Dear God, make me a bird, so that I can fly, far far away.

I would like to say that I pray all the time, every day, many times a day. Unfortunately lately I've had a hard time praying. I still believe, I just have been so tired and had so much running through my head that I just haven't prayed, have been lazy, confused, preoccupied.

However melodramatic, I've decided to write a prayer here just to get it out, solidify it. Then whenever I feel too tired to pray I can come back and read this.

God, please watch over my family and friends.

Please watch my mama. Keep her safe, and make her life good. Give her happiness and relief from stress and let her have the ability to find some peace now that she's raised her children. Please give her the knowledge that she's done a good job.

Please help my sister to find some happiness in a life that is different from what she imagined as a child. Help her to relax and find some goodness in her life, and to let go of all her disappointments.

Please help my dad to be happy and safe and healthy. Help him to know that his kids are all good people, even if we're so far from perfect.

Please help Jason's mom to find some peace and to know that she did a good job with her children. Help her to know that their fierce love of life is a testament to what kind of parent she is.

Please help Jason's dad to love himself, to be proud of his own tough brand of fathering. Help him to remember that his children love him.

Please keep Jason's brothers and their families safe, and keep them on the path to a great life, a path I think they are already on.

Please give happiness and safety to the rest of our families, our uncles and aunts and cousins and step-parents and all of their families.

Please watch over Kristi and Chris. Help them to stay as happy as they are now, to remember this time when life gets harder or different, to have a life with babies and good jobs and friends who love them and take care of them.

Please help Andy to find some happiness, to let go of some of the awful things he's been through and feel a little lighter. Watch over Diane and give her the peace of mind that she deserves as a woman who has worked her entire life to make a good life for her children.

Please help Lindsey to know that her life will be full and perfect and that this time when things are swimming around her and everything is murky will one day be gone. Help her to remember that when her life seems mired in pain and uncertainty, her friends still love her and still want everything to get better, and that's a start.

Please help Stephanie to find some peace, some calm, some ability to see clearly in the dark. Please give James the ability to center down, to remember how delicate life is, to remember how much he loves life and smiling and his future wife.

Please watch over all my friends who I don't see as often- Deanna, Brock, Linnea, Johnny, Derek, Mason, Jasper, Amanda, John, probably others whose names aren't coming to me now- help them to be happy, keep them safe.

God, please watch over Kane and Jude and help them to understand that parents can't always agree. Help them to understand that having divorced parents, fighting parents, is not their fault and that everything will be okay. Help them to forgive us for being imperfect and not always knowing the right answer. Help them to remember that this life is not perfect and even when things are disappointing, we are always trying really, really hard.

Please keep my baby safe. Please, God, just be with Reed and don't let anything bad happen to him. I am having a hard time right now not thinking about all the bad things that can happen to a child, all the illness and accidents and tragedies. Please just let Reed have a long happy life that I can enjoy with him. Please don't let him be a crazy person like me. Please give him the ability to be a hard worker and a fierce lover of his friends and family and a person who can love his life with reckless abandon.

Please help Jason to remember why he fell in love with me, why I fell in love with him. Please let us know how to persevere. Please help us to find our roles with each other as a team, as a pair of people who want the same things, and people who want good things for each other. Please help him find everything he's looking for. Please keep him safe.

Please help me to be a better person. Jesus, please, just help me let go of some of this grief that is inexplicably lodged in my heart. Please don't let me waste this time, this time with Jason and Reed and Kane and Jude, being a sad person, a crazy person. Please help me to know the right thing to do in all these situations I find myself in, these moments when I feel lost, when I forget for a moment that I'm not a kid, when I think that I can't possibly be old enough to make the decisions that I'm faced with. Please help me hold on these last little remnants of my ability to have a good time, to smile and laugh, to get pleasure out of watching other people laugh. Help me remember that my children are fragile and I must always think about every action, every comment, every single thing that I do and how it will affect them. Please give me the strength and grace to combine the very best qualities of my favorite people, to be like my mother and Kristi and Lindsey and Jason and Stephanie and Deanna and to have the quick, witty sense of humor and irony that Kane and Jude and Reed have. Help me to remember why I am not perfect, why Jason isn't perfect, to remember that our flaws are beautiful and that without them, we would be someone else. Please give me some peace in the night, some time when I don't wonder if the doors are locked, some time when I don't wonder what that sound was, some moments when I'm not thinking about all the bad stuff that could be about to happen.

Oh God, please don't forget about Leonard Peltier. I cannot imagine how hard his life has been, still is, how much longing he must have to hold his grandchildren, to stroke their hair and tell them that he loves them.

Please help all of us to do better, to think more about this living, breathing organism that is the world we live in. Help us to remember that it is our responsibility to make sure that there still is a world for our children, that this fierce love and fear we have for them is the same fierce love and fear they will have for their own children, and that we have a hand in deciding how much they will have to worry about their families, their lives, their futures.

And God, as long as I'm making requests, please help me not take a cow pie to work in a bag and throw it at my boss. All those times that she rolls her eyes at me, grunts at my "stupidity", claps her hands in my face, talks to me like I'm an idiot, please in those moments help her to know that she is walking a very thin line with a very crazy lady. We haven't got Reed potty trained yet, so I still have access to some very nasty substances which I could very easily rub all over the door-handles on her car.

Help me to remember why a sense of humor is so important, and help everyone reading to know that I still have one. It just gets lost behind a very thick fog sometimes.