As a follow up to last week’s “Message to Enneagram Two’s,” this week I wanted to share some additional thoughts, specifically my prayer for two’s, as well as anyone else feeling weighed down by the burden of the needs they see and are needing a filling of their own.
“Dear Heavenly Father,
The Two reading this is tired, weary. They see so many needs, and yet, in so many ways feels so very empty themselves. This two struggles with wearing themself out with the constant evaluation of other’s needs, the constant caring for the desires of others, seeking to show others how loved they are, and the weight and energy that this takes.
Yet, while we don’t wish to admit it, we also know WE are are in need. We need care, we need to feel loved and wanted. We need to be invested in. But being needy is one of our biggest fears, and feels like one of our biggest weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Sharing that need with others, speaking what we actually want or need seems too much to ask, seems often too great a risk, because of the fear it will impact someone else’s need or can be a fear that the vulnerability that it takes from ourselves.
There’s a fear that someone else won’t be able to step in to care for us when we do express it, that having our need cared for is too much to ask. We fear saying it for worry that, when it’s finally spoken, others won’t move towards us in love, but instead pull away. We fear the pain of that rejection. Father, because of this, it’s hard for us acknowledge, admit, and to speak our needs.
But Father, you know we are in need. Would you help us to see that you, you know our need even before we ask?
Would you help us, to not only see our own need, but to be able to sit in and identify with it? To acknowledge and admit our needs, first to ourself, then to you, and finally to someone else? Would you help us to see that our neediness does not make us less than, it does not keep us at a distance from others, and it is not too great for you. Instead, would you help us to see that this is the very place for other people to enter into our space and care for us? That it is the very place that YOU meet us in? That admission of this need is the place where the connection and care that we so desperately crave actually begins? Help us see that when we hide our need, we arrogantly lie to both ourselves and others that we do not have them, but that our need is not a sin, not an error, but rather a way in which we are human.
Greater still, would you help us as twos to see that YOU are the source of provision that never runs dry? Would you remind us, help us to know with confidence that when we ask, and as we keep asking, you will not hold back your care, your presence, your love, and that nothing we could ask for, nor keep asking for, is too much for you?
Would you help us to see and truly know, know that we are loved and wanted by you?
God, sometimes we need to see you with skin on. Would you also provide for us as twos, someone that speaks love to us directly, that meets our need in a physical way, and reminds us of these things tangibly? Would you open our eyes to see just how much we truly are loved and wanted?
In Jesus’ name, Amen.