a little change, a little risk.

Hey Hannah Gee,
Today is a good day. Today I feel different. I think that somehow, although I didn't think it was possible, God changed my attitude. Remember when we were talking about that? Of all things, my attitude is something I thought I was stuck with. My attitude is what I was born with, a part of my personality that would never be different.

This attitude of mine (that is, before it changed) seems to have a mind of its own. My attitude likes to dwell and be bitter. It likes to cast blame on people and places and everything around me. It likes to wish everything could be perfect all the time. It likes to be disappointed when things are not perfect. My attitude likes to be all up or all down.

I never thought that people could change. I knew that we were constantly changing, but I didn't believe that we would ever change change. But maybe we can change. Maybe we change all the time.

Today I recorded a song in the studio. It felt good, but I wasn't on top of my high horse afterwards like I usually am. Release, yes, but no high horse. Instead of a high horse, I felt a simple urge to let go and take more risks. It's not something I've ever been ready to do. My risk always consisted of packing up and moving myself around. Transporting my entire life has become my comfort, actually. Pretty backwards, I'd say.

I'm going to take a risk. I'm going to stay right here...right where I am.
That's where God wants me. I just know it.

Love,
Hannah El

the quiet place

It's the quiet place. It's the place where nothing is moving around you. Where you can be still and your hair doesn't have to look a certain way. Where your face muscles release, where your eyes do not strain, where your shoulders relax. Where the lights are warm and you can feel safe.

Where no one can find you.

It's the quiet place. It's the place where no one can bother you and you don't have to impress anyone with your words or your thoughts. Where you can let your head wander into the clouds of a cold night sky. But you're not cold anymore, because you have a blanket around you. A red one. Where you can open a book whether with words of your own waiting to be written or words of another author. Where you can even open the book of your Lord, and you can finally feel the peace that He offers to you.

It's the quiet place. The place where you feel most at home. The place where you can find yourself without having to move at all. Where nothing is chaos. Where you are completely still except for the world that is quietly turning you. Where there is no interruption.

It's in the quiet place that you can stop moving and stop speaking and stop listening and stop pleasing and stop singing. It's where you can be free for awhile.

We are moving too much. God is telling us to stop. He is telling us to wait on Him. He is telling us to stand still. He is trying to bring us to the quiet place.

-Hannah L

snowstorm.

Got this text from my mom tonight:

Took me 5 hours to get home tonight. Just thank god m home safe. There's goodness in people a man helped push my car when i got stuck at the exit n a neighbor helped push my car to the driveway. Changed my perspective on people. I'll try to be more kind. Luv u girl

I'm more than glad that my mom got home safe but I'm also glad and thankful that those people got to help her out.

See, my mom works at the bank and she meets a lot of different kinds of people. I get the feeling she has more rude and difficult customers than kind ones, just from what she tells me when she gets home. I always feel really bad because while my mom keeps her game face on and has a pretty tough shell, I know it must take a toll on her. I mean, it has to. So, even though I know it must have been a terrible 5 hours trying to get home, I think those people that helped her gave her some hope and made some light in her life. Thank you stranger and neighbor for helping my mom get home.

I bet you they were angels in disguise :]

2:15AM

And I thought I was the only one.

Everything you said hit home for me. It comforted me in a weird way, reminded me that really, however I'm feeling, wherever, there is at least one other person in the world that feels the same way. At the same time, it still sucks, feeling like this.

The waiting you speak of, I'm all too familiar with. I can daydream unlike any other, but when it comes to action, that's foreign to me. I get lost inside my thoughts a little long and a little too far. And I don't really know how to break the cycle. I wish I had some sage advice to give, but I don't. Just know that I'm listening and I understand.

The whole thing about looking to others for self-worth, about being a perfectionist, this was a major theme for the past two weeks when I was in Florida on the choir tour. I'd say that during a majority of the concerts, I was so worried that I was the one who would sing out of tune and ruin the music or that my voice was not blending enough and I'd stick out. In turn, I would sing really soft or even drop out at parts (don't tell anyone! haha). When I individually messed up a part, I would get really down on myself after the concert. I dreaded it. I hated feeling that way. But thank goodness I was reminded by the conductor and a close friend to just sing. Just sing. Maybe it's like that in life too. Just live. I dono.

I am afraid of growing up. Of having responsibilities. Of making mistakes. WHY?! Why can't I just be like "everyone else" and just suck it up and do what I have to do? I am so worried about what people think about me. I want to make mistakes and go through with the consequences. I want to speak my mind and not care of everyone I know likes me. What good is it to me to waste time constantly changing how I act around different people so I'll blend in? I'm weird. I know. I just want to know what it feels like to be comfortable in my skin, to rely solely on the fact that all I need is Christ. I just want to be. I want to stop comparing myself to other people and their lives, because I will never be them.

Hannah, I'm very far away these days. I wish I could say I had roots deep down to the ground so that I could be something sturdy for you to depend on right now. And I'm not saying that you can't depend on me, because I will be here for you. It's just that I'm kind of just suspended in the air right now. I'm not moving either.

This is something that someone sent in an email me tonight:

Tennessee Williams. "In the time of your life--live!" That time is short and it doesn't return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition."

It is a new year. And you're already new. He makes all things new.

<3 Hannah Gee

new.

It's almost twenty days into the new year, and I want things to continue to be new. Fresh. I want to have a fresh start. 2010 did not end so great. I mean, come on. New Year's Eve I drove clear across the middle of the country with my sister in order to escape this suffocating town. Bergen County is disgusting and awful, and North Jersey gives me migraines. My life was suffocating me, and I felt trapped. I was tired of being confused, and I was tired of waiting. I was tired of being scared, and tired of feeling like I was worthless. I am not worthless, dammit. But who am I really, anyway? And why have I been looking to other people to show me?

I guess that we do meet people for reasons. We meet people everyday who change us and shape us and mold us into who we are. So when I say look to other people, I mean to literally or figuratively ask them. "Hey you, can you tell me who I am?" It's a waste of time, because without knowing it, you are losing time and losing yourself in the process of trying to find something. The real answer is, of course, Christ. Christ is the answer. Christ is my identity. He is the reason that I still wake up every morning with my hair curly and my head on straight. So what is my purpose?

We're all on some type of quest in this world. Whether we're trying to find peace, comfort, "true happiness", purity, WHATEVER. We're all looking for something. But me? I am... kind of just following instead of looking. I'm mindlessly waiting instead of actively searching. I wait for things, Hannah. Every damn day I wait for things to come my way...for all of the things I've dreamed about--I wait for them to appear in front of me on a silver platter.

I want things in the past not to matter. But why is it that once something is over, we're all just supposed to accept it and move on? REALLY? Honestly, if I could have that mentality I would be much happier. Everything around me is moving at such a fast pace and I can't keep up. And I'm thinking, but wait a second...--OH! It's gone. Okay okay I'll move on but hold on...SLOW DOWN EVERYONE. I need to THINK. I need to DWELLLLL...how else am I supposed to really live? IT'S EVEN THE LITTLE THINGS. Someone will leave me a message and I'll call them back ready to give them a response. But something new has already happened in their life. So I let it go. I let so many things go. I move on from so many things that I don't know if I'm ready to move on from. I wonder if this makes sense...

I am a perfectionist. I hate doing things that feel wrong. When I do too many things that feel wrong, I fall into this trap that is instantly self destructive. After that...I run away. And I am sleeping away my life, my world. I am sleeping away my feelings until I feel something that is good. I sit, self aware, and stare at the objects around me, waiting for something to move. And at the same time, I am fighting for more time to think. To dwell.

Too much looking. Too much waiting. Not enough finding. I look at myself in the mirror and see someone who I don't even know.

This is a new year. I think it's important to stay true to who you are or at least who you think you are. Cliche...and a cliche even to say that it's a cliche. But I don't care. I don't want to hold back anything anymore. I won't hold back this year. I am tired of it.

Gray.

I've been sitting at Panera for a few hours now. I escaped from campus without a scratch. I should be doing my homework since that's what I came here to do, but I am writing this.

It's been getting harder and harder to do all the things I should be doing and to become this person that I "should be." Should be, want to be, who I am. The lines are blurring together and all the black and white are blending into an unattractive shade of gray. One of my closest friends often likes to ask me, "What color was your day today?" If I'm honest, I would tell her that lately, my days have been gray.

I can't really tell you what happened between now and last semester, when my days were blue, orange, red, an periwinkle. I think one of the most difficult places to be in this life is knowing how you want to feel but not being able to feel those things. Knowing how you want to be in awe of the changing seasons and how you want to be thankful that you have all your limbs. I don't know. I guess I just don't want to go through this life unaware and not cherishing the precious minutes I have.

It's like that line in our song, Larky - "I won't be standing in my way." I don't mean to be corny or anything, but I just know that I am the one standing in the way of what I want to be, what I want to do. Even these thoughts of what I "should be." I'm so afraid of what people think of me. I'm so afraid to offend, to anger people. It's cause I'm a people pleaser. That's what I do. And then I look at other people who are doing the things they want to do, and I get jealous. And bitter. What is this?

It's ridiculous. That's what it is.

Your wings will grow soon enough, Larky. Just wait. And I bet it will be the most amazing feeling to leave the ground.

Love,
G Love

a caterpillar.

It's October 1st. The first day that it's been sweater worthy weather. What happened since the last time I posted? Everything. I moved all of my stuff back to Princeton, and moved in with my roomie G Love (that's you)!

I started classes, and somehow was swallowed into another daily routine. A routine that pushes me around when I don't want to be pushed. A routine that takes away my time. The time that I am borrowing. The time that I don't ever want to waste. The time that I tend to abuse. The time that I try to control. The control that I can't really have but I still hold onto so tightly. The control that pushes me farther and farther away from God. But then God is pulling me up when I get pushed around. He is pulling me up when I abuse the time that I borrowed from Him. He is pulling me up when I try to take control.

He is pulling me up because I am on the ground. I am on the ground because I don't have wings. I don't have wings because I haven't grown them yet. I haven't grown them yet because I am on the ground.

I want to grow wings.

-Larky