Live Loved.

The sun peeked through my open window this morning an hour before my alarm was set to go off. I squeezed my eyes shut and my dog tighter, willing away the familiar ache that spread across my chest. Sleep was done with me for today.

The sun always rises.

It's surprising to me how this year started much the way my last summer began, and how February tends to lend itself to minor personal tragedy. It's like the wicked stepmother to January- while the first month filled me with light and hope and new beginnings, February sat on my shoulder and whispered,

"You're too much."

I miss talking on the grass with my friend, picking weeds and pretending they were wildflowers, watching the Auburn traffic pass us by.

"You're like staring into the sun," he said and I didn't understand him then but I'm beginning to.

I made a vow and taped it on my wall this year:

“Live Loved.”

I want to live as a girl not searching for love but certain that I'm loved so completely that it's spilling out of me.

Maybe I haven't done the greatest job at that so far.

Which is why I woke up this morning with a stomachache, focused too much on the why that belongs to other people than the who that I am- forgetting that I am loved by the King.

<em>“How it must break His heart when we walk around so desperate for a love He waits to give us each and every day.”  Lisa TerKeurst, Uninvited

I forgot his love that makes me resilient and brave and gives me my favorite things

like writing and music and visits with dogs and babies and the back corners of coffee shops where I meet new souls who've never known my name.

And the sun always rises.

"You're too much," February nudges me again.

But maybe that's a good thing. I want to live loved fully and completely and I want it to be too much to ever hold inside me.

Let me live loved.

And let it be overflowing.