Dear God, will I ever sleep well again? 

Honestly, it feels like times will never end after three nights’ crappy sleep, but they will. They always do. And even if they don’t, it’s okay, because there are Sunday afternoon naps and Tylenol.

So what to do, God? Best to get moving. Best to get on up and get the pork loin seasoned and seared on all sides and in the crockpot with the liquid that will turn into a tasty sauce. Wash the dishes. Dry them and put them away to keep a tidy kitchen, then make a cup of coffee. Take it to the porch and listen to the hummingbirds and wonder if their sound is akin to hearing Your voice. Poop. Clean up the dog’s poop. I’ve washed my hands five times in the hour since I’ve been up.

Could my soul ever be as clean as my hands, or do you stand, God, with one of those lights like the home economics teacher had that time to teach good handwashing skills, except You’ve got it trained directly on my heart and my soul and my mind? What hidden filth is there, God, that I’m too blind to see, those things that I can never scour away? 

I think of the things that I’ve thought and said, the garden variety of cuss words that sprinkle my speech like cow patties in an otherwise lovely green pasture, and I think, forgive me, God. Forgive me.

And—help me, God, help me.

I go back to the porch and think about people having hard times. 

Help them, God, help them.

Oh, there are too many to even touch with a personal act of kindness, like fixing a casserole or baking a batch of cinnamon rolls, as if food is the only way to show someone you care. So send them a card, Marla, if you really want to do something that isn’t food-related.

Yet I know that I won’t. There are still too many. I’d need to open my own personal Hallmark store, for everyone is fighting some kind of battle, dontcha know? And then I wish I lived in Minnesota where people say that little phrase, where it’s very cold in the winter. I could experience the sport of curling and maybe also go ice fishing. The temperatures are more or less pleasant in the summer, kind of like this morning, for it’s finally cooling off, yet they say Minnesota mosquitoes are huge and that they swarm in great fogs, blackening the sun like an Egyptian plague.

Focus, Marla. You’re supposed to be praying.

I am overwhelmed with the burden of it all, so forgive me, God, for daydreaming and releasing a puff of ADHD steam, and thank you for making me this way, God. I think all kinds of interesting thoughts, things that are fun and that make me smile. 

Do they make you smile? 

Thank you for my mind, for imagination, for this porch, for the hummingbird feeders, for the sun that shines on us all and the dew the dampens the grass. 

I am glad I am not you, God, You who see it all and know it all and is working it all out, somehow.

So I pray for them, these people who do not know that I think of them. There isn’t even anyone here to see my hand go up when the imaginary pastor asks for unspoken requests, and there certainly aren’t enough words to express all that I feel for these folks—people with cancer, people with kids who have cancer, people on death’s doorstep, one foot in the grave and another on a banana peel.

People who have lost their jobs. People who have children who act as if they’ve never had any kind of training or teaching on manners or right living. Children who have parents who don’t care a thing about teaching them how to brush their teeth or their hair, much less cuddle or snuggle during thunderclaps of life’s storms.

I think of parents who are, for whatever reason, away from their children, estranged for maybe a short season, but it could also very well be a lifetime. 

I think of those separated from their friends and loved ones by the dark shroud of death, and how the mourning comes and goes.

I think of people who have doubts. People who are struggling. People who are stressed, depressed, anxious, uncertain, or generally pissed at the world.

And it isn’t even words that come out. I don’t craft long and flowery prayers. I can’t. I don’t have it in me, for these “groans too deep for words” connect these people’s needs with their pasts and presents and futures in a way that only God can do. 

All I can do is utter their names in a breath of hope. 

Lord, this one. Lord, that one. Hear my prayer, O Lord. I feel each one rise as does the morning mist now ascending through the rays of sunlight. It’s like I’ve got a Jacob’s ladder of the heart on which I place all these thoughts, and I know they won’t land on deaf ears.

I know God hears.

Then I’m silent. My heart, soul, and mind are still.

Meanwhile, the hummingbirds continue their morning feeding, though there are fewer this morning than in the days before. The dew from the roof drips down the gutters. The world is anything but silent, for the busy hum of the little birds’ wings and the plunking drops of collected condensation striking metal mean that it is time to move. Time is ticking. 

I look one more time at the vapor rising to the heavens when a hummingbird decides to take a closer look at me. It zooms down from the feeder, hovering in front of my face, only a foot or so away, so close that I could reach out and grab it—and I am struck with a holy awe. Its beady, black eyes examine me intently. I am wearing no brightly colored clothing, nothing that would indicate that I am a flower for food or a feeder for fighting over, so why pay me any attention at all?

Is it you, God? Lord, are you here?

Then the little bird buzzes even more closely, the better to squirt out a drop of hummingbird poop that lands on the left corner of my seat cushion, narrowly missing the notebook in my lap, before flying away into the sawtooth oak trees.

I smile.

God, you’re funny.

And yes, Lord. You are here.