Control to Will and Surrender

"You know how I always seem to be struggling, even when the situation doesn't call for it?" 

- Carrie Fisher

Question: Explore a scenario in which you have struggled or are currently struggling to release control. What was your desired outcome? Did you receive it? 

Control. My core desire is to process it and receive what I want, when and how I would like to receive it. I have tried that method. No matter the situation it does not work. Control is a false reality in my opinion, it seems to deliver what you want, but in reality it takes and steals from what is true and turns it into a lie. That is why when manipulation and plans start catching up with a person it finally dawns deep in the gut that they are out of control no matter how much they try to convince themselves otherwise. Control a sucker of truth and life. Control however beautiful and alluring it seems is not worth the price, I know. 

I used to lie through my teeth. I believed that just being myself was not enough in a new world where I was the one who was the stranger hoping to be welcomed in. After just one small week of being myself I started my game, my goal was to make a friend, my end game turned into a thirst for popularity. Control leads to one’s own implosion and leaves a wreckage of destruction and brokenness in its aftermath. My selfishness led me so close to getting kicked out of school and my dad getting investigated for physical abuse towards me that never happen. My thirst led me to lie about my father hurting me, in the name of gaining friends. Control can quickly run to lust, that can lead to a hot mess of crazy that takes not a single thing off the table. Control says you have to keep going deeper, instead of choosing to finally speak the truth. 

Different people do different things to gain control. Lying was my choice of vice, but it is typically one of the tools always used to manipulate the board. Then you wake up and realize that no matter how hard you play and strategize you will never win the game, and even more so you realize that life is not a game to be played, but a gift to experience. A gift that is given by the one who is in control and knows how the story is going to go, even when we try to manipulate it. God is still in control and He uses all things for the good of those who love Him. 

God used my desire for control and all my sin that came with that desire to get me to finally look up. To see my need for Him and to surrender my insecurity and accept my identity; who I am today. I once was lost, but now I am found. I am also forgiven for my need control. I am learning to surrender when the temptation comes. 

Surrender, it is the opposite of control. It is releasing my will and plan to God and saying yes I want your will and your plan for my life. It is accepting what God says and laying aside what I say and what I want. Laying down popularity and likability for the road less travelled. A road that denies myself, picks up my cross, and follows in surrender. Not my will but His be done. 

It is easy to write and harder to live. Grace. Always grace as the monster prowls around taunting me to take what I want in whatever way possible, because I am more important. This is the battle, it is deeper than the physical momentary desire, and it is spiritual war over my devotion. Control, no matter what you can get…you will always want more. 

- Hannah

Belief

"Authenticity is not the watering down of your message to help someone accept your words. Authenticity, I think, is simply trying to find the kindest way to tell the whole truth." - Erin Loechner

Question: Write down what you believe to be true about God. Where did you first learn this? How has your belief evolved since? Does it still hold true? Why or why not? 

I believe God is sovereign over all things. He is faithful in all things, and there is a divine reason for how all things are used for good for those who love Him. Every bump is used to teach me and bring me into a deeper relationship when I surrender my shame and embrace His grace. I believe God is loving and just, what He says is true and He is not going to shift to suit the times and culture norms. His words are for our growth, grace, and protection…wisdom in the secret place. 

I learned these things in church, but I claimed these truths along my own journey of brokenness. Before, I relied on truth by others, rather than trusting that God is who He is all of the time, not just in times of desperation. I have seen God reign in darkness and his love notes to my heart, in a sunset, moonrise, divine cups of coffee, and friendship bloomed in pain. God was there. God is here. I learned to look for Him, to seek him.

While all of the above is true of the character and heart of my God and He does not change, I am transformed, broken down and built up when I start to believe that He is who He says he is. What I think I understand is not important when compared to the absolutes of who God is. My understanding is small compared to the knowledge my God. 

These truths are still true, because they are not dependent on circumstance to be true. They are true, because He is true. My understanding founded in religion wavers and dissipates when I come back to that place of pursuing my Savior. The truths of God’s character are, because He was, is, and is to come. 

But, in the unshakable reality of God, my idea of understanding blinds me from the truth. I believed that God demanded perfection of me. That now that I was in this family, forgiven, and free I better not mess it up. I have to be on my toes, jump through hoops, strive, be, and do all the right things. Obviously perfection, as I've discovered over and over, is not attainable no matter how perfect everyone else seems to be. I had to learn that. God demands my heart and surrender, and willingness to accept grace freely given to live set free. 

I believe God doesn’t just call me to live out grace, love, peace, and all the other fruit of living with the Spirit inside of me. He calls me to rest in those and accept them for myself. Without surrender and acceptance I can’t truly live. I believe that God does not want me to live from my own power or on the fumes of religion, but from the Spirit. That sounds mystic, but I have come to see that I am not truly living when I am not surrendering to God. Without surrender there is no life abundant, only a false facade that looks sparkly, but is unfaithfully dead inside. 

This is what has held true about God in my life…He is everything He says He is and not at all what my human understanding tries to make Him to be. My unfaithfulness blinds me and His faithfulness saves me, yet I still will never be able to comprehend all of who He is. I can’t handle it in my flesh. I know this to be true of my God. He is and that is enough. 

- Hannah

I Don't, But I Do

"The cool thing about God, and also the annoying thing about God, is that when he wants to move, he tears down the whole operation, lumbering giant style. Even when he tiptoes, the whole ground shakes." -Erin Loechner

Question: How, in the past, have I embraced ambiguity? (Hint: We do this daily.) What did it teach you? How can I apply this lesson?

Embracing the unknown is not my style. I like to know. I want to know. I want to see, then I can move forward with my head high. The unknowns taunt me. With scattered pieces of interests, hopes, dreams, and maybes I keep my head down because most of the time is feels like they are pulling me apart instead of coming together. The unknowns. 

Death is not an unknown, it is a fact, but its presence before the living comes and goes with the wind; unknown to the world, people, families, a person. It just comes and then it leaves behind shattered innocence and ashes of reality. 

I have lost many things and people through irresponsibility, selfishness, and fear. Death is the first thing that brought me loss, which I had nothing to do with. I did not cause it, wish it, want it, or think it would come. I lost my Nana, to the unknown ways of God’s timing and the repercussions of smoking with a dash of cancer. Death is known, but the “when” is completely unknown. Yet even in knowing we do not expect it to come. I know, but I don’t want to know, but I really want to know. A cycle of poison.

I live a post loss life. A life that is the reality of the repercussions of grief and believing that pain is valid and if not looked after could lead back to death, even if it is just the death of hope and dreams. I say this often and I used to say it with complete discontentment, but here I am today nowhere even close to the place I thought I would be when I was nineteen and high on my dreams, my hopes, myself. Another known, pride comes before the fall. 

Unknown, what does the fall look like, because it looks different on every person.  Known, my fall looked like eggs being scrambled, a clear picture of what was all whirled and broken down into a bowl full of ooze that everyone says is still a beautiful life, despite the missing piece. But yet even if over scrambled, the eggs always rise.

It is a beautiful life. Took time, but it is beautiful and uncomfortable, but not a bad life. Beauty can rise from the ashes. Still it is those unknowns…the uncomfortable beautiful pieces that have floated back into my life; the hopes, the dreams, the desires; no amount of heart change makes how those pieces come together known to me.

What is known to me has taught me that the unknowns can produce everything from the highs to the deepest lows. But the worst unknowns are the ones that I am generally unwilling to face, to let bloom into knowns, because they can bloom, grow, and reach towards the sun, just as they can wither and fall to the ground. I do not know when life blooms and when it dies, I just know it will and does.  There are truths in life that I will never understand, because I am not in a position in my humanity to ever truly grasp them. That is why I can find peace, because I am known, by the one who knows it all and reveals to me what I am meant to know. The ability to rise, fall, bloom, wither, live, and die.

So to the unknowns that are the puzzle pieces of my days, I do not know what you will become, but I know you will. A permission to keep going in the loss of a person, a dream, an ideal. An invitation to embrace ashes and the ability for them to bloom into new life. The ambiguous life is filled with pieces all over the table, some fit together and some have not yet been placed, some get taken away, but trusting that the picture will be whole, because the picture is known. I can live. 

- Hannah

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

Chasing Slow by Erin Loechner

“I have chased more and I have chased less. I have lived large and I have lived small. I have sped up, slowed down, traded up, pared down, built myself up, fallen down. But have I looked up? Laid it down? Perhaps we were never meant to change the pace. We were meant to surrender it.” – Erin Loechner

The past couple of years I have had the amazing opportunity to read advanced copies of books that excite me and books from my favorite authors. Chasing Slow, Courage to Journey off the Beaten Path, was a book that excited me. The title alone caught my attention and ignited a quieted desire within me, slowness. A life lived in enjoyment of my days, not a life lived wondering where all my days went; the latter is a beat I tend to keep up with. There is a song my world seems to work off of, more, most, do, be all, do all, achieve it, add it, look it, earn more. It is a life of more and if you think you got it, there is yet another step to reach. 

Erin knows this life well, she lived it and is in the struggle daily to embrace the beauty and gift of slowness in her every day. She shares her journey in chasing slow as you read her about struggles and see her family grow in the face of hard battles. Slowness is embracing the surrender of every day; our more, our less, and embracing humility. It is not a cry for you to ditch the things you love, but to leave behind the things you do not need and embrace the bare bones of what you truly enjoy, not the extras we tack on out of expectations or comparison. 

This story of Erin’s journey has helped me to embrace my uniform, to create a space that is reflective of me, to embrace my quirks and live in the abundance of what I have been given. Most of the time that does not look like trying to achieve or be a carbon copy of the women next to me in what I physically possess. Slow for me is more about being present in life, not trying to make a life. More being and less running in circles trying to chase my own butt, when the invitation to do me is right in front of me. 

I have already arrived. 

Raw writing, short chapters, beautiful pictures within and gorgeous hardcover.

This book was a 10/10 for me. 

You can purchase Chasing Slow ….

Amazon: Chasing Slow

Erin’s Blog: Design For Mankind