here i am.

I've been getting out of bed late at night.

Sleepy, with my face mask shoved up over a mussy ponytail, trying to make sense of the shape of my furniture in the dark, and always, always catching my left toes on that second bar stool.

I'm going to say something crazy in 5..4..3..2..

I get up because He calls to my heart. He says to meet Him. To get out of bed, and meet Him.

And I think, Father, I love you. But we've met. We've been meeting. Great job on the OT, by the way, that's really, really top notch stuff back in there. We've met. So why now? It's late, I'm tired. I'm in bed. I'm warm. I've prayed for the housewives today. It's all good.

Come. Meet Me. I want to talk to you.

And then I think, if God tells you to get out of bed because He wants to talk to you, you'd best jump to, Bunnell. Look at what happened to Uzzah. Dude got smote. So I get out of bed.

Some nights, it's glorious. We talk, and it's entirely different than any other time throughout the day. Something about the quiet, and the dark, amplifies my reliance on His voice. Other times, I feel like I wait and wait, and nothing happens. But I don't feel released. I feel as though He's telling me to stay still, and wait some more. So I do. Still, nothing. Until it's time to go back to sleep. I'm let go.

Either way, one thing is certain: I am honored to be called out of bed by a God who knows my name.

Yet, there's nothing special about me. He knows each of us. He calls each of us. And in that, we become special. Marked by the Most High.

A friend suggested I memorize scripture last week. Not something I was particularly keen to--I wasn't raised doing that, so the idea isn't a common one to me. But I do think it's a good one. So I figured I'd just start with Ephesians. I'm wondering now, in the telling, if that's normal. Do people remember whole books, or just verses from different places? Am I going about this the right way? I feel sometimes like I do this whole Christian thing a little oddly.

Well, anyway, Ephesians. As I've been memorizing, this verse in the first chapter comes back to me: "Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession..."

I like the idea of having been marked. I like especially the idea of a sort of indwelling by the Holy Spirit. When He calls me to meet Him, I've dimly understood that it has something to do with that Spirit.

I'm waiting on Him. With Him.