Considering how I'm leaving for school tomorrow and won't be on xanga for awhile, and considering also the fact that this is the thousandth day since I joined xanga, I decided to post a picture.  I took it this summer when we were in Baltimore for a few hours.  It's not beautiful or artistic.  But I like it because the bench and the dog and the book lend it a peaceful air, while the setting by the Inner Harbor, where around the bend there are ships that will be mooring in foreign docks the world over, gives it adventurous romance.  Someday I want to do that.  To be surrounded by people of all languages hurrying past on the sidewalks, to study and be challenged and grow intellectually, and sometimes to be able to escape somewhere to be alone...yet not alone. 

I'm excited about this semester.  If there's only one thing I get out of it, I know exactly what I want that thing to be.  I've been working so hard for it for so long.  But just during the past couple days, God stole it out of my hand and showed me that it is never found in the striving.  It's found only in the receiving.  Jesus is, I mean.  In the quiet, alone, vulnerable, hungry receiving.  I have been hungry for Him, despairingly, for so long.  But intimacy with Him won't be found in plans or sixty minutes or mind control or cookbook methods or any or all of the above.

When Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God warned them that they would die.  He didn't say that eventually they would die, that someday their bodies would rot away into the humus of the earth.  He said that in the very day they ate of that fruit, they would die.  But from all outward appearances, their lives seemed to roll right onward as before, except, of course, that they were driven from the paradise they had formerly enjoyed.  So what did die?  Their innocent relationship with Him.  For centuries, millenia afterwards, the only way people could find a sort-of relationship with Yahweh was through animal sacrifice.  Until Jesus' ultimate sacrifice.

Jesus died for relationship.  Not because He felt sorry for wretched sinners, though doubtless that was part of the reason.  Not because this was the way things were supposed to happen, though of course, Calvary had been planned since before the foundations of the world were laid.  At the core of things, He, Himself, was so hungry for communion and fellowship that He went through all the shameful horrors of death on a cross--where the most horrible part of all was the severing of His own relationship with Almighty God.  "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?"

His love is enough.  Mine is only a reflection of His.  "As I have loved you, so you also love one another."  Because I am His bride, He is the initiator in this relationship.  All He desires is my response.  He is my warrior.  He fights for freedom for me and invites me into living a glorious adventure with Himself.  He calls me beautiful.  Over and over and over again.  But I don't believe Him.  I think it's someone else He means.  So I hide away in self-pity and shame until I am so starved for love that I come groping before Him, clutching filthy rags of righteousness, thinking He's waiting for me to prove something before He will love me back.  And that's simply repulsive!  He just wants me as I am.  To respond to His love.  Without affectaions, without preconceived notions, without protective barriers or safe distances.  "Oh my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the cliff, let me see your face, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely."

I'm excited and scared.  Excited because I finally believe that it is possible to be everlastingly, richly satisfied in this God Who before often seemed ethereal and almighty and untouchable and too different from humankind.  Scared because when I was in India, I was close to Jesus.  But somehow I drifed away.  I really don't know what happened.  I continued to work for His smile; I rejoiced when Scripture became alive; I dreamed His dreams.  But like the church at Ephesus, I lost my first love.  He has broken gloriously through all these walls that had been rising around me.  But I'm scared that I'll pick up the rubble and pile it high again to keep me safe from this wild, dangerous love that fills me with such joy I've never know before, that teaches me to feel anger and pain like I never did before, that asks me to surrender all the dreams and plans I've made for Him, that calls me out into the wilderness to find His wooing, that pleads entry into all the dusty corridors of my heart, that unashamedly reasserts itself as very truly different from the love of humankind, that asks me to understand, that asks me to become that unhuman love, that bids me love others lest this love stagnate in my heart.  I want so badly to learn that love because this is why I was made.

But I'm afraid of failing Him.  I pray, "Hallowed be Thy name," yet I refuse to share another's pain when Jesus died for this enemy.  He has become vulnerable before me as He has shown me a fraction of the pain He suffered on my behalf and a glimpse of the love beating in His heart for me.  I don't want to cause Him more pain, and yet I know I will.  For some stupid reason, I tell myself that if He never sees me, He'll never be hurt by me.  It boggles my mind that still He desires me.  Through it all, He keeps saying, "My love is enough, Hannah.  This is why I died.  I won't give up on you."

Au revoir.

in 2007...

I left Suriname.  I don't know when I will see those wonderful friends again.  But when I was young, there were three WWII photographs in my history book that thrilled me every time I looked at them.  Two of them are superfluous to my point.  But the third was of General MacArthur and his men, disembarking from a Navy ship, sloshing through water as deep as their thighs, making their way to an island coast in fulfillment of MacArthur's promise to the Philippine natives years before: "I shall return."  I, too, shall return someday.  It won't be soon, and I don't know for how long, but I do know that with every resolution of my being, I will try my best to make that happen.

I also started college.  I guess it was about time, what with these friends who turned thirteen and seventeen with me being juniors or college graduates, even, by now.  Seriously, though, I wouldn't trade those two years for the world.  I knew it then, and I'm realizing the full truth of it now, that that time was filled with all the Anne-of-Green-Gables romance and adventure that my heart loves.  The wild, and unexpected, and extraordinary...there's a fire in me that leaps up in response to those.  But I was talking about college.  Academics have always come easily for me, but that two-year break gave me a curiosity and a zeal that had largely been missing before.  I'm starting to crave this quest for knowledge.  When my Hebrew professor in high school would begin mentioning various ancient manuscripts that somehow related to the Old Testament passages we were studying, he seemed to be whispering of mysteries lost in the primeval dust of smoldering civilizations.  If only, something inside me would say, if only I could break that code and understand their language, I could slip through the golden door into their world and it would come alive and I could walk and talk with the ancients.  This is the curiosity that drives my hunger now.  I have the wisdom of the ages at my fingertips.  I can explore, dream, discover in any direction I choose.

As for this moment, I'm a statue, transfixed, like those four children were when they first stepped through the bureau into Narnia.  I haven't made many steps yet.  Last semester was easy.  For the most part, I simply had to do what the teachers asked, and I was almost sure to please them.  I met nice people, some of whom will probably become closer friends as time rolls on.  I chose a couple things to get involved in and started getting involved in them.  Being at a Christian school took away the need to stand up for my faith.  The most frustrating part was having to fight in petty little skirmishes about why some people think CCM is immoral and Presbyterian theology is off-limits for discussion and whether children should be allowed to read about the White Witch.  Maybe I'll eat my words later, but so far, college has been easy.

The biggest battles, the real ones, are still on the home front.  It makes sense, I guess, since the family is the first institution God created, the one in which He chose to show His love for people.  Satan doesn't like families.  And it makes sense too that the hardest part of family life is relationships, since God at His core is a relational Being.  It's so hard to come back to people who have seen you at your worst...and, now that I'm thinking about it, may never have seen you at your best.  You can't just start over with them.  You can't hope they didn't notice, because they often understand you better than you do yourself.  You can't always suppose they'll simply accept you, because too often you yourselves judge them the most harshly.  When home is the place you've always gone to to throw away the civilities, let go of the pretence, and relax in blissful, absolute self-absorption, it's so hard to try to bring home a new face.  And every defeat only makes it harder.  But this wasn't supposed to be a philosophical dissertation.

In 2007, I also read Captivating.  I highly recommend it.

I began studying French.

I learned my very first classical piece on piano, a waltz by Chopin.  And what's more, I memorized it, after never having memorized anything on the piano before.

I wrote that xanga post about Moses and Aaron.  I think last year was also when I wrote the one about Hosea.  Those two posts mean a whole lot to me.  I don't often go back through my xanga, but I have gone just in search of those.  That's another thing that happened last year.  I never once, not in the whole year, was in a situation like I was at Teen Mania where the environment was conducive to abandoned worship of God.  I wanted it.  I prayed for it.  I didn't even have my Christian worship music last year, except for the summertime.  But I met God in a different way.  It was quite clear to me that God was taking the so-called "worship experience" away for a time because He wanted me to seek Him without all these "helps," excellent though they are.  I'm not at all saying they're bad.  He simply didn't want me relying on them--and that's as far as it goes.  So sometimes when I'd be reading my Bible on the cold tiles, or riding a taxi through the dusty afternoons, or gazing at a sky piled high with billows of snowy clouds, that was when I met Him.  It's a strange paradox, but last year it became harder to meet God, to have one of those encounters when you know you are in His presence.  And yet at the same time, when I did find myself there, it was richer than it ever had been before.  Take those two posts I mentioned, for example.  Even today, months later, I can still read back on them and be moved almost as much as I was when I first wrote them.  Nothing like that ever happened before.

As one of the speakers at Teen Mania said, though he certainly didn't mean this flippantly, it's like God is playing a game with us on the beach.  He steps a few yards away to see if we'll follow.  When we do, He dances away, splashing into the water.  Too easily we give up, thinking He's running away because He doesn't like us, because we're hampering Him.  Sometimes He may choose to come back to where we're stuck and meet us there...but it's a shallow, cheapened relationship.  Once we learn--and it's a lifelong process--but once we learn to follow Him by faith, He leads us far deeper than our toes can touch, and we go diving, plummeting, crashing through the oceans of His unexplored love.  I won't deny that it's dangerous and scary.  God is a dangerous God.  If you don't believe me, just look at the world He created, at boa constrictors and hyenas, at avalanches and glaciers, at supernovas and black holes.  Trusting yourself to His oceans is dangerous.  Yes, but it's exhilerating.

So now, 2008.  I wonder how much deeper I'll go this year?

Hi, everyone, whoever's still out there.  It seems like this world of weblogging has become a ghost town, but that's probably just because I've been out of the loop.  I'm home on Thanksgiving break, and I'm lying in my bed using my laptop via wireless internet--a surprise upon coming home--and unfiltered internet at that.  I challenge you to go without [yahoo] email and xanga and facebook for three months just to see what it's like.  It's hard, man!  And even I had no idea how much I missed it until I came home and started to find out that friends are engaged or pregnant, and to rediscover friends I thought I had lost contact with.

Yeah, BJU.  Try as I might to be all angelic about it, I really am struggling with it.  There's undoubtedly good there.  My professors care, and that means a whole lot to me.  More even than I think I realize.  I can have high-quality piano lessons free of charge every semester.  And there are other classes I really want to take, like upper-level Greek classes, and religion classes about cults and other fun stuff, which I probably wouldn't have the opportunity to study at most other colleges.  But does the good outweigh the bad (filtered internet being among the least of it)?  It's such a difficult decision to make.

I know God led me this far, and I need the grace to live the life He's called me to.  But I also need wisdom to know where to proceed from here.  There's a shadow of a difference between humbling following His guidance and passively taking the easiest path as it comes.

Hello, everyone.  I'm at family camp now, and I am so happy and contented.  It's amazing that I never look forward to coming here.  When I come home, I'll try to explain everything better; I'm just at the beginning now.  These weeks here are always so emotionally stretching, but they more than make up for it in...in, oh, I don't have the words for it.  The love and care of the families.  The humility of the volunteers.  The passion and focus on God and praise of Him in everything they do.  We're a family in Christ, and it's absolutely amazing to see a little bit of heaven on earth, for a week in which people live by love is heaven on earth.

This evening, Pastor Echols baptized Stephen and Elisabeth in Bonclarken Lake.  They went into the water and shared their testimonies first.  Stephen's was very much like mine.  We both did sneaky little things for awhile, nothing very serious in and of itself; it was the lifestyle of disrespect for God that finally caught up with us.  And Elisabeth was simply beautiful, inside and out.  Then they were baptized.  I felt like I was all alone in this huge outdoor cathedral, a sole spactator on the Gospel being proclaimed through that sacrament.  It was a moment where everyone held their breath in wonder at what God was doing.  What made it all the more special was how so many of these people who watched are people who have been at the family camps with us for years now.  It's that family in Christ, that bond found in Him alone, that nothing else can replace.

So I told Joseph that I had to find a computer and write it all out on my xanga, so here I am.  I don't think I've given it justice.  But when you're trying to describe such deep things of the heart, it's nearly impossible for anyone short of a genius to give it justice.  All words can do is remind you of the memory.  So, to bed, and tomorrow the week really begins.

I'm paired with Cody, a five-year-old boy with cerebral palsy.  I met his father this evening, and he seems really nice.  I'm excited about the week.  Like Pastor Clint said this morning, it's a hard week, but you always go home changed.  Let that love change me!