Why I’m Not Figuring Out What I Learned in 2020

lizabeth.hannah@gmail.comUncategorized

I don’t know about you, but these days I’m clinging desperately to anything that feels like hope. Christmas decorations up before Thanskgiving? Normally no but what the heck this year, it’s 2020 and the halls were decked. Got the shopping done early. Prayed for snow. Apparently, as I unloaded my bag of Christmas goodies at […]

Christmas When You’re Sad

lizabeth.hannah@gmail.comHealing

“I just don’t want to be all holly jolly,” a friend told me. I nodded. I know the feeling well. It’s been three years since I felt genuine happiness at Christmas. My babies were getting bigger. They could finally take a turn holding a candle at the Christmas Eve service in my memories I see […]

a poem

lizabeth.hannah@gmail.comUncategorized

A liturgy of feeling the carpet below my socked feet and bowing in worship listening to YouTube releasing all to Almighty God as I breathe out. Exhalation. The solace of slowly dicing onions sliding them off the knife into melted butter to simmer quiet music soothing preparing hot soup to nourish my family. Creation. The […]

Eating Healthy in Survival Mode (it CAN be done)

lizabeth.hannah@gmail.comUncategorized

Raise your hand if meal planning has caused you problems. If you’ve tried every method in the book to stay organized and list meals, buy the ingredients for those meals and then cook them on certain days of the week. But failed. Over and over again.  There are dozens of brilliant meal planning strategies out […]

5 Steps Toward Growing Lasting Change in Your Life

lizabeth.hannah@gmail.comUncategorized

I was a plant killer.  I’m not sure how it became a standing joke between my husband and I, but he thought it funny enough to buy me a snake plant once, because the label read something like, “Can be neglected for weeks at a time.” Sadly, the snake plant didn’t make it long in […]

What Good Does Suffering Actually Do?

lizabeth.hannah@gmail.comHeart Encouragement

“Why suffering? I get it but I don’t get it,” a friend told me recently. Yep. I agree with her. This “problem of pain” we face in everyday life – from minor annoyances to heavy trauma – what good does it actually do and why does God allow it?  Let’s be real. I can’t answer […]

3 Books to Read When Life is Hard

lizabeth.hannah@gmail.comUncategorized

Once an optimist, always an optimist, I think. The hard parts of life keep surprising me. I think I subconsciously believe that if I would just heal completely, or if my husband would just get his dream job, or if my kids would grow out of tattling or whining, that everything would be peachy keen […]

It’s Time to Buy a Yoga Mat

lizabeth.hannah@gmail.comHealing

I have a complicated history of caring for myself.  Over the past decade, the suggestion of yoga slipped into my life from this person and that. A printed instructional sheet of yoga moves someone gave me that I practiced in my college dorm room. (Oh, the first time I posed in warrior one I never […]

When You Can’t Figure Out What God’s Teaching You

lizabeth.hannah@gmail.comHeart Encouragement

Whoosh.The machine at my feet kicked on, the cuffs at my ankles compressed and squeezed the air from my lungs as they tightened on my legs. My left big toe itched. My ice water needed refilling, and I could use that pain pill the nurse mentioned an hour ago.  The room was cold and gray […]

It’s [more than] Ok to Raise My Hands in Church

lizabeth.hannah@gmail.comUncategorized

Nobody ever told me not to raise my hands in a worship service.  But a.) I never got moved enough emotionally to want to and b.) one word: distraction.  We’ve all seen the parodies by Tim Hawkins and John Crist about church worship. We’ve seen the side eyes glanced at that one lady who dares […]