And ours wasn’t a family who would ever, under almost any circumstances, ask others for help. Help is a complete prayer, writes Lamott, and uttering it creates space for solutions that humans have neither thought of nor could pull off on their own. I was the go-to girl for everyone in my family. At the same time, I didn’t want to ask my parents for help, because they had so much on their hands. Teachers wrote on my report cards that I was too sensitive, excessively worried, as if this were an easily correctable condition, as if I were wearing too much of the violet toilet water little girls wore then. People always told me, “You’ve got to get a thicker skin,” like now they might say, jovially, “Let go and let God.” Believe me, if I could, I would, and in the meantime I feel like stabbing you in the forehead. I was so sensitive about myself and the world that I cried or shriveled up at the slightest hurt. And in her new book, Help, Thanks, Wow, she has coalesced everything she knows about prayer to these fundamentals. By the time I was five, the migraines began. Help, Thanks, Wow INTRODUCTION Readers of all ages have followed and cherished Anne Lamott's funny and perceptive writing about her own faith through decades of trial and error. By the age of four or five, I was terrified by my thoughts. I had frequent nightmares about snakes and scary neighbors. I was terrified of death by the time I was three or four, actively if not lucidly. Lamott has a new book out called Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.
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