Family Foxhole

Our family is taking time daily to pray about the current global health crisis. Our prayers will likely reference the Christian tradition, but we’ve written with an ecumenical and agnostic audience in mind.

If you’d like us to pray for you, let us know. If you’d like us to write a prayer for you or for a concern you have and share it here, just ask. You don’t have to share your name if you don’t want to, and we won’t share it or any other identifying details about you here or elsewhere.

Today we pray for children in foster care as well as those who recently left the foster care system, especially college students who may be struggling to find a place to “come home” to.

Today we pray for children in the foster care system and those who have recently graduated from it. We pray, too, for foster parents, respite foster parents, and social workers serving in foster care. We pray for all those who love and support children and foster families.

We pray for those we don’t know and for those we do, including [names of people involved in foster care, including ourselves].

We pray for children who may fear entering the foster care system but who are not safe in their biological parents’ homes. We pray for them confidence that they will be cared for. We pray for them soothing of conflicted feelings about pursuing their own safety. We pray for them assurance that they are loved and remembered. Our hope for them is safety, security, affection, support, and the meeting of all their physical, social, and emotional needs.

We pray for foster families, that they retain optimism, hope, acceptance, and compassion, that the welcome they share never wanes but that they are sustained by broader communities of support and kindness. We pray for just treatment of children in foster care, positive relationships between them and other children and adults in their foster homes, and ethical treatment throughout their engagement in the foster care system.

We are thankful for children in our community and grateful for the opportunity to meet all their needs. We are thankful for foster families and those who protect children.

Above, The Siblings by Max Lieberman shows a young child and a baby playing together on the floor. The older child holds a doll, which the younger one examines. Every child deserves a safe, loving family.

 

Our family is taking time daily to pray about the current global health crisis. Our prayers will likely reference the Christian tradition, but we’ve written with an ecumenical and agnostic audience in mind.

If you’d like us to pray for you, let us know. If you’d like us to write a prayer for you or for a concern you have and share it here, just ask. You don’t have to share your name if you don’t want to, and we won’t share it or any other identifying details about you here or elsewhere.

Today we pray for people who are immunocompromised and those with underlying or pre-existing health conditions.

Today we pray for people with immunocompromised health and other health conditions that make them vulnerable to viruses or make recovery from illness more challenging. We pray for those who are ill and those who fear they will be ill, as well as all the people who care about them and for them, including physicians, nurses, home health aids, and friends and family.

We pray for those we don’t know and for those we do, including [names of people we care about who are ill or who have had illnesses that make them vulnerable to further sickness].

We pray for all those with AIDs, cancer, diabetes, and malnutrition, as well as other conditions that suppress their immune systems. We pray for those who use medications that make them vulnerable to other illnesses. And we pray for all those in nursing homes, hospitals, prisons, foster homes, ICE detention centers, and group homes who may be more vulnerable to the spread of disease because of where they live.

We pray for them health, safety, security, and access to medicine, good healthcare and sanitary conditions. We hope for them peace of heart and assurance. We pray that they are able to rest from any worries they might have.

We are thankful for every member of our community, for each unique contribution they make, the gifts they share, the ways they leave, and the models they provide.

 

 

Our family is taking time daily to pray about the current global health crisis. Our prayers will likely reference the Christian tradition, but we’ve written with an ecumenical and agnostic audience in mind.

If you’d like us to pray for you, let us know. If you’d like us to write a prayer for you or for a concern you have and share it here, just ask. You don’t have to share your name if you don’t want to, and we won’t share it or any other identifying details about you here or elsewhere.

In this pandemic, we have a duty to others to physically isolate from them–to stay “Safe at home.” But, for many, home is the most unsafe place in their lives. Today, we pray for victims of violence within families.

Today we pray for those for whom home is not a safe place: for all victims of domestic violence. We pray for children, adults, and the elderly who are abused or neglected. We pray for people hurt physically and emotionally by their intimate partners, parents, and others whom they cannot safely flee. We pray for those who support them, love them, care for them, and advocate for them, including friends, extended family members, social workers, shelter workers and volunteers, 911 dispatchers, and others. We pray especially for police officers responding to domestic violence calls for help, that they have wisdom in responding to and keeping the most vulnerable people safe.

We pray for those we don’t know and for those we do, including [names of people who are victims of family violence, including ourselves].

We pray for people who have been hurt, are hurting, and fear being hurt. We pray for those with few places to turn for help. We recognize the reality of their pain. We pray for them resilience, comfort, hope, assurance, inner strength, peace of heart, and confidence. We hope for them safety in all forms.

We hate violence in families. We want for ourselves the courage to fight for justice for them, for an end to system of oppression that keep people stuck in unsafe situations, and for a culture change to end the entitlement of abusers. We seek the courage to name oppressors and perpetrators and hold them accountable for their actions so that they, too, can live with peace of heart.

We are thankful for members of our community vulnerable to abuse and the gifts they bring. 

Above, Eugenio Zampighpi‘s A Happy Family. All members of a household deserve respect, which is the root of love.

Need help?

• If your life in in immediate danger, call 911.
• The National Domestic Abuse Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 or text LOVEIS to 22522.
• Lundy Bancroft’s website

 

Our family is taking time daily to pray about the current global health crisis. Our prayers will likely reference the Christian tradition, but we’ve written with an ecumenical and agnostic audience in mind.

If you’d like us to pray for you, let us know. If you’d like us to write a prayer for you or for a concern you have and share it here, just ask. You don’t have to share your name if you don’t want to, and we won’t share it or any other identifying details about you here or elsewhere.

Today’s prayer is a little different. It’s inspired by John Prine, one of our favorite singers, who is critically ill with COVID-19. So it’s for John Prine, but it’s also for all the people John Prine’s music reminds us to love, too.

Today we are thankful for musicians who call our attention to those in need. We pray for all artists who use their gifts to expand our hearts.

We pray for those we don’t know yet whose words we sign, share, and carry with us, and we pray for those we do know. We pray specifically for [names of artists and singers whose work inspires us].

Inspired by the work of John Prine, we also pray today for

• families affected by addiction
• for people who are incarcerated
• for those making peace with mortality
• for people and places bearing the costs of environmental degradation
• for people seeking connection amid loneliness
• for peacemakers

We are grateful for voices that call us to kinder thinking, action, and words. We are grateful for their words and seek to have hearts open and tender to their call to remember the vulnerable.