Cause for Joy

         

         I heard his voice coming out of the telephone, but it felt like I was drifting far away.
        “I woke up to the wailing coming from their house,” he said, “It was so loud, Courtney.”

       Heartbreak was something that I could suddenly physically feel. I could feel it there, my heart beginning to break apart in my core.
        I thought of her, little baby Fosemone. 13 months old and so much life yet to behold and live. 13 months old and taken by an unrelenting rainy season in a hurricane-shredded place.
        “We’re too late,”I whispered at the voice coming out of my phone. “We’re too late,” I sobbed and thought of the new house we had just finished building for her family.
        I roamed through the rooms of my parent’s house in Pennsylvania until I fell against my mom. The miles and ocean separating me from Haiti suddenly felt unbearably far. I had never felt so far from home.

     I had thought I was busy in August and September, traveling and organizing and meeting with families to set up schooling and start up some smalls way to jumpstart some income for them. I was busy. But then October came, and with it, hurricane Matthew.
     Port-au-Prince was relatively untouched, as if nothing had passed over Haiti at all. But then reports from the South started leaking in, and I began to cry and ache for days for people whom I did not know, and friends I had yet to hear from.
      “Look at this.” Someone handed Jimmy their phone. He looked at pictures of the Grand Anse region, pictures of where so many of his family members live, where he spent so much of his childhood.
       I watched his face fall and then give me a look as if to say, “Let’s go.”
        So we did.

     The next few weeks became a non-stop rush at finding supplies and searching for things like tarps for some temporary relief.
     Our days in Palmis were long and exhausting, and arriving there was journey enough. We would go walking every day under the maddening downpours, searching out how friends and families had fared.
       Elderly women with broken bones, newborns without roofs over their heads, the blind being robbed of what remained. I remember walking past a man well into his advanced years. He just sat there on the ground, staring at his home and gardens and trees in disbelief. There was something about seeing total loss in a person’s eyes, something that makes forgetting impossible.        

       I tried to imagine his home as he probably was. Lush and green- in the most fruitful of areas in Haiti. His house, his gardens and livelihood all gone in a matter of hours.

       One afternoon, by the time we had made it to Jimmy’s aunt and uncle’s, it was already beginning to pour. We all hurried under the small tarp covering some of their belongings. I watched as his cousin wrapped her baby boy tight against her chest. We looked at the wreckage of their house. Jimmy held his head in his hands and cried.
       

    

        “Don’t rush through your pain.” My mentor and friend told me when I arrived back to the States for a few weeks. She is always saying things like that, annoyingly hard and good things that I need to hear. “Maybe you need to start asking what God is trying to do through all of your pain.”
       I had decided to come back to the States at last minute because I was all broken apart. Every day had become a day spent in tears, it was a new, foreign kind of sadness. A new kind of broken. Joy was always something I have breathed. Joy was natural, something easy and familiar to my nature. But not now.

      

       Come get me, I began to beg God. Come get me. 

       

I felt like I was drowning in sadness, in my heart aching, in my being ravaged by hurt. I kept having to experience other's pain, and yet was unable to even handle my own pain from what I have been through this year. Each day seemed to bring some new hard thing to go through, and I began to feel buried in it all.

       

    

  

   

       Joy seemed like an unattainable thing now. How could I offer up my heart to Jesus with it being such a sad and lonely and ugly place? I knew Jesus wanted to be invited into my mess, but I didn't know how. Sadness seemed to replace all of the areas of my life where God's presence had always so abundantly filled up before. And I missed Him, I missed feeling Him right there, missed being able to talk with Him, and walk with Him, and spend my time with Him. But shame controlled my life. I was so ashamed to be struggling with such pain and sadness, ashamed to be so low.

        I didn't want to be such a wreck of a girl. I was ashamed to be unable to share in the fun my family wanted to have with me being back, ashamed to admit that I was overwhelmed and hurting in front of churches, ashamed that my boyfriend had to keep taking care of me in sickness and walking alongside of me in my sorrow. I felt such shame every time I met up with friends and supporters and burst into tears.

       But it was these very people who began to show me how to let God into my hurting heart.

       

    For I will satisfy the weary soul and every languishing soul I will replenish.

                                                          Jeremiah 31:25

        Talk and pray with those who breathe life into you, and Courtney, say yes to all that breathes life into you. My "second-mom" said softly and firmly to me a few hours after I received news of Fosemone's death. She looked into my eyes, into the mess of my soul, and reminded me that I need love. That receiving love, God's love, is the most important thing we can do in life, without receiving love first, we are unable to give love at all.  It was in that moment that I began to remember what it is like to receive God's love from the most obvious of places: other people.

         

       Other people keep our souls alive, just like food and water does with our body. -Donald Miller

       

 It was the very people that I had felt so ashamed in front of, that made me remember to let myself be loved. 

       It was my family, listening and searching out the hard things I have held inside for so long, prodding me to speak and be heard. It was my church, in the way they listen to you with not only their ears, but with their spirits, encouraging you, uplifting you, reminding you of the way Jesus so hears us. It was my boyfriend, running miles to get a small thing of relief in my sickness. When all I feel is alone, he reminds me that I am actually not, that he is incessantly and continually there for me. It was my friends, making me smile- the smallest form of joy, and the way each has walked alongside of me in such important and strange ways.

      And really, the only thing that each of them are doing is loving me as Jesus. Searching my heart, listening in spirit, walking beside me, and just being there for me. I have never seemed to realize that I am indeed supposed to be loved by others in the same way I am supposed to love others.

     On the cross, Jesus held the guilt and remorse of the world, the despair and ruin of every soul, the wickedness of every heart, and the darkness of every sin. Most of my life, I have focused on how Jesus physically suffered for us, but now I have begun to realize the even heavier burden in which he bore. A burden so great that his Father, the one true God, actually turned away from him. Jesus became utterly alone in the world as we will never be.

      God is always with us, but on the cross, Jesus felt total separation from God. Jesus sacrificed what was actually the only thing that matters- being with God.

  
        In this long year, I keep thinking about this moment- this moment where Jesus becomes alone, where he experiences being betrayed and his closest friends abandoning him, where he has to watch his mother weep for him, where he has to choose to bear unbearable pain. The emotional pain of Jesus is a blaring truth to me that he is the only one who is able to bear such pain and suffering, it is as if when I look at the cross, Jesus is looking right at me, out of so much love and longing, saying,

Let me be God.

Don't take my place.

Don't bear that which you cannot.

You are not capable as I am.

          It is in this moment where I realize that I am actually unable to handle my pain and sorrow, because although I strive to be like him, I am not him. 

          "...Thus says the Lord, 'The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness, when Israel sought for rest, the Lord appeared to him from far away, I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you, again I will build you'..." 

       

 I have been endlessly reading this passage in Jeremiah where God promises to turn Israel's mourning to joy. I feel like my whole life this year is inside of this chapter. Sometimes I think it's tempting to not write something until you get some sort of closure, some way to end a story, some final thing that closes a part of what you are going through. No one wants to tell a story without a good end, but sometimes, I think we are supposed to tell our stories in the midst of figuring it out, right in the middle of it all.

        

 This year had been all sword in my life, attack after attack, trial and another trial waiting it, and I have lived through it. For so many months, I have felt so lost in this wilderness-kind of confusion, of not knowing how to praise God even though he has brought me out from under the sword, in not knowing how to find joy again. But I have found grace, and God has appeared every time I search for Him. He has so loved me, has been so faithful in all of my struggling.

         Since returning back to Haiti, we have decided to take the month of December to rest from our work in Palmis, where we are working on rebuilding homes from the hurricane. Jimmy and I had both gotten so sick at different points that we had begun to think I had malaria, and he himself had to go on IV for a day.

        

        December has been full of good things- of birthdays and weddings, of celebration and Christmas. It has been a month of letting joy leak into my body, and learning to receive love from people, and learning to choose all that breathes life into my life.

        

         In that chapter in Jeremiah, God goes on to talk about the joy that He will once again restore in His people, the way they will sing and languish no more. He says He will turn their mourning for joy, and will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow. 

       

               The other day I went walking in Santo to where my favorite mango tree stands, and the goats all walk home together when the sun begins to lie down. While I was there I kept thinking about what I had heard from a Haitian speaking on Jeremiah, he kept using the phrase, "mete pye w' ate." Put your feet on the ground. For some reason, these words remind me of how I am to find joy. I am to choose it, to place myself in it, to put my feet on the ground and walk, and do something about it. I am to let others love me, and I am to love others, and I will find joy in doing both. I need to mete pye m' ate and look at my friends, who struggle with joy because they can't provide for their kids, or don't have the money to get married, or can't sign their own names. I need to walk with my friends who have lost everything in a storm, friends who have lost a baby without warning...

      

        I am to be a cause for joy in their lives, just as so many have been the cause for joy in mine. 

       Jesus in our cause for joy. He is in you. He is in me. And we are never alone.

         

He Remembers Me.

        

 I was a zombie coming home from the orphanage. My limbs were heavy, my body felt like a stone. I had held her skeleton body on the motorcycle in the darkness, I could hear her whimpering as every bump in the road jolted her bones against me.
         We made it back home and I escaped to the bathroom for a minute. My entire being was aching with sickness, and I wanted to crawl onto my mattress and forget it all. I breathed and I breathed.
I was okay, I made it through, I willed my body to act like I was strong.

        She had no name, just a faraway look in her eyes and a scowl forever resting on her lips. I bathed her, and she cried from having to hold herself up. I dressed her, grabbed a diaper, and gave her a little soup. And then went back out into the night to hunt for some medicine
Relief trickled in as I watched her drink down some medicine, and keep down most of the soup. I watched her drift off to sleep, and soon the house was silent.
It wasn’t until the water in the shower started pouring over me that I fell apart. Water can wash away all of the dirt, and fecies, and dust, and foul smells away. But not the hurt, never the hurt. 

           I am Moses. I am Moses- the one God chooses and I can’t understand  it. I am Moses- the reluctant one, the one who isn’t adequate, the one who argues with God to ask someone else instead. I am the one He chooses to love anyways, the one He asks nonetheless.

When Moses was born, God used his mom to save him, He was with him before he could even walk.
My mom always tells me that when she was pregnant with me, she would think of Hannah and Samuel, and she would pray Hannah’s words over her belly. She would give me back to the Lord once I was born.
I think the first time she told me that was the first time I came back from Haiti.
It’s strange realizing that I have known Jesus all of my life, that in the earliest of my memories I can remember Him being my friend. 

For the past few months I have thought of Moses- as he looked upon the pain of his people- at their misery, and slavery, the very thing that led him to murder. And besides the murder part, this has been my own reality.
Suffering, hopelessness, pain. I have looked upon my people, my friends, ones I dearly love, and I have watched them walk in that.
One of my closest friends was electrocuted and broke his shoulder, and after getting an X-ray, the doctor gave him some pain killers and sent him home. Each time I visited the orphanage in the rainy season, the mosquitos would come, the kind that aren’t just annoying. The kind that hurt. The kids start crying when dusk came. A mother I know, spent over a year coughing until she threw up, every day. One exam later, and tuberculosis was named.
Several meetings with Social services later, the orphanages remained the same, unchecked, unmonitored, full of misery.
I received some funds- enough funds to send at least 25 children to school in the families I work with. I was relieved and excited- for once I didn’t have to wonder where I would get the funding I needed. And then I had to give it all away for another need, and I was suddenly in need of thousands of dollars again.

         I met Louisna many months ago. Her house was open to people to see in, her children went place to place, scavenging for food, her husband died from alcoholism, and she was 8 months pregnant. Louisna never went to school, can’t write her last name, and her sons weren’t going to school. This was her situation, but this isn’t Louisna.
I love Louisna.
She lives in Jerizalém, which used to be a tent city after the earthquake, but now is a city of dust and tin and cement. Louisna works hard. She is brave, and beautiful, and even though she can’t provide for her children, she loves them in a way that I haven’t seen a lot of here.
She loves me in ways that continue to surprise me. She has never taken advantage of me, not in the smallest ways that she could. She is upright, and tender-hearted.
We decided to rebuild Louisna’s house, and the entire time, I kept thinking of Hannah. I thought of Hannah weeping bitterly to the Lord in her anguish, calling out in her pain and grief. And how the Lord remembered her.
I hear those words every time I’m with Louisa. He remembers you. He remembers you.

          I didn’t know how far along she was, she never went to the doctor. One day, I gave her money for her to get a sonography, little did I know, I was actually paying for the midwife to deliver her baby safely the next day.
Now she has a house with privacy, her baby girl is healthy and growing, her youngest son is in school, and her oldest son is in an accelerated program to finish school more quickly.
God sees Louisna. He remembers her. He remembers me too.

          The past six months might have been the hardest six months of my life. My heart became torn up from anxiety and stress, my soul became weary with discouragement and hurt. So many relationships have changed, so many transitions have been made, so many hard choices have been had. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, for the first time in my life, I felt too skinny.
I never questioned God’s goodness. I could see the darkness and hard times for what they were, but it was as if I was just walking in the dark, knowing that God is there, but not knowing what to do with myself as I was walking.

          I would walk past baby aisles in stores, wondering over my little baby Moses that I haven’t seen in 9 months. I would cling to Nickenson at the orphanage, crying over him every time I came. I started searching for doctors for my friend with the broken shoulder, and started to wonder where I would find $5,000 to pay for his surgery or who would agree to do it. I could feel Satan attacking me where it hurt the most, I could see how he was trying to destroy and ruin. Amidst the hard things, things started to happen that made me dare to hope. I became terrified of hope, knowing how quickly it ransacks my heart and takes over. 

It was like I knew God was there, He was there watching me and He was there with me. But I didn’t know what exactly it was that He wanted me to do.
   In March, as my best friend started to watch life suddenly become hard for me, he told me that God is letting all this happen, he is breaking apart what needs to be, so that what is best can be before me. It was so simple, but it stuck, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. And I knew it deep in my heart- seeing Jesus even then felt familiar, I knew He was working on my behalf, that He was fighting for my good, and that when He does that, it is usually painful and hard.
But what was I supposed to do while He did that?
Yes, be faithful. Yes, trust Him. But I was missing something.
It wasn’t until July that I knew what it was. 

“Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share in Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you…therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.” 1 Peter 4

        I was supposed to praise him in the dark. 

       When my heart is all out and exposed, and all that is inside it hurts, I am supposed to thank Him. When I don’t understand, when I’m supposed to trust Him, I’m supposed to thank Him. When I’m taken advantage of and used or feel as if God isn’t answering, when someone betrays me or lies to me, when I feel nothing but despair for someone’s life, I am to rejoice.

Through a lot of work, and time, God provided the $5,000 surgery for my friend for $1. My friend’s mom is taking medicine for her TB, and is doing much better, and the skeleton child spent a month and a half recovering in a clinic for malnutrition. Her name is Marie Andre, and she smiles now. My best friend who reminded me of God’s presence in my life got baptized a few months ago, something I had been praying for since I moved down here. God provided the thousands of dollars I needed to send all of those children to school in a matter of weeks, and then added some more. Three of which I have been desperately praying would be taken out of the orphanage I lived in. For three years I had prayed for that to happen. Three years later, God has answered me. Three years later, He remembers me.

        I have walked through the dark, and God has brought me out, but that doesn’t mean that after what’s hard, everything is made right. Suffering continues, heartache remains, and pain lives on. With no legal paperwork, Marie Andre had to go back to the orphanage, I still have to wave goodbye to my family at the airport, sickness rages on, families are still very much in need, kids are still trapped in a corrupt system, and ones I love get held at gunpoint in the streets. It’s still dark out.
But I have learned to praise God in the dark, and to thank Him for what is hard. I have learned a new kind of love from this, a maddening kind of trust in Him. A trust that is a fierce, struck-down, seizure kind of force on your body. I think when you feel hopeless and you remember that you are remembered, and understand the impossible way He evidently loves you, it does that to you- enraptures you.
Beautiful things are seen in the darkness- like the moon and the stars and the silhouettes of trees. Friends get married, ones you love choose to follow Jesus, and you get to see a little more of the world. Moments become more beautiful when they are cherished in the hard times.
  

       I want to start closing my eyes more. When I pray, when I sing, when I don’t have words. When I close my eyes, the world goes dark, and somehow the communion I have with Jesus deepens. He is there, in the darkness, in what is hard. 

                      The whole land went dark when Jesus died. It was a place of great suffering and death and gruesome things. But life came after, salvation came after. Hope arose, and He made all things right and good.

       

         

       Maybe when it's dark, we are just supposed to bind our hands to the cross, praise the One working on our behalf, and ask for the strength to do what is hard and the bravery to do what is good.

       I will be like Moses, I will reluctantly say yes and I will face the darkness in the world. I will be like Hannah, I will pray, and I will rejoice, and God will remember me. 

       And I will be like Louisna, I will be brave, and I will love, even when I don't have. I will love, because again and again, He surprises me. He is kind to me. He remembers me.

Marie Andre

Getting the surgery!

Man of Sorrows

      I had been away for over a month, the longest span of time I had been away from Haiti in a while. After weeks in America, and a week in England, my being so deeply ached to return to the little ones I knew were waiting on me. The day after I landed, I sped to the orphanage, expecting the excited hellos, the mob of endless rejoicing of being together again, the shouting of each other's names...
      But I stepped back in the orphanage and it was silent. There was no mob and no cheering. No smiles and no excitement. All of the kids were sleeping, sprawled out all over the floors. The place was terribly dirty, the floors were covered in filth, in human waste, and a foul smell filled the rooms. And they were sleeping on those floors, walking barefoot on those floors.
      Three of the girls ran up to me and clung to me. "I missed you" they said quietly, but there was no joy in their voices. We just stood like that for a long time, as I felt them sigh against my chest.
 
  Slowly they started to wake up, and more of my dear little friends ran up to me, and there was something in the way their eyes were set, something of hurt, something sad. Precious ears, scalps, and limbs covered in oozing sores and scabies came to find me.
       One by one they wake up, and I begin to remember, I begin to remember what is real.
       A reality where Wendi pulls his mask up and tries to shut himself off from everyone, where Rezinald, usually so energetic, is crying simply because he is sad, where Nickenson vomits his entire meal because he was made to eat so much, where Gaelle closes her eyes and tries not to touch her shaved, blistering head.
      Megan and I left as the sun was setting, and we said nothing for the three taptap rides home. I returned home, and instead of returning with the joy of being reunited, I returned with a gaping hurt in my chest.

       For months I have been thinking through and struggling with the fact that Jesus was a man of sorrows, that he was acquainted with grief.
       And it was like as soon as I started to wonder what that meant, to think about those things, he started showing me.
   

For months now I have been wrestling with sorrow, have been struggling with a grief deep-set inside me. It was like I was suddenly becoming painfully aware of how all of the things that have been etched into my heart from years of working in the midst of injustice, pain, and suffering, were finally affecting me. I started struggling with stress and anxiety, things more foreign to me than how Haiti used to feel.
      The fact is there is just so much suffering, and sometimes, just not a lot you can do about it all. I became so discouraged, so brokenhearted from it all.
      I started feeling small, so incredibly more than just inadequate, but of realizing that it would be impossible for me to fill the role God has been laying before me.

     This weird thing happened where I woke up one day and realized that God had answered every one of my prayers, and I mean every prayer. I started shrinking into myself, I started feeling unworthy, unable, and terrified. I started warring with God to not become the person he wants me to be.
     Suddenly I couldn't handle the pressure of having so many wonderful people rooting for me, supporting and encouraging me. So much love, kindness, and hope was being set on my back and it felt as if it was stifling me, as if I couldn't think from the weight of it all. It was just too much for my spirit to handle.
     I started listening to a voice in my life, a voice telling me I was worthless, that I'm nothing, and that I am not someone usable. That I have nothing to offer the kingdom.
     I had never listened to such voices before, but now I couldn't seem to get it out of my head, and stop it from leaking into my heart.
 



 It was a dark place, a dark place of letting someone else define who I was, of letting hurtful things sink into my being, of feeling so vulnerable and hurt that it started to affect the way I simply exist each day.

      Courtney, God is good. God is so good in fact that you can pray your little prayers, the feeble things that they are, and expect Him to do it. But the thing is, you can't think like Him, you can't even bear to behold His thoughts. You can't expect Him not to do more than you ask. 
      Know that all of those feelings you are feeling are real. You are small. You are incompetent. You don't have the wisdom you need. You are not able. That's the whole point. You can't even do what you want because what you want isn't enough. God wants something bigger and you have to deal with it.
      That hurting in your heart- that you aren't enough, that you cannot do this, that you have no worth? Let yourself know it, let yourself know that it's true. Become less, and He will become more through your life, and He will satisfy all of the hurt in your heart. It's going to be embarrassing because everyone is going to see your sin, and realize the truth that you have nothing to offer. Don't try and hide it. Let everyone know it. Be vulnerable. Let everyone see how you are nothing, and how incredible God is. Don't get in the way. Don't pretend anything.

    I wrote that months ago, and only one thing has made it possible for me to begin listening to those words, to not remain lost in the hurt in my heart, and in the overwhelming effects of unabated suffering.

The Lord your God is in your midst

a mighty one who will save

he will rejoice over you with gladness

he will quiet you by his love

he will exult over you with loud singing.

                                Zephaniah 3:17

      How God loves me frustrates my ways. The way in which He does it lures me into changing, into wanting to fight for what is good and right and best. How He loves me has me agreeing to surrender to becoming who He wants me to be, and what He wants me to do. How He loves me silences the farthest reach of my heart.
      I am so sure of the way that He loves me, not in the sense that I understand it, but that I have come to accept the unbelievable as my normal, as this is how He loves me at all times. The love of Jesus is steady. Even when His voice seems quiet and His hands feel closed, his love is steady.
      Jesus knew sorrow deeply, he was known for it. And yet Jesus continually spoke of great joy, and great change. He prods me to not just understand sorrow, to be well aquatinted with grief, but to also experience full joy and change that baffles me.
     Every Saturday we have this odd group of people come to the house- my students, motorcycle driver, good friends and their families, our neighbors, even our landlord. We spend the morning just reading the Bible together, and talking about Jesus.
     Each morning I get to watch Yvenante walk out the door and go to school, a dream that she whispered to me almost three years ago. Every day I get to see Yvenante with her child, together. I not only get to see Jesus keep their family together, but I get to be part of it.
     Every week I get to teach my students English and get to watch God grow those conversations deeper than just talking about a language. I get to watch children stay with their parents and go to school. More beautifully so, I get to watch as my friends help others, as they start pleading their cause. I get to watch them fight for those who need, give out of their own pockets, open up their homes, stand up for ones who need a voice and an advocate.

      There is such deep, deep joy here, in seeing Jesus' steady love pulse in and out of each day. Sorrow, injustice, and suffering are across the world. And that's why we have to be in the world. We have to reap good. We have to bring relief and comfort. We need to bring joy and love to ones who know great suffering and much sorrow.

   It's weird how "to look" and "to see" have the same action, but hold such different meanings, that when you look at or for something, there is a reason and intention in that, but when you see something, something is coming into sight that you weren't looking for.
    Through all of this strange wrestling and struggling, I haven't been searching for hope in it all. I haven't looked for it. But regardless of me not looking for it, God keeps making me see hope everywhere.

    I have seen hope in Caille a l'eau, on a tiny little island not even on the map, as I'm walking wearily beside the shore as Yvenante's uncle throws coconuts out of the trees and tells me about his life and his hope for his family.
 
I have seen hope as I walk through Jerizal ém with Jimmy as he stretches his hand towards a woman's house, a widow that he knows is struggling to take care of her children. He starts talking excitedly about fixing her house up, about sending her children to school, and trying to figure out ways to help her get back on her feet. The hope rises out of him and threatens to permeate all of Jerizalém.

      I have seen hope in Zoranje, in Lindia's family finally getting a piece of land to have their own garden for a source of food and commerce. Lindia stands before my eyes, bigger, healthier, and she smiles, and it is then that this hope fills my being- that God has remembered her. That he has brought her out of the dark place, and into a place where there is hope. I look at Lindia and I feel God giving me the hope I stopped being able to see for all of the kids still in the situation she used to be in.
 

 God's love beckons hope in the smallest, most simple of moments. Hope comes in things of joy- of driving through the fog of Kenscoff, of rain soaking you to the bone, of finally driving a motorcycle here and simply remembering something that you love.
      Hope is something you can't talk about. It takes away the words that were on your lips just a moment before. Hope quiets you.
      Hope is what reminds me that God is in my midst. Hope is the way God is kind to you in the midst of grief, hope is His way of letting me see the things that I don't know how to look for. Hope is the thing God presses into that gaping wound in your chest . It is what happens after the part where he completely, and utterly silences you by the way He loves you. Hope, I think, is the place where deep sorrow meets great joy, the place where you come to know the Jesus who wept bitterly over Lazarus, and brought the greatest joy the world has ever known.