I am afraid.

I hear my alarm. I wait. I don't want to leave the soft space of escape but hot coffee and the possibility of seeing something more than my own frustrations today grab my feet and swing them to the floor. I pad quietly past the girls' bedrooms and absentmindedly stir in cream and sugar as I consider possibility. I'm barely awake and it's all I can think about.

What if?

I remember the bit about David I read two days ago. "When David served God's purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep." [Acts 13:36] David who got it all wrong - and somehow got it all right, too. He served God's purpose. God's. Am I doing the same?

I dive in further to the Introduction of Jennie Allen's study Restless. My stomach hurts and I want to cry. With every piece of Scripture that speaks of a dream and a calling and a specific purpose, a pre-ordained place in God's great story - I wonder if it can be so. I wonder if adulthood pushed me to dummy mine down instead of fight to dream more and more. I wonder how I have read this verses all my life and never seen the connection - never believed them for the details of my own little life.

I think of my response to the "living God's purpose" question - the one that flowed out in blue ink, broken heart, and fear lurking - all over my journal page. It's there. Staring at me when I didn't even know I was feeling it so hard and so much. The three most honest words I have spoken to myself in a very long time.

I am afraid.

The dam broke and they all came spilling out. Fears I've been harboring silently, never saying out loud because they seem like things I should be afraid of, should be concerned about. Maybe they are, but I keep coming back to the Love whose depths I am determined to plumb and there is no fear in that love. Today I am looking to test the length of the great love of Jesus. Again. Because His perfect love casts out fear...

...and I didn't realize I was afraid of so much.