A childhood prayer

Maybe it’s because of my age. Maybe it’s because of the complexity of my life. Maybe it’s because I’m more God-centered than I was forty or fifty years ago. Maybe it’s because I value the simplicity of old age. But a childhood prayer has continued to reverberate in my mind these last few days, not replacing the prayers I usually say, but reminding me of the ones I said every night as a child:

Now I go to sleep.

I ask God to keep my soul.

And if I die before I wake up

I ask God to take my soul.

Maybe it’s just a matter of distilling my complex life down to its simplest form and getting rid of all the unimportant things that usually occupy one’s life. Maybe it’s just a matter of looking at where we came from and where we are going, and measuring our lives in teaspoons instead of endless gallons, and maybe it’s just a matter of focusing on the importance of fulfilling one’s destiny and making a difference in this world, leaving it better than we found it, but I find the prayer of my childhood very comforting.

It’s comforting in a way that it wasn’t when I was a kid. In those years, I said the prayer from memory and I ended this prayer by blessing all the members of my family, also from memory.

Over the years, as I grew closer to my family and realized how lucky I was to be born into this family and how much I appreciated the close ties we shared, I prayed differently. My words came from my heart, not my head and every night and several times during most days, I continually thanked God for these many blessings that I was fortunate to receive.

Whenever I hear of other people’s trials and tribulations, it saddens me and reinforces my gratitude for all that has been given to me. I hold it close to my heart, as the most precious secret and I cling to it as the gift that it is.

I know that I cannot cure all the problems in the world or all the problems of the people I know, but I try to share the part of me that is accessible to those who need love and support.

I am in the process of learning to distinguish between those who really need it and those who just want to take what they can without lifting a finger to help themselves. It has been a difficult lesson to learn, this separation from the takers who continue to drink without caring about how much they have taken, and from the people who take only what they need and work hard to use the life lessons they have learned. However, little by little I am learning this lesson well enough that I do not have to repeat it over and over again, and little by little I am learning to get rid of the people in my life who do not have my best interests at heart, but I want to everything they can get without thinking about how to get it.

It is a lesson worth learning. Everyone should listen to their intuition and recognize the warning signs they see and pay attention to their messages.