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I know I've been quiet for over a month but I've been processing a lot of things. God has given me the opportunity to hear and read some things that cannot be taken lightly. Indeed they are exciting, overwhelming and deserve much thought. I've been reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan. If you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it. Especially if you're like me and have this fear-awe relationship with God where the fear is not the healthy kind but makes you want to win His love with good deeds. It's not a book I can read overnight. Every chapter makes me set the book down and think. Most days I can't get through an entire chapter without pausing.
Last month we had a guest speaker at Church. There are not many people in this world that can start their preaching by saying this: "In 1989, I was on my way back from a church conference when an 18-wheeler struck my Ford Escort head on. I was killed instantly - pronounced dead by four sets of EMTs." Don Piper spent 90 minutes in heaven and then it was God's will for him to return to tell his story. It is a beautiful story in spite of the years of pain and suffering where his body was literally put back together with surgery after surgery. But that was not what stayed with me after the service. There was something else he said. When he got to heaven he was received by people that had all played a part in getting him there. I can think of many people that would be there to receive me if they went before me. But who would I receive? The list shrinks. Greatly.
The second thing he said that I find so hard to forget was that in heaven everyone was ageless, blemishless, perfect. The only one with scars was Jesus Christ. He had to have those scars because that's what lets us enter heaven. I think about how we run after futile things to make our earthly bodies perfect. Even though we know that nothing works. Age-perfecting moisturizer? Scar remover? Stretchmark minimizer? Anti-frizz serum? I'm glad I'll look perfect one day, just as God intended me to be. It's just not going to be this side of the river.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Friday, December 18, 2009
Burying The Hatchet
I woke up Sunday morning with this odd feeling. I didn't want to go to Church. There was going to be something in the message or in Sunday School that was clearly an instruction to me and it was going to be hard to follow. I told Will I felt kinda sick. He didn't pursue it. He told me I sounded a lot better and wasn't coughing or running a fever. I felt like a 6 year old trying to come up with excuses. We're going to be late for service anyway. If I don't feel too good after Church can we come straight home?
Church was great and it was time for Sunday School. The apprehensions I had been feeling had melted away during a wonderful time of worship. We went to class and the new teachers were there. They handed out some paper to everyone with a picture of an axe on it that looked ready to color. Oh cool, this is going to be a fun class. Then we launched into the lesson and it was about burying the hatchet. Oh, its not an axe, its a hatchet. The first part of the lesson was what to do as Christians if someone had offended you. The second part was what if you were the offending party. The teacher Dan told us to write down the name of any person God brought to mind that we needed to sort things out with and carry it in our Bibles till we had reached out to them and then bury that piece of paper as a symbolic act. Uh-Oh. I knew I should have stayed home. The thing is I was the offending party. And the offense was something done years ago when not a Christian that I still hadn't apologized for. God had reminded me about it once a few years ago and I made a semi-decent attempt to find her contact information but that didn't go anywhere. Now I had Facebook and I was pretty sure I knew someone who knew how to reach her.
For three days I tried to argue it away. God has already forgiven me so why do I need to do this? We were 11 years old then, I was just a child. Everybody does mean things at that age. She probably does not even remember me. But this is not easy! I tried talking to Will about it. He had two questions: Did I know then that what I was doing was wrong? Yes. Was she hurt by my actions? Yes. "Then you can do this Hannah!". I need a second opinion!!
Thursday afternoon I sat down to write her an apology. It was hard. I told her I wanted her to know I was sorry for my actions. I was sorry I had not come forward earlier to apologize. I regretted the things I had said and done and regretted not fixing the situation earlier. I regretted how cold and stressful our relationship had been from then till we graduated high school. I sat back and read the mail. And then I realized that I had to send it. Even if she didn't forgive me, she had to know that I felt sorry for what I did. I scanned my list of friends for anyone I knew that knew her equally well and copied her as well because I knew that if I had apologized years ago, it wouldn't have been a secret. Once I was done typing, I felt a lot better about it. I realized that even if I got a response with a lot of *$#!*(& in it, it would be OK. If she never responded, that would be OK too. This was an act of obedience. I clicked on send and this burden lifted off of me.
I didn't get back a mail with a lot of #$%!$#% in it. In fact, she responded with the sweetest little mail telling me to forget about what happened and to let bygones be bygones. Wow.
It's time to take my piece of paper with my hatchet on it and bid goodbye to it forever!
Church was great and it was time for Sunday School. The apprehensions I had been feeling had melted away during a wonderful time of worship. We went to class and the new teachers were there. They handed out some paper to everyone with a picture of an axe on it that looked ready to color. Oh cool, this is going to be a fun class. Then we launched into the lesson and it was about burying the hatchet. Oh, its not an axe, its a hatchet. The first part of the lesson was what to do as Christians if someone had offended you. The second part was what if you were the offending party. The teacher Dan told us to write down the name of any person God brought to mind that we needed to sort things out with and carry it in our Bibles till we had reached out to them and then bury that piece of paper as a symbolic act. Uh-Oh. I knew I should have stayed home. The thing is I was the offending party. And the offense was something done years ago when not a Christian that I still hadn't apologized for. God had reminded me about it once a few years ago and I made a semi-decent attempt to find her contact information but that didn't go anywhere. Now I had Facebook and I was pretty sure I knew someone who knew how to reach her.
For three days I tried to argue it away. God has already forgiven me so why do I need to do this? We were 11 years old then, I was just a child. Everybody does mean things at that age. She probably does not even remember me. But this is not easy! I tried talking to Will about it. He had two questions: Did I know then that what I was doing was wrong? Yes. Was she hurt by my actions? Yes. "Then you can do this Hannah!". I need a second opinion!!
Thursday afternoon I sat down to write her an apology. It was hard. I told her I wanted her to know I was sorry for my actions. I was sorry I had not come forward earlier to apologize. I regretted the things I had said and done and regretted not fixing the situation earlier. I regretted how cold and stressful our relationship had been from then till we graduated high school. I sat back and read the mail. And then I realized that I had to send it. Even if she didn't forgive me, she had to know that I felt sorry for what I did. I scanned my list of friends for anyone I knew that knew her equally well and copied her as well because I knew that if I had apologized years ago, it wouldn't have been a secret. Once I was done typing, I felt a lot better about it. I realized that even if I got a response with a lot of *$#!*(& in it, it would be OK. If she never responded, that would be OK too. This was an act of obedience. I clicked on send and this burden lifted off of me.
I didn't get back a mail with a lot of #$%!$#% in it. In fact, she responded with the sweetest little mail telling me to forget about what happened and to let bygones be bygones. Wow.
It's time to take my piece of paper with my hatchet on it and bid goodbye to it forever!
Saturday, December 12, 2009
It May Not Take Sticks 'n Stones
I feel like I first need to apologize to any blog readers I may have for the lack of posts. I wish I could blame it on pregnancy or fatigue or a lack of time but I have to be honest and say it has more to do with the sad state of my quiet time over the past couple of months. There's something about sitting at the feet of God and having a good conversation, letting God feed my mind with His word and processing it over the course of the day that lent me some sense of creativity to write a blog. And with a lack of quiet time that was easily gone. I have missed it dearly though and I'm glad having this blog around made me realize what an impact it had on my life before I let it slide completely.
My new translation project gives me a lot of free time. I've used some of it to catch up with movies from home that I haven't seen in ages. I recently watched a Hindi movie titled "Taare Zameen Par". One among a few that I would recommend to someone that understands the language or doesn't mind subtitles. One scene in particular really stood out in my mind. The protagonist, a teacher, is trying to help the parents of a dyslexic boy understand that every time they belittle him about his poor grades and performance in school they are just crushing his spirit a little more. He mentions that in the Solomon Islands, some villagers practice a unique form of felling trees. They just surround it and abuse it with their words and eventually the tree dies and falls over.
The Bible reminds us a few times about the importance of the words of our mouth and gives us this instruction in Ephesians 4:29 - Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. In other words, if you're going to open your mouth and say something that could discourage someone, cut someone down or do no good to them its better to just shut up. I've realized I give my opinion all too freely sometimes under the guise of "constructive criticism" but only a small percentage of that may actually build someone up. It's an area I need to work on, very hard. I've watched Will in two scenarios - wilt under an authority that was particularly sarcastic and critical of him and absolutely excel under an authority that encouraged and motivated him. It's time I made a choice about the kind of influence I want to be for the people in my life.
My new translation project gives me a lot of free time. I've used some of it to catch up with movies from home that I haven't seen in ages. I recently watched a Hindi movie titled "Taare Zameen Par". One among a few that I would recommend to someone that understands the language or doesn't mind subtitles. One scene in particular really stood out in my mind. The protagonist, a teacher, is trying to help the parents of a dyslexic boy understand that every time they belittle him about his poor grades and performance in school they are just crushing his spirit a little more. He mentions that in the Solomon Islands, some villagers practice a unique form of felling trees. They just surround it and abuse it with their words and eventually the tree dies and falls over.
The Bible reminds us a few times about the importance of the words of our mouth and gives us this instruction in Ephesians 4:29 - Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. In other words, if you're going to open your mouth and say something that could discourage someone, cut someone down or do no good to them its better to just shut up. I've realized I give my opinion all too freely sometimes under the guise of "constructive criticism" but only a small percentage of that may actually build someone up. It's an area I need to work on, very hard. I've watched Will in two scenarios - wilt under an authority that was particularly sarcastic and critical of him and absolutely excel under an authority that encouraged and motivated him. It's time I made a choice about the kind of influence I want to be for the people in my life.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The man with the umbrella
A couple of weeks ago, Will and I went to dinner at Famous Dave's. The weather had been gorgeous contrary to what the weather channel had predicted but things changed quickly. When we got out of the restaurant after dinner the rain was coming down hard. We stood at the exit and Will asked if I wanted to run for it or wait as he brought the car to me. We stood there looking at the cold rain a little helplessly when a man got out of his car with a HUGE umbrella and walked over to his wife's door to let her out. He looked over at us and asked, "do you want me to walk you both to your car?". I was more than a little surprised. Normally everybody is so busy, nobody really notices someone else's troubles. The man insisted it was no trouble at all and walked us to our car and made sure we both got in dry before he let his wife out of the car and they made their way in. On the drive home I thought about the times I've never looked around to see if someone had some needs when I had plenty to share. Hopefully I'll never forget this lesson.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Michael Jackson's Real Cause of Death
I thought this video is definitely worth sharing. It explains something so important about life in such a clear and simple manner. It's a truth everybody should know!
I have a new blog!
My new blog has been up for a few days but I hadn't made it public yet because it was so bare-bones! But I knew that if I hadn't spruced it up in 3 days, chances are I wouldn't. So here it is and hopefully I'll continue to work on it!
http://thechroniclesofbubs.blogspot.com/
http://thechroniclesofbubs.blogspot.com/
Monday, October 12, 2009
New Role, Same Purpose
In the month of September, Will and I found out that we're going to be parents in May 2010! We're past the stage of absolute shock and the feeling that its "not real". How can it not be real after you watch your baby's heart beating on a little ultrasound screen and walk out clutching the "first photograph"? And how can something so incredible not always be on our minds, drawing out a smile in the middle of a regular day?
What has been hard though is to not let it be all-consuming. I am realizing that my purpose is not to be a good wife or a good mother, a stay-at-home mother, a work-from-home mother, a working mother, a housewife or any of these labels that the world likes to attach to me. My purpose in life is to worship my Creator and bring Him glory. To have my mind renewed and transformed constantly so that ONE day, it will look like the mind of Christ. Everything else is just a part of the journey. Something for God to use to get me to that goal. I'm praying that I do not get so fixated on my upcoming role as a parent that I lose my time and conversations with God, something that would actually help me someday in that role.
I would love to blog about my pregnancy. But out of respect for any of my readers that do not want to be subject to an aerial view of my feet or a play by play of morning sickness, I will do so on a new blog. For those who want such entertaining information, stay tuned for a new blog announcement ;-)
What has been hard though is to not let it be all-consuming. I am realizing that my purpose is not to be a good wife or a good mother, a stay-at-home mother, a work-from-home mother, a working mother, a housewife or any of these labels that the world likes to attach to me. My purpose in life is to worship my Creator and bring Him glory. To have my mind renewed and transformed constantly so that ONE day, it will look like the mind of Christ. Everything else is just a part of the journey. Something for God to use to get me to that goal. I'm praying that I do not get so fixated on my upcoming role as a parent that I lose my time and conversations with God, something that would actually help me someday in that role.
I would love to blog about my pregnancy. But out of respect for any of my readers that do not want to be subject to an aerial view of my feet or a play by play of morning sickness, I will do so on a new blog. For those who want such entertaining information, stay tuned for a new blog announcement ;-)
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