A Letter to my Sister.

Dear Courtney,

You are home! Home, finally.
Home after a flight from LAX last night.
Home after two weeks of gallivanting around the Asian countryside.
Home after a busy month of May with surprise visits and packing and tying up loose ends.
And home, too, after six full, blessed years in California.

Six years!

I'm thinking back to when we started this blog. I can still recall the afternoon we created our individual Blogger accounts. I was days away from moving to New York. A minted college graduate with only a couple months of life experience under her belt. Embarking into the great unknown. You were home for the summer. Gearing up to start your senior year of college. Leaving for Los Angeles.

There were 3,000ish miles between our cities. So we found a niche in this small corner of the Internet and we wrote and remembered and laughed and dreamed.

Now, three years later, we're both back in D.C. Would we ever have envisioned this?

It's good we don't know the future. It's good we can trust God with what lies around the bend. I'm thinking back to Beth Moore's study on the book of Esther. She says,

No matter what life- or Satan himself- hands us, the favor God has on His children causes that “lot” to tumble out on the table in such a way that, instead of destruction, the child will discover that her portion turned into destiny one trusting step at a time.

It is good we can trust Him. My friend Kalen says,

He is the most trustworthy Being that exists and there is more joy, hope and faith in him than could ever be experienced.

You know I've been all sentimental about this move for you. Excited, of course. And thrilled beyond words to have you back. There is something wonderful about spontaneous coffee dates, movie marathons, hugs, and church outings (to name a few) with no thought of geographical distance. Physical proximity is a gift.

I feel nostalgic because as this new chapter begins, you are closing another chapter. We went out to California together. But you are leaving it on your own. When I think of California I think of how the Lord weaved together so many small details we could never have forseen. Like, how in high school we adored the Christy Miller series by Robin Jones Gunn. And fell in love with the fictional college Christy and her friends attended. We wanted to go there! We even tried to Google it, but to no avail. We didn't know until we were in California that Robin had based fictional Rancho Corona University on Biola University. Unbeknownst to us. Completely known to God. Does God pay attention to teenage girls' dreams? Oh yes, I think so.

A God-thing is when something happens in your life, and you look at it and can't explain how or why it happened, but you know there's a reason for it. You know that God is doing something in your life, and it changes you. There's no other way to explain it except to see it as a God thing.

We may not have found our "Todds" at Biola, but we certainly found our "Katies." I get all weepy when I think of you being father away from so many wonderful friends. Your friends have shaped your years on the West Coast. They've surprised you with impromptu birthday parties, asked you to stand with them at their weddings, invited you into the broken places of their hearts, traveled overseas with you, traveled to the East Coast with you, traveled to Oklahoma with you, lived with you, cried with you, laughed with you.

In Island Dreamer our girl Robin says,

I look back now and realize that the gift of a true friend is that she sees you not the way you see yourself or the way others see you. A true friend sees you for who you are and who you can become.

Your friends have loved you into a place of strength and beauty. You are not the same girl who ventured out to California with a suitcase, a plaid H&M skirt, and a semester of college under your belt. You have changed. Your experiences have shaped and molded you into more of the person you were created to be. Life is all about change. From summer to autumn. From student to graduate. From child to adult.  And the Lord guides our steps. He leads us by streams of water. He hems us in. Behind and before. His banner over us is love.

When all is said and done, she will see that the portion God assigned her was good. Right. Rich. Full of purpose.
-Beth Moore

I wonder where you'll go from here. I wonder where life will take you in these next three years. Wonder what we'll be looking back at then and marveling about. I hope wherever life takes us from here...whatever kind of city or country girls we become next...that we'll live by Psalm 37, verses five and six.

Commit everything you do to the Lord.
Trust Him, and He will help you.
He will make your innocence radiate like the dawn,
and the justice of your cause will shine like the noonday sun.

It is a beautiful life He has given us.
I'm so glad to share it with you.



All kinds of love,


Emily