[Magdalen] Prayers for a friend. (Is basically timely.)

[M J [Mike] Logsdon]

My friend I mentioned recently, of life-long knowledge and relative relational ups and downs with me over the recent years, is in serious need of being tacked onto a few prayer lists, if you'd all be so kind.

Her name is Becky (you can use Rebecca, if you prefer), and in blessed fall-out from her fiance's recent death she's sought professional help (partly at my urging, mostly at her employers'), and today was her first session.  She's sought therapy before, but this recent experience (first-hand; she found him dead in the bathtub; and her 16-yr-old adopted daughter witnessed and took part in the 911 experience) is, as I described it for her tonight, a "watershed moment" (me and that floodplain talk), and let's just say that in telling her abridged life story to the therapist as a first session starter, her therapist was amazed at what she's experienced, nearly from birth.  From what I heard from her tonight, I sense this therapist is the Real Deal, and will be able to help, but Ms Hard-shell Becky needs some "softening prayer", as it were, to allow what cannot be an overnight experience of healing to be nonetheless redeeming.

There are those who remember my feelings for her, and our repeated negative experiences over the recent years, but I'm glad to say that I feel really good about just being a badly needed friend right now, and only wanting what is best for her and her kids.  And what's best for my own peace of mind.  Historically, worry about a "relationship" with her, put simply, hasn't worked.  Maybe what little bit of me is a priest, is functioning in at least that sort of capacity right now.  And it feels okay.
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"O perplexed discomposition, O riddling
distemper, O miserable condition of man!"
- The Rev Mr John Donne
(in a not-so-chipper moment)