love you to peaces.

That summer was the best and the worst all rolled into one perfectly packaged four months. We spent every weekend making 179 mile drive from Knoxville to Nashville and back, attending a Bridal shower, or plotting the best Bachelorette events known to man. It was wedding season. And there was no looking back.

It was the first time since my mixer/date party days that my Facebook notifications were constantly full of tagged photos of myself, donning a different bridesmaids dress, dancing another night away, or placing another bobby pin in someone's updo. Social media had taken marital bliss to a new level of perfect photos, elegant events, and innovative ideas. One of those ideas was the clever wedding hashtag.

It had become an agonizing part of the planning process to develop the ideal, witty phrase that melded both names but was still unique. #RyanFinallyGetsManley, #TheHuntIsOver, #GoingGreene.

I didn't have a typical wedding. I eloped. Against our family's preference, Jordan, my husband, and I flew to Colorado, just the two of us, and tied the knot with only the yellow aspens and a hired photographer as our witnesses. But the day he put a ring on it, I felt the pressure to develop a stinkin' hashtag. Thus, #loveyoutopeaces was born. I was marrying Jordan Tyler Peace, there were going to be two of us, and I did/do love him to pieces.

As the weeks went by, I used that phrase more and more. It became a part of my everyday lingo. And slowly but surely, in my life, it began to take on a meaning all it's own.

My whole life I've been a confident human being. Who I am, my purpose, and my self worth has never been something I questioned. Even as a teenager, I walked tall. Then, adulthood hit me. I couldn't rely on my reputation. I had to work for it. My pride took a huge hit. And all of the sudden, I felt the emotions that my middle and high school comrades experienced through puberty. I was/am always striving to be more this or less that. I'm never good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, homemakery enough.

Over the last few years, there have been ups and downs, trials and obstacles, and I've found myself in a place where I feel low. I feel like another face in the crowd. It's hard. I have a deep desire in my heart to know that I am loved. I have a deep desire in my heart that only the Lord can fill for that love to bring me peace. I know it's there, but in the midst of everything else whirling around me, the Enemy turns my need to be loved by Him into a need for myself to be admirable. In Deuteronomy 8, the Israelites have been traveling to the Promised Land for far too long. They've been through it all. Deserts, times when they felt alone, times when they turned to something else for fulfillment, times when they were hungry, frustrations, tears, anger.

Verse 2 says, "And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness..."

Forty years. I can't make a month without feeling upset to not have an answer or reached a destination.

"...that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not."

There it is. My freefall into the unknown of who I am, what I'm created to do, and self worth is not abandonment. It's an adventure to the Promised Land. I need to be humbled and tested that when everything is stripped away, my reputation, familiarity, comfort, my heart remains purely rested in Him. He "let [me] hunger" (v. 3). But only because He wants to feed me. He wants to remind me that the humbling is not an excuse to get down and out, but an opportunity to be perfected and pruned, to realize He loves me to pieces, and to peaces, and that my peace can come from His love alone.

I still work on this everyday, remind myself of His love every moment. Because I'm swarmed with thoughts, emotions and feelings about my own selfish anxieties. But while I learn, I rest in the fact that He tells me daily, "I #loveyoutopeaces."

the beginning.

I'm a sucker for a good bookstore. There are pages, chapters, sections and volumes of stories waiting to be unfolded, one word, one letter, at a time. I could sit on the floor in between the aisles and read the descriptions of what is between the covers for hours. Just the possibility of getting so deep into what was on the page that you lose yourself vastly intrigues me. It has happened before, and it will happen again. I'm easily distracted by the next cover, because I want to develop another story in my mind. 

There's a certain smell in the bookstore that brings me hope. It's a hope of something new, something different, something that will challenge me, stretch me and maybe even change me. I used to love the smell of the book fair. You remember that week in school? Where for two hours that week you would get to spend your own money on posters, toys, kits...and books...that were hauled into the library in trunks the size of Epcot. Those people were geniuses. Somehow they got thousands of students across America to get pumped to buy books. I loved that smell. 

I'll often stroll the aisles pondering where each book got its name. And as I pull the book from its tucked position, there's something beautiful about knowing the unknown is in my hands. That even in the smallest way, I'm about to embark on an adventure unlike any I ever have before.

All too often, I put the book back. Or even worse, I walk out of the store with a newly purchased story that will find its home gathering dust sitting on a new bookshelf in my home. What a disappointment. Knowing excitement, joy, fun, emotion, engagement is just waiting on the shelf. I'm a sucker for a good bookstore, but I'm not always a sucker for a good book.

I've been this way my entire life. As a little girl, I loved stories. I loved to create my own stories, have big dreams, even write my own lyrics (thank Jesus I was smart enough to know my voice wasn't one to sing them out loud). But when it came to finishing a book, seeing a dream through or asking my brother to write the music, I always believed more in the potential of something than the actual product. 

Every personality test I've ever taken has told me one common thing about myself: I'm a developer. I develop ideas, tasks, dreams, people, stories in my head with no problem. I believe in their potential, but sometimes all I can see is potential.

It's time that I went past potential into reality. It's time that I saw exactly what story the Lord has put in front of me, instead of just believing it has potential. It's time my passion went beyond a thought, and was a story that was worth actually reading.

This, this is my story. It's the story that has shaped who I am. The story that has pointed me in every direction. The story of people, places and circumstances that were put in my path to teach me something about Him. The story that has sharpened me, challenged me, and made me realize, its actually not about me. 

Chapter 1 begins now. And it's not going back on the shelf.