Dear Anonymous

Last week, a favorite blogger gave her readers the opportunity to anonymously share their truest hopes for 2012. It was such a powerful exercise for me to be able to publish my thoughts and hopes to the world without having to attach my name. Without having to worry if someone would judge me.

And while I was being honest, you know what? So was everyone else.

I just read through the resolutions, and the one thing I noticed over everything else was how similar they all were. How, even though we feel like we're all alone, there are other women out there who deal with the same stuff.


I want to fall in love with my husband again.
I want to conquer my envy.

I want to be confident in my own skin and to be the best me. I want to see my real purpose in life, beyond dishes and cleaning, again. I want to quit trying to control people around me. I want to stop all my jealousy. I want to love with my whole heart, expecting nothing in return.


I want to get closer to God and be a person of integrity and worthy of trust.


I want to quit talking bad about my friends behind their backs because I have some crazy idea that it makes me more interesting to my other friends. Drama is overrated.


I want to have more patience with my husband and children. I want to cut ties with the people who bring me down and lead me on. I want to get butterflies when my husband kisses me again. I want to learn how to sew and make cute things for my littles.


I want to have hope that my marriage will hold together, despite my husband's constant absence (due to military). I feel so very hopeless and that I don't even know him, because he's deployed 4 times. I'm so tired of not being together. I want to have HOPE.


I want to feel like being a mom is enough. I don't have to have Etsy shops or meals on the stove or DIY projects going constantly enough. Screw DIY projects! I'm raising a human being! That is enough.


I want my family to get through this ridiculously tough time we're going through. I want my father to be able to say no to things that are ruining us as a family. I want my little brother to understand, I want him to stop hurting so much over something that isn't his fault and has nothing to do with him. I just want us to go back to loving the way we used to, without the distrust and the anger. And dangit I want UNO night back.


I want to find balance. This will be the year that I accept that I need counseling and to deal with depression head-on. I want to find love, or at least be confident that what I have is love. I want to be brave in admitting that even if things aren't perfect, I don't have to lie about anything.


I guess my hope for 2012 is that my path becomes clear. I've never been more confused in my life...


I want to learn to love myself again. To not be bitter towards myself and my broken body and women who are blessed. I want to love my pregnant sister in law and not hate her. To not think of myself {and 5+ yrs of infertility} as less than other women. To embrace our family as two, and truely, honestly be ok with it, except that I am enough for my husband.

I want to come to peace with the abortion I had almost a decade ago. I want to stop feeling like I will never have children because of it.

I want to move past the heartbreak of a canceled wedding...that I didn't choose to cancel.


After 20 years I want to be able to forgive my mother.

I want to find the joy in living again. I want to believe that, despite how much I still loved him after 6 years together, that there is someone else out there for me, someone better. I want to believe that he left because we were going in separate directions, and not because I was no longer pretty enough, exciting enough, or as physically attractive as I was when we met in college.

And so I began to pray. I pray for each of the 400+ women who shared their heart. I pray for their hurts and their fears and their struggles.

But most importantly, I pray that they allow their hearts to be open enough to hear God minister to them. Because He will. In our darkest moments, when we feel most hopeless, He will minister if only we let Him.

Dear anonymous, He hears you. You are not alone.

Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.-- Jesus (Matthew11:28)