May 28, 2006
Let Go
Several months ago I wrote very briefly about how I was finally able to let go of the anger I felt towards my father. I thought about that entry today as Andy Stanley closed his series on what lurks in the Heart with a sermon on Anger.
Ephesians 4:26-27 "In your anger do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold."
When we're angry at someone it's because we think they owe us something - they're indebted to us. But the problem with that, of course, is that the guilty party can never make the loss up to us. You can't get back a first marriage or a childhood or your freshman year of college. I can't go back to being a 12-year-old girl whose daddy lives in her house. It's impossible.
But I let go of my anger towards my father and I forgave him. I realized that my adult relationships were patterning themselves and I wasn't angry at any of those guys (well, not at the center of it anyway), but I kept trying to get other people to make it up to me, to pay me back for what was stolen from me. That was never going to happen. Intead, I let it go and I forgave. I cancelled the debt and I closed the book.
Today, as Andy spoke, I thought about Guy and I tried so hard not to cry. He is still so, so angry and I am desperate for him to forgive our father. For both of them, but even more importantly, for the son my brother is about to have. How can he enter into another father-son relationship when his heart is still so hard? But how do you ask someone to let go of their anger? How do you show them that they have to?
We all know the saying, "Don't go to bed angry," and while that is very sound advice, it's more important to stop being angry while you're awake too. Drop it off, and in a hurry, because there is nothing - nothing! - that will ruin your life faster than an angry spirit, a victim mentality, a hard heart. Even if you take God out of it; even if you don't think that you should forgive because you were forgiven, (which you were), forgiveness is still a pretty good idea.
It's hard - to let someone off the hook, so to speak, when you think that they Owe You, especially when it's something big that they took from you. But why would you let them take your whole life?
Posted by hannah at 04:31 PM | Comments (4)
May 25, 2006
I Go Gladly
Sponsorship checks for my Romania trip have started to come in, and every time I get one, I am amazed. There is a missions slogan that says, "Some people go. Some people pay. Some people pray." The Caedmon's Call song, "Share the Well," says, "Maybe you've got money, maybe you've got time, maybe you've got the Living Well that ain't ever running dry." I honestly never thought that I would be the one to go.
There are 10 people on the team, including two teenage girls who are going with their mothers, and about the only thing we all have common is that we have all been saved by Grace. For some of us, it's our first mission trip, for others, their fourth or fifth. Our leader and her 14-year-old daughter have been to Romania a few times, though never to Timisoara. They are our resource, teaching us how to say "please" and "thank you" and preparing us for the carb heavy Romanian diet.
I expect to be changed by the experience, but I am still uncertain as to how. I read in my team member training guide that God wants us to invest our experiences in changing the world around us; that He is interested in us "impacting" the world, not merely impressing it. In the letter I sent to friends and family, asking for their support both financially and in prayer, I said: "And pray for me that God will use this experience and the people I encounter to draw me closer to Him and to embolden me to be in the world for Him."
I pray that every day - to be Bold. It's easy sometimes to make excuses for our beliefs, because we don't want to be seen in a way we don't see ourselves. No one likes stereotypes, but I am learning to say "Who cares?"
In my application for this trip, I had to write a brief testimonial and at the end I said that the greatest lesson I have ever learned is that Jesus is the answer to every question I have ever asked.
There is a worship song that I am sure I have quoted here before called "The Glory of Your Name." Sometimes I sing it without even realizing that I am singing it. (If M and I were to ever reside under the same roof, it would be a noisy household, as he is a mindless hummer and I am a mindless singer.) It says "It is in your victory, risen for the world to see, that all who would believe could enter in. It is in the passionate price, now demanding all my life, beating in the chambers of my heart." He is the answer. The heart beat. The call, demanding me to be Bold, to impact His world, for Him. I go gladly and with great praise.
Posted by hannah at 05:32 PM | Comments (1)
May 17, 2006
Butterflies
Here's something you've never heard me say before (ha): Dating is hard. There are rules of engagement and expectations and everyone is different and maybe you've been bopping along for years behaving in a certain manner and never thinking a thing of it till someone calls you on it and you think, "Oh!"
All of that to say: I hate dating. I wish it were easy and clear and that it involved a checklist of some kind. But it doesn't, and emotions are sticky and weird and people are weird (and sometimes sticky), and you never know what effect you really have on someone - positive or negative.
But then there are the butterflies and you can't escape them. On one of our first dates he sent me an e-mail with directions to his apartment and at the end he put, "When you get to the breezeway you will be overcome by a strange, giddy feeling. Not all will feel it, but those who do will understand."
He calls me by my whole name and sends me random text messages and he is reading "Pride & Prejudice" for fun. I don't understand him and sometimes we miscommunicate in the most mixed up ways, but every time I think about him, there is that giddy feeling.
For the first time, I feel Zenlike about the entire enterprise, which itself is throwing me, and I don't know if that is because he's (can I even say it?) Someone Special of if it's because I finally (finally!) let go.
On Friday night we sat in the corner of a Buckhead bar and had a conversation about race and beauty standards and why people make fools of themselves for love as drunken Atlantans danced around us to horrible '80s music and drank too strong cocktails.
Sometimes my feelings get hurt and I am realizing sometimes I hurt his but then the weirdest thing happens: we talk about it and say "case closed," and move on. It's scary to think that I'm 30 (t-minus 44 days) and I hadn't figured out yet how to do that. How to accept an apology from someone and truly forgive them and let go of hurt feelings, and to have someone do that for me.
But I still hate dating, because at any moment the tide could turn and I can't stop that from happening, any more than I can stop the actual tides from ebbing. I control nothing and nothing belongs to me - no person, no thing, no heart. I can only let myself get washed away with the giddy feeling and swept up with the butterflies. I can only hope that, like all the times before, I will be all right.
Posted by hannah at 07:23 PM | Comments (6)
May 16, 2006
Sick of It
It's so chilly here that I keep getting surprised every time I look at the date. Seriously. I got an out-of-office e-mail from a co-worker today when I forwarded her something and when it said she would return on May 17 and I thought, "Sheesh!" Then I realized that May 17 is, hello, tomorrow.
I have a cold and that makes me grumpy. I started feeling poorly on Thursday, and I made the mistake of going out on Friday and I think it did me in. But I had a date and I didn't want to cancel on him, so I thought if I took some medicine that I would rally just fine. I so rarely get sick, and when I do it's usually just annoying, that I didn't forsee being knocked out of commission for the next four days. It was worth it.
My home computer is still dead. Never buy a Dell. Never. I don't understand why a company offers a warranty if they're not willing to stand behind their product. Just send me a new laptop! It would cost them nothing, but it has cost me months of aggravation and waiting around and getting hung up on. It makes me so mad even just thinking about it. I had a Compaq for five years that never gave me any issues and I have my Dell for two months and it goes kaput. Awesome.
2006 is slipping away at an alarming rate and I don't know how to get my hands around it. The next time I turn around, I will be 30 and I'm not ready yet.
Posted by hannah at 02:36 PM | Comments (3)
May 03, 2006
My Heart Goes to Romania
So the Romania trip is starting to take shape, and I'm overwhelmed by the opportunity and so grateful to God that He would present it to me. The real work begins now of raising funds and getting to know each other as a group; of laying out our schedule for the week's work. We leave in mid-July and we will be in the town of Timisoara. I know we fly into Bucharest, but I'm not sure if we'll take a train to Timisoara, or another flight. I'm hoping for a train, because there is something romantic and unrecreatable (surely not a word) about train travel in Europe. And I believe that despite a horrific 12-hour sleeper car trip from Seville to Barcelona in 2001.
This Sunday the director of missions presents our group to the congregation so that the church can pray specifically for us over the next few months and I'm so humbled by that. I feel like I don't deserve this; like it just sort off fell into my lap and I needed to work harder or be better or know more before I went out into the world for Him. But what I keep forgetting is that every day I'm out in the world for Him.
I've been searching for Romania tags on Flickr and the photos are breathtaking. It's a country I never even considered that I would visit, but I've been reading voraciously - history and culture - and I feel like I have enough time to learn a few phrases before I go, even though we will have a translator and most of the people we'll be working with will speak English. In preparing for this trip, both prayerfully and logistically, I hope to be reminded that the God I serve is also the God that they love. And in teaching them the curriculum of NPCC's early childhood Sunday School - that God created me, God loves me and Jesus wants to be my friend forever - I'll be constantly reminded that those tenants are universally true. I recently read Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller and in it he makes the (laughably obvious) point that Jesus wasn't an American. It's laughably obvious, yes, but it also stands to be repeated, often and loudly. There is a movement at work in our country - a movement to fully Westernize Christ into a symbol for things He never intended to symbolize. It's dangerous, and as a Christian I think you have to be constantly vigilant that you don't fall victim to that mentality. It's easy though, because when you have a personal relationship with someone you think of them as like you, when instead we should be forming ourselves to be like Him.
Jesus came to save humanity and as He flings me across the globe to do his work, even if only for seven days, I hope that truth imprints forever on my heart.
"There is nothing in this life that could take the place of You, that could take the place of You, my Jesus. And there is nothing in this life that could take the place of one life, one love, one power to save us all. One hope, one truth, one glory in it all." - Glory of Your Name
Posted by hannah at 05:05 PM | Comments (0)
