Peggy Dobbs stands on the shoulders of literary giants with the following poem, her third entry into our A Word from You writer’s showcase.  Peggy – like Milton’s oft-quoted poem, and like many of us! – reviews her life and wonders where the time went.  She looks forward to a future which is unknowable, and may include, perhaps, diminished capacities.  Milton concludes that “they also serve who only stand and wait.”  Peggy echoes Milton’s sentiments, but her words reach back, long before Milton, to the biblical Paul:  whatever happens, grace is sufficient.

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A Prayer for Grace in the Morning Hour

I breathe in your grace, O Lord
For I must rise from my bed
And face another day in a hostile world.
A world where heart ache and pain are the order of the day.
A world where fear and hate and distrust have seeped into
The fabric and design of human hearts.
I breathe in your grace, O Lord
To be an essence of your joy and hope and peace
Wherever my footstep falls.
Should I awake on the morrow to the confines of one infirmed,
Even more, Lord, may I ever be
A receiver and giver of your love.
I breathe in your grace, O Lord, for the face I see in the mirror
Is not the one I remember from when I was young.
I have been extravagant with the currency of my days
As though my riches were without end.
The mirror cautions that poverty is near and I must spend wisely now,
Ever careful of how I use and share what coinage I have left.
I breathe in your grace, O Lord
To ever live by the hour, the moment, the second of every gifted day.
May your presence become more real to me
Than the footfall of my closest companion.
May the desire of my heart be that we walk as one
So that when my world and the boundaries of my time here are no more,
Your grace will be the only breath I know.

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I am in love with the line “I have been extravagant with the currency of my days.”  It’s a beautiful metaphor, and you employ it without sentimentality or cliche.  Well done.