Author Archives: Hannah Giselbach

Jan 8 2012

Barbie Girls in a Barbie World

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My last semester at FHU, I wrote a 12-page paper for my Advanced Composition class on the influence of Barbie dolls on young girls of America. As a disclaimer, let me just say that I’m not a fanatic and I’m not personally condemning mothers who buy Barbie dolls for their daughters. I, myself, was a huge Barbie fan as a little girl. For the sake of an A on my paper, however, I was passionate in my arguments against the little blonde beauty that’s revolutionized toys in America. When I did my research, I was shocked at just how influential the things our children play with and the things they see on TV can be.

Something you may not know about Barbie:

In 2002, The New York Times published a story reporting the death of Ruth Handler (inventor of Barbie). In the article, Sarah Kershaw wrote that “if the 11 1/2-inch doll were 5-foot-6, her measurements would be 39 [chest]-21 [waist]-33 [hips].” In fact, according to Kershaw, “one academic expert calculated that a woman’s chances of having Barbie’s figure were less than 1 in 100,000.” With such unrealistic proportions, it seems doubtful that a real person with such a gigantic upper region supported by such a tiny waist and little hips would be able to stand up without topping over because of the excess upper-body weight. Barbie, with her numerous careers, would have to spend every workday on all fours were she a real person—and you thought heels made it hard to walk around all day.

…and this is just the tip of the iceberg about sweet little Barbie.

We live in a society that screams at our youths the beauty of materialism rather than the beauty of simple gratitude and the importance of outward appearance rather than the importance of character, honor, and integrity. Children feel pressured to fit a certain mold that the media tells them will equal success, but that mold has little to do with the qualities that will truly make them happy, successful adults. Instead, they are taught to love things and not people, to love a good hairstyle more than a pure heart, and to favor fashion, movies, and pop music over intelligence, scholarship, and responsibility. Parents blame celebrities like Britney Spears and Lady Gaga who so easily infiltrate the minds of our children, but how often can the problem stem directly from what most parents are giving children right in their very own homes?

What the toy stores won’t tell you are stories like that of Cindy Jackson, who holds the Guinness World Record for having more cosmetic procedures than anyone else in the world. She told reporters recently,  “I looked at a Barbie doll when I was six and said, “This is what I want to look like.” In effort to reach her goal of looking like Barbie, Jackson has had 31 plastic surgery operations and spent over $100,000.

During this study of Barbie Doll’s affect over youths, I couldn’t help but think about how God responds to women who will pull out all the stops and spend any amount of money just to appear physically attractive, which, admittedly, our culture has deemed the most important quality a woman can have. In 100 years, how will Cindy Jackson’s perfect body look? Well, let’s just say it won’t be anything worth the money she’s spending now. Why not? Because everything on this earth–everything that you can touch with your hands—is perishable. One day, everything we can see right now will burn up (II Peter 3:10).

My body doesn’t belong to me. Everything I am and everything I have belongs to Him. My body will turn to dust one day. What will remain forever, however, is my soul. Living for God doesn’t just affect my life on earth (which by the way, will be abundant if spent in His light, according to John 10:10). Living for God affects my eternity, a concept that’s difficult for any of us to grasp. Godliness and faith are imperishable, meaning they will never die. If I spend more time focusing on maintaining my soul’s appearance before God than my outward appearance before men, I will be doing well.

“Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning bethe hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.” –I Peter 3:3-4

Jan 8 2012

NYC

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During one of my spring breaks at FHU, I had the opportunity to travel to New York City with a friend of mine whose grandmother lives in Brooklyn. It was my first time, and to say I was excited would be the understatement of the century. While we were there, we got up early every morning and went to bed late every night, filling our days with all kinds of adventures. We saw two Broadway shows (Wicked and Mary Poppins), both of which completely blew my mind.

Besides all the cool stuff I got to see (like the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the John Lennon memorial in Central Park, and everything Times Square has to offer), I also came face-to-face with one of the most humbling experiences of my life.

One of the things I made sure about before leaving for the trip was that I would be able to worship with the saints somewhere in the city on Sunday and Wednesday. I take Matthew 6:33 and Hebrews 10:23-26 very seriously, so I wanted to make sure I did not convey to God or anyone else that visiting NYC was more important to me than worshipping God and honoring His wishes.

On Wednesday night, we had plans to visit a small congregation that met in the preacher’s apartment. In order to get there, we had to take the subway, switching lines a few times, then a bus, and then we had to walk a few blocks and find the apartment building.

This proved more difficult than we thought, and after getting lost trying to decipher the subway system, missing our bus, getting on a different bus going the same direction but dropping us off at a different location, and walking more than a couple of blocks in effort to find the apartment building before the service was half over, I began to complain. I remember it like it was yesterday.

“You know, if we were in the South right now, none of this would be necessary because the preacher would have offered to pick us up the moment we called and asked to worship with them. Isn’t it just natural to offer a ride to two college girls alone in New York looking for a place to worship? Instead he sends us on a wild goose chase all over the city, and even when we call him and tell him we’re lost, he STILL doesn’t offer to pick us up—just gives us more directions. The very idea…”

I’m not proud to admit this, but it happened. I was frustrated.

Somehow, we found the apartment building 20 minutes late, and because the church was so small, they waited for us to arrive before beginning their Bible study. When we walked in all out of breath from hurrying down the city sidewalks to find the church, the preacher’s wife greeted us and led us to her husband who stood still and waited for us to walk over and shake his hand. He was friendly, but I noticed indignantly that he didn’t even mention anything at all about why he wouldn’t give us a ride that night.

When he began his lesson on kindness from Ephesians, my eyes welled up with tears as I noticed his hands—rapidly moving back and forth over the pages of a large book of Braille Bible lessons he had written himself. This stuffy Northern preacher that wasn’t considerate enough to jump in the car and come pick us up for church….was blind. As I realized the error of my harsh judgment on a man I’d never met, I began to feel about 3 inches tall. I had whined like a child when I saw that certain subway lines we needed were closed for repair. I whined when I saw the bus we needed in order to make it to Bible class just in time drive away just as we made it to the bus stop. I whined when I saw someone pressing the signal tape to alert the bus driver they wanted to stop at every…single…stop, putting us further and further behind schedule. I whined when I looked at the numbers on the businesses when we got off the bus and saw that we were more than 8 blocks away from our destination. I was complaining about all these things I was seeing, while he couldn’t see anything at all. How much would a man like him give to see one of the things I saw during the hour I was stressing out?

Needless to say, the kind preacher put me in my place after leading us in an awesome discussion about kindness, morality, and Christian love. Afterwards, his wife served us all apple pie, and then she and her husband insisted on walking with us several blocks to the subway station since it was dark and they wanted to see us safely back.

While walking back, a scantily clad woman was walking the opposite direction as us, and the preacher accidentally brushed shoulders with her, knocking the fast-walking woman a little off-balance. Not knowing he was blind, the woman turned around and shouted a rude insult at the kind man. Embarrassed, I thought to myself…I’m really no different from that woman. Had she known about his life, his disability, and his determination to passionately throw himself into mission work for the Lord, maybe she would feel exactly as I did at the Bible study.

Bottom line: Be very careful about what you assume about a person. You never know what that person’s story or background may include.

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” –Matthew 7:1-5

“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” –Ephesians 4:29

Jan 7 2012

Toy Story

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Two summers ago, I went to see Toy Story III at the movie theater with my family (opening night, of course). Ever since the original Toy Story’s release in 1995, I’ve absolutely fallen madly in love with Pixar films. I could write several blogs about all of my favorite characters and scenes from all of my favorite Pixar movies, but I’ll just focus on Toy Story for now, since I can’t stay up all night (after all, tomorrow’s the Lord’s Day!), and since something about the storyline from the first movie to the third one has recently caught my attention. { I could also write about how I actually cried in the last Toy Story despite my ardent attempts to never cry in public—and despite the fact that it’s a movie about toys, for cryin’ out loud…but that’s too embarrassing, so I’ll skip to something more substantial. 🙂 }

The story contains lots and lots of hard-core jealousy. Perhaps the most obvious example of this occurs in the first movie, whenever favorite toy Woody is replaced by super cool space toy, Buzz Lightyear. In the second movie, it’s the other vintage Woody’s Roundup toys that are jealous of Woody, who has a child to which he can go home and actually be loved. In the third film, it’s the toys at the daycare center who are threatened by and are jealous of Andy’s toys. These toys feel that their original owners replaced them with better and newer toys before they allowed themselves to be “washed up” at a daycare center. In their growing bitterness, the forsaken toys gradually transformed the daycare center into a ruthless prison for toys. It’s jealousy that drives the plot in all three movies.

Have you ever had a friend who was jealous and maybe a little possessive of you? Maybe he/she didn’t like it whenever you hung out with your other friends instead of him/her. This can be a dangerous predicament if you’re ever dating someone who allows his jealous tendencies to make him want to control you. In general, we think of jealousy as a very bad thing, and it usually is. When passed around among humans, jealousy usually represents bitterness, heartache, selfishness, and often cruelty. Shakespeare even called jealousy the “green-eyed monster” in his play, Othello.

But have we forgotten even God can be jealous?

Check out the first five verses of Exodus 20:

“And God spoke all these words:

‘I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.’

Our God was not hesitant in admitting his jealous nature. Like the faithful husband knows the pain of his wife’s infidelity, God feels the hurt of unfaithfulness. God uses this metaphor often in the scriptures. If you’re looking for something new to study, I suggest you look at passages where God compares his relationship to the church to a husband/wife relationship. You will grow to appreciate more and more just how much God loves you. Deep, beautiful stuff right there.

We all know the damage caused when a woman cheats on her husband with another man (and vice versa). Adultery is condemned time and again in the scriptures (Matthew 19:9, Exodus 20:14, I John 3:4, Luke 18:20, Matthew 5:27-28, for starters). Are there ways that we can commit spiritual adultery? In the passage I mentioned earlier from Exodus 20, God tells us that He is our God, and because He is our God, we are not to make anyone or anything else gods to us.

When the passage was written, the problem was literal idols–made of gold and silver—that people created to worship instead of the one true God who created them. The modern day equivalent would be worshipping a Buddha statue (I never understood why the little fat, happy man was anything but merely comical to people). But in America, literal idol worship is not that common. Today, the idols we worship might be less obvious but every bit as dangerous and condemning as the golden calves the Israelites were tempted to worship.

How often do we go absolutely crazy at a Saturday night concert of one of our favorite artists—singing at the tops of our lungs, screaming and cheering after every song, and nearly passing out with excitement if we happen to actually shake hands with the artist or even get close to him, and then on Sunday morning, we arrive late, forgetting our Bibles, sit through worship with our eyes half-open, barely hearing anything the preacher says and barely mumbling the words of each hymn sung?  Don’t fool yourself. God isn’t blind. He can clearly see who your god is. What would happen if Christians transferred that kind of excitement they have at a big concert to worshiping God, evangelism, and benevolence? God gives us a VIP pass to get as close to him as we please, and to talk to him as long as we want any time of the day, and so often, we ignore it.

For many, money is a god. They’re so busy making money that they forget to make time for God, or to use that money to His glory. For others, popularity can easily become our idol. When popularity takes precedence over God, we are quick to compromise our standards in reference to things like alcohol, sexuality, immodest clothing, or gossip in order to be considered “cool.”

God is zealously eager to protect and hold on to what is important to Him, but he wants us to choose Him above all other gods. The gods that try to drag us into their clenches on earth might seem innocent and provide us with temporary pleasure, but everything on earth that takes us away from our focus on God and His will for us is an idol that will burn up with the rest of the earth one day, and the people that we idolize over God will be waiting in line with you at the Judgment Day, and it’s not going to matter at all how famous or popular they were on earth. They will have to face the Lord alone, just as you will.

Don’t be an idol worshipper.

“Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Deuteronomy 6:5)

Jan 7 2012

Hannah’s Heart

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Welcome to The Heart of Hannah! But really, that’s what you’ll be getting if you continue to read my blog. Me—right to the heart of me. What I hope you’ll find there is a desire and effort to rid myself of as much of that “me” word as possible. My heart, as well as most peoples’, I guess, contains a lot of selfishness that could be filled with something much better.

Actually though, my blog name is one with a double-meaning. While I chose it because you’ll definitely be getting a glimpse into my heart, I also chose it because of my deep respect for the heart of the woman after whom I was named; Hannah of I Samuel. What an awesome person she was. Hannah, in the very depths of emotions like grief, despair, aloneness, bitterness and desperation cried out to God like He was an old friend. Her grief was so great that I Samuel I mentions her emotional state 13 times. Those 13 times include words like “provoked,” “weeping,” “affliction,” “sorrowful,” and “great anxiety and vexation.”

We’ve all suffered grief in one way or another. We grieve over little things sometimes. I grieved a little when I burned the cornbread right before Dr. Lipe, one of my former college professors, came to eat lunch at our house. I grieved when my dad gave my cat away when I wasn’t home one summer when I was 6 or 7 years old. I grieved when, at 11 years old, my piano teacher told me I would never be as good as Caleb (my brother). But how many times in a person’s life is she so completely overcome with sorrow that she falls down before God and begs for mercy, regardless of what’s going on around her? Have you been there before? Well, that’s where we find Hannah. Hannah is so desperate to pour out her heart before God that she can’t wait until she gets home. She simply leaves the table of feasting and merriment and steps outside to talk to her Father. The Bible says she “wept bitterly” as she spoke to God (vs.10). I’ve always pictured her collapsing to the ground in exhaustion from her grief and anxiety as she begins her prayer.

I’ve tried to imagine what it must have felt like to put up with the constant bullying Hannah endured from Peninnah year after year after year. In that society, it must have been rather embarrassing, maybe even shameful, for a woman to be unable to have children, and Peninnah, who harbored a whole different set of emotions, took full advantage of Hannah’s dilemma. In Elkanah’s  eyes, Peninnah was always in Hannah’s shadow, as Elkanah loved Hannah most (vs. 5).  Peninnah’s envy and jealousy caused her to do to Hannah what so many of us women, especially young women are tempted to do today. Peninnah chose the one thing about Hannah that appeared inferior, and she fed on it perpetually. It was her one hope of ever looking better than Hannah.  How often are we tempted to gossip about or entertain thoughts of others’ flaws simply because we’re jealous? For some reason we think it’s empowering to put others down or even to constantly remind ourselves of the imperfections of others, just so we can feel better about ourselves. That’s what Peninnah was doing, simply because she could do something Hannah couldn’t.

I know the focus of Hannah’s distress is the fact that she was barren, but before I can dwell on that, I always get caught up in the fact that Hannah and Peninnah shared a husband. Can you imagine? I can’t fathom having to constantly compete with another woman for my husband’s time and affection. The thought is unbearable and repulsive to me. No wonder Peninnah had self-esteem issues and Hannah was nearly driven out of her mind in desperation. Aren’t you thankful God didn’t design polygamy as an acceptable option? And for the record, it wasn’t exactly an acceptable option back then, either. The problem was due to the total anarchy of Israel at that time. Everyone simply did what was right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25), and apparently this included Elkanah. Regardless, Hannah must have been lovely in every way to be the recipient of Elkanah’s devotion despite her, as it were, disability.

But it wasn’t enough for Hannah. She, like so many women today, had an innate maternal longing inside her that I think had little to do with the harassment she underwent because of her barrenness. She wanted a child, simple as that. She wanted a child more than anything else in the whole world. She wanted to hold a baby in her arms that was her very own. Now, that’s something I can understand completely {but don’t get your hopes up, folks… no baby in the Giselbach house for a long, long time 🙂 }.

We all know the rest of her fascinating story. God did give Hannah a child and, as she promised, she took him to live in the temple as soon as he was weaned, left him there, and visited him year after year. Whether or not I think she did the right thing in making that vow is for another day. For now, I want to focus on one remarkable aspect of Hannah’s character. In her time of trial, Hannah never stopped worshipping God, and she never stopped praying to God. If you study the first chapter of I Samuel, you’ll notice that there are 14 references made to Hannah communicating directly with God, and one in I Samuel 2. My favorite mention of her prayer is when Hannah described it to Eli, who had just falsely accused her of talking gibberish in a state of intoxication. She argued, “No, my lord, I am a woman of sorrowful spirit; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord” (I Samuel 1:15 emp. added).  Not,  “I just said a prayer,” not “I was just saying my bedtime prayers,” but “I poured out my soul before the Lord.”

This tells me a lot about Hannah. She wasn’t just a good, God-fearing lady. Hannah had a relationship with God that was so intimate that it was only natural for her to pour out her soul to him no matter where she was or what was going on around her, and He was listening intently because He loved the heart of Hannah.

That’s what I want for this Hannah. I want to have that kind of relationship with my Father. I don’t believe it comes naturally for people. I don’t believe that intimacy with God is achieved through some emotional experience (and if so, I don’t think it’s long-lasting). I believe that kind of effortless relationship comes with a lot of hard-core discipline. My goal for 2012 is to daily bury myself deeper in God’s word and just talk to Him more often. Not just before I eat or as I’m drifting in and out of consciousness as I’m falling asleep at night. I want to have the kind of camaraderie with my Father that evokes a 24-hour communication line with Him. I know He wants that and I know He’s told me to do that (Matthew 7:7, Philippians 4:6-7, I Thessalonians 5:17, etc).  I just have to do it. Like the Hannah of I Samuel 1, I want to be so lost in God’s love that I can’t help but talk to Him, and I know that will come with time.

For starters, my husband and I, as well as our church family, are reading through the Bible chronologically in one year. We’re not just reading though—every Sunday, as a spiritual family, we’re discussing what we’ve read and how it applies to our daily lives. To see our schedule for this endeavor, check out www.riverbendfamily.com/resources.  I’m sure I’ll be spilling over with the new things I’ve learned throughout this year, maybe even after tomorrow’s study. In the meantime, this laundry isn’t going to wash itself. More soon. 🙂

Jan 6 2012

Well, hello there!

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If you’re in search of an intellectually and academically challenging blog to stimulate your senses in all things scholarly, this is not the place for you.  Do not pass GO, do not collect $200—just move along. I won’t hold it against you. If you’re still reading, however, let me clue you in. What you’ve stumbled upon here are the sincerely raw, honest musings of an average, clumsy 24-year old newlywed (me) who, however diverse in interests and passions, has one goal in life that is really rather simple: to live my life and go to heaven when I die. That doesn’t make me any better than anyone else. It doesn’t mean I’m particularly special in any way, unless you count the fact that Someone died because He was in love with me. But that cool thing is…He didn’t just do it for me—He did it for you, too, so I hope your goal in life is the same as mine. If so, I hope you’ll keep reading, because I’m sure we have a lot in common.

As a disclaimer, I should tell you that the whole “clumsy” word I used to describe myself includes not only the problem I seem to have with getting the words just right when I talk or with walking in heels like I do it every day (I don’t at all if I can help it), but also that I’m completely and totally void of all technological competence. In other words, I’m new to this whole blogger deal and so please be patient with me as this blog is definitely under construction as I try to figure this thing out. As soon as I’ve got it under my belt, I promise I’ll be posting a lot, so stay tuned. In the meantime, thanks for browsing!