the letters on my hand

I write important information on my left hand so I won't forget.    "I want animal crackers." [Translation: When I get home, add "animal crackers" to the shopping list.]   "Ask for November 21 off work."   "Text best friend because today is _______."   "Buy fish food."   Recently, I wrote this.  

* * *

On August 14, 2014, J and I were sitting in a car together. I was in the passenger seat crying because I felt like a failure and didn't believe anyone could actually love me. J said he wouldn't leave me. I said, "I would." He put his hands around mine and said, "I love you." 

* * *

Before I was conceived... 

Before my birth mom knew about me...

Before my parents received my photograph from the adoption agency...

Before I asked Jesus to be my Savior...

Before I was diagnosed with childhood cancer...

Before I graduated high school... 

Before J and I began courting... 

Before I finally admitted I struggled with depression...

Before I believed that I wasn't worth it...

God loved me.

* * *

First, I doubted J's love for me. I told him that no one deserved to be stuck with someone like me and that I would understand if he left me. 

I've grown up a "church kid". For as long as I can remember, I have been faithfully taught about God's love (and man's fallen condition). If you asked me, "Does God love us?" I would immediately say, "yes." But over the past several months, I have come to realize that I doubt God's love for me too. 

I think that someday, J and God won't want to listen to me anymore.  That they'll grow tired of my neediness and cease to care. That I'll mess up so much that they'll just want to be done with me. That someday they'll both see me the way I see myself: not worth it.

But they tell me that's not true. 

J tells me every day that he loves me.

And God tells me in His Word that, "If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not His own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us." (Romans 8:31-32)

* * *

I write important information on my left hand so I won't forget.

Until I can't forget, I will remind myself

that I am loved.