semi-introduction, newsboys, and nonstalgia?

Hello.

Uh---well. This is. New.
I am Hannah. Des Moines is my home. Words are my release. God is my satisfaction.

There. Now, at the moment what has hit me in the face is growing up. "Growing up." Yep. And I do not suppose it is just because I am free from high school come this May. Not that I am (probably) going off the college two hours away, 'on my own,' starting with a new school, new teachers, new people, new church.

Church started this tangent.

It started when I stumbled upon the facebook of a (long, long ago) childhood friend. From the large friendly church I grew up in. Pause. I do not know what it is, but I cannot help but muse...what it would have been like to stay there. Grow up there. There. In that...community---or whatever it was that all of a sudden, like a fist, blew my breath out.

Yes. It was like seeing a finish, from little boy to man. And seeing the rest of them, what had become, almost as if I saw what had become of those little people I grew up with, sensing that I had missed something, as if I had died. Literally, broken away from something.

Now I come against the past. I---and I don't know why, as a rule, as a shutting out?---cannot remember much of my past. Some events I remember, and during the time in my life I can remember being aware of it searing across my brain, almost as if a little narrative had gone off, saying, "You are changed now"---and my pyschological make-up rings, signaling something.

For probably an hour last night I tried, I pushed, to get memories out from that church and the people I knew then. And they came. They had not wiped off. Some embarrassing ones. I remember my insecurities, my rivalries, my mistakes...I wanted (still want) to know more about the people.

Today (or yesterday?) I listened to the song "Something Beautiful" by Newsboys:

I wanna start it over/I wanna start again/I want a new beginning/One without an end/I feel it inside,/Calling out to me/It's a voice that whispers my name/It's a kiss without any shame/Something beautiful

What is it about those memories that makes me believe I have missed something beautiful?

12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:12-14

There is definitely more later on this. As for now, it is 3 am and I get up in four hours. Nice to meet you, let's talk again.