My name’s Hannah Smith, and I’m a 21-year-old recent college grad from Houston, TX. I currently live at home with my mom, two brothers, barky dog, and flighty cat. It’s hard to know where to start with describing myself; to borrow a term from my friend Bonny Beth, I feel like a kaleidoscope of different things.
I’m not sure whether I’m an introvert or an extrovert, but I’m beginning to think I’m a shy extrovert. I need people around me. And this summer, while I’m living at home, I have my family (very important) but not really any friends (equally important, I think). I know people, but I don’t have the kinds of friendships where I feel I can bare myself to another person and have them accept me. These friendships are rare, and I had them at school. I will keep up with these people, but it’s hard to nourish friendships when the friends are not in the same town.
I was a sociology major in college and I love to watch people and figure things out. I like making connections.
I’m a Christian. This is a fact that should be first in my life, but it is currently somewhere in the middle. I’m not a very good Christian. God keeps holding onto me nonetheless. It’s a very strange thing, but I can’t tell you how grateful I am for it.
Theatre runs in my veins. I’ve been spoiled by seeing some incredible performers onstage (I’ll make a list someday — I’m always afraid someone will think I’m making it up), but as someone told me yesterday, being spoiled means having a lot and taking it for granted. I don’t take my theatre experiences for granted.
Someday, I want to have a family. I pray for this to happen, and someday, I believe God will provide. For a big part of my life, I was scared to even hope for such a wonderful thing to happen to me, but as I’ve grown in life and in my faith, I’ve come to see that prayer is a real thing, and that God delights in marriage and families, and that God delights in me; I can freely hope and pray that God will bring this miracle into my life.
I love to go new places and to learn new things and meet people who aren’t like me. This fall, I’m going to Germany to live with a family and learn German and help take care of the kids in the family. I can’t wait to live somewhere new, challenge myself, meet Christians from a different culture, and be a part of a Christian family raising their kids in this different place.
Our social culture definitely runs by iPod these days, so here are some of my favorite musicians: Over the Rhine, Wilco, Iron & Wine, U2, T.I., Neko Case, the New Pornographers, the Decemberists, Bob Dylan, Arcade Fire, Derek Webb, Kanye West, Patty Griffin, the Beatles, and yes, Coldplay and John Mayer. I listen to a lot of pop radio while I’m at home. I don’t listen to “every kind” of music, and I guess I can’t really be put in a box. I used to wish I were a hipster, and I still sort of do, but I’ve come to terms with my own love for “sub-par” music. I have quite a few Justin Timberlake songs on my iPod (which I break out when I’m in a dancin’ sort of mood), and I have been known to belt Broadway tunes in the shower. I don’t “get” Radiohead, and probably won’t enjoy their music for a long time (except for the tunes on Pablo Honey).
Performance art of any and all kinds fascinates me. High, low, play, concert, impromptu street piece — whatever, I love it. It’s that whole “incarnation” aspect, I think. Word made flesh, before your eyes. Powerful. Sometimes undeniable.
A last thing you should know about me is that I struggle with OCD — specifically, a type called scrupulosity. I know, it sounds like I made that word up — but it’s very real. It’s taken me quite a while to come to terms with this. I don’t mind talking about it. I know it is something I will have to live with for my whole life. I’m working on it with medication and behavioral therapy. Slowly but surely, I think love is replacing fear in my life.
