14 years ago, I came alive.

After Mom and Dad put me to bed, 5-year-old me opened my eyes and prayed for the eyes of my heart to be opened. I guess I saved important decisions for bedtime thinking. Not much has changed.

I don't remember what led me to this decision. I don't remember many of the thoughts leading up to the night I prayed on my bed in the dark. God called my soul, though, and I answered.


I didn't stop at the ABCs of faith. I don't think that I even went over those steps. I simply recognized that without Jesus, I am dead. Without God's grace, I will struggle and struggle without true life. I wanted to do life with God.

14 years ago, God adopted me into His family. He took away all of my sins (sins like stealing candy every day while Mom slept) and clothed me with his goodness. He claimed me forever as a loved daughter of God. He is still claiming me.

What makes my heart smile even more is what I prayed after I received new life. I prayed that God would come and change every aspect of my little life. I realized that being God's princess meant that I would live differently. I would obey Him with all I am.

I prayed over everything in my 5-year-old life including obedience to my parents, love for my sisters, faithfulness (aka, not complaining) in school and dance, and joy in church. I don't distinctly remember everything, but I remember that the prayer lasted for, what seemed to me then as, eternity.

I treasure these fragments of memories. They remind me that nothing has changed. Every day, God still challenges me (and you) to surrender everything we have to Him, not because of some meaningless rule-book but because WE HAVE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST. Won't we want to walk step-in-step with Him?

14 years later, I prayed again. I rejoiced in how far God has brought me. Oh, He has done marvelous things! I surrendered the things in my 19-year-old life to Him. He is trustworthy. He is the Life-Giver. He is worthy.



Step by step, let us surrender to His will and ways, not because of guilt or routine but because of His life that shine in every aspect of our being. Let us, in light of our adoption into God's family, rejoice in how we can live grace in everything.

I guess the theme of this blog started 14 years ago where I prayed for the first time to live out grace in everything. Let us not give up.

Princess Hannah

God is trustworthy.  He never fails to deserve our complete and joyful trust. His ways are perfect; there is no flaw in them.

It's that time of year again. Finals. Big projects. Late nights. Empty coffee cups piling up.

Who is our companion during this time?

Stress.

It's simply assumed that we students will be stressed during the end of the school year. We go into this season expecting anxiety and all-nighters. We don't always fight the approaching worries. Instead we tweet about them and complain to our friends.

What if I told you that we didn't need to be stressed? What if this year we didn't give into overwhelming anxiety or nervousness?

What if this year we kicked stress in the butt and completely trusted in God? 

"Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus."

Philippians 4:6-7

"Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need. So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today."

Matthew 6:33-34

These are familiar verses to many of us, but what if we lived like they were true and trustworthy? How would we go into this last stretch of the school year if we based our lives off of those verses and God's trustworthiness?

I made a little infographic to help illustrate how we can approach stress differently as children of God.





How will you go into finals? What truths will you cling to? What verses will guide you? Will your response to stress be the same as the world or set apart?

Princess Hannah