Fast forward a week and it is late at night. We are in a meeting room at the apartments, all four of us. Coffee in hands, sweat dripping down my back I move uncomfortably in my seat. My leg bobbles—faster—as the moments of silence settle in, uncomfortably so. I look up and smile awkwardly, trying to assure them I am not this crazy person, trying to assure myself mostly.
So, just tell us a little bit about yourself, Courtney. He voices.
Well, I stutter. How do I say the right words? How in depth do I go? What if they hear my brokenness and decide I'm too messy, too much to be redeemed through such a relationship. I just begin to talk. A little bit about my past leading me here. A lot about the here and now, this desire for a dad. He is quiet but attentive. She is constantly giving me reassuring nods. I get through it and it can only get easier from here.
We agree this is a God thing and we all want to walk on this journey together, totally unsure of what it looks like. So he talks logistics and bible and she covers me in affirmation and we pray. We decide I will just get to know them in life on life time—going out to the house and hanging out with their family of eleven. Yes, nine kiddos.
So I go. The very next week. And the next and the next. I trust that the Lord knows better then I do.
Truthfully, I can't remember much about the first time, except that I came home and wrote about it. One day, I will share because it makes me laugh and cry all in one breath.
Time with their family was easy—a little too easy. They welcomed me as a guest only a couple times, before I found myself covered in soapy water in front of the sink rinsing a dozen plates and belly laughing with the girls. Not a guest anymore, just a part of life. They became the same for me—until one day it started feeling like home. Not the house perse or the windy road up the mountain—just them, being with them, learning and laughing and crying sometimes.
It was nothing like I expected but everything that I needed—and of course the Lord just did that.
We had some intentional time that fall, some hard conversations. I had to hear hard Truth and decide if I was willing to submit or not. It's funny looking back, it really wasn't all that grand in the scheme of life. Things like what to do if my car breaks, how to love my roommates well, what it looks like to be a young single woman, how to pay off debt, types of boundaries to put in place with my parents back home and so on. Praise Jesus He is patient and does things little by little because He knows us so well.
After a Christmas with them, they were family and I was beginning to trust.
Then life happened and I slipped from offense and fell pretty hard. Mainly, the consequences of decisions that hadn't been mine which led me to choosing sin over Christ to cope with it all, because that's what I knew. There were consequences, all the same. They stepped in, this dad and his wife and they told me I wasn't going to stay in this place, the battle wasn't over and something had to give. I kicked and screamed and wrestled them on it too. Patient and gracious, he told me it would take the flip of a calendar and accountability and Jesus.
That's when they told me to come live with them.
Then life happened and I slipped from offense and fell pretty hard. Mainly, the consequences of decisions that hadn't been mine which led me to choosing sin over Christ to cope with it all, because that's what I knew. There were consequences, all the same. They stepped in, this dad and his wife and they told me I wasn't going to stay in this place, the battle wasn't over and something had to give. I kicked and screamed and wrestled them on it too. Patient and gracious, he told me it would take the flip of a calendar and accountability and Jesus.
That's when they told me to come live with them.
The months to follow God began asking me to trust more and continue submitting to the process. He began challenging me to trust them with more of my heart and my life, to ultimately trust Him through them, this authority that He placed in my life for this season of time. What a scary thought, I remember thinking. Looking back, we really didn't know much of how this all works and still are no experts, but He was the author of it from day one.
Then the submission became harder. To trust him in things that were so deeply woven into me, to trust him (them) with it all. My relationship with my biological dad. My financial independence from my mom. My education and goals. My debt and my time. Even just beginning to learn my role as a woman, the way that changes everything I had planned.
As I trusted and submitted, I experienced so much peace and blessing. Dont get me wrong, it was and continues to be one of the most challenging battles—giving up control. Trusting that the Lord really does know better then I do—that His plans are perfect. Even His plan to provide this earthly dad to intercede on my behalf for this season of time, to bear some of the weight, this earthly imperfect man that God has called me to trust and submit to. Not because anyone told me I had to but because even the SON OF GOD submitted to His earthly parents for a season, knowing all the while He had the Perfect Father.
And yet, no longer having to bear up under the weight of it all, of always trying to figure it out and hold together the pieces shattered from life in a fallen world, from not growing up with a dad who protected me, from seeing too much and rebelling against all authority for so many years, that is a blessing.
"And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man." -Luke 2:51-52
And yet, no longer having to bear up under the weight of it all, of always trying to figure it out and hold together the pieces shattered from life in a fallen world, from not growing up with a dad who protected me, from seeing too much and rebelling against all authority for so many years, that is a blessing.
The good news—He restores. Yes, even through a dad and mom and family that have only become mine because God spoke and it was so. Because He burdened their heart for the mess I am, and me for a need not being met apart from them.
I don't claim to be an expert and neither do they. We are in a process of learning how to do this well, how to trust and talk real and how to redeem this biblical principle in a completely fallen and messed up world.
It's so not perfect and neither are we, but God is being glorified and I am safe here.
"My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the LORD reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights." -Prov. 3:11-12
It's so not perfect and neither are we, but God is being glorified and I am safe here.
"My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the LORD reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights." -Prov. 3:11-12
I am just a girl learning to submit in a generation that says run. Just a girl without a [God-fearing] dad learning to let one in. Just a girl with some hurt and a whole lotta pride learning to heal and be humbled. Just a girl who asked for a dad and got a whole childhood redeemed through this family of whom I make a dozen. Just a girl who desires to run a home some day and raise babies and submit to a husband. A girl just learning to inhale hope and exhale brokenness because we all have to breathe.
Just a girl learning to write gospel and breathe in the future promised because hope lives here alone.
And if this is you, there is hope for you too. To see God's redemption in a tangible way—to know Him as the perfect Father. For you, maybe this means seeking out some type of "fatherly authority" in your life as well. Perhaps it is just spending time around families living it out. Maybe it is God redeeming relationship with your own dad. Maybe it is a friend you want to support.
Whatever it is, I pray sister, that you might know this: And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ; He redeems and makes new and it is good, but it's never going to complete until we see Jesus. Let's rejoice in this hope when all will be perfected!!
Just a girl learning to write gospel and breathe in the future promised because hope lives here alone.
And if this is you, there is hope for you too. To see God's redemption in a tangible way—to know Him as the perfect Father. For you, maybe this means seeking out some type of "fatherly authority" in your life as well. Perhaps it is just spending time around families living it out. Maybe it is God redeeming relationship with your own dad. Maybe it is a friend you want to support.
Whatever it is, I pray sister, that you might know this: And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ; He redeems and makes new and it is good, but it's never going to complete until we see Jesus. Let's rejoice in this hope when all will be perfected!!
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