From Campus to Contients [& one month of support raising]

Exactly one month ago today, I waved a tearful goodbye to the kiddos I've spent the past two years with for the majority of their waking hours and cruised my way through those all too familiar hills and curves of Shadow Valley one last go round. It all felt oddly ordinary, so when my back wheels slid through that tiny black gate at the end of the curve and it all became suddenly real, I decided to pull over and weep.

I just needed a moment.

Those were tears of thousands of diapers changed and apologies made after loosing my temper at the end of a long day. Tears of a lil man's first steps and the day the twins finally learned the sound of "th" placed together in a word. It was remembering hundreds of trips to Chickfila and birthdays celebrated with the cow. Tears wept as I rocked a miracle baby girl to sleep day after day, begging Jesus to reveal Himself to her one day and pleading with Him to give me grace to trust bigger with my own too. Tears over the hunger these kiddos have to be loved and the way God entrusted them to a daddy and momma who are searching for that too. I recalled the meals I could make in my sleep and the paleo lumps that made me infamous amidst this little world that had become my calling, my people, my job, and my family through the craziness of life.

Floods of emotions and memories and struggles and joys and changes and seasons--all of which left me overwhelmed by His insane faithfulness through it all. Oh, if you only knew.

Thirty days later, here I am in continued awe of His steadfastness and my days look so vastly different. For example, in life with a 2 year old and a newborn, a successful week demanded a least 120 minutes of adult conversation to be scheduled in, for all of our sanity--and now I find myself perhaps too easily drawn away from the ones I came to visit with and find myself sitting on the floor in a pool of barbies and cars without a second thought. While 2:57pm no longer brings me to the side of the curb waiting for two big Kindergardeners to come bobbling off of the bus, that is still the time of day that my body calls for a snack--and caffeine! Funny how He allows those little reminders of His grace, reminders that He holds our days, our seasons and is fully worthy of our trust.

For those who don't know, a total chain of events only God Himself could have laid out, led me to serving as a missionary with the North American Mission Board as the International Student Ministry Coordinator for my church and a campus ministry at the University of Arkansas. If you want more details, I'd be happy to send you a newsletter or grab coffee and tell ya all about it.

Did I ever see myself here? No way.

If you told me I would agree to raising my own salary, working in ministry with college students from all over the world, and still living in Fayetteville five years after moving here I would have told you all the reasons that would never happen to me.

Praise God, that while the heart of man may attempt to plan his way, but the Lord establishes His steps. [prov. 16:9]

The four years leading up to now have taught me a deep and driving love for the nations and the students studying right in my midst from those very ends of the earth breathed out by the Creator. God knew what He was doing the very day He moved me to this crazy natural state, unbenounced to me of course. This is my dream job and then some, the story unfolding still blows my mind. It was a dream He put in me and brought to growth year after year. I'm beginning to expect Him to ask of me the very things I inform Him I will never do or be. I just picture Him, leaning back and laughing deep in His belly watching me, as I come to see His perfect plan unfold.

Oh the JOY He finds in displaying His great power through our weaknesses and lack. What a free place to be! I am so thankful that God is sovereign and yet gracious to give us His spirit and work through us!

"And the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes….then the nations that are left all around you shall know that I am the LORD; I have rebuilt the ruined places and replanted that which was desolate. I am the LORD. I have spoken and I will do it!" [ezekiel 36]

These days, this journey just leaves me in awe. The mountain highs and valley lows, the curves and straight-aways of a gracious Father's pursuit of a wayward daughter, a daughter so oblivious to the greatness of His glory and the wholeness of His love, a trail that recounts His faithfulness and new mercies over and over and over again. Then, behold all things are new. He alone transformed this heart which was once stone. Now He satisfies and is fully worthy of my life. Billions are yet to hear of His name. How can that be?

And a block away from my front door, thousands are going from one class to the next, thousands from those very ends of the earth that haven't heard, ambassadors of gospel right here in our midst. May I daily be bold in faith and speaking the gospel to these students. I pray I will be faithful to journey on in such a manner to which His name goes forth and ends with nations at His throne, crying out in unison, "Holy, Holy, Holy…" What a day that will be. Lord, make that the lens through which I see today.

I'm raising my support right now, a whole salary from those He leads to give and see fruit increase to their credit. I'm learning SO much of His provision and gift in the body of Christ, my local church too, as the trail forges onward, pointing clearer then ever to the God who redeems and holds my all in all. The only message that brings the dead to life. And so many need to hear.

I set out on a one-hundred day journey, a goal to be fully funded by August 1st. Thirty days in, I find myself 60% funded and in awe of His provision, encouragement and affirmation that I am right where He has called me to be. It's a good thing too, because He knows I'm a bit thick-headed and slow to trust.

Join me in praying this journey will continue to make all else grow strangely dim in light of His glory and grace. Pray for the 1,500 students from 112 different nations finding out right now, they're headed to Arkansas this fall.

I plan to write more and tell the stories that make this support-raising journey so incredibly humbling. Stay tuned.

And because I so desperately miss this crew...

In Which I Have a New Job

The past six weeks of unemployment have challenged me in ways unending.

Just two weeks ago, in fact, I began packing up my life here in Arkansas to head northbound to St. Louis where I was offered a place to stay with my best friend and her new twin boys (and the Mr. of course). St. Louis made a lot of sense as I will graduate in June and just need a filler job until then, at which point I can attain the "dream job" whatever the heck that means! 

Plus, I was relieved to have a back up plan after the 30+ jobs I'd applied for ignored my emails and calls. I didn't see then what God was requiring. And I can see now how miserably I failed that test. How often I forget He is trustworthy and fully in control [especially when I'm not, amen?]

Yesterday I started my new job as "nanny" and then some to three boys. 

Just two days before I was to depart for St. Louis, I was offered an interview for a nanny position in Arkansas. I interviewed the following night and was offered the job the day after. In the meantime, I still kept my plans to go to St. Louis and interview there as well, though I knew on the drive up it would be a short trip as I was pulling away from my "home" in the rolling hills (that I once called mountains) of the natural state.

See that was much of the wrestling and not trusting--this place has become my home these past three years and I couldn't imagine calling it quits quite yet. [Despite desperately missing my family in St. Louis.]

God used the trip to confirm the door He'd opened back South was indeed the one I should walk on through. So barely a day into my trip, I accepted the position. The reactions of those close to me were a little bitter mixed with a lot a sweet, as most I trust knew it was the answered prayer we'd been believing for.

Tonight, as I sit here physically, emotionally, and spiritually drained, covered in spit up and various combinations of peas and carrots with a couple layers of paint, chalk, and dog hair to top it off---well let's just say I can't do much but laugh at the reality that this is what many prayers answered looks like in all it's glory. I am reminded God's "working all things together for our good" takes on odd shapes and sizes at times, yet He is working indeed.

As much as I need a shower right now, I am equally confident of His provision of this position for my good. 

I always thought these concepts of God "equipping us for the calling" and "training us in death to self" were ones I would wrestle through prior to moving across the world for the sake of the gospel. Instead I'm seeing it as I re-define the word "time-out" for boys quite fluent in disobedience [and absolute melt downs]. In the way eating my lunch around three this afternoon was a victory celebrated. I'm seeing it in the way my "Tot School" qualifications can be found on my Pinterst wall. How I yelled when my perfectly clean kitchen took a thick layer of red play-dough to the rug this afternoon [and fought to hold back the tears while I scrubbed]. And I see it in the way that the lady at the bookstore today asked me if they were twins and bent down to help as I juggled the baby and his buggy of gear too. She smiled and told me they were precious--and I gritted my teeth and replied yes ma'am, they are.

And you know what? They really are. It's a part of the dying that God is teaching me at the close of this day two. A little spit up and few melt downs doesn't change that. Nor does the suffering I feel when six o' clock feels centuries away. Neither does the fact that they are just my job. They are gifts from the Lord and for this season of time, they are my gifts for these fifty hours of the week. God has entrusted me with them--so have their unbelieving parents. And He commands me to be faithful.

Yesterday I connected with the mom of these boys over her previous hurts from the Catholic church. She explained to me she is excited for the twins to be in school in the fall--school in a church because they need something spiritual, even she can't give it to them. And God reminds me--Courtney, I have chosen this family to employ you for reasons far exceeding your need for a check at the end of the week. This morning I met another mom at story time and she just moved here from India. What a blessing my time with her was. Another reminder the Word is living and active here too.

Today, God didn't need me preaching in India. He needed me at Barnes and Noble for story time in Rogers, Arkansas with two boys attached to my legs and another slobbering in my arms. He needed me to sit cross-legged on the floor of this bookstore feeding the baby a bottle beside a mom from India while the boys shared a bench up front.

I wasn't ever quite convinced changing diapers and teaching the alphabet was a worthy calling until they were my own one day. Today, God ever so gently reminded me that taking up my cross to follow Him is the only worthy calling. 

So tomorrow, picking up my cross is asking these boys to forgive me for yelling over spilled play-dough. It's singing of Christ's love while I change the baby's diaper. It's speaking life over these boys when even their parents tell me they're a handful. It's disciplining when they don't obey the first time, even if letting it go would prevent a melt down. It's praying for patience and joy and India while I wash dishes and fold laundry. It's remembering just how unworthy I am, how selfish, and repenting.

Picking up my cross is resting in His grace all-sufficent when they all three have pressing needs and there is just one exhausted me. It's the deep breath and the peace that transcends it all. It's the fact that He died so I could live. So these boys could live--and one day know the peace too.

And then I realize just how worthy this calling is--and how it being  entrusted to me is grace alone.