“Gather Me to Be with You” (by Ted Loder)

O God, gather me now
to be with you
as you are with me.
Soothe my tiredness;
quiet my fretfulness;
curb my aimlessness;
relieve my compulsiveness;
let me be easy for a moment.
O Lord, release me
from the fears and guilts
which grip me so tightly;
from the expectations and opinions
which I so tightly grip,
that I may be open
to receiving what you give,
to risking something genuinely new,
to learning something refreshingly different.
O God, gather me
to be with you
as you are with me.
Forgive me
for claiming so much for myself
that I leave no room for gratitude;
for confusing exercises in self-importance
with acceptance of self-worth;
for complaining so much of my burdens
that I become a burden;
for competing against others so insidiously
that I stifle celebrating them
and receiving your blessing through their gifts.
O God, gather me
to be with you
as you are with me.
Keep me in touch with myself,
with my needs,
my anxieties,
my angers,
my pains,
my corruptions,
that I may claim them as my own
rather than blame them on someone else.
O Lord, deepen my wounds
into wisdom;
shape my weaknesses
into compassion;
gentle my envy
into enjoyment,
my fear into trust,
my guilt into honesty,
my accusing fingers into tickling ones.
O God, gather me
to be with you
as you are with me. Amen. 
1 Ted Loder, “Gather Me to Be with You,” in Guerillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle (Minneapolis: Augsburg
Press, 1981), 76-78.