Loss - Leadership Prayers
Loss
Oh, God, heal these wounds.
I am the Lord who heals you. Exodus 15:26
Change often wounds people, and the leader who champions those changes has a unique reason to stay close to the wounded.
GOD, this organization is perpetually on the road to the future: relocating, reorganizing, revising, restructuring, retooling, reinventing. And all this change results in an endless string of bruises, dislocations, cuts, strains, and breaks. No matter how I do it, and no matter how necessary it is, every change hurts someone. Comfort me, Father, so your healing can flow to those I lead.
There is so much pain in this world, God. So much loss of health, energy, love, opportunity, happiness, security, and due reward. These wounds are very real. So many of us are working wounded every day; it is a miracle that we accomplish so much. Touch us, Father. Console us. Heal us. I know you love each of us, even those who choose to live far away from you or who injure themselves needlessly.
The loss we cannot control is bad enough, God, but how I hate it when we do it to ourselves. We try to function like a family, but when family members hurt each other, it is worse than if we did not care about each other at all. Our caring for each other binds us together, but the grief is all the more intense when feelings are hurt and relationships are severed. We need your healing.
We try to work like a body, and we all feel pain whenever one of us has a problem. It doesn’t seem to matter what the problem is; the pain spreads to others. I feel for those who hurt, but for the good of everyone, we need to keep going. Heal us.
The separations never seem to stop. We work very hard to evaluate, select, and integrate people in the organization. Then when one of them has to leave us, it really hurts. Even if we believe you have truly called that person to some other service, we still mourn the loss of relationship.
Firing people is the worst of all, God. When I have to tell people that they don’t fit the needs of the organization or we can’t afford them, they feel betrayed. When they joined us, I told them how important they were, and now no matter how I say it, my message makes them feel unimportant—to us or to anyone else. Maybe not even important to you.
We all feel pain whenever one of us has a problem.
We are doing everything we can to cover these human losses, but beyond money and time and kind words, there is still the pain and grief that you must heal. Have mercy on all the hurts and fears among us, including the pain we have inflicted on ourselves.
Oh, God, heal these wounds.
Reflections
As a leader, I spend a lot of time at funerals of all kinds: the death of a physical body, the death of a marriage, the death of a friendship, the death of a career, the death of a department or a team, the death of a dream, a hope, a legend.
Though there is often little or nothing that I can actually do, I am needed at the point of human and organizational crisis. My caring creates my credibility.
At a graveside I stand in for everyone in the organization, leading through the silence and darkness with an embrace, a moment of direct eye contact, or just my presence. Somehow, in a mysterious process known only deep in our spirits, some of God’s healing flows.
I sometimes witness the agony when people unwillingly meet the end of their service in the organization. Not really ready to retire, or perhaps being released, they suffer the wounds of separation as the corporate knife cuts the flesh of human bonds and feelings that are as real as they are intangible.
Every corporate change has a human price that is just as real as the price of personal illness, injury, and loss. Leading the changes in the organization puts me close to the pain. And if I helped bring the pain, the least I must do is be present to bless the healing with prayer.
