Life Shaping Memories

I have decided to take thirty days to dive into a writing- truth journey. I was a part of the Chasing Slow launch team several months back and as a gift for pre-ordering the book I was given a set of 30-journal prompts that I have decided to share with you. I hope you grab these questions and work through them yourself as you embrace your beautifully imperfect story. Just run with it and see what you find, then share it, because the world needs to hear YOUR story.

Question: What memory (Be specific!) first shaped your idea of what life should look like? Have you changed that thought lately? Why or why not? 

"But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water well up to eternal life." John 4:14

I have experienced life through the views of a military brat (mom) and a creative spirit (dad), this dynamic has/is a conflicting life style. Half of me screams structure and order and the other desires adventure and hippie vibes. I am thankful that the current that runs steady is our mutual hope in Christ, but until I came to that place of need I was confused about what life should be. I spent most of my days with my mom while dad worked and those times were filled with order and a demand for structure. My nights and weekends I could be free and explore the world around me. I knew my mom wanted me to live in a box of girliness and tidiness, but I favored my dad’s creativity and adventurous spirit. I believed that life had to be one way or another, tight ship or free spirit. Cookie cutter or abstract. Uniform or unique. Control or open hands. The sacrifice was to be disappointing both of my parents at one time or another.  So I devised my own thought on life, a mix of the two; do the serious stuff (school, work, love) in a cookie cutter way and with everything else I could be my free-spirt self. Life does not flow like that and God does not fit in a box of plans. 

God and time has taught me that I am shaped by both, but my life is unique. How my life looks is not at all cookie cutter. I am on my own God designed path and it is more unknown than my most carefree thought. His ways are not my ways and his thoughts are not my thoughts, so many unknowns to me, but God faithfully lights my path each day. Life with Christ is both the carefree of the unknown, but also the structure and discipline of doing my best to live a life pleasing to him. I fail miserably, just as I failed to be the little girl my mom wanted. 

Life should look like your life, not someone else’s. I am learning to embrace my story. I have tried to fight against the current of my own story, because I have not liked my life, especially in the past several years. I did not like that God has me at home doing college on a computer. I did not like that I live at home. I did not like being behind in college. I did not like getting diagnosed and going through surgery for a birth defect. I did not like having my plans ripped apart and tossed aside. I did not like a lot of things, about my resume or myself. I still fight to appreciate my journey, because I wasted so much of it in bitterness, control, and embarrassment. It is hard to be thankful for the days I wasted, but it has led me here. To a place where I am thankful for the twists, turns, and changes of direction. God uses all things for good, not a sin is wasted when I surrender it, He is faithful to me when I am everything but. 

Life is messy. This world is broken. I am broken. But this is my story and I am thankful that I have been given an out of the box not at all typical story, because it has shown me how much I want to have control and just how far I am from daily surrender to the Christ who holds the pen. I am doing my best to embrace what He has given me to do each day and rest in the hope of an already planned beautiful ending. That is what I think life should look like; trust, surrender, embrace, and rest in the eternal.

-Hannah