"Courtney," Jimmy, our motorcycle driver says to me as we slump against the stairs of my house one night, after a long day. "I need to be reborn, like Nicodemus."
He sounded different tonight, like he was thinking more clearly about the things he was struggling with, like he felt lighter, more free.
We talked for a while before he left, and I wondered over my struggles in my own heart. My conversation with Jimmy echoed in my mind, but it was the way he talked that spoke words into my thoughts. I need to be reborn! He had said, but I kept thinking I need life! I need life! The plea resounded in my own heart. I need hope. I need freedom. I need life.
God waits to be wanted.
- Tozer
For months I have been struggling with this feeling of hardness in my heart. It was like my beating organ inside my ribs felt calloused and scarred. It felt shut of.
I hated writing, because it leaked into my words. I hated talking about it, because I felt embarrassed and ashamed.
It's not that I felt apart from God. It's that I felt apart from His love.
I remember two years ago, I used to say things like many people do, like "break my heart for what breaks yours". I used to. But then He started doing it.
I don't think we realize, at least I didn't, that when Jesus breaks your heart, it is supernaturally hurtful. And that there is no preparing for that kind of heartbreak.
I knew this was why my heart had been hardened, had wrapped its thick guards around itself, and I knew that God was the only one who could undo the damage that closing myself off, had done.
I had tried so hard to remember what the love of Jesus looked like in my life, but I was soon to learn, that sometimes, you have to watch God love someone else before you can remember anything about His love in your own.
It started with Moses. Or should I say, Moyiz.
A 2-day old baby was abandoned at the gate of the orphanage, and the director gave me the privilege of naming him. Ever since living at an orphanage two years ago, Moses was the one I had always identified with. I had clung to his story in hope, and had held on to the restorative way God changed his life. So Moses, Moyiz in Creole, was the first name in my mind, and when someone mentioned the name out loud, I knew it was the one.
Over the next six weeks after he was abandoned, I watched God love and take care of him, this tiny little baby who wouldn't be able to know Him for years.
Moyiz had nothing. No clothing, no milk, no diapers, no place to sleep. Nothing. And then God loved him. God loved him and provided funding for diapers. He loved him and brought us to a huge donation of formula. He loved him and found him a beautiful, wooden crib.
Moyiz stayed at our house for a few weeks, and the entire time I watched as God loved him, through our hands, by His providence, and through Himself. God's love was chasing after this tiny little boy, just like he did in the beginning of Exodus.
Two weeks ago some of Moses' siblings were brought to the orphanage. His brother Nickenson only spent a few days there before we decided to take him to the hospital, which turned to be too late for the day, so we took him to our home instead. And I was to watch again, as God loved someone in the walls of our home.
Nickenson was malnourished. A hard and big stomach stuck out under his tiny ribcage. He vomited his meals, and couldn't go to the bathroom. His hair was turning red, and big legs moved
feebly beneath him as he walked. But more so, he was far away and his eyes were unfocused. 
I don't know if I have ever been more excited or relieved to see a messy diaper in my life. Two weeks have passed and now Nickenson eats and plays and sleeps and goes to the bathroom. Even more, he smiles, he gets into trouble, he laughs and he cries.
How wondrous it is to have watched Jesus begin to heal him with the markings of a love so gentle and near.
There are always those moments in your life. Moments when you don't want to say yes. Yes to loving the person who just stole something from a child in an orphanage, or having to miss your only brother's wedding, or only getting to see your family twice a year.
But getting to watch God move from this close?
It is how I find my way through the tearing and aching of those moments. And other times, you don't have to find your way. Jesus leads you right to it.
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
and saves the crushed in spirit.
Many are the afflictions of the righteous
but the Lord delivers him from them all.
He keeps all his bones,
not one of them is broken.
Psalm 34:18-20
On a Thursday evening drive through Pennsylvania, He did that. I still don't even know what had been burdening me so, but all I know is, that Thursday, he freed me of it, He drew near. I begged Him to un-harden my heart, and He delivered my afflicted heart.
As thankful and ready as I was to get back to Haiti, the realization that I was saying goodbye to my culture and family for another six months weighed heavily in my being. I guess I always had it in my mind that leaving would get easier the more times you do it.
It does not.
"And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life."
Matthew 19:29
A missionary I had met in Costa Rica had reminded me of this verse once, telling me to cling to the promise of both hurt and goodness in these words of Jesus. I find myself doing that quite often.
And so I miss all that I have to leave again and again. It is impossibly painful to have to say goodbye all the time. But there has been much goodness. There has been much received, and much life born.
It does not get easier. But I get closer. Closer to His heart.
And that is every reason to say another heart wrenching goodbye, and step back into the strange calling of being a disciple here. And I find that when I obey, Jesus gives every reason to rejoice and to be inspired.
Yvenante crawls onto my bed and lowers my music. Before I put my book down, the words are spilling from her mouth.
"Courtney, I want to be closer to Jesus. I love him, but I want to love and know him even more." She looks at me, like she can't find the right words to explain. "I want my heart to change completely." I listened to her as she went on and on, her voice heavy with feelings of the Spirit, and the hunger to know Jesus deep-set in her eyes. "I want to pray more. I want to serve more."
I remember her praying for the first time with her own words. I remember giving her a Bible and us reading together late into each night.
Olivier, another friend of mine who drives moto for us on occasion, wrote to me one night; Courtney, I want to live like you. The next day, I asked him to explain, and he explained that we, in our house, enjoy life together. That we do the smallest of things, and simply enjoy each of them. It's strange, that the smallest of things, like enjoying a walk together, can reveal deep love to someone else.
I made Yvenante go on a walk with me so I could take pictures of her.
`
Because frankly, she's stunning.
I took Yvenante's hand and remember saying to her, "Look at all that God has done for us these past two years."
Our steps were slow coming back to the house, and my heart was full of hope from all of the beautiful, good things I could actually see God doing among us.
I have watched God love Moyiz through his abandonment. I have watched God love Jimmy in his questioning. I have watched Him love Yvenante in her humity and in her desire. I have watched God love Olivier and Nickenson and Stesse.
I have watched Him love me.
In my hardness, in my turmoil, in my warring against His love, He has loved me. He has loved me through my spiritual brokenness and has loved me despite my fighting against Him.
Yes. How He has loved me so.
I have never danced so much in my life. I have never wanted to dance this much at all. I've never wanted to move so much, to rejoice so entirely, to praise so completely, to worship so utterly, to live so readily. The dry season has ended, and there is much to rejoice in, much injustice to battle, and much loveliness to behold.
I think about my talk with Jimmy and those resounding words beating inside of me. I need life. I need life. I need life.
He has given it. He has instilled hope, he has won a war, and he has rebirthed wondrous love into a soul that is prone to wander.
He waited to be wanted.
And how much my soul does want.
