the truth is

the days will pass by

whether you choose

to embrace the day

for all that it was

and all that it was not.

the truth is

yesterday is gone

tomorrow is out of grasp

but this moment

where your feet are

is here.

this moment is here.

I hope you breathe it in

all of it

all that it is

all that it is not.

the days will pass

either way

but perhaps

who you will become

in that choice

is worth the embrace.

– J.E.F.

I used to think

that grief

was like a thief in the night.

One that came to steal,

to hollow out

each place

where the light remained.

I’ve learned

that grief

did not arrive

to take from me.

Grief arrived

to be embraced

to be held

to be accepted.

Sometimes it arrives

with a quiet knock,

I invite it in

we laugh and cry

about memories already made

and memories that won’t ever be lived.

Sometimes it arrives

banging on the door,

I invite it to sit.

We are quiet

not because there is nothing to say,

but because there is too much.

Some mornings

I find it sitting on my front porch,

a long night spent

outside

it didn’t want to disturb me.

I invite it in,

we hold tightly

to worn photos,

the warmth

of memories and time

frozen on a page.

I used to think

that grief arrived

to take from me.

Now I know

that there is space for me

at grief’s doorstep

on the front porch

on quiet and loud

mornings alike.

Some days,

I go knocking

on grief’s door,

and it invites me in.

– J.E.H

I think at some point we all envision

that purpose will come wrapped

in a nice box with a bow,

an overarching moment

an epiphany

that says:

“this is what I was created for”

and maybe we do experience those big moments

but I’ve found

that the journey isn’t just

one

two

or three

moments.

It is a thousand moments,

moments that exist

in the places I never knew I would call home

in the people I grew to love

in the experiences that

softened and sharpened

my edges.

Here,

I have found purpose

in a thousand big and small moments alike.

Here,

I have found a place to call home.

the sadness is in this very thing —

in leaving a place you call home.

But the joy is in knowing

there will be a thousand more moments

moments to be lived,

people to be loved,

the uncertainty and the hope

of having a new place to call home.

– J.E.H.

There’s always been something about science that intrigued me – something that kept me going back to it even in moments throughout college where I’d ask myself, “WHY am I doing this?” It wasn’t until recently that my perspective shifted, and the phrase “author of it all” kept coming to my mind. God is all around us – not just in small groups, Sunday services, ministry jobs, or environments that always talk about God (although He does exist in those places). He is in the body that works to keep you alive every day, He is in every neuron that allows your brain to communicate with the rest of your body (how cool), and He is in the researchers & doctors who are pushing to learn more and more about the diseases and illnesses that plague our world. I get to study and learn about the complexity and beauty of the brain, which is the coolest thing – and through that, I get to know the one who truly is the author of it all.

---

Deeply embedded in me

was the belief

that I needed to be

in a Church

to see and experience God,

that I needed to pursue a career

in a Church

to be connected to God.

These days

I’m learning that

God is where we

choose to see Him,

in the way the leaves fall

and flowers bloom,

in the way the earth spins

and the sun shines,

in every cell in the human body

that keeps us alive

to breathe, to think

to heal, to grow.

Every little detail

beautifully complex,

the miracle of science

gifted to us

to explore

to discover

to get to know

the author of it all.

— J.E.H

I wrote this short poem on a whim over the summer, when a thought came to my mind on an evening drive. I’ve honestly been “sitting” on this blog post for a couple of months now, occasionally coming back to it, editing and deleting, but never quite feeling like it told the story I wanted it to tell. I had written a couple of paragraphs about God’s unconditional love with references to Scripture to preface this poem, but I felt God pulling my heart in a different direction.

September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month — it’s estimated that about 800,000 people die each year from suicide, which equates to one person every 40 seconds. My heart hurts thinking about the reality of this statistic, knowing that millions more battle different mental conditions and illnesses.

I’ve felt alone and abandoned by God more than a few times in my own struggles with mental health. Unseen. Unloved. Forgotten. Why am I still struggling with this? Where is God? Why haven’t I been healed? What did I do wrong?

I think a lot of us hear that God loves us unconditionally, and HE DOES. But sometimes we miss the less common narrative that goes along with His unconditional love, and it’s this: God’s heart breaks when our hearts break — He hurts when we hurt. That loss? He felt it with you, His heart ached right along with yours. Those days where you felt like you couldn’t get out of bed? He saw every moment, and He longed for you, His child, to feel some sort of hope for even a split second. And those days where life felt like too much to bear? He felt the weight you were carrying and His heart broke for you.

Maybe you’ve struggled with mental illness for years or decades, and maybe you’ve asked every question possible and you can’t quite figure out why you still suffer. Maybe the thing that hurts you most isn’t mental illness — perhaps it’s a traumatic event, a physical disease, or something in the past that won’t seem to loosen its grip on your life.

I don’t have the answers, and I doubt I ever will — but my prayer is that this short piece will touch even the smallest part of your heart.

---

My eyes were glued

On a world

That appeared to be falling apart

At its seams.

Tears stained my eyes

Knowing the pain

That my fellow humans

Faced and felt.

A pain that I could feel

But could never fully understand.

I asked You

To break my heart for what breaks Yours

And my heart broke.

I felt a whisper

A quiet voice.

“Don’t you know

That my heart breaks

When you hurt, too?

My child,

Don’t you know

That my love is for them

And it is for you, too?”

---

-J.E.H.

Wow. What a week. I cannot put into words how good and faithful God was in Guatemala. There are no words that could ever do this trip and the people justice. To my team members, thank you for constantly covering me with love and grace. It was a joy to serve alongside every single one of you. To the Inn Ministries staff, thank you for welcoming us as family, for serving as examples of God’s love, and for letting myself and my team be apart of such incredible work for the Kingdom of God. My heart and my life will never be the same. 

---

I’ve found God in a lot of places. I’ve found God in a church surrounded by thousands of other people. I’ve found God on late night drives listening to worship music. I’ve found God in the moments where I’ve literally been brought to my knees, and by His grace made it through to see the light of another day.

But I also found God in a small church in San Cristobal, Guatemala – a church that did not speak English, a church that wasn’t huge with thousands of people. I found God in people who lived in homes with dirt floors and tarp ceilings, but smiled as if they had it all. I found God in children who gave hugs like it was their job.

I am sure of this: God is at work in Guatemala. He is in that place, in those people.

Let me tell you about the night I found God in this small church:

It was a Wednesday night, and our entire mission team gathered to attend the church service at the Inn. We sang songs in Spanish and worshipped together, not as Guatemalans and Americans, but as people and children of God.

At the end of the service, the pastor called our team up to the front of the church – we were all confused as to what was about to happen. A few seconds passed, and the pastor’s wife came up to me, grabbed my hand and said to me, “We’re going to pray over you.” In that moment, men and women from the church paired up with every single team member and individually prayed out loud over each of us. The first half of the pastor’s wife’s prayer was in Spanish – yet, there I was, tears streaming down my face. Because in that moment, there was no language barrier. There was only love. She ended her prayer, hugged me, held both of my arms and said to me:

“God has the perfect plan for your life.”

She didn’t know my story. She didn’t know my struggles, my highs and lows, or what brought me to Guatemala. She had no idea. And she will never know the kind of seed that she planted in my heart that night.

Over the course of the week, we taught Bible stories, we played with kids; we prayed over police officers, firemen, each other, complete strangers, and anyone who would allow us to do so. We loved as hard as we could, and we ventured into the uncomfortable all for the chance of planting even one seed of faith.  

As I sat in that church on Wednesday night, God put something on my heart:

You don’t need a huge church or thousands of people worshipping next to you to feel His presence. You don’t even have to understand the music or what the people around you are saying. God’s presence is wherever you are, so long as you are willing to sit still for a moment and listen for His voice. In fact, we don’t ever have to “find” God. It’s always me, it’s always each and every one of us that really needs to be found.

God found me, in that church, that night. He found me in the Spanish worship songs that I could not understand. He found me through the people who so fearlessly poured into me and loved me day in and day out. He found me in the hugs from strangers who treated me like family. He found me — through a single moment, and a single seed planted in love and faith, in those eight simple words: “God has the perfect plan for your life.”

That’s the thing — sometimes God sends us somewhere for a single moment. Sometimes we need to experience that moment ourselves, and sometimes we are the vessels for other people to experience it. Maybe God sent me to Guatemala just to hear those words — maybe my trip was meant for that one moment. Maybe I planted seeds in others while I was there, too.

I won’t ever know, and that’s the beauty of it. I can rest in knowing that God is working beyond what I or any of us can see, in my own life and in the lives of others. God planted a seed in my heart, and although I do not know what will come of it, I do know that a seed planted in love and faith will never die. That seed will always grow into something that is beyond what any of us could ever imagine.

Wherever you go, plant seeds. Plant seeds of love, of faith, of hope. Whether it’s in a stranger you pass by on the street, your family, your city, another state, or even a different country — Live your life in a way that shows never-ending grace and love to those around you. You never know what God can do with one seed planted in faith.

And all it takes, is a single moment.

– J.E.H.

Nothing makes sense.

God doesn’t care.

Why me?

This isn’t fair.

Broken. Lost. No purpose.

---

Over the past year, I’ve found myself reverting to this mindset — the mindset that the world is a place of pain, that things will never work out for the best, that my soul is permanently broken, that I will never find fulfillment because the world simply does not want me to, no matter what I do.  I have found myself in pieces when I have loved the world and it has not loved me back, and I have found myself praying for the help of a God that I wasn’t sure cared about me or existed at all. I’ve looked at my own life and wondered how God could possibly love me, and I’ve looked at the world and wondered how God could still love a place that seems so broken.

I’ve found myself loving people, places, possessions, accomplishments, success, and so on with the expectation that I was going to get all of that love back — and I have been brought to my knees every time that the world has given me pain instead. I have desperately wanted to shut the world out, to deem it as a horrible place, to give up, all because I have felt as though it didn’t give me the love that I deserved.

But this isn’t how God loves. God doesn’t love mankind because he expects us to love Him back, and he doesn’t stop loving us when we stop loving Him. He loves for the mere chance that maybe someday we’ll run to Him and realize that it’s never been the world’s love that was promised to fulfill us — it was and is God’s love.

The world has never promised to return the love that we give it.

But God did, and God promises to love each and every single one of us, everyday – even when we choose not to love Him back. It’s not a love that we’ve earned. It’s not a love that we receive because of the love that we have given. It’s a love that we will never truly deserve, and yet He gives it freely.

Lately, I’ve found myself in a space where I don’t know how to keep loving in a world that won’t always love me back. I don’t want to keep giving love in exchange for pain. I know that each of us is called to love freely and fearlessly, but I don’t know how. I don’t know how to love without the fear of being devastated, let down, or drained of everything that I am.

I remember a Church service recently where our pastor was telling the story of a family that had just lost a child, and the family had a prayer service filled with worship. At the lowest point in their lives, at a time where nothing made sense, at a time where they had every right to question God, they had their arms up praising Him. They understood that the love of God could heal what this world could not.

“You don’t have to understand the space you’re living in, you just have to know what to fill that space with.”

I don’t know how to heal a broken heart. I don’t know how to fix a world that can seem so cold. I don’t know how to explain the things that just don’t make sense. But I do know this:

It starts with Him. If we have any chance of continuing to love in a world that won’t always love us back, God is that chance.

Maybe you’ve loved someone or something so hard that you feel empty. Maybe you’ve devoted your life to a goal that just didn’t work out. Maybe you’ve felt slighted by God. Maybe tragedy in the world has made you stop believing in God’s love. Maybe you just want to be cold to the world because it has been cold to you. I know, because I’ve been there. I’ve searched for fulfillment in the arms of the world instead of the arms of God. I’ve put hope into what this world could offer me. But God has already offered us the greatest gift of all:

Love. A love that is greater than any heartbreak, any disappointment, any tragedy. A love that can’t be matched by anything in this world.

We just have to be willing to search for it.

I’m still looking for it, every second of every day. I’m looking for it in a world that so often seems cruel and unforgiving. But so long as you have eyes that can see, ears that can hear, and a mouth that can speak – choose love. Look for love, even when it’s hard to find. Listen with love, even when the opinions of others are hard to grasp. Speak with love, even when the world challenges you to do otherwise.

Choose love. Choose love when it’s hard, when it’s easy, when you feel like you can change the world and when you feel like your actions won’t make a difference on this planet – not because it makes you look better or because you know it’s the right thing to do. Choose love because this world needs it, and you do, too.

– J.E.H.

 

“I have competed well, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

2 Timothy 4:7

This summer tested everything that I am. On July 13th, I lost a classmate, a teammate, a lifeline, and one of my best friends. You see the news articles about young people dying and you don’t ever think that it’ll happen to someone you know. Until it does. It’s something you don’t understand the magnitude of until it happens in your own life. It is something that ultimately changes your life — forever. 

Grief is a cruel, unforgiving process. There’s no guide to it. There is no step-by-step plan to follow to get through it. It is a pain that demands to be felt in its entirety. There is no definite ending — only the hope that somewhere someday the pain will diminish even a little bit. Only the hope that you will someday find peace in something that has ripped your heart apart. It is feeling like the world is leaving you behind. It is countless nights spent staring at the ceiling and mornings wishing it was all a dream, and it is hugging everyone you know and exchanging no words, because there aren’t any words for that kind of pain.

I have days where I see the sun peaking through the clouds and I smile & know that she’s okay. I have days where I laugh and think about all of the good memories shared over the years. I have days where I’m so sure that God really does have a plan. And then I have days where I just don’t get it and I break. Days where I wonder, asking all of the “what if?” questions. Days where I think about the future and can’t seem to wrap my head around the fact that she won’t be there for any of it. Days that seem to drag on with no ending and no sign of relief. 

I’ve asked the questions. But the truth is, I’ve realized that you won’t ever find all the answers you’re looking for. The answers to all of those questions will never quite be enough to make sense of the loss. 

Over the last two weeks, the phrase “the good die young” has been repeated over and over again. And it’s true — the best people seem to leave us the earliest. 

But I have to believe that the good don’t ever truly die. They leave so many pieces of themselves here with us that they are never really gone. Whether it be how to live passionately, how to love yourself, how to be strong, anything — these people instill values and lessons in us that cannot be unlearned: lessons and values that we can teach others the same way we were once taught.

I don’t know when or if this loss will ever feel real. Honestly, I don’t want it to feel real. I want to live each & every day feeling like she is still by my side. And although there are days where I just don’t understand how the sun can possibly come up and the world can turn without her, I have to believe somewhere deep down that the sun rises and the world turns now because of her. Because she truly made this world a better place. 

Abby, thank you for showing me the power of passion and how to laugh & smile through the hard times. Thank you for reminding me that life is meant to be lived without fear & to the absolute fullest. Thank you for showing me the value of friendship and for making home a better place to come back to. 

The lessons and values you have taught me are surely alive in my heart and in the hearts of so many others, too. Rest In Peace.

– J.E.H.