A Prayer for When You Feel Numb

Lord, I do not feel sad exactly. I feel nothing. There is a strange fog where my emotions used to live, and I move through the day like a person watching their own life through thick glass. I cannot cry, I cannot laugh, I just exist at a distance from everything.

I confess the numbness scares me more than the pain did. At least pain meant I was still in there somewhere. This blankness makes me wonder if I have gone missing from my own life.

So I come to You in the flatness, with no tears to offer and no warm feeling to prove my faith is real. You are God of the numb places too.

Reach me where I cannot reach myself. Thaw me slowly and safely, not all at once. And until the feeling returns, let my faith rest on what is true rather than on what I can feel.

You promised never to leave me or forsake me, and that promise does not depend on my emotions to hold. You are with me in the fog whether I sense You or not.

I give You this empty, distant version of me without dressing it up. Sit with me here in the quiet. When the feeling returns, and it will, let me find You were beside me the whole numb stretch. Amen.