While cleaning out a box of old papers, I stumbled across a stack of Bible study notes from 2009. At first, I thought I had found old sermon notes. Instead, I found a conversation with my younger self. Hidden in the margins were prayers for a future spouse, future children, and a future family. There were goals, declarations, and reminders about faith, identity, and healing written during one of the most transitional seasons of my life. Seventeen years later, I can see something that thirty-year-old Lela could not: God was already rebuilding a life I couldn't yet imagine. Read more on Memoirs of a Black Girl.