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 Going Home & Memorizing the Book of James

I walk through the door and everything is clean and white and perfect. It is all breakable and they sit on the couch with the screen blaring and she snores. I turn on the light and dogs lick me and she says make it stop. The light, the noise, the giggles. Make it stop because that's not here, that's not how we live, that's not it.

So I calm and quiet and dim the lights and tell her hello. She laughs at the dogs loving on me, as though they could smell the months I have been away. Neither of them hug me though.

I go upstairs and my bed is double the size and the walls are barren. I set my stuff down and she calls it messy. I tell her it's okay, I'll close the door. She says goodnight and I shut it behind her. I turn to face this life that used to be mine and I pray. I pray because I don't know what to do when the old mixes with the new. I talk to myself aloud, I say it's not true. That there is no need to revisit that place, that pain. To remain faithful to what I know so true, the love like a hurricane.

It is here in these moments I learn to let the waters flood over me and be still.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you face trials of various kinds for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

So I don't go downstairs, even though I am so thirsty for that cold water that never has tasted quite so good any other place. But I don't go because I don't want to know what's in the fridge. I don't want to know how many snacks reside in the pantry, how much I could eat to numb the chaos in my brain, to escape. How good it would feel to do it and know that no one will ever know, that my toilet would remember the years we spent so close and our friendship rekindle.

But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when fully grown brings forth death.

So I go brush my teeth becuase that always gives me an out and the lights are brighter, more brilliant. I look at myself and I see the blemishes illuminated like never before. That's when I thank Him for the dust, for the little boy smudges on the mirror back with my dozen and I think about smudging up this mirror myself, just because this is too much, too perfect for me now. 

For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.

The cleanliness and the expectations and the silence and this other lens through which I glimpse...it's all just too much. I try to forget what I look like, to forget my redemption would be easier. To look and forget and walk away. Sometimes I just want to walk away because counting it all joy is so hard.

I wash away the makeup caked on from the long day of work and driving and I wonder how I survived high school. I wonder how I lasted here, here in this house for so many years. I decide it only could have been the Lord, that even before I knew Him He knew me and He met me here, right here in this place where I don't feel Him the same, where the Spirit grows weary inside of me as I step within these walls.

But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

I drive past the church and I remember driving, sitting there in front of that cross and rolling down the window. I remember the tears and the blade and the throwing up. I remember craving it. I remember feeling in control. I remember it not ever being enough, me never being enough, so night after night I found myself there, a slave to my flesh. And today, as I return for a visit I collide with the same roads, the same buildings, the tress a little taller and the flowers a little more and the cross still in the center of it all. 

This time, this time I see the cross and I cling for dear life because the lies and the oppression and the desire to return to my old ways—it's all so magnified here in this place.

Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights in whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 

I remember the stash of zip-locks in my trunk and the food. I pass by the McDonalds and the Wendys and tears fall. I cry for that girl and her pain and the way out she couldn't see until it was so late. I thank Jesus He taught my eyes to see, that He is still doing that even now, as my eyes gaze at these places in disgust and empathy.

And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you might be perfect and complete lacking in nothing.

Friends and family welcome me home with over-whleming love, and I soak in it because being with them is so sweet. Yet I don't feel home and I remember AGAIN, this is all just a glimpse. Home is waiting and I am longing for it more then ever.

Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has passed the test, he will inherit the crown of life which God promises to those who love him.

So as I pack up the car bright and early, so desperate for an out I just run because quite honestly, lingering here another hour is too much and I know it so good. I drive past that road with that cross and that parking lot where I used to hide in the shadows. It is now packed with cars and little girl dresses walking inside and I know that He is working, that I am being clothed in newness and it is beautiful.

By God's grace, I am learning to pass the test and count it all joy.

Back to my smudge-covered mirrors and bathroom that wreaks of boys and the noise from the nine littles, an anthem to my ears. Back to more tests and trials and joy. Back to the cross to which I cling as I let the waters flood. Back to waiting for the crown of life, for my inheritance and home.

Maybe your battle looks different then mine. But we all wear this coat of flesh and we all feel stuck, consumed by it sometimes. Whether here nor there, freedom is found in letting these words pierce the depths because they give us a glimpse of life outside of the coat. We all need perspective and we all want to look in the mirror and see because forgetting keeps us bound--and let's face it, who wants to live bound?

These words of James are changing my life, teaching me to battle with memorization of Truth—teaching me that I underestimate it. One chapter down I will press on, because I feel less in the world when I think with scripture instead of my flesh. 

Let's be faithful onto death, looking in the mirror and seeing the blemishes only through the law of liberty as we persevere, remaining unstained from the world. 

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, andto keep oneself unstained from the world.  

{James 1}

A few photos from the weekend with family & friends...

On Finding Hope in this Messed Up World

While watching her two little sisters cross from life to death before her very eyes, the eleven year old tried to stop it, she texted several, just before it all came to a silent halt.

So by the time the woman who birthed her had it pointed square to her head, she knew where the bullet would land next. Did she cry or pray or scream—I wonder this. What could she have been thinking, knowing her decade was over without another blink to spare. I simply don’t understand. My eyes don’t even know how to make those kind of tears.

Tonight four lives of a dear friend gone just like that—it happened in a blink.

At what point must we reach in order to act in such a way? How many bad days and dark nights must we endure, unnoticed, before the only way out that actually makes sense is silencing our kids and then turning the trigger head on. How did we get here, here to this place that I cannot imagine, this place where death looks better.

I say I can’t imagine and yet I knew it in the dark too.

I hear my body groan as deep cries out to deep, utterances of this body that is longing for home and unsure how to walk the straight and narrow through this foreign land.

And today, the fallenness paralyzes me.

A baby lost in the womb. A mom shooting her three kids. Five high school boys drag racing collide with a pole and that’s it—several lost and the rest fighting to hang on. And that is just today. That is just in my little world, the people I hold close and the faces my eyes search for in the crowd. That’s just my world.

I find myself ranking it in my head. Which is worse then the other? If it were me, if it were me being afflicted with such pain, me in those midnights unceasing—could I really press on as Job? It is truly all joy, could I chose to make it so?

Truth—I don’t think I would. Even now, the burden hanging across my shoulder blades lingers and beneath the weight his mercy finds no wedge, not even in the morning, because I pile it so darn high.

I can’t go about my night like none of it matters. I can’t watch the same silly documentary or care so much about my grade on my first test today. I can’t prepare for a busy weekend ahead or the pastor sleeping in my bed or my Egyptian friends I have to meet for dinner in an hour, raccoon eyes and all.

It all looks different, a whole lot darker like the sky which holds the storm brewing as my fingers glide across these keys. The calm before the storm—or during?

You know sometimes you can just smell it—the leaves turning over and the smoke hanging between the mountain-tops and the tears about to burst forth from His eyes. He wept. He still does. As He watches His creation attempt to give and take life, to understand the stars and to act a fool.

I wonder what He is thinking—weeping in sorrow or laughing over our little attempts to be He who made the stars and counts them, who gives life and calls us home, our desperate desire to control.

The clouds gather and the shadow lingers and the wind curls up around your waist and you remember that exact moment and something tingles up your spine as the chill bumps ride across your arms like a kite through the blue sky on a really good day and you are silent because you know that He is God—weeping and laughing right there on the throne.

But on the throne—still on the throne, always on the throne,

I know He is. I smell Him tonight, even as I grieve something unknown and wonder about the things that are not my reality but I know they could and I just have to blink into the fear because that’s how He made my eyes.

As I blink upon the pain and suffering I wish I could close them and tell Him He is good and stop right there.

It’s easier then, isn’t it?

We all wish we could blink it away—or just stop blinking all together, that maybe that would be better.

But one day I am going to blink and see His face and oh glory all the rest falls away.

So yes, the pain is beyond my comprehension and days like today I just don’t quite know what to do with but cry out “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty who was and is and is to come” because that is the only hope I have in such a messed world where moms kill and cars race into tress and babies die in the womb.

Today, I am just thankful for Jesus because life apart from Him is hopeless. 

On South Asia Coming to Town

Don't worry, this is not a big announcement that I am moving across the world—though I do hope and pray that day will come, soon.

Above my bed hangs this photo, taken moments before I passed through security and handed over my Indian Visa in exchange for my American identity and all the luggage that goes with it. We cried and we hugged just one last time at least a dozen times before I could will my legs unlock from that place, that place on this side of eternity where I have never felt more at home. What was being left behind seemed far greater then anything on the other side of that darn metal detector.

Tomorrow, a glimpse of this photo is coming to me. 

I glanced back as the tears still streamed heavy and gave them a big smile, a just hold on don't forget me I'm coming back kind of smile. And that's the pride in me, the part that still knows I can save the world. You know, since I don't know a lick of the language, have merely glimpsed the culture, and am the only white person for hours. So my body straightened and I willed my neck not to turn around again, I put one foot in front of the other and flew back to my native soil. 

It didn't take long before I remembered—the food, the soft bed, the AC, the family that I adore, and the friends that make this home. The water tastes so clean and it doesn't make me sick and I don't fear the bugs crawling across my legs as I dream of all the tongues and tribes confessing one day, hearing it right there in the dark under that net. I think I showered a dozen times those first couple days—mostly because I could.

 “Look, he is coming with the clouds,”

    and “every eye will see him,

even those who pierced him”;

    and all peoples on earth “will mourn because of him.”

So shall it be! Amen.

                                         -Revelation 1:7

I sleep and eat and go back to work. There is so much to do that my hours blur to days, my days become weeks and now it has been nearly four months since my return to this soil so green. I plastered images across all four of my walls where I sleep so that I wouldn't forget because I already have. Some days, I look at those faces all brown and hot. I wonder about them by name and I offer up some words. I want to be there, but I am here. So I fight with these nations, with the burden I bear, this battle that rages like some unhealthy dare.

And tomorrow, my sleeping and eating and working are going to be interrupted when I arrive at the airport and all of this is awakened once more with one breath of the spices still lingering and the way his accent repaves that little path right on home. I know it is coming and it scares me to death. I know I have gotten comfortable, maybe a little too comfortable here on this soil.

India comes up once in a while. We talk and I pray and I forget some days. I want to go and teach English and disciple the women, but wisdom says white woman should not go alone to live on a mountain with only nationals. So I wait and I doubt and I study and I play with these kids. I serve well at my job and think about my husband too much. I buy clothes I don't need and dye my hair every month and I eat way too much ice cream. I forget how to need Jesus like I did there. I fill up on all this other stuff. Persecution is different, and here is hard too. I long to know the Jesus I did there. I long to go back.

Back to the place where I don't need makeup because I don't get blemishes because I hear my food outside squawking just hours before I eat it and any remaining toxins seep down my skin with the rise of the sun and each step I take in that inferno. I'm sure I complained about it then, but now I chase it down like a dog his tail. Endless circles and back and forth, longing for something that seems so far away, yet so close you can taste it. Until God says go, I will probably keep spinning, trying to grab hold of something God is so divinely doing that I can do nothing but trust as I linger between my here and my there.

In the meantime, I prepare practically—working full time to pay off school debt, studying to get a college degree, learning to die to self by living with a dozen, trusting authority and honoring it. And I prepare spiritually—sharing the gospel with my international friends, building relationships with internationals, pouring out more and needing less, learning to feed myself the Word, and learning to hear other voices less and Jesus more.

I can't wait to know how all those little brown faces are doing, how God is answering little, quiet American prayers all the way across the world on that mountain, among those people whom I love, among those people who He loves.

So me and the butterflies already fluttering in my belly will head to the airport tomorrow night and yes, for a good long week I get to smell spices and feel the Spirit dwell so richly as words fall from his lips. I know I will be challenged and encouraged and the week with Sam will mess me up. 

But it's okay because life is just messy and He has always seemed to make something incredible from my messes—probably just because He can. And I love that.

They say the grass always looks greener on the other side—but what if we simply learn to glory in the dirt of the here and now?

Friendships: On Hobbling into Eternity

I drive down the windy road, covered in darkness and flashes of light. I pass the street and I remember.

I haven't driven these roads much over the past four years, as it seems for most with our high school diplomas in hand, off we fly—all in different directions of course, without looking back. 

And then four years later, another diploma in hand you find yourself driving down that road and walking in that house and seeing that momma, a little more wrinkled and grey—you see and you smell and you breathe those moments all over again. Then you cry because of the promises unkept and the relationships lost and you swear you didn't see it coming, though you were given fair warning. 

I remember walking down this road, ten feet deep in layers of hoodies and scarfs and socks, the ones that go up to your knees, the ones that are tie-die, boasting all the colors of the rainbow. Leggings and sweatpants miles deep. Oh, and yes, I thought I was the greatest thing on earth in those socks. I remember walking and looking up, gazing at those little white lights as we wiggled our way down the curves. 

The road ahead seemed clear and narrow, lined out with the moon glimmering off the crystal white surrounding. We walked in linked arms and we knew the road would be long and hilly, we couldn't exactly see beyond the night, but we had the same vision and we held on tighter. I remember watching my breath come out into a puff of exhaustion and joy all steamed together. And I remember hiking up the hill after we flew down it, the greatness of it all, the way we all talked with our eyes and knew in our hearts we would raise babies together one day.

My hair was brown then and I laughed louder and I hugged boys without thinking and I didn't care what people thought so much. Life seemed so complicated, relationships messy but in hindsight, it was all oh so simple. 

Little sisters, ride on the simplicity of it all because one day you will blink and it will all look a little uglier, a little more complex.

Mostly, I remember being with her. I remember the others too, the ones that have since long faded into Facebook photos and random status likes over these four years. I remember her because we made it—we passed the test time and time again and I don't understand it but I don't ask because in the mountaintops and the pits of life, she has remained, arm linked in mine. 

I envy those people who just attract friends with a wink. It's not like that for me. It's a labor and a lifelong one. I think too much and try too hard. I invest my whole heart and when it breaks, my life crumbles and I cry a lot. 

I expect a lot too. I love deep and I try to be real because sometimes the mask gets too hot. 

Even tonight as I saw her but a minute, I drove down that road remembering and I walked in and I looked into her eyes and I saw the past six years and I remembered and it felt safe, even in the doubt I trust because she's earned it. The smell of her house floods my nostrils  as we sit—with moments that somehow summed up my life outside of the high school classroom all rushing in because they were most often here, here in this place where the spirit still grips my heart so tight. 

I can't decide if I should laugh or cry so I smile. I grew up with her, mostly right here in this basement where we first met and she fed me milk as I became a new creation and learned to chew solid food. I fell in love with Jesus and tried to run away a million times and she's watched it all, talked me back with her bold words more then a handful. We have to take planes to link arms now, and it happens way less then I ever thought possible, but somehow God's grace has been enough. We used to tell stories with our eyes and now we use our lips more often then not, but yes, someday we will raise babies together and when I look in her eyes I know her right into eternity. 

Life keeps going and most of the friends you have now won't walk down the aisle in front of you on your big day like you're planning, but it's life and He's good, so hold fast. You will learn to let go and trust more. It will humble you and challenge you to die more and love better, less about you really. You will learn from the mistakes and make new friends and some of will last forever. Not all of them will walk the straight and narrow road, some of them will fall off and it will shake you to the core of your own faith and this too, is good, so hold fast. It's a messy journey, one that is so worth it because we were created to be in relationship, first with the Lord and then with each other. 

The ones worth keeping will see the mess and grab a broom and look into your eyes and tell you the gospel with a single glance and you will be better because of it, and so will she and into eternity you hobble, arms linked. 

The 6 Fs of Friendship:

1.) Fellowship in real life, not behind a screen. When your midnight rolls around, and you don't know what to do, your friend behind the screen isn't going to come running so find one who will. Don't waste your time in fake friendships that hide behind typed words and never go anywhere but back and forth. It's not worth it.

2.) Forget about Facebook.  The number of friends you have, the posts on your wall, the weddings and babies and events—live in the here and  now, your own here and now because that's all you're promised. Facebook friends are great when you have an hour to kill at the airport or ten minutes waiting in line, but get out of cyberspace and invest in some real people, face to face coffee dates and all.

3.) Find your few and pursue them. Focus your attention and time. Invest in people where you are. Stop trying to get everyone to like you, stop trying to hold up some image. Just talk and be real and learn and love because that's how you are going to find the ones worth holding onto—that's where the push comes to shove and some stick around and others don't.

4.) Figure out what works for you. Are you the kinda person who needs one or two besties for life who know you better then you know yourself and even with distance that's enough or are you one who gives chunks to a handful of chosen friends wherever you are at for that season or are you one invests deeply in a many and they change with life? Figure out what works for you and pursue that.

5.) Forge ahead and stop looking back. The past it over and we can't live there. There is no way the past can fulfill current needs. Life keeps a goin' and we change and grow and wonder with it—whatever season of life you are in now, I guarantee you won't be the same person next year so surround yourself with friends who are growing and learning and moving with you. When you lose friends, press on. 

6.) Find grace and forget it. We are all sinners learning to do life together. That means it's gunna be hard and messy so give more grace then you take and forget the little stuff once in a while. Grace can sustain you through a lot, so know it better then you know the hurts and the changes and the fears. Give it freely, lavish it often.

On Learning to Look in the Mirror and See Eternity

I hope I get to be with you in Heaven, he says from the backseat.

We are driving to church and I am lost in my thoughts as his little four year old voice pierces through the depths of it all. 

I had woken up to gaze a monster in the mirror--a reflection of myself which I hate. It was just one of those mornings. You know the ones. Where your hair won't curl just right and you have that pimple jutting out like a mountain and you don't remember it until you're in the middle of conversation and you realize she is staring at it. One of those mornings where all the blush in the world couldn't cover up the hurt, the insecurity, the pride, the fat, the failure that you just can't bear up under anymore.

Continue reading over at Chasing Silhouettes...

On Taking a Deep Breath

Its been a few weeks, a few weeks since I have heard anything. A few weeks since I've really thought about him.

I am thankful for the way they protect me, the way the burden is just gone. While trust is still a process and submission a war waging within me, I never knew how light these daddy issues could be when I actually broke down let them fight for me, my adapted dad and my big bro, when I stopped trying to prove something. When I stopped trying to save the world—and my dad.

While I've been working and studying and doing life with my dozen and welcoming my international friends back for another year, he has been detoxing and sobering up. While they counsel him, yanking up his war-torn memories and question his attempt to bring the 80s back to life, they counsel me to fast from him and let Jesus be Jesus. He remembers his days of having it all, his days of good looks, his days of being called boss. He probably remembers the alcohol weaving through those years too, the millionaire gone broke in a single choice gone bad, the abuse and neglect, the relationships burned to ashes—the story of his life would bring in millions at the box office.

We are all drawn to the brokenness, I think. We feel better, more comfortable in our own mess when we know that someone else has it worse? And there is always someone. I glimpsed a show last night, Intervention, an episode of a man who is addicted to getting high by holding his breath long enough to pass out. His family was desperate to save him, to keep him a while longer. I sort of laughed because what else can you do? We are just so broken and we cover it up, but sin always takes us farther and I know it too well. 

While my battle has been with food, his continues with alcohol and I remember we're not so different, but oh sweet Jesus we are and I praise you for that! 

He is getting out today. We have been here, here in this place too many times to hope. I don't trust because nothing but fibers in my blood tie me to him now. But it's okay because we are all a lot of work and a little progress, crying out for the image that was before the woman and the tree screwed it all up. 

But one day, one day soon we will see heaven and it won't matter. 

This time, he is walking out the door with a diagnosis. I don't really know what it is but I know he can't function on his own anymore. He can't have money and he can't take his grandkids out for an ice cream afterschool. Life is different and messed up so I know faith is the thread that holds me even tighter. 

My god-send of a brother, this man with deeper hurt then I will ever know, this one who loves his wife and raises his son so good, this one who fights for me and wears the gospel on his sleeve, this one with grace unfathomed and mercy so raw—he is getting dad and driving him hours to live in this house with others like him for a year. Others so broken and hurting and lost. We've all been there—I am there. We all have our out, we all stop breathing sometimes.

Yet, he has sustained me thus far and for that in itself, I call Him good. 

So, here we are in this world where men get high by holding their breath and dads hurt their little girls and we don't know how to make it all right, to justify the brokenness so we paint a mask and we cover up with leaves because it feels more right and we laugh because we remember that heaven is coming and it's just not getting better until then.

So we take a deep breath and we tighten the thread and we press onward, heaven bound.