Dear God,

Thank you for supporting us through another week. We are so grateful for your light and your love. I just read a quote that reads, “There is only love. Everything else is our resistance to it.”

I want to write to those who are trying something out for the first time and maybe opening their hearts up to a new or another opportunity. Lord, you know that new can be a scary three-letter word, but it can also be a word full of opportunity.

New can look like another 24-hours, but it can also look like a person, a job, or a hobby.

I ask that you give those who are trying new things this week an opportunity to feel proud of themselves and to know that while there is room for fear there is just as much room for faith. When we try something for the first time, when we move forward even though we may feel uncomfortable or challenged, we can do hard things, (thank you Glennon Doyle, but, also, you God), and that hard shouldn’t be a STOP sign, but a sign of growth and an opportunity to push ourselves differently.

I know that You are with us as we encounter these new situations and that when we put you towards the forefront of our minds, when we prioritize You, we are not running the show and therefore we are doing things with good and peaceful intention.

We also know that fear can provoke acting in ways that move away from our best selves and so we ask you Lord to also help us get back onto the right and good path when we start to swerve and to grant us — especially those who may not know it – the knowledge that you love us not despite our swerves, but as a whole human being which is to say someone who when presented with a new thing may need a few chances to come at it in the best way.

When we are walking with you hand-in-hand we are not making choices without thinking them through and considering how our behavior effects others. We are aware even in a new, different situation.

God, you teach us so much about love, but most importantly you teach us about loving ourselves. I ask that You remind each of us — specifically those who are on a new path — that they are loved just as much when they are figuring it out as when they know; that the new is a path to honor just as much as the old.

Amen.