(Original Post 4/4/2019 – Updated 3/17/2021)

There are few things more crucial to the reputation and well-being of an 8-year-old than how one plays a good game of truth or dare – or at least there wasn’t in my neighborhood. I was among the younger kids who just wanted to be part of the big kids and usually (and wisely, I might add) ran away when it looked like something was going to be dangerous (or someone was about to get in trouble!)

Then one fateful day I was finally invited by the big kids to play, little knowing I would be given the hardest of all the hard dares that ever had been handed down in the history of neighborhood dares. When asked the question, “truth or dare?” I thought the worst thing I would have to do was lick a rock or say out loud I liked Amy’s brother (gag!). That’s why I couldn’t believe it when I heard the word “roof….”

There was a church on the corner next door to our house that had a low roof above a basement door that was the stuff of legends. We all knew who had “jumped the roof” and who had chickened out and knowing this was the singular most important decision I had ever been called on to make, I agreed to the dare. After all, it didn’t really look that high from the ground and other kids had done it – what could be so hard? (Oh, little Shellie….)

The ten or so feet might as well have been a million as I stood on that low, flat roof, looking down. I don’t know how long I stood there, but I know I eventually did it. I remember that terrible feeling of hitting the ground and the sudden shock waves, like tiny electrodes that shot through my feet and up my legs.

And I vowed, no matter what, to henceforth and forever choose truth!

I was talking with a friend recently about how we never really leave the past behind. We can fix our gaze ahead and we can find freedom and healing from painful parts of the past, but the truth is….it’s still with us, the beautiful parts as well as the not so beautiful. But though it will always be a part of our story, it surely doesn’t have the last word….

What God is showing me these days is that, though every bit of that beautiful and not so beautiful past comes along with me, it isn’t all there is.…each day I am adding new words: words of life and hope and promise as I begin to see and believe the truth of who God says I am.

I am chosen
Not forsaken
I am who You say I am
You are for me
Not against me
I am who You say I am

I don’t play “truth or dare” these days, but if I did I don’t think I’d choose one or the other….I’d choose both.

What if I dared to believe the truth of who God says I am?

Sometimes I still feel like that 8-year-old looking down from the impossibly high roof, but I choose to trust the truth that God has a plan, purpose and meaningful future yet for me.

Will you choose to believe that truth for yourself as well? Come on…..I dare you. =)

Love,

Shellie ♥

Who You Say I Am
Hillsong Worship