Dear Heavenly Father,

Please give me the strength to raise this child without losing my ever-loving mind.

Please help me to teach him to use his powers of negotiation to bring peace between people in conflict and not as a way to get out of his Latin assignment.

Please let him grow up to use his natural leadership abilities for more than to persuade his younger siblings to climb with him onto the roof of the shed.

Please let him use his affinity for debate to fight for the rights of the downtrodden, and not to argue that corn is technically a starch and therefore cannot be included in the statement, "Finish your vegetables."

Please take his unwillingness to back down from a disagreement and use it to help him stand strong for what is right when people oppose him, and not to try to convince his mother that she never ACTUALLY SAID that he had to write essays in complete sentences EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Please allow me to live long enough to see him leading people to Christ, being sworn into office, righting the wrongs of the world, or, at the very least, getting a good enough job to get me into one of the nicer mental hospitals.