A Joy Inside My Soul-Stories of Summer

Applications...friends...tattoos....paperwork...finances...

100 things cross and re-cross my mind as I work inside my favorite coffee shop in my new town...soon to be my old town if these plans worked out.

Caught up in my human concerns, it isn't until the darkness begins to seep into the windows that I look outside to see the storm approaching. Black clouds creeping slowly over the sun, showing between the buildings, a feeling of danger suddenly overtaking the once cloudless sky.

Shoppers hurry a little faster through the historic downtown streets, looking up nervously in case the clouds empty themselves prematurely. 

My heart beats faster and my Joy grows. That little thrill of danger, the quick flash of lightning excites me. I've decided that I could be a storm chaser if this teaching thing doesn't work out.

Suddenly, the deluge begins. 

From dry to streams in the street in 3.5 seconds, and shoppers run for their vehicles helter-skelter.

People begin leaving the coffee shop, young ones darting out as quickly as they can, older ones standing under the eaves longer, waiting for a slackening, a slowing of the downpour before they try to run--a little slower--to their vehicles. 

Others enter, parking as close to the door as possible, attempting to use umbrellas as they get out of the car, only to have them soaked and pushed sideways by the wind. Families come in, laughing as they wipe the wet from their faces and find a place to get comfortable. 

A grandmother pauses with her three young grandchildren. The kids discuss how fast they'll run, excited at the possibility of getting wet and dodging raindrops. The grandmother contemplates pulling the car up, but with a resigned sigh says:

"Well, I guess we'll just get wet." As they leave, three have beaming faces, while one is less enthusiastic. 

I pause my observations. Is this how it is supposed to be? When did that grandmother forget the Joy of running in the rain? When did the older ones stop taking risks, just doing, and darting out into the storm without a second thought?

At what point do people stop choosing Joy in ordinary circumstances? 

Was there a point when that grandmother began to view storms as unpleasant, a nuisance to the natural progress of life? 

What about the older ones, as they hesitate to take a risk, waiting for an opportune moment as the rain streams down the eaves? Is this something learned, or did it happen gradually, as they got older?

Risk taking, choosing Joy in the small things, I think they're all connected.

I didn't used to be someone who took risks. 

Calculated, well-thought out, work-the-way-I-planned risks? Yes. If you can call those risks at all.

Choosing something new where I didn't know the outcome, and jumping off that ledge with Joy? Never. 

My 15-year-old self would be scandalized at who I am today.

But because of the risks I've taken, my eyes have been opened to the Joy that a rainstorm can bring. The dark clouds are more exciting than scary, and the cliffs I jump off of don't seem quite so tall.

There are many days where I hesitate to jump, and my 15-year-old self begins to scream at me to stop. 

Then I shake her words from my head, and I remember that I don't want to go back to who I was.

I don't ever want to be afraid to dart into the rainstorm, or jump off of that cliff, no matter how high, as long as the Lord is whispering to me to follow Him in that direction, my Joy and fulfillment will surpass my fear.

The rain stops as quickly as it had began, and the Joyful sun peeks through the clouds.

Hanna Elizabeth 

Fear, and What to Do with It

I'm moving in four months.

Even to write that seems foreign to the little girl who had her life all planned out for the town she grew up in.

I was the kid who always had the answer to that classic question "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Grow up, graduate college by 22, meet and marry a good Christian guy who was tall, dark and handsome, and settle down to teach 3rd grade in my hometown and raise 3 kids.

Perfect
Idyllic
and boring.

Here I am at 24

Single
Almost finished with college,
and about to move to a new state to teach preschool.

The Lord is funny with His plans, isn't He?

Yet even as I've prayed and thought and prayed some more, realizing that this is truly my desire, Fear begins to creep in.

I'm so afraid that I'll hate it. That I'll miss my family too much, and regret my decision, that I won't make any new friends, or that I won't find a church family as wonderful as the one I have now.

I'm afraid of losing touch with my friends back home, that I'll be bored in the little town of 14,000 when I grew up in a city of 70,000. I'm afraid that I won't be able to make enough money, that I won't ever meet my Romeo who I've been waiting for.

Even though I've grown and changed, and the Lord has given me confidence and independence, a thirst for adventure and new things, and a great and mighty Love that I know will not let me go,
Deep down, I'm still that fearful little girl who had her life planned out, and who couldn't bring herself to talk to strangers.

I wonder why I'm really so afraid. I mean, the Lord tells us 365 times in the bible not to fear.
Fear should be something I can pray against, and it will magically go away.

Right?

"Fear is necessary for us to be courageous." A wise man told me the other day.

Every time I think of it, these words brings tears to my eyes, because there is so much truth, and so much relief in that one sentence.

I don't have to fight the feeling of fear which grows whenever I think of leaving.

All I have to do is act in spite of it, and follow where God leads, and He will do the rest.

Hanna Elizabeth

Yarn and My Tangled Life

Tonight I sat down to do a task that had been begging to be taken care of for months.
I sat down to untangle my insane pile of yarn.

The culmination of two half-finished knitting and crocheting projects, and four balls of yarn, this mass of green and blue had been sitting in my closet since before the semester began, patiently waiting for me to do something about it.
Finally, I got sick of seeing it every time I opened my closet. The ruins of two perfectly good projects, getting more massive and tangled every time I moved it around. Well, the yarn wasn't going to untangle itself, tonight may as well be the night.
And as I sat there on my floor, fiddling with a pile of mostly pistachio colored yarn (which is really difficult to untangle when it all looks the same), I began to notice some things.

1. I don't really know if I want a blanket in these colors.
2. The scarf that is is part of this tangle has taken me over a year to finish.
3. The harder I pull, the more hopelessly tangled and dense the yarn becomes.
4. I really need to follow one end at a time, in order to get it properly untangled.
5. I need to find a better way to store my yarn and projects.

But as I was thinking about these things, it occurred to me: Isn't life with the Lord sometimes like a wild mass of pistachio colored yarn?

Stay with me on this one for a moment.

In some ways, our lives are like this tangle of yarn.
     For one thing, the harder we pull and chafe, trying to do things our way, and with force, the more stubborn and knotted our lives become. We can pull and tug and force our way into situations all we want, but without the Lord to come alongside us, and start to untangle us, we are as helpless as that pile of yarn was in my closet. Unable to untangle and fix ourselves, and making it worse by trying to fix things with our own hands.
   
      Yet the Lord's hands are gentle, knowing which strings to pull, how to loosen the mass of tangles that we have become, and just how it will all come apart. He knows when we need an extra tug. He knows where that string of poor choices will lead, if it is not unraveled to reveal the heart of the issue. He knows how to fix and untangle all of it, because he has the whole picture. He knows where every one of those hundreds of strands lead.
   
      Every time I try to look at the big picture, or my version of it, it gets messier.

     I think I'm doing so much good for it, and that it's starting to look less knotted. I pull a loop here, unwrap a tangle there, but without knowing where everything goes and how it all fits together, it's a longer process, a futile effort, and I may as well put it back in my closet. It is only when I start with one strand, one end, and follow it where it leads me, that I can begin to unravel the bigger tangle.
     It is only when I trust and follow the Lord's plan for my life, that I am able to see the bigger picture of where he's leading me. It may seem like it'll be quicker to do it myself, to take on the bigger mass of yarn as a whole, and try to untangle it all myself.
     Sometimes it takes longer to follow the individual strands of yarn to their ends. It seems futile to follow when I could be doing a better job pulling it apart as a whole. Yet in the long run, it is much more productive for me to follow the path laid by one strand, and to complete it before moving onto another.

    Following the Lord's path for my life in the day to day tasks, as well as in the bigger issues can seem like drudgery. Sometimes (read, most of the time) I want to do it my way, and choose my timing.

Yet when I let him do the work in my heart, and fix the tangles in my life, and in my relationships with others, I find that somehow, miraculously, the clump of pistachio colored yarn becomes two projects and four balls of yarn again. I can finally finish the scarf that has taken me years, and maybe I'll give that pistachio colored blanket another shot.

Hanna Elizabeth

Trust in the Lord with All Your Heart

This morning, I was challenged with a question:

How often do I forget to trust in the Lord?

How often do I waste my time worrying, wondering, and chafing at God's timing, instead of trusting in his will for my life?
Lately, I have been struggling with a finance issue, which I could not find a way to solve. For days it sat at the back of my mind, the little voice of fear whispering words of worry, regret, and prompting me to forget all of the times that the Lord has brought me through with His mighty hand. For days I struggled to fix the problem on my own, seeking to find a solution which was easy and manageable, but nothing ever seemed to quite work out.
     Then the Lord began reminding me, in that quiet, gentle way he likes to do, of all the times he has come through for me, provided for me, and guided me down my path. It hasn't been easy, and the solutions often came in forms that I didn't expect or want right away. Yet through it all, He always, always, always has provided in one way or another. I've seen this work in the lives of many others as well.
I can say with confidence that he will again.

So this morning as I was asked this question, I wondered: if the Lord provides in some way every time I need him, why isn't my immediate response to trust?
   It reminds me of the story in Matthew 8, when Jesus calms the storm. The passage from Matthew 8:23-26 came to mind:

And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.

Keep in mind that this was immediately following the disciples witnessing Jesus healing many people, including the Centurion's servant from miles away, and Peter's own mother-in-law. I have sometimes marveled at this story, and others like it, aghast that the disciples could have possibly forgotten all that had just transpired, and been afraid of a storm, when the power of Jesus had been so clearly demonstrated.  
    But I have been realizing that I'm not so different from the disciples.

"Why are you afraid, oh you of little faith?".

Yep, that would definitely apply to me.

How often do we as Christians become fearful of the earthly struggles we deal with? How often do we so easily forget all of the times that the Lord has provided for us, taken care of us.
This doesn't mean that he will always work and provide for us in the way we want, or the way we think would be best. It also doesn't mean we won't be frustrated, and struggle on a daily basis. He promises us in John 16:33:

"In this world you will have trials and tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world."

He has overcome the world.

How can this change my perspective? My response to the worries of the world?
How can this prompt you to Choose His Joy?

Hanna Elizabeth