Category: daily graces

daily graces

The Most Difficult Gift

Hannah

I love giving gifts, and I enjoy receiving them, yet I struggle to accept one of the greatest gifts offered to me; the gift of receiving. It is a humbling place to exist, needing others’ love and care, and I find it difficult at times. I have realized because of my love of giving that it takes far more grace to receive than it does to give.

After years of priding myself on my strength, being humble is difficult for me. It’s hard to ask for help. Do you find yourself agreeing with me? Yet we are all in need in one way or another; broken and struggling but putting on the best brave face we can muster just to prove we can go it alone.

In this long, loooooong season of needing to accept the help of others I find that the luster of having it all together is wearing thin. I see the depth of brokenness within me and around me, and I long to connect in my brokenness. I long to be known and to know the true hearts of others around me.

At my core I am a doer. A server, a giver, a wear-myself-down-to-nothing all in the name of love kind of girl. Accolades for me, right? What if I told you it’s just a ruse for my pride and need for control? Control that blares I’m not needy, I can do it myself, I don’t need anyone— unless someone needs /me/, and then I’m there.

I have spoken with enough people to know that I am not alone in this. Well, maybe I’m alone in admitting it, but I’m not alone in feeling it.

For 35 years I basked on the pedestal of being able-bodied, capable of doing anything that needed doing. I spent decades believing my purpose was to wear myself out pleasing those around me. I knew the truth, but it was easy to ignore when I had strength on my side.

Culture convinces us that our success is measured by our strength. It’s a bold-faced lie that what we are capable of is what we are loved for. This isn’t living in the truth of the gospel. Thankfully God is continually gracious to keep showing me the sin of my pride and need for control. He patiently loves me back to the foot of the cross and reminds me of my need to be needy and not just needed.

It took the stripping of my strength by this awful disease to expose this to me, and I still have to seek grace often because my heart’s bent is on proving myself instead of letting myself be loved in my neediness. Jesus is breaking me of my strength and showing me the grace to be found in embracing my weakness, and the joy that it gives others who want to help.

I hope that you can find this truth in your own life. Don’t settle for being loved for your abilities instead of being loved for your heart. Resist the temptation to keep yourself busy in order to feel accepted. Look for the ways to slow and find your significance in something more real. Then notice how you find peace and rest in giving others the gift of helping.

daily graces

Being Present

Hannah

I am hurting in too many places to name; exhausted beyond staying awake for a few hours, and sapped of all my energy. What a gift to be so. I spent it all this weekend, and it was worth it.

I play a constant juggling game of shifting what things I can do, and how long I will need to recover. Any activity at all takes a pretty great amount of effort. This past weekend I did less calculating and more doing. Missing the days of doing projects around my house, I worked hard to make my front porch a welcome landing pad. Tending to plants, arranging welcomes, and repainting a forlorn mailbox left me tired, hurting, and so fulfilled. It was an accomplishment for myself, and it was a gesture of love I could provide my people.

At the end of the day, covered in soil and spray paint, I pushed myself even further to clean up and go out with my loves for dinner. I didn’t think I could do it, but the delicious food and sweet company spurred me through a wonderful evening. The following night, I pushed hard again to spend time with kind friends who invited us over. It would have been easier to retreat to the cool quiet of my bedroom refuge, but I fought to stay up and enjoy the company of loving friends. It was a beautiful evening together.

By Sunday my body was done being pushed, and I had to give in to the haven of my bed for some extra sleep, fluids, and help with my breathing. My bones and muscles complained at all I had done, but my heart was light. I’m so thankful for the opportunities to fight for more, and the strength Jesus has given me to keep taking them. Remind me when I need a push! These times are surely a gift I don’t ever want to take for granted.

Please leave me a comment, it lets me know you’re listening!

daily graces, endurance, family, hope, joy, suffering, trials

Bits and Pieces

Hannah

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I have this blank canvas to scribble my thoughts, but lately I have let them recycle, tumbling unsorted in the confines of my mind, timid of what people will think if I speak out loud.  Someone told me not long ago that I should try writing about something else.  I took it to mean people do not want to hear the confessions and wonderings of my soul; they are probably rolling their eyes and turning off their screens.

After talking with a close friend about what else to write about, I came to the conclusion that I don’t want to write about something “else,” and I don’t know how to.  The reason I write about what I do is that it flows quite easily when I need to release and process difficult things.  It’s therapeutic for me to free up some space in my thoughts by unleashing the tangle of words and emotion that sometimes becomes difficult to find space for.  Part of me also supposed, in the beginning of this place, that someone else would find hope and strength in the raw processing of the journey of my life.

I have been learning more lately that it is okay to let every experience, good or bad, shape who I am and how I view things.  Let’s be real; life is never going to be all rainbows and bubblegum, so if we are going to become something other than tainted and bitter, we are going to have to figure out how to filter through our ups and downs and pick out the important growth-inducing bits, and let the rest hit the shredder.  That’s what I’m trying to do here; sift through the daily barrage of twists and turns and cling to the slivers of truth that will deepen my character and make me a softer, wiser human for the other people on this expedition with me.

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Think back to the last hard, life-changing thing you went through.  It might have been the loss of a loved one, loss of a job, a difficult diagnosis, a traumatic world-event… you know how you had that numb feeling for awhile afterwards?  Thankfully we all have this mechanism that only lets us take in what we are capable of at the time.  Our simple minds and hearts would simply explode if the full force of things hit us all at once.  So we take it in little by little, in easily digestible chunks that we can begin to process and break down.  That movement happens in the telling of the story.  Each time you share your story, your mind is able to handle a little bit more and apply a greater understanding than it could the last time, until eventually you can boldly tell your story, maybe still with some tears, but with a confident and understanding boldness that has replaced the initial shock and bewilderment.  That is my place here.  I will keep on sharing the plot twists of my life as I continue to find deeper meaning and healing in the new details I understand every time I brave it.  And if in doing that some of you are able to pull out the important truths, the pieces that make you bold and brave and inspired, then even the more reason to keep shouting it loud.  My story.  My unbelievable, true, heart-breaking, beautiful, hope-giving story.

Will you share yours too?

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PLEASE LEAVE ME A COMMENT, IT LETS ME KNOW YOU’RE LISTENING!!!

daily graces, joy, Kara Tippetts, Thankful

Ordinary Amazing

Hannah

Thumbing through a high school journal, I can easily see how this road I stand on is far different from the one I dreamed into existence before my heart met reality.  I could easily list about a hundred… well never-mind about that.  Truth is, I’m sure there are very  few of us, if any, who find things have gone just as we imagined for our lives.

Truth: I have somewhat come to accept the unexpected, admit that my plans probably wouldn’t have been best, and trust that my God will redeem every hard chapter He has called me to walk.

Uglier Truth: I still find myself sad and grumbling when I don’t like the battles that have been chosen for me.

Sooo… my heart has been wrestling, and by that I mean screaming, pleading, searching, digging, longing for a passion to call out the things in my life that are in fact incredible gifts that I overlook in my discontent.  Ordinary Amazing Graces.

While this flame has long flickered inside me, through my Blessings journal, the daily texts of thankfuls between my sweet sister and I, and the preaching to my small fries about all the gifts they have in this life, my greatest challenge to gratefulness has been found in my friendship with Kara Tippetts.  From watching this young beauty face her first diagnosis with gusto and determination, to the celebration when it was done, to the staggering beat of more cancer, more cancer, terminal, she has CHOSEN to meet each of her numbered days with thankfulness for even the simplest of gifts.  In head throbbing, gut-wrenching weakness and pain, she has lifted her eyes to meet the grace which she finds all around her.  She doesn’t harbor a spirit of complaining, but looks beyond the tumors and the limits and the sickness and calls out the beauty of relationships, of food, of quiet, of snuggles, and of fresh air.

I don’t know about you, but that jabs me right in the bulls eye of my restlessness.  Never will it make the deep, disappointing hurt of sickness and death and failure and pain disappear, but if our souls are meant to give thanks, this has to be the answer to looking beyond ourselves and our grievings, and having a reason to find joy.

Oh.  DUH.  Perhaps JOY has to be chosen, just like HOPE.  Oh my helpless soul!

Here is where I need, want your help.  I need reminding in the darkest of days to look for the gifts.  My sadness becomes sticky and selfish and doesn’t let me look around.  How about a place where we can all learn to look for the blessings around us?  The daily graces.

I created a page on Facebook called “Daily Graces.”  Please join me there to flood the screen with the moments, big and small around us that we often overlook. Hook up your Instagram, hashtag it #dailygraces, upload your photos, or share a story of what you found in your daily going that reminded you that you are loved.  Lets help remind each other of how many things permeate our hard, and have the potential to infect our attitudes with joy and thankfulness.

“Like” the page and then let your grateful gusto explode!  Annnnnd GO!

  ——–>>>>>>>>>>     Click here for Daily Graces

Please leave me a comment, it lets me know you’re listening!


Oh!  And if you want to laugh and cry and smile and frown and be challenged and encouraged through everything hard, follow Kara’s blog here:  Mundane Faithfulness
And then buy her book here: The Hardest Peace, you won’t be sorry you read it!