tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60896332432218228872024-03-12T19:21:24.655-07:00Prayers of Lightseeking glory in a land of longingHannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.comBlogger71125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-33599558354358733852016-08-04T17:37:00.002-07:002016-08-04T17:42:16.001-07:00silver thread of eternity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I think there are little clues, tiny gifts, in life that remind you who you were meant to be.<br />
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I don’t know always if God sent them on purpose or if they are simply woven into the eternal world like silver threads through a veil.<br />
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They are the signposts we are to follow: <i>This is love. This is purpose. This is home.</i> This is what they feel like, this is what you have been searching for.
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<br />
I don’t think it has to be like lightning from heaven that changes your life forever. I think it is often the little things.
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<br />
It is walking into your grandmother’s house, and all is quiet, soft colored curtains blending together and light through the windows, crocheted doilies and the clock that has chimed on the hour for 26 years. And you know what it means to have a home you are at peace in, and you feel the beauty you are meant to see when you walk through your own door. This is what you need to create in your house, <i>this is the home you were meant to have</i>.
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It is when you feel the calling on your life, the puzzle-piece place in the world where you were designed to fit. You see glimpses of the things you would die for, the people you wish to fight for, the elements or injustices or visions for this world that keep you awake or bring you to tears or you want to change forever. They are the things that make you feel alive and is the life you were meant to have. This is your vocation; <i>you have found what you love, now let it drive you.
</i><br />
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It is the moment you hear from God, visions in your head and words in your mind, and God breaks out of your small rule-bound box. Your friend tells you when a word from heaven saved his life during the war, you speak in a foreign language you were not taught, or the one you prayed for is healed from cancer. Angels whisper to you in that place between awake and asleep, and you let go of religion to see the face of God. <i>This is the touch of God you were meant to know, and the relationship with the divine you were meant to have</i>. <i>Don’t let it go.</i><br />
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There are others. There are moments that show you the love between a man and a woman, the rest available to your heart, the beauty to be found in clothing and paintings and music, the raw power in the art of war. These are the infinite glimpses of eternity.
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Hold on to them. Don’t ever let them go. They are the key to abundant life.
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For it is in those moments, if we will be quiet enough to feel it and humble enough to accept it, we will feel a sad-sweet longing, a calling to something we do not yet have but know we are created for.
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This is our call to redemption, to holiness, and to a world we were made for before evil and pain.
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Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said, I will give you rest.
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.<br /> ― C.S. Lewis
</i></blockquote>
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Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-52967188934375729242016-05-24T12:37:00.000-07:002016-05-24T12:42:57.437-07:00the small frozen bird and the mismatched quilt<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.” </i></div>
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<i>~DH Lawrence</i></div>
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You long to change your pain into pity.<br />
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Don’t.<br />
<br />
Feel the pain. Feel all of it.
<br />
<br />
Let everything happen to you: joy and love, beauty and terror. Feel the weight and darkness, the fear and peace. <i>“Just keep going. No feeling is final.”</i><br />
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When I change pain into pity I do myself a disservice, for instead of feeling, I am fixing. I am saying, I must find a reason for this pain, I must make it Unjust, I must make myself a Victim, I must manufacture a greater story – a Tragedy that will force this to make sense, a silk-patch ending sewn awkward on a denim quilt.<br />
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Much would be better in this world if we could feel pain instead of fix it, receive it instead of telling a story about it.
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If we could cry ourselves to sleep instead of drink it away.
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If we could say, I don’t know, instead of, This is how I’ll change.
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If we could allow ourselves to lose our faith instead of holding onto a hope that is dead.
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So let us comfort adults the way we comfort children, with embrace and understanding and not words and solutions, in the face of unexplainable hurt.
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For once we can admit that life may not make sense instead of forcing a black and white explanation on a Technicolor world, we will become closer to the small bird on the bough, who even in the face of senseless death, feels no need to hate or pity, but simply to live until she is called home.</div>
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Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-89810186600736179862016-05-17T14:23:00.000-07:002016-05-17T14:34:17.311-07:00hope, on sale with coupon<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Life is composed of things that are more important than they
should be. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You are existing, moving, minding your own business in a
black-and-white world, and suddenly something meaningless becomes doused with a
bucket of scarlet importance, like a single snowflake on your tongue.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And it feels like hope.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: center;">
…<o:p></o:p>……………</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m at the front doors of Kroger, shopping list in hand: six
apples, some bagels, a bottle of wine. And more I’m sure I’ve forgotten, and
more I need that they don’t sell. Where do you buy joy, or happiness, or peace?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Hope. On sale. 50% off
with coupon.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the past year, the colors had
been slowly fading from my world like a book in the August sun on a front porch
swing. With every day, I had less energy to paint in the color that was
draining away or to remember what it was like to see beauty where others saw
darkness. Now I was the one who saw in shades of grey. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But sometimes you don’t know what will become color in your
grayscale world. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In front of the grocery store doors, a pallet of miniature roses.
Cheap green plastic pots and buds wilting from the hot Texas sun, soil dry from
neglect and leaves turning brown.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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But color.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Green and pink and soft dull white, red-tipped buds that
promised to bloom and some that already had. Smeared yellow leaves with purple jagged
edges, tips curled down like toes in sand and petals that felt like peace. Long
green stems and pink-rimmed buds, bees crawling in dirt like children at play, and
as my fingers brush through flowers and leaves, my world becomes a three-dollar
rose bush.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And like in the stories you heard as child and you always wished
were true, for a moment the curse is broken and my world is drenched in color,
and I remember what I used to know: that there is beauty in this world, and to
see it is called faith.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That morning, I took a rose bush home.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Hope. On sale. $2.99.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: center;">
…<o:p></o:p>……………</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
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<br /></div>
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In the end, I believe that life is composed of things that
are more important than they should be, like sunsets and love and small red
rosebushes.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To see that is an unreasonable thing, an unreasonable
happiness.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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But it feels like hope.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-71643409214163528582015-01-31T10:31:00.001-08:002015-01-31T10:31:27.677-08:00One second of eternity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It’s the desire so strong it hurts. It’s so strong you almost don’t want to tell anyone about it. You can try to describe it with words like adventure, battle, longing, calling, but that never quite describes it and you are left with a something that is not a feeling nor a word but a shift of your soul.<br />
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It is someone is calling your name over and over and you have to respond or you’ll be trapped in a fog you were never meant to die in.<br />
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It’s when you feel life's very core, like how glittering music affects you or the mountains, or great beauty or great pain; when a small child dies or when you hear the stories that meant something.<br />
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It is anything that makes you feel eternity for one second.<br />
<br />
Just one second.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
Listen to it.<br />
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Whatever it is, this soul of yours, this calling or cry or pain or joy, this is who you are. Somehow, here is the key.</div>
Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-67233382354957625052014-08-26T07:01:00.002-07:002014-08-26T13:51:54.432-07:00The day God said "I'm sorry."<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I see pictures in my head sometimes.<br />
<br />
Not like full out visions that play like Netflix in my head complete with sound effects and credits that last too long, but more like memories I knew once and forgot a long time ago. They come and go and I know when I’m forcing them. And when I don’t force them they usually show things I don’t expect. And sometimes I know what it means and sometimes I don’t.
<br />
<br />
One morning I was lying in my bed looking at my ceiling and I saw one of these visions. Actually I wasn’t really lying in my bed looking at my ceiling at all. I was lying on the floor looking at the wall. I was on an air mattress that had a leak, which kind of made it like a slow-motion magic trick because you started the night on a bed and woke up in the morning on a floor. And I was looking at my wall at a painting that was held up by a Command strip, a pink clothes hanger, and packing tape. Except it was falling down, because I guess I hadn’t used enough packing tape.
<br />
<br />
It wasn’t that I was poor, exactly, but I also didn’t have any money. Otherwise I probably would have bought a new air mattress. A few weeks ago I had seriously considered becoming a breatharian, because I had read about them on the Internet once and apparently they don’t eat or drink or anything and just live off sunlight and air. I didn’t really know how they did it but I thought it sounded like a good way to cut down on grocery bills.<br />
<br />
So I was lying there and looking at my painting and thinking about God. I had planned on talking to him but I guess God wasn’t talkative that morning or maybe I wasn’t listening very well, so I ended up sort of just staring at the wall and thinking about God and my life and the air mattress. The day before I had more or less lost my job and now I had two weeks to find a replacement, and for months, maybe four or six or nine months prior, life had been really hard. It seemed like nothing had let up in any area of my life—job, finances, relationships, health, spirituality, infinitely more. I had moved three times, changed lives how many times. <br />
<br />
Lost one of my favorite earrings.<br />
<br />
I was tired. Not sleepy tired, though the magic-trick mattress was starting to fix that too. But tired of fighting. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been truly happy. I didn’t feel like myself.<br />
<br />
But nothing really bad had happened. I hadn't died and I could pay my bills this month at least, and I had a family who loved me and more packing tape to fix the painting on the wall. I was going to be okay.<br />
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But I still desperately wanted someone’s sympathy. Just someone to say, I know this has sucked. You’ve gone through more than a lot. I know you’re really tired and it’s okay to be that way because anyone would be after all this. Not someone to tell me how they were tired too, and their life was exhausting too, and I-know-how-you-feel-when-you-say-you’re-done, but someone to look at just my life, and say, it’s been hard.
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<br />
I wanted God to say it.<br />
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But it hadn’t gotten bad enough yet to earn God’s sympathy. And so I lay there thinking about maybe what would be bad enough to be <i>really</i> bad. Maybe my house burning down or my parents dying or losing my other favorite earring. Certainly not just an exhausting six months or losing my job, because I was supposed to run the good race and persevere in trials and see God’s provision and remember he works all things for good and rejoice in all things.<br />
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Which I guess I wasn’t doing.<br />
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So I’d failed at that too.<br />
<br />
And that’s when I saw the vision.
<br />
<br />
It was short. God just came up to me, and he sat down next to me and put his arms around me, and he gave me a hug. And he said two words.<br />
<br />
<i>“I’m sorry.”</i><br />
<br />
God said, I’m sorry.<br />
<br />
Not, fix it. Not, try harder. Not, be more grateful or praise me more or look on the bright side. Not, use this for my glory or pray about it or fast over your next step or remember those worse off than you.<br />
<br />
But just, I’m sorry.<br />
<br />
Sometimes I think God is very different from who I’ve believed him to be.<br />
<br /></div>
Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-40639693276862430742014-06-13T20:53:00.002-07:002014-06-13T21:29:46.559-07:00When Jesus asks me for a drink<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I want to hear his voice.<br />
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So I wait, and sit, and stare at the window, determined to stay silent until I hear him speaking, hear what verse I am supposed to read, what life-grace is set out for me from the pages of this Book.<br />
<br />
And I hear nothing, and Louisiana sun settles toward the land and shadows from pine trees creep across blades of browning grass. And the world breathes out as it waits with impossible patience for a kingdom we cannot quite grasp, fingers brushing the corners of its power, thrilling down to our soul and tearing our heart in two.<br />
<br />
So I wait to hear his voice. <i>What verse, Jesus?</i><br />
<br />
4:07 p.m. this afternoon, and the silence breaks, but he answers with a question instead of the answer—a teacher at heart, my Rabbi. <i>What do you need to hear? </i><br />
<br />
I do not know. I have too many questions to know which to ask, journal pages full of scribbled inked-out tangles of four-letter words and too many question marks and words blurred down by tears.<br />
<br />
So I say, Jesus, tell me what I need to hear—<i>you</i> know—and he says, <i>you need to hear my love.
</i><br />
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And that is when I hear the passage.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Jacob’s well was there; and Jesus, tired from the long walk, sat wearily beside the well about noontime. Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Please give me a drink.” He was alone at the time because his disciples had gone into the village to buy some food. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The woman was surprised, for Jews refuse to have anything to do with Samaritans. She said to Jesus, “You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink?” </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
John 4:6-9</blockquote>
<br />
And I am back in November seven months ago, at an upper room in Dallas so crowded people were turned away, when the pastor stood and declared, “We wish to be a people who minister to Jesus’ heart.” My pen froze then, like when I would fall asleep in morning college classes (writing slanting off the page), but this time, I am woken up. <i>Does that mean heresy or freedom? </i><br />
<br />
Maybe it means hope.
<br />
<br />
Maybe it speaks of a Jesus who is thirsty. Who wants to be heard, who wants something far simpler and sweeter than I ever thought.
<br />
<br />
Maybe it is the love of one who asks me today not for more tears and trials and frustrated paragraphs of I-do-not-understand, but just one thing.<br />
<br />
Just a glass of water.
<br />
<br />
Just a here-is-what-I-have, with dirt under my nails and a frayed rope at the well, no special skills and just a bucket for water at noon on a hot day, and we will sit and you will drink and maybe we will talk about the parts of life that hurt and that I don’t understand while we get sunburned and dig our feet in the dark-flecked dirt.<br />
<br />
Because you were thirsty.<br />
<br />
And I gave you a drink when you asked.<br />
<br /></div>
Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-59235064802386269362014-03-28T12:46:00.000-07:002016-05-24T14:07:33.501-07:00I am all right with wind<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I am all right with wind.<br />
<br />
Wind is the breath of God. It says, a storm is coming, there is change and danger larger than yourself.<br />
<br />
Though I don’t think I know what is a storm anymore. I used to think it was when things did not go as expected, but too many times the unforeseen led to more blessing. <br />
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And I thought a storm was uncertainty, but I began to realize that certainty is a state of the soul and<br />
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not of your circumstances. Life moves forward; you lose things, you gain things. One may not be better than the other. Your plans change, your plans go as expected; both end up all right.
<br />
<br />
You change and move and it’s not what you thought. So you change again. And you find a way to happiness in that place as in the other.
<br />
<br />
It is a radical peace, to love the storm. It is not safe, and your bruises show it, and today, you may be tired. But when we say, be safe, travel safe, and pray for safety, we lie through our teeth as heretics. We do not need that and we never did; we need pain and danger and change to be driven to the light-slashed glory that reminds us who we are created to be in a kingdom that was never meant to be safe.
<br />
<br />
Not even heaven will be safe.
<br />
<br />
Because God is not safe.
<br />
<br />
But He is good.
<br />
<br />
So you the see the wind through the window and you step out into it from the four walls that protect you to your death, and the wind hurts, and you remain alive.<br />
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Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-42273633645855671742014-01-29T12:36:00.000-08:002014-01-29T13:10:49.828-08:00When toothpaste is your only strong point<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
“Well,” I thought dourly, “at least my toothpaste is still the same.”<br />
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Five minutes prior, I had been sitting on the floor, back to my bed, journaling and praying about why I felt so unsettled. Was there sin in my life? Was I trying too hard, or perhaps not enough? What had changed from the times I would feel so rooted in myself and in my Lord?<br />
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And as I wrote, sentence after sentence, words uncensored, I realized the answer.<br />
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It was uncertainty.<br />
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Everything was different now, since I moved to Florida a month ago. Nothing had been left to me the way it was—job, home, state, family, friends, coworkers, doctor, church, schedule, income, weather, spirituality, exercise, pets, hobbies, health—and with my mind unable to settle on even one unchanged element of my life, it floated in some sort of land in the looking glass, unable to find a resting place.<br />
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It was like my life was saying, <i>Here, be a new person. All at once. Have fun, goodbye.</i><br />
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I got up from the floor, walked barefoot to the kitchen, and pulled out the bread. Was there anything that was still the same?<br />
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Home? No. Job? No. Income? No. Good grief, I thought, even my makeup is different.<br />
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I put the bread in the toaster. There had to be something.<br />
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I pulled out a plate.<br />
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Of course!<br />
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My toothpaste. My toothpaste was definitely still the same.<br />
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I set the plate down. Toothpaste. That had to be the absolute stupidest thing to be encouraged by in history. <i>Toothpaste</i>. What the heck.<br />
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Put the bread on the plate, pour my milk, get a napkin.<br />
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Toothpaste cannot seriously be the most unchanged part of my life right now. This is ridiculous.<br />
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<i>Let there be grace.
</i><br />
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Sometimes when I talk to my friends, and we sit across from each other on a sleepy looking couch with our tea in our hands, I hear stories of frustration or confusion or fear, and a decision needs to be made, I ask them—<i>What would make you feel light? </i><br />
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What would take away the heaviness, the burden? Not that there are not crosses to bear, and that those crosses are so often good, but where is the place for your heart that would allow you to move forward in lightness and hope, that makes you feel not just that you can go on, but that you can go on with beauty? <br />
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<i>What would be grace to you?</i><br />
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This is a question I easily ask others but so rarely offer myself. They should have grace—I should not. They should be able to hold themselves lightly—I must live with an iron grip. <br />
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But if I cannot extend grace to myself, how can I grant it to others? <i>I have fallen too many times to be offered grace yet again</i>, the lies say. But in this is the ultimate danger, for I either give grace or I do not. I cannot pick and choose the recipients, for grace is less a choice of the mind as it is a way of the soul. So let me first offer grace to myself—to the one who has hurt me the most and is the hardest to forgive—that I might be grace to all others in this world.<br />
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I step back into my bedroom, toast and plate and glass. I am glad for my toothpaste, as I am for my life, for much can be borne when you hold yourself with open fingers and let there be light between them.<br />
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Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-34531333293686510582013-10-22T13:21:00.000-07:002013-10-22T21:56:29.350-07:00This is the key to lasting change<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This morning I was lying in bed, thinking about the coming week, knowing I needed to talk to Jesus, because I could feel my spirit twisted up inside me. It’s the kind of fog that makes you think so unclearly you can feel it, when you see the lies you’re believing and know they have to leave, but only Jesus can free you.<br />
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My thoughts: they are the dirty dishes, the spilled puddle on the floor, the back of the tapestry. They are the real life that I hide, and by doing so, I take my own poison.<br />
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So I needed to hear Jesus. There are times I can’t stop hearing Him; this often seems to be around four in the morning, when Jesus seems especially chatty, or, perhaps, I am especially silent. <br />
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But it was seven in the morning, and there was silence.<br />
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<i>Jesus, I need you. I want to hear you. Please don’t leave me alone like this.</i><br />
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And suddenly, He spoke. He spoke with the sort of clarity that I don’t always receive but desperately pursue, the Voice that cuts so deeply and so unexpectedly that you wonder if you heard it out loud.<br />
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<i>This is the key to lasting change</i>, He said.<br />
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I waited for the rest.<br />
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<i>Be yourself</i>.
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It is not that anything is permissible. It is not that I was being told to skip off and live willfully blind to responsibilities or people or truth, for that would be a sort of death.
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Instead, what had upset me that morning was expectations. There was the person I thought others wanted me to be (whether that belief was rooted in reality or my own insecurity), and, even more, she—the “me” I wanted to be—was <i>good</i>. It is hard to fight a good idea, even if it does lead to death.
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For I felt to get there, I had to run until I dropped. I had to work harder. Be more. Don’t disappoint. Don’t be a failure. Follow through. Be everything to these people you respect. Just thinking about it made me want to give up, made me die a little inside.
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And yet, in all that, I still knew who <i>I</i> wanted to be.
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I wanted to bring beauty and peace and grace. I want to operate out of the overflow.
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I want the supernatural, the beauty, the laying hands on people and healing them, the miracles. I want to see more pictures for others in my mind and words for them in my heart, and I want to my joy to infect the world. I want to hear Jesus’ voice and go into the realm of heaven. I want everything, all the gifts of the Spirit, to see angels and release power and be the most radiantly loving person the world has seen.
<br />
<br />
I <i>want</i> everything Jesus and His kingdom has to offer. I want the miracles and signs and wonders, I want to see His face and hear His voice, I want to bring others before His beauty and to rescue others out of their captivity. I want to act and I want to fight.
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<br />
But all of that is the power of Jesus flowing out of you.
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And you can’t have Him flowing out of you if you’re not overflowing to begin with, and the overflow comes from His heart.
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It comes from spending time with Him, it comes from sitting at His feet: the one thing that is needed. I want the heart of Jesus, not just the actions or the power of Him, for without His heart, I am just a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal. To become who I want to <i>be</i>, sometimes I don’t have to <i>do</i> anything more at all.
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Sometimes, I just have to be myself. I have to go for a walk in the woods, or rest for a day, or read all night. Sometimes I have to try against all logic and perhaps then to fall, for to fail is not to be flawed. Sometimes I have to follow where my heart leads in order to find that He was guiding it all along to His own.
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For in the end, even if He never gave me power, if He took away everything I held dear, if I never witnessed another miracle or saw another vision, but if He gave me His heart, I would be content. For out of the radiating glory of my life would come all the beauty and joy and calling I longed for when I was pursuing the power and the kingdom in itself so desperately; in His heart I find the victorious life that, when I pursued it for its own sake, became a freakish carnival maze of mirrors that leads only to confusion and death.
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For while all of the power and eternal expanse of glory in the kingdom is indeed part of His Spirit, His heart is always where it begins. It all begins there, and it never leaves. It stays. You stay at His feet. You’ll stay there forever. You stay in His heart as it becomes yours, as He pours out of you—as He pours out into your life and world and kingdom, He pours out in power and love and grace.
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This is living in the overflow.
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This is the key to loving without getting tired.
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This is the way to stand against the evil of the world without getting lost in the darkness.
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This is the beauty that sets the captives free.
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With His heart, I will be content.
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Only one thing is needed.<br />
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<i>Love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.
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<i>~Jesus </i><br />
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Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-50017041918522723762013-10-03T14:20:00.000-07:002013-10-03T14:22:12.975-07:00Guest Post: Surprised by Time<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It was my pleasure to write a guest post for the blog <a href="http://www.findingheaventoday.com/" target="_blank">Soli De Gloria</a> on time! This is a subject close to my heart and a subject of both personal struggle as well as victory; I loved writing this piece.<br />
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<i>C.S. Lewis once wrote a book called </i>Surprised by Joy<i>. Sometimes I think he should’ve written a sequel called </i>Surprised by Time<i>. He did allude to the thought, once, however: </i><br />
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<i>If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don’t feel at home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Of if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures?
Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. (“How time flies! Fancy John being grown-up & married! I can hardly believe it!”) In heaven’s name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal. </i></blockquote>
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<i>We are constantly surprised by time, because we are made for eternity. </i><br />
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<i>So in trying to find “enough time” and create the eternity we’re made for out of the time we live in, we never really live at all. It is not your fault you feel rushed, that time moves too quickly: you are an eternal being surrounded by the suffocating fog of time. </i><br />
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<i>But what does it get us, all the rushing? Do we ever really get to where we’re going, ever catch up, ever slow down? We hope we will—we lie to ourselves that we will—but we never do, and meanwhile, our hearts are trampled and Jesus fades to the background. “What makes any of us think that the place we are trying to reach is far, far ahead of us somewhere and the only way to get there is to run until we drop?” (~Barbara Brown)... </i><br />
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<i><a href="http://www.findingheaventoday.com/2013/10/surprised-by-time-reflections-on-time.html" target="_blank">Read more here! </a></i><br />
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Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-777303692248834182013-09-27T13:12:00.000-07:002013-09-27T19:35:19.532-07:00When Jesus speaks: stories from my life<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>And Jesus said, ask about her tattoo.</i> South Dakota sky is the child of eternity, just land and sky and land touching sky, with grass turned gold. The gas station off the highway was the only building from here to the horizon, and outside the door, I licked my ice cream, wiping chocolate from my shirt, and listened to the attendant as she took her break. Her cigarette smoke hung flat. And Jesus said, ask about her tattoo. It’s beautiful, I said—what does it mean? And I heard a story of loss and of pain, every color a different death, and a woman left now alone.<br />
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<i>And as I heard her story, I saw a picture of a butterfly emerging from a cocoon</i>. We sat on the floor, the corner of the church, after everyone had gone home; midnight streamed through the windows. So much shame and so much pain, with broken marriages and hurtful words, of rejection by the church and of forgetting her own worth, and I hated the cruelty of the world. And as I heard her story, I saw a picture of a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, a beautiful creature full of hope and of grace. I told her this, and she cried.<br />
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<i>And I said, how can I pray for you?</i> A Wyoming trucker, Vietnam veteran, and his semi truck broken down. The gas station crowded, he sat next to me as I ate my lunch from Subway and heard of a life that had been hard and was not getting easier. People mocking his service, wives now gone, friends eternally lost, war nightmares that would not let him go. And I said, how can I pray for you? And he stopped. His body began to shake—he took off his sunglasses, pulled out his gray-worn handkerchief—and tried to hide all the tears that fell. No one has ever made me cry, he said.
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<i>And as cancer was destroying her body, I held her hand and prayed</i>. I knelt by her side as three of us women covered her in prayer, each in turn. The doctor had just told her—bad news. It had been in remission and she had seen the hand of Jesus—finally, she was going to be healed, she was going to be free! But it was back, and it was worse, and she was too young to die. And as cancer was destroying her body, I held her hand and prayed. Please Jesus, give her my healthy cells. What grace has been given me, let it pass to her.<br />
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<i>And she looked lonely, so I smiled</i>. She was royalty; I knew because she had gray hair. No longer able to leave her wheelchair, she sat in the bead shop, watching the silence, surrounded by walls and tables of purple and blue, pearls that caught the Colorado sun and silver chains two feet long. And she looked lonely, so I smiled. Isn’t it a beautiful day? Do you like to bead? Making necklaces is my favorite, what’s yours? Though her former stroke left the words up to me, the smiles were from us both. After I left the store, a woman ran up to me. Thank you, thank you, she said, for being so kind—that woman is my mother, and though she can no longer speak, what you did means everything.<br />
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<i>And my prayer changed to an unknown tongue, and she began to cry</i>. The room was filled with those trying to find their way—the New Pagans and spiritualists and Pleiadians and those desperately seeking hope and truth. This tiny woman sitting nearby was the hardest, coldest, most closed soul I had ever seen; only six inches from me, her heart was galaxies away, and she would let no one through to be hurt again; the strings of advice from the others in the room made her only more cold. But Jesus said, pray. So I turned to her (meeting still going), and I said—can I pray for you? So I took her hand, and I began to pray, and my words changed to an unknown tongue, and she began to cry. She curled up on her chair and I held her hand tightly, and her soul came back from where it had been lost, and she was no longer hard but beautiful. She sobbed in the agony of finally letting herself feel, repeating—thank you, thank you—this Jesus, He comes to me at night, He’s calling me. And I said, yes, yes, because He loves you.<br />
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Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-26069464315602582732013-07-21T14:47:00.000-07:002019-01-01T19:15:27.650-08:00"Stay with the pain" <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I was struggling with something recently, and in talking with Jesus, He told me something critical: “Stay with the pain.”<br />
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Stay with the pain.<br />
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Jesus’ words related clearly to the struggle I was going through, but the concept of staying with the pain soon spread to so much more for me. Jesus not only related it to beauty—I’m to focus on the beauty while staying with the pain—but also began to show me it as a guide deeper into my inheritance as His child. So I asked Him—staying with the pain, does this make me more into royalty—the shieldmaiden, the queen, the life I always longed to live?
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And He said yes.<br />
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Staying with the pain is about allowing the situation—the person—the struggle—the fear—to hurt. To not run away, to not “deal with it as those dead people do,” as Tyler says, but to allow it to cut right through your heart and drive you to your knees, and to numb it with nothing. Not people, food, busyness. Not devotions, church, rituals. To anesthetize it with nothing, and to entirely, completely feel the expanse of the pain. <br />
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Part of my difficulty in staying with pain—whether it comes through fear, grief, insecurity, confusion—was that I felt I was a failure, that I had screwed up somewhere along the road. Somehow I’d taken the wrong path (or been too weak? too sinful?), and now, the pain was driving me back to holiness; it was a sign I was to fix something and fix it now. <i>Do something. Don't stay here. Pain is dangerous.</i><br />
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But then Jesus said, no, just stay with the pain. Just learn to feel it, to not run, and to let Me touch your heart. It’s all right to feel pain. Henri Nouwen said much the same thing:<br />
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It is important that you dare to say with your pain and allow it to be there. You have to own your loneliness and trust that it will not always be there. The pain you suffer now is meant to put you in touch with the place where you most need healing, your very heart…<br />
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Dare to stay with your pain and trust in God’s promise to you.</blockquote>
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In this age of medicine, of Vicodin and aspirin and Tylenol, we have little concept of what to do with pain other than to try to stop it. But what if the pain meant something? What if shutting it out destroyed its lesson, its beauty, its transformation? At the end of the <i>Fight Club</i> scene of staying with the pain, there’s one last line: “It’s only after we’ve lost everything we’re free to do anything.” Stay with the pain. Lose everything.<br />
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Jesus, take everything.<br />
<br />
…<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Stay with the pain.
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<i>And breathe. Quiet my mind. Breathe in God. Hear His voice, walk with Him. Breathe. And breathe. And stay present. Think of Jesus, always of Him. Always come back to your breath and His presence. Stay present in His presence… always. My mind rushes and whips around in a panic, all the time, develop the internal discipline of the royal. Breathe into the insanity, the rush, the frenetic panic of what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed and done and proved—and stay with the pain. Don’t rush out or into it. Be present.</i><br />
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<i>This ability to handle pain, the staying present—this is the same feeling I get when I think of the shieldmaiden.</i><br />
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<i>That’s what the Lord is after.</i><br />
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<i>Stay with the pain.</i><br />
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Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-75866482886665012232013-07-10T14:43:00.003-07:002013-09-10T20:24:03.015-07:00Were you sorrowless, I would still love you<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"And Éowyn looked at Faramir long and steadily; and Faramir said: 'Do not scorn pity that is the gift of a gentle heart, Éowyn! But I do not offer you my pity. For you are a lady high and valiant and have yourself won renown that shall not be forgotten; and you are a lady beautiful, I deem, beyond even the words of the Elven-tongue to tell. And I love you. Once I pitied your sorrow. But now, were you sorrowless, without fear or any lack, were you the blissful Queen of Gondor, still I would love you. Éowyn, do you not love me?' </div>
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Then the heart of Éowyn changed, or else at last she understood it. And suddenly her winter passed, and the sun shone on her."<br />
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~J.R.R. Tolkien<br />
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Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-6254545971528663852013-06-09T19:46:00.001-07:002013-06-09T19:46:29.417-07:00The terrible pain of the kingdom of God<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It’s the longing that hurts the most, the beauty so intense it will claw your soul to shreds—or perhaps, make it whole.<br />
<br />
We all feel this pain at some point. In horses, I am torn by it most in story—in Shadowfax, Flicka, the Black Stallion. In reading about Tsornin and Bree and Hwin. The longing for that beauty, to be caught up in its transcendence, to reach that place entirely beyond words is so deep for a time I thought of leaving horses entirely: the desire for it was so strong if it couldn’t be fulfilled, I wasn’t sure I could stand it.<br />
<br />
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It’s odd, you know—a beauty, a longing, a glory, a transcendence so great that it may drive you away as much as it draws you in. I am glad the Lord made it that way, because pain—the grief of having lost something we can’t remember having, of searching for the story we were supposed to live and trying to wake up from the dream in which we seem to be trapped—the pain is sometimes more transformative than the joy.<br />
<br />
If you’ve ever felt it, you know what I mean; some of you have, with horses, with why you sought them in the first place. It’s to touch magic with horses. Some feel the beauty, the longing, the touch of the divine in other places: my dad knows it in flying, one of my friends in playing flute. Another is gripped by its power in writing and another in filmmaking. They all agree—it’s the same no matter where in the kingdom you are—the same blinding pain with incredible longing, the insatiable desire for the beauty always just beyond your fingertips, the vision of the way the world was meant to be and the life you always longed to live. The transformative power that drives you straight to the face of God.<br />
<br />
That is the kingdom of God, after all. <br />
<br />
</div>
Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-6120030797876935112013-05-09T15:38:00.001-07:002019-01-01T18:23:38.570-08:00Voice of the divine in a bareback ride<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Off to the west, thunder and lightning, but try as it might, the clouds could not fill up the sky with gray. In South Dakota, there is always more sky.<br />
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<br />
Today was the third afternoon of my bridleless experiment, riding without neckrope, sticks, whips, or anything but myself and my horse; I’d committed to ten rides in a row of this to see if bridleless long term is possible or should stay closed in the realm of the dreamers.<br />
<br />
Maybe I’d keep the bridle off for a month. Maybe the summer. Maybe forever. I wouldn’t put any limits on what the Lord wanted me to do.<br />
<br />
We face the west, watch the lightning, and Maia snorts into rain-wet wind. <i>Why am I here, Lord?</i> Why do I ride? What am I missing that is beyond just reins and saddles, trot and canter, oat hay and brome grass? There is more—I know there is—there is a reason we long to ride, to be united with the power and the beauty and the sound of hoofbeats in summer grass.<br />
<br />
There is more than one reason, actually, but today, there is a specific one: <i>I want you to hear My voice</i>, He says. <br />
<br />
And so I listen. And Maia and I set off again, and suddenly, thoughts flood through my mind—<i>sit up taller, look ahead now</i><i>—yes! and breathe and breathe and breathe</i>. Maia loosens, relaxes, and in just a few minutes, we had our breakthrough: long and low at the walk, stretching, forward, softly bent, and utterly, completely bridleless. I haven't been able to reach that state of beauty on my own. Ever.<br />
<br />
In itself, this is not new—to walk with God, to converse about my day and yesterday’s breakfast and the e-mail I’m supposed to send by 3 p.m.—but this is different, now, a God-guided horse training. I haven’t read about that in my books.<br />
<br />
But do you know what this is?<br />
<br />
This is hope.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"She was, for the first few moments, fearful of her own lack of skill [to ride Tsornin bridleless], and of the strength of the big horse, but she found they understood each other… She felt almost uneasy that it was too simple, that she understood too readily. But she was too caught up in the beauty of it to wish to doubt it long." <br />
~<i>The Blue Sword
</i></blockquote>
<br /></div>
Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-88448268297323897542013-05-07T21:34:00.002-07:002019-01-01T18:25:20.678-08:00When I fly above the clouds<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Flying above the clouds is, I think, something like heaven. Under the clouds is the gray and the rain and the sleet and the snow, smog and car horns, barking dogs and slamming doors; confusion, tears, and we see only dimly through the fog. That is our lives, right now—sometimes the sun tears through the clouds in ransomed glory and we remember, for a moment, what it is to have the sunlight on our face—but for now, we are under the clouds.<br />
<br />
We go through lives clinging to those faded threads of glory that trickle through the clouds, and we seek to gather and weave them into things of beauty, to cover others with their peace and the name of Yahweh that is written on each strand.<br />
<br />
That is when I think of when I fly. Hurtling forward through winter gray, the scream of engines and ears popping, blinded by a fog of clouds for seeming eternity—then! Ripped through the top to a sun of beauty that blinds and ground made of clouds bleached white as a wedding dress, blue oceaned sky.<br />
<br />
And to think—this was always here, even on the darkest days below. The sun always was here, the clouds that glitter always here, the land we were searching for always here, though we did not always remember. Heaven always sends itself down to the dark kingdom of man, the sun does shine, and someday we will see.<br />
<br />
When I die, I am not afraid, not for a moment, because I will break through the clouds and see the Son in heartbreaking glory and whisper yes, I know You, I have already seen Your face, because You shone on me when I was not yet above the clouds.<br />
<br /></div>
Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-51212872908275667542013-05-01T16:57:00.003-07:002013-05-01T20:14:09.402-07:00When you've lost your story<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Deep within our hearts is an aching longing and desire. It is sad to me how little such longing is spoken of; somehow, it seems wrong or frivolous, yet it is a crucial part of kingdom redemption. This desire is endless longing for a better land, endless aching that you were not meant for this country—an aching that drives you to redeem it, to change it, and to make it a little more like home. We will never quite get there, never "quite get in," as C.S. Lewis says, for we know that ultimately sin runs too deep in creation and can only be removed by having a new heavens and new earth. But until that time, we keep redeeming the land in beauty and glory and in our war against darkness. <br />
<br />
I feel I need to defend desire, and it is devastating to me that I need to do so. We have learned to destroy our desire, to hide our heart, instead of guarding it fiercely as the wellspring of life and remembering that true desire may be one of the strongest pulls of the holy within our soul.<br />
<br />
Desire is feeling so much longing—the longing you feel when you are supremely happy and yet then aching for the eternal. It is the perfect longing when you see the total glory of this world and the incredible magic in it and love it a thousand times more than you ever did before, yet simultaneously feel your heart is being ripped out for the truer land, the clearer Narnia, the redeemed land where that magic would be made perfect:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
When I attempted, a few minutes ago, to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends or as the landscape loses the celestial light...You know what I mean. For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. (~C.S. Lewis, <i>The Weight of Glory</i>)</blockquote>
That desire is the reality behind every storybook and every fairy tale. Where do we get the ideas for those places, those lands, those adventures? The desire for More, for adventure and battle, heroism and beauty, and a depth so deep it moves beyond all words cannot just come from within us; we know it is true, somewhere, in some world. It must be rooted in reality, as the feel of it is far closer to memory than to make believe, and we are searching for it with every breath we take. We find it in our world, though dimly, though one day those who have lived in Christ’s glory will see it face to face.<br />
<br />
Once, I was snowshoeing through my grandparents’ woods by myself. The flakes seemed the size of cotton balls, eternally silent falling, catching on my eyelashes; it was quiet and beautiful and Christmas Eve. The beauty was so intense, the longing and desire to be within that life I always longed to live so strong, I couldn't speak or even think, and all I could grasp was that it looked just like what I thought Narnia should.<br />
<br />
And then, I realized, it was—it is. This is Narnia. That is what I sense sometimes, and this is why people are so drawn to magic and fairy tales and unicorns and fantasy, for it strikes a part of us we think isn’t “real”; we think magic isn't a part of this world, but it is. That is why we love the fairy tales, and that is why we love Narnia—because it reminds us of us—of home—of the story we left but once we knew. Because there is magic in this world, there is something so much deeper; there are miracles and true love and mountains and sunsets and families and dreams that come true. It is truly magic, it is another dimension, there is storybook adventure here in this world, but we close our minds to the dimension of adventure and magic, and we do not see it.<br />
<br />
I love Narnia because I love the Narnian dimension of this world. We do not have to search for Narnia and magic and adventure any longer, for it is here, and in the new heavens and earth, it will be perfected; it will truly be magic. Now I see as in a mirror dimly, but then, face to face. I feel wisps of the magic brushing by me, of what life is supposed to be like and was like before we fell, before we lost our story, and what it will be like at the end of time.<br />
<br /></div>
Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-49266159646321448352013-04-25T20:22:00.001-07:002016-01-27T17:50:16.671-08:00Windchimes in the night<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
"I'm not ready to die."<br />
<br />
In the glow of my nightstand clock blinking 11:32 p.m., I set down
the purple pen and the bedside notepaper kept there to record thoughts
and images and prayers that flit at the edges of consciousness,
appearing only in the filmy gauze between awake and asleep. I don’t want
to forget those words, because they often contain truths I don’t
realize when the sun is up and there are friends and bills and books.
But just before I fall asleep, I drop my guard for just long enough to,
sometimes, hear my spirit like windchimes in the night.<br />
<br />
And tonight, I realize I am not ready to die, which means I am not truly living.<br />
<br />
An hour later, my flowered sheets are nearly ripped off my bed with
continual tossing and my Bible lies open to Psalm 61 and outside, a
blizzard sets more snow on top of 7” already fallen.<br />
And if I can rouse myself from the trance of what’s wrong to find
something stable in this world, something either awake or asleep and not
this place of in between, perhaps I will be all right. The snow is
falling harder now, at 12:43 a.m., and as a child on Christmas morning I
need to be out in it, within the beauty I see. Or within its war, or
pain, or fighting, or longing, I don’t know.<br />
I unlock the sliding door, push back the curtain (soundless, now,
with roommates asleep), and without thinking, abandon my socks in a heap
on the carpet.<br />
<br />
Outside. The purple sky is a halo to the glittered white world; if I
am trying to be asleep, I can pretend I’m Alice down the rabbit hole,
but if I want to be awake, then it is just city lights on city clouds
with smog, sometimes, and sirens.<br />
<br />
The patio soaks cold through my bare feet, but just wet, not snow,
and in one more step, I am barefoot in the storm. The snow over my feet
is not as cold as expected; it wakes me from my fog to focus on one
thing: ice, slush, April, and what it is to stand in your nightgown barefoot in the snow in your apartment by County Road D.<br />
<br />
I wait to hear from God, in the snow, as if somehow it is more holy
to be there. And in a way, perhaps it is: it is more holy because I can
hear. In the parking lot are seven lampstands, twenty-three entombed cars. I feel
snow turning to ice water under my toes and wonder how many millions of
snowflakes I have just melted by standing there; each one unique, they
say, and I have destroyed them. And the wind blows my hair from its
braid, and I wait for God’s voice.<br />
<br />
Nothing.<br />
<br />
And the silence is beautiful.<br />
<br />
There is no less of God in silence than there is in words; there is
no less beauty in mystery as there is when all is known. The grass
withers, the flowers fade, not one sparrow drops apart from Him, and are
they not all clothed more beautifully than ye?<br />
<br />
And God does speak.<br />
<br />
Because as ten trillion million snowflakes pour from the sky in
sunbeams of snow and a thousand land in my hair and my hands and on bare
feet and I behold infinity, I hear Him say, “This is how much I love
you.”<br />
<br />
Standing barefoot in the snow is my small act of rebellion against a
normal life. Pathetic, vulnerable, alone, and not enough, but tonight,
at 12:43 a.m., it’s all I can do.<br />
<br />
And at the end of my path from bed to snow perhaps I’ve walked the way of God.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-50785905840059884152013-04-25T20:12:00.002-07:002013-04-25T20:12:14.919-07:00Waiting for your story<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<img alt="" class="alignright" height="270" src="http://s4.favim.com/orig/49/book-draw-nice-once-upon-a-time-Favim.com-443805.jpg" style="border: 0.5px solid black; margin: 15px;" width="405" />If
someday I ever decide to live in one place for more than three months
(maybe the nursing home?), there is really just one thing I want in my
house.<br />
<br />
A window seat.<br />
<br />
My grandmother had one in the green-papered room I stayed in as a
eight year old, and I’d always clamber up on top, look out at the birch
and maple woods, and make up stories of valiant adventure. I was a
princess—I was a Jedi—I was a princess <em>and</em> a Jedi. I was being rescued through the glass-paned window—I was fighting some great dark evil—I was riding away on a unicorn.<br />
<br />
This window seat was different, Room 220 of Owatonna Microtel Inn and
Suites (the room with the Tempur-Pedic bed! the receptionist crowed).
The second-story view was of the Fleet Farm gas station and the truck
drivers’ parking lot instead of the magical woods with the scrabbling
turkeys, but of course I didn’t care, because you can make up adventures
about Fleet Farms and truck drivers, too, if you’re practiced enough
(and I am quite experienced).<br />
<br />
Only I wasn’t making up stories this morning—I was asking the Lord about my own.<br />
<em>Waking the Dead </em>lay next to me, scribbled all over in
Barbie-pink pen, bent open to the section on the healing prayer, chapter
8, page 142. The pen marks had paused here as I set the book back down,
swirly green cover against flat white sheet.<br />
<br />
<em>Lord, what part of my heart is still broken?</em><br />
<br />
I received an instant answer, one word, unmistakable. I continued to
question, to search, to let the Lord reach into my heart and tell me why
I had not allowed healing there. It had to do with something I deeply
wanted, had dreamed of for years.<br />
<br />
<em>Why? When will it come?</em> I twisted my fingers into the sheet.<br />
<br />
The Voice sliced into my mind.<br />
<br />
<em>It will. You’re just not at that part of the story yet.</em><br />
<br />
Sometimes what you want is beautiful and true, a longing the Lord has deeply set within you, and that is <em>holy</em>. The longing for it is real, and it is <em>good</em>.
Maybe it has to do with horses or music or marriage, or perhaps a
friend or a skill or a dream. Don’t be afraid if it hasn’t yet come. It
still may.<br />
<br />
Perhaps, you’re just not at that part of your story yet.</div>
Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-17753784630746650892013-04-25T20:11:00.000-07:002019-01-01T18:29:03.257-08:00Eternity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
Footprints through snow, eight inches deep, but the air is too cold
to allow water to pool. Just snow—plain snow, old snow—to step through,
sink in. Six footprints press from arena gate to ATV-plowed path, and I
arrange my feet in them as I go.<br />
<br />
Maia steps behind me, chooses one path as I pick out mine. Braided
mane, loose rope, and a sparrow picks through hay on the ground.<br />
<br />
<em>What are you doing?</em> she asks. <em>Walking to the pasture gate</em>, what else?—but that is the wrong answer.<br />
<br />
That is what will happen, but what am I doing?<br />
<br />
I am stepping into footprints in the snow.<br />
<br />
And when I become present to stepping through snow for no other
reason than to be present to stepping through snow, I realize Maia’s
breath on my neck and jewels glittering on ice and boots sinking deeper
and the weight of the rope on my glove and that someone once said that
forever is composed of nows.</div>
Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-91079570623651664322013-04-25T19:53:00.000-07:002019-01-01T18:30:44.133-08:00When stories are truer than reality<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
On
the flat screen on the wall (just right of the fireplace, just under
the horse painting) flickers Shadowfax in the meadow, Rohan of the
hills, and Eowyn in the great hall.<em> </em><br />
<em><br /></em>
<em>Aragorn: What do you fear, my lady?</em><br />
<em> Eowyn: A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire.</em><br />
<em> ~Lord of the Rings</em><br />
<br />
<br />
And I sit on a couch of faded blue as the credits trickle down and
Enya sings about the West, and I wonder—is this it? Is this life I have
chosen all there is—to get up early, to work through the day as the sun
brightens and fades, to go to bed early and sleep in the same bed as all
the days before, to make enough money to buy the same food to live the
same life to cry the same tears until all chance of valor has gone
beyond recall or desire?<br />
<br />
I cannot believe it.<br />
<br />
For if life is less than my greatest dreams, if the truth about this
world that goes straight to my soul is a liar, if Middle Earth has more
inherit glory than Planet Earth—then fiction is better than reality, my
God is not who I believe Him to be, and I dedicate myself to living in
my made-up world:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those
things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself.
Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up
things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this
black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me
as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think
of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four
babies playing a game can make a playworld which licks your real world
hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s
side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like
a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.</em></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br />
And with that decision, life opens to me—all of life—the life that
makes this world as wild and breathtaking and terrible and beautiful as
any Rivendell or Mordor or Shire. The battles just as great, the risk
just as high, and the love just as real. The same cutting feeling of
maia that causes me to dig my fingernails into my palms when Sam talks
about the great stories, the same desire that makes me
curl up and sigh when Eowyn goes to war—those stories only affect me
because they were meant for me to live.<br />
<br />
I don’t know how to live them, sometimes. But I don’t think that
always matters so much, in the end. Because once you believe in the
greater stories, the stories seem to then find you.<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>Aragorn: What do you fear, my lady?</em><br />
<em> Eowyn: A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire.<br />
Aragorn: You are a daughter of kings, a shield maiden of Rohan. I do not think that will be your fate.</em><br />
<em> ~Lord of the Rings</em></blockquote>
</blockquote>
</div>
Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-78184510892449875982013-01-03T18:14:00.002-08:002013-01-03T19:36:51.239-08:00Gas station miracle<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I suppose, to some, it would be a stretch to call it an adventure.<br />
<br />
But it was to me.<br />
<br />
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It was just a gas station. A soundless Shell station on the south side of County Highway 22, with exactly six pumps, and it always had the lowest gas price of any station in the Chisago County area. Actually, I could never understand that, because it was out in the middle of nowhere, and if I were a greedy gas station owner, I would hike the price and force everyone to pay a fortune and then cackle happily over my piles of money.<br />
<br />
But I wasn’t a gas station owner, and whoever owned this one apparently wasn’t greedy, because the place always had the lower gas prices on the highway.<br />
<br />
And today I stopped there.<br />
<br />
I’d always wanted to go simply on principle, because it looked like a pleasant place (as far as gas stations go), and it was inexpensive, and I’d driven past it many times—rather like the street vendor who offers you a newspaper so many mornings that one day you just buy it, because you feel obligated.<br />
<br />
3 p.m. sun squinted through my filthy windshield (my grandmother would be scandalized, awful dirt), and the gas gauge was below ¼ tank. I couldn’t concentrate on account of this unforgivable sin, gaze flickering between snow-covered road and dipping gauge needle: it seems for as long as I can remember, Dad had told me to not let the gauge get below ¼ tank. Not in the summer. But never in the winter. In Minnesota, you could always needed gas, in case you got stranded or a snowstorm descended or you went <whoosh> <whoosh> out into the ditch because you were trying to adjust the radio and drive on ice at the same time and were stupid.<br />
<br />
(Or because you needed gas for a car chase. That was my personal philosophy. Always have at least ¼ tank of gas so when the bad guys are after you, you can fly off on an epic 20-minute chase and still get away with time to kiss your true love.)<br />
<br />
There weren’t any KGB agents behind me now, but I wasn’t taking chances, and my Shell station was up to my right. A few seconds later, the car is off, fuel cap wrestled away from its petulant hold on the car, and the pump is interrogating me: Shell rewards card? Zip code? Credit or debit? Car wash? Receipt? No. 55079. Yes. Good grief, no, do you know how expensive those are? Yes, duh. <br />
<br />
But then, life switched.<br />
<br />
Maybe you feel it sometimes; I’m getting more aware of when it happens. It’s when you suddenly look at the trees around you, and feel January through your jacket, and your necklace is cold on your throat, and you realize with a start, you’re in an adventure.<br />
<br />
No one else is at the gas station, driven away at my approach—no people in a solitary place. The sun slants low, flickering branches with the magic of golden hour. The wind wakes up, and I am cold, but I don’t flinch, and the not flinching is important. A field (plowed, covered, waiting) is behind me, a forest (watching) in front of me, and it is strange. And new. And alive. And exciting and calling to something you thought you’d forgotten.<br />
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And the world is beautiful, with new life happening every moment, when you least expect it, if you allow yourself to feel when at a lonely gas station buying 9.4 gallons of $2.99 gas. </whoosh><br />
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Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-88257981887576981552012-12-25T09:40:00.001-08:002019-01-01T18:32:29.107-08:00Only humans have birthdays<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>7:43 a.m. 0 degrees. Christmas Eve. </i>The dogs are eating breakfast. I wait for Riley to finish his kibble; I could stand and watch him chew, or pull<i> The Horse Owner's Veterinary Manual</i> off the shelf and read a half page, or fold three sweaters from the laundry.<br />
<br />
Or step outside (where it is beauty incarnate).<br />
<br />
Later my father would ask why I went outside—me? Who is always cold? Out in my pajamas and stocking feet?—and I didn’t have a good answer, other than I needed to feel alive. A 60-degree temperature drop in three feet and two seconds is enough to drive your thoughts to God, as happens to me, now, when I feel most alive. Cold. Pain. Tears. Joy. Sitting next to a Christmas fire so long your face burns hot or breaking a paper-thin Christmas tree bulb you didn't mean to destroy, or pinching out the flame of a candle with your bare fingers or trying to tear open a present that refuses to give up its prize—this is life, pure life that rushes your heart like zero-degree air.<br />
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So I stand outside and frozen concrete pounds through my socks.<br />
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<i>4:54 p.m. 12 degrees. Christmas Eve. </i>I swing my black-suede boots out of my dad’s blue Corolla and cold air freezes my skirt, black beads on white satin—outlines of flowers and leaves in swirl and sparkle. My father and I are silent, thinking of what I’d just read out loud by moonlight:<br />
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<i>The Voice was and is God…</i><br />
<i>His breath filled all things with a living, breathing light—</i><br />
<i>A light that thrives in the depths of darkness…</i><br />
<i>It cannot and will not be quenched…</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>The true Light, who shines upon the heart of everyone, was coming into the cosmos… The Voice took on flesh and became human and chose to live alongside us… Through this man we all receive gifts of grace beyond our imagination… God, unseen until now, is revealed in the Voice, God’s only Son.</i><br />
<br />
We had been silent a moment, and drove past snowed-in pine trees.<br />
<br />
“What should I read next?”<br />
<br />
<i>This is the revelation of Jesus the Anointed, the Liberating King: an account of visions and a heavenly journey. God granted this to Him so He would show His followers the realities that are already breaking into the world and soon will be fulfilled… </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>“This is not the time for fear; I am the First and the Last, and I am the living One. I entered the realm of the dead; but see, I am alive for now and for all the ages—even ages to come.”</i><br />
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It is a candlelight service tonight—heat of flame and cold of snow and voice of God.<br />
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<i>7:32 a.m. –14 degrees. Christmas Day. </i>The dogs are eating again. I wrest open the sliding door smudged by dog nose prints, step over Anya’s soggy blue ball, and walk into the backyard onto the one patch of concrete patio not covered with snow. Wrapping my arms around my waist does nothing against the glass wall of ice I just entered—<i>wake up! good morning! merry Christmas! </i><br />
<br />
Earlier, sitting by the fire and the lighted Christmas tree before my parents were awake, I had seen on Facebook a friend post a picture of a cake with “Happy Birthday, Jesus!” written in green icing across its face—a family tradition, as proclaimed in the comments.<br />
<br />
Beyond the mesh yard fence lies unbroken snow to the treeline. <i>Happy birthday.</i> I rarely think of Christmas as Jesus’ birthday—perhaps this is sacrilegious?—but today the air-torn cold won’t let me forget one thing: I am alive. I am human. And only humans have birthdays.<br />
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Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-86334233731659180112012-12-22T19:09:00.000-08:002012-12-22T20:16:55.126-08:00Wildflowers don't cry<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I once knew a girl who walked in the woods.<br />
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She would remind the sun to wake up; without her, it might not make it above the horizon. So winter Minnesota mornings she stepped through oak trees; frozen pond, frozen branches, frozen sun.<br />
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Frozen.<br />
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But also agonizingly alive, with sunlight glancing daggers off bitter snow, making eyes sting and cheeks burn hot by unmixed energy and light. (You know what this is; the purer life is, the more it can hurt; this is the great irony.) When she breathed in air breathed out by pine trees, she could feel the scent, like you feel music or light or a bleeding heart. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://img2.etsystatic.com/000/0/5272877/il_fullxfull.301618598.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://img2.etsystatic.com/000/0/5272877/il_fullxfull.301618598.jpg" width="320" /></a>Her favorite wildflower was the bleeding heart; it always had been since it grew wild around the trees she walked among as a child. Her grandmother told her its name that afternoon gardening by the barn, and she never forgot bleeding hearts. Not others’. Not her own. <br />
<br />
She gave her own spirit away, once, twice, more; to people, to dreams, but it was dropped and stepped on and now bled—was still bleeding—like the wildflowers. She asked Jesus about the pain, and He told her about her heart that was no longer hers. Take a breath, take it back, and don’t make the same mistake again.<br />
<br />
Her eyes are dry, because wildflowers don’t cry.<br />
<br />
Today unbroken snow rests, waiting for mice and leaves to draw on it, and she walks on the covered path and crushes ten trillion snowflakes, ten trillion marks of the holiness of the world. Once she made a snow angel, but it didn’t look much like an angel; untouched snow seemed more divine in the end, so she didn’t do it again. Destroying beauty hurts too much, especially if your heart already bleeds.<br />
<br />
I knew a girl once who remembered a poem she heard a long time ago.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Blessed is the road that keeps us homeless.</i><br />
<i>Blessed is the mountain that blocks our way…</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Blessed are the night and the darkness that blinds us.</i><br />
<i>Blessed is the cold that teaches us to feel…</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Blessed is this shortest day that makes us long for light.</i><br />
<i>Blessed is the love that in losing we discover.</i><br />
<br />
The sun is above the horizon now, has burned off dawn’s golden light, and underneath the snow are bleeding hearts waiting for spring.<br />
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Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6089633243221822887.post-84044308837863980002012-11-14T18:10:00.002-08:002012-11-14T18:24:42.648-08:00A world where you could run<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>For now we see in obscurely in a mirror, but then it will be face to face. Now I know partly; then I will know fully, just as God has fully known me. </i></div>
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<i>~1 Corinthians 13:12</i></div>
<br />
<a href="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvv8nfSdJB1qzmc8xo1_500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvv8nfSdJB1qzmc8xo1_500.jpg" width="265" /></a>Mourning doves speak, and I don’t catch their words; I get so frustrated when I cannot understand, and sometimes I stop trying. The doves bounce on their birch branches, crying with frustration over my stupidity: “Why can’t she hear us?”<br />
<br />
I feel like I live in one of those dreams I used to have when I was eight, when some awful man was trying to kidnap me—or a witch with wild hair to grab me—or a train rushing down on me—and I couldn’t run away.<br />
<br />
I knew I could run—I remembered faintly that in some other world there was running, as there was sunlight and wild mountains and prairie grass at noon—and I knew, somehow, that in that impossible, forgotten otherworld that everyone around me did not believe existed—I could run. Though my mind was locked away from it, my heart was still raw to the touch of a half-remembered hope: It remembered the world where I could run.<br />
<br />
I <i>knew</i> I was born to run. It’s the knowing that was the worst, because in your dream, there is no question that in that other world, you were able to run. You haven’t forgotten, and you never will; you just want to go home.<br />
<br />
Or perhaps it is like when you cannot remember a word you know exists. You’re not stupid. You could use a different word, get by, move on, rush forward, not take the time to say what you really mean. But you can’t. There is that feeling behind your soul and your words aren’t saying what you mean. There is a deeper reality and it just crashed into your own, unable to stay out any longer; “the Lord knows what He is after.” It’s the reality behind your words, the place of true meaning.<br />
<br />
And you try to reach for that word—that deeper place—the one that will let you finally be at rest—the word you were meant to say, or, perhaps, the world in which you were meant to live. You don’t know what that word—that world—is or how to find it or if you ever will. In fact, there is only one thing you do know: <i>there is another world</i>.<br />
<br />
So I listen to the doves when they try to tell me of the hawk who disturbed their breakfast, and I watch a December sunrise and try desperately to think of in which other world I’ve seen it before, and I fly in a plane and wonder why the sunlight reflecting off the tops of the clouds seems so familiar—and why primroses pushing through matted oak leaves are supposed to make me cry—and why the princess in the stories was supposed to be me—and why music makes me homesick for a place I’ve never been.<br />
<br />
It makes me think of what I did to forget, to forget home. What adventure I had—what mistake I made—to suffer such amnesia.? How did I get here, so far from my true world? And I can only conclude that this must be a sort of dream, a mirror land, in which my greatest calling is to go home.<br />
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<i>“The Eagle is right,” said the Lord Digory. “Listen, Peter. When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. That was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia, which has always been here and always will be here… And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream.” </i><br />
<br />
<i>It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling... "I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!" </i></div>
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<i>~The Last Battle </i><br />
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Hannahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01887116903551658512noreply@blogger.com0