Keep Your Plans In Open Hands ~ Hannah Petterfer

Keep Your Plans In Open Hands.

I said that to myself so many times over the last several years. I said it as I graduated college and entered into the event-planning sphere only to be met by COVID. I said it as I tried to navigate dating for the first time only to be met by heartbreak.

I said it so much it accidentally became a book, “Open Hands,” which is about how to be specific, personal, and powerful about what we mean when we say we trust God. And you can’t write a book about trusting God without having to trust God with the writing and publication of the book. It was a wild ride.

One of the most challenging things for authors and creators is imposter-syndrome. At 26 years old, I often feel underqualified to write and publish a book. After all, there are so many wiser, older people in the world (like my dear friend, Kim). Why me? Why this book? Why “Open Hands”?

I recently had a young girl message me on Instagram. I met her at a speaking engagement in Georgia, where I spoke on how to wait with open hands. She was too shy to come up and speak to me afterwards, but her message touched me. She expressed how she was encouraged at how I wrote and spoke in the middle of what God was doing in my life. My life is still very much in limbo. I rent, not own, a house. I am still single. My career shifts every six months.

And in the middle of this, I know that God is good. Even in the middle of struggling to trust Him, He is worth trusting. Perhaps it is this very tension that makes my words those of weight. Perhaps it is the tenacity through the confusion that makes my words something of use. Perhaps it is the rather unfinished-ness of my story that makes it a necessary one.

For I see more clearly now that God was using all of the confusion and questions in my life to guide other people not to my perfect answer but to the person of Christ. That’s what I love most about my book: you can’t go more than a page or two without a scripture reference. For Christ has my story written on His hands, and it is finished, even as I await the manuscript of the details.

Let this be your encouragement today that you don’t need to know the ending of your story to tell it. You don’t need a neat little bow at the end of your testimony, ministry, book, or life. The Lord is working with all the dreams, disappointments, and disasters in your hands.

Hold them loosely. Let God use the mess. You never know what will come of it.
You, too, may accidentally write a book.

"Open Hands" by Hannah Petterfer can be purchased on Amazon and where books are sold online as well as locally in Lake Charles, Louisiana.