I live in a house with a yard. I have a nice car (a 2001 Honda Civic, but I think it’s pretty nice :) and I own a computer and a convection toaster oven. I’m sleeping on clean sheets and I’m watering plants and watching the hastas grow under my front window. I’m fit and healthy; my back is strong. I get my hair done in a real salon and I go to the dentist for cleanings. I have friends— good people, fun people, people I can openly share with.

These were all things I didn’t have as a child, things I used to long for. I yearned for clothes from Old Navy, I pined after clean cars and fresh fruit, I wished to live in a place to which I could invite people. And now I have all these things, all these things and more.

But it’s more than the things.

I have a Savior, my Lord Jesus Christ, and He has lavished on me so many gifts. I have a confidence I never had as a child, a sense that it’s okay to speak my mind. I have a husband— something I didn’t really long for as I child or a teenager (back then I thought love was for the romantically foolish), but caught me by surprise and totally remapped my interior life. I have a college degree… and now I’m finishing up my masters degree. I understand my place in the world. I feel now; I experience emotion in a way I never did before, deeply. I have a voice, I’ve been gifted, I know what it means to live.

I’m no longer the child that I was ashamed to be. I’m a woman, a very blessed woman looking to the future with hope and enjoying the present moment with deep satisfaction.

moves and removes