Recently, God has put a new prayer in my heart. I barely heard it at first, and then I was sure I was mishearing it, but now I sing it every day.
In high school, I used to pray daily for three things. I would get to school, run up the three flights of stairs to the chapel, fling my backpack down outside the doors, enter the calm and quiet space. I'd drop to my knees before the closed tabernacle and beg God to give me peace, courage, and strength.
Peace, courage, and strength, I'd plead. Please, God. Give me peace, courage, and strength.
Peace, because I was always so close to being consumed by my overwhelming anxiety and perfectionism. Courage, because I knew I had a voice, but I didn't know how to use it. Strength, because I was always so weary of the world around me.
In college, my prayer slowly changed. I learned how to make my own peace; I found my courage and pressed forward; God made me strong and never let me fall. Over time, that old prayer fell away, although it still rises to my lips, unbidden, when I can't think of anything to say. It's my oldest and most favorite mantra. But I was soon asking God to help make me great, to show me how to change the world, to give me happiness, to help me feel important, to give me opportunities to make differences.
Make me great... so that I can help others.
What good intentions my selfishness cloaked itself in.
The past year, a new prayer has quietly been growing within me. The desire to be great has died down and taken a new form. I still want to make changes and do good, but the wording has twisted itself beautifully in me now, I believe.
God, give me a servant's heart.
This is the wish that springs to my mind when I let myself be quiet and show myself to God. He has been grooming me slowly and patiently into His servant. I believe He has wanted this for me my whole life, giving me Therese of Lisieux as an example, whom I have loved since I was 7 years old. She has held my hand all these years, and I have finally asked God to strip away all that which I have previously wanted and simply to give me the heart of a servant.
I have so many wishes within me, and I have never known how to accomplish them. I want to do so much, and I have been working, working, working tirelessly (though I have taken more than my fair share of rests). I am still surprised when I hear my own prayers, but there they are, whispers growing ever louder:
Give me a servant's heart.
