On Gratitude for the Thursday Night Ladies [and ten months together]

I'm sitting here, as often happens each week, plopped in the middle of the living-room floor, candles still flickering, crayons still sprawled about, a sea of food covering the kitchen counter that all needs to be put away and I haven't looked yet, but I'm guessing the cushions are off the sofas, tossed about in the other room, little chocolate hands left marks in random places, and the trash is likely overflowing.

For the past three hours this place was straight up chaos, as it often is on Thursday nights. Littles running rampant like they run the place or something, and beautiful women eating a little slower and talking a little longer--tonight I had to pause for a minute as I was walking out of the bathroom and into the chaos--just stood there and took it all in.

With tears flowing down my cheeks, I cannot even believe that the Lord would be so sweet as to provide, to entrust me with these dear friends and our Thursday nights together. He has truly done abundantly beyond anything I could have asked or dreamt up ten months ago.

I love these ladies fierce, y'all.

Back in August when a friend and I met two families in the park across the street from my house, I never could have imagined how our gracious Heavenly Father would  be to use that meeting to forever impact my life. One of the ladies we met that afternoon, shared how she had been living in the area for over a year and only one or two American women had ever even talked to her. Can you imagine that? It broke my heart and I desperately wanted to be her friend.

We parted ways that evening, one-another's phone numbers in hand, having no clue if I would ever see this sweet lady again. BUT GOD! He had a perfect plan and had gone before me in SO many small ways. I met up with my new friend from the park the very next week--she and her little girl went with me to a bookstore and for an ice cream--and the rest is truly history!

God used our friendship to solidify a desire He had put in my heart months prior--to use my home as a refuge for those feeling lonely and alienated. A few others with the same heart gathered with me and prayed that this home could be a place where women from all different tribes and tongues could find meaningful friendships, share vulnerable areas of theirs lives with one-another, and discuss where our ultimate Hope comes from.

So last August, this dream became a reality every Thursday night! Most weeks we share a big meal, talk about our lives, talk about stories or do fun activities together. Most all of the women coming have connected to our group through that ONE dear friend we met in the park that day--talk about God's perfect plan! Whew!! And none of it would be possible without some AMAZING American friends who come faithfully, bring food and joy, and walk with these ladies too.

One of my favorite memories of this group was when we got to celebrate one of their sweet little girls' second birthday party--with a houseful of like thirty people from all over the world! We have rejoiced together, laughed until tears poured out, wept together, prayed together, miscommunicated and disagreed about things, learned from one-another, needed one-another, come up with all the inside jokes together, tried to practice different languages together--with much laughing--and lived a year of life together and I am forever thankful and indebted to these ladies. They make me better.

Ya'll, they are the most brave friends I have known--they willingly leave everything that's familiar to them--their families, their culture, their FOOD--and trek half-way across the world where they then land in this corner of "the natural state" where they (or their husbands) purse intense degree plans at the University while they also raise babies and manage all the tasks of normal life, yet not knowing the language at first, not having a car, not having many friends to call on for help in their times of need and so on.

As Americans, we often tend to shy away from people who look, act, or even talk differently from us. I want to encourage you, wherever God has placed you in this season, to just pause and look around you--take note of the people around you who are different from you. Sojourner literally means "guest," "stranger" and even one who "belongs to another."

We mustn't forget that WE ourselves are indeed aliens, strangers, sojourners on this earth--we await a heavenly citizenship, a better country which God has prepared. The reality is, if we do in fact "belong to another," why wouldn't we jump on any opportunity we are given to befriend and care for those who might seem quite different from us, those who are sojourners in our midst and yet share a similar situation to me or to you--when we look with eternal perspective, right?

Every week these ladies thank me and tell me that I don't have to do this every week. What they don't understand is that what I do is easy--what THEY do on a daily basis is the hard and brave part! And ya'll, none of us are perfect but man, they are so incredibly kind, sincere, and trusting. They are EASY to get to know and even easier to love deeply. These ladies are some of the most kind and generous friends I have. And if you only knew some of their stories--some of the miraculous ways God has protected them and provided for them in the midst of realities you or I could not even imagine--these ladies are my heroes and beloved friends.

Tonight, paused in the hallway gazing out over the chaos--all I could hear was the Father saying, Courtney, this is how much I love YOU--that I would willingly, joyfully take a sojourner, an exile like yourself, someone that was far from me and I would choose to bring you near to me even when it cost me greatest sacrifice ever made. You don't even understand the heights and depths and breath of my unceasing and unchanging love for you. And as much as you love these ladies--I love them more then you will ever know.

As we squeezed one-another tight, all the kisses on the cheeks, utterances of "Masalama" and "In-sha-allh," the tears just fell yet again as they herded out the door--God has and continues to teach me SO much through these beautiful friends and our Thursday nights together. I can't wait to see what plans are in store for our little community in the months and years to come! What a sweet ten months it has been--learning from and loving you ladies!

As a side note, it was perfectly fitting, of course, for our last official Thursday night of the semester to involve half a dozen kiddos running around, two grand-mommas visiting from the other side of the world, and a dozen women from near and far--yes you never could have guessed--all getting facials and foot massages and being told to "relax in the quiet like we're at the beach"--HAHAH as if that were possible! Wouldn't have had it any other way!

"As I have loved you, you love one-another. Greater love has no one then this, that someone lay down his life for his friends."

Now off to tackle those dishes and hunt for all the hiding crayons! 

In Which I Wrestle & Wait

A week ago life started singing outside my window so I slept with it open all night. I don't think I've slept quite like that in months. The sun kissed my face red after a day outside in the country with my adopted fam finishing my little [turned big] chicken house project from last year. It's almost done now and it was a project far to large for my own undertaking, joke's on me evidently!

Today rain and gloom linger and I feel a chill in the air. It's my dad's birthday and I don't quite know what to do with that. Oddly, all I can think about is wanting to hug him tight and for him to tell me it's all gunna be okay. I took a three hour nap and have no motivation to leave this bed. Nonetheless, the grass is gaining color and I am thankful for a resurrection glimpse.

Isn't it good news that the story doesn't end with the crucifixion?

We sang in church today and I wept like a baby. I tried to fight it, but by the time the offering song launched I was a goner. I think it was deep rooted in this weariness I've felt and the way I've depended on the idol too much in this trial. And then there is the trial itself. My applied for job count has topped out in the late twenties this week and my interviews thus far cap out at a whopping zero. It hasn't been the darkness of before, but it's lingered and weeks later I still haven't run the other way.

Why is that sometimes our wounds feel better oozing then they do all stitched up?

These days I look in the mirror and find disappointment in the faded blonde staring back at me. I haven't felt it in months and months but it feeds something of old. I find myself reaching into the back of the closet for the hoodies that cover up a few times too many and I wake up to the hum of relentless failure flowing ear to ear. There is something to be said for getting dressed up for work each day and with that gone--maybe I just need to pretend I have somewhere important to be?

I find myself making excuses to be places and moving my life to the week after next because I am just a little fragile right now and, well I don't even know why. Maybe something will click by then, though. I hope so. Surely I am not bound to a life of sweatpants just yet.

I hear the enemy loud. I open my Bible and the words just look a little blurry. I think it's a season we all know and the timing of it makes sense--tomorrow sums up my forty days of prayer and this last week I've felt the resistance.

But, God is speaking and I am dependent on hearing His voice.

Community around here really has sustained me. From random (rather large) checks taped to my windshield to people meeting me for the fist time only to discover I'm that one their whole family has been praying for these past weeks (which has happened more times then I can count on these fingers). All of my "adopted parents" both local and back home have been a constant flood of grace and wisdom in my life. My bible study friends have loved me well. Sweet ladies from church far more aged and faithful then I have come in close and looked me in the eyes while His words sunk deep. This is the testimony of His bride who have relentlessly pointed me back to He who is able.

And I think I forget it, when I don't see Him doing the abundantly more. I forget He is able. I forget faith is not seeing. I forget His ways are better too. Because let's face it, I have it all figured out stored away, just in case anyhow. 

"...the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead." [Phil. 3:10-11]

I think He is letting some parts of me crumble off. Hammering away.

The fire is thick and blazing these days, and this whole dying thing is a dreadful process. But as I watch this tulip fan open into yellow budded bliss, I remember abundant life such as this requires a cost so great as death itself.

In this case, undeserved death on a cross which burst forth an impossible stone that He who is able might attain resurrection. And here He dwells in the fire with you and me, His spirit sustaining.

I'm not sure what this season is to result in, what He is trying to carve outa me.

So all I can say is such--by any means possible, Lord, by any means possible. 

On Community in the Unexpected

Okay twenty-something year old, post under-grad, full-time employed, studying some more, waiting for husband/wife, trying to love Jesus more brothers and sisters—how do we do this whole community thing well? It's something I've really been battling lately.

Trying to migrate upwards, out of the late nights and nap-filled days of studying and living way too close, I find myself lost in a world that I spent so much time waiting for. Now I wonder why?

There is work confined to hours which start far too early and extend way past my own personal ability to remain still and alone under the freezing AC vent that looms over my head with this screen as my company, and yet I am growing up. There is the studying that lingers, the studying to finish my degree that seems to fall about the 25th hour. Then there is a bit of sleep, not enough argues my adopted mamma who teaches me to value it. Those are the necessities.

I would argue, though, that even more then the salary and the degree and the shut eye—I need community. I need people. I need people who are messy and don't have all the answers but talk hope into my weariness. I need the body and the Bride and I need to hear the gospel lived out.

And in this awkward stage of life it is hard to know where it is, and yet it is everywhere.

We all need it more then we want to admit because hope in brokenness breathes life when we are one. 

Community is everywhere--and so I ask, where do you spend most of your time?

For me, my time is at work, at home, with my international friends, and in the church. In that order, too.

I never saw it coming and while I've been busy searching for it everywhere but here, it has found me and reeled me in. I have fought and unlatched only to get bound up and find myself in the midst of it, of this community of saints and sinners, brought together by a paycheck which bears the same name. It's funny how God just does that sometimes. Puts you with people you would see on the street and pass right by.

Some of us have more hurt then words will ever tell, breathing grace in and out. Others are so blinded and broken, suffocating without it. But here we are, a family God ordained for this season of time. Truthfully, it's not the customer or the big deals with Walmart or the craft competitions that bring me here everyday--its the people, its the community, its the body and my need for it, my role in it.

Community seems to be actually quite unpredictable, but on purpose.

I am thankful for that, that His ways are higher and that the Bride comes to life in the business world as much as she does underground. We get fifteen minutes a day to read some bible and pray together corporately and this time gives me eyes to see these people like the body that they are. It is a sword that pierces and we live because of it. It always reveals something, I learn too.

Community is inescapable. No matter how much you screwed up last night or how dark your morning--it knows when one is missing and seeks him out until he is found. Community is confrontation in love because it's outpouring of truth preveils past the sting of death and points us heavenbound.

Don't just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good. Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other. -Romans 12:9-10

When we ask for prayer requests, they are never lacking. Neither is the praise. We approach the throne, all in need of grace and mercy and wisdom. A cord of us unbroken, so much stronger then going at it alone. A voice echoing praise and thanksgiving, grief and pain, answers and a will to be done. Meanwhile the chorus amening in unison. Some days I don't feel like talking to Jesus and yet community is not about me, so I open my lips and He fills them with praise. I am so thankful.

Four of us ladies (and wives of co-workers), we gather at BSF every Tuesday night and during lunch we trudge through the homework. We are all in such different seasons of life, have such different stories and yet here we are...brought together by this company but only united by Christ.

We are serious most of the time, serving in the mundane and working for the glory of God. But I know that as we pass one another in the hall and smile, even there in that moment the light cannot be overcome. Let's walk to the bathroom, to the printer in prayer, we all need Him more and some of us have never met Him. Community is continually interceding and not about me.

Don't look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. -Phil. 2:4

At work community happens outside of the office too. It means birthdays celebrated every month as we gather around our table and bow our heads to give thanks for the one we celebrate this day. It means a trip to KC to watch the Chiefs lose in celebration of our five years of existence as a business, as a family. It happens in the Razorback games and sweet summer nights around my boss's pool as the kiddos splash and joy lingers well into the night. It is the babies we bless with gifts and prayers, the child in India in need of a new hip. We give sacrificially and we trust God with our giving. Maybe the boy will walk again. Community.

It helps us all remember to press on sometimes.

I see it in the lunches with his wife as we talk real life and I am encouraged in my youth. It is there as kids come by and call the co-workers aunt and uncle because that's our family. We watch each other's dogs and we don't like cats much. Our company is growing from it's meager start, and so we rejoice. We pray for meetings and we try to get ahead of the trends. We pray for his daughter to return home and for my friend who lost a baby and for sickness and jobs lost and international students. We walk through it together and we know the behind the smile.

Community is everywhere and I am beginning to see it, in all of it's unstructured, unpredictable, unrelenting glory.

Tonight as I write six little ones are asleep in this house and I get the joy & responsibility of watching them for the weekend while their mamma and daddy are in Haiti. They are my boss's kids and we go to the park and I watch little boy football games and we stay up late watching movies and eat cookie dough straight from the tube and this too, is community.

I love these kids and I am so thankful for this because it is changing me and refining me and calling me out and talking hope and life and I know love here.

Community serves as a shepard for the lonesome and a tomb unblocked for the dead. Community points us to life in Christ, for He is the perfect Shepard, the risen King.

So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples." -John 13:34-35

Thankful for Amber—no one writes quite like her. Check her out over here and her series on Community over here. 

and a few pix from the weekend....

Samantha and I watching lil man play football

This is how you take 15 kids to the park...on a rope

Yes, 15 of them!!

As we walked to the park, they were singing songs and all the old people at
the nursing home came out to watch us walk by...so hilarious.

Cookie dough inside a cupcake...yum.