In case you are not up on the details, I returned to Houston two weeks ago, and am working as a live-in nanny and continuing to develop the Reading Tutor Program and community garden at the Forge for Families. I've found myself in a slightly unexpected position of creating and developing my community nearly from scratch ~ things were much different during Mission Year. I know or have met most of the people I am presently in contact with, but I find myself in the very initial stages of determining how I will invest my time, and wondering where my intimate friendships will arise this year. There is a quote from a Mumford & Sons song that says, "Where you invest your love, you invest your life," which I think is very true, and so I take on this season with a certain sobriety; it is teeming with significance.
My spiritual life over the last two weeks has been rich and full of blessing. Many people struggle with the re-entry into normal life from the spiritually favorable structure of Mission Year, but the Lord has kept me very close. While visiting home for three weeks, I was surrounded by loved ones who share with me a consuming and even desperate need for God (and admittance of such need) coupled with a living hope and a rampant search for more. I am reminded - through experience, the best teacher - of the both massive gift and incredible necessity of having good friends: friends who believe. (This sort also happens to be the sort who are most attuned to and capable of committed, faithful friendship. Bonus.)
Now, through my reflective phase at the end of Mission Year, my good friends back home, and other influences and convictions, I've been in a phase of desiring to listen more and more fully to Father's voice.
It really began several months ago, when He began to make clear to me how miraculously He listens to my prayers. I know that all those of us who in some way ascribe to the Christian faith uphold a textbookish requirement to believe that the Eternal hears our murmurings... but really, who actually believes that the Great One listens? Who, after all, am I that the Ultimate should listen to me... and actually give me what I ask for?? But He does! He really does, and has, and has tenderly shown me that He does. As my heart grows closer to Him, His heart grows closer to mine. And He cares for what -and specifically who- I care for, and our hearts become each other's in the communion of love and pain. And as His heart comes closer to mine, I desire to come closer to His, and the desire born to listen -for me to listen- is truer than it has ever been before. And life is no less painful, but it is continually fuller.
So now, in this season of newness, I seek to listen; I pray for God to guide me toward whom and how I should love; I ask Him to continue to break my heart, though it is becoming a scarier thing to ask; I ask Him to give me more of His love, and I know that He will and does. I've come up against new challenges, and also against old ones. Aspects of my life are troubling to me, but I feel that I am growing in peace and clarity.
Thank you for being prayer warriors for my life. I believe that your prayers have a more tremendous effect than you imagine.
Please pray for me in (one or more of) these ways this month:
~an abundance of love and patience for the children
~a spirit of rigorous creativity
~wisdom and leading in my job at the Forge
~a spirit and routine increasingly adept to listening
~for my dear friend Jessi
~for my brother Benjamin
With love and gratitude,
Hannah Rooth
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| My sister and I, Birch Bay, August 2013 |
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| View from the peak of Early Winter Spires, which I climbed with my father, August 2013 |
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