Graced with Grace

  I said a kind word One day And I saw the light That it brought, The smile on his face, The joy in his eyes. I said a kind word One day And it seemed To change a life, Give life.   I tend to be a joker, a teaser. I love to laugh and I love to make others laugh, I can be really sarcastic and sassy. But when it comes to speaking affirmation, speaking an encouraging word, giving a compliment or saying a kind word to a friend, somehow the words always get stuck in my throat and a joke comes out instead. Or sometimes I can manage a nice word, but then just so the person knows I am not really that nice, I cover it up with a joke or a sassy comment. But a few weeks ago I gave a genuine encouraging compliment to a friend and was surprised by how much joy that brought my friend not to mention how much joy it brought to myself to see his joy. When I joke with my friends, I don’t really seem to be changing a life, but when I gave that one ge...

I am by no means a pro on knowing what kind of man to marry, but I believe I have an advantage to some extent, in that I am not dating or married and never have been, so I can’t be biased, but have instead gotten to observe much. Being single for almost 23 years now has given me lots of opportunities for watching the young men folk in my life and seeing pros and cons. Sometimes, I say “No way! I could never marry a man like that!” and sometimes I say “That is a beautiful characteristic and something to keep in mind for a future spouse.” Coming from a Christian perspective, there are some of the obvious things that a girl should look for in a spouse, but I want to mention some of the other things, assuming my readers already desire a godly spouse. 1.      In all my observations, one thing on the top of my list of approved men are the ones who help with the dishes or other mundane tasks, whether married, dating, or single. Yes, seriously! It seems...

Hi Friends, So I just realized that many of my readers may not realize that I actually have a baking blog, too. Now this baking blog actually does not get used very much, but occasionally a story or recipe will make its way to publication, so if you're interested than you can check it out. Here is a link to my latest blog post over there telling a short little story of baking bread with children. http://hanasmessykitchen.blogspot.com/2015/06/bread-baking-and-child-joy.html  

I was reading a book called Heart to Heart Stories of Friendship compiled and edited by Joe L. Wheeler and one thing that stood out to me in these stories of friendship is the power of words. You can use your words to kill a friend in a matter of seconds or you can use your words to save a life, but it’s up to you. One story tells of a grouch who always seemed to be in the worst of moods, never smiled, was disliked by all, and cussing seemed to be his only language, but he was also the most faithful at his job. After eight long years of laboring day and night, someone finally told him that he was appreciated for his faithful hard work and guess what happened? The grouchy man was transformed completely; began working harder than before, smiled at everyone, moved his way up to top position in his line of business, and became a much loved coworker. I was thinking about this and other stories I had read and began to think how I might be able to use my own words to change lives, as ...

Ever since I can remember being able to write, I have loved sending letters to friends from far and near. As a young girl, I always looked forward to and excitedly anticipated a letter in return which was part of my motivation for writing in the first place. But as I got older and those I wrote to got older, I knew that they may not have time to respond, but some how I knew that they would be blessed if I sent a letter anyway.  Writing handwritten letters through snail-mail may seem like an old fashioned, slow, and rather quaint past time communication. But I have been discovering, to my pure delight, that I am not the only one who wants to keep this old fashioned communication going.  There is true beauty, delight, warmth, joy, strength, and encouragement that can be found through simply writing a handwritten letter and sending it through the mail. There is beauty in the note card that was picked out for someone special. There is pure joy and del...

I've always loved a good story. If someone has a good story to tell me then I 'm all ears. I love to find out a little about the back ground of someone; where they grew up, what kind of family they grew up in. knowing the kind of life someone lived, helps me to understand that person better. It helps me to understand why they might think or feel or talk or act a certain way. It gives me a new perspective of that person. Yet not only do I love to hear peoples stories, but for a long time now I have had a desire to write down peoples stories. There are so many people who may seem to have lived such an ordinary life, but if you sit and listen to their stories then you will find that their life isn't as ordinary as one may think. The truth is, I really can't say that anyone's life is completely ordinary, because God created every life and every life is a miracle and every life is unique with each person having their very own unique story to tell. So today I woul...

Every day brings reminders of how much I must depend on Christ for everything and look to him for grace. But some days have particularly strong reminders of my need for Christ and the realization that I am nothing apart from him. Tonight was one of those days. I attend a rather large church that is very theologically and Biblically sound, nevertheless, today was a fresh reminder that not everyone who goes to this church has theologically sound doctrine, such as the lady that I spoke to before the service. She said that true joy comes from being kind and not being mean. She told me that she didn’t need Jesus to make her good or to be kind, but that she is kind on her own free will. The more she talked the more heart broken I was for this woman. It would be easy in that situation to just agree with everything she said just to avoid controversy, yet I knew consciously that I could not be silent. I had to speak, yet how could I? How was I to explain to her the gospel of ...

      It is not every day that I have a grateful heart, yet I know that I am one truly blessed girl. Recently I have been reminded once again of how blessed I am for all the people and friends in my life. I sometimes grumble in my heart or even out loud that I have no friends at all, but all I must do is look around me and I see my life is full of wonderful people and friends who really love me. I may not have a lot of friends, but the friends I do have are the best kind of friend that a girl could ever have. They encourage me to do the difficult things that arise in life. They don't let me give up even when things get really hard. When I fail I am only encouraged to try again. They try their best to teach me new things or an improved way of doing something even when it takes great pains to teach me. When it is time for me to take wings and fly away to a new adventure in my life, they are there to back me up and encourage me. They love me just the way I am and are going ...

Hello  Awesome People, How are you this fine night? This is the night before January 1, 2013! Yay! Are you excited about that!  So  today 3 years ago, I started this blog. I had been wanting a blog for a long time before that! Back when everyone had xanga! Do you remember those days?! So, yeah, now I just gave away how old I must be to have lived in the xanga days. Hehe! ;) So after xanga went out of style I still wanted one, but then I started finding out about blogspot and decided that might be a better route.Therefore, after many years of waiting, I finally got a blog, which I absolutely love writing on... when I can think of something to write on it. Some times my brain is working really well and is full of all kinds of quaint thoughts, but then sometimes it is quite stale and unmemoriable (I don't think it will do any good to google that word because I am pretty sure it isn't there.). So why do I have a blog? Well, I saw it as a way to be able to encourage oth...

September 7, 2012, Day 4 Pencils! I  am so thankful for pencils! I use pencils like literally every single day. I have a collection of little pencils (seen in the picture above). I even wrote a poem about pencils! Yes, just in case you didn't figure it out by now, I am slightly obsessed with pencils! ;) Have a happy day full of sunshine, smiles, and laughter! Your Blogging Friend,                             Hannah

As my sisters and I sat enjoying a delightful tea party, Elisabeth asks, “What are some good questions to ask, to get a conversation going?” That was all we need to get us going on a lengthy conversation about communication. First we discussed the basics. What are some good questions to ask? We girls didn’t have much of an answer to that. Rather we discussed how difficult it was for us to actually get into a good interesting conversation. How helpful it would be if there was a book which just gave you lots of good questions to ask, but then when you get into a real life conversation those questions just fly out the window and are either forgotten or just don’t seem to be the right ones. Or some times we contemplate long and hard about what were going to talk about, but conversations never go as planned. Then there are always those awkward silences. What do you do about that? Well, really a silence is not so bad. I think some people think that there can never be a silent momen...