Motivation

I've been thinking a lot about commitment, goals, and the weight of my words and actions. (this is a new years post, just so you know. =P )

Lately, I've been taking advantage of the fact that I'm really really good at doing things last minute.

I don't say that to brag. In fact it's a terrible weakness of mine.

I can memorize my speech the night before the tournament and still do well.
I can study new vocab right before taking the test and remember it.
I have fabulous short-term memory.
Basically, I can learn quickly. I can also rattle of said learned information and sound like I know what I'm talking about.

In the past couple years, though, I haven't really internalized much of what I've learned. That's not to say that I haven't learned anything, but that a lot of my life has been lived on the surface.

I could go into a lot more here, and I will in a later post. But lately I've been thinking about everything I say as if I was binding myself into a legal contract.

A couple weeks ago, I was challenged by the speaker in awana who was talking about how she made the commitment when she was 12 years old to read her Bible every day for at least 5 minutes a day.

At first I thought this kind of weird. Then I thought again. And I found it a rather brilliant idea.

So I wrote up a little piece of paper stating my commitment, signed it, put it in an envelope, and stuck it in my Bible.

I have now committed to reading my Bible at least 5 minutes every single day for the rest of my life.

One person I talked to was slightly taken aback at first.

"Isn't that kind of a lofty goal?"

I mean, you know, we all make New Years' resolutions, and almost half of them are unreachable ideals that we set to make ourselves feel better, or at least so that at the end of the year we can say "well, I tried."

But if you think about it, that's such a tiny little commitment. 5 minutes a day. Out of how many minutes in our crazy days?

And what else does Christ ask of us but for the rest of my life? I say my life is committed to Christ, but what does that mean?

Well, for me, it means that every day for the rest of my life, I am going to spend time reading His word.

It's kind of big, but if you think about it, it's really rather small. Yet this is what God asks of us.

Since then, it's been crazy how impactful the idea of my signature on that piece of paper is.

That means if I miss one single day, I've broken my commitment: one I made to Christ. That's pretty huge, you know.

I don't have many goals for the coming new year. (2011. Isn't that kind of scary?) But one of my goals this year is to reach all my goals. How about that?

So often we make them just to make us feel better, to sort of put us in an ambitious mindset in hopes of reaching the perfect ideal. As if writing it down is going to magically make it happen.

Since I've been so good at doing things last minute, the concept of working for something is sort of hard to grasp sometimes. But that really hit home to me when I went to Nats last year. [see my Nationals tag for more about that] Learning what it means to work hard for a goal and to reach it.

One of my friends pointed out that I'm really goal oriented. I never really thought of myself as particularly this way, but the more I think about it, the more it's true. When I set my mind to something, I really do do it. The fact is that I haven't been setting my mind to very much...just sort of flitting around and only halfway setting my mind to things.

So here's to the New Year: setting my mind on knowing Christ - and actually reaching my goals. My goal is to be committed. To my friends, my family, my schoolwork, and my Savior. What are your goals?

Merry Christmas, world. (:

I think my favorite part about Christmas is definitely Christmas Eve service: and I've especially enjoyed it at my church the past two years.

I love to sit in the balcony - where we always do - and look over the edge to see the a thousand tiny lights filling the whole room with a beautiful glow.

I love watching as the choir members come down, and light their candle from the advent candles. And for awhile it's just 3 or 4 little lights making their way down the aisle. But slowly, the light starts to spread. And as we swing into another verse of The First Noel, it spreads more. Until, by the time we have begun Silent Night, the whole room glows.

And you think.

One light. That's all I am. Not enough to pierce the darkness myself. But when we join together with thousands of other lights and hold them up high: look at the difference it makes.

One of my friends posted recently about Christmas - and how it doesn't feel quite so Christmassy this year.

The past couple years have been especially so for me. It might be for lack of church family, the fizzling out of traditions, or the fact that presents aren't quite so exciting as they used to be.

I think it's the lack of anticipation.

Christmas is all about anticipation. The preparation, the planning. Shopping, wrapping, finding something just right for someone and keeping it a secret for the whole month.

My friend and I like to get each other presents for our birthdays and Christmas. But half the fun of the presents is the fact that we taunt each other to no end about what it is. We drop each other casual hints, random hints, irrelevant hints, and send each other intentionally blurry pictures of it. They aren't generally very big presents, but we always find ourselves in delightful anticipation of whatever it is that is to come.

The birth of the Messiah was an anticipated event for years and years. Prophets wrote about it and scholars studied it. The Israelites waited and waited for the promised Messiah to come and save them from those who oppressed them.

Last year, my family started celebrating advent - something we'd never done at our old church. But our new church did, so we tried it out. I always thought advent was just counting down till Christmas - but it's so much more than that.

Every night, we read a section from our storybook: a historical fiction about a young boy and his adventures as he learns about the coming Messiah and eventually gets to meet the child who will be His Savior.

The amazing thing that I loved about this was the anticipation. The focus wasn't on the presents, Christmas day, or whatever it was we were getting. The focus was on the coming Messiah. That a Savior would soon be born during their lifetimes.

And it brought into a different light the anticipation of Jesus' birth and the beauty of it. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be there, in the stable, when Jesus was born? To read the Torah and to wonder when this Messiah would come?

The days until Christmas are filled with the waiting and anticipation of discovering the contents of the packages under the tree. But Advent is about the anticipation of Christ's birth.

Which....is what I love about Christmas.

Christmas vs. Me

I've done a lot of thinking about Christmas. I love it. I'm the type who listens to it in October and begins planning quite early. Snow, trees, food...I love it all.

But lately I've been sort of scrooge-ish...and for a number of reasons. (all while still listening to Christmas music, posting about Christmas, and running around in the snow...)

-Jesus wasn't actually born on Christmas. The whole "Jesus is the reason for the season" is rather stupid and quite honestly not true. Christmas began as a pagan holiday and still is.
-"Giving is better than getting" is overrated. People say it to mask their mad desire for gifts. They don't mean it and they don't believe it.
-Christmas is so very over-commercialized. All holidays are, come to think of it, but Christmas especially. I take traditions and holidays rather seriously, because I believe they are important. But one of my greatest pet peeves when it comes to holidays are consumer products that are cheap, fake, poorly made, short-lived, and overly marketed. It downplays the importance of it. It lessens the effort you put into it. It makes it easy, cheap, and heartless.

Love is giving - love is selfless. It's not giving if you didn't give it out of love. It's not giving if you didn't put some part of yourself into it.

On the other side, why do I love Christmas?

-I love traditions. Something that is repeated only on certain occasions tells me it has meaning. Something that is specially set aside and "sacred", if you will.
-I love the seasonal change. Snow, cold, trees, red and green. I love cozy, warm things, decorations...
-Memories...family...friends...time spent together. My primary love language is quality time...which is probably why I hate cheap consumer products. There's not a single ounce of someone's genuine time put into that.
-I like the focus on Christ. Even if He wasn't born on Christmas: it's a different perspective. It's an idea centered around Christ and the celebration of something great. It's a break from normal life to elevate Christ even more.

So what do I think? I hate commercialism, I love Christmas. Giving is a great idea, but so many people do it in a heartless way just to please "Christians" and to mask their greedy hearts.

I hate the typical "so this Christmas, think about...[insert meaningful and unreachable ideal here]" blah blah blah. How many people actually are impacted by the typical "Jesus is the reason so giving is better than getting" speech?

Why do I celebrate Christmas?

Is it because everyone else does it?
Because I genuinely love the celebration?
Because I actually want to celebrate the incarnation of Jesus?

Quite honestly, I'm not sure why I celebrate Christmas. There are obviously legitimate reasons for celebrating it or for not celebrating it.

But. I do know this - that no matter what the holiday, time, or occasion, that Christ should be our focus. Christmas is a time when we can look at the awesome beauty of the fact that the God of the universe became next to nothing in order to save those who had turned their backs against Him. Not that we can't look at this any other time - but I guess that's what celebrations are for, right? Remembrance? To elevate something you prize as important?

So, during this Christmas season, during this celebration and remembrance - I want every move I make to be one that is elevating what I truly hold as the most important - that is, Christ. Not necessarily the giving, not necessarily the family, the traditions, the putting-others-first: because those are things that should flow out of my life as a result of my love for Christ: when Christ is put first.

Finally!

There's such a disparaging lack of decent Christmas blog backgrounds out there - actually, there's a terrible lack of decent ANYtime blog backgrounds out there...most of which I blame my friend Inders for making me such a web-design perfectionist.

I also had to go back to the normal template [::sob::] because I couldn't find any to fit the spiffy new one. So everything's a little more squished up again. [::wheeze::]

Of course, it is rather late to be finally changing my blog up, but ah, well. Life is far too busy.

Today in church, they had all their train sets up and so so so much WONDERFUL FOOD. I loooove the Sunday before Christmas! It's such fun to see all the trains and there were SO MANY this year! And I didn't have my camera. [boooo.]

The sermon was really good too - it was about focusing not on the "how" of our problems: as in, how to fix them, what to do to make things better, but rather the "who": the one who holds all in the palm of His hand. He talked a lot about how when we give Christ our brokenness, pain, and death: He exchanges it with joy, renewal, and life.

In other news, MY BIG SISTER IS COMING HOME FOR CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!! (whom I haven't seen in a year!!!) sad;fkharieudsj I'm so excited. (:

::sigh::

Well. That was a random update.

Keep seeing Dawn Treader!
(oho, you thought you could get out of hearing about that movie for at least one blog post, eh? sorry. =P )

Love, Hannah

2010

Yes, I've made 3 posts in one day...(well, technically not, today's January 1st)yes, it's 1:30 am, no, I am not planning on staying up all night.

Movies (as you probably well know) put me in a rather emotional, poetic sort of mood, and seeing as it is now 2010 and another year has past, I thought I might as well make a New Years post. :P This shall be my first post of 2010.

(and in case you were wondering, we were watching the Ultimate Gift. I love that movie. Always makes me cry. We've been watching a lot of Christmas movies lately because we missed them all at Christmastime...)

Here's what I posted on my facebook, I'm a bit too tired to think of anything else poetic or philosophical. But seeing as I wrote this at 10pm rather than now, it should make a bit more sense...

On a more serious note, for those of you who read my little blog here, thank you so much. :)

2010...is another gift from God. It's a full 365 days, 24 hours in each, 8,760 hours total - from Him to use for His glory. There is so much potential in that amount of time. How much of myself can I give to Him to further His kingdom this year? What can I do during this year to make it count, to make it different, to become closer to my Savior?

Happy New Year!

Love, Hannah

Christmas things...

One of my favorite things about Christmas is church. I especially am beginning to love advent - the candle lighting, stories, and all. Our family has been reading "Jotham's Journey", which is an advent story, and I LOVE it. It's so well written and sometimes we purposely skip a day so we can read two the next day because we can't stand the cliffhangers! =P

Last week we sang "Zither Carol" at church. I LOVE this song. I think the congregation really enjoyed it too.

This week our handbell choir played background music. I absolutely LOVE handbell choir. It's so much fun!!

I love this picture. These are the biggest bells, which Raymond and Jared got to play. The smallest ones are about half the size of your hand. [whereas these are about what, twice the size of your head?? =P]

Our little flute trio! I absolutely love our flute group. It makes me happy. =)

Katy and I just learned 4-in-hand about 2 weeks ago. 4-in-hand is where you have two bells in each hand [as opposed to one] and it's really tricky at first, but once you get the hang of it, you feel reeeally smart. :P We had a lot of fun playing and learning together as you can probably see....

Geneva Hall was decorated beautifully - all the trains everywhere and trees and decorations. I loved it.
The train tree

For at least this year, my favorite part about Christmas is definitely church. All the special music, decorations, candles, advent...I love it. =)

Titles are for those with creative minds...

Today has been a long day. And it's not half over. And the rest of the week is going to be long.

I spent this morning playing flute for a Hanukkah party with the Union Gospel Mission. I think I played for a total of 1.5 hours...which is a long time just to be playing background music...in dress shoes and with no food. But I loved it, and the seniors did too. I really love to play my music for people like that...because they love it, and I love to bless others in that way.

One of the seniors is friends with my sister [who's coming home TOMORROW!!] and she was talking to her on the phone during the event - and came up and held the phone up so that she could hear me playing. It was quite funny. (My sister usually plays for this event but wasn't home in time this year)

Tomorrow....is going to be a really long day. And I'm exhausted already. So please pray that everything will go smoothly and I'll have lots of energy. =) I will have lots of pictures and will tell you all about it afterwards!

Love, Hannah

I'm bored. And *slightly* hyper.

So! I'm going to make a random post. Because I'm bored and feeling random. And childish and immature. And I will probably look back at this post and be all like, "wow, was I dumb", because I'm not really thinking properly about how my sentences are worded....[see? that didn't even sound right..]

Heeheehee...oh, the joys of being random and hyper. But, there is some cause for my joys, as you shall soon see in the sentences that follow....[boy that sounded lame...]

1) My big sister is coming home for Christmas! In 8 days!! And just in case you're thinking "what in the world?? Hannah doesn't have a big sister", it's true, I do. But she adopted me, and we're not biological sisters. But we're sisters. =)

2)We started a flute group at church. I'm loving it. Immensely. I haven't played with a group of people just for fun in a long time and it felt really good. Plus I got to sing for the first time with the choir, and that was loads of fun.

3) Christmas time is always happy....

4) Did I mention my big sister is coming home for Christmas?

5) It's sunny out. I'm quite happy. And as cold as it is, I really like it. And I think so long as it stays sunny, I shall be positive about the lack of snow. However, if it decides to rain and stay this cold, I might have reason to complain. But So Far, it's sunny, so I'm happy.

6) I had hot chocolate this morning. and it was warm. Oh, and there was a gigantic vanilla bean marshmallow that I had with it. It was lovely.

7) I forgot to tell you that my sister is coming home for Christmas! =P

Love,
Hannah

PS if you're wondering why this post is tagged "purpleness" it's because I really wanted to use the tag, and because this post is random, I saw it a useful place to use it. :P

PPS please tell me if I made a really embarrassing typo and didn't notice it. [I tend to not notice things when I'm hyper] And please comment, because I love comments. =P

What to do??

I am in desperate need of a Christmas background for my blog. I want something green and red and without the reindeer/Santa stuff. And without anything that blocks the text. Yeah. I'm picky. If anyone finds one, or is talented enough to make one [unlike me] it would make my day. =)

As it is...I may have to end up with reindeer. Or Blueish snowmen-y things. But I really don't want something cold looking. It's already far too cold outside. =P