Me again, God.

I've asked you for a lot. Wisdom, and patience, and courage in new things. I've asked you most recently to take my armor and give me yours, and it's left me raw and closer to the surface and safer than I expected.

It's sinking in deeper and deeper, this knowing that to ask is to receive, and I come more boldly than I used to come. So today I come again, and I'm not ashamed of coming with my hands open, not ashamed of needing something from you, not ashamed that "need" isn't a strong enough word.

Give me peace over your timing, to sit and wait until I know it is time to act, and then to act, not out of grasping, selfish ambition but out of a quiet sense of the rightness of it, that this is the time to speak and these are the words I need to say.

Grant that I not wound you or others, and that any wounds I have already inflicted may heal and not fester.

Send me the broken, neglected, abused, hopeless children. Send me the ignored, the written-off, the "problem" children. Give me a heart to hold them, a double portion of your spirit that it may overflow over their lives, cascading and cleansing and freeing, because I was an outcast and you called me yours.

The kingdom is not noise, but power. God mighty to save, God who hears and answers, God who works out all the details...I leave these requests in your hands.

I look forward to seeing what you will do with them.