A Prayer for Strength in a Terminal Diagnosis

Father, the doctor used the word terminal, and the world tilted. I am still breathing, still here at my own kitchen table, but a clock I cannot see has started, and I do not know how to hold both my life and my dying in the same two hands.

I confess I am afraid, not only of the end but of the road there, of pain and dependence and the grief on the faces of the people I love. There are mornings I rage and mornings I am eerily calm, and I do not know which frightens me more.

So I bring all of it to You, the fear and the fragile peace, the days I have left however many they are. You have walked through the valley of the shadow ahead of me and You will not let me walk it alone.

Take the terror out of the unknown. Give me time that is good and not only long, conversations that matter, laughter that surprises me. Free me to live the days I have rather than only mourn the ones I will not get.

You said though I walk through the darkest valley I will fear no evil, for You are with me. Be with me, Father, all the way through. Hold me now, and hold me at the end, and I will not be afraid. Amen.