My favorite feeling in the world is the way you feel after you've just woken up from a perfect dream. And you lay there- half still in it and half awake and you're just happy to be alive. Or after something unexpectedly great happens. After you risk and the outcome blows reality out of the water. That warm feeling that overwhelms the rational part of you and makes you want to freeze time forever.

The problem is this: to every upside, there's a down. After every mountain is a valley waiting with another hill to climb. Some days the sun isn't as bright.

And it all kind of bubbles and twists around inside of me. The really great parts of the day and the really not so great parts. I store them up. I think that's what we do instinctively. Tuck away our stories until later to share with that person who really cares.

Here's the thing: sometimes parts of our stories get lost. Relationships end, friends move away, people just forget. So that when you mourn the loss of someone, you're not just mourning their absence, you're mourning those pages of you that they take with them. People keep memories alive, keep them from becoming dreams.

And then you run into a person who knows the deepest parts of you. And you feel an overwhelming sense of relief in your soul. That part of you comes back to life and you're suddenly intensely aware of who you are. It's like finding a missing piece to a puzzle or a key to a locked room.

The trick is in understanding. Who it is that you should offer yourself to. Trust yourself with. And this is where we lose ourselves. It's why best friends were so important when we were little. And later on, when we set out on that search for the one. We lose weeks and months and years of memories to all of the others who had possibility but weren't quite it. Then down the road you give and share with children. And when they move out it must feel like picking up the edges of you and trying to figure out how to fill the emptiness in the middle.

But you're getting ahead of yourself. You have to figure out the now before you can guess at the then. You have to figure out how to preserve who you are and where you've been.

And then He reminds you. That you gave Him your heart a long time ago. And no matter how much of it you try to give to other people, no matter how much of it you think you've lost, He hasn't let go. He's still holding it, living in it. And He's been there with you during every memory you've ever made. He won't let you forget the important ones. He won't let you forget who you are. It's not the past that is important, it's what He's done in you because of it. You're His story. His great work.

And so your favorite feeling sweeps over you.