Thank God for shirts

I’m thankful for my son and his simple honest prayers, like this one he prayed with Kevin a few days ago:

"Dear God, please help us. Amen."

And this one over dinner the other night, after I started saying thanks for the food, and he interrupted with, “Don’t say Amen!” (which means he has more things he wants to say to God, because in his mind “Amen” is equivalent to “the end”). So he prayed this to finish our prayer:

“Thank you, God, for our house … and for Mommy’s food and Sam’s food and for… our eyes and noses and … for our shirts.”

Yes, indeed, thank God for shirts. I am thankful for those, too. They keep us covered up and decent and warm, like friends who take me in with radical acceptance, my brilliance as well as my bad jokes included. For their willingness to cover up my plainness, my goose bumps, and my indecencies – to give me another chance to be whole through their eyes, and ultimately whole indeed – I give thanks.

For trust, for peace, for release, for laughter – I give thanks.

I am thankful for an elastic understanding of permanence which frees me from desperate anxiety. For a resolve that I don’t need to make anything happen, because it has all already happened, and for an awareness that always is not counted in minutes but in moments – I give thanks.

Thank you, God, for our shirts. Please help us. Amen.