There’s something about cool summer nights that I love. Just love. I took a walk tonight, for the sake of just walking and thinking. I actually haven’t done that in a very long time. With the hour past midnight, and the neighborhood lit with a solitary streetlamp and the crescent moon overhead, the night was quiet with the exception of a few chirping crickets. Strolling by still houses, I felt different. I don't know. It was a good different though. 

So I reach the top of my hill and I simply sit down on the sidewalk at 1 something in the morning. I think I could sit there forever. I used to walk around my neighborhood a lot to think or imagine, but that was when I was in middle school. Actually, I did it a lot my senior year too because I was super depressed all the time. haha. how things have changed.

Now nearly 19, I scale the nearby water tower with my eyes, and feel a sudden surge of childish ambition to climb the ladder so that I can journal up there while dangling my feet off the top of the tower. I feel all bridge to terabithia-ish. A car drives by and slows down and although I can't see the driver behind his glaring headlights, I'm sure he thinks i'm some suicidal runaway. I feel sort of awkward but its too nice where i'm at, so I stay. After a while, I walk to another area behind houses and i'm sort of scared cause its really dark and I cant see a thing but I get to a place where I see the view from our hill and its amazing. Not caring how dirty I’ll get, I climb up this tall brick wall and sit on the ledge to soak in the night. How Hannah of me. =)

During the day, I manage to feel busy even when I just stay at home. I suppose I have a tendency to complicate things and worry in aspiring to do a lot, when I really just need to breathe and enjoy whatever it is I’m doing or not doing. While on the ledge with the distant city lights like tiny bright sequins, I breathe, I talk to god, and I make plans to return the next night with much anticipation.

I felt like a little girl. It’s the same way I feel when I go to the library. haha i'm serious. i like it.

the one downside of my midnight escapade: as i jumped off the wall, i scraped my left wrist and now it is beginning to hurt. a lot more.

the end.

There must be more than this. O breath of God, come breathe within.

this week has been so long. it doesn't help that i am awake for 20 hours of the day and that's if i'm lucky. i feel like i've been living day to day, deadline to deadline, paper to paper, without being able to think, hope, or work for the things of the future, be it the next week, this summer, or whenever. and it breaks my heart because i want to, i want vision. i want to take action, i want to serve and most of all i just want jesus because i love Him so much. He is seriously the only thing worth living for, the only beauty in this life and sole purpose for being, and yet we get distracted. we lose sight. we are selfish.

i want first quarter back. i miss the intimacy, the joy, and i KNOWWW that it's there and i KNOWWW that i just need to spend time with Him. i am simply in a new season and i'm growing and learning that it isn't about me. learning to lose myself to be found in You, to pour out to others while falling facedown because You are glorious and worthy of all my praise. i am nothing. purify my heart jesus. i guess in a lot of ways, i feel like i can be strong for other people, but inside i just feel like i'm barely clinging on. i feel like i disappoint people who know where I really am inside. I feel like I need to be so strong right now for my family, for homegroup, people we're reaching out to, ministry, etc. when in all honesty, i feel weak, to a point that it is numbing, but i can't be. i can't.

i've been hesitant to write an entry like this for a while because for everything that i am saying, i can think of a verse to solve the problem. i think this is what makes somebody who believes in God's Word different from the person who neither believes nor knows God. in a way, i wish i was completely broken and could be spoonfed and nurtured back to vibrancy but i'm not because i know His enduring word, because i know i have to persevere and claim his promises of joy, peace, and strength. So while i am weak, while i am tired, i know that i am not struck down and perhaps it is in this limbo that i struggle and fear. it is at this place where i know that i need to fight that i feel weak and burdened, but how else would i mature spiritually? by His strength and grace alone. 

god is faithful. god is sovereign over school, family, friends, everything, but right now, i just want Him for His deep love, abounding grace, and comforting omniscience--for knowing my heart and thoughts before i even utter them. I want Him for his closeness. please god. please.

For our God is a consuming fire. hebrews 12:29

From My Utmost For His Highest:

After God's Silence--What?

"So, when He heard that he was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was." John 11:6

Has God trusted you with a silence-- a silence that is big with meaning? God's silences are his answers. Think of those days of absolute silence in the home at Bethany! Is there anything analogous to those days in your life? Can God trust you like that, or are you still asking for a visible answer? God will give you the blessings you ask if you will not go any further without them; but His silence is the sign that He is bringing you into a marvelous understanding of Himself. Are you mourning before God because you have not had an audible response? You will find that God has trusted you in the most intimate way possible, with an absolute silence, not of despair, but of pleasure, because He saw that you could stand a bigger revelation. If God has given you a silence, praise Him, He is bringing you into the great run of His purposes. The manifestation of the answer in time is a matter of God's sovereignty. Time is nothing to God. For a while you said--" I asked God to give me bread, and He gave me a stone." He did not, and today you find He gave you the bread of life.

A wonderful thing about God's silence is that the contagion of his stillness gets into you and you become perfectly confident--"I know God has heard me." His silence is the proof that He has. As long as you have the idea that God will bless you in answer to prayer, He will do it, but He will never give you the grace of silence. If Jesus Christ is bringing you into the understanding that prayer is for the glorifying of His Father, He will give you the first sign of His intimacy--silence.

hi all,

i hope everyone is doing well. sure we have finals and all of that, but surprisingly, i am at peace because of god's grace. i seem to find amusement in the little things. so in the powell library bathrooms, they have these "writings on the stall"-- monthly one-page newsletters posted on the stall door for you to read while you do your thing. There is a column where they address a reader's letter and this month's weighty topic of interest was... the lack of toilet seat covers in the restrooms and our dire need for an adequate supply. One reader bluntly suggested that maybe they could buy more toilet seat covers instead of wasting their money on printing out lame newsletters in expensive colored-ink for the stalls,  to which the staff writer(s), writer, i presume, defensively responded that the janitorial staff receives a certain quota of seat covers so maybe people could use seat covers more sparingly..i wish i could quote it verbatim but yeah THAT SERIOUSLY CRACKED ME UP. i was peeing by the way. i can't wait for next month's newsletter. HAHA. anyway, i found another thing tremendously amusing but i forgot what it was. also, my bracket score pleases me, seeing as i am currently ranked #1 on my floor. i could brag more about this but i know certain people are sensitive so i shall refrain. hahah. besides, it'll probably be a short-lived bragging right and then that'd be embarassing.

so i sound really carefree huh? i'm not really. i just woke up from a  40 minute nap. refreshing? NO. IT WAS LIKE AN INESCAPABLE NIGHTMARE-i dreamed about my NOTES. THEY WERE LIKE FULL PAGE PDF FILES OF NOTES. I COULD READ WORDS LIKE "VOLATILE ORGANIC COMPOUND" i remember that so vividly. AND THEN THE PAGE WOULD FLIP TO ONE ABOUT BLACK POWER AND ASSIMILATION, AND THEN ETHICS IN MASS MEDIA. just thinking about it makes me shudder. maybe i have been studying too much. i'm so behind though.

after reading this entry, you will probably come to the conclusion that i have a really lame sense of humor or that studying has made me wack. did i just use that word? anyway, if anything, hopefully reading this entry proved to be a refreshing or at least unique respite from your usual dilly-dallying amongst facebook profiles and aim infos you know you've already checked countless times in your efforts to procrastinate. i only know because i do it too. so while we're at it, let's include some substance with some verses that i have found to be encouraging:

"For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life. And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart." Galatians 6:8-9

"My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." Psalm 73:26

And i'm off to food for finals and a review session. May god bless you abundantly and i pray that you will open your eyes to see that He is good and faithful even when we feel listless, weak, broken, or even simply distracted. Let us glory in knowing and understanding God, and that alone.

Let everything that has breath praise the lord. Praise you in the morning, praise you in the evening. Praise you when i'm young and when i'm old. Praise you when i'm laughing. Praise you when I'm grieving. Praise you every season of the soul! Yes, even through finals, and whatever season, dry or however trying, you may be going through. And in all seriousness, I know how hard it is, especially lately.

Nevertheless, choose to.

i can't believe it's already the sixth week of winter quarter and as i jot down events and assignments in my planner, i just feel as if it's a never ending cycle. at the same time, i know the year is going to end before i know it. so far my first year has been good, to say the least.  

i'm finally settling into this routine of college life and i actually enjoy staying here on weekends when not too long ago, i'd grow nauseous thinking about college and worry about finding good friends, missing my family and mom's cooking. well the food isn't a problem because as evidenced by my 10 pound weight gain (no, i'm not proud of it), i love the food. hahah. among my favorites are de neve's bbq chicken pizza-- DIVINE, bcafe's yogurt parfait, and hedrick's udon when it's real udon. and friends, yeah. i've got that covered that too.

other than the food, what does my college life consist of? a smattering of classes and discussions, long treks up the hill and down the north campus route, late night study rooms that seem to get more late as the year progresses, team meetings, morning prayer, and homegroup meetings. lunches by the windows with sunlight streaming in just the way i like it, loud catch up dinners with helen in hedrick, and the always satisfying and deep conversations with caroline. sitting under the arches of royce or occasionally on the lawn when it isn't wet since it's just a collegy thing i've always wanted to do, scanning for activities on bruinwalk and not finding any that strike my interest, wondering about my future and what i'm good at. listening to my ipod, reading in powell, fun train trips, westwood occassionally, procrastinating, writing papers, ltg and girl talks with christine, girl talks on aim with chester hahah. sharing about my productive days with bunto and hearing about his, taking pictures on hannah's macbook, discipleship, sleeping, and questioning, reflecting, and praying. questioning and searching for my individual purpose here at ucla. god's purpose for me. yearning to be broken and desperate for god and before god every single day, to have that genuine heart of worship, to be changed for His glory. to be satisfied and content.

i have a midterm tomorrow. i feel so.. not myself. i dont know what it is. maybe it's the hair. no. maybe it's the indecisive weather, or just me.