A prayer for Mental Health Awareness Sunday

A prayer for Mental Health Awareness Sunday
By Rev. Debra McKnight

All Loving God, Living Water

We pause in care of our community,
    knowing our neighbors struggle,
    people we love struggle and we struggle
        with the health of our minds, bodies and souls.

We pause in heartbreak and hope, seeking for all to be whole.

We pause in gratitude for researchers and providers,
    therapists and doctors,
    nurses and social workers,
        advocates and allies that stand in the hard moments
            and work towards healing, hope and care.

For those diagnosed and those without,
    for those with access and for those without,
    for those exhausted in searching for the right care, the right medicine,
        the right insurance and the right provider that makes their life their own
            we pray.

For the ways we discount and demonize, the ways we have stigmatized and enflamed fears
    for the moments we have put the diagnose before the person
    for the wounds we have salted with our thoughts and prayers
    for the words and questions that have made what was bad worse
    for all the moments we failed to show up; frozen and caught unaware
we pause for forgiveness and seek to build a new way.
    
    
Draw us beyond our own comfort and our love of cliché
     from cheep platitudes to real presence
    steel our hearts to be silent when we don’t know what to say
    and open our ears to hear beyond the compulsory ‘fine” we all seek to be.  

Draw us beyond the easy boundaries we make
    and into the worries that threaten to swallow our neighbors whole,
    grant us courage to show up and listen until our hearts break,
    grant us the grit to do what needs to be done,
        offering phone calls, casseroles and everything in between.

Draw us to learning and listening, reading and researching,
    that opens our hearts and our minds and advocates for a world where all can be whole.

May it be so, Amen