TGIF
Thank God it’s Friday! Every Friday night, as part of Night Prayer (Compline) in the Christian breviary, the Church prays Psalm 88 — one of the darkest, most honest psalms in the Bible. It doesn’t end with triumphant resolution. It simply ends in darkness. And somehow, that makes it one of the most comforting prayers for those of us living with traumatic brain injury.
Here is the psalm that has become painfully familiar:
Lord my God, I call for help by day, I cry at night before you.
When Your Whole Life Feels Like the Pit
“For my soul is full of evils, my life has come close to its end. I am counted with those who go down to the pit: I am left without help.”
This is how many days with TBI feel. Your brain is exhausted by noon. Simple tasks drain you completely. You look “fine” on the outside, but inside you feel like you’re slowly disappearing. You’re alive, but you’re counted among those who are barely functioning. Help feels far away.
“I am one of the dead, like the murdered who sleep in their tombs, who lie there forgotten, cut off from your care.”
The invisible nature of brain injury makes you feel forgotten. People assume you’re getting better. Most stop checking in. You become one of the “walking wounded” — alive, but somehow cut off from the normal flow of life and relationships. Forgotten.
The Crushing Weight and the Lost Friends
“You have thrust me down into the pit, to the gloom and the shadow of death. Your anger weighs heavy upon me; you have drowned me under your waves.”
The constant symptoms — the dizziness, the crushing fatigue, the headaches, the autonomic storms — feel like waves that never stop. Some days it truly feels like God’s hand is heavy, even when you know intellectually that He isn’t punishing you.
“You have taken my friends away from me: you have made me hateful in their sight. I am shut in, I may not go out.”
This verse hits especially hard. The loss of close family and friends since the injury has been devastating. Some don’t understand. Others can’t handle the long-term reality. You become “shut in” — not always physically, but mentally and socially. The invitations stop. The phone grows quiet. Your world shrinks.
“My eyes are weak from my sufferings… You have taken my friends and those close to me: all I have left is shadows.”
Oh Brain Injury eye problems. Whether the too bright of light, the double vision, the floating spots - my eyes are weak. All that is left is shadows of the friendships we used to have. People who you thought used to care about you and love you, that not only now don’t care about or love you, but have chosen to ask you to leave them alone and not allow you to know or love them anymore.
“My one companion is darkness.”
This is the raw truth of TBI isolation. You used to be surrounded by people. Now so many days and nights are spent in silence, cognitive fog, and loneliness — even at times when your family is nearby. The darkness becomes your closest companion.
The Honest Cry That Keeps Going
What moves me most about Psalm 88 is that the psalmist never stops crying out. Even in total desolation, he keeps praying:
“I have called to you, Lord, all the day; I have stretched out my hands to you… And so I have called out to you, Lord, and in the morning my prayer will come before you.”
This is the prayer of TBI recovery. You cry out by day when the fatigue hits. You cry out at night when the symptoms won’t let you sleep. You keep stretching out your hands even when it feels like no one is listening. You keep praying. You keep going.
Finding God in the Darkness
Praying this psalm every Friday night has become strangely healing. It gives me permission to tell God the full truth — that this injury feels like a pit, that I feel forgotten and abandoned by people, that the loneliness is crushing, and that I don’t understand why this happened.
And yet, the Church gives us this psalm to pray in community, week after week. I am not the only one who has felt this way. Saints and sufferers across centuries have prayed these same words from the depths of their souls. Not just in brain injury, but in their human condition. What will it take for our Church on earth to recognize we are all crying out this same prayer. That we all want people to walk with us. Yet, despite the universal prayer of this psalm and the millions that pray it every single Friday night, here we still are.
Even when healing is slow, when former close family and friends are gone, when the brain feels broken, and when darkness feels like my only companion — I am still allowed to cry out. And somehow, that cry itself becomes an act of faith.
Lord my God, I call for help by day, I cry at night before you.
If you’re walking through the long night of brain injury, know that Psalm 88 was written for you too. You are not alone in the pit. The Church prays with you every Friday night.
And the God who heard the psalmist in the darkness still hears you.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit…
https://www.liturgies.net/Liturgies/Catholic/loh/compline/friday.htm
COMPLINE
(Night Prayer)
Friday
God, come to my assistance.
- Lord, make haste to help me.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:
- as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever.
Amen. Alleluia.
HYMN
We Praise You, Father For Your Gifts
Holy God, We Praise Thy Name
This World, My God, Is Held Within Your Hand
Now At The Daylight's Ending
O Christ, You Are The Light And Day
All Praise To You, O God, This Night
The Master Came To Bring Good News
Te Lucis Ante Terminum
Christe, Qui, Splendor Et Dies
PSALMODY
Antiphon: Day and night I cry to you, my God.
Psalm 88
Prayer of a very sick person
This is your hour when darkness reigns (Luke 22:53)
Lord my God, I call for help by day;
I cry at night before you.
Let my prayer come into your presence.
O turn your ear to my cry.
For my soul is filled with evils;
my life is on the brink of the grave.
I am reckoned as one in the tomb;
I have reached the end of my strength,
Like one alone among the dead,
like the slain lying in their graves,
like those you remember no more,
cut off, as they are, from your hand.
You have laid me in the depths of the tomb,
in places that are dark, in the depths.
Your anger weighs down upon me;
I am drowned beneath your waves.
You have taken away my friends
and made me hateful in their sight.
Imprisoned, I cannot escape;
my eyes are sunken with grief.
I call to you, Lord, all the day long;
to you I stretch out my hands.
Will you work your wonders for the dead?
Will the shades stand and praise you?
Will your love be told in the grave
or your faithfulness among the dead?
Will your wonders be known in the dark
or your justice in the land of oblivion?
As for me, Lord, I call to you for help;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
Lord, why do you reject me?
Why do you hide your face?
Wretched, close to death from my youth,
I have borne your trials; I am numb.
Your fury has swept down upon me;
your terrors have utterly destroyed me.
They surround me all the day like a flood,
they assail me all together.
Friend and neighbor you have taken away:
my one companion is darkness.
Antiphon: Day and night I cry to you, my God.
READING Jeremiah 14: 9a
You are in our midst, O Lord, your name we bear: do not forsake us, O Lord, our God!
RESPONSORY
Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.
- Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.
You have redeemed us, Lord God of truth.
- I commend my spirit.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
- Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.
GOSPEL CANTICLE Luke 2:29-32
Antiphon: Protect us Lord, as we stay awake; watch over us as we sleep, that awake, we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep, rest in his peace.
Lord, now you let your servant go in peace;
your word has been fulfilled:
my own eyes have seen the salvation
which you have prepared in the sight of every people:
a light to reveal you to the nations
and the glory of your people Israel.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning, is now and will be for ever.
Antiphon: Protect us Lord, as we stay awake; watch over us as we sleep, that awake, we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep, rest in his peace.
PRAYER
All-powerful God,
keep us united with your Son
in his death and burial
so that we may rise to new life with him,
who lives and reigns for ever and ever.
BLESSING
May the all-powerful Lord grant us a restful night and a peaceful death. Amen.
Or:
The divine help remain with us always,
- and with those who are absent from us.
Antiphon of the Blessed Virgin Mary