First off, Hello! and welcome to my blog!
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Who Am I?
Welp, God is revealing this to me bit by bit but what I do know I would love to share with you!
The Basics:
- 26 years old, allllmost 27 🙂
- INFP
- Registered Dental Hygienist
- Seasonal Farm Camp counselor
- Vegetarian
- Aunty Court
- Love playing soccer, running, reading, camping/hiking, and listening to vinyl
- New and transformed believer
I am living back in my hometown of Winnemucca, Nevada. I moved back home from Portland, Oregon in December 2016 to work for the dentist I grew up going to as a kid. I have an older brother and he just moved back home too. SO, my family all lives under the same roof again!
Let me tell you about my family. My momma bear is such a lovely soul. Her name is Jan. She is 59 years old and is a Zumba Queen. Her occupation is an accountant for a company that sells explosives to the mines. She loves God and is one of the most dependable, loving, honest, and hardworking human beings I’ve ever encountered. I strive to be anything like her.
My FAJAH is my hero. His name is Skip. He’s an honest, witty, sarcastic, strong, intelligent, and rad 56 year old with two gold front teeth 🙂 He is the person that gets me to the core and I appreciate his existence. He was a miner for 20 years and God has graciously given him a new life path that he’s currently navigating. He’s a new believer too and I’m grateful I get to learn and grow with him.
My parents have been married for 29 years and together 34 years. They’re the absolute best. They’re easy to spot because they’re the ones you’ll find wearing tie-dye <3
My brother is 18 months older than me. His name is Skylar. He is a talented artist, a good father, a good listener, and has a big heart. He is working at the mines currently.
Winnemucca is a small mining/cowboy/basque town. We moved here when I was 6 years old because my Dad was transferred to one of the mines here from California. I graduated high school here in 2008 and moved to Coos Bay, Oregon on a soccer scholarship. I graduated there in 2010 with my Associate’s of Art and didn’t know what I was doing with my life so I move to Jamestown, North Dakota and played soccer for them for a semester. Moved back home and started working at the gold mines as a warehouse technician. I was the assistant coach for the high school girls’ varsity soccer team and interned at the dental office I work at now to see if Dental Hygiene (DH) was the path for me. I quit the mines and started going to school for my pre-requisites for DH. For a summer I lived in Montana with a friend and worked for the Forest Service as a Biological Aid. I moved to Reno, NV and after getting my Associate’s of Science degree in 2014 I was accepted to Truckee Meadows Community College Dental Hygiene program in 2014. It was a very competitive program and they only accept 12 people a year so fortunately I got in my first try. I graduated the DH program in May 2016 and moved to Portland, Oregon. I got a job opportunity in Winnemucca, NV and ended up moving home in December 2016.
But this is all the external stuff. On the outside everything looked good. I did well in school and I was taking the steps that I thought I was supposed to. Go to high school, go to college, get a profession, and so goes the American Dream. What was happening internally no one ever really knew because I didn’t care to share it with anyone.
The truth was that for most of my life I didn’t like who I was, I didn’t understand the point of working so hard, I felt like I was floating and my existence was pointless. I was an atheist. I was my own God. It was Courtney against the world and I did whatever I wanted to. As you can probably imagine, I lived a pretty broken and destructive life as time unfolded. I had a hole inside where nothing would grow; an emptiness. I filled it with alcohol, drugs, relationships, video games, Netflix, and whatever else gave me a temporary dose of “feeling better”. This was normal. After a while it got to a point where I really didn’t care about much. I was in my third semester of Dental Hygiene school and I was ready to throw it all away. The weight of my brokenness and spiritual bankruptcy was so heavy and I couldn’t carry it anymore. God was putting people in my life that were giving me hope for a better life than the one I was living. On October 25, 2015 I swallowed my pride and I asked for help. Thankfully I was brought into new territory with people who were on a spiritual and healing journey too. This is where I eventually found God. He was revealing himself to me through others and I wanted more, so I started seeking him. My life started to change and the old me was becoming something of the past. It’s been such a beautiful journey. It’s been almost two years since the day I asked for help and the unfathomable love of God continues to absolutely blow my mind the closer I feel to him.
In my first blog I’ll unravel the details of this walk with God and how He is leading me now 🙂
