On Finding Home

Tonight as I sit here, I must hold back the tears.

We are all dozen in a room and it has been awhile. We are singing praises to Jesus. He strokes the guitar and the little boy squirms across my lap. Little fingers twist my hair and those little toes with dirt infested beneath the nail lock close to mine. I squeeze him tight and I know Jesus is here. The babies are dumping towers of blocks across the floor. It makes a big bang as it crashes over the wood. There is pushing and tears and little guy screams.

He just keeps strumming and oh, how his voice draws me back.

As I hum along to the words so foreign I can barely contain myself.

Memories flood—the bad of the past so contrasted against this moment here and now. Nights of yelling and cussing and kicking and running. Nights locked behind a door so entangled and trapped and dark. Nights of horror movies and love scenes. Nights accompanied by the TV and microwave dinners. Lifetime helped me dream happy endings. Nights of roaches and gun-shots. Nights of innocence dissolving and childhood ending. There just weren't ever nights like this right here and now growing up. I get lost here and I feel all the ugly conceive and begin to birth all over again. Sin surfaces high as my throat.

Then his glance my direction pulls me out of the darkness and the light is just so incredibly light.

And so I close my eyes and soak it up and I feel Him giving me back my childhood nights, redeeming them in some weird way. But it is Him doing it and I don't deserve it.

His fingers across that guitar strum grace right into my bones and I feel the cistern being sealed. 

My steady flow interrupted as he asks us to recall times in scripture where God acted immediately. Like Philip dissolving into space after baptizing the Enoch and Christ walking on water and demons launching pigs over the cliff and even sending a wife to water the camels. Sometimes, he told us, God is quick to answer our prayers and quick to confirm our decisions. Other times, we don't know that we made the right decision for awhile, we don't always see an immediate answer. Like when Christ promises He is coming back—oh we can be sure He is. It just hasn't happened yet.

He read Psalm 150 which talks about praising the Lord...with lute and harp. (As Hannah is strumming her new harp!) Let everything that has breath, in fact, praise the Lord! So we praised as blocks collided with the floor and lil guys jumped off furniture. A year ago I was yet to even glimpse such a life, such a home, such a moment.

Unlike Philip disappearing in a blink, home has taken time for me—it has been much more a promise not yet seen. 

But tonight, tonight I realize I may be a Philip in flight, but my home is sure. My home is here and yet not. So for now, this place where we sing loud and blocks plummet with a crash and little boys snuggle--it is drenched in grace and dripping mercy, something I don't deserve and never foresaw but completely Jesus, completely where He wants me and a complete promise of home that is coming.

Home is the heart and the people and memories--but it's more.

What a gracious God, to ordain decision after decision that led me here, here to this home in the middle of the country for this season of time. Here where these parents are pouring and kiddos are loving and Jesus is being praised by all. Here where the flip of calendar actually heals and Thursday night worship redeems years stolen. Oh I am so thankful for this family, for this time, for this God who knew I needed a glimpse of the home that is coming.

So home, I think, home is the promise not yet fulfilled and the longing that keeps us finding. Home is coming, keep finding Him. 

Dear 16 Year Old Self

Dear Six-Teen Year Old Me, yes the one with the cake thrown on your face,

Wow. I really don't know how you made it to here, here where I forget just how green it really is, just how crisp the air smells on this cool day. Here with this family in these mountains with this job and this hope and this future.

I wish I could just hug you, one of those big ole' make you feel at home in my bosom Southern hugs. You just really wanted to find home. You really wanted to be loved. And looking back, you were skin and bone near death starving for it.

Oh Courtney, just chill out and be a kid. Let life be simpler. Eat your cake and don't cry when a boy slams it in your face. Makeup not being perfect on your sweet night isn't really a tragedy. You will see tragedy, though.

You are driving and you think you are hot stuff. You still watch 7th Heaven every Monday night and you sing—at the top of your lungs—on those back windy roads in your Solora. You are a dreamer and your world flips if you forget to write in your journal. I have no idea what you wrote, but the breeze across your neck and pen in hand always made sense to you in a world where much didn't.

If only I could spare you the pain that is coming. You think it's bad now—but you will dig your grave and you're even going to lay down in it. I wish you never had to know that darkness, that feeling of suffocation because the dirt heaping over you is just that heavy. But there is a shovel and latter you will get out.

You just broke up with that boy, the first one you ever kissed and outside you smiled and your friends told you that you could do so much better. Fuel to the fire. He made you feel special and loved and when it stopped, you starved. It will take you years to remember how to hunger. But for the sake of righteousness, you will.

Oh and FYI, you will kiss dating goodbye. Crazy I know.

You don't know it yet, but one day soon your phone is going to ring...and it will be your dad. Yes, the one that disappeared for over a year now. The one who missed your birthday and never called at Christmas. The one that your mom told you was probably dead. He isn't. He will want to see you and you will stand strong—for awhile. Then you'll give him a chance and he will cut you deeper. But the hurt will be more then you ever imagined, for a while. You will get some distance and flip the calendar and get stitched up. It is good.

You love your friends more then life itself and you are all black and white. One day, maybe you will learn grey is a color too. You hide your Jewish heritage because you want to be one of them--you want to fit there, maybe. The years will teach you to glory in your decent from the Holy Nation, in your identity as God's chosen, a people belonging to Him. You will disobey and screw up more then your pride can handle.

Oh and please just give up the control, you freak--one day you will live with a dozen and it would be a whole lot easier if you learned now!!

All men aren't scum...I wish you could see it, to just glimpse what it coming.


He has a plan for you. You don't even know who "He" is yet, but oh little one, He knows you. And He is already at work. Oh I wish you could get it a little sooner. I wish I could help you see past your studies and your girl drama and your pride. I wish you could see the hope and future instead of the past. 

This year you are going to meet you siblings. They are going to define love and you are never going to be the same. This is your first taste of home and family and stability. Let it soften you, soak here for you are safe. Your sister plays with your hair and you purr and it will be your "thing" well into adulthood.

Your best friends will invade your world and you will raise babies with these three, one day.


Your appetite will change. You will learn to eat grace and drink mercy. But oh young one, you will always hate cheese. 

You want people to like you--I wish you would just like yourself. You're fashioned in His image--see Him in the mirror. You get straight As and you are a tennis champ. But the works don't earn you nothin'--remember it. You live in the hospital your senior year and you yell your mom--a lot. You see things that drain the little girl right out of you and I just wish I could save you from it. You are gunna be a great mom, though.

You wasted so many lonely nights locked behind your door--I wish I could plow it down, just like the walls you built up. Even six years later, you still hide behind the door and the walls, but if you stand tip-toed you can see over them now. Yes, you always have been a bit of a learn it the hard way kinda girl.

I wish I could give you a new lens to see you mom. Love her Courtney, love the mess out of her. One day you will miss her. You are beautiful, even if you go to the prom solo. I know you couldn't believe it though--not then and maybe not now.


Eventually you will stand up again and pick it all back up because its all you knew for these six-teen years. It will be a pattern, a puzzle solved before it's started. You and food will have at it—tug of war over your life. You will learn to be still and let Him fight. You will learn to submit to the process and not worry about the product. It is a process. Hate sin.

In a couple years, you will quit on life. But in His mercy, God will spare your life and you will stop pursing death. You will taste redemption this night--and you will want more. The sun will shine across your skin and you will taste His goodness, that He chose in His grace to redeem you from the pit of darkness. He will teach you to walk in the light.

And every time you feel the sun like that, the tingles scamper up your arms and you just know that He is God.  He stirs deep down as the darkness fades into a horror scene that was another life, another girl. And even this morning, you must remind yourself you are not her.

Your feet will walk the dirt of India and the mountains of Australia. You will hear the nations declare He is Lord and your life will be messy. You will want a husband and babies and you will cleave into Jesus so much more. You will have hope.

And one day the darkness won't loom so close and you will depend on the light for air. You won't ever be that perfection you measure yourself against in the back of your mind, so just give it up already. You are always a little more hungry for grace, a lot more in need of it too.

Sixteen doesn't last forever--One day, the seas will part and you will sing a new song, so hold fast!

Thankful for Emily over at Chatting the Sky and her new book!

On A Lunchbox

It is funny how life happens sometimes. Really, I just have to laugh.

I think that sometimes the hurt is so deep, yet the reality of His faithfulness so divine that all I can do is stand in awe. This morning, I had one of these moments. I just had to laugh—to rejoice in His redemption alone.

Growing up, I dreamed of a life in which my parents were in the PTO at school, volunteered to chaperone all the field trips, and never missed the school musicals. Just the thought of someday coming home to the sweet aroma of cookies baking and toilet bowls with blue water brought me great joy. I was crying out to be a child—for that to be enough. I hungered for the little things.

I love my parents. I really do. I know that my mom worked and worked and worked to provide me with everything I ever needed. I know that being a single mom was such an impossible task—we as women just weren’t created to raise babies alone. I know that she loves me as every mother loves her daughter. And I know that no family is perfect—the aroma of sweet-smelling cookies and all. In spite of the truth I know now, there is this part of me that still craves the little things. The cookies—the blue toilet bowls—the conversations—the moments.

This morning, I had a moment. I was leaving for work and realized that I needed to bring a lunch. I was offered anything from the pantry to eat. I started making a sandwich and she came along and wrapped it up, adding a few things to complete my meal. She then realized I needed something to put it in. She reached up high and pulled out a lunchbox for me to use. She threw in some napkins reminding me that my orange will probably get messy and these will come in handy. She gave me a hug and sent me out the door.

Ten minutes later I am driving down the road and it hits me—through the tears all I can do is laugh. I can remember buying my lunch all through elementary school, even into middle school. I would sit down with my lumpy potatoes, plastic chicken nuggets, and chocolate milk carton continually glancing across the table at my friends’ lunches. Their pink and purple princess lunchboxes came full of surprises. They would pull out their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, in a perfect square with the crust cut off and sliced down the middle. They got chips and a perfectly plump chocolate treat for desert. And a juice box—always the newest and tastiest. They always had a napkin. The real sweet moms even wrote a little love note to their daughter on the napkin, or snuck in an extra treat for later.

I was so jealous. I can vividly remember crying in the bathroom one day. I just so deeply desired that kind of a lunch box—not because of the food, the colors on the box, or the napkin—I wanted the love that came in the crust-free sandwich and letters on a napkin. 

Here I am, twenty-one years old—and I finally got my lunchbox.  

And of course it wasn’t about the box—in fact it was a boy-looking lunchbox, nothing spectacular. It wasn’t even about the food—and yes, my bread still had crust on it. But it was about the moment—it was about the thought inside the lunchbox. That lunchbox was filled with love.

As I sat alone eating my lunch at work today, I simply had to bask in the moment—He is faithful to redeem the years the locust has stolen. He is faithful to meet all of my needs—even my need for a lunchbox at the age of twenty-one. And only He knows those needs, even better then I do. And oh is He faithful to provide for them, that He might be glorified in that very provision. Only He knew the joy and praise that would one day come--from a lunch box at that.

Today, I saw His intimate and persistent and selfless love for me in a lunchbox. He cares for each of us so much, that He would place me in this place on this morning with this spiritual mom to whom He told to send me off to work with a lunch in a box, and in that perfect plan which far exceeds anything I ever could have dreamed, I see HIS love for me—the depth and perfection of it. I stand in awe.

Lord, thank you for revealing your love for me in my lunch box.

I am STILL confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. -Ps. 27:13-14