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Hannah Morrell
Faithfulness Even Still

My friends in Haiti are isolated from the world again after the gangs fired on a commercial plane and the airport was closed this week. They were ousted from their homes for over a year while fighting raged around them and they went into hiding. They have shown up for teen and preteen kids who are watching their friends die, and who are still healing from their pasts. I am so blown away by their faithfulness.

I speak to several woman who are raising kids while dealing with debilitating illness and chronic pain in themselves. They show up for their families in the ways they can while desperately surviving their own health journeys. I know they often feel like they are failing, like they can’t do what other moms can do. But I stand in awe of their faithfulness to keep showing up.

Faithfulness Even Still
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Hannah Morrell
The Wilderness

Several years ago, my husband and I were camping in Moab, Utah with our one-year-old son. Camping is probably a generous term—we did have a pop-up camper and weren’t really roughing it. We did, however, drive about half an hour outside of town on a dirt road to the middle of nowhere, and then parked the camper at the top of a rocky hill. The views were spectacular, and we would only see another car on the dirt road about once every few hours. It was a little taste of the wilderness, with only us and our little camper. No cell service, no toilets, and no other people around.

This seemed like a fantastic experience until we decided the next day to head back into town to get a few groceries. After piling in the truck, my husband tried to start the vehicle, but it wouldn’t start. The truck’s battery was dead. And the wilderness experience that seemed like a lot of fun became quite scary.

I started to panic, wondering how we would ever get out of there. No cars came by on the road, and it was at least a day’s walk to get back into town with a one-year-old and only so much food for camping. Finally after a bit of worry, my husband brilliantly figured out that he could use the camper batteries to jump the truck battery, and we were finally moving again.

But what about the figurative wildernesses in which we find ourselves where we can’t figure a way out, and we sit and wait with no resources and no hope? Wildernesses are a real experience in life, and one which often catches us by surprise. I’m not sure why, as so many of the people in the Bible went through years and years of wilderness, sometimes figurative and sometimes quite literal. There are stories of prison, hardships, desert-living, wandering, frustration, hopelessness, disbursement and aching for home.

The Wilderness
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Hannah Morrell
Why I Choose Jesus

I get questions a lot of times about why I love and serve God even when He doesn’t always give me what I want. A lot of people wonder why I continue to pursue relationship with Jesus, and consider it old-fashioned or burdensome. So, I wanted to write a post about why I choose Jesus.

It’s definitely not because of the people who call themselves Christians—although some are a wonderful gift to me and I’m so grateful for them. But the people in the Church are messy just like everyone else, and when we expect them to be perfect or to never hurt or reject us, we will be disappointed. I know, though, that people who believe in Jesus recognize they need something other than themselves to do life. So, as they are dependent on Him, they love people well. When they are relying on their own self-righteousness or rule-following, they end up in a place of religion which is toxic and downright abusive sometimes. The word religion means to bind over and over again. When we bind ourselves up in trying to please God without the power He has given us to do so, we are in a bigger mess than if we deny Him entirely.

I also don’t pursue relationship with God because I was raised to believe Him and brainwashed into doing so. In fact, I have had many reason NOT to pursue relationship with Him over the years, and it would actually be easier for me and make more sense to drop the whole thing! I could make more money, have easier relationships and not experience nearly as much rejection.

Instead, I love Jesus because He loved me first, not when I met His standard or expectation. He reached out to me in love with no strings attached. I don’t have to accept His love, and He experiences rejection more than any other person I know as many refuse Him.

Why I Choose Jesus
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Hannah Morrell
Walking Like a Superhero

There’s a little boy I see every morning when I’m dropping my daughter off at school. He comes to help drop off his older brother, and always shows up in his Superman pajamas complete with cape. The thing that always strikes me as hilarious is how he walks next to his dad. He’s this tiny little man, but walks like he is 10 feet tall—he definitely has the superhero walk down. His cape flows behind him, and he takes large, commanding steps no matter where he is going.

I love watching him and it makes me giggle a little to watch him stride through the parking lot. This morning, though, God spoke and asked me how I would walk if I knew and believed the super power that dwells within me? That caught me off guard. You see, I used to always walk with my eyes on my shoes (which might explain some of my clumsiness). I didn’t feel that I had worth, and I walked like it. I didn’t understand Who I had, or who I was.

You see, when you have Christ’s Life within you, you have the power of the Living God walking around with you. He says He will be everything you need, and we have all of Him to meet all of our problems, dilemmas and circumstances. I think when I realize that I am the chosen dwelling place of God Himself (1 Corinthians 6:19), and that makes me His.

Walking Like a Superhero
Posts
Hannah Morrell
Cry of the Broken-Hearted

We cry out from a broken heart,
Shards lying all around us on the ground.
Our tears pour out—
It feels like they will never end.

The pain explodes from within us,
Our chests feeling like they will break apart.
Lying face down on the ground,
Our desperate plea for help and rescue escaping our lips.

Our Kind Shepherd is here,
Never leaving, never abandoning us in grief.
A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief Himself,
He will not turn away.

Cry of the Broken-Hearted

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Hopelessness to Hope

Hopelessness to Hope

Do you ever have those days when you wake up and feel that it’s all hopeless? You lie awake at night considering all you have going on in your life, and imagine that nothing will ever change and your life will always be this way? Maybe you have tried to break free and to change things, but these attempts have fallen to the ground with no sign of completing their task.

Your heart cries out and aches for relief as you go about your day with a dreary cloud of despair tormenting your every move. The problems seem insurmountable, and you wonder how you will continue to walk forward. Everything ahead of you feels uncertain, or, even worse—the same as it is now.

I was reading the story of Hezekiah in Isaiah, where the powerful king has sent messengers to taunt his people and foretell their defeat by his army. The Assyrian army had destroyed many people and nations at this point, and were greatly feared. Hezekiah takes the message to God, crying out for help. I would imagine that it looked pretty hopeless to him as well. But he poured it all out before God anyway. God’s response through Isaiah was basically--don’t worry, I’m taking care of it.

In What Are You Trusting?

In What Are You Trusting?

I am discovering there is nothing like the year 2020 for helping us sift through and recognize what it is we use as our foundation and safety point. For many, it’s being able to get up each day and not have to think too much about going out, or our health. The COVID crisis this year has changed that significantly, and we no longer have the freedom to go about life as we did before. Those who struggle with chronic illness have walked through shifting trust away from health already, and in some ways are prepared better for the current COVID-world than those who have not had their physical limitations as pronounced.

Some trust financial stability, and the means to provide for their family or to maintain their standard of living. This year has taken its tolls on this safety net as well for many, with job losses, economic nosedives and general unease about what the future holds. Some put their trust in the control they have over the future, or at least the control they think they have. We go about our days assuming we know the future, and 2020 has basically blown that out of the water. I think my most common answer for my kids’ questions this year has been “I don’t know” as I don’t know what will happen with school, when we will get to see their grandparents in Texas, or even what next week will hold!

What we are really confronted with during this year particularly is how little control we have. We maintain an illusion of being in control of our lives, but we don’t realize how much this is a falsehood.

Your Problem Isn't Sin

Your Problem Isn't Sin

My mentor told a story of a pastor who had in his church a young man wracked with guilt every Sunday. Every week, the man would walk to the front to confess his mistakes for the week, recommitting to being done with whatever he was doing that week. The pastor had finally had enough, and meant to call him out the following Sunday. As he stood at the front, the young man rose and began his weekly trip to tell the pastor about his mess-ups. And God spoke to the pastor and told him to tell the young man, “You can come again, and again, and again. I will never tire of you coming to me.” The pastor was overcome with the beauty of the forgiveness and compassion of God for this man.

I talk to many people each week, and often it can become a confessional of how they feel they have failed. The communication in many Christian circles has been one of obsession with sin, condemnation for wrong-doing and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to try to make God happy again. I don’t believe this is Biblical, though. Jesus is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. He says that apart from Him you can do nothing. He talks of how he forgets your sin, and throws it as far as the east is from the west. He talk of forgiving over and over, without resentment or demand.

Sin is not what keeps people from God—pride and unbelief does that. Sin has been dealt with on the cross. It’s the pride of feeling I must do everything independently, including “being good” although the standard for good is one which I cannot attain. It’s also the relentless unbelief that God doesn’t work to pursue me or want me—it is all up to me to live life in a way that pleases Him. So, we carry on trying harder, trying again and working ourselves into a depressing frenzy of self-torture.

The Weed of Fear

The Weed of Fear

I have a vine in my backyard that seems to be a parasite that can’t be stopped . I know I talk a lot about The Vine (Jesus in John 15:5), but this isn’t that kind of vine.

I first found evidence of it coming through the fence from my neighbor’s back yard into mine. I just cut off the branches coming through the fence, and thought I had it sorted. I found more a bit further into the yard, and started to wonder. Finally, some popped up right in the middle of my raised garden bed, meaning it had gone through the weed guard and all the soil and come up right in the middle of my vegetables.

This meant war. I started pulling the vine out, and it kept going. And going. I pulled up the weed guard a little to look underneath, and realized there was an immense system of vines growing all under it like it was a comfortable blanket rather than a method of keeping weeds out. I found it clear across on the other side of the yard, which means this vine system is now growing throughout my entire yard, underneath everything and lying in wait for whatever plant it can take over while I’m not watching.

Now, I realize I make it sound quite menacing, but honestly, this plant is trying to take over! But it got me thinking about the small things we allow to grow under the surface of our lives without checking them at the fence, and as they slowly spread and choke the life out of everything we have tended so carefully, we can wonder how they could have gotten there.

Waves Are Only Waves

Waves Are Only Waves

I was listening to the song “Peace, Be Still” sung by Hope Darst the other day, and thinking about when Jesus calmed the storm in Mark 4. The world right now often feels like we are in the middle of a storm, as it rages around us with all its fury and confusion. We can begin to feel as though everything is out of control, and we are just floating over each wave as we are pelted with rain.

Many of the disciples who were with Jesus were fisherman, so the sea was not a foreign place to them. They spent a large part of their lives understanding the weather, knowing when fishing was best and dealing with boats on the sea. This storm sent them all into a fright, which made me consider a couple of things.

Celebrating in the Brokenness

Celebrating in the Brokenness

I really hate cliff-hanger endings. I know some people consider it an art form, but I just get frustrated and want everything wrapped up and sorted out. I wrote a post a couple of years ago on the hardship of being in the middle of a story with no idea what the end will be. We like to listen to those who have completed that part of their journey—the cancer is gone, the marriage is restored, the kid has returned to the family. But right now, there is so much that cannot be tied up and completed. I feel that my most common answer to questions is “I don’t know.”

I battle with the part of me that wants to make plans, schedule things, get excited about whatever is coming next. And God keeps calling me back to moment-by-moment of walking with Him, and entrusting the ending and the future to Him. And frankly, I don’t like it.

The revelation I’ve been having, though, is how there is such a sweetness to that simplicity and smallness of the moments lived hand-in-hand with Jesus. I am weary, and it’s because I keep trying to run ahead and sort it all out for God. In taking a pause, I am reminded that it isn’t my responsibility to do God’s job—I get to follow.

Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day

I have heard from many people during this pandemic season that they feel like they are living in the movie Groundhog Day, where the main character relives the same day over and over again. Sometimes these days can seem to stretch on forever with little change, and we don’t have big plans to look forward to or answers to the questions of when we can do things we have hoped to do. I feel especially for those who are in nursing homes and care facilities, sometimes limited to just their room for months on end with no visitors to break up the monotony.

In some ways, it is similar with grieving a loved one. It’s like someone hit a giant pause button, and life doesn’t go anywhere for a bit. Even so, there are signals of change all around us, albeit small ones. The flowers bloom. The trees leaf out. The kids keep growing. My hair keeps turning more gray.

I am a person who loves making milestones a big deal. We celebrate birthdays, holidays, last days of school, any sort of milestone. I want to throw a party and invite everyone to participate in some way of acknowledging what has passed. But now the celebrations have changed, and they are much smaller and less populated.

We can believe that with nothing to look forward to, we are stuck. We feel like we are living the same day over and over. But this morning God reminded me that this time can be a gift.

The Deception of Being Alone

The Deception of Being Alone

My daughter hates to be in one part of the house by herself while we are in the other part. She doesn’t want to go upstairs or to the basement alone, even if we stand at the stairs and remind her that we are present and not leaving.

I have friends who, during this stay-at-home season, are suffering through all by themselves. They are isolated in an apartment, have lost their jobs and are trying to find ways to entertain themselves and keep busy.

Sometimes even when we live with others and have good connections, we can feel alone. I was struggling with that feeling recently—feeling that I was slugging it out all by myself. Everyone else seemed to have a team or an ally in their work, and then there was me. I suppose some of that comes with working in a one-woman nonprofit ministry. But God started showing me that the idea that I am alone in this battle was a deception.

What To Do When You Aren't Radiating With Hope

What To Do When You Aren't Radiating With Hope

I always want to be real with you guys, not pretending to have it all together or to never struggle. I want you to know that Jesus is the same for me as He is for you—and He is enough for all the messes in life as well as the days that seems to stretch on forever. And I hit a wall this week.

I was exhausted, felt sick (not coronavirus symptoms) and had to cancel some remote appointments. In short, I was not radiating with hope like Romans 15:13 talks about.

Have you ever been there?

I knew when I woke up the morning after that I needed to regain my focus in order to operate out of the fullness of uncontainable joy and perfect peace, because I definitely was not. I usually get to the end of my rope when I don’t even realize I have changed my source and have decided that all the pressure to perform, do and produce has landed squarely on my own shoulders again.

Walking in Dependence

Walking in Dependence

My son and I were talking yesterday and I watched him finally confront the sadness that he had kept at bay for the last couple of weeks. He was sad he wasn’t going back to school for the foreseeable future, that he wouldn’t get to enjoy days with his great teacher and friends. And he asked me how long the sickness was going to last. And I don’t know. So, we talked about how we do hard things, and find the joy in them. And we talked about how it’s okay to be sad and miss things, and then also okay to enjoy the day in the way we could.

The reactions from many of the people I work with in counseling have been similar—how do we do this season when everything has been uprooted and made raw?

I was thinking through practical tools I’ve been giving people, which I will talk about later in this post. But first, God reminded me this morning we do this season of life just like we do every other season--in dependence on Jesus. Every morning we can wake up knowing that the day is too big for us, and ask Him to be all we need for it. That hasn’t changed with the magnitude of the situation, or the radical difference many of us feel in our lives. God hasn’t changed. He is still more than enough for all the pieces of our lives, even the ones that look like pandemic, shelter-at-home and remote everything.

Courageous Peace

Courageous Peace

I often misunderstand God’s peace. I want it to be an absence of hard circumstances, or not being uncomfortable. Sometimes, it’s equated with happiness. But the verses in the Bible about peace don’t view peace like this at all. In fact, it’s often talked about in the middle of hard things. And Jesus says that it’s not a fragile peace like the world gives, but perfect peace. Unexplainable peace.

I have realized that I generally want peace to be tied to circumstances, but that’s comfort. No, peace doesn’t come from what surrounds you, but from Jesus Himself. To me, that’s actually quite a relief as that means I don’t have to have great circumstances to find peace. (Although, don’t get me wrong—I’d love to not be in the middle of suffering.) But that means that anywhere, and in anything, Jesus can be my peace.

No More Guilt

No More Guilt

Unfortunately in a lot of Christian communities, the emphasis is on guilt. We are told that we are supposed to feel really guilty all the time in order to get our act cleaned up, and to keep wallowing in the guilt so we don’t fall back into bad behaviors.

My friend and teacher Mike Wells used to differentiate between false guilt and true guilt, and I think it’s a concept that many have not considered because they almost equate God and guilt together. True guilt is the gentle nudge of the Holy Spirit that what you are doing or have done doesn’t suit you as a new creation in Christ—this is the guilt that leads to repentance. We admit the problem, turn away and move forward in Him. Any guilt that comes after that initial repentance is false guilt.

Dealing with Failure

Dealing with Failure

Last week, I was in a mood. For most of the afternoon, I stomped around grumpy with the kids, the house, the husband. Everything. I justified it in my head as being someone else’ fault, but it wasn’t. I dished out orders to my precious little ones—I even got mad at the dog because she wouldn’t stop barking at something she has made up in her head! I was incredibly unpleasant to be around.

When I finally realized what a jerk I was being, I hung my head in shame. Here I am, the one who is supposed to know Jesus and experience His fullness and strength for everything—stomping around and throwing a temper tantrum like a 3-year-old.

Now, I have learned a few things about failure. And it is an ongoing sort of lesson, but I wanted to encourage any of you that feel like you have failed recently whether it be in a big or small way. These are some common misconceptions with failure that I think will help you come back to your acknowledgment of your state of abiding in Christ.

Fear Doesn't Get To Be Your Boss

Fear Doesn't Get To Be Your Boss

Anybody else make decisions throughout their day struggling with fear? Could be anything from fear of death to fear of missing out, and everything in between. But fear becomes the boss of you. It tells you how to live and what to avoid. It makes you believe you are controlling your life by obeying it. But any control given to you by fear is an illusion.

So, if God doesn’t give you the spirit of fear (2 Timothy 1:7-8), how do you take fear out of the driver’s seat?

God's Enoughness

God's Enoughness

What do you need for today? Do you feel like you’ve been waiting so long for something that has yet to come? Do you feel a growing discouragement that it won’t ever come? Do you look at your day and feel it has already become too big for you to handle?

There are many things I have asked God for that He hasn’t brought yet. And there are things He has promised me that He hasn’t yet fulfilled. I was reading Genesis 17, which begins by telling us that Abram is now 99 years old. This man has been waiting on God’s promise of a son who will become a great nation for many, many years. I bet he’s been tempted to quit believing God’s promise many times. 

Lessons in Rest

Lessons in Rest

As we close out 2019, I am reflecting on the word God gave me this year. I don’t do a word for the year often, but this one was incredibly prominent throughout the year for me. He gave me the word “rest” and I wanted to tell you what He’s taught me about rest this year.

When God first told me that “rest” was the theme for the year, I laughed because of all I had to accomplish this year. It was not the year I would have picked for rest. But what He was showing me was that rest wasn’t about what I had to do, but the Source from which I operated.  When I realize that everything I need for the Christian life comes from the Life of Christ within, I don’t have to overexert, overcommit, or overwork to try to make it all happen.

What is Abiding Life?

What is Abiding Life?

What is the abiding life? Imagine a branch which decides that it can produce grapes just fine on its own—it’s doesn’t need the life from the Vine. And then it gets even worse as it believes that the Vine has required it to produce fruit, and there is pressure associated with trying to meet this requirement with only its own strength as its source. You can see the branch will get frustrated, blame the Vine for putting this standard on it, and finally grow completely discouraged that it can ever live as it created to live—fruitful.

God's Blessing

God's Blessing

A friend of mine gave me the Passion translation of Genesis that just was released, and I was struck immediately in the introduction by something that was said about blessing. Genesis is full of talk of God’s blessing, and yet I realized I had a bad definition of blessing. I had always thought of it as the “good stuff” like riches, power, freedom, etc. You know, sort of like the opposite of a curse. 

Walking with the broken to find hope in Jesus