No, I’m not talking about the kind of hippy that uses a crystal for deodorant, makes toothpaste from scratch, or brews her own kombucha. (Even though, yes, I do all of that.) I’m talking about a beautiful picture The Lord gave me of myself while I was at training camp this past summer.
It was during an intimate time with the women on my squad. A time where our mentor, Erika, led us to pray and ask The Lord what He wanted to grow and establish in us, what He saw in us that we could end the race with. We sat quietly and prayed. Erika asked us to envision ourselves in front of a mirror at the end of a race.
“What do you see? What do you see in this person after completing these 11 months away. What do you see? Who do you see? What is God calling you into?”
Friends, I very clearly saw myself in this mirror. However, it wasn’t a Hannah that I was currently operating out of… not a Hannah I recognized in the slightest. It was the clearest picture of myself sitting completely calm, completely confident, content to just be. The only way I could explain it was ‘Blissed out Hippy Hannah,’ and I have been talking about her ever since.
What have you learned?
What has the Lord taught you in this time away so far?
I get these questions frequently and to be honest, sometimes it’s overwhelming. Because what HASN’T He redeemed in me? How HASN’T He met me? How HASN’T He grown me? Trust me, there is an infinite abundance of what I could still grow in, an abundance of what I could surrender, but the amount of what has already happened is so beautifully overwhelming.
One way I know I have grown, is in newfound levels of trust I have in The Lord and who He has created me to be.
I’m not a worrier.
I’m not an anxious woman.
I’m not a woman who has to see every detail before she trusts herself to move.
Why? Because those aren’t characteristics that the Father has given me. He actually redeems that in me. Yes, I still have moments of anxiousness, moments of worry, moments of wanting to see the full picture of life before I move in any given direction, but I’m so much quicker to realize these things in myself and to take it to The Lord and ask Him to bend down and to sit with me in these moments of self.
When I saw that picture, that picture of a confidently calm woman, I have to say that I laughed. She was unrecognizable. She wasn’t someone that that I would ever consider to actually be me.
But WOW OH WOW was I wrong.
One of the buzzwords surrounding the World Race is abandonment. It’s something that the Lord has completely renewed in me during this past half year. As soon as I surrender parts of Hannah, I walk in characteristics of Christ.
Characteristics of Him that aren’t capable of sharing citizenship in my heart and life when I’m holding on so tightly to self.
Control, trust, rest, and self-confidence, are a few words the Lord has been redeeming in me.
I feel different.
I think differently.
I act different.
I pursue The Lord with anticipation knowing He’s so quick to reveal and quick to give in confidence.
I rest in such a renewed way. Without a to do list. Without an agenda, I actually feel and look rested.
Blissed out Hippy Hannah was a picture I would NEVER be able to conjure on my own. It was something so outside of Hannah at training camp that I knew it was from The Lord, and friends, did I hold tightly to that picture, that redemptive promise that The Lord gave me.
I can sit here today, in Namibia, and confidently say that I am becoming ‘Blissed out Hippy Hannah’. I have newfound freedoms in who The Lord has created me to be simply because I have decided to live a life of abandonment. Don’t get me wrong, there is and will always be more for me to abandon, but I’m so thankful for the peace and hunger I have to pursue more of it, more abandonment.
After being recommended to listen to an artist known by Sleeping At Last, I have found a song by the name of Pluto that so reflects my heart and what I have been encouraged to grow in while abandoning self. Music and lyrics are definitely something that The Lord has used to speak so clearly to me throughout my walk with Him, and today while laying in my top bunk mere inches from the ceiling fan of our hostel, I was listening to this new-to-me artist and a song struck a chord in a new way. It could mean nothing to you, or something completely different than what The Lord revealed to me in it. If you want, give it a listen and look up the lyrics.
“Until one day I had enough
Of this exercise of trust
I leaned in and let it hurt
And let my body feel the dirt
When I break pattern, I break ground
I rebuild when I break down
I wake up more awake than I’ve ever felt before.”
Love ya lots from way over and down here in Namibia
— becoming ‘Blissed Out Hippy Hannah’
