Promises, Promises

Keeping my word is something that is very important to me.  If I tell you I'm going to do something, I will do it unless circumstances completely out of my control keep me from it.  And even then, I'm going to apologize and feel guilty for it.  Case in point: I offered to buy my friend lunch one day so that we could get together, and then realized the night before that I didn't have the money that I thought I did and thus didn't have enough money to buy him lunch.  I felt so bad, and all he did was tell me I apologize too much.

Because of how important keeping my word is to me, I hate saying I will do something unless I am certain I can do it.  This keeps my people-pleaser tendencies in check because as much as I may want to say yes to something, if I'm not really sure that it's possible for me, I won't say yes.

There's one outlier I can think of to this life-rule of mine, though.  Back in October 2012, when I had a meeting with Pastor Sean and Carla just a couple weeks after I joined Theater Church, what I didn't tell many people for a while was that that day, after I had told them my testimony/story, I made a promise to God, that if He gave me the opportunity to tell my story to people, I wouldn't so.  I didn't know why I did it at the time, but I just knew that there was too much joy in telling my story to avoid it, and I'd been told too many times what my story had done for people.

Well, God is kinda funny...I feel like when I said that to Him, He just sort of laughed and said "Well, okay then.  I'll keep that in mind!"  Because opportunities have just kept being dropped in my lap.  And weird ones, too!  From Pastor Chris and Wells Branch, to a kid I met at Starbucks, to a girl I worked with, I've been able to tell my testimony in completely unexpected situations.  It never ceases to make me smile and chuckle, either.

Tonight, it happened again.  I ran into a girl in the laundry room, and I realized that she was the girl I had seen when Corey was in my dorm last weekend.  We got to talking, and next thing I know, she's sitting in my room for almost two hours.  We shared testimonies, and we actually have some freaky similarities.  It was so sweet and honestly just so beautiful.  The hilarious part about it is that she lives literally diagonal from my room, yet somehow last Saturday was the first time we'd ever seen each other.  But now I feel like I have a new friend.  I love how testimonies bond people.

Nick Vitellaro once put out on Twitter, in reference to testimonies, "What you're tired of saying, someone else is dying to hear."  That and Revelation 12:11 - "They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony" - are two things that help me continue to step out and be vulnerable and share my story with anyone who is willing to hear it.  And I'll tell ya, telling my testimony to different people are some of my sweetest memories.

Making God that promise was one of the smartest things I've ever done.  No question.