Parental Prayer by Alfred Starratt

This is one of my favorite authors (now deceased) and a friend.  Thought you’d enjoy the poem:

PARENTAL PRAYER by Alred Starratt

Soul of the Universe, hear our prayer

For all of our children everywhere

For those whose walk is a skip and hop,

Like miniature bulls in a china shop;

For those with the drive of a storm at sea,

Raging and weeping and wildly free;

For the softly sweet as a summer rose

And for those with a gift for tearing clothes;

For the quiet child who runs to hide,

And the one with talent and bursting pride;

For those who give with great delight

And those who take as their sovereign right;

For the homely child and the one that’s pretty,

The braggart, the dunce, and the one born witty;

In short, for the endlessly different kinds

That sometimes drive us out of our minds

Though we must admit that we’re mostly glad

That we’ve had the chance to be mother and dad.

You made us, Lord, so you surely know

The hopes that we have as we watch them grow

Thinking our own frustrated dreams

Can be fulfilled by parental schemes

To spare them the errors and bitter tears

That we remember in childhood years.

How anxiously, tenderly, day by day

We try to guide in the wisest way.

Yet how many times have we sung this song:

“I can’t figure out what I did that’s wrong.”?

So humbly here we ask this prayer,

“Help every parent to be aware

That all of the children we call our own

Are never completely ours alone,

And around our tight little anxious space

Is the endlessly loving power of grace.

Our children each have a special role

As the drama unfolds under your control,

And in ways that none of us could have guessed

Each of our children is specially blessed.

Give us such trust for your mercy’s sake,

For without it, at times, all our hearts would break.

( – A. B. S.)