what my daughter wants

5 years ago I asked my daughter what she wants. I found her response today, going through old piles of stuff.

- i want my daughters to grow up to be fabulous women with lives full of people who love them, who love God and have a strong sense of their own worth and beauty.
- i want to be a good mom, who leaves them with memories they can hold onto rather than ones they have to 'deal with'
- i want to be able to sit on the porch with my girls when they are grown and talk about life, to have grown into friendship with them like my mom and i have
- i want to look back over my lifetime and be able to say i said yes to God, and did whatever he asked of me - that i used my gifts well. I want a "well done, good and faithful servant"
- i want a lasting marriage that doesn't just hold out til the end for the sake of blind commitment, but rather one that continues to grow in love and intimacy and respect. i want to learn to love curtis better. i want to feel like the center of someone's universe
- i want big lillies that aren't eaten by rabbits
- i want regular time to hang in my hammock and sleep
- i want to be a better human in the mornings
- i want to always live where it is warm, and there are living things to get lost in (i stood out in the street last night at dusk while 4 or 5 bats swooped and dove not 10 feet above my head)
- i want to write a book that people read and think is fantastic!
- i want to grow old and beautiful - the kind of woman you want to sit beside and talk to because she is so wise and funny - i want to be the kind of person peter and john were "unschooled, ordinary men, and (others) took note that these men had been with Jesus." i want that kind of tone in my life, too.
- i want to find a way to live that gives more life than it consumes
- i want to always have parties that people look forward to coming to, because they know they are going to laugh hard and have a great time
- i want always have cute shoes and style
- i want to live so that the people i love always know i love them
- i think that's it...

What I like about this list is how it moves through all the arenas of a real life - it isn't a pious list of dis-embodied hopes nor is it a greedy list of lusty wants. We are all like this in some way - what we want ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous and that is the beauty of being human.