Sunday, November 25, 2012

Prayers of a Tweenage Girl.

When I was 12 years old I remember clearly praying almost every night before falling asleep,


"Dear God, please let me be a good person."

It was my nightly plea.

"Please let me be..." 

I don't know if it's something for which I needed to ask permission.  But it was a prayer for the future.  It was something I hoped for.

Before me, I could see where my thought train headed.  I could see my priorities changing from baby dolls to cute boys.  I could remember the pain I felt when the books were knocked from my hands in the hallway and I could feel the anger welling up inside me like boiling-over potatoes - the sounds of the steam licking the burners is singed forever in my memory.

I look back at how things could have turned out differently.

I look forward and I realize that this is still my plea.

In spite of these things, oh, Lord, allow me to be good.

1 comment:

T Peter said...

This is a good prayer, reminiscent of the "lead us not into temptation" line in the Lord's Prayer. As Tolstoy pointed out, we have the capacity for good or evil inside our nature...it's not that difficult to imagine doing evil. What makes you a good person is the desire to be good, and the conscious decision to do good instead of harm.

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