I think by the end of this last year I might have that chapter memorized.  If the words aren't worn from the page.  The one that really got me this week, the verse that stopped me each time, was the one about deep waters and His promise to reach down and pull me out.  The first time I read it, a strange noise moved from my lungs, through my throat, escaped my mouth.  I read it a few days later on the patio of a coffee shop and it stopped me again.

I am not in deep water, not yet.  But, I am at the beginning of another year and I am remembering what the last year meant, how bullyish and tired it felt and I am so aware of where the deep waters lie.  I am not in them, but I will be.  At first, I read that verse and prayed them away.  I told Him, they're coming, they're going to sweep over me again and I am so scared.  But on the patio I realized that if I pray away the waters I pray away His reaching arm. 

What do you do when you know that the deep part of life is coming?  What do you do when you're standing on the shore and you can see it start to really move out there, to swell and roll and somersault towards you?  Part of me, the part of me that wants to be brave and large, would like to charge into the water with my fists raised and the loudest warcry. 

But there is a thicker part of me that craves rescue.  I was focused on the water and so I missed what it means to have Someone reach down, I forgot to marvel at the way it feels to be pulled out and up.  I am moving towards impossible places.  I am being pulled a little, tossed around a bit, shoved under.  But I am not frantic; I am not panicked and this is why:  there is a God in heaven.  There is a God in heaven who sees and hears and loves so intensely, He'll let nothing take me from Him, nothing.  Not even my crazy thoughts, my relentless doubts, my dreary weeks that feel to be entirely too much.

So while I am on my knees, pleading.  While I am asking Him why, telling Him no, that is too much.  You are taking too much.  I am also high on my toes, grinning painfully, laughing with my whole body.  Because while He takes, He gives.  And I have never trusted so fully.