For Restoration: Three Days, Three Poems, Three PrayersSample

🌿 Day 1 — Even in Ache: A Benediction

Theme: Naming the wound

Scripture: “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” — Psalm 34:18

Reflection

Before healing begins, there is ache. Sometimes the most honest prayer is not praise but presence — the willingness to stay in what hurts without turning away. In these moments, God is not a distant physician waiting for our perfection but the quiet companion who holds our breath steady. Even when faith feels thin, blessing is still possible.

Even in Ache: A Benediction
By Elaine Rumboll

Blessed is the waking

when nothing in me

wants the day.

Blessed is the breath I take

without wanting to.

Blessed are the mornings

when I do not feel holy,

but thick with ache,

and the slow bruising

of the medicine I must take.

Missing my parents:

one gone,

the other

riddled with forgetting

as Easter approaches.

Blessed are the lonely,

the orphans,

the lost.

Blessed is the heaviness in my chest,

the eyes that well,

wishing for simpler times.

And Blessed is Your love

that does not hurry me,

but waits.

Blessed is the breath

that comes back

when I thought it wouldn’t.

Blessed is the beginning

I didn’t ask for,

but take.

(from Unfinished Faith, 2026)

Reflection Prompt

Where do I need to allow God to bless what still feels broken?

Closing Prayer

God of the aching heart, draw near to me in my weariness. Bless even the heaviness, and let Your presence become the soft place where healing begins.