I’ll admit to there being times when I’m consumed with guilt for my very existence.

While not helpful to anyone, there are those times.

I almost feel like I got away with something, being born a woman in this place, in this time in history.

These are pretty unreal living conditions.

The reality of the cultural conditions for so many alive today and who’ve come before- and here I am.

Here. I am.

I get this life?

Why?

My own mother can bring me to tears with tales of her childhood and I do say she exceeded her intention of making things better for me.

And what right do I have to all these opportunities?

In all of what I may claim of my suffering, what do I really know of pain?

What pain have I really known?

Why me?

Why this life? Why this time on this planet? Why this family and these friends? How did I get so lucky?

My riches are embarrassing.

And the resources within me, my strengths and my gifts, oh sweet life, how I feel chosen.

And why am I chosen?

May my knees turn bloody as I fall to them in service.

And so I use this body until bagged and broken with so many clumsy stumbles in hopes of doing right by You.

What sweet burdens we carry as the privileged few.

More concerned with creativity than survival.

Overcoming adversity is something we read about and are inspired by.

For us it’s overcoming egos and entitlement.

Since I don’t wonder where my next meal is coming from, shouldn’t I ensure the meals of others?

I don’t want for medicine and so don’t I hold the healing of the world in my palm?

I don’t have to fight for an education, so shouldn’t I use my life to educate?

The greatest privilege of being a first world princess is leveraging all the grace we’ve been given in service of the whole.