10 years

In ten years...

I pray I am married to a man who loves me for who I am. With all my faults and all my deficits. A man who loves me because of my imperfections.

I pray my husband supports my dream of going to China to welcome the daughter I imagine myself with, since I probably won't be able to bear children myself.

If I am not married, I pray God will allow me to go to China anyway for my little girl. On a teacher's salary (ha). Lord willing.

I pray that my past only whispers and never shouts.

I pray that I can come as close as is humanely possible to forgetting what I've done to pierce the hands of the Savior I love so dearly.

Since I know I will never be able to entirely forget what I have done, I pray that God will give me a way to atone for my sins. I know he has forgiven me by offering himself as a sacrifice, and I know that nothing I could ever do could take away the pain of pure hands and feet, pierced for me, or the sorrow I have brought upon my Lord. But I pray, in spite of what I have done to him, he will give me a new path to forward his kingdom.

I pray that God allows me to teach my child through homeschooling or, if that is impossible, through a private school education. I pray that I will never have to enroll my child in a public school, to hear what I heard and to feel what I felt.

My child will not have my genes, but she will be raised in the same culture that I was raised, with anorexic models and disproportioned Barbies. I pray that she will not fall victim to the "1 in 4 women in America" statistic - I pray that she will never, ever have to battle mental illness. I pray that she will never even have to fear it.

And Lord~ I dare to pray that I will have the boldness to dare.

I want to go farther, live boldly, swing higher, and laugh loudly. Lord, make it so.