Have you ever met someone that you knew you would love? The moment they opened their mouth and spoke, you knew it. You knew their heart was something your heart was going to love… that was the case for me with Hannah Pauwels. The first time I met Hannah was at Training Camp. She seemed like a lifetime older than me because of the maturity she walked in and I could see the compassion she had for people in her eyes. She was introduced to my squad with the rest of my leadership team and she was described as “someone who walks in intimacy and creativity and passion.” I knew right away that I wanted to know her.
Hannah is an alumni team leader. This means that she is with my squad for the first three months of my race (which sadly is over in a week and a half) and she was assigned two teams to be the leader over. I got extremely lucky, and she was my team leader. At training camp, when all of us racers, or me at least, were extremely uncomfortable and nervous about being shoved into automatic teams where we were asked to be vulnerable, Hannah led in vulnerability. She broached the hard things and asked good questions. She empathized and showed genuine love for us, when she had only just met us. She talked about how in high school she was always the person her friends came to for counsel and advice and she was looked up to as a girl who really loved Jesus and followed Him closely. I immediately felt like I could relate to her, because I was that girl in high school. I was looked at as a girl who was crazy for Jesus and I had a lot of people come to me for advice and counsel and I found my identity in that. I thought thats what made me valuable, because people needed me. I was hearing Hannah say that that wasn’t her identity and that wasn’t what gave her worth. I knew at training camp that I wanted to know her. I wanted to be her friend. I wanted her to love me (I have always had this thing were I want leadership and authority to love me and I work very hard to get that. But I know now htat I have worth that comes from the Lord, I don’t have to work to make sure every person in authority respects and likes me). We all know how I am though, SUPER BIG MEGA AWKWARD. I didn’t know how to tell her I wanted to be her friend, so I didn’t.
Training camp came to an end, and the race finally rolled around. Hannah Pauwels on the field, is even greater than the Hannah I met at training camp, and maybe thats just because I’m living life with her every single day, but wow, I really value that woman. Hannah loves laughter. She shows you how to truly rejoice in the Lord in all things. She walks in so much joy, its contagious. You can see the Lord filling her up, there’s no other explanation for it. Hannah has a heart for community. She longs for good, intentional, personal conversations with everyone in her community and those she wants to bring into her community. She asks hard questions and calls people higher. She speaks people’s identity over them, reminding them who they are in the Lord. Hannah LOVES vulnerability and she leads by example in that area. She isn’t scared to talk about the messy parts of life, where sin has been way too prominent and the journey the Lord took her to get her out of it. Hannah is genuine. If I have a conversation with Han, I know that everything she said to me was truly meant and didn’t come from a shallow part of her heart. She has more intimacy with the Lord than I even knew was possibly, and it comes from hours of talking to Him and listening to Him and creating with Him (She’s an artist let me tell you). All of this about Hannah are things that I had been learning over the past few months, but like I mentioned before, I have this weird thing with authority. I was so focused on that fact that she was someone that was leading me, that I didn’t know how to dig into the friendship. She was someone that I loved and respected, but it was as a leader, not as a friend. These last couple weeks that changed… I don’t think it was anything dramatic or huge, I just saw her in a new light. Hannah Pauwels, this woman that I really respected and valued, was my friend. She loved me deeply and I loved her deeply in return. Han being someone I can be friends with and not just forever keep in this authority box, really shows me the growth the Lord has walked me through. All of that growth, you might say, is because I’m being led by crazy intentional amazing people like Hannah Pauwels.
So, Hannah Pauwels, whenever you read this… thank you for being you. You’re one of my new favorite faces of Jesus. Thank you for showing me His heart for me in a really new fresh way. I love ya, woman.
<3 K
