Immanuel, we stand palms up.

She is the kind of steady that you easily trust. She is kind and she is friendly. She's patient. She is a laugher and a lover. She is stubborn and is feisty if provoked. She loves Jesus and coffee, and few things make her eyes light up like they do when her family comes home. She's the best listener I've ever known and she gives advice that points you towards Jesus. 


She's a warm, long hug after a long day and an exclamation of joy when you tell her good news. She'll scratch your back until you fall asleep and she'll cuddle up to you in a heartbeat. She beautiful in a way that few people are, and she's gentle hearted unlike anyone else I've ever seen.

She's my mama. The one that's loved me and prayed over me and worried over me. She drove me miles and miles to make me fall asleep when I was a baby, and she put band-aids on my head (in my hair) because I swore I needed one after lightly bumping my head. She made quilts for my bed and went on every field trip she could. She prayed with me before my first day of middle school and high school, and she has always encouraged me to try new things, but she has also let me fail at things. She's made sure I always knew how proud she is of me and how much she loves me, and no matter what, she points me towards Christ.

And last Tuesday, November 18th, 2014, her doctor told her that she has cancer.

I'm not writing about the details of her cancer (but you can click here to know all about that, too).

I want to write about my mama and Jesus and how beautifully the two of them collide.

Last Tuesday night, after my parents had told my siblings and I the news, everyone came over to our house. Brittany and Bo brought pizza, but no one felt like eating. We stood in the den and held each other and cried and asked why this was happening. Why her? This can't be right. This happens to other people--never your people.

We finally decided that eating would be a good thing to at least attempt, so we held hands and prayed.

My mom prayed.

Tears poured down my cheeks as she prayed for us as a family and for herself. She thanked God for being good all the time and for being an anchor and a shelter. She thanked him because even now, walking through this valley shadowed with uncertainty, pain, anger and shattering sadness, he is with us.

This past week has been hard--a hard that just tosses you around and sits in your bones and closes in on you. From Tuesday to Friday, it was almost impossible to focus on anything for more than a minute. Seriously.


I've spent several nights awake until two or three AM, sobbing and asking Jesus, Why the hell are you doing this to her? To us? To me? I can't watch her be sick. I'm scared to death of what the results are going to say. I'm scared and I don't understand. I. just. don't. understand.

I have screamed and thrown things and I have wondered if I'll ever breathe again or if I'll ever be able to focus long enough to actually do my homework. I have asked God a million and three times how we are going to do this and what his purpose in this is. I have hugged my sweet mama and let my tears run down her shoulder, and I have collapsed onto my floor in a puddle of tears, trembling in fear of all that is coming and all that we simply don't know.

And in the morning he teaches me again, though I thought I already knew: "There may be pain in the night, but joy comes in the morning." (Ps. 30:5b)

Grace like rain.

Oh, the heart wrenching, screaming pain of the night, of the fear; of the unknown.

But the JOY that settles into my soul in the morning when I hear him whisper: Cameron, I walk with you here. I sit with you on the floors at night and catch every one of your tears. I sing over you. I rejoice over you, and oh, I rejoice over your mama. I will walk with you when she's sick from treatment, and I will be the one to mend your heart when it breaks into shards on days when she doesn't have strength or energy to do much. I am here and I too know this pain. 

So we take heart, for he has overcome. We stand, palms up, and we are his. Even when we can't breathe and sadness presses on our chests and we wonder why her, we are held and we are loved, and Jesus, he's lifted high.

I'm not sure if I offered for her to sit in my lap or if she just did because she wanted to. She was tall and skinny and her big deep brown eyes that were striking against her small, light brown face barely brushed across mine before she nudged into my lap.

And she just sat.

She didn't speak, she didn't squirm; she just sat and watched and listened Honestly, I forgot that she was sitting in my lap a couple of times because of how quiet she was when there were at least five other children around me asking me questions and hopping in and out of my lap and on and off my back. I didn't even know her name or where she'd come from. She just appeared.

And so it began.

I don't know what her name actually is. It was different everyday and no matter how many times I tried to understand her when she said it, it was indistinguishable.

She clung to my neck and secured a firm grip on my heart for the rest of the week. As soon as I had to stand up, she would get out of my lap and reach up for me to carry her. She would cling tighter and tighter to my neck, always wanting to be sure she was firmly held. I would hold her all day as tight as I could. I told her that I loved her and that Jesus loved her more than that.

I helped her with crafts and opened her lunch for her. I wiped her mouth after meals and squeezed her in my lap.

She was feisty, that one. I think that only made me love her more.

She stole my heart and Jesus stole mine. It was in those moments with my cheek against her sweet head; her arms holding tight around me; her little hand clutching mine--these are the moments that I learned grace deeper.

____

I relive these days more often than not and I still close my eyes and feel her tiny hand in mine. I smell the mustiness of the clothes she wore everyday that week and I see her eyes looking into mine.

I haven't posted since July and that's really because I haven't found time. My summer came and went in a whirlwind and all of the sudden I'm a sophomore in high school who does homework from the time I get home until I go to bed.

And I hate it.

I hate how mundane it feels and how I can't catch a break between homework and projects and tests and essays and worksheets. I haven't sat down at a family dinner in God only knows how long and there has not been ONE day since August 22 that I haven't had something to study for, an assignment to do, a story to analyze, blah blah blah. I'm so busy and my head is spinning 98% of the time with things to do, obligations, expectations to fulfill, and tasks to prioritize.

I don't know what this post is, really, but I do know what it's not: it's not something that I care to wrap up in a pretty bow and end with some cliché sentence about how I see Jesus working in me in high school. Because I don't.

That's the honest truth.

I don't know what Jesus is doing in me or my life right now, and to be quite frank, most days I don't have the time or energy to know or care.

(And now you're realizing that I probably liked that little girl and her feistiness so much because I'm feisty too.)

I'm taking it one day at a time and treading water, trying to keep my head (and my GPA) up. These days are a stark contrast from what I just shared with you about being in Memphis, I know. But I can't pretend that they're anything but a contrast.

This is a raw piece of my gnarled heart tonight. Thanks to those of you that love me anyways.

where the hurt & the Healer collide

I have spent the past week in Memphis, TN with Union Grove Baptist Church from Lenoir, NC at Street Reach Memphis falling in love with filthy children and even more in love with a beautiful Jesus. Street Reach goes into one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Memphis and offers bible clubs for all of the children we can possibly get to come. I spent Monday through Friday loving on kids that were desperate for my affection, and I was more than willing to give it to them. 

I have seen abuse, neglect, brokenness and pain that threatened to squeeze every last bit of hope from my heart and gnarl me into someone that snaps shut their eyes to the hurt.

But I also saw Jesus. And in seeing him in the hurt, I refused to let myself shut my eyes. Because if I had shut my eyes to the pain and brokenness and filth of the streets and of our sin, I would have been blind to his glory.

All I have to share with you tonight is a little piece of my broken heart. I wish I was still in Memphis and didn't have to say goodbye to a little girl that wrapped her little brown arms around my neck and around my heart. I wish I didn't have to walk kids back home to their moms that don't bathe them often and their siblings that beat them to prove their dominance to their fellow gang members. My heart hurts when I think of what they see and hear everyday--gun shots, shouting, one threat of death after the other, their mother in the next room giving a man what he wants because she wants cocaine.

This brokenness is real. My brokenness is real.

And so is his love. 

In his love, I find hope and I find rest. I find joy in that the war on those streets is already won and that Jesus has conquered the hell on earth those people endure as well as the hell that we are doomed for without him.

I wrote this on Monday, June 30th:
The brokenness here breaks me. I wonder where cuts on faces came from and if anyone took immediate care to it. The eagerness in a child's face to get their lunch makes me wonder who gave them their last meal and when that was. The kids learn too early a "survival of the fittest" mentality and they are only five years old and ready to fight. Who teaches them that? 

They say things that cut to my heart and they make me laugh. My heart explodes with love and I want to put every one of them in my lap and hug all of them. Their brokenness and thirst for love that most of them have never known before breaks me, but Jesus meets me here. I see him here and I remember just how much he loves me like he loves them. That's so amazing.

Here, in the dirt and on their dirty hands that touch my face and their small bodies in my lap and hugging my sides and clenching their brown hands to my white ones, I find joy.

And I know that this is what he made me for.

I have seen him in the pained eyes of a small child and in the smile of a girl that knows that he loves her so. I have heard his voice in the cry of a young boy that is afraid of going home and in the laugh of a child that screeches with joy when I tip her upside down in my arms. I have felt his touch when my sweaty hand meets that of a young girl that wants someone to show her that they care, and I have felt him in worship when I am sure that there is no life I could imagine that is better the one he has for me. I smelled him on the trash lined streets because he is reclaiming them and I smelled him in the tight hug of a child that hasn't been bathed in weeks.

So I force my eyes wide open and ask that he would let my eyes see brokenness in a raw way. I refuse to shut my eyes to the hurt expression of a young boy of the hopelessness in the eyes of a little girl. I refuse to shut my eyes to the condom wrappers and broken bottles that line the roads that tell the heart-shattering tale of the fast pleasures these people seek and their lostness and oblivion to what truly gives joy.

I refuse to shut my eyes because I am determined to see him here. I refuse to shift my gaze from Jesus' eyes just because seeing what he sees is uncomfortable and dirty.

I hold his stare and look at the snot and the dirt and the sin because he is hope in this place. He is love. He is joy. He is redemption.

Behold his glory and just open your eyes.

He is not done and he wants YOU to see him and to be a part of what he is doing.

Wake up, sleepers. Redemption is here.

"Come, let us return to The Lord. He has torn us to pieces, but he will heal us; he has injured us, but he will bind up our wounds. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us that we may live in his presence. Let us acknowledge The Lord; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth."

Hosea 6:1-3

to know sorrow as unspeakable joy

Many of you have expressed to me and my family over the past few days that you knew that my granddad passed away on Sunday night. Thank you so much for your texts, calls and prayers. I have been blown away by the way we have been loved. 

I don't have a post to share with you here, but I want to share with you something I wrote Monday morning. I wrote once a few hours after he died at 2 am and then again when I woke up after three and a half hours of sleep. This excerpt is from the entry I made after a short night of sleep, a tired body, but a full spirit.

He loves me. This I know.

Last night (this morning) I wrote about where I was to find joy here. Now, in the still of the morning, with the birds who know only the freedom of their flight chirping, it sets into my soul. There is joy here simply because Jesus walks with me here. Jesus knows this pain of loss. There is joy simply because he sits on this white couch with me and takes my hand and says, "Keep going. I am here. I will walk with you."

This is joy. This is amazing grace. That I would invite the Rabbi into my house and all he wants is for me to sit at his feet. What sweet love that the God that formed me and set me apart delights in me and in my sorrows. There is joy here because we know that when death pangs our hearts, he is still so good and he is still here and he is still Jesus.

"There may be pain in the night, but JOY comes in the morning." (Ps. 30:5b)


Behold, the Lamb has come.

Thank you for loving us and walking with us. We count the ways that Jesus loves us, and we count the joys he bestows in our lives and you are one of them.

We love you because he loved us first. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.