For about a month now, I have felt so strongly people need to hear how important it is to be known.

Perhaps it comes from being in true community for the first time in a long time, and I realize now how lonesome I really was for the season of life after college. It’s a crazy time after college, figuring life out! I can see now in hindsight how unknown I was despite living so openly and inviting so many into my life through writing. Funny how in a social media world, a world where we are more connected than ever before in history, there is more loneliness and even to the point of depression for so many than ever before. We have to take that seriously, y’all. I want to make it clear, I haven’t suffered from depression myself, I can see how easy it could be to fall into it when you aren’t in community. Social media is wonderful, seriously it’s amazing how I can connect with people from all over the world. But it can also be isolating and the greatest component, in my opinion, for why so many people are discontent and unhappy. Truth is, the more social media and technology take over face to face human interaction, the more I fear our hearts will grow cold, isolated, community-less, and unknown.

If you’re not in a tangible community that loves you and knows you, reminding you of the good simplicities of life or the heart of good that has nothing to do with what you have but rather who, then you are sure to find yourself lonely and unknown. Being part of the church body is how we were wired, it’s a deep rooted need within us because it is how God made us! God didn’t even let the first man he breathed life into live alone, because he saw it was not good for man to be alone (Gen. 2:18) I wrote a couple weeks ago about this idea of being known in my devotional Sweet Thoughts, and I have felt I needed to share more. I keep hearing in my spirit, “Be known, be loved, make others known and loved.”

One of my favorite friendships in the Bible is that of Timothy and the great Apostle Paul. Paul was like a spiritual father to Timothy, and they did life on the heels of one another, Timothy following the leadership of Paul. Even when it came time for Timothy to step into his own identity of ministry, their friendship remained solid. Accountability, encouragement, and always longing to see each other as any good friends do. Read this intro to a letter to Timothy’s church from Paul:

“I, Paul, am on special assignment for Christ, carrying out God’s plan laid out in the Message of Life by Jesus. I write this to you, Timothy, the son I love so much. All the best from our God and Christ be yours!

Every time I say your name in prayer—which is practically all the time—I thank God for you, the God I worship with my whole life in the tradition of my ancestors. I miss you a lot, especially when I remember that last tearful good-bye, and I look forward to a joy-packed reunion.” 2 Timothy 1:1-6

The reason I love this scripture is because you can see just how much Paul loves Timothy. Do you have people in your life you could say that whenever you mention their name in a prayer, which is practically all the time…? Are you in community with people you love and care for so deeply that you pray often for them, you share your own struggles with them, and are actually doing life together? If you’re not, I bet there is something in you that longs for it.

Friends, find community. Be part of the body. What I mean by that is that the Bible calls its people “The body of Christ”, meaning the body of the Church. The hands and feet. In multiple ways, the picture is made that we are all units of a larger picture but we have to be part of a body to help it function and move properly. We are our fullest self when we are functioning as part of the body. We flourish and are our best self when others are helping us process and pull out the things we can easily hide under or mask. There is nothing sweeter than being known y’all. And, as if the challenge isn’t hard enough to place yourself in community and find good friends, be eyes to see people that need a place to belong. Make others known.

Love you guys. I know you can change your world around you, and it starts with being known. We can love others and be loved, because he first loved us. Praise God, right?

xoxo, Han

You can snag a pre-order of my Because He First Loved tee from The Cake Shop to rock this mantra yourself. Love others and be loved, because we get to mirror what Jesus already did for us. Here. 

Here we are going on two weeks into the new year. Feel different? Probably not. 😉

Already broken a goal or resolution? Probably.

Regardless, I do love how the new year makes me feel. It’s like a deep cleaning for my soul and spirit, a time to be reflective and hopeful. I have set goals for myself personally, for my marriage, for my business, and as a mom. I have set a word for me that I hope to live into personally this year, as well as a word for our marriage like we always choose for us every year.

But, at the core of it all, it seems I have one hope for my 2018: Simplify. 

Everything I have written down and what I am aspiring to make happen this year starts with simplicity. It starts with pitching and tossing, and welcoming in more silence, more quiet, more of less. Have you ever tried to sit in silence and after about 30 seconds feel awkward? Yeah, me too. I want to change that. Funnily enough, I feel like so many people are saying the same thing for their year. I have read it over and over in my feeds and heard friends say, “I want to live more simply.”

Perhaps it is because after a year of so much tragedy and rockiness in our world, we finally are starting to understand collectively what actually matters and what doesn’t. The fluff is unnecessary. Or, maybe you are sick of devoting your every waking hour to work and not enough to people and relationships, and loneliness was the result for 2017 because of it. Or, maybe your state of being can be defined by “cluttered”, and you’re over it. Cluttered by toxic friends, negative memories, bad habits. Whatever your reason might be, it’ll be different for us all, simplifying life seems to be the goal for so many of us.

In my efforts of simplifying, I aim to drop the phone and computer to replace it with more face to face. I want to read more. I want to sit in silence more. I want to be okay with silence. I want to soak in every inch of my growing son, and memorize every detail. I want less distractions, and more intentionality. I want more scripture, and less of the world’s opinions. I want to get rid of the negative, and full of positive influence and relationships. I want to forgive quicker, and hold onto hurt shorter.

I have read the scripture over and over, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And all these things will be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33) For the longest time, I thought this meant that if I say I am a Christian, I will get what I want in life. Truth is, though, that’s not what this is saying at all. Believe me, brokenness and hurt still come after faith. What changes is hope accompanied with faith within the brokenness. But see, when we truly seek first the kingdom of God, our desires become his. That’s what this is getting at. And, it is then when we can see our desires come to life, because they’re really his for us. When we seek the kingdom of God first, above all else, when we wake up and give him our first thoughts, we spend time in the word daily, when we devote our first fruits, we grow to want more of God’s heart and less of our own wants. It comes naturally by putting him first.

But in order to hear God’s heart and know it, I have to silence my mind and simplify. Choosing less for immeasurably more.

I hope your new year has started off with every dream and desire in your heart burning holes deep within you with great passion and persistent pursuit. But, more importantly, I pray you simplify enough to hear from God what it is that will truly make this year the best year. Your best life is waiting in the silence, the simplicity. Be still, know God, know his heart, know his desires for you.

Love you sweet friends! And, though 9 days late, happy new year.

xoxo- Han

Advent season has begun, and more than ever before, I feel like I get to experience true anticipation of a gift closest to what it must have felt like waiting for Jesus’ birth as it was foretold, and what it feels like to anticipate the return of Christ.

See the season of advent is a time of celebrating and reflecting on Jesus’ birth, the anticipation of the best gift that was ever given, which is the entire reason we celebrate Christmas and what everything Christmas (whether you believe Jesus was Lord or not) circles around. Christmas is so magical and full of anticipation for a reason… it’s all about the best love story ever told. And who doesn’t get giddy over a good love story? Jesus told us to live with child-like faith (Matthew 18:3), and Christmas is a season that embodies that command more than any other time of the year.

As my due date inches closer, this child could literally come any second, I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas morning so that they can finally unwrap that gift under the tree they know is the gift they asked for the most. The best part is, like so many of us before we discover a relationship with Jesus, my gift I am waiting on I didn’t even know the extent of how much I wanted or needed it until I saw it wrapped and waiting for me to open it. It wasn’t until I experienced pregnancy that I knew what this love was. How sweet to experience this kind of love and agonizingly long wait now, during Advent.

Isn’t it beautiful how much those gifts under our tree that we so meticulously picked out and wrapped for the people we love truly represent? The gifts you bought for mom, dad, your hubby, your best friend… they represent Advent. 

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Now, because the Lord has given me a platform, I wouldn’t be using it well if I didn’t share with you the story of Jesus’ birth.

You may be a Christian who has ready the story of Jesus’ birth in Luke hundreds of times, or you may be a brand new Christian still figuring out this CRAZY story. Or, what really gets me excited, you might be here on my blog for some random reason -maybe the first time ever- and you do not claim Christianity. I am SO GLAD you’re here. You, my friend, are supposed to be here today. Right now. Yes, I am talking to you.

So, yes, the story of Jesus is crazy.

Like, if you really think about it… it’s a wild thing to believe what I believe. That is, that God sent a piece of himself in the form of a baby to grow up and walk with us, fulfilling a prophecy foretold hundreds of years before, and bringing the promise of oneness with the creator of the universe again following the fall of man in The Garden of Eden….

Cricket, cricket.

Yeah, it’s a little crazy. But I believe in it with every single bit of me, because I have experienced a relationship with Jesus that makes all of the crazy make sense.

Jesus’ birth was foretold from the minute God started the process of redemption after Adam and Eve separated themselves from God by listening to Satan’s lies and welcoming sin into the world. But there was always a plan of bringing us back, and the Old Testament into the New is the story of how God proved time and time again he was real, at work, and redeeming. As it was said it would happen, the prophet Samuel chooses David as King -son of Jesse- and the process of redeeming God’s people continues. Then in Isaiah, the prophet gives a word from God that the process of redemption is still happening (can you imagine being the people of God waiting thousands of years… hoping for oneness with God again?… ahhh the spirit of Advent!).

Read Below to see what I mean:

Isaiah 11:1-10

“There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, And a Branch shall grow out of his roots. The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him, The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, The Spirit of counsel and might, The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD. His delight is in the fear of the LORD, And He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes, Nor decide by the hearing of His ears; But with righteousness He shall judge the poor, And decide with equity for the meek of the earth; He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked.”

Isaiah 7:14

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.

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So far, so good. All the proof is in the pudding, everything has happened that people said God told them to share would happen hundreds of years before. Then, just as it was said, fast forward hundreds of years from David and the king of the universe, the bright morning star, was born in Jerusalem from a virgin betrothed to Joseph from the lineage of David who came from Jesse.

You can’t make this stuff up. It sounds crazy, but crazy love is hard to grasp. God is hard to understand. 

Jesus’ life, he did exactly what he said he would. He did exactly as the prophets of old said the son of God would do. He lived a life you couldn’t live because … sin… and then died the death you deserved because… again, sin. He was sinless, he did as he said he would, and on the cross the story of redeeming love was complete. He absorbed the wrath of God, God hates sin and hated we were separated, and Jesus soaked up every bit of that as the propitiation of sin.

It is THE greatest love story. Period.

Now we get to pray and talk to God in constant communication because Jesus did what he did, and God did just as he foretold for thousands of years. (Have I said that enough yet?)

BUT HOW GOOD IS THAT? And, sometimes my logic tells me I am crazy for believing this stuff. But, I cannot deny the relationship I have with God. When I doubt HOW we got to where we are, I cannot deny the perfect love I have felt and live in daily. Faith the size of a mustard seed is all God says we need, and I can say I definitely have that. As I said above, my relationship with Jesus daily proves the crazy just enough to me.

I can’t deny my finger has healed the week of my due date after having a pregnancy tumor removed at an unreal rate. I have watched a miracle unfold, but of course I have… I prayed for it and God cares.

“For all the promises of God find their YES in him (Jesus). That is why it is through him that we utter our amen to God for his glory.” 2 Corinthians 1:20

I cannot deny that at 12 years old I asked God to make me nauseous on every single date I went on until I met my husband. And, because I prayed it, of course it happened. You can’t make this stuff up.

There are so many instances in my life I have seen God unify my heart in crazy, God ways with people, timing, and circumstances. That I have been prompted awake from my sleep to pray for things I had no explanation for, but come to find out was timely and needed at that second.

God is so real. That is what I am trying to get at here. The story of Jesus and his birth, the story of Christmas and all that the season of Advent represents, it is proven to me daily throughout the year in my relationship with Jesus.

Advent is a season of waiting and reflecting, just as the people we read about in the Old Testament did for years and years, generation after generation waiting for Jesus. They waited for this king to come, like a gift that they anticipated unwrapping underneath the tree. Like at 39 weeks and 4 days pregnant, waiting for a baby to finally be born.

Like Mary who was told she would be the one to carry the child of God for 9 months, and had to -at the worst timing ever- ride with her betrothed to Bethlehem on a donkey for a census BECAUSE Joseph had to go to the city of his ancestors… Jesse, David… Can you imagine? As a very pregnant women myself, no. I cannot imagine.

“And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David.” Luke 2:4

You tracking?

God is the God of answered prayers, miracles, and fulfilling promises.

I hope you experience this Advent season in a new way like I have been able to already as I wait for Baby K to come any day. I hope you feel the anticipation of Jesus’ return in a way you’ve never experienced. I recently read that we are in between two different Advents right now. We reflect on the first Advent, the thousands of years God’s people waited for Jesus to fulfill the prophecy of his first coming and redemption. And, now, we are in a season of Advent waiting for his second return as it is foretold throughout the New Testament after his death and in Revelation.

I hope you know love like you’ve never known this Christmas.

Merry Christmas, my friends. Happy Advent. Happy waiting, happy anticipation.

xoxo- Han