love, courtney

var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-17339412-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://' : 'http://') + 'stats.g.doubleclick.net/dc.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 corinthians 13:13

[nevver]

“In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

[lovecourtney]

church was good today

but the part that got me was at the end, when my pastor started talking about our annual christmas offering. 

this year it’s over 250,000. we have two weeks left and we’re not even halfway there. my pastor started talking about how our annual christmas offering always allows us to give to ministry partners and fund or grow current ministries. and the wonderful thing about the christmas offering is that it allows us to change lives.  then he started talking about the christmas offering and how this year we’re asking for over TWO HUNDRED FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. and he and the partners at this church firmly believe that our christmas offering is a special offering separate from our regular tithing. it is a sacrificial love offering that we make prayerfully once a year to enable ministries to do God’s work. 

but this year they’re asking for a lot. and we’re not even halfway there. 

so my pastor then told us that when he went to the office this week one of the administrators told him that the strangest thing happened--there were all these envelopes that had come to the office. these envelopes had come from prison.  our church does a prison ministry once a quarter. my pastor goes and preaches, and there is worship. the last time my pastor went to preach, he must have mentioned that we were having some difficulties handling our finances and staying within budget. 

my pastor and his administrator opened the envelope. inside, was a check written from an inmate for $10.  a check for $10 written from a man who works for $0.30 an hour.  lifting the other envelopes into the light, they saw that each envelope contained a check, altogether totaling $400.

checks written by men who earned thirty cents an hour. checks written by men who were in a maximum security prison. checks written by men who were in prison serving 25 years- life sentences. checks written by men who had committed murder.

my pastor received a letter from the reverend and head of the prison chapel, saying that he felt in his heart God placing a burden for my church and our finances. a note that he received from an inmate at the end of the service confirmed that. along with their offerings were notes of encouragement, reminding US, a church full of middle to upper middle class citizens working in the tri-state area, that just as Jesus provided with fish and bread, so would he provide to us. 

who in their hearts understood what it meant to give with a pure heart in earnest to Jesus?

They gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything--all she had to live on. 

Mark 12:44

[bey]

if you’re ever proud of me and say ‘that’s my girl’ I can guarantee my heart will melt into a little puddle of happiness

[lovecourtney]

PROGRESS/NOV16

Went to my first small group in over a year Started a journal entitled "letters to & notes for my future therapist"

[stephaniegraceofficial]

He’s not asking you to never grieve again. He’s not asking you to never feel sorrow again; but you can feel sorrow and not feel hopeless and separate from the Father.

Melissa Helser  (via yesdarlingido)

[fa-s-sion]

[lovecourtney]

2016 has been pretty bad but brooke fraser on the new hillsong album may be god’s gift to us as an apology

[kylemeck-deactivated20210130]

[lovecourtney]

i wish

i wish that my grandparents didn’t have to bury their son. i wish that my mom and her siblings didn’t have to bury their brother. i wish they all didn’t have to worry about cleaning out his apartment. i wish that funerals didn’t cost $20,000. as i look at pictures that were brought back from my uncle’s apartment, i hear stories that accompany the photographs that were taken decades ago. i wish that i could have known my grandparents back when my grandmother had eyebrows that were on fleek (even in today’s standards) and my grandfather was a handsome young man. i wish that i knew them in more than their current day frailty. i wish that my grandparents could have lived through their youth in the 21st century in the free world, rather than through communism and starvation and poverty. i wish that their life didn’t have to be so hard and i wish that they could have spent more time enjoying rather than worrying and working. i wish that i didn’t fear death the way that i do now. i wish that my family had the same hope that i have in Christ. i wish and i hope that God has mercy on my family who don’t know Him--yet are still his children. i wish and hope that there is a soft spot for those who have lived under oppression, through famine and fire and drought, for people who considered themselves beggars, who were at the mercies of their lenders, who worked in factories after school, who saw their relatives killed, who were beaten, who fought so hard to get to the land of the free, where they are the brave.

i wish for less sadness. i wish for more hope. i wish for more time. i wish for forever.

[observando]

[mercuryvixen]

Be with someone who will take care of you. Not materialistically, but take care of your soul, your well being, your heart, and everything that’s you.

[lovecourtney]

niagara falls 2016

rooming with my grandpa was the best thing that’s ever happened and if i wrote any more i would never stop and i would cry until my eyes fell out.

[twcgentleman13]

If. The only word that is a thousand letters long.

Stephen King (via h-o-r-n-g-r-y)

[renamonkalou]

The gathering blue | Beth

[lovecourtney]

My mom has been complaining about her phone for a while now with every opportunity that she gets to say something bad about her phone. I mean she’s always muttering and grumbling and complaining about it. She takes every opportunity to showcase how she has a bad phone and how she’s she’s such a champion for dealing with it. Even though she’s working and my dad’s retired, she won’t get herself a new phone. When he first bought my mom her first smart phone, she lost it within the first week. Case in point: I don’t think my mom deserves a new phone, not one bit.

But my dad finally ordered her one and charged it and set it up for her today and he drove to her office to surprise her, because he knows that she’s not too busy on Wednesday afternoons. Before he left he even made sure to download her favorite game, just so that it was ready for her to play with.

Lessons learned: - I know that 1000% there isn’t a man out there who is like my dad. Which means that there is a 1000% chance that I am staying single forever !! - Sometimes we are all as bratty and undeserving as my mother, yet people are still kind to us and give us second chances and there are beautiful things like grace and forgiveness.

[lovecourtney]

“In that heart, where there had been a wound, there was a scar”

Hugo, Victor. “Les Misérables.”

[everythingsparklywhite]