Wednesday, December 4, 2013

if you don't already read the broad river community church advent guide...go read it now.

broadrivercc.wordpress.com

if you aren't eating peanut butter poptarts already...go get some now.

those are my two public service announcements.

life is good friends. it hasn't been an easy 6-8 weeks lately but sunday night i learned peace again. sunday night chelsea picked me up and we drove to target just to walk around. we talked and laughed and listened to good music. her jeep is a little slice of home for me, i've been riding around in it for the past 6 years. it's my favorite. at target we wandered and had no agenda and didn't feel rushed and we bought playing cards and decided to share a drink together at tavern 24. so we got drinks and a side order of fries and played round after round of speed. no agenda, no rushing. it was 9 on a sunday night and we were playing cards at a bar together and it was good. we started talking about life and transitions occuring and hopes and dreams for our futures and then peace and hope snuck up in me.

 i've been anxious about brazil and health things so long that i forgot peace and hope and joy and love existed. i've been living so frantically for so long. i told chelsea i was ready. i was ready to leave boiling springs. i was ready to move to brazil. i'm ready to move to richmond. ready for this next chapter. i haven't been ready until sunday night. chelsea agreed that i was erady. she said she's seen me grow and become who i am today and has watched me get up and just do things that i want to do. colorado, grad school, cdh, brazil. so, as we sat there and talked about our friendship and the impact it's had on our lives i still knew. still knwe i was ready.

monday i ran into my friend tyler and he looked me in the eyes and asked if i was ready to go. i said yes. he said, i can tell.

monday i rode all over charlotte with caroline going to doctor appointments and she got in my car when we left and said Hannah, you are different. you are calm. you are peaceful. I haven't seen you like this in a long time.

tuesday night at women's prayer Heather said, you are different. you look better. you seem more healthy.

friends, my hope is back. even on monday which was full of doctors and numbers and not a lot of hope i ended the day with an email to my family that ended in saying that I had hope. I have hope that Jesus is more than all this mess. I have hope that Jesus knows my little body better than any doctor. That decisions I make at this point Jesus promises to meet me in them. I have hope that He will be for me in the decisions I make and if they are wrong His grace is bigger than my mistakes.

I maybe haven't felt this alive and full and hopeful as I did the first time I went to Brazil.

I'm ready.

(i also know that when push comes to shove and I have to get on an airplane in 6 weeks to move to brazil on my own for 6 months I may not feel this way. but I'll read this post over and over and over and know that the Lord that has given me this hope now hasn't changed and will never leave me-so I will find my hope again if somehow I drop it along the way)

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...