Beginning life we all have dreams. We learn to develop ideas about what life will be about. What will our future hold? When I was 8 years old I thought I would have five children by the age of 25. When I turned 12, I swore I would not get married until I was 40 and I would never have children. As we awaken to the world, at least in my case, we wonder if our predictions become more accurate, we wonder if they will ever come true. Sometimes we give up. I am 35 and still am not married and I have no children. In my memory I remember making this decision to not have children being a very firm conviction. And yet I did not know what my life would entail. When I was a blossoming and very smart teenager going to school and playing sports, I believed I would graduate college and have a successful career. When did God decide that the plan for me would be to battle a very serious mental disability? I can only say that after 17 years of living with bipolar disorder with psychosis, that I am strengthened by the experience. It has shaped me and the outcome of my life in ways I never imagined. As I wake up from the debilitating dream, I am posed with so many questions about the nature of myself. Am I gifted? This was the label I received at five years old, though no one imagined what that would actually mean. Who knew that with this blessing that has disguised itself as a curse that I would have the greatest and most loving relationship with a man that anyone could hope to be blessed with? I traveled many journeys, on the physical, spiritual and mental, and I have had his loving arms to fall into at every curve. God may give you a padded cell, but he will bring you tea, and when you emerge from its barriers, he will explain that there was a world war and the cell was the only place where one would be safe. That is what it feels like today. I still have time, to relish in and develop my gifts. I have a loving man who continues to cherish and provide for me in endless indescribable ways. Thank you, thank you, thank you, God for this life. Your plan is decadent and unencumbered. In your divine intervention on me there has been so much learning, so many gifts; lollipops and rainbows emerge from behind the torrential clouds and I am here sitting in the sun, realizing that my past has purpose and meaning. I find myself among a bed of flowers able to understand the many colors and beauty of your creation. And I am a part of it, magnificent in my struggle. I have been blessed in this dungeon that has always had a window. Bless the world you have created, and may everyone find the greater purpose and meaning to their struggle.