I Am

I am the little girl that my parents prayed for and that gave my mom “seventeen stitches,” which she never let me forget. 

I am the little baby that puked down my daddy’s tie as he held me up in the middle of church.  Even then, I was causing a scene.

I am the girl who watched in wonder as her baby brother was born, so thankful that I finally had a sibling to play with and to love.  I dressed up in my Sunday best to read a story to him when he came home from the hospital.  I felt so important to be able to care for him with my mom. 

I am a girl who rushed to the hammock in the front yard of our farmhouse, reading Little House on the Prairie with my daddy when he got home from work.

I am a child who first heard about Jesus in my mother’s bed during a thunderstorm, waiting for the lightening and thunder to pass as she told me about Peter walking on stormy waters. 

I am the girl who dreamed of owning a horse like the one I loved, Licorice.  When I visit Iowa and drive by his empty pen I still wonder where he is today.

I am the girl who left all of my friends behind to move to a new place; as scared as I was I was ready to see what else the world had to offer, even at that early age. 

I am a woman riddled with the memory of a childhood in which making friends was difficult, not only because we moved frequently, but because I hated letting other kids know me only to tease me.  

And then we moved again.

I am my mother's songbird, who could not stop singing in the car when a song came on I knew. 

I am the girl who took the hardest job at work just to prove that I was capable of doing a man’s job. 

I am the girl who gave her heart away too fast, to have it handed back in pieces.  Diamond rings and promises of love did not satisfy what my heart unknowingly sought in Christ.

I am a dreamer, who tastes the sweetness of the future I have been promised and is eager to meet it.

I am a woman, who dreams of the day when my struggles with sin and vanity are over and I am made whole.
I am a pioneer, who aches to bring hope to a lost and dying world.

I am a daughter of a king and the bride of a prince, a prince who rescued and renewed my wounds, fashioning me to look as he does and loving me enough to show me his mercies every day.

I am nothing in the presence of I Am, and that is enough.  It is more than enough.