Today’s Prayer to Passage will be from the book “Tropic of Cancer” by Henry Miller.

Today I pray, “Dear God, I am putting up walls and closing down communication this week. Not because I want to. Because I am being asked to. And it feels awful. Help.”

Following my prayer, I held the closed book in my hands and opened it to reveal this passage:

“And for that one moment of freedom you have to listen to all that love crap… it drives me nuts sometimes… I want to kick them out immediately… I do now and then. But that doesn’t keep them away. They like it, in fact. The less you notice them the more they chase after you. There is something perverse about women… They’re all masochists at heart.”
—HENRY MILLER

Is this why he kicked me out, God? Are You trying to tell me something I was not aware of? Are You hinting at his subconscious motivation? He is toying with me the way an alley cat toys with a brown mouse before the final strike of his claws? If men are confronted by the tremendous complexities of their violent, hidden sexism at this time, it will come out. At a time when a woman could be the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, men are showing us their true colors in the way they are really voting… and in the way they are really treating the women in their lives.

Women who have done nothing but devote time, money, and energy to these men and their children and their parents for the past 20 months. Oh, I got a little off track from the general assessment train and veered a bit down the rails of my own sadistic situation of the man in my life. Is he secretly sexist? Is he teaching his teenage boys horrific lessons about how to treat women? Is this what You are trying to tell me, God? It seems that it is. Is he flatlined surrounding expressions of — and even just feelings of — love? Is he a stubborn man who will do anything to be chased after? Does he secretly enjoy the drama and the attention? Does he secretly enjoy seeing me be beautiful around his children and parents as he proceeds to make up untruths about my character when I am no longer around? Does he enjoy the lies and the drama? Is he really that sadistic, God? What are You trying to tell me? What are you trying to let me in on?

I am of Mary Magdalene and Mary the Mother. I forgive. I provide grace. I pray for those who persecute me. I follow Christ. Forgive them, Father. They know not what they do. Amen.