Praying Again

I am nervously awaiting news that could -- will -- change my life forever. My husband is there, taking care of it for me. Despite everything I've done, he is sticking up for me, defending me, protecting me.

I hardly know why I deserve it. 

Last night, he asked that we pray together again. We used to, every night, until things got...busy. Messy. Complicated. And now I find this, posted by the priest who married us.

I hear You. Loud and clear. 

I'm still just as confused, but I hear You.

"I am praying again, Awesome One"

(Ich bete wieder, du Elauchter)

You hear me again, as words

from the depths of me

rush toward you in the wind.

I’ve been scattered in pieces,

torn by conflict,

mocked by laughter,

washed down in drink.

In alleyways I sweep myself up

out of garbage and broken glass.

With my half-mouth I stammer you,

who are eternal in your symmetry.

I lift to you my half-hands

in wordless beseeching, that I may find again

the eyes with which I once beheld you.

I am a house gutted by fire

where only the guilty sometimes sleep

before the punishment that devours them

hounds them out in the open. 

I am a city by the sea

sinking into a toxic tide.

I am strange to myself, as though someone unknown

had poisoned my mother as she carried me.

It’s here in all the pieces of my shame

that now I find myself again.

I yearn to belong to something, to be contained

in an all-embracing mind that sees me

as a single thing.

I yearn to be held

in the great hands of your heart–

oh let them take me now.

Into them I place these fragments, my life,

and you, God–spend them however you want. 

-Rainer Maria Rilke