promises.

when I was in Alaska the school sent the students out to the beach. You had to choose a rock and they had you write down a verse on one of the rocks that you found on the beach. I've always always felt like I was like a stone on s beach, rough on the edges at first and then God works, slowly, on me, with his wave after wave after wave after wave of love and challenges and tests and I become smooth and more like i should for Him. The Rocks become eventually smooth enough to have His words written on them... and I hope that as the years pass people can see His words on me.

I wrote a verse on one of them, almost as a challenge to God. I was testing out his promise. it was the verse in Psalm 34, "I will deliver you from all of your fears." I changed the word all, and I wrote, every single one. "I will deliver you from every single one of your fears." I set that rock out in Alaska and I looked at it often, and then I moved back home and I set it on the white window sill of my parents house, and then again on the shelf in the Frederick house and would look at it often, and it laid in the basket as I moved to the boiler room for two weeks, and now it lays on the top of my dryer in my home. my home.

I realized something today. He HAS. Delivered me. From all of my fears. (of course in my imperfection as a human they from time to time rise again, but God has been faithful each time.) As the days pass slowly with Max at my side I am awed by the fears I used to hold out as walls in front of me to protect me from entering in to a relationship with a man. Scared of marriage. scared to share myself. Now I have. and it isn't scary. He has gently held me. And now Jesus has skin in a way because Jesus shares himself with me through Max as Jesus teaches Max how to love me. and love me he does. and I trust it. As I opened my heart and allowed myself to receive and believe that God truly loves me and favors me and that I am indeed the apple of God's eye without having to do anything for it but just because he DOES, I began to also learn how to believe that people can truly love with God's love and that there could be someone out there that would indeed love me for me... with my times of weakness, anxieties, fears, dreams, emotions, moods, and hopes... for me. and my heart is healing! and I am happy!

It is amazing. And I challenge you not to test God but to hold the promises that he makes us up to him and ask him to remember them and then watch.

(and give Him time, it might take years... He knows what he is doing. trust him.)