Category Archives: Life After Cancer

Introducing: Still Waters Cancer Retreat

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Last month, I wrote about “My Summer of Cliff Jumping” and promised to share more about Still Waters Cancer Retreat, the nonprofit I’m starting. Today is World Lymphoma Awareness Day, “a day dedicated to raising awareness of lymphoma, an increasingly common form of cancer” {which sounds just like what you’d think it is}. This retreat isn’t just those for lymphoma, but because lymphoma is part of my story, I figured today’s a pretty good day to follow through on my promise. So here goes!

The American Cancer Society publishes its Cancer Facts and Figures report each year {which I keep in my iBooks app on my phone and which is totally normal, right?}, and basically, the rates of cancer have been pretty steady for a while. They estimate that 41/100 men and 38/100 women will get cancer in their lifetimes, not including basal or squamous cell carcinomas, since those aren’t required to be reported. Check out the link here, if you, too, are also semi-morbid and want to read through them: ACS Facts and Figures.

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My Summer of Cliff Jumping

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I figure it’s time to give an update on life and let you know what I’ve been working on that I’ve hinted about and which I’m so excited about. Here we go!

For those wondering where I’m living right now and what I’m doing, I quit my teaching job in California at the end of the school year, which means that since June, I have been unemployed, though in a planned way. As everyone started heading back to school over the last week or so, I realized this year is only the fourth in my 30 years where I have not had a first day of school. The other three go to the year when I wrote my book between stints teaching in Hawaii and my first two years of life (yeah, I went to 2-year-old preschool…apparently someone needed a break).

There were many reasons I quit my teaching job, but one of the biggest was because I’m in the process of starting a non-profit, and I knew that with my seven different roles at school, it was never going to happen. It’s sort of how I felt when I knew I needed to write my book but also knew there was no way that was going to happen while teaching high school English (a.k.a. grading papers and reading literature in my “time off”). For the past two years, God’s been reminding me of my heart for those with cancer, and for more than a year, I’ve been working on a vision of starting a faith-based cancer retreat (more on that later!).

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The Case of the Reappearing Posts

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If you’re reading this on the heels of my last post and thinking, “What witchery is this that Hannah’s posting twice within a week?!?” I assure you: everything is okay. Plus also, summer break.

To really answer that question well, however, I direct you to the title of this post one more time. And now, I’ll be sharing more context than you wanted to know about what I started my last post with: on the loss to Internet oblivion of my old posts from 2013-2016. And for the handful of you who might subscribe to my posts, my MOST PROFUSE apologies for the onslaught of notifications you may have received over the weekend at the recovery of those posts! If the #sorrynotsorry sentiment ever applies, I feel like it’s in this case because, out of said Internet oblivion, MY MISSING POSTS REAPPEARED. It’s actually kind of a miracle. And I’m a realist, so in “Hannah speak,” I think that means it’s a legitimate miracle.

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On [The Grace of] Turning 30

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Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here—and that’s for a couple of reasons.

1) I switched websites, and it’s still a little bit in shambles. The most frustrating part is that in the transfer, many of my old posts were lost. It sounds dramatic, but that’s been a bit painful because when I write, my words come from the heart. I pretty much fail all marketing guidelines which say to write short posts and publish them frequently so as to keep up a steady readership. I’ve always struggled with that, though, because I refuse to just write fluff in order to have published a post. So when I do post, it’s generally something that’s been on my heart for a while, something that comes from deep conviction and truth I’ve been learning. Losing those posts has gotten me a little disheartened and kept me away.

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A Complex Response for this Complex Life

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Nine months later, I’m still here, keeping my head above water as I enter the final quarter of this school year. I won’t get too deeply into the specifics of my move to San Diego or the minutiae of my journey back to teaching high school English, but per my last post—on not knowing where I’m going—it’s been amazing to look back and see how God led me here. That’s another post for another time since this post has been on my heart for the past 6 months. However, I’m out in San Diego, I’m teaching English again, and I’m exhausted but confident that God brought me here for some reason.

Aside from my move, my adjustment out of grad school and back into the classroom, and some other events in our family, the past 6-8 months have been marked by some significant challenges. I honestly believe I’ve cried more tears in the past 8 months than in the past 8 years combined.

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Praise the Lord for Not Knowing

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Hebrews 11:8 has always been one of my favorite verses:

“By faith, Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”

I’ve felt like this a few times in my life, where I’ve literally quit my job and moved home, or quit my job again to go to grad school, or now rejected a job while trusting that God is leading somewhere unknown {I’m sensing a common thread…}.

I’m always so encouraged by Abraham’s incredible faith, faith that completely trusted God to lead him, even though he did not know where he was going. I wrote about the blind runner in the epilogue to my book, and I think the reason I loved that image was because it reminded me of Abraham, just running blindly and trusting. 

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The Valley

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A year ago, I was in Israel, studying for 6 weeks with Wheaton in the Holy Lands. The trip began on May 17th and ran through June 28th, and we had to keep a daily journal of what we learned and did as part of the course, so I’ve been reading through each day’s journal entry one year later before I go to bed each night.

And wow. It’s been amazing for a number of reasons, but I’m finding that somehow the things I learned one year ago while in the Holy Lands are encouraging and teaching me each day today. The things I learned one year ago are really poignant for my life today, and as I read through each day’s journal entry from last year, it’s like the lessons from archaeological sites in Israel are casting light on my life at home in Fairview, Texas. Go figure. I think maybe the things I learned impacted me at the time, but since we learned so much and did so much in our typical 10-12 hour days “in the field,” it was hard to process everything, to make sense of it all and its impact on the rest of my life.

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2015 Theme of the Year (Part 2)

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Seeing the World Through a Redemptive Lens

Last month I wrote about trying to redeem moments of time in 2015. Now I want to focus on the second part of my “redemption” theme for 2015: seeing the world through a redemptive lens. (Stay with me here as I explain the background to a “redemptive lens.”)

During the week-long intensive class I took at HoneyRock Camp in November, the professor had us examine and imagine three different lenses or worldviews that different “churches” might have had, applied to their views on the Bible, the Trinity, and Jesus, the church, humanity, and other categories. The professor asked one group to read through the first three chapters of Genesis, trying to imagine how the “Edenic” church would have viewed these topics. The “Edenic church” would have looked pretty great—life was good, relationships with God and others were great, and humanity was viewed as created in the image of God.

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2015 Theme of the Year (Part 1)

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Each year, instead of “resolutions,” I try to think of a theme word or idea to frame my year. Well, for 2015, that’s “Redemption.”

Now, before I jump into what that means and what I hope that looks like, I should explain what that doesn’t mean. I’m not talking about “redemption” in the sense of being vindicated for wrongs done to me or mistakes I’ve made. I’m not on some warpath of vengeance or quest to re-create myself in others’ eyes. Nor do I mean “redemption” in the sense of coming to faith or being redeemed from my sin; praise the Lord for His redemption in my life, but that’s not quite my theme of the year (though His redemption is the foundation from which I hope to live with this theme of redemption).

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In Light of the Incarnation

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So, it’s almost Christmas {obviously}. If you’re my sister Katie in Uganda, it actually might be Christmas already. I’ve been wanting to post on this for a while, but I let finishing my grad school classes stand as my excuse…really I think I’ve been sorting through my thoughts on this idea. I first had to think a lot about the “incarnation” over this summer after I got home from Wheaton in the Holy Lands and had to read five books for the program, one of which was early church father Athanasius of Alexandria’s On the Incarnation. Having grown up in the church {in every possible imaginging of what that means…Sunday School, private Christian school, Christian summer camp…you get the picture}, I’ve always heard a lot about the “incarnation,” or the fact that Jesus came to earth and was born as a human to save us from our sins. However, in the past six months, I’ve been thinking about it in new ways, understanding what Jesus’ incarnation actually implies for my own life.

In October, I devoured a book for my Teaching for Transformation class, and I can’t be sure of its long-term impact yet, but in the past couple months, it’s given me new energy, purpose, and encouragement in my pursuit of serving Him. It’s called Visions of Vocation by Steven Garber, and my friend Tony gave me the book back in March, but I didn’t get around to reading it until 7 months later. However, when I started reading, I kept thinking, “I know exactly why Tony gave this to me and knew I needed to read it.”

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