tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76740161351087070342024-01-22T05:10:36.437-08:00Growing Is BeautifulCourtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.comBlogger259125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-51068606942002242892014-02-10T08:32:00.000-08:002014-02-28T17:18:41.268-08:00When The Snow Falls<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<em></em><br />
<em>{If you are reading this in an email or feed reader, you may need to visit the blog directly to view the above photos. If so, simply <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2014/02/when-snow-falls.html" target="_blank">click here</a>.}</em><br />
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The snow finally came to visit my neighborhood this past weekend. It was a very brief stay but it was beautiful and I am grateful. I took a photo walk through our garden and these are some of my favorites. If you would like to see more, you can view the whole collection on <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/growingisbeautiful/sets/72157640762062243/" target="_blank">Flickr: Garden in Snow</a>.<br />
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Wherever you are and whatever you are buried under, Dear Friends, may you know it sure and strong that there is beauty and hope even in Winter.Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-89701681199817232672014-01-20T19:46:00.001-08:002014-02-28T17:19:00.198-08:00When You Need To Know If You Can Count On God<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's an evening in July when I scratch it down, right there on a page of my journal.<br />
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#3000.<br />
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It's the three-thousandth entry in the gratitude journal, and when I write it out, I only know this: That number seems too big and too small, all at the same time.<br />
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It was the last month of 2010 when I began a journey I didn't understand. A journey I didn't even know I needed to take. I just knew that I wanted things to be different.<br />
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That <i>I</i> wanted to be different.<br />
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And maybe I had no idea how to change and maybe I didn't even know if I <i>could</i> change. <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2011/07/thousand-times-over.html" target="_blank"><u>But it only took 7 months for me to figure out what I really did need to know: There's only one thing that can ever change us at all and it's Love</u>.</a><br />
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<i>Being</i> loved, it can change everything.<br />
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But <i>believing</i> we are loved? This is what really does change everything.<br />
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The first thousand entries in the gratitude journal, they open my soul to what I spent a whole life desperately seeking. For the first time in all my broken years, I know it now without any more doubt at all--God loves me with an everlasting love.<br />
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And when I write this down on paper--<i> </i><br />
<i>#1000 - I am loved</i><br />
--I'm broken and made whole, all at the same time. <br />
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I keep on counting because I never want to go back to the days before I knew Love. But the second thousand is harder than the first, and it's 17 months before I figure out what living loved might mean. Because life comes hard and fast and I break deep and often, and <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2012/09/when-you-feel-abandoned.html" target="_blank"><u>I start to wonder if God's walked right out on me</u></a> at long last. But then <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2012/11/when-youve-been-spared.html" target="_blank"><u>He shows up in a deserted parking garage</u></a> on a Friday night and He spares the life of a father and I catch a glimpse of what it is to be loved.<br />
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And it's nothing like I thought it'd be and somehow everything I need it to be, all at the same time.<br />
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Gift number 2000 might be the strangest one of all, but I write it down anyway: <i>#2000 - Figuring it out at last that it's the holes in a thing--a life, a soul--that let the light shine through.</i><br />
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Yes, living loved means all the aching, broken places lead us straight to God. And all the cracks in a soul bleed only Him into a world in desperate need.<br />
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This is what the second thousand entries in the gratitude journal teach me--and also this: If I want to live, really live--I've got to keep counting for always.<br />
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I want to live. So I keep on counting.<br />
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The third thousand gifts, I count them in some of the hardest months of a life. Those 6 months, they're the ones in which <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2013/01/when-you-feel-unlovely.html" target="_blank"><u>I fall ill</u></a> again and again. The ones in which <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2013/02/when-you-need-to-be-brave.html" target="_blank"><u>I can barely breathe</u> </a>through all the upheaval. The ones in which <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2013/04/when-youve-lost-your-way.html" target="_blank"><u>I nearly drown</u></a> in a darkness I name Hopeless. But I count on, and I don't even know how, but I <i>live</i>.<br />
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I'm sure of it now that the real living is only found in the counting--the counting on God. Because that's what the third thousand gifts teach me--that even in our darkest days, <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2013/02/when-everything-falls-apart.html" target="_blank"><u>God hasn't abandoned</u></a> and He's not going to. That we can still keep counting on God even when we're not sure if we can keep on breathing. That even in the pitch-black night, there is hope and there is life--because there is God.<br />
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I record gift number 3000 on a night in July: <i>#3000 - Not feeling alone anymore, in my struggles, in this journey, in this whole mess of a life</i>. But now it's 6 months and 500 gifts later and I see it plain, how the end of one thousand is always just the beginning of the next. The next chapter of a life story. The next revealing of Grace and Glory and God.<br />
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And maybe there are still things I don't understand any more now than I did at the beginning: How the goodness of God can be endless, how <i>Love</i> can be endless, how the gratitude journey can keep a heart beating right on through all the dying mess of a life.<br />
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But there's this one thing I've learned 3,502 times over:<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart.</i><br />
<div>
<i>Jeremiah 29:13</i></div>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</div>
When we look for God in the ordinary, mundane pieces of a life--we find Him.<br />
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When we look for God in our beautiful, hope-filled hours--we find Him.<br />
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When we look for God in our fiercest, darkest, most terrifying nights--we find Him.<br />
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<i>When we look for God--we find Him.</i><br />
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And when we find God, we're the ones who are really found.<br />
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<br />
<a href="http://www.aholyexperience.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff162/annvoskamp/multitudesonmondaysbutton2-1.jpg" /></a><br />
<i>I'm happily, gratefully, and wholeheartedly taking <a href="http://www.aholyexperience.com/2014/01/how-to-know-gods-will-for-your-life-the-art-of-fully-living-giveaway-for-dslr-camera/" target="_blank"><u>The Joy Dare</u></a> again for 2014--the dare to find God a thousand more times before year's end. Join me?</i>Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-70047660498440460152013-10-01T19:08:00.001-07:002014-02-28T17:22:27.786-08:00When It Hurts to Heal<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQsl11Yax8pLli5nDPl5wouC865JD5pLiOqjHYl2orALxYXzq2uOjQt_f743Pt6kPuoXwB5JQNzLcwB4_TdAnc0BNz9ZSos0Yza6wg0xjPdsgjjPrBXcfEGbqZhJF3TF3pzEi_jmVhJVI/s1600/BlogPics+Memorial+Tree+Fall+6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQsl11Yax8pLli5nDPl5wouC865JD5pLiOqjHYl2orALxYXzq2uOjQt_f743Pt6kPuoXwB5JQNzLcwB4_TdAnc0BNz9ZSos0Yza6wg0xjPdsgjjPrBXcfEGbqZhJF3TF3pzEi_jmVhJVI/s1600/BlogPics+Memorial+Tree+Fall+6.jpg" height="425" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
It's the first week of June when I'm out watering the Memorial Tree and my heart just about splits open with joy. There among the newborn leaves of late spring, I see it clear--tiny clusters of buds just beginning to form.<br />
<br />
It's been nearly 5 years since <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2011/07/garden-update-memorial-tree-in-spring.html" target="_blank"><u>I planted a tree in my grieving</u></a>, and truth be told, I didn't even know it was supposed to bloom. I chose this tree for the shape of its leaves and their brilliant, fiery colors in Autumn--who needs flowers on top of all that beauty?<br />
<br />
But when I see those first buds growing with abandon, I'm giddy with the surprise of it and I want to shout it out loud that grief's brutal and deep and messier than anything, but it can be beautiful, too. Yes, <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2012/09/when-youve-been-reborn-and-you-want-to.html" target="_blank"><u>a whole life can burn straight to the ground</u></a> in the wake of what's been lost and God can still grow a tree right out of the ashes. But God doesn't do anything halfway--He doesn't stop with new life out of death. He turns it into Beauty and Glory and Grace. Yes, a whole heap of Grace.<br />
<br />
This is what's coursing through me when I see those blooms at their beginning. But I'm afraid, too. Afraid they'll shrivel up before they even open. Afraid that if they open, they'll never mature into a fruit that's meant to last through a whole winter of darkness.<br />
<br />
And this fear? It drives me to do the craziest thing. I refuse to take a photograph of those beautiful, God-breathed buds. I refuse to document the grace of this moment because I'm terrified of what's to come.<br />
<br />
Oh, yes. The fear of impending heartache? It can steal the joy right out of a life if you let it.<br />
<br />
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<br />
Those tiniest of buds, they do open up into yellow-green blossoms, their bright red centers barely peeking out through those curled petals. But even then, I keep the camera in the house and I keep holding my breath for what's to come. Because as much as I believe in the God who redeems all the broken bleeding mess of a life, I'm still desperately weary of <i>being</i> the broken bleeding mess. Yes, I'm more than a little ready for the hard labors of grieving to give rise to an abundant harvest of Hope and Healing and <i>Him</i>.<br />
<br />
So I whisper pleading prayers over the Memorial Tree for days. I beg God to let it bear fruit, let it be a symbol of all the healing that's been and all the healing that's still to come. And when I see those flowers just beginning to round and redden with new life, I rejoice.<br />
<br />
But it's only a matter of days before I know something's not right. The signs of life fade clean away, dry up into nothing. And that's when my heart really does split open.<br />
<br />
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<br />
But my heart's not the only thing that's a bit broken. It's my body, too. Because it's then that a few weeks of restless nights turns into 3 months of no sleep, and it's as if the bottom's fallen right out of my healing journey.<br />
<br />
I stop writing and I stop reading and I stop recording the graces of a good God. Maybe it's only because I become too weak to stand up or climb the stairs or put thoughts together in any way that makes sense. But maybe it's also because my heart's a broken bleeding mess and I'm just a little tired of being ripped open again right when I'm beginning to heal.<br />
<br />
My doctor keeps the faith and he tells me again and again that we're not getting no where, that the reasons I'm not sleeping might just be the clearest signs of a healing body we've ever seen. But when you haven't slept for 12 long weeks, there's not much strength left for understanding the hard things. There's only enough to keep breathing in and out and grabbing hold of every hand that's held out to you.<br />
<br />
So that's what I do. I breath and I hold on and I wait for whatever's coming next.<br />
<br />
Because I finally know this deep--being afraid of what's to come, it doesn't just steal joy. It steals strength, too. And when you've no longer got enough strength to be afraid, maybe that's when you really start to live again.<br />
<br />
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<br />
It's the first week of September when I sleep through the night for the first time in 3 months. And I sleep the next night, too. And the one after that. And ever so slowly, I find my way back to the healing road and realize that maybe I never left it at all. Because my doctor's been right all along--my body *is* healing.<br />
<br />
It just doesn't always feel like it.<br />
<br />
And maybe this is what the year's teaching me more than anything else. Sometimes it hurts to heal. Sometimes healing is brutal and deep and messier than anything. Sometimes healing takes every last bit of courage we've got just to keep on breathing and holding on.<br />
<br />
And there may be days, weeks, months when we won't acknowledge those tiny bits of hope and recovery we've seen because we're terrified they won't grow into that big, beautiful Redemption we're so desperately yearning for. But what if we could just believe that healing doesn't always look the way we thought it would? What if we could just believe that sometimes healing can be the hardest road of all? What if we could just believe that when we feel ripped open again, it might just be God rebuilding us from the inside out?<br />
<br />
If we could just believe? Maybe then we'd really start to heal.<br />
<br />
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<br />
I don't know why the Memorial Tree didn't bear fruit this year. Maybe it was the weather. Maybe it was the soil. Maybe it was me.<br />
<br />
Or maybe it was only this: Growing and healing and becoming take time. They don't happen all at once. They don't happen the way we expect them to. But they <i>do</i> happen.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>He Who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.</i><br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>Philippians 1:6b</i></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
As the last days of September slip in, I open up the gratitude journal after 3 months of silence and I begin again to record the graces of a good God. With the simple act of pen to paper, I say no Fear and I say yes to Joy. Yes, I welcome Joy back into all the broken places--back to where it belongs.<br />
<br />
And ever so slowly, I begin to heal.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>To read more about the significance of the Memorial Tree:</i><br />
<a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2012/09/when-youve-been-reborn-and-you-want-to.html" target="_blank"><u><i>When You've Been Reborn and You Want to Say Thanks</i></u></a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2011/09/how-to-give-thanks-when-lifes-been.html" target="_blank"><u><i>How to Give Thanks When a Life's Been Buried</i></u></a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2011/07/garden-update-memorial-tree-in-spring.html" target="_blank"><u><i>Garden Update: The Memorial Tree in Spring </i> </u></a>Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-5232841527066187142013-06-20T15:15:00.000-07:002014-02-28T17:23:30.127-08:00A Farewell to Spring...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCrTv8E1DJNNqFbkbB9S4yNM10f55wYZ4eb8KeWJwXpd99gfogaevYJ5ItzL1JFTs3Sr5hoTeXlWeHz86JMDPXerjiwq44r9CRm2MQQ3MwQWls9puY6c6VuGgFnka6Yoq6ao9s3YYGZ1E/s1600/RoozenGaarde+2013+c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCrTv8E1DJNNqFbkbB9S4yNM10f55wYZ4eb8KeWJwXpd99gfogaevYJ5ItzL1JFTs3Sr5hoTeXlWeHz86JMDPXerjiwq44r9CRm2MQQ3MwQWls9puY6c6VuGgFnka6Yoq6ao9s3YYGZ1E/s1600/RoozenGaarde+2013+c.jpg" height="425" width="640" /></a></div>
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<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Evening In Spring</b><br />
<br />
Daylight is<br />
Slipping out of sight<br />
To make way for a<br />
Coming silence<br />
<br />
As the garden<br />
Breathes<br />
A sigh of relief,<br />
I smile and<br />
Follow suit<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
The hard work of Today</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Is finished</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
And the pressing</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Concerns of Tomorrow</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Have not yet</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Descended</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
In the brief<br />
Hours of evening,<br />
Hope awakens<br />
And quietly takes root</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
<i>I wrote this poem one wild April a few years back but never shared it with anyone. On this, the last day of Spring, I thought I'd bring it out into the light and let it stretch its wings a bit.</i><br />
<br />
<i>And if you want to savor the beauty of Spring for just a bit longer? <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/growingisbeautiful/sets/72157634234141319/" target="_blank"><u>I've posted photos from the RoozenGaarde Display Gardens, taken earlier this Spring, on Flickr</u></a>, including those featured here in this post.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Farewell, Sweet Spring! </i>Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-43017831691488300522013-06-18T19:25:00.000-07:002014-02-28T17:24:40.355-08:00When All You Have Are Fragments<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
I wonder about it sometimes.<br />
<br />
How a writer can still be a writer when she cannot write.<br />
<br />
When words flit around the edges, just out of reach, and the story God's writing with a life is too big to find its way onto a page.<br />
<br />
The silence, sometimes it really is deafening.<br />
<br />
Oh, the writing's never been easy. More like wrestling with a Great God and somehow, through all the striving and the yearning, giving birth to the story of a life word by word and line by line.<br />
<br />
But for long weeks, months even, I have only felt barren.<br />
<br />
And I am beginning to wonder if this is the end. The end of being a writer. The end of being <i>who I thought I was</i>.<br />
<br />
But maybe that's just it.<br />
<br />
Maybe the story God's writing with my life is redefining--<i>refining</i>--who I am. And maybe who I am, maybe she is a writer, too.<br />
<br />
Maybe she just needs time to find her voice.<br />
<br />
I take courage from <a href="http://www.faithbarista.com/2013/05/what-i-killed-what-i-want-to-write-instead/" target="_blank"><u>a woman who writes broken and unfinished</u></a>, who tells her story in bits and pieces when she is able--<i>if</i> she is able. Yes, I believe it deep, that some chapters of a life can only be told in fragments. And when we aren't the real Author anyway, who are we to say that this is not good enough?<br />
<br />
Who am <i>I</i> to say that this is not good enough?<br />
<br />
I don't know what I will write in the weeks and months ahead--or how I will write it. Maybe it will sound different than before, a little stilted and a little unfinished. But I hope somehow you'll still hear God's heart beating strong for you, for all us.<br />
<br />
Because this life? It's all His story anyway.<br />
<br />
And I can't shake the feeling that I am still a writer--that to be who He wants me to be means that <i>I must write</i>. Even when the words are out of reach.<br />
<br />
Thank you for Grace on this journey. I am grateful to walk the road with you.<br />
<br />
<br />
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>You may have noticed a few changes here at Growing Is Beautiful. I am slowly working to simplify and beautify the look and feel of the blog.</i><br />
<br />
<i>I have also decided to switch the comment system over to Disqus to facilitate better discussions with you, My Dear Readers. If you are unfamiliar with Disqus, you may use it to comment on the blog with your existing Facebook, Twitter, or Google accounts or you may simply enter your name and email in the designated boxes and comment as usual. You can also opt to set up a Disqus account, which is free and generally painless--at least that has been my experience!</i><br />
<br />
<i>Please do let me know if you have any questions or experience any difficulties. I can always be reached by email, Courtney {at} GrowingIsBeautiful {dot} com. Again, thank you for Grace!</i>Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-57490121124909043822013-04-28T20:44:00.001-07:002013-04-28T20:44:31.731-07:00When You've Lost Your Way<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
It's a Sunday morning in the middle of March when I wake up sad.<br />
<br />
It's been pressing in for weeks, all this change and uncertainty weighing a heart right down. But this is the morning when the tears start falling before I even climb out of bed. And this is the morning when I know it sure and strong.<br />
<br />
I am discouraged.<br />
<br />
I walked into the month of March with great hope expectation, laying hold of that one promise God spoke over me loud and clear:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.</i><br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>Isaiah 43:19</i></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
But the answer is no.<br />
<br />
I don't perceive anything new at all.<br />
<br />
There's no path opening up through the wasteland of a life and there's no stream flowing into this parched soul of mine. There's only more bad news, more setbacks, more I-can't-take-anymore-of-this days.<br />
<br />
The whole world's awakening under the warmth of spring rains, everything growing and blooming and being born. But what I really want is for Winter to come back and cover us all, so I won't have to be alone--the only one still buried in the mud while everyone else is made new.<br />
<br />
I spend the days of March with an emptiness beating inside, my skin wearing thin and my resolve wearing out, and I walk through Resurrection Sunday feeling nothing but broken. As if God's walked right out of the grave and left me behind in the wreaking dark, still waiting for resurrection.<br />
<br />
It's not until the first week of April that I can finally put a finger on what's eating me alive, and it's this: Hope's left me. I don't know when it left or where it went or how to get it back. I only know the aching gaping hole right through the middle of me where hope used to be.<br />
<br />
And I can't get that one line of a song out of my head--the one we sang on Resurrection weekend about a merciful Savior and a deep hunger for grace:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Oh, we've hopelessly lost our way!</i></blockquote>
<br />
I see it now, how being lost isn't what makes a person hopeless. No, it's the being hopeless that makes a person lost.<br />
<br />
The kind of lost that can leave a person wondering if there's any reason to keep fighting or if the only way out is <a href="http://www.aholyexperience.com/2013/04/what-christians-need-to-know-about-mental-health/" target="_blank"><u>that one awful leap from the burning building</u></a>.<br />
<br />
I haven't been this kind of lost for a long stretch of life, but that's the place I find myself as April unfolds. And the naming of the darkness, it's both devastating and delivering all at the same time.<br />
<br />
Because who really wants to say it straight out that hope's left you in the night and you don't know if you're even going to keep breathing?<br />
<br />
But then, who can keep from drowning right here in the icy waters when you don't even know which way's up--which way's God?<br />
<br />
So I name the dark Hopeless and I decide to keep on breathing and I grab hold of this one thing: The darkness and I, we are not the same. We are not one. This darkness might have itself wrapped clean around me, and it might be trying to drag me straight to the bottom of an ocean. But I've finally figured out which way's up--which way's God.<br />
<br />
Because it's the middle of an April night when that one line of a song comes back to me and I finally remember what's right before it:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>You offer hope when our hearts have hopelessly lost our way.</i></blockquote>
<br />
And we might all want hope to be engraved clean through the marrow of us, where it can't be lost or taken or buried under the aching dark of a life. But it hasn't been that way since the day we fell from grace, right there at the beginning of our story. Now hope's what we've got to hold onto with our hands and our hearts and our whole lives.<br />
<br />
But this is what I finally hear God whispering to me here in the night--<i>when you've lost your hope and you've lost your way, you haven't lost God.</i><br />
<br />
When you've lost your hope and you've lost your way, you're not hopeless and you're not worthless.<br />
<br />
The darkness and you, they are not the same.<br />
<br />
And precisely when you've lost your hope, God holds out His hand and offers it right back to you.<br />
<br />
The saying yes to hope when you feel nothing but hopeless, it might seem like the craziest, most terrifying leap of all. But it's not a leap in the dark, it's a leap into the light--and aren't we all more than a little ready for that?<br />
<br />
I know I am.<br />
<br />
I'm saying yes to hope and I'm leaping into the light and I'm holding out a hand to anyone who wants to come with me.<br />
<br />
Because there's enough hope for every last one of us and God's lighting up the night to show us the way home.<br />
<br />
Won't you come with me?<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>__________________________________________ </i></div>
<br />
<i>The last number of weeks have brought a kind of darkness I haven't seen
for a very long time. I am deeply grateful to all of you who have
reached out to offer a hand or a heart or a shoulder without even
knowing how desperately I needed it. You've given me the courage to
leap straight out of this dark. And if anyone's out there and feeling a
bit hopeless? I'm holding out my hand to you--yes, you, Friend--grab
tight and we'll make our way home together.</i><br />
<br />
<i>And the song that's been haunting me for weeks? I recorded this little video of me playing and singing "Wonderful, Merciful Savior" in my parents living room, complete with the antique clock ticking in the background. Because sometimes, even when you can't speak or write in the dark, you can still sing.</i><br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/BfjWNAjNULM?rel=0" width="640"></iframe>
{If your reading this in an email or a feed reader, <a href="http://youtu.be/BfjWNAjNULM" target="_blank"><u>you can click here to view the video directly</u></a>}Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-1863622659155867642013-03-07T15:02:00.002-08:002013-03-07T15:02:20.101-08:00When You're Waiting To Be Made New<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
It's late on a Thursday evening when it finally dawns on me what day it is. And that one thought?<br />
<br />
It's enough to make this overburdened heart beat a little giddy with relief.<br />
<br />
The new month's still a couple hours from being born, but I'm not climbing into bed until I've turned every calendar in the house. It's the one hanging on the fridge, though, that I'm most aching to turn--the one emblazoned with Truth Names for every month of the year.<br />
<br />
And I might've once been foolish enough to think I'd chosen those names myself, those pieces of scripture adorning all the pages. <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2013/02/when-everything-falls-apart.html" target="_blank">But January wasn't even finished before it was plain as day that God's the One speaking promises over the months of a life</a>.<br />
<br />
February's lived up to <a href="http://bible.us/Ps27.14.niv" target="_blank">it's name</a> and who says the shortest month can't hold the longest days on the hardest roads? <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2013/02/when-you-need-to-be-brave.html" target="_blank">All this waiting and hoping and holding on and being brave and taking heart</a> when all you really want to do is run. Hide. Bury this hurt and this hope and stick your head in the sand and your heart in a box.<br />
<br />
Yes.<br />
<br />
February's been a fight to keep breathing, keeping hoping, keeping holding on to the One Who Holds when everything else just falls to pieces.<br />
<br />
And what comes next?<br />
<br />
I'm just about weeping when I turn that calendar to March and read those words I already know are there:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.</i><br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>Isaiah 43:19</i></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
New.<br />
<br />
Could there be anything more joyous for the weary-boned and the weak-kneed and the wounded-souled than this? That what's coming next is different than what's come before? That God's making a way through the impossible dark and He's breathing life right into the deadest place?<br />
<br />
It's three days after the turning of the calendars when we're about to take communion and I'm playing <a href="http://youtu.be/rnhUojhJRW4?t=42s" target="_blank">this familiar song about a mighty cross</a>, singing of how the dead wood can become a Life Tree when a Savior's been nailed clean through it. I know all the words and I've sung them a thousand times, but this one phrases catches me off guard and I can barely keep going: "<i>Love held Him there...</i>"<br />
<br />
It wasn't strength or determination or willpower or anger or even desperation that kept Christ on that cross. It was love.<br />
<br />
For me. For you. For all of us broken ones.<br />
<br />
Love held Him there. And love holds me here, too.<br />
<br />
In the dark days of change and loss and struggle and uncertainty, it isn't strength or determination or willpower or anger or even desperation that keeps me from packing it in, throwing in the towel, and walking away from this whole mess of a life.<br />
<br />
It's only love.<br />
<br />
Love holds me together and love holds me in place. <i>This</i> place. Where He's asked me to stay, to wait, to hope, to be brave in the face of everything I fear.<br />
<br />
And I say Yes because I'm loved and I'm <i>in</i> love and who wants to walk away when Love's asked you to stay? Who can bear to say No when you've waited your whole life to say Yes?<br />
<br />
Yes to being loved and being held and being <i>in</i> love.<br />
<br />
Maybe the first week of March still feels a lot like February. A lot like Winter and wounding and waiting. And maybe I'm still buried in the dark, hoping and praying and <i>expecting</i> something new.<br />
<br />
But when you know it's Love Who holds you here, you also know this: <a href="http://bible.us/1Cor13.7.niv" target="_blank"><i>Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres</i>.</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://bible.us/1Cor13.8.niv" target="_blank">Love never fails.</a><br />
<br />
And suddenly the quiet dark begins to feel less like a prison and more like a refuge.<br />
<br />
More like Home.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.faithbarista.com/join-faith-barista-jam-thursdays/" target="blank"><img src="http://www.faithbarista.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/FaithBarista_FreshJamBadge_Stacked2.jpg" /></a><br />
<i>Faith Jam is on hiatus for the moment, but since I missed posting on the topic of Love a few weeks back, I thought I'd write anyway. You can read everyone else's posts on Love <a href="http://www.faithbarista.com/2013/02/never-been-kissed-dream-you-dare/" target="_blank"><u>over at FaithBarista.com</u></a>.</i>Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-26442996966825015072013-02-22T18:21:00.001-08:002013-02-22T21:25:44.901-08:00When You Need To Be Brave<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<i>Jesus</i>.<br />
<br />
I whisper Your Name late at night when I can't sleep, can't breathe, can't find my way in the dark. It's the changing of the guard, one day giving way to the next, and I lay down this armor of mine just long enough to speak the only word I can find, the only Word Who Is.<br />
<br />
<i>Jesus</i>.<br />
<br />
But it's Your Name on my lips that's my undoing at last, all this striving and writhing breaking apart and me just lying here broken and open and emptied right out.<br />
<br />
<i>Jesus</i>.<br />
<br />
Are You near? Will You come? The weight of a life, it can press a heart straight into the ground, and oh, Jesus, I am weary. Too weary to stand. Too weary to keep breathing in and out. Too weary to hold on. Can You hold all this together--hold me?<br />
<br />
<i>Jesus</i>.<br />
<br />
You've named this month with <a href="http://bible.us/Ps27.14.niv" target="_blank"><u>just one verse</u></a>, and those are the words echoing here in the night. But I don't know how to be strong. How to "take heart" when everything's fallen to pieces. How to wait for You without giving up, giving in, giving it all away.<br />
<br />
<i>Jesus</i>.<br />
<br />
It's late and I'm worn through, but Your Word, it calls me into the dark and I'm not turning away. I open the Hebrew and I'm lost, but I open this and it's right there on the page:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Wait and hope for and expect the Lord; be brave and of good courage and let your heart be stout and enduring. Yes, wait for and hope for and expect the Lord.</i><br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>Psalm 27:14, Amplified Bible</i></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
Be brave.<br />
<br />
<i>Jesus</i>?
<br />
<br />
I don't feel very courageous tonight, but I'm taking off the armor and I'm laying my head right down against Your chest. This is me being brave. This is me waiting, hoping, expecting You to hold firm when all else gives way.<br />
<br />
<i>Jesus</i>.
<br />
<br />
I feel Your heart beating sure and strong against my cheek and I know it now--this is me taking heart. And this is You taking me as I am, small and weary and broken through and through. I am Yours and I am held and I am fiercely loved.
<br />
<br />
I close my eyes, and I breath in and out, and I sleep for the first time in weeks.
<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Sharing a day late (aren't I always?) with the community over at <a href="http://www.faithbarista.com/2013/02/where-do-you-go-when-you-are-lonely/" target="_blank"><u>FaithBarista.com</u></a>, all of us whispering thoughts this week on the only Word Who Is--Jesus. Join us?</i></div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.faithbarista.com/join-faith-barista-jam-thursdays/" target="blank"><img src="http://www.faithbarista.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/FaithBarista_FreshJamBadge_Stacked2.jpg" /></a>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Thank you for grace as I walk through these days when the words are short and the demands are long and all I can do is breathe His Name and wait for morning. Your prayers are strengthening me and I am holding all of you close in my heart, even when I cannot write or read or extend a hand across the miles. May you know Jesus intimately in whatever path you are walking.</i>
Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-20814244476944258922013-02-08T10:36:00.000-08:002013-02-08T10:36:06.037-08:00When Everything Falls Apart<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
Long before the new year even begins, I sit down and christen each month of 2013 with a piece of God-breathed truth. And I choose the familiar promise of Jeremiah 29:11 to undergird all the days of January because it seems like the only way to really enter into a year. Believing in a God Who's always at work, always for our good. Believing we have a future and we have a hope and we're not lost and we're not abandoned.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper and not to harm, plans to give you hope and a future."</i><br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>Jeremiah 29:11</i></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
But it's not until the fourth week of January arrives that I feel it strong, how God's chosen these words to mark this month of a life and He's speaking this promise right into the marrow of me. Because it only takes two days and one phone call and one appointment and the whole world starts shaking and shifting and I start wondering who I am and where I'm going and what all this is really about.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2013/01/if-youre-looking-for-refuge.html" target="_blank"><u>I welcome the new year with a new name</u></a> and I declare it loud that God's the only refuge for a life and I'm choosing to build my home right into Him. And now I stand here just one month later with everything falling clean apart and I think maybe I'm just a fool to believe this year's going to be a story of rebuilding.<br />
<br />
All this falling apart, it feels like the worst kind of <i>deja vu</i>, and I think back to the days of summer <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2012/09/when-you-feel-abandoned.html" target="_blank"><u>when I let grief bury me in silence and I refused to speak this one awful truth out loud</u></a>: <i>I felt abandoned by God</i>.<br />
<br />
And some things, they really are the same. My job hangs once more by the tiniest of threads, frayed and worn and closer to breaking than ever before. My beloved kitty remains mysteriously ill, only marginally improved after the options have run out. And a piece of my own treatment has been ripped out of my hands overnight and I'm left grasping about for wisdom and courage and peace.<br />
<br />
Just like last summer, I pick up my needles and my yarn and I knit for hours without end, try to keep on breathing while everything else spins out of control. I stop writing, too, and the irony's not lost on me, how <a href="http://www.faithbarista.com/2013/01/the-heart-that-says-yes/" target="_blank"><u>the topic is "Yes"</u></a> and I say "No," just keeping on knitting and breathing instead.<br />
<br />
It's a bit of a broken record--me, this life, all the loss and the grieving and the I-can't-believe-this-is-happening-again's. And, yes, maybe there's this one long moment when I feel like a fool, caught off guard and thrown off course just when I've begun a new path. But there's one thing that's different than before, and that one thing? It changes everything.<br />
<br />
<i>I don't feel abandoned by God</i>.<br />
<br />
I'm hurt and I'm scared and I'm angry and I'm a bit lost and knocked off my feet. But God's near and I feel it strong and I'm leaning hard into Him, counting on the promise of Jeremiah 29:11 to carry me through.<br />
<br />
Yes, God's got a plan and I've got a future full of hope and suddenly I don't feel like such a fool at all. Because <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2013/01/if-youre-looking-for-refuge.html" target="_blank"><u>I've named 2013 the Year of Refuge</u></a>, the year of learning how to take refuge in God alone. And who learns to take refuge at all when they're not actively, desperately, wholeheartedly in need of refuge?<br />
<br />
When I dig a little deeper into the Hebrew translated "refuge," I look up the verb form and I find this: <i>to take refuge in, to trust in</i>.<br />
<br />
Trust. For me, right here and right now, trust means this: <u>T</u>aking <u>R</u>efuge <u>U</u>nder the <u>S</u>helter of the <u>T</u>hrone.<br />
<br />
The year's only a month old and this is what I'm already learning. That I'm not stuck in the past, stuck in the old life, stuck in the woman I used to be. I've grown and I've been changed and I'm learning to take refuge in God, learning to trust Him in the middle of the hard days and the pitch-black nights. And I don't know how any of this is going to turn out but I do know this:<br />
<br />
God's got a plan and I've got a future full of hope and the Year of Refuge might just be the most important year of a life.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Linking up a day late and sharing in community over at <a href="http://www.faithbarista.com/2013/02/why-the-smallest-movements-can-bring-god-the-greatest-pleasure/" target="_blank"><u>FaithBarista.com</u></a> this week as we consider the word "Trust." Join us</i>?<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.faithbarista.com/join-faith-barista-jam-thursdays/" target="blank"><img src="http://www.faithbarista.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/FaithBarista_FreshJamBadge_Stacked2.jpg" />
</a>Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-406416930492202052013-01-25T18:35:00.000-08:002013-10-25T06:44:27.339-07:00When You Need to See God<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
It's the third week of January when I finally figure it out.<br />
<br />
I watch the sun rise and set for days and I snap pictures with an arm stretched out the window and I wonder how all this beauty on the horizon keeps finding me again and again and again.<br />
<br />
I think maybe it's this out-of-season weather, all these cloudless skies and no water dripping down. Or maybe it's just me, hungry for Him and Hope, my eyes always fixed on what's outside the window as I search for Light and Life.<br />
<br />
Or maybe it's a bit of both.<br />
<br />
But there comes a morning in January when the truth settles deep at last and I'm knocked clean off my feet by this one thing:<br />
<br />
<i>I'm seeing the sun when it rises and sets because it's the dead of Winter</i>.<br />
<br />
The trees, they've been emptied, stripped right down to their souls. And me, I'm looking straight through them to what's been there all along--beauty and glory and light.<br />
<br />
Yes. I'm seeing the sun because it's the dead of Winter.<br />
<br />
So when I read these words on the pages of a borrowed book, the story of a life begins to make a bit of sense after all the aching months of loss and longing:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Be the Gardener of My Soul</i></div>
<i><br /></i>
<i>Spirit of the Living God, be the Gardener of my soul. For so long I have been waiting, silent and still--experiencing a winter of the soul. But now, in the strong name of Jesus Christ, I dare to ask:</i><br />
<i>Clear away the dead growth of the past,</i><br />
<i>Break up the hard clods of custom and routine,</i><br />
<i>Stir in the rich compost of vision and challenge,</i><br />
<i>Bury deep in my soul the implanted Word,</i><br />
<i>Cultivate and water and tend my heart,</i><br />
<i>Until new life buds and opens and flowers.</i><br />
<i>Amen.</i><br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>~Richard J. Foster, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Prayers-Heart-Richard-J-Foster/dp/0060628472/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1359163527&sr=1-1&keywords=prayers+from+the+heart" target="_blank"><u>Prayers from the Heart</u></a></i></div>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br />
The calendar page bears the name January, and this chapter of a life, I'm calling it January, too. All the days of a year that came before, they've done their work at last--me emptied out, stripped right down to the soul, and the clutter of a heart swept clean away.<br />
<br />
And what I didn't know until now is that I haven't been laid bare just to make room for what's to come. I've been laid bare <i>so that I might see God</i>.<br />
<br />
Yes. I'm seeing God more clearly than ever before because it's the dead of Winter and the past's been cleared away and the hardness of a heart's been broken right apart. And I might be just a little overwhelmed by the newness of it all, a little unsure of what really does come next. But God, He's the one stirring in the vision and the hope, planting seeds of His Truth right down deep.<br />
<br />
Yes, God's the Gardener of this soul of mine and He's been hard at work for a whole lifetime of days. And He won't lose heart and He won't grow weary and He won't give up on me.<br />
<br />
He won't give up on any of us.<br />
<br />
And I've never been more grateful for the hard days of Winter and the One Who lays us bare.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Sharing a day late with the community over at <a href="http://www.faithbarista.com/2013/01/when-clutter-isnt-just-about-your-house-but-your-heart/" target="_blank">FaithBarista.com</a> as we ponder the word "Clutter" this week.</i><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.faithbarista.com/join-faith-barista-jam-thursdays/" target="blank"><img src="http://www.faithbarista.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/FaithBarista_FreshJamBadge_Stacked2.jpg" /></a>
Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-91762366113291366652013-01-17T20:12:00.000-08:002013-02-10T11:29:05.166-08:00When You Feel Unlovely<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<br />
Alone in the dark<br />
I bend over a bucket,<br />
let all this pain and nausea<br />
empty me right out<br />
<br />
I'm wrecked and undone,<br />
this breath coming <br />
ragged and shallow,<br />
me just grasping about<br />
for something to hold on to--<br />
someone to hold on to <i>me</i><br />
<br />
I whisper His name,<br />
this the only word I can utter<br />
and Him the only<br />
One Who says "I AM"<br />
in sickness and in health--<br />
<br />
<br />
Him the only One<br />
Who calls me Beloved<br />
when I'm this<br />
shaking mess<br />
on the bedroom floor<br />
and He's<br />
the loveliest One of all<br />
<br />
Maybe Love's<br />
unveiling moment<br />
comes right here<br />
in the dead of night,<br />
His hand on my back<br />
and me just<br />
breathing in and out,<br />
us waiting together<br />
for morning<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>This feels a bit rough and unfinished, but I'm trying to write even when it's hard. Thank you for grace. I'm recovering slowly from a bout with the flu this week and pondering <a href="http://www.faithbarista.com/2013/01/a-first-step-becoming-the-beloved/" target="_blank"><u>the call to live as His Beloved</u></a> with the community over at <a href="http://www.faithbarista.com/" target="_blank"><u>FaithBarista.com</u></a>. Join us?</i><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.faithbarista.com/join-faith-barista-jam-thursdays/" target="blank"><img src="http://www.faithbarista.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/FaithBarista_FreshJamBadge_Stacked2.jpg" /></a>Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-66270372463403605942013-01-10T20:18:00.000-08:002013-02-10T11:29:32.773-08:00If You're Looking for a Refuge<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
It's the last weeks of 2012 when I start to wonder if maybe two years can bear the same name.<br />
<br />
Because the <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2012/02/when-you-need-new-name.html"><u>Year of Home</u></a> is rushing right up to an end, and I feel it deep, how the living out of this one year's name--it's only just beginning.<br />
<br />
Maybe I set out to make my home in Christ, but God, <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2013/01/when-god-does-impossible.html"><u>He's emptied me out instead</u></a>, Christ making Himself at home in this one woman's soul. And how could a single year ever be enough to really grab hold of this impossible truth? That God's in me and I'm in Him and I'm no longer the broken woman without a home--I'm the Beloved who's always at home in the One True Lover of us all.<br />
<br />
But I wonder if even a whole lifetime could teach me the depth of this one glorious Grace, and maybe what the new year really needs is this: a new name that roots right into the old one, builds straight up from the year that's come before.<br />
<br />
It's a morning in late December when that new name finds me. I'm just sitting on the edge of the bed, reading through Psalm 27 for the hundredth (thousandth?) time. This is the song of hope that's been my resting place for months. And it's right there in the very first verse, that one phrase jumping clean off the page, planting itself in the soil of a soul that's been scraped bare:<br />
<br />
<i>The LORD is my light and my salvation--whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life--of whom shall I be afraid? {Psalm 27:1 NIV}</i><br />
<br />
Stronghold.<br />
<br />
That one word might come with a whole heap of baggage, us always the ones trying to break free from the strongholds of fear and doubt and life-searing shame. But aren't we really just trying to break <i>into</i> the Stronghold Who won't let us go?<br />
<br />
Still, this word doesn't quite fit the year that's being born, and I think I see it for what it really is--a signpost saying, <i>"Here! Look here, Beloved! Dig down with your own hands and find the treasure I've hidden for you!"</i><br />
<br />
And that's exactly what I do.<br />
<br />
I pull out The Amplified Bible first, let these added words flesh out the truth behind this one verse:<br />
<br />
<i>The LORD is my Light and my Salvation--whom shall I fear </i>or <i>dread? The LORD is the Refuge </i>and<i> Stronghold of my life--of whom shall I be afraid? {Psalm 27:1 AMP}</i><br />
<br />
Refuge.<br />
<br />
<i>Yes! That's it, Lord, isn't it? The name You've chosen for 2013?</i><br />
<br />
But I want to be sure and I look up the Hebrew that's been translated "stronghold" in the NIV and I find it there, too: <i>refuge, stronghold, fortress, place of protection</i>.<br />
<br />
And isn't that the kind of home I've wanted all along? A refuge. A place of protection. A stronghold that can never be shaken or taken.<br />
<br />
Yes.<br />
<br />
The first day of 2013 slips in quiet and I christen the year with this one word: <i>Refuge</i>. I've no doubt that God's the One doing the naming and God's the One Who'll teach me what this year's really about. But what I already hear Him whispering across all of my days? It's enough to make this one heart leap clean out of the chest with joy and hope and <i>relief</i>.<br />
<br />
<i>"I'm your Refuge, Beloved. I'm your Place of Protection. You are home. You are safe. You are loved. You are Mine."</i><br />
<br />
So I throw my arms and my soul and my whole life wide open and I say it straight out:<br />
<br />
Welcome, Year of Refuge. Welcome.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.faithbarista.com/join-faith-barista-jam-thursdays/" target="blank"><img src="http://www.faithbarista.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/FaithBarista_FreshJamBadge_Stacked2.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
<i>Trying something new and sharing in community over at Faith Barista today.</i>Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-49245244880674021762013-01-07T20:11:00.000-08:002013-01-07T20:11:37.697-08:00HomecomingI set out for home<br />
because all I know is this:<br />
I'm lost and I'm weighed down<br />
and where I've<br />
built the house of a life--<br />
it's not my home<br />
<br />
But I'm the foolish one<br />
who's stone-blind<br />
to the one thing <br />
I really need to know:<br />
God's my home<br />
and I'm already in Him--<br />
I'm already home<br />
<br />
I wonder how<br />
I've spent a whole life<br />
looking<br />
for what's been here<br />
all along,<br />
but none of that<br />
matters now,<br />
only this:<br />
<br />
I've been found<br />
and I've been held<br />
and I've been<br />
given a new name.<br />
Because God is love<br />
and I am loved--<br />
yes, Love is my home.<br />
<br />
Now I finally hear it<br />
sure and strong,<br />
every heartbeat<br />
drumming it out loud:<br />
<i>"Welcome home, Beloved.</i><br />
<i>Welcome home."</i>
<br />
<br />
<br />
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br />
This poem's been a year in the making, my third Psalm of Ascent. You can read the rest of the story behind the third Psalm of Ascent here: <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2011/12/if-youre-looking-for-home.html" target="_blank"><u>If You're Looking for a Home</u></a> .<br />
<br />
<i>To catch up on the whole series:</i><br />
First Psalm of Ascent:<br />
<a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2011/11/how-to-begin-long-road.html" target="_blank"><u>How to Begin the Long Road</u></a><br />
<br />
Second Psalm of Ascent:<br />
<a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2011/11/when-youre-in-need-of-protection.html" target="_blank"><u>When You're In Need of Protection</u></a><u> </u><br />
<a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2011/11/when-you-want-to-make-words-your-own.html" target="_blank"><u>When You Want to Make the Words Your Own</u></a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.aholyexperience.com/" target="_blank">
<span class="pibfi_pinterest">
<img src="http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff162/annvoskamp/multitudesonmondaysbutton2-1.jpg" /></span></a><br />
<br />
<i>Giving thanks for a week of Him....</i><br />
<i> </i> <br />
2301. Waking up to a new year with hope and anticipation<br />
2302. Rooftops covered in frost<br />
2303. Clocking of for work on New Year's Day and finding there isn't any<br />
2304. Mom and Dad helping me undecorate the Christmas tree<br />
2305. Dad trying to vacuum up the needles and making a mess of things instead<br />
2306. Me laughing so hard at Dad that I've got tears running down my cheeks<br />
2307. Christmas decorations all back in their boxes, and the boxes all back in storage<br />
2308. That big empty space where the tree used to stand<br />
2309. Leaving a garland of beads across the window and paper snowflakes all over the walls--a bit of cheer to welcome in the new year.<br />
<br />
2310. Another day without work, a chance to exercise the trust muscles<br />
2311. God Who always provides, even when the job doesn't<br />
2312. Dad and me cooking dinner together<br />
2313. Sunny skies all day, the air cold cold COLD<br />
2314. That golden horizon at sunset, me stretching the arm out the window to capture the beauty with a camera<br />
2315. Friend's baby girl arriving safe in the world at long last, her name meaning Balm of God<br />
2316. Amaryllis bud now half a foot tall<br />
<br />
2317. Work! A full day!!<br />
2318. Buddy Cat sunbathing on my desk, him on his back with all four legs in the air<br />
2319. Sun streaming in the window all morning, me having to strip off sweater and blanket<br />
2320. Annabelle Cat moving back and forth from sun to shade--too hot! too cold! too hot!<br />
2321. Packing a whole bag of teas to bring to a friend's house<br />
2322. Celebrating her birthday with tea and pie and one solitary candle<br />
2323. Afternoon full of laughter and friendship and sweet conversation<br />
2324. Picking up the knitting project twice in one day, finding a rhythm after long weeks of busyness<br />
<br />
2325. Morning without work, time for writing, knitting, and breathing<br />
2326. Being emptied out by God, Him making room for Himself<br />
2327. Feeling it deep that all the heartache of a year has been worth it<br />
2328. God Who doesn't abandon the work in us, even when we declare it loud that we think He's abandoned us<br />
2329. Working coming in at last, afternoon hours filled up<br />
2330. Craning my neck while I work, trying to watch the sun go down<br />
2331. Giving in to the beauty, pausing work for just a minute while I reach out the window to snap a photo<br />
<br />
2332. Quiet Saturday, only a bit of work here and there<br />
2333. Learning to trust as the hours of work keeping adding up to "not enough"<br />
2334. Picking out new teas with the birthday giftcard<br />
2335. Spending time in the Word, God already teaching me about the name of 2013<br />
<br />
2336. Opening up the curtains just in time to see the morning sun turning the horizon pink<br />
2337. How the sun keeps rising and setting and I'm staring at the sky, all this beauty breathing hope into a soul<br />
2338. Writing a poem for the first time in months, that one hard stanza working itself out at last<br />
2339. Catching the mistake in the knitting pattern before it becomes a mistake in my work<br />
2340. Making sense of the hard pattern, continuing on with a bit of confidence<br />
2341. First week of Joy Dare 2013 complete, a whole year of days still stretching out before us<br />
2342. Being confident of this: God will *not* abandon. God *will* be faithful.Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-91003310205113053922013-01-04T13:21:00.001-08:002013-01-04T13:21:38.846-08:00When God Does The Impossible<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMtKTkoe3Inf-LI9CsiReMioPAI2Ov6GlgzUghyphenhyphenp4avFDjaD_sx_ulna8ivtYV09HD9F4o3XdwlbelxlwU4q7zVTkiK_ywL0J1bwBpQfqMoYX1DjNR5DegFr7MHYVE-ctd8DGCk0heQ2Y/s1600/Last+Sunrise+of+2012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMtKTkoe3Inf-LI9CsiReMioPAI2Ov6GlgzUghyphenhyphenp4avFDjaD_sx_ulna8ivtYV09HD9F4o3XdwlbelxlwU4q7zVTkiK_ywL0J1bwBpQfqMoYX1DjNR5DegFr7MHYVE-ctd8DGCk0heQ2Y/s400/Last+Sunrise+of+2012.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Last Sunrise of 2012</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
It's the first day of the new year when I pack Christmas away in boxes and drag that dead tree right out to the alley.<br />
<br />
And it's true.<br />
<br />
I feel a bit of loss here, all these symbols of hope tucked back into hiding for another year and this one big empty space where the Tree of Rejoicing once stood.<br />
<br />
But there's also this: A sense of starting over, or maybe just starting again, a fresh year unfurling right here and now.<br />
<br />
And I leave that empty space where it is, maybe because I don't want things to be the way they were before--and maybe because I'm finally starting to sense what this whole year's heartache might really be about.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2012/02/when-you-need-new-name.html" target="_blank"><u>I named 2012 the Year of Home</u></a>, and I felt it strong and sure that somehow, some way I'd be making my home in Christ, laying down all these notions of being a woman without a home, a woman who doesn't belong. But these last 12 months, they've ripped me open and emptied me right out and left me a bit wounded and wondering. The year I thought would be about rebuilding a life has been mostly about tearing down and throwing out and letting go and <i>laying it all down</i>.<br />
<br />
And, oh, it's been <i>hard</i>.<br />
<br />
But it's the last week of 2012 when I stumble upon those words of a friend, the ones he spoke over me from the start: <i>God wants to be a home for His beloved just as much as He wants to be at home in His beloved.</i> I might've thought I knew a bit of what this meant, but did I really know anything at all?<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2012/02/when-you-need-new-name.html" target="_blank"><u>I said it once</u></a>, how I have my suspicions about who's really naming who when it comes to the christening of a year. But I know it now, down in the marrow of a soul, that God's the real Namer of us all. He asks me to name the year Home because He's asking me this one thing:<br />
<br />
<i>Will you let Me be your home, Beloved?</i><br />
<br />
And I say Yes with my whole life because I'm this woman who's weary of all the wandering, laid low by all the loss and the leaving, and what I want most? It's a home that can't be taken.<br />
<br />
It's 12 months later when I finally see it clear, how this wholehearted Yes has opened me up to the God Who doesn't do a single thing halfway. I might've thought I could build a home in Him with all these pieces of the past, the places I used to call home and the woman I used to be. But God says No, tells me to let it all go, and I come to the end of a year with the soil of a life scraped bare and a heart that's a bit empty and aching.<br />
<br />
But just like that big empty space where a Tree of Beauty used to stand, I don't want to be filled up again with what used to be here. Because this year's just about cost me everything I've got, and I haven't been ripped wide open so that I can go back to the way things were before. I'm figuring it out at last that to make a home in Christ, we've got to let Him make Himself at home in us first.<br />
<br />
And the only way to make room in a soul for the infinite God?<br />
<br />
Say Yes with our whole lives and let Him tear us apart, clear out every last thing that holds Him at bay.<br />
<br />
I name 2012 the Year of Home because I want to make my home in Christ. But God names the year Home because He wants to make Himself at home <i>in me</i>. And maybe the last thing I expected from all these months was to stand here feeling <i>emptied</i>.<br />
<br />
But maybe it's always the last thing we expect that makes the impossible possible.<br />
<br />
We say Yes to God and He says Yes right back, does what we don't even know needs doing.<br />
<br />
This past year, I've grieved and I've lost and I've ached and <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2012/09/when-you-feel-abandoned.html" target="_blank"><u>I've felt <i>abandoned</i> by God</u></a>. But I'm standing here in the wake of all that's been and I'm sure of this one thing: <i>It's been worth it.</i><br />
<br />
Because God's making the impossible possible.<br />
<br />
God's <i>doing</i> the impossible.<br />
<br />
God's making Himself at home <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2012/03/when-god-makes-himself-at-home.html" target="_blank"><u>in the broken body of His beloved</u></a>.<br />
<br />
And I couldn't be more grateful for a year that's cost me everything and given me Everything in return.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br />
<i>Yes, My Friends, it's been a year full of heartache but a year full of Him. And it's been pure Grace to be companioned on the hard road by each of you. Thank you, with all my heart and soul, for prayers and friendship and words of truth along the way. You are each a gift, straight from the hand of Our God. May the new year bring you the last thing you expect--God making the impossible possible.</i>Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-75718691192192871712012-12-30T22:22:00.002-08:002012-12-30T22:22:56.331-08:00When You Want to Celebrate a Life<i>Sharing grace moments and pictures from the epic week of birthday celebration earlier this month. Absolutely the best birthday ever. And it only took me three decades to figure out how to really celebrate a life. Thank you to all who helped me celebrate and to every single one of you who has been apart of my journey. It's been a wild ride so far but God's been faithful through it all. Here's to all the years still to come!</i><br />
<br />
<br />
MONDAY<br />
2052. First day of the birthday week!<br />
2053. Waffles and bacon for breakfast<br />
2054. Flock of birds taking flight over the grocery store parking lot, then settling right back down on the roof again<br />
2055. Lunch date with the best-est of best friends<br />
2056. Her paying my way unexpectedly<br />
2057. Cup of chowder so full of good things I can barely fit the spoon in<br />
2058. Afternoon spent chatting about life, yarn projects in hand<br />
2059. Wrestling the knotted yarn while we wrestle the events of a week<br />
2060. Beautiful ruffled, sparkling, purple scarf she gives to me<br />
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<br />
2061. Her smiling big and saying it's perfectly *me* <br />
2063. Me smiling happy whenever I look down, see all this joy wrapped around my neck<br />
2063. Driving home to the Toby Mac Christmas CD, because sometimes I really do like it loud<br />
2064. Pear cinnamon cider before bed<br />
<br />
<br />
TUESDAY<br />
2065. Second day of the birthday week! <br />
2066. Plenty of work to start off the week<br />
2067. Tea and crochet date with another friend<br />
2068. Me left standing outside when the buzzer fails to buzz me in<br />
2069. Friend hurrying down the hall to open the door for me<br />
2070. How warm and cozy her place feels as soon as I walk in the door<br />
2071. Steeping our tea and settling in for a chat at the table<br />
2072. Her surprising me with a gift--I have the best of friends!<br />
2073. Her artwork adorning the packaging, me marveling at the beauty<br />
<br />
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<br />
2074. Knitted scarf inside the bag--in purple, of course!<br />
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<br />
2075. Her sweetness and generosity, the true gift<br />
2076. Us pulling out yarn and patterns and crochet hooks<br />
2077. Both of us laboring long to learn how to crochet a snowflake<br />
2078. Laughing, making mistakes, trying again, both of us successful at last<br />
2079. Geraldine the Cat talking away while she wander the house<br />
2080. Discovering cookies in the cookie jar right before I leave for home<br />
2081. That "pig chef" cookie jar and my friend translating the French for me--"cookies," of course!<br />
2082. Goodbye hugs and talk of "next time"<br />
2083. How the last page of the second gratitude journal sneaks up on me<br />
2084. Knowing that there is no end to the Grace, to the Love, to the God Who holds this life together.<br />
2085. How the second thousand has taught me this: If I want to live, really live, I've got to keep counting for always<br />
2086. For change and growth and figuring things out--no matter how long or how hard the path to get there.<br />
<br />
WEDNESDAY <br />
2087. Third day of the birthday week!<br />
2088. Too much work--even this is a gift<br />
2089. Strength to work extra when the hours are hard<br />
2090. Dinner date with the ones I've named Second Parents<br />
2091. Trading shoes for slippers as soon as I get to their house<br />
2092. Sitting by the Christmas tree while we wait for dinner to finish<br />
2093. Having to ask if their tree is real because it looks so natural and beautiful (it's not real!)<br />
2094. Homemade chicken and veggie lasagna!<br />
2095. The unceremonious way my Second Mom dishes up the food, us all laughing out loud<br />
2096. My Second Dad praying blessings over me and asking for my kitty's healing<br />
2097. After-dinner tea<br />
2098. My Second Mom hurrying me to open my gift because she can't wait any more<br />
2099. Handmade earrings with little silver teapots dangling at the ends--LOVE<br />
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<br />
2100. Generous gift of Teavana gift card--because you can never really have enough tea.<br />
2101. My Second Mom lighting candles on the cake, my Second Dad telling her how she should do it.<br />
2102. Me just watching them both and laughing<br />
2103. Blowing out all the candles with one breath<br />
2104. Sneaking another piece of cake because the first one is so good<br />
2105. After-dessert tea<br />
2106.
The three of us in the kitchen, me on the floor with Barney the Cat, my
Second Dad sitting on the counter, and my Second Mom the only one of us
in a chair<br />
2107. Settling back into the living room with our tea, watching the cats eye the Christmas tree<br />
2108. Barney climbing the tree twice--and knocking it over twice<br />
2109. Only one ornament breaking from the fiasco, my Second Mom shaking her finger at the naughty cat<br />
2110. My Second Mom sending me home with a plate full of cake<br />
2111. Goodbye hugs and talk of "why don't we do this more often?"<br />
2112. The gift of having Second Parents<br />
2113. The way they've loved me strong for these last two decades of a life.<br />
<br />
THURSDAY<br />
2114. Better day of work than the one before<br />
2115. Quick nap in the afternoon to rest up for a full evening ahead<br />
2116. Mom walking across the parking lot to meet me, reindeer antlers perched on her head<br />
2117. Wandering the gift shop at Swanson's Nursery with Mom and Cousin, cup of chai in hand<br />
2118. Trying on hats and marveling over all the beauty here in one building<br />
2119. Two reindeer and a camel named Curly<br />
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<br />
2120. How the camel doesn't bother to stand up to eat, just lies there and buries his head in food, grabbing mouthfuls to chew<br />
2121. Blitzen the Reindeer bellowing at me when I try to talk his picture<br />
2122. Walking into the Christmas tree building, that wave of evergreen scent washing right over us<br />
2123. Wandering rows of trees, breathing deep and running hands over branches<br />
2124. Cousin driving the three of us to dinner, me listening to Christmas music in the backseat<br />
2125.
That parking spot waiting for us right across the street from the
restaurant, us hardly daring to believe we can park there<br />
2126. Peeling off all our layers, settling in for dinner, and pondering the menu<br />
2127.
Us all deciding on chowder--it *is* a chowder house after all--and the
waitress answering all our questions so cheerfully.<br />
2128. Sipping tea and telling stories across the table while we wait for our food<br />
2129. My sampler plate arriving at last--all five kinds of chowder!<br />
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<br />
2130. Tasting chowders one at a time, deciding on a favorite and then changing my mind<br />
2131. That basket of bread that keeps getting refilled<br />
2132. Mom dropping her glasses in her soup--really?!--and us all laughing while she tries to wipe them clean<br />
2133. Leaving the restaurant happy and full--but still walking around the corner to the cupcake place.<br />
2134. Picking out the snickerdoodle cupcake because it's got the tiniest heart nestled right on top and I can't pass it by<br />
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<br />
2135. The three of us settled on the couch in the corner, sampling cupcakes and sipping eggnog steamers<br />
2136. Taking the heart off the cupcake and setting it atop the eggnog foam<br />
2137. How the heart gets swallowed right up and we all joke that I've lost my heart<br />
2138. Last sip of eggnog revealing my heart right there on the bottom of the cup<br />
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<br />
2139.
How God's teaching me again and again that what feels like loss and
heartache (a lost heart) might just reveal the greatest beauty of all<br />
2140. Climbing back in the car for the last event of the night.<br />
2141. Cousin driving us to a neighborhood we've never seen, all these houses decked out in lights<br />
2142. Driving up one street and down another real slow, pointing out all the beauty<br />
2143. That one house towards the end, three enormous letters filling the front window: J O Y<br />
2144. How the Joy Dare of 2012 is completed right here in the midst of this week filled to the brim with Joy<br />
2145. The way God keep teaching as long as I keep counting.<br />
2146. Day 4 of the birthday week coming to an end, me so full of happiness and hope.<br />
<br />
FRIDAY<br />
2147.
Day 5 of the birthday week and that funny email I get from a friend,
her asking me to bring doilies with me to our lunch date<br />
2148. Me digging through Mom's bins in the basement after work, in search of doilies<br />
2149. Welcome hugs at my friend's house, her telling me that the doilies are for a "project"<br />
2150. Homemade chicken curry pot pie coming out of the oven<br />
2151. Us enjoying a cup of tea before lunch<br />
2152. Sitting down to a delicious meal, Baby Cora "talking" to us while we eat<br />
2153. My friend revealing the mysterious project at last and me a little giddy with excitement<br />
2154. Rolling out porcelain clay until it's smooth and flat<br />
2155. Pressing pieces of crocheted lace right into the porcelain, us thinking we know what it's going to look like in the end<br />
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<br />
2156. Holding our breath a bit while we peel up the lace, reveal beauty we never saw coming<br />
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<br />
2157.
How we're both learning it right here that the beauty of lace is only
revealed after it's been pressed down hard into the ground<br />
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<br />
2158. Life lessons learned in the kitchen beside a sister-friend, us marveling and pondering together<br />
2159. Heading out to our next adventure, Baby Cora in tow<br />
2160. Making good time on the roads and finding a parking place nearby<br />
2161.
Walking up the path to the Bellevue Botanical Gardens with all these
glorious lights on display, us already oohing and ahhing over the beauty<br />
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<br />
2162. Wandering a whole garden made of lights on a cold, cold evening in December<br />
2163. Us taking turns guessing the types of flowers, ever single bloom made out of lights<br />
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<br />
2164. How beauty can light up a whole night of darkness<br />
2165. Warming up with a cup of hot cider held in the hands<br />
2166. Going through the garden a second time, because really, how could once be enough?<br />
2167. Heading back to the house for hot soup and cake<br />
2168. Friend and her husband singing happy birthday to me, that one candle flickering bright and Baby Cora just watching us all<br />
2169. Early Christmas present opened, those home-canned peaches and that jar of chai mix weighing the bag right down<br />
2170. My beautiful curly-haired friend and her new baby and her incredibly kind husband--and me welcomed right into this life<br />
<br />
SATURDAY<br />
2171. Day 6 of the birthday week--my actual birthday here at last!<br />
2172. Mom the first to wish me happy birthday, her hair still asunder from sleep<br />
2173. Enough work to fill the whole shift--on a Saturday. Gift, Gift, Gift!<br />
2174. Dad and me pouring over the Snappy Dragon menu, picking out the birthday dinner (takeout Chinese!)<br />
2175. Dad making cranberry-apple cobbler and the way it fills the whole house with this delicious scent<br />
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<br />
2176. All these friends writing birthday messages on my Facebook wall, me having a hard time keeping up<br />
2177. That package that comes in the mail and me completely taken by surprise<br />
2178. Butterfly wrapping paper adorning the gift inside, a telltale sign of the one who sent it<br />
2179. Tearing off the paper because I can't wait any longer, book of crochet patterns nestled inside<br />
2180. For friends I've never met<br />
2181. And how they become dear companions on the long road, no matter how many miles separate us<br />
2182. For the God Who lets us find each other in the most unlikely ways and binds our hearts in the way only He can<br />
2183. Sitting down to the birthday dinner, Chinese takeout covering the table<br />
2184. Good food and family to share it with<br />
2185. Movie night at home to finish off the birthday week<br />
2186. Blowing out candles after the traditional off-tune, out-of-sync rendition of Happy Birthday by my family<br />
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<br />
2187. Eating cobbler and ice cream, fighting off the kitties who want to lick the bowl<br />
2188. Handmade scarves from Mom, in purple of course<br />
2189. That enormous package that appears on the table at the end of the night, covered in purple pansies<br />
2190. New griddle that will actually *cook* pancakes, not just burn them or leave them pale<br />
2191. For 31 years<br />
2192. For finally figuring out how to celebrate life in a way that honors the person God's created me to be<br />
2193.
God never giving up on me, always stretching and pulling and turning me
right into something else--someone else--the someone He always knew I
could be<br />
2194. For growth<br />
2195. But mostly for GodCourtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-10081383000669999482012-12-24T16:35:00.001-08:002012-12-24T16:35:41.421-08:00If You're Looking for Joy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
It's a Monday morning in December when I wake up weary.<br />
<br />
There's a list of things that need doing and that list stretches clear around the corner, right past all hope of reaching an end, and I think I might just give up before I even get up.<br />
<br />
It's two days after my 31st birthday and I've just done what I haven't done before in all my years--I've celebrated the life He's given me in six different ways, on six different days, all in the same week of December leading right up to my birthday.<br />
<br />
And, oh, the joy that's found me in this one week of celebration?<br />
<br />
There are no words for that.<br />
<br />
But I'm sitting here in the wake of all these festive days and this broken body of mine's telling me what I've been afraid of from the start.<br />
<br />
<i>I'm not strong enough to live that kind of joy.</i><br />
<br />
And there's this one piece of a heart that thinks it might just be true.<br />
<br />
But I'm not convinced and I get out of bed regardless and I start to think maybe what's really true is this:<br />
<br />
Maybe the joyful life doesn't come easy.<br />
<br />
Maybe it comes at a cost.<br />
<br />
And maybe that's exactly how it should be.<br />
<br />
I think back to that day in January when I wholeheartedly took up <a href="http://www.aholyexperience.com/2012/01/the-1-habit-your-new-year-cant-do-without-giveaway/" target="_blank"><u>the dare to find joy in 2012</u></a>--to count another thousand pieces of His Grace and let Him fill up a whole life with joy. And I might've been foolish enough to believe the second thousand would be easier than the first, but oh, could I have ever been more wrong about anything at all?<br />
<br />
This year, <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2012/02/when-you-need-new-name.html" target="_blank"><u>the one I named Home</u></a>, it's named itself Loss and I've given up more times than I can count and I've grieved and I've wondered and maybe I've even shaken an angry fist at the sky.<br />
<br />
And that journal meant for catching Grace, it's sat closed and silent for months without end.<br />
<br />
But then there's a day in the middle of October when <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2012/11/when-youve-been-spared.html" target="_blank"><u>the Death Angel passes by and my dad nearly dies</u></a> and I count gift number 1710 that night: <i>My dad didn't die today</i>.<br />
<br />
And I'm more than a little paralyzed by that one enormous Mercy and nothing finds its way into the journal for long weeks after. But there comes a day in November when I realize there are only seven weeks left and I'm 407 gifts short and maybe there's no real hope of finishing what I've started but don't I want to give it everything I've got? Don't I want to find Joy after all, at the end of a year that's ripped me clean open and carved me right out and left me wounded and wondering what God's really doing in all this? <br />
<br />
Oh, yes.<br />
<br />
YES.<br />
<br />
That day in November, it's the one on which I finally make the choice to find Joy. I make a permanent home for my journal on the dresser beside my bed and I lay it open and I leave the pen right there on the page and I start counting like I've never counted before.<br />
<br />
Because I might've thought counting 1117 gifts in 2011 would've taught me how to really give thanks, how to find God in all the days of a life, how to <i>live joy</i>. But it's another 593 gifts before I figure it out that there <i>isn't any figuring it out</i>.<br />
<br />
There's only the choice to keep living the daily thanksgiving and let God teach and change and grow us as He will.<br />
<br />
And what He's teaching me through the second thousand gifts?<br />
<br />
That Joy's this force of God and it doesn't settle for a place on the shelf. No, it requires the emptying out and the making way and the carving of a space in the soul and it doesn't come easy and it doesn't come cheap.<br />
<br />
But our redemption's been paid for with the blood of a Son and why do I keep thinking that the abundant life in Christ can be bought with anything less than sacrifice and letting go and falling right into the mystery of God and His ways and all this crazy life we're struggling to understand?<br />
<br />
It's a night in December when I'm in the backseat of a car and we're driving up one street and down another, just three women marveling over strings of lights adorning trees and houses and windows and fences. And we're just about to call it a night when there's this one house that catches my eye across the road. There are lights strung all across the eves but what I can't take my eyes off? Three giant letters emblazoned on the living room window.<br />
<br />
J. O. Y.<br />
<br />
I sit in my bed late that night and I count the thousandth gift for 2012 and I feel it deep, how Joy really has come and it's making a place in me. And I wonder, for just one moment, what happens now.<br />
<br />
But I already know.<br />
<br />
I pick up the pen and I keep counting.<br />
<br />
And I let God figure out the rest.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.aholyexperience.com/" target="_blank">
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<br />
<i>All 512 gifts from the last few weeks are a bit too much to catch up on, so for today, on the eve of celebrating the birth of Joy Himself, just a whispered Thank You to the One Who has filled another year with Himself and taught me that Joy's a hard-fought battle that might just cost us everything we've got. But, oh, it's worth it, Friends! *He* is worth it!</i>Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-82435237819231490682012-12-10T22:06:00.000-08:002012-12-10T22:06:52.298-08:00When You're Feeling Ragged and Worn Through<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
I learn to knit because I am afraid.<br />
<br />
It's a day in early January and I've put off the learning for 13 months and I've finally decided that the only way to <i>be</i> brave is to <i>choose</i> to be brave.<br />
<br />
Because I'm this woman born under a cloud of terror, and I'm still figuring it out, how to really live when you're afraid of failing, afraid of rejection, afraid of being who you are. Maybe the only thing I've figured out is this--there's no once-for-all cure for the broken place of a soul, only the daily choice to keep fighting for the life God has for us.<br />
<br />
And maybe this, too--that Fear doesn't go away when you hide it in the closet.<br />
<br />
No, the only way to send Fear packing its bags is to pull it right out into The Light, look it square in the eye, and do the very thing that Fear's declared we can't.<br />
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<br />
So I pick up the needles and I teach myself to knit and purl, cast on and bind off. Because the path of a courageous life, it's made up of a million little steps into a million little fears. And maybe no one understands how learning to knit can teach a soul to live.<br />
<br />
Maybe I don't understand it either.<br />
<br />
But God's this crazy pursuer Who pries open the eyes of the blind, and me, I'm the blind one more often than I'm not.<br />
<br />
Is it any real mystery, then, that I've no idea what He's doing when I meet a woman in February who will show me how knitting can change a life?<br />
<br />
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<br />
Bernadette and I, we meet in the most impossible way--me clicking randomly and her <a href="http://thefreedomjournal.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><u>writing soul poetry</u></a> on a page of the big wide world. I'm captured and I'm held from that first happenstance reading of her words, and we exchange comments and emails and prayers.<br />
<br />
Mostly, we exchange hearts.<br />
<br />
And we both know it without one bit of uncertainty that God's behind all this Grace, and how can we doubt the extravagance of His love when He's given us both a soul sister we never knew we had?<br />
<br />
Yes. We might be 817 miles apart and we might have spent a few decades without knowing who we were missing. But we know it now. We are sisters who've been found at last.<br />
<br />
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<br />
It's a day in July when I decide there's only one way to send my love across all those state lines. So I pick out the loveliest yarn, soft and delicate and perfectly blue, and I pick up my needles and I do the impossible.<br />
<br />
I learn to knit lace.<br />
<br />
It's only my third time knitting and everyone thinks I'm a bit out of my mind and I do have to rip it out at least a dozen times in that first week.<br />
<br />
But I keep at it for five long months and every stitch becomes this labor in love, knitting yarn into beauty with patience and prayer and mostly just this straight-up stubborn persistence. And it really is the most beautiful thing I've ever created.<br />
<br />
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<br />
But I'm still this woman oblivious to what God's about to do and it's not until I wrap up my love and send this blue lace across 817 miles that I see what He's been trying to tell me all this time.<br />
<br />
Because Bernadette, she holds my love in her hands and she writes <a href="http://thefreedomjournal.blogspot.com/2012/11/courtneys-lace.html" target="_blank"><u>the poetry of us</u></a> and she points me straight to this: It's the holes in the lace that let all the light shine through.<br />
<br />
<i>It's the holes in the lace that make it beautiful.</i><br />
<br />
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<br />
I'm this foolish woman who learns to knit because she is tired of being afraid. And God, He's the patient One Who bides His time and waits quietly to reveal this one thing:<br />
<br />
I might feel ragged and worn through, all the struggles of a life chipping away at the beauty of a soul. But I think maybe I'm really these endless tangled threads, and the needles of adversity and loss, they bore clean through me. I might be left with all these aching empty spaces, but God, He's the One holding the needles and He's knitting me into lace.<br />
<br />
And when I'm held up to the Light, the beauty of what He's done might just bring us all to our knees.<br />
<br />
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<br />
Yes. This year's been about letting go, about loss, about leaning hard into God when everything else is being stripped away.<br />
<br />
But maybe underneath all that it's really been about this--God emptying me out in the most beautiful way, His pattern emerging from all the heartache, and me becoming lace, knit together in the hands of a good God.<br />
<br />
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<br />
Yes. I think it's really true. All of us, we're being made into lace, knit together in the hands of the good God.<br />
<br />
And He makes all things beautiful in their time.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
~~~~~~~~~~~~<br />
<i>Project Details</i><br />
<i>Pattern: <a href="http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/red-pepper" target="_blank"><u>"Red Pepper" by Tanja Pessina, Free Download on Ravelry.com</u></a> </i><br />
<i>Yarn: <a href="http://www.cascadeyarns.com/cascade-AlpacaLace.asp" target="_blank"><u>Cascade Yarns Alpaca Lace (100% Baby Alpaca), Color 1432 Sapphire Heather</u></a></i><br />
<i>Needles: Size 7</i> Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-68566385239608363192012-11-11T21:30:00.000-08:002012-11-12T09:15:46.281-08:00When You've Been Spared<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
It's a Friday evening in October when the life drains right out of my father.<br />
<br />
I'm across town, standing in line with friends, and my dad, he's crouched in the corner of a parking garage, trying to stop the dying.<br />
<br />
I'm buying boots and trying on dresses and he's crawling across the concrete floor in search of a car.<br />
<br />
I'm living and he's dying and I want to know how all the ordinary life keeps right on going when all the while, someone you love is being ripped straight out of the world.<br />
<br />
Yes. My dad's alone and he's about to die.<br />
<br />
But he lives.<br />
<br />
There's only one reason my dad makes it to safety, finds a way to live. And that reason has a name. Because the Great I Am, He never leaves my dad and He chooses to deliver. And His mercy, it pours out on us all.<br />
<br />
It's a few hours later when I hear the news that I've nearly lost a father on this ordinary day. I'm blindsided and there's this ache in my chest and I can hardly stand to breathe. Because sometimes the weight of Mercy, it's more than any of us can bear.<br />
<br />
To be spared when we don't even know our need for it? Yes. This is Grace and God and a mercy like no other.<br />
<br />
I write these words in the gratitude journal that night:<i> #1710. My dad didn't die today.</i><br />
<br />
And when I realize the significance of these five words, I'm laid low. Because this one thing I've just given thanks for? It's been true every day of my life--and every day of my dad's life before I was even born. But it's gift number 1710 because I'm this broken woman still trying to understand what life's really all about.<br />
<br />
Maybe <a href="http://onethousandgifts.com/the-book" target="_blank"><u>I read it before</u></a>, how the question shouldn't be <i>"why all this suffering and loss?"</i> but rather <i>"why all this Good and Grace and God?"</i> But how could I have really known what it meant until now? Until I'm standing here in the days after my dad nearly dies and there's no mistaking how every day is Gift. Every day is Grace.<br />
<br />
Every day is God.<br />
<br />
We haven't been promised tomorrow--but how many times has He given it anyway? We're not entitled to even a single day with the people we love--yet how many countless days has He so generously bestowed regardless?<br />
<br />
For weeks on end, I've been listening to <a href="http://youtu.be/L2EVKmM1QFY" target="_blank"><u>just one song</u></a> on repeat. Because I'm this woman with a beauty-hungry soul, always listening for Truth hovering in a melody, and lately, I'm this woman with an aching heart and a great big hole in need of Him. And I remember that first time I heard this song and how I didn't really hear it at all until the last line had been sung and that one word still hung in the air while I reeled long.<br />
<br />
And I haven't stopped listening to it since.<br />
<br />
Because my body really is tired from trying to bring Him here. And my brow really is furrowed deep from trying to see things clear. And this whole year? The one <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2012/02/when-you-need-new-name.html" target="_blank"><u>I named Home</u></a>? It really has been about just one thing: Turning my back to the blackest night <i>and letting go</i>, falling right into all the things I don't understand, all of Him I don't understand, and waiting for the mystery to rise up and meet me.<br />
<br />
And, oh, the waiting's been hard and heavy and full of deep loss. And there've been all these days when I didn't know how I could hold on until He showed up.<br />
<br />
But it's a Friday evening in October when God shows up where I didn't know I needed Him, in a deserted parking garage in the middle of downtown. And God stops the bleeding and the dying and He breathes air into lungs and moves muscles that haven't any strength and He gives me back my father when He doesn't have to.<br />
<br />
And all this letting go and all this falling and all this waiting for God? It's not over yet. But how can I doubt for one second that He's still here, that He's working and I'm not forgotten and there's enough Grace to light up all these dark days?<br />
<br />
The Death Angel's passed by and God's shielded us with His own hand, His own blood across the doorpost, and we've been spared.<br />
<br />
<i>We've been spared.</i><br />
<br />
In the wake of this mercy, the gratitude journal lies silent. Because what really comes next after those five words, <i>my dad didn't die today</i>?<br />
<br />
Maybe I'm still figuring that out. Maybe I'm a little bit afraid of the day when those five words are no longer true. And maybe I'm just breathing in and out, letting go of what I don't understand and holding onto Him and Hope, giving thanks again and again for this one gift that's come from His hand.<br />
<br />
And that very last line of the song that's carried me for weeks?<br />
<br />
<i>I'll wait for the mystery to rise up and lead me Home</i>.<br />
<br />
I'm still weary and wondering. I'm still letting go of what's not mine to keep and falling into the mysterious dark of God and Grace and Growth. And I'm still waiting, waiting, waiting.<br />
<br />
But I know it now that God's rising up and I'm not crashing into anything but The Rock and He *will* meet me.<br />
<br />
And He will lead me Home.<br />
<br />
Yes.<br />
<br />
The letting go, it's leading me Home.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.aholyexperience.com/" target="_blank">
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<br />
<i>Today, only this--a thousand gifts in one: #1710. My dad didn't die today.</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<i>And if you'd like to hear the song that's been the soundtrack of my days these last weeks: </i><br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/L2EVKmM1QFY?rel=0" width="640"></iframe>Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-9369809470067041842012-09-27T19:33:00.001-07:002012-09-27T19:33:29.831-07:00When You've Been Reborn and You Want to Say Thanks<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Dear Nathan,<br />
<br />
I've heard it said that when you lose someone you love, there's this one thing you can't quite understand: How the whole world keeps turning as if nothing at all has changed, as if your heart's not shattered on the floor, all this life draining right out.<br />
<br />
But it wasn't like that for me.<br />
<br />
When you left us that evening in late September, the world shifted clean off its axis, everything known and familiar gone and me just grasping about in the emptiness of what used to be. There was only this I needed to know: How the world could ever <i>start</i> turning again. How all of us could ever start living again. How anything at all could ever be the same again.<br />
<br />
But maybe the real truth is this: I didn't <i>want</i> anything to be the same again.<br />
<br />
I said it once before, <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2010/09/alpha-and-omega.html" target="_blank"><u>how you were the beginning of the end for me</u></a>--the end of who I was and who I was going to be. But I think what I should have said was this:<br />
<br />
<i>I chose to let you</i> be the beginning of the end.<br />
<br />
Yes.<br />
<br />
I chose to grieve long and hard for you--a choice that hasn't always been understood. A choice that's cost me more than I can say.<br />
<br />
But it was the right choice.<br />
<br />
Because saying Yes to the grieving, it's really saying Yes to God. <i>Yes</i> to being torn down and someday rebuilt. <i>Yes</i> to being wrenched out of God and someday reborn into Him. Y<i>es</i> to becoming the woman of God He's always meant for me to be.<br />
<br />
Because sometimes the world needs to stop turning before we realize what's been true for a lifetime--that we don't know who we are. That we don't know Who God is. That we don't have any idea what we're supposed to be doing here on this great big spinning earth.<br />
<br />
Yes. Sometimes we have to grieve in order to find God.<br />
<br />
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<br />
The first two years after your leaving, this new world and this new me and this God I was discovering--it felt all wrong, as if none of this was ever meant to be. But it was the third year when the One True God found me and He gave me a new name. <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2011/07/thousand-times-over.html" target="_blank"><u>He called me Loved</u></a>.<br />
<br />
And for the first time in my life, I believed Him.<br />
<br />
Maybe that's the moment when the earth started turning again, when I started living again. But I was right about one thing.<br />
<br />
Nothing at all is the same as it was before you left us.<br />
<br />
And that's exactly as it should be.<br />
<br />
Because the woman I was and the life I called mine and the home I made for myself? They weren't what He wanted for me. Just pieces of a broken soul who wanted to be loved more than she wanted to breathe.<br />
<br />
You drew your last breath that Autumn night, and <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2011/07/thousand-times-over.html" target="_blank"><u>2 years 9 months and 14 days later</u></a>, I drew my first. Because all those unloved decades that came before? They were more like dying than living.<br />
<br />
But the first year of being alive, of settling into being loved? It's been full of loss and struggle and a whole heap of aching days. It's not what I expected. Not what I hoped for. And it's left me wrestling for weeks with what I should say to mark the fourth years since you left us.<br />
<br />
But today I'm starting to understand that being reborn into Him, it's this life-altering moment of brilliance. Of awakening. Of hope unquenchable. But the growing up? The making of a life in Him? The building of a home on nothing else besides Him? This is what living is all about.<br />
<br />
And maybe this year's been more about tearing down than rebuilding. More about pulling up the old life by the roots than planting seeds for the new one. More about leaving the home of what used to be than settling into the Home of What Is and Will Be.<br />
<br />
But that one moment of waking up into Him, of being born into Love? It tells me that new life is coming. And everything that came before--before your life ended and mine began, before God stopped the world from turning and rewrote the story for us all?<br />
<br />
There's no going back.<br />
<br />
And, oh, for that I am grateful.<br />
<br />
It's been four years since you left us behind. Maybe the hard, breaking days have outnumbered all the rest, but I wouldn't give any of them back. Because the only way I know to honor the life that's been laid in the ground is to use every last day I'm given to honor Our God with the woman I am becoming.<br />
<br />
I keep flailing and failing and falling right down in the mud. But He keeps picking me up, nudging me forward. And I keep choosing to believe. To hope. To bury myself down into Him until the only thing springing up from the soil is a life that points all eyes to the One Who calls me Loved. The One Who calls us <i>both</i> Loved.<br />
<br />
Maybe this one day in September is the one on which I remember you with my words. But all the other days in between? They're the ones on which I remember you with my life.<br />
<br />
Happy Home-Going Day, Nathan. You are loved. You are missed. And we can't wait for the day we see you again.<br />
<br />
With deep love and great hope,<br />
<br />
Courtney<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
<i>In memory of Nathan R. Neahring, July 7, 1990 ~ September 27, 2008</i><br />
<br />Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-16326753917540373742012-09-23T22:00:00.000-07:002012-09-23T22:00:00.802-07:00When You've Been Held and You Want to Say ThanksFor coming out of the dark<br />
and finding Love holding out a hand.<br />
For sister-friends and brother-friends--<br />
the ones who pray and hope and<br />
send Fear packing its bags.<br />
For the choice to believe<br />
when all seems lost.<br />
For the One Who isn't lost<br />
even when we are.<br />
For the last week of Summer<br />
and the way it lingers warm.<br />
For watering the garden at sunset<br />
and finding one cluster of jasmine still in bloom.<br />
For Fall coming in with a chilling grey<br />
and those spiced cookies baking up in the oven.<br />
For Psalm 27<br />
and the way it holds me up <br />
when the burdens push me down.<br />
Yes.<br />
For being held up<br />
but mostly for the One Who holds.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.aholyexperience.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff162/annvoskamp/multitudesonmondaysbutton2-1.jpg" /></a>
<i> </i><br />
<br />
<i>and a few snapshots of joy from the week...</i><br />
<br />
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<i>Giving thanks in words and pictures for the God Who holds when everything else gives way. #1660 - #1682 of <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/p/joy-dare-2012.html" target="_blank"><u>the Joy Dare</u></a>. </i></div>
Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-61318883872069034022012-09-11T19:57:00.001-07:002012-09-11T19:57:27.686-07:00If You're In Need of GraceIt's the middle of a church service, my fingers dancing over piano keys and my voice ringing out loud. Yes, it's right then when I'm struck by the words I'm singing, this well-worn song always taking me by surprise.<br />
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Maybe because I've know this song for a lifetime and maybe because I learned it decades before I ever knew Grace, before I ever understood what it meant to be a woman born into Grace.<br />
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Crazy isn't it, how we can sing what's entitled Amazing Grace and still be taken aback when we realize it's about Grace?<br />
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But tonight it's the third time through when I feel the tears stinging in the back of my eyes and I hear Him saying this one's for me.<br />
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<i>Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come. Twas Grace that brought me safe thus far and Grace will lead me Home.</i><br />
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I've already come through shame and grief and chronic illness and oh-so-much loss. I've already come through doubt and fear and regret and more mistakes than I can ever count up. Yes, I've already come through three decades of life that have hurt more than they haven't.<br />
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And it's Grace Who's brought me all this way, saved my life in a million ways, given me a new start every single day.<br />
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But the thing I really needed to hear?<br />
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It'll be Grace leading me Home.<br />
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I <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2012/02/when-you-need-new-name.html" target="_blank"><u>named this year Home</u></a> and just when I'm certain that this year's named itself Loss, He spins me right around again and says there's more happening here than I can see or feel or know. That someway, somehow I really am coming Home to Him through all this grief and fear and a whole mess of struggle.<br />
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And I wonder now why I ever thought it'd be any different? Didn't I know that there's no easy path to making a Home in Christ, that mostly there's the ripping out and the tearing down and the feeling like God's walked clear out of this life?<br />
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Because who can make a new home when the old one's still standing tall, when <i>we're</i> still standing tall?<br />
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Yes. That's really it, isn't it? It's ourselves we've got to give up when we've decided that He's the only Home we want to be in. And, oh, the breaking down of who we are and who we've been and everything we thought we wanted? It feels like the whole world's crashed right down and there's no Grace in sight--no <i>God</i> in sight.<br />
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But I've already figured it out, that <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2012/09/when-you-feel-abandoned.html" target="_blank"><u>we choose what we believe</u></a>, and that choice we make, it can send up straight into despair or it can lead us right into Him.<br />
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I'm choosing to believe that God's not gone and there's Grace to be found if I'll only look hard enough.<br />
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But maybe when I'm looking for Grace, I'm really the one who's found. Because Grace is the One taking me Home.<br />
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Yes. I'm going Home. And Grace is leading me right to Him.<br />
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<a href="http://www.aholyexperience.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff162/annvoskamp/multitudesonmondaysbutton2-1.jpg" /></a>
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<i>Capturing drops of grace with a camera phone and a journal....</i><br />
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1618. My desktop buddy, sleeping right in front of me while I work the hours away<br />
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1619. Amaryllis blooms in August<br />
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1620. Walking into a room and finding Annabelle in her happy pose<br />
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1621. Root beer float ice cream sandwiches!<br />
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1622. Summer haircut<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiD60-zIUJJQRiX_18iCd4bJ6U4eZuoDwtVGdLVFSZil2mz9_hV5m23TCEITnuyqlhgnfdyhg87ret-Kh3TQk8sjXXC7v8Oh490gAkHmiMj_wWmGVB35meYAnJvyVtBh0gm5dE4IWCZ7o/s1600/IMG_20120816_163105.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiD60-zIUJJQRiX_18iCd4bJ6U4eZuoDwtVGdLVFSZil2mz9_hV5m23TCEITnuyqlhgnfdyhg87ret-Kh3TQk8sjXXC7v8Oh490gAkHmiMj_wWmGVB35meYAnJvyVtBh0gm5dE4IWCZ7o/s400/IMG_20120816_163105.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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1623. Chai and marshmallows in a strawberry-covered mug<br />
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1624. When the cats sleep side by side, give up their quarrels in favor of sunbathing<br />
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1625. That accidentally heart-shaped scone, one side all ragged like me<br />
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1626. Happy new curtains in bright green<br />
1627. The mom who sews them<br />
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1628. Open windows all summer long<br />
1629. Buddy Cat making his home in one of them<br />
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1630. That one bright spot in the sky and how it looks like a heart to me<br />
1631. The way I keep seeing hearts because I'm looking for Him<br />
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1632. Breakfast food for lunch--fried eggs and potatoes!<br />
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1633. Wearing sandals for three straight months--best NW summer in years<br />
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1634. Those crisscrossing tan lines that make me laugh every time I look down<br />
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<br />
1635. Pile of inspiration from the Library shelves<br />
1636. Musing over stitch patterns and dreaming up things to make<br />
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<br />
1637. Week of "staycation"--housemates out of town and all this peace and quiet to enjoy<br />
1638. Celebrating the occasion with a piece of piece every. single. night.<br />
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<br />
1639. The turning of the calendar page, new month full of fresh starts<br />
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<br />
1640. Postcard coming unexpectedly from across the world<br />
1641. Friend who thinks of me even though we've never met, wants me to see all the beauty<br />
1642. The way it feels like God's dropped an "I love you" in the mail<br />
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<br />
1643. How the long hours turn into 5 feet of blue lace<br />
1644. The excitement over nearing the end of a complicated project<br />
1645. Imaging the joy in a friend's face when she finally holds this gift right up next to her cheek<br />
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1646. First pumpkin spice steamer of the season<br />
1647. And that piece of berry coffeecake that brings a little sweetness to a hard day<br />
1648. The best of friends sitting by my side while we sip and stitch and hold this life close<br />
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<br />
1649. The last piece of blackberry dessert<br />
1650. Childhood memories of eating this very thing every summer<br />
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<br />
1651. Crochet baby blanket being given as a gift at long last<br />
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<br />
1652. Baby Cora coming into the world safe and healthy, only 11 days late<br />
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<br />
1653. Listening to <a href="http://youtu.be/ghC3gqNQJPQ" target="_blank"><u>this song</u></a> on repeat, because when it feels like God's missing in action, sometimes you just have to sing the truth loud and drown everything else out<br />
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Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-7723265705706063432012-09-06T19:13:00.000-07:002012-09-09T11:44:28.213-07:00If You're Waiting for God to Show UpIt was fourteen months ago when <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/2011/07/beauty-rising.html" target="_blank"><u>I waited an hour and 37 minutes</u></a> in the cold for God to show up.<br />
<br />
And He did.<br />
<br />
Twelve months later, I sat on the banks of that same pond and I waited 41 more minutes in the cold for God to show up.<br />
<br />
And He did.<br />
<br />
Lately, every day's been feeling exactly that way. As if I'm standing in the cold, the heat, the aching dark and waiting for God to show up at long last. And I think I'm finally starting to believe this one thing--<br />
<br />
He will.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>{Recounting pieces of His Grace from a trip in late July, accompanied by pictures of the last morning's sunrise--only a 41-minute wait this year and I remembered my pocket camera}</i><br />
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1573. Cousin and me crammed into the backseat, not one iota of space to spare<br />
1574. That flat of raspberries we "have to" hold on our laps<br />
1575. Downing raspberries like the best kind of candy<br />
1576. Our backseat dinner of rotisserie chicken<br />
1577. No forks, no plates, and only one napkin while we chow down on a messy meal<br />
1578. That funny movie we watch on the drive--and the way we quote lines from it all weekend<br />
1579. Rain shower as we climb the mountain highway<br />
1580. The way the sun glints off everything washed by the rain<br />
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<br />
1581. Dusk settling as we near our destination<br />
1582. Pulling into camp at last, cousin and me tumbling out of the backseat<br />
1583. My parents already there and my tent already set up<br />
1584. Finding a makeshift bed when mine goes flat<br />
1585. Raiding the snack bins before bed<br />
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<br />
1586. Waking up that first morning to the infamous crows<br />
1587. Laughing to myself because I know my cousin's cursing the birds from her tent<br />
1588. Lazy morning around camp before everyone else arrives<br />
1589. Knitting and purling in a camp chair, trying to keep the yarn from finding the dirt<br />
1590. Hugs and jokes when more family pulls in<br />
1591. Afternoon rest in my little tent<br />
1592. Watching hemlock branches waving their shadows across the ceiling<br />
1593. First campfire of the weekend<br />
1594. Uncle who tends the fire like an eager boyscout<br />
1595. All of us making jokes at his expense<br />
1596. Late-night laughter in the open air<br />
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<br />
1597. Waking up to a symphony of chaos--babies crying down the road, crows swooping and hollering overhead, and those squirrels chattering loud and long right beside someone's tent<br />
1598. Smothering my laughter at the cacophony around me<br />
1599. Morning fire thanks to the uncle who brings the woodpile and the dad who gets up early<br />
1600. That first hour after sunrise when the world's still asleep and the day's still opening<br />
1601. Round of miniature golf with Dad<br />
1602. The way he insists I start over when I hit the ball off course--which is most of the time<br />
1603. Failed attempts at shuffleboard in the hot sun<br />
1604. The biggest "one scoop" ice cream cone I've ever seen<br />
1605. Trying to eat it all down before it melts<br />
1606. Being too full of ice cream to eat dinner<br />
1607. Grazing off everyone else's food instead<br />
1608. Sitting around the campfire roasting marshmallows and laughing late--again<br />
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<br />
1609. Waking up before sunrise on the last day of the weekend<br />
1610. Sitting at the pond's edge, waiting for light to break forth<br />
1611. All those birds flitting back and forth overhead<br />
1612. Blue heron strolling right down the road at the far end of the pond<br />
1613. Me craning my neck to see where the heron will go next<br />
1614. That moment when the sun finally breaks right over the mountains<br />
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<br />
1615. How it never gets old to watch a day being born<br />
1616. The way God feels near at sunrise<br />
1617. Hope for better days ahead<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.aholyexperience.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff162/annvoskamp/multitudesonmondaysbutton2-1.jpg" /></a>Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-59982185887302768582012-09-03T10:02:00.000-07:002012-09-03T10:02:59.122-07:00When You Feel Abandoned<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
The needles click softly, one against the other, and the yarn slips through my fingers like a silent river, washing away the world.<br />
<br />
I knit and purl and slip. I decrease and increase, decrease and increase. And then I do it all again. A hundred times over. A thousand. More.<br />
<br />
The hours, they turn into days, weeks. Yes, even months come and go while the pen lies still, connections fade right out, and I lose myself just like I lose everything else.<br />
<br />
I might want to believe that I'm just wrapped up in the creating, this wild-eyed woman who can't rest until every last stitch is in its place.<br />
<br />
But I'm not blind.<br />
<br />
Even with my eyes shut tight against all that aches and burdens, the truth still lingers here like a fragmented dream. So every day, I pick up the needles one more time, bury the head in this complicated pattern, and refuse to say the words out loud.<br />
<br />
<i>I feel abandoned by God.</i><br />
<br />
The bald, ugly truth, it's lodged in the soul like a shard of glass, but I've no strength to wrench it out. So I pull the corners of a tattered life together, hide that gaping wound beneath all this silence, and I knit as if nothing else mattered in the whole wide world.<br />
<br />
Because who really wants to bare the soul when you're still waiting for God to show up--and you're just a bit terrified that He won't?<br />
<br />
But then, who can bear to hide and tremble alone when you're feeling abandoned by the One Who loved you into life?<br />
<br />
It isn't courage that's brought me to this moment right here, speaking straight out of the dark. It's only this--a desperate longing to be found, known, loved. One last shred of hope that I am not alone, that I am not abandoned.<br />
<br />
I try to piece together the road that's gotten me here, and there's only one thing that I see clear--sometimes its the smallest things of a life that point a soul to despair. Because I can't put a finger on the day it began--the when of all this--but I know the why and the how without even thinking.<br />
<br />
My beloved cat, she's been ill for months and I feel it deep, as if God's mocking this woman He's already burdened with a decade of chronic illness. It nearly breaks me, caring for my kitty and myself, making medical decisions for us both.<br />
<br />
And then comes this: The job I've held for eight years, the one that keeps the high cost of treatment from bowling me right over--the bottoms falls clean out one morning. For long weeks, I'm left waiting for a phone call that will leave me without an income, without a way to obtain my own medicine.<br />
<br />
In four years' time, I've already lost home and independence and loved ones and all my dreams for the future. And there's this one bitter part of me that wishes God would just stop with all the reprieves--those weeks and months between loses, the ones where I start to heal and hope and live again.<br />
<br />
Because those reprieves? They feel like love.<br />
<br />
And the resumption of all that loss? It feels like a kick to the gut, me lying in the ditch beside a broken life while I watch the back of God disappear from sight.<br />
<br />
You can throw theological arguments at me all day long and it won't change that deep ache I feel, the sense that God really has walked right out on me. Because how I feel, it's got nothing to do with the truth and everything to do with what I believe.<br />
<br />
What I <i>choose</i> to believe.<br />
<br />
Yes, I see it now. How I've <i>chosen</i> despair because I've <i>chosen</i> <i>to believe</i> what my circumstances keep shouting:<br />
<br />
<i>I've been abandoned by God</i>.<br />
<br />
But have I?<br />
<br />
Maybe I don't really know the answer to that but I do know this--I've got a choice to make. And maybe I'm not quite ready to believe that all this heartache adds up to a life hid in God but I'm ready to try to believe it anyway.<br />
<br />
And maybe, just maybe, this is how it always begins. That desperate eleventh-hour choice to try one last time to find God in the pitch black and believe, for one more hour, that all is not lost.<br />
<br />
So I make a choice and I start small. I write out those words like a mantra half-a-dozen times a day.<br />
<br />
<i>I choose to believe You're near and mighty to save</i>.<br />
<br />
I'm writing out those words again and again, but what I'm actually doing is this--making a choice again and again. A choice to keep trying until I really do believe. A choice to shout out what just might be the truth until it silences everything else.<br />
<br />
Until it silences me.<br />
<br />
Because I might've thought I was burying this wounded soul beneath a whole mountain of quiet, but there's no burying of that aching fear of abandonment. No, it's always the one doing the burying until all that's left is a gnawing loneliness and an unspoken certainty that we truly have been abandoned.<br />
<br />
A friend, <a href="http://kimscorner1.blogspot.com/2012/07/for-when-you-stop-and-for-when-you-pick.html" target="_blank"><u>she says it right</u></a> when she declares that we're always keeping track of something. And if we're not counting up His gifts and His goodness and His grace, then we're counting up all the ways we've been let down, hurt, forgotten, abandoned.<br />
<br />
Yes, sometimes it's all the little things of a life that can point a soul straight to despair. But I'm certain now--it's the little things, too, that can also point us all back to the Hope Who Is.<br />
<br />
So I dig out the gratitude journal from where it's been hiding and I refuse the guilt over having left it this long. Because <a href="http://www.aholyexperience.com/2012/01/the-1-habit-your-new-year-cant-do-without-giveaway/" target="_blank"><u>I took the dare</u></a> all those months ago. The dare to find joy in all the days of a year.<br />
<br />
Isn't the search for Joy really the search for Him?<br />
<br />
And when you're feeling abandoned by God, isn't the search for Him the only thing worth doing?<br />
<br />
I'll say it straight out that I don't know yet whether God's near or far or what He's up to in all this mess. But I'm choosing to look for Him. I'm choosing to climb out of this pit I'm in. I'm choosing to believe what seems more than a little impossible.<br />
<br />
God hasn't abandoned me.<br />
<br />
God hasn't abandoned you.<br />
<br />
<i>We are not abandoned.</i><br />
<br />
And we are not without hope.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.aholyexperience.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff162/annvoskamp/multitudesonmondaysbutton2-1.jpg" /></a>
<br />
<i>Since this post is already long and full, excerpts from the gratitude list will be saved for another day. Thank you for grace.</i>Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-19851026147248380512012-06-26T20:56:00.000-07:002012-09-03T09:03:19.505-07:00When The Shadows FallIt's been nearly a half-dozen years since I've set foot in my grandparents' house, but when we pull up to the curb in the middle of the afternoon, I wonder if I ever left at all.<br />
<br />
This little red house with the white front steps and that tiny patch of grass, it's just the way I remember it from the time I was small. The years, they've taken their toll. But me, I'm walking right back into childhood when I step over that threshold, and I'm not expecting it to feel like this.<br />
<br />
Like I've found a piece of who I used to be and there's nothing I can do to take it back into the life I live now.<br />
<br />
My dad and his dad, they rummage in the shed for bicycles long unused, and my grandma and me, we wander the house and recount the past. I trace my hand over wallpaper and curtains and I smile to myself at things still hanging on the walls after all these years.<br />
<br />
We make our way to the basement in search of the puzzles my grandma once loved, because her eyesight's slipping away and there's no more use in trying to see what she can't. She pulls them out from all the places they've been stashed and I look them over slow, choosing a handful to carry back to my side of the state.<br />
<br />
And we're standing in that room where my whole family used to sleep when she points to a photograph on the wall and tells me a story I didn't know. My grandma, she's not quite 80, but the years--they haven't been kind. She's forgotten how to cook an egg and she's forgotten how to use the microwave and she's starting to forget her own grandchildren.<br />
<br />
She's starting to forget me.<br />
<br />
But she remembers that morning decades ago when she left the house before dawn, my grandpa already off to work. And it was only 5 am when she made her way to that bridge across town and snapped a photo for a newspaper contest. Grandma won second place for her efforts and she still smiles big when she tells me the story.<br />
<br />
And that's the moment when I feel my heart break open just a bit, all these pieces of the past weighing me right down. Because there are too many things I've forgotten, too many things I've never known about my own family, all our history slipping away in the unkind river of time. And I know it now, how it's too late and some things really are lost and, oh, the longing to get it all back? It leaves me broken and grieving.<br />
<br />
I don't want to re-live the growing-up years, so heavy with pain and loss. But there's this one thing I wish I'd known from the start--that counting all the moments and giving thanks for what's here and now, it's the only way to remember what shouldn't be forgotten. It's the only way to carry the heritage of a family into all the years to come.<br />
<br />
Maybe it's the only way to build a heritage at all.<br />
<br />
Because there are stories told in photographs and mementos and there are stories told from one person to another, but what does it really matter without the story of God's goodness running right through all our days, all our generations?<br />
<br />
And isn't that what the <a href="http://www.growingisbeautiful.com/p/joy-dare-2012.html" target="_blank"><u>listing of His gifts</u></a> is really all about--telling the story of His goodness? <br />
<br />
It's two days later when we're driving home across the mountains and I hear the echo of my soul in <a href="http://youtu.be/gAac0XBbUkg" target="_blank"><u>the words of a song</u></a>: <i>Life is full of light and shadow. Oh, the joy and oh, the sorrow. </i>Because I'm still aching a bit over what's been lost and what can't be found again and yet I'm whispering thanks with every breath, desperately grateful for even one more day with the grandparents who birthed our family.<br />
<br />
And it's the chorus that shouts loud the truth I'm trying to learn:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>When shadows fall on us</i><br />
<i>we will not fear</i><br />
<i><b>we will remember</b>.</i><br />
<i>When the darkness falls on us</i><br />
<i>we will not fear</i><br />
<i><b>we will remember</b>.</i><br />
<i>When we're thrown and we're tossed</i><br />
<i><b>we'll remember </b>the cost.</i><br />
<i>We're resting in the shadow of the cross. </i><br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
~~David Crowder, <a href="http://youtu.be/gAac0XBbUkg" target="_blank"><u>Shadows</u></a></div>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
There's no going back to all the years before. Before I started counting His Graces, counting on Him. There's no retrieving what's been lost and uncounted and unremembered, but there's the giving thanks for what is and there's the remembering of Him right here and now.<br />
<br />
Because maybe there's only one thing that needs remembering in all
our lives--Christ on the cross, God redeeming us out of every shadow
that will ever fall, us never forgotten by the One Who holds the whole world together.<br />
<br />
When the shadows fall on us, we will remember. When time steals our eyesight, our memories, our loved ones, we will remember. When we've forgotten everything and everyone else, we will remember.<br />
<br />
Because the record of God's goodness? We're writing it down, carving Him into the story of our lives, choosing to remember Him when all else is slipping away.<br />
<br />
The grief over what's been lost and what's slipping away, it breathes life into the gratitude for what is and what has been and what might still be. And the shadow of the cross? It leads us right to the Light of the World.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.aholyexperience.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff162/annvoskamp/multitudesonmondaysbutton2-1.jpg" /></a>
<br />
<i>Recording the story of His goodness...</i><br />
<br />
1573. Days without work<br />
1574. Car loaded down, us all tucked in for the drive<br />
1575. Safe travels over the mountain, clouds following us all the way<br />
1576. Road trip snacks and backseat catnaps<br />
1577. Pulling into the campground at last, sun starting to break through<br />
1578. Setting up camp while the sun sets across the river<br />
1579. Hot drinks before bed<br />
1580. Me tucked into the teardrop trailer for the night<br />
1581. 4 am trip to the bathroom, horizon already on fire and everything perfectly still<br />
1582. Cinnamon french toast for breakfast, broken fork and laughter to start the day<br />
1583. Setting up lawn games in the grass<br />
1584. Practicing, practicing, practicing before anyone else arrives<br />
1585. Me and Dad traipsing around the pond looking for dragon flies<br />
1586. Day already hot before lunchtime<br />
1587. Grandpa and Grandma pulling in, their old station wagon recognized from afar<br />
1588. Grandparent hugs and hellos<br />
1589. Grandma and me moving our chairs from sun to shade and back again<br />
1590. Hot dogs and pasta salad for lunch, quiet conversations before the whole gang arrives<br />
1591. Camp stove malfunction, propane leaking when we're nearby and awake<br />
1592. Trip to the store to fix what's broken, finding a makeshift part<br />
1593. Dad and me making our way to the house where he was born<br />
1594. Pulling up to the house and finding everything just the same<br />
1595. Honking the horns on old bicycles dug out of storage<br />
1596. Grandma and me wandering the house in search of puzzles<br />
1597. Memories and feelings from the past, a childhood forgotten and remembered<br />
1598. Grandma recounting stories, me grieving and giving thanks<br />
1599. The sound of her voice, her laughter<br />
1600. The woman she once was<br />
1601. Arriving back at the campground to find cousins here at last<br />
1602. Hamburgers on the grill<br />
1603. More cousins finding their way, and a brother, too, unloading cars and setting up tents<br />
1604. All of us gathered around the campfire, laughing loud and late<br />
1605. First morning with all of us together, more french toast, and sausage falling in the grass<br />
1606. Playing games with cousins, me still bad at them all<br />
1607. Crocheting in the shade when it's time for a little quiet<br />
1608. Heading down to the water after lunch, carrying my chair and crochet<br />
1609. Hanging out with a cousin, chatting and sharing life<br />
1610. Day hot and sticky but all of us thankful for the sun<br />
1611. Bratwursts on the grill for dinner<br />
1612. All of us sitting 6 feet from the campfire because the day's still hot<br />
1613. Wind coming up at last, cooling us down just enough<br />
1614. Laughter and s'mores and silliness late into the night<br />
1615. Good sleep on the last night<br />
1616. Packing up after breakfast, a million trips back and forth across the grass<br />
1617. Everything loaded at long last<br />
1618. Goodbye hugs and well wishes<br />
1619. Protection when the cargo comes undone and we're standing on the side of the freeway<br />
1620. Makeshift tie-down, us making it to the next rest stop in one piece<br />
1621. Dad figuring out how to get us home, us grateful for Him watching over us<br />
1622. Rain greeting us as soon as we reach the mountains<br />
1623. Home, home, home<br />
1624. Him, Him, Him. Yes. This most of all.<br />
<br />Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7674016135108707034.post-13310034865084513142012-06-21T15:06:00.000-07:002012-06-21T15:06:50.771-07:00How Life Can Be Twice As Good<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I visited a local rhododendron park last month and these photos have been quietly waiting ever since. Today seems like the perfect day to share them with you in celebration of Summer's beginning and in honor of a very dear friend's birthday.</i></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Happy Birthday, Rachel. Life with you, it really is <a href="http://youtu.be/_2K_QXxJ8yU" target="_blank"><u>half as hard and twice as good</u></a>. I love you.</i></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>~~~~~~~ </i></div>Courtneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019187519810116317noreply@blogger.com9