Seven Daily Prayers to Strengthen Your Work Week

I no longer work day-to-day in an office since I had my second child and made the shift to working at home. I began my career as a freelance writer over a decade ago, but did not begin submitting work regularly until I had my third child. I hated the daily grind of the corporate world, the fight to the top of the ladder, the avoidance of what I really wanted to do for a paycheck, and the stress of constantly licking the heels of others who had little respect for my self-worth. And somehow, I thought constant, daily motherhood would bring more rest.

Ignorance is bliss...until ignorance is shattered.

Now my work week is spent at home, serving my family, and I love my job. I so much prefer it to working in the office setting., but it is still difficult. It is still, often, stressful. Sometimes there is no downtime, just as in many other jobs I have had. Writers generally get copious opportunities for "excellent" temping positions. I half-jokingly always referred to myself as "a grunt". But even in grunt work, peace could be found in prayer. While juggling a half-eaten bagel, a toddler, a pregnant belly, a mug of herbal tea, and whatever else needed my handling out the front door, I could sometimes only rely on someone else's prayers to get me through the day. Something memorized. Today, as a stay-at-home mom, I have the same reliance. I pray all day. At the sink while washing dishes. In the family room while cleaning up. Over the stove while making dinner. Before my computer while composing an article, a novel, an essay. Stress still seeks me out sometimes, but I have learned, through the years, the many prayers to send it on its way.

I turn often to St. Francis of Assisi, known to many as the great Saint of Peace. His prayer is also a song, and the tune resonates with me whenever the stress of the day seems too much for me to handle on my own. It is the earliest prayer I remember, the one I lean on more often than any other, often more than once a week. When articles get rejected, when readers don't understand my words, when paychecks are less than I would like them to be, when alone time cannot be found, I seek Francis. The man who undertook the command from God to "Build my Church" by feeding the poor and clothing the lepers, knew how to impart and take-in peace.

Lord, make me a channel of Your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life. Amen.

Another great example of ancient prayer that can instantly sooth, and redirect negative thinking, but that contains much fewer words is this ancient promise found in a piece of Sacred New Testament Scripture that can be uttered as a much-needed request.

"Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world gives unto you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid," John 14:27.

I was offered this bit of Sacred Scripture once as a young child when, after a couple of weeks of deliberating the necessity of it, I decided to defend a fellow classmate against an entire gang of bullies. I accomplished absolutely nothing physically transforming for him. After I made my valiant speech everyone laughed a hearty laugh at my expense, but I gained a lifelong friend in the process and had bravely offered friendship to the friendless. It felt good. It gave me the stregth to do it again if need be. My mother, completely unaware of my plans, had written the verse down on a piece of paper while I was away at school. When I returned home, she handed it to me. I still have it, and had to pull it out on occasion in the corporate world. Sometimes, we are called upon to be brave, even in the office, and this verse never fails to encourage as a prayer, as a promise.

I offer you peace.
I offer you love.
I offer you friendship.
I see your beauty.
I hear your need.
I feel your feelings.
My wisdom flows from the highest source.
I salute that source in you.
Let us work together.
For unity and peace.

Mahatma Gandhi

My stepmother was raised in the Buddhist tradition in a small town in the north of Thailand. I have not always respected her spiritual beauty and wisdom as closely I should have, but the words she taught me as a child have often returned to me in adulthood. I truly do not deserve the gifts she has unknowingly given me. One admonishment I remember vividly is her strong urging that I learn everything possible about Mahatma Gandhi and Blessed Mother Teresa, that I emulate their lives and pray the prayers they prayed. Whether or not my stepmother knows this prayer does not matter, because I know she would approve of it in a moment. I love it, because in his prayers, Gandhi always taught. "I hear your need...I salute that source in you..." Like Christians, he believed in the Divine at work in the deepest part of human beings. Remembering the Divine inside every human, forces us to be kind in the office, forces peace into our work lives.

"Try to feel the need for prayer often during the day and take the trouble to pray. Prayer makes the heart large enough until it can contain God's gift of Himself," Blessed Mother Teresa

And she went on to say that she and her Sisters of Charity, in their homes for the sick and dying around the world, would wake early every morning to recite the prayers they had chosen and memorized for their work week. I have never had the Saintly gift of awakening at 4am to pray before the Blessed Sacrament every day, rain or shine, in sickness and health, but I am so humbled and relieved that this great Saint of the 20th Century used and reused prayers often in seeking the strength she needed to save the world in which she lived - one naked child, one starving mother, one dying AIDS victim at a time. And so it is good for me, too, and all those who work hard, sometimes too hard, each day, to seek peace through prayer. We must seek peace in order to receive it, we must give it to experience it coming back. And we must, like Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, return to simple, quiet prayers to keep us on the peaceful path even amidst the daily grind of life. Prayer will lead us safely back home each night.

"In peace I will both lie down and sleep..." the Book of Psalms.