Patty Griffin, giving an impossibly courageous voice to the experience of remembering, processing and moving through a childhood trauma into adulthood. Let the reader understand.
Things can happen that make it hard for us to pray. Why did God let this happen? How is this part of the salvation of the world?
How can we pray to the one whom we feel has betrayed us? Keep singing our shame into the light, sisters and brothers. You are transforming the world.
[LYRICS]
All you kids get out the back door
I've never seen her this mad before
She took all her favorite things down from the window
And broke 'em all over her clean floor
It's Saturday at the mansion
The oldest boy walks with a slouch
The young ones are wild in back of the house
And she gave up and went back to sleep on the couch
Something as simple as boys and girls
Gets tossed all around and lost in the world
Something as hard as a prayer on your back
Wait a long time for an answer
When I was little I'd stare at her picture
And talk to the Mother of God
I swear sometimes I'd see her lips move
Like she was trying to say something to me
When I was eighteen I moved to Florida
Like everyone sick of the cold does
And I waited on old people waiting to die
OhI waited on them
until I was
Something as simple as boys and girls
Gets tossed all around and lost in the world
Something as hard as a prayer on your back
Wait a long time for an answer
So I'm wearing my footsteps into this floor
One day I won't live here anymore
Someone will wonder who lived here before
And went on their way
I live too many miles from the ocean
And I'm getting older and odd
I get up every morning with my cup of coffee
And I talk to the Mother of God
Something as simple as boys and girls
Gets tossed all around and lost in the world
Something as hard as a prayer on your back
Can wait a long time for an answer
Can wait a long time for an answer
Maybe it's alright
Maybe we won't fight anymore
Maybe love is waiting at the end of every road
I don't know
I don't know
But maybe
maybe it's
alright