A Prayer of Gratitude for Life

Father, I am alive. Heart beating, lungs filling, this strange and ordinary miracle of being here at all. Today that simple fact is enough to make me grateful.

I confess I treat my days like they are guaranteed. I spend hours numb to the wonder of them, scrolling past my own one and only life, waiting for it to become something else before I will love it.

But this is the life. Right here. The taste of the morning, the sound of rain on the window, the ache and the joy all mixed together in the same ordinary hour. Thank You for breathing it into me at the start and sustaining it still, one heartbeat after another, even while I sleep and forget to be amazed.

Your word says You formed me in secret and knew all my days before a single one of them began. I am not an accident. I was not a mistake or an afterthought. I was wanted into being, written into a story that started long before I noticed I was in it.

Help me live awake. Not numb, not rushing past it, not always somewhere else in my head. Let me feel the full weight and gift of being here while I am still here to feel it.

Thank You for the unrepeatable gift of this life. I do not want to sleep through it. Amen.