117 Comments
Aug 2, 2020Liked by Nadia Bolz-Weber

We need to have some small degree of assurance that this shitshow won't have a sequel.

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Please Jesus.

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Without MUCH better leadership, “this” will, with 100% certainty, have sequels (pleural) and much worse ones.

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Amen

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Prayers for RBG, please God, keep her with us at least until January. And please keep her comfortable and as healthy as possible while she's here.

I also pray for all of us who may be struggling financially, physically, emotionally, and spiritually to find some indeed peace. We've had enough of this shit show. Please no encore.

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RBG. My God: how strong she is. I add my prayers to yours!

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RBG added!!

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Yes please! Prayers for RBG.

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Yes!

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I’m a rural doc and I’m losing my first patient to this COVID19 shit show. I’m so tired, so angry and so scared. Scared that I might take this thing home to my kids, that I might catch it and not go home to my kids, scared that I might not have the guts to keep coming back to work each day. And I’ve got it easy compared to TX and NY. — I am struggling today with the Now but Not Yet of the Kingdom - Come Lord Jesus, quickly come 😓

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Ashley, in late February, all of March, and all of April, I was where you are right now. And I was scared, I felt helpless, I felt worried that I would be an inadvertent carrier of c-19 to my other patients, to my co-workers, to my family, to my loved ones, to the poor kid behind the cash register, you name it. It was awful. It was terrifying to see all those wards and all those floors in my small rural hospital where the walls were lined with paper bags filled with PPE (because apparently a lunch bag has magical anti-viral properties that we weren't told about in school), all those negative-pressure rooms, an entire CCU that was nothing but c-19 patients on vents or trying not get on vents, or trying to come off of vents...It was so incredibly stressful and frightening. I had reddened, irritated skin from my N-95, my hands were peeling from so much scrubbing and glove use, I had a headache from trying to see through my glasses and my goggles and my face shield... I used to walk out to my car at the end of the day, close the door and bawl. That was pretty much all of March, and all of April. Steeling myself to go to work, working in a pervasive pea-soup-fog of fear at work, and bawling after work. BUT--I will tell you one thing, Ashley...there will be very little else in life that you and I will do that will equal this for letting us see how precious and fragile an ordinary life is. It is a gift that was delivered like a baseball bat to the head. We will spend years getting over the stress of this. I offer you this little nugget of hope: 3 weeks ago we discharged a patient who was one of our nurses--she had been in the hospital for 104 days, 21 of those days on a vent. She's home now. HOME. Sometimes, we win. Blessings on you, Ashley. Blessings on you and your team. I carry you in my heart.

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Thank you and I'm so sorry.

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For the external awareness of people to overcome their egocentrism. For basic common decency, civility and goodwill to prevail. For public health common sense to outweigh wanton neglect of the safety of others.

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Amen, sister!

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Just got out of the psych ward. Prayers for everyone who is still in it, exposed to COVID, and unable to have visitors. Prayers for those of us who are feeling crazy, even after discharge, for we are legion.

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Hi, Annie.

Please take good care of you. Your life is precious. Go back if you feel you can't trust yourself to stay safe.

Sara

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A Mennonite pastor, Anne Lamott, and you: my truth-bringers, my light-bringers, my beacons of realness and vulnerability and honesty in a (yes) shitshow of people not being any of those things. Thank you. Bless you. May God's light shine on you perpetually and light your way so that you can in turn light ours.

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Amen to that...we need prophets desperately.

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That many, many people come out to vote, and safely, and without waiting 500 hours in line, on November 3rd. For all the lonely grandparents, family, friends, for unemployed and under employed. For our mental health please. And thank You for that weird feeling of joy that comes in the midst of the shit-show, the glorious moments of (oddly) Taylor Swift's new album, and thank you very much for Lady Gaga, and Beyonce'. Thank you for our BIPOC activists who give their time and energy over decades and have lost many things like jobs and health to serve for a better world. Pray for all those that serve - seems like that is actually everyone - but especially schoolteachers right now, and parents. Also thank you for the comedy relief and occasional irritation of our fur children - they are truly pure of spirit. Please let us see the crack of sunshine through the pottery bowl we are stuck in, that it bursts open into wholeness. Or, can this shit funding stop? Give us the intuition/guidance to take the next right step.

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Not funding, funding. 😀

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Fucking

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God, I am really angry and frustrated with all the anti-maskers in my community and I need Your help to not lash out.

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The Bitter Southerner website sells masks that say: Abide No Hatred.

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Maybe try Thich Nhat Hanh's trick for compassion: see each one as a five year old child. See the original innocence. If that's not too facile.

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Dad died in April. Mom has esophageal cancer and she's in the hospital right now, not that I can visit. Thank you, God, for two amazing parents -- amazing in different and sometimes difficult ways -- and for my amazing Warrior Women sisters. But SRSLY, God?! I get that this is life. I get that it's my turn to nurture and support and walk with my Mom. But I'm not feelin' it. I need a serious, freakin' God Breeze. STAT. Oh yeah -- and the rest of the shit show? Are you pissed or just showing off? Please, thank you, and Amen.

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I'm so sorry. That sounds miserably hard right now.

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I need it to be OK that I don't think about all the shit show at the same time, that it's not a reflection of my love for you and others, that it's not denial, a lack of faith, that it's just toooo much sometimes and I need to be able to say that out loud, at least to you.

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Ugh seriously. The guilt i've been carrying around lately just because im afraid i'll forget to pray for one of the hundred people im supposed to be praying for right now.

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I am despairing and lost...drinking too much and finding myself without prayers. I am not holding on very well. I pray that my mom will be okay (in that relative sense where there is already illness) and that I will have patience with her as she declines. I pray that I will find God's presence in unexpected places and that I will find more strength in God than I do in other useless diversions (hello, food, alcohol, television, Facebook...) And Lord, please help to stop being so angry at the stupidity I see around me and simply love people instead of wanting to be ignorant in response to them.

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HEY, i am a 63 year old still recovering alcoholic and need to tell you there is always hope and God is always present but the fog of my friend Jack Daniels was often all I could see, so, for me, that's what God said had to go first; other stuff followed. God is with you.

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I'm weary. Everyone I know is weary. (And we are the "lucky" ones....I know people with some serious illness, but no death. There is so much racism, and fear for the election....I cannot write ETC enough) Even still. All our edges are fraying, especially the raw edges of anxiety and depression. I'm scared of this Fall and Winter. I get through each day by imagining an end. How it will be. Next Summer? How joyful, how grateful we will be. I don't expect we will be where we were before the pandemic, but just...SOME sense of a lower defcon, more lightness, the ability to go places, hug friends, break bread together, Prayers for everyone who is suffering on every level and for an "end." Help us hold on.

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For Joe Biden to survive through November, and for him to pick the very best running mate, and for the majority of US citizens to vote for him. And when and if his VP, a woman of color, I hope, takes over as president, that she be amazing and take responsibility to right a lot of wrongs, as we often see women leaders do.

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Praying for my auntie kay who is alone at 91 in an er with some massive infection... and her family are not with her..

Praying for love to be restored in marriage which has somehow morphed into roommates .. which sucks because sometimes physical love ... a hug .. keeps the shit show at bay.

Pray for peace in every way.

And to not have to think for stupid people every minute of every day.

Grateful to be able to pray for these things and feel it will be heard.

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I hear you loud and clear!

:-)

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Thank you, Nadia. I am praying for science and the scientists who are working 24/7 to find some kind of treatment/vaccine/help/relief for this ever mutating virus. I've seen posts on Facebook and Instagram urging people to pray for the president, or pray for repentance so that the virus will go away (would that even happen?) I think we need to pray for the scientists and chemists and lab workers. First, that scientists will be believed and trusted, and not maligned, misquoted and judged, and secondly, that they may swiftly find a vaccine or treatment that works. They are putting their own lives at risk every day they go into the lab, don their hazmat suits and get out the vials of Covid, and blood samples, etc to try to figure out what makes this virus tick - and is there a way to make it not tick so quickly and overwhelmingly? At the end of the day they must shower completely, and head home to their families. Always with a worry, I am sure. They need support via grants and they need our support. They do not need us to say, "We trust God more than you."

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We need a caring bone in the body of our leadership.

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Ahmen! At least one if not a whole body part of bones.

:-)

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