By Sharon Campbell Rayment – Special to the Sydenham Current
I’m sitting in my darkened bedroom feeling alone and panicked.
I pull back the drapes but close my eyes quickly as the light hits my eyes.
I already had a headache, and the daylight didn’t help.
My head continues to pound and roar in my ears.
I hear my kids laughing and the sounds of dinner being made but I can’t leave dark and quiet my room.
The rattling of pots and pans and the silverware touching the plate is amplified and high pitched leaving me absent from the dinner table.
My thoughts are running wild.
“Don’t be so silly. Get out there.”
“Why did this happen?”
“What will I do now?”
“God, where are you?”
And I imagine what others are saying.
“She should get back to work.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
“Oh, I’ve had worse and was able to work and get all I have to do done.”
“She just needs to pull up her bootstraps.”
This is how I felt after my traumatic brain injury.
Isolated, hypersensitive, frustrated, angry, sad, and feelings hopelessness.
Sound familiar?
Have you felt this way, or have you heard folks expressing these feelings more of late?
The frustration of another shut down.
The depression of isolation.
The sadness as another life is lost.
The anger of “when will this be over?”
And feelings of hopelessness are all common right now.
We all felt this would be behind us before now, but it’s not.
Who knows when this will end?
This is the International Week of Prayer and I shared a five-step practice in our worship service on prayer today.
This practice of prayer is one I used during my healing process to transform these feelings to ones of hope, inner harmony, and spiritual well-being.
My prayer is that it helps you to find a wee bit of silence within and renewed hope.
This practice came from Paul’s writing in Philippians 4:4-8 and First Thessalonians 5:16-18. “Rejoice always, pray unceasingly, and in all circumstances give thanks” and “God is near. Be anxious for nothing.”
The five steps of prayer are first to ready yourself to begin by being grounded and present.
To release negative and distracting thoughts and receive inner peace.
To return to your world with thanks and to remember throughout your day this moment of calm and to share this with others.
This five-minute prayer practice with 5 stages can be done by using a labyrinth or just by pausing, imagining and visualizing through these pieces.
God has given us the gift of prayer to help us to reconnect with hope, with Spirit, and with one another in peace and love.
Take five this week. Five minutes, 300 seconds, to pray and as Paul declares “the peace that surpasses all understanding will be yours in Christ.” (Philippians 4:8)
Until next time remember every breath you take is a breath of God and a shared one with All my Relations United as One.
