Unending Change

January comes with snowy mornings and pale sunshine. Its gray skies and ice cold days leaving the fireflies and grass-y smell of summer a memory. The new year has been laced with memories of, “Remember a year ago…” 

C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different?” 

Amidst the wedding planning and the nannying days, the way those words resound in my heart is taken to whole new meaning. So much has changed in such short time. Hard maybe, but never bad. Exciting, yes, alongside challenging and stretching. I don't know that one can transition from one season to the next without using the word, “Bittersweet.” 

New cannot come without the old dying. Anticipation of tomorrow does not stand without some sort of goodbye to today. Every possible dream for the future is weaved with excitement, but threaded through the past is a sadness of sorts for something that is ending. 

Change is good. But change is hard. 

I have these conflicting desires. On one hand rests a desire for everything to always be new and different and exciting, for things to constantly be changing. On the other hand, I find myself with a want for the comfort of stability, the constant that comes with routine, the certainty that one can have when things stay the same. 

January turned the corner and I suddenly saw 2016 as the year of changes. Finishing my nannying job, a day-to-day living of life with a family which feels too intimate to be called a job. Marrying the man whose name makes me smile, whose gentle kindness melts me, and who gives the best hugs. Moving across states from the city to a small town, taking his last name and being known as his wife. Leaving the only home he’s known, boxing our few belongings, and leaving the States behind to fly to Haiti.

Every time the leaves change on the treetops, so will our lives. The thought is a bit daunting.

I think the fear is normal, maybe even necessary. Change and fear have this beautiful way of reminding me where I should put my hope. The seasons always change. Our lives cannot remain exactly as they are today. There is a time for everything under the sun, as the author of Ecclesiastes wrote. 

In the year of change and inconsistency and newness comes this whispering, “Embrace..” 

Embrace this, child. Embrace every single change through every single season. Because you know the One who does not change.

safety of the heart

It’s hard to tell which is louder—the pound of my feet on the pavement, or the pound of thoughts in my mind. It’s Tuesday morning and the light is early and golden. Busy cars drive their routes to work. The occasional walker hastily makes their way to the train stop. Tuesday is waking up to the world.  

A blogger I love recently wrote an article regarding the expression “Time heals all wounds.” In it he writes, “Once we reach a certain age, we learn that the healing of the physical wound is not the same thing as being returned to one’s original state of being. [It] does not equal “happily ever after.”

I’ve been waiting for time to make things as they once were. But ‘once were’ is gone the way yesterday is: remembered and cherished, but never held again.

I miss yesterday. The tin roof and thunderous rain. His crooked teeth and big brown eyes. Rice upon rice upon rice. Jolly phonics. Nighttime games with the rats in my ceiling. Cold showers and hot drinking water. Bugs and dirt mixed with sweat and tears, but a joy that runs deeper, a love that stands stronger, a purpose that stretches farther. 

Yesterday became a part of me in a way I never initially wanted. Today is wonderful, filled with such happy and exciting things. A family I love. A job with a little boy I adore. A fiancé who has been every bit kind and patient and loving (and who I’m crazy about). Words cannot capture the way I love today, or how thankful I am. But yesterday’s wounds will never mend me the same. 

And I’ve become the girl on a run who no longer knows how to trust her God with tomorrow.

I’ve learned to not expect safe from the Christian life in physical terms—ebola in Africa, sketchy boda rides, riots blocking roads, voodoo drums. Recently, however, I’ve realized I also cannot expect safety of the heart. Looking at the life of Jesus, I should expect just the opposite: weeping at Lazarus’s tomb, anguish in the garden, tears over Jerusalem.

My God is well acquainted with the sorrow.

Tomorrow is something I’m struggling to leave at His feet. In the midst of that though, I take comfort in the words of Job: “For He wounds, but He also binds up; He injures, but His hands also mend.” 

He cannot mend tomorrow what I haven’t surrendered today. The words of C.S. Lewis come to mind as I make my way to this thing called surrender.

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he is good. He’s the king I tell you.”

He is good, friend. Let us never forget that.

beautiful forget-me-nots

The words don’t come easy. Not the way they used to anyway. They’re scribbled in notebooks, these thoughts half finished-- fragments and snippets of the last 5 months scattered on index cards and moleskin journals and iphone note apps too numerous to count. They hold everything from the craze of nanny days to a new-found relationship to the achings and longings for Haiti. 

Like the winter we’ve watched become summer, the seasons come and go. One moment they seem to stretch into eternity, and the next you’ve blinked and wondered how it all passed so quickly. We swear we’ll never forget, but it’s been not even 4 months and I can’t recall the sound of the snow crunching beneath my feet or the sound of the birds on the first day of spring.

So we write, in attempt to always remember. We string together letters and words with the hope that sentences will bring back all the memories and feelings like how it was in the very beginning. 

This is my effort to never forget.

I fell in love with him—this man who sings hymns on 7-hour road trips and stops mid-sentence for the airplane flying overhead (even via FaceTime), this man who prays over our meals and our lives with a fervent passion and continues to teach me more and more about the God I serve, who cooks eggs every morning for his breakfast, and his mischevious eyebrow arch can be traced all the way back to the baby pictures. 

He took me on a roadtrip to see his 3 week old niece and nephew, and we cradled the scent of newborn in our arms. He tracked my plane and held me tight when it landed. We grocery shopped and cooked the macaroni and melted the cheese and had dinner together. That weekend he took me out at 10 o'clock to stargaze and watch the moon dance shadows on the Nebraskan fields below. We picnic lunched at a rest stop in the middle of the nowhere and it was there that he knelt on one knee and asked me to be his wife and share life with him for as many days as we have left. 

Sweet sunshine filtered through the tree tops above us, spilling patterns on the picnic blanket. The sky was this brilliant blue, with puffy white clouds all around. It was there that his question hung in the breeze. And it was there, looking into his eyes that I could see it all: the stargazing that first night in Haiti, the heart-wrenched sobs of a girl who was leaving a life behind and the way he just sat beside her, the night she killed the spider for him; the hopes for the future and the taste of adventure in his words; the late night FaceTime calls, the very hard and very long talks, the packages mailed and plane tickets bought. 

And it was there that I said yes. And it was there that we began the most terrifying and most beautiful adventure. 

The coffee mug is half empty sitting on the table beside me. I’m watching out the window for the bus to bring Fin home. My ring keeps catching on my coffee cup, clinking at every touch. I’ve whispered the words under my breath a hundred times… Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders, let me walk upon the waters wherever You would call me. Those words took a frightened 18-year-old to Uganda, to the world of special needs, and to a country where evil runs rampant. But I never anticipated it leading me to a nanny job in the suburbs, or a relatioship-turned-engagement. 

The past 5 months have been a whirlwind I’m still trying to keep up with. They’ve been hard, and beautiful, and unforgettable; thought-provoking and spiritually stretching and filled with such bliss. Some days I rest in the peace of knowing He has held and ordained every moment. At other times, I’m the one whispering late into the night, struggling to believe her God is good and gives only good gifts. 

Summer has only begun, but I can feel how fall is just around the corner. And it’s human nature to forget. So this, right here, is my effort, to always remember and choose to believe: 

there are things too beautiful to forget.

These Things that Remain Constant

What I miss is the sound of the rain on a tin roof. Thundering, it drowns out every other noise. I can close my eyes and see the 4-wheeler rumbling away, that small bundle of stubborn energy and spunk holding on tight. No one’s called me “Hannah” for 12 weeks now and I can’t remember the last time the power went out. I can still feel his red overalls, tattered and worn, beneath my fingertips. Rats don’t scurry in my ceiling at nighttime. 

How do you leave a life behind you, and remain the same?

It’s funny the things that bring it all back to you. And it only takes a moment-- a song, a line in a book, a sighting on the street, a photograph on your phone, a passing comment in conversation. Sometimes it’s nothing but the stillness. For here in the silent darkness, the whisper of memory surrounds you.

It leaves you aching.

I told him there would always be longing. I know longing the way one knows the feel of their skin and the sound of their breathing-- fully and intimately. Every moment is laced with it.

I know she mends—the girl with the broken heart. But I don’t know how. I know she always longs. Unlike the vapor and the raindrops, I know her aching never fully vanishes. Her life consists of a little bit of empty no matter where her feet wander. Because she’s tasted something more, something better, something far beyond.

Sometimes I want to forget. Memories burned in my mind puncture like a needle to the flesh—fragile and messy, painful. Yet how will we know the joy if we do not also know the ache? I remind myself of that on the nights where their faces haunt and that life of adventure feels so distant and fleeting. 

I hear Him beckon, here in this aching stillness. Like the pulsing in my veins and the breath in my lungs, there is this constant calling… 

There’s so much more love, so much more.

times of transitions

On the first day I brought the 2-year-old to preschool with two left shoes on his feet. We’ve come a ways since then, 7 weeks into this new job called nanny and new life in the States. But let’s be real, this past Friday the same 2-year-old wore pajama bottoms and oversized rain boots for a walk in the stroller. We will always be just a bit of a mess and a tad of some crazy.

Transitions are never easy, and I’ll admit there’s been an overwhelming number of them in the last 2 months. However, transitions also lead us to incredibly beautiful seasons. 

One year ago, I could’ve never imagined living the days I live now, or so deeply loving the moments the way I do. And I stand here knowing the only explanation for it all is His unfailing goodness.

Life today is a stark contrast from life 6 months ago. I’ve swapped duffel bags for diaper bags, passports and visas for car insurance papers and tax forms, international plane tickets for domestic flights, cold showers and sleepless nights for clean sheets and late-night FaceTimes. There are days the transition has happened with such ease I almost can’t imagine I lived any other way.  At other points I’m left with the wind knocked from my lungs, grappling to maneuver this very different way of life. In many ways, the last 2 months have been a harder walk of faith than the day I booked a plane ticket to Uganda for the very first time.

Transitions: never easy, always beautiful. 

I’ve struggled to know what it looks like to keep up this blog. Still riddled with a passionate desire to write, but unsure of what, now that the crazy classroom days and plane trips have come to an end. Life is still very much crazy. It’s as every bit exciting today as it was a year ago. And I’m just as much simultaneously thrilled and terrified as I was before, maybe even more so. 

Spring is coming. The 50-degree sunshine outside my window and chirping birds remind me of that the same way the chilly winds and gray skies do. Spring is coming. These transitions need only time.

beautiful nevers

The page has sat blank before my eyes for nearly an hour. My coffee has long gone cold. The sun that was hidden when I first sat down has now brought light to the morning. I just feel like the words should be eloquent. When you had 90 days upon 90 days, what do you say when you're down to the final 8? You could never imagine the story, but you definitely did not imagine this.

As it is with the ending of one season and the beginning of a new, you find yourself looking back. A lot. And replaying the moments in your mind from the very beginning.

There's the day they took in the girl whose last name they didn't even know. The day you taught that class for the very first time. There's the day you decided you were going back. There's the days you realized motherhood is the single most demanding job to exist. Ever. And somehow, you miss those crazy days. The day he grasped a toy and laughed to no end is forever burned upon your memory. There's the day he was carried from the poor house to the nursing home and this. is. love. You've seen an empty building brought to life. There's the season your heart was literally torn in two. And then.. then there's the day that make all the bad ones worth it. There's the day he stood tall.

Looking back, I said a lot of never's. I could never go overseas. I would never be able to leave my family for 6 months. I could never do special needs. I would never love a dark and desperate country 2 hours from the coast of Florida. I would never understand Creole (ok, that' still a work in progress). I could never be a teacher. I would never meet a guy I wanted to date. I could never be a nanny. I could never… never… never…

I marvel at the way He has taken my never's, and turned them beautiful.

By now you would think I would learn not to have never's. But I am stubborn Israel and I've forgotten. Still He proves relentless. His grace is limitless and His mercy great. And I stand thankful.

Some moments are too sacred for keyboards and blogposts. And these final days in Limbe are just that. You've followed the journey from its very beginning, and it is far from over. But the next week I want to remember with ink on journal pages and quiet coffee mornings, waiting for the sun. The last 5 weeks have been a struggle of messy and heartache. But I can also say it has been absolutely beautiful. Never have I been more tested to trust He holds our every moment. And never have I walked away more confident in His goodness.

He has ordained it -all of it- from the very beginning.

May it always be so.

when he stands

"Hard things can be good things.." I whisper it in his ears. His arms are locked tight around my neck and he screams, fighting me at every touch. I coax his stiff, bent legs and attempt to strap his feet into the grooves of the smooth wood beneath his toes. Sweat trickles between my shoulderblades. His brow is furrowed furious, those brown eyes wide with bewilderment and terror. His stander. 

We make it 4 minutes that first day. His posture is improper and we have such a ways to go. But it's 4 minutes. It gives me hope. 

He shakes when I pull him out and bring him upstairs. We put on his favorite music (Sleep At Last) as slowly he calms. I hold him tight as he catches his breath. I tell him he did so good. He cries at me. I tell him I know it hurts. He sighs heavy. I tell him I'm sorry. He puts his head against my chest.

Hard things can be good things. 

I realize I came back for this very moment. His two legs strapped into that stander as he screams relentlessly. That night I toss and turn, overcome with the emotion of it all. He will stand. If only because I am too stubborn to cease praying for it. 

The what-if game tempts me to play. There are nights I do, knowing full well that I am destined to lose. "If only you had more time… If only you came sooner… If only you had actual training… If only you weren't leaving…" If-only will run you ragged if you let it. 

For days I think on how he fights. He fights me. He fights the stander. He fights nutritious food. He fights the cup of water I hold to his dry lips. He fights sleep. He fights medicine. He fights everything good.

I am not so unlike this boy as I sometimes like to imagine I am. 

Again and again I will take him, for as many days as I have left, and I will beg him to see… hard things can be good things. My hands have inflicted pain, but only with great love. I'll cry over every shove and push and scream he throws my way. I whisper it quiet in his little ears, "I know you need to fight. Nothing about this feels nice or natural. So fight if you must, but do so with a trust that I love you." I will remember-- from his vantage point, he cannot see the way I can. What he perceives as great harm is actually appointed mercy. 

As the days pass, I watch him (ever-so slowly) learn to love his stander and it's closer than the humid air stuck to my skin-- this hope that one day he will walk. I dream big. I hope for things seemingly unattainable. Headfirst, I dive "all in". Sometimes the price I pay in heartache is dear. But watching this small boy, with his striped overalls and love for spaghetti, stand taller and taller with each passing day, I know it: every ounce of sweat and tears are well beyond worth it. 

Working with Michael's stander during my final days here in Limbe are a most precious gift. And my knees will bow in reverence to the One who made it all possible. Who am I, that I get to be a small part of the grand story the Lord is writing on this little boy's life? The thought leaves me breathless, forever grateful.

You are good, Lord. You are so good. 

One day he will walk. And the steps he endured to get there will make it all the sweeter. I choose to believe that one day I will hear the shuffle of his footsteps across cemented floors and the both of us will know: the hard things are always good things.