GOD, I ENTRUST YOU WITH THE PROJECT THAT LIGHTS UP MY EYES.
You have an idea, and your face changes when you discuss it with the right person. Details come to mind, possibilities, things you would love to learn. Then come the costs, the lack of time, the fear of sounding naive. The idea goes back into a drawer, but every so often it makes itself heard.
It might be a workshop, a course of study, or a creative venture. Something small you want to do carefully. This can belong in prayer too. Paragraphs 2659–2660 of the Catechism invite prayer within everyday events: we can bring God what troubles us and also what excites us.
The following is an original CHIARA! prayer. Read it all, or choose the passage closest to your day. It is not a liturgical text and offers no guarantee that a project will succeed. It is a way of entrusting a living part of your day to God.
Before writing the first line
Lord, today I come to you with an idea. It is still rather untidy. There are things I understand and others I am only imagining. Yet thinking about it brings a joy I would like to hear without feeling ashamed.
I entrust this desire to you. Help me understand it better, see where it comes from, and recognise its possible place in my life. Let me discover the good it contains without assuming that everything I want is already a direction from you.
Give me time and honesty to ask questions. Patience to learn what I do not yet know. Willingness to hear someone who notices a difficulty that my enthusiasm has overlooked.
For the joy of trying
Keep alive in me the pleasure of doing something carefully. Let me notice the lovely parts of the work too: finally understanding something, getting a detail right, having a conversation that opens a possibility.
Help me avoid postponing every joy until the final result. There will be much to do before I can see where this idea leads. Teach me to live the journey without constantly checking how it might look to other people.
I entrust my abilities to you, those I know and those I still need to practise. Make me willing to work at becoming more capable. Let me smile when the first attempt is awkward, without treating it as proof that I should have given up before starting.
When I open the accounts
I bring the budget, the expenses, and the hours I can give this project. Help me see them clearly. Make sustainable promises. Respect the work of anyone who might join me.
If beginning requires a smaller version of the idea, give me freedom. If I need to wait, help me recognise what preparation is possible meanwhile. If the time has come to try, support my first practical step.
Let me care for those who live beside me too. Help me discuss the time this project will require. Accept a limit without immediately feeling obstructed. Remember that my enthusiasm belongs within a shared life, with people and responsibilities.
For the people I will meet
Bless those who will teach me, offer an opportunity, or work alongside me. Help me express gratitude practically: keeping agreements, paying what I owe, and acknowledging other people’s contributions.
Give me clear words to ask for help and explain what I can offer. Free me from the rush to seem experienced already. I would like to build relationships in which asking a question does not make anybody feel small.
If a good result comes, help me share its joy. Keep me mindful of the hands that accompanied me. Keep my attention open to those still looking for an opportunity of their own.
If I need to change direction
Lord, I entrust to you the moment when I may discover that this idea needs to be different. Perhaps simpler. Perhaps directed elsewhere. Perhaps something to leave behind, at least for now.
Support me if I feel disappointed. Help me distinguish what I can correct from what I must accept. Let me ask for advice before spending more energy simply to avoid admitting that something is not working.
Remind me, through those who love me, that I can be loved while beginning again. That I can rest without defending every pause. That my name remains greater than the outcome of this project.
I entrust today’s work to you. A call, a page, an hour of study, a quotation. I bring you the joy that moves me and the questions that accompany me. Walk with me while I seek a good, thoughtful, possible shape for this desire. Amen.
One thing to do after praying
Stay quietly for a moment, then write down the next action that genuinely depends on you. Just one, realistically measured. Prayer can accompany the necessary work, conversations, and decisions that take time.
If today’s action is simply collecting one piece of information, that is enough. The notebook can begin there. You do not need to know the final page already to write the first one with care.
