Let's see.

Dear FutureMe, You have just recovered from a mild attack of anxiety, stemming from the paralyzing thoughts of dying alone, unmarried, and childless while sitting in the dining area of Panera Bread in Ann Arbor. This attack was exacerbated by the fact that you don't even particularly enjoy the atmosphere of Panera, or its food. You've come here because you're cheap and refuse to pay for bandwidth at home which will only allow you to surf mindlessly at two in the morning in search of song lyrics that breifly popped into your head and only became important to you because you were too unmotivated to pick up page 48 of the Proust lying next to your bed. You've just sent a silent prayer to God, asking him to help you, have mercy on you, comfort and love you in this time of need. But what you were really asking Him is to provide you with a loving husband, beautiful and obedient children, and a blissful future of financial stability and the status quo at His earliest possible convenience. You realize this is both selfish and irrelevant, and you quitely scold yourself. It's bad enough to be prideful, but being uncreative about one's desires adds cliche' into the sack of sins. You've fully surrendered to God. You have invited Jesus into your life and he is both softening your heart and strengthening your spirit. Beauty appears now where at one time was nothing. Experiences bear greater dimension, and what was once superficial now becomes... difficult, and confusing, and glorious and awesome. God has inspired you to start expanding, and with that, of course, comes growing pains. You are lonely. Your heart is filled with so much of God's love and it seems there are so few with which to share it. You have no Christian friends, and connecting at church has been difficult. There are those that are friendly and obliging but the creation of a real union of souls proves elusive. The ghost of your ex-fiance lives with you every day and is so seldom welcome. He is with you most often when you try to sleep or when you're in your car. He barges into your mind like a bull in a china shop and seems to wash away all of your hard-earned piece of mind. You no longer feel physically ill when you think of him, however, but when your heartbreak gets the best of you, and his new life, his new wife, and his child enter your thoughts, all the work you've done on building the facade of independence, stregnth, and fortitude seem to vaporize, leaving you desperate and exhausted. But that is today. October 24th, 2010, and there is hope in the future. That's what these letters are about, aren't they? Hope. It seems obligitory to make a neatly bulleted list of achievements and revelations to be completed by this due date. There's a part of me that thinks it too arbitrary. But that same part thinks saying that is a cop-out. But either way. I hope the Lord continues to fill my heart and bless my life, allowing me to fill the hearts and bless the lives of my neighbors. I hope to keep this peace that accompanys the love God has for me. I hope to finally, fully, be rid of the heartbreak that permeates my every day. I hope this dull, aching fever breaks at long last and this ghost vaporizes. And when it does...I hope I believe it. ...andihopeifindanicemanwithasenseofhumorandajob. Get on it, Future Me.