A Blessing by Kate Bowler
I first came to hear of Kate Bowler from my daughter, who read her book, “Everything Happens for a Reason.” I read it and immediately came to cherish her words.
Kate Bowler is a New York Times best-selling author, podcast host, and associate professor of the history of Christianity in North America at Duke University. After being unexpectedly diagnosed with Stage IV cancer at age 35, she wrote the New York Times best-selling memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved), which tells the story of her struggle to understand the personal and intellectual dimensions of the American belief that all tragedies are tests of character. Her TED talk on the subject has received over 9 million views to date, and on her popular podcast, Everything Happens, she talks with people about what they have learned in dark times and why it is so difficult to speak frankly about suffering.
A BLESSING FOR WHEN YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW HOW TO PRAY (OR WANT TO)
Blessed are you in this terrible, wonderful now.
Fumbling around for the right words.
You need so much and it seems impossible to say at all.
Blessed are you for whom prayer feels hopeless, disappointing, futile.
Blessed are you in your radical honesty, in the ways you speak of your grief.
The long, sleepless nights in a still-empty bed.
Or the physical pain you feel, the joints that don’t work like they used to, the brain fog or chronic migraines, who speak of your loneliness, the empty home or nest or womb.
Blessed are you who have the audacity to ask for the miracles you need, the healing or a new friend or a redeemed family.
Blessed are you as you learn to trust, trust a God who hears, who listens, who hasn’t left your side, who prays on your behalf, interpreting those deep groans you can’t quite put into syllables or sounds.
Blessed are you, as you settle into acceptance.
And blessed are we who live here in the someday, but not now.