As a young woman, I decided that I was a Mary Rose.  I defined a Mary Rose as a Rose that no matter how often it was trampled in the mud would keep coming back looking fresh and smelling sweet.  The tragedy with that description was that for a long, long time I used that realization as an excuse for never taking the trouble to get out of the mud.  And even a beautiful rose is not beautiful when it is muddy.

God created me to be an Overcomer.  My Dad wanted to be the President of the United States and had all the raw materials he needed to become just that- he was attractive, intelligent, rich, and a really charismatic leader.  My Mom wanted to be First Lady and had everything she needed also: she was beautiful, intelligent, a society princess.  She had talents as a writer and a classical pianist.  They were both atheletic.  Their Roman Catholic faith meant a great deal to both.   Their wedding was a coronation.  And I was born a princess: coddled, pampered, and groomed a lot more than I wanted to be. 

But Dad was also an alcoholic, Mom was prone to chronic depression, and both families had brought them up in a co-dependent lifestyle.  Both lived in a fantasy world where they could take whatever life brought them and defeat it.  So they forsook the virtue of prudence and kept daring Satan to attack them.  Dad went back to the farm where low pay and big families were the name of the game.  Mom longed for a world of parties and gaiety and high status.  Neither had grown up before they took on the task of raising a large family under extremely difficult circumstances.  Their whole life was a house of cards and could only be held up with God's help and intercession.

At the point I was born, things could have gone either way.  My parents could have held firm in their faith and their prayer life and endured the hardships- or they could give up and have the whole mess topple in on them.  So God, in his infinite love, created me to be a hothouse flower that might never discover her hidden depths unless she needed them.  And if she needed them, she would have the persistence and courage to hold up under unendurable hardship and still stand.  And if she ever got to a place where she had the courage to get out of the mud, her life and her example would be a wonderful story of hope to all who feel there is no way out.

This is my story of hope and my vision for the world.  Thank you for sharing it with me.