Thursday, May 31, 2012

its been so longggg. i've come so farrrrr. it's absurd to me that two weeks ago today was my last day in colorado. i drove thursday, friday, and saturday with my dad to va. we had some laughs, i had some naps. thats about it. i read this book about a mom with 3 girls with autism and it made me want to work with autistic kids again so badly. got home and unpacked and noah and zach pulled up. surprise! brothers! they are the best. sam was seeing michelle obama or something cooler than seeing me. it was nice to come home to an (almost) full house of family. i loved it a lot. sunday we all left and i drove to NC. no stops. got there and remembered most of my friends were with their families who were in town for graduation. evan found me and we hung and maggie and i hung out and the three of us went to chip and sip and sonic. life was good. spent the night with erica laughing a lot and it was good. monday was full of friends and love and celebrations and still being homeless haha.

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i started this blog in florida and am just getting back to it. i want to still blog even if i'm not in colorado.

since then i've been to florida with my best friend mary, got really tan and freckily, had some laughs, swam around with a manatee, laughed some more, slept really well, got addicted to the bachlorette, drank some good drinks, talked to justin a lot, hung out with my puppy, cleaned my entire childhood out of my room, went to a really stupidly great church service in richmond, met christine, loved life a lot, found joy in a lot of things, realized some dreams i have for the future and have worked on achieving them, still been jobless, spent a night with my sister, listened to some good music, found out i own matilda!, painted my nails with emily, cried because i miss colorado, bought a new kindle, missed zachary, watched a lot of scrubs, and that is it i think.

choose joy.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

it's over. i can't really understand that and if i try too hard i know i'll get sad so i'm not. today i got off work at 530 and went on a run up my mountain one last time and said fuck yeah i'm done its summer and danced a little then i got the worst cramp i've had in a long time and so i apologized to god for saying fuck but my cramp stayed but i ran home through it. then i made a mix cd with every good song i own with summer or sunshine in the title. the cd sucks. hahahahaha except for a few songs. then i went to church and sat in the sunshine with evelyn who saved me a seat and church was good. real good. philippians 4:4-8. someday i'll think about it more and write about it. then evelyn and another girl got coffee and hung out at mcdonalds. we just talked life and that was nice. i drove evelyn home then went to belly up because it was a free show. saw joe and fred so hung with them. the band blew so bad. ashley and i texted and she said she loved me and she was grateful for me and she missed me. i danced by myself on the dance floor and missed her but i was still bold so she was proud. and now i'm home. and if nothing else i can be proud and excited that i survived colorado and didn't have sex. which i thought may happen on many occasions. so.

hannah 1. colorado 0.

now its time for the summer of fun

cuz...summertime and the living's easy. and just the smell of summer can make me fall in love. (summertime by sublime and summertime by modest mouse)

Monday, May 7, 2012

i should be packing but i'm sitting on my floor in the middle of packing mess and crying. i'm sad to leave. i was sad to say bye to young life girls tonight. i was sad to say bye to sayer last night. i'm listening to the curve by avett brothers. my friend kacie the other day told me i was different and the things i said made her sad and i wasn't the same person i used to be. i know i'm not but i didn't think it was in a bad way. i don't love the lord any less. i don't love people any less. i think i know the lord better from living in colorado. seeing his faithfulness, even just by reading old blog posts that were full of fear and tears and misery, is so cool. his promises are true and good. he does want to love me. i have felt loved here because for a long time i wasn't loved by anyone else. i wasn't known or loved or cared for at all for a long time in colorado. but i knew the lord knew me and loved me and i felt it real big all the time. all the lonely nights i sat at the counter after work wasting away my time i knew i was loved. i knew i was loved when i messed up with marques. immediately i knew i was loved. and have grown and learned and been forgiven and loved since then.

my last real blog post was about loving people. i don't feel like i don't love people. i just asked mary if i loved her any less or less well than before and she said no. i think i love people better from being around so many new kinds of people. i like that.

i think it's okay that christians kinda freak me out now. i think its okay that i have a desire for people to be real not just put on christian skin and say things. i want christians to love people well. i want to be loved well inspite of the things i do. i want to love others well. my friend chelsea tweeted the other day something about how if something worked out it doesn't always mean god wanted it to happen it just means his grace is inescapable. i want my grace to be inescapable. i want to be approachable and i want my life to be a legacy of love. sayer told me last night i was approachable and honest and that it was good for her to see that. i appreciated that. i don't want to hide or pretend that i don't screw up because romans says we all have fallen short of the glory of god. i don't want to live in those mistakes and don't want others to either but i think confessing them to the lord and talking about them is good. we all need grace and all don't deserve it but get it anyway. so i want people to be authentic in their love. justin, adam, and ashley were probably my best friends here (and sayer) and they are all real people. real screw ups. but they deserve real love too. i learned how to be real from them. chelsea taught me a lot in college about honesty and how good it is but these boys and ashley were just real. and i know you may be like but they aren't living real life because they don't know jesus. i understand that. but i think i was more comfortable here in aspen than maybe i ever have been. ashley always was the first person on the dance floor at shows and would pull me out there. i learned to dance in aspen. i was free and who i was created to be and that was cool. i never shied away from talking about the lord. ashley would always be like ugh you know how i feel about religion and i'd be like ugh me too but i love jesus. i've said before that the boys and i have had many conversations about the lord. and i hope that they all saw jesus a little different. a little less the church version or the jesus that they think judges them and a little more love. because that's what jesus is all about.

so maybe i have changed. maybe i am a hippie. maybe i want to live radically like shane claibourne. i don't know. i want my faith to be real. i want my love to be real. there is an avett song that goes

Lord I just want my life to be true
And I just want my heart to be true
And I just want my words to be true
I want my soul to feel brand new


and i do. i want my life and heart and words and soul to be true and new because of the lord. 


(also- this is real cool and freeing. dig it. 

Psalm 33:15

New Living Translation (NLT)
15 He made their hearts,
    so he understands everything they do. )

Saturday, May 5, 2012

the one and only positive thing marques has ever said ... "who goes to deaf camp in their free time? nobody. deaf camp sucks"

well said.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

crap. sorry. i have a lot of drafts written but never edited or finished them. everyone's been hassling me to blog. i think i stopped and then too much happened and i couldn't catch up. i feel that way with letter writing too but my friend presley reminds me there are no dead lines and nothing is ever over-due. for a while i was too sad to blog because my heart loved this place to much to leave and talk about leaving and i wasn't into blogging about that. then the shitith hitith the fanith and i almost quit last week. my parents convinced me not to but i really was about to. the whole time i've been here i've been disrespected and treated poorly just by one employee and he crossed the line a lot and real far and i was over it. then i went to gardner webb and it was maybe the best weekend i've ever had. i hung out with erica a lot (she told me to talk about her) and it really was good. lots of laughs and love and being touched which is new for me again. it was the perfect weekend of everyone and anyone i love at school with the promise of returning in 14 days which was fun. super grateful for it.

i've been hanging with church people here because the girls i party with were in denver and my boys are in arizona falling in love and kari and chelsie are in mexico. i've realized that i've forgotten kinda how to live in community. i still know all the jesus lingo but hearing it made me laughing. hearing this boy cameron talk about pursuing his dude friend in jail because he wanted him to follow jesus made me laugh. i've forgotten what real friendships look like. i've forgotten boys can be nice and not just exist to grab me and dance with me in the club. cameron told me i looked pretty last night and i was literally taken aback.

i talk to mary, erica, and chelsea every day but i've forgotten how to live that life. i hung out with this girl Sayer from church tuesday night and she was real church-y but real great as well. she asked me about my walk with jesus since i've been here and it's been cool to think about that and process that. i think in a lot of ways i'm kinda like a baby jesus lover again. like i didn't go to church for a long time and haven't lived in community for even longer and i don't know the last time i had a quiet time. but i pray a lot. and i've learned a lot about love and freedom and grace. and that is what the gospel is all about. i think we were created to live in community but i think this season of my life was for discovering more about myself and the lord and how to live in this world. cuz, i've been living. the weird crazy life that i have but i've lived. i think i understand people and love people much better than before i moved here. i think i can love high schoolers and see more of their lives because i've been living in such a broken place with broken people.

my whole life has been pretty easy. i mean i have this crazy condition and i get sick a lot and have had over 50 surgeries but like i've never not been around love. i've never not been loved every day of my life. and i mean by people, i know everywhere and always the lord has loved me but i only know that because i choose to acknowledge him. if you don't acknowledge him then it means nothing. so here in colorado i've lived with completely broken people in a broken place. i know the lord is here but like i live and hang out with people that have no concept of love. or that they are loved. and i think high schoolers feel like that a lot. i understand more about broken homes now. i understand why its easy to find cheap love and cheap thrills and cheap drugs because you don't feel or know love.

so i'm looking forward to CDH a lot. but also scared. scared to live in a christian bubble again, even if that's what life is supposed to be like i know its not. and i don't know that i'm comfortable living in that bubble knowing these people and this place and not being here to love them.

i have six days and 15 hours left in this town. i don't feel pressure to like convert the boys. i feel content. content with the crazy adventure that was aspen colorado. i don't know how i'm going to drive off and not worry about talking to our grant writer and helping her or being the only sane person lesa has to talk to. i don't know. i don't know if i'll be back here in a year. i have no idea. that's okay. i want to live and love this town as best i can in the next 6 days and 15 hours.

Why would I ever want to write a book? Who would ever want to read a book I wrote? the market right now is definitely oversaturated with chr...