a blessing for the courage to do something difficult

God, I am struggling to face
the difficult thing I know I should do.

O God, help me.

God have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Spirit have mercy.

I took courage,
for the hand of the Lord
my God was on me.
Ezra 7:28

God have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Spirit have mercy.

Blessed are we who recognize,
that strangely,
we are struggling under the weight
of the nothing that has happened
but needs to.

Blessed are we who say honestly, God,
this is so hard, and i don’t know why.
The longer i leave it, the worse it gets.

God, help me begin
—or even begin to begin—
though I can’t know how this will go.
come into that inner space
where I am secretly overwhelmed
yet hiding it, even from myself.

The fact is,
there is that one difficult thing.
and what if it were today
that it could start?

And even as I begin
to notice how afraid i am,
I hear you say again
“I will strengthen you and help you”
(Isaiah 41:10)