On Age

A lot of things change as you get older.

You find out that whining actually doesn’t really get you your way in the end, that anything that’s really worth something demands effort, that there are actually more meaningful things in life than holographic Pokemon cards and the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. You learn that reading doesn’t need to look cool to be good for you, that your parents were right when they forced you to practice piano and the clarinet until you graduated high school. You learn that you are never actually “broke,” and have absolutely no authority to ever complain about the life that you have.

And then you find out some other things as you grow older – things that, if you let them, can make rob your heart of its joy and put cynicism there instead. You find that those people in your life that you thought were invincible actually do have flaws and can make mistakes that really hurt, you find that people and churches can stray quite far from what God intended them to be. You find that friendships can become icy and distant no matter how close you may have been before. And boy, can that anger consume you before you even realize what it is.

And then I love it when there are those people that show up randomly into your life, be they people that rarely frequent your blog but just so happen to comment on an angry post, people that you haven’t seen or had a real conversation with in years but spend an hour driving with you in an impending snowstorm, or a well-meaning friend who isn’t afraid to step on my toes to humble me. And I love how God uses them in a mighty way to shatter my arrogance and the silly notion that I can change the church in 20 days, or that I am somehow less blind than my parents, or that distancing myself from people that think differently than me is somehow the best thing to do. To show me that criticizing outwardly and judging inwardly produces more bitterness in my heart than transforming love. Prayer is… just something amazing. It dawned on me how much I can complain about things and people without ever once praying for them. Hah! But to learn that God hears your prayers in the morning and your sighing at night, to acknowledge that an Almighty God can do infinitely more than a bigheaded little girl – that is something awesome. It’s hard to judge someone when you are praying earnestly for their souls that Christ would draw them to Him. It’s hard to harbor bitterness at someone when you are continuously praying for their well-being and that God would change your heart to love that person more.  What an incredibly tough lesson to learn, especially for someone as prideful as me – but I feel myself being freed, shackle by shackle, into something that I have never quite felt before.

Thoughts

Usually I have an agenda when I set off to write one of these things. But this time, I really just want to write. I’ve stopped importing these to Facebook because sometimes, I really just need to write without trying to sound smart, poignant, or witty. That’s exhausting. But more importantly, I’m tired of putting off writing simply because I don’t have something mind-blowing to say. I need to write before my thoughts become dust, before I have no recollection of the mind I used to have in the past. So hopefully my one avid reader, Mimi, will appreciate this!

I tried starting up a tumblr account and thought of completely making the switch over, but I don’t know – there is a level of intimacy that I don’t think I can reach on tumblr. I need to get deep and depressing, because that’s how I like it right now. With worship music, with the things I write about, with the things that interest me. There is something about brokenness that I really identify with (maybe because I am… horribly messed up! A-ha!). I think it is because when I am broken, I actually feel something. And I hate feeling nothing, feeling like I have let my day go to waste in complacency.

Mm. We shall begin.

I am home but I don’t know if it is home anymore. I really wanted to come back to Maryland a lot more than I did this time last year, and I’m not all too sure why. I suppose that I missed my family and driving and Chinese food and a life where I am not surrounded by people 24/7 and residents cannot burst into my room unannounced. Yet I am finishing up my second day out of my 5.5 days here, and I am unsettlingly dissatisfied.

I have yet to find the balance between having a godly discontentment with things that are wrong in this world, and fighting a judgmental heart. What do I mean? My dad picked me up in our car from the airport, and as he took off the huge red contraption that locks the steering wheel in place so no one can steal it, I noticed for one of the first times in my life how pristine and well-kept our car is. I came home, and while eating a huge and delicious home-cooked Chinese meal with my parents, I found myself getting more and more disappointed when my parents shared how much money they spent on cute little trinkets in Taiwan and new cameras and new clothes and fine dining. I found myself frustrated with my mom as she kept walking into my room over and over wearing yet another new necklace that she bought from eBay, and another new sweater or shirt from the mall. I wondered why they thought it was such an odd idea for rich people to live at a cap and give the rest of the money away like Brad and Julie do. I walked into the doors of CBC and went to the single-stall bathroom and just thought about how clean and nice our facilities are. I was frustrated by the family at CBC whose father is a banker and who lives in a mansion in Potomac, yet spends the money on his children and their comfort instead of the poor.

I know there is some amount of merit to what I’m feeling right now, but I don’t feel a lot of love in me when I get angry like this. How do you speak truth in love? How do you challenge your parents to start living biblically and not be owned by their possessions without looking down on them for it? How do you take out the huge freaking plank in your own eye?

I’ve been reading the book, The Cost of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. What a ridiculous book, in the best way possible. I just finished the 3rd chapter talking about single-minded obedience, and Bonhoeffer goes into real detail about the parable of the rich young man, and attacks the practice of many Christians (including me) today that read the living Word and try to justify not doing it.

How is such absurdity possible? What has happened that the word of Jesus can be thus degraded by this trifling, and thus left open to the mockery of the world? When orders are issued in other spheres of life there is no doubt whatever of their meaning. If a father sends his child to bed, the boy knows at once what he has to do. But suppose he has picked up a smattering of pseudo-theology. In that case he would argue more or less like this: ‘Father tells me to go to bed, but he really means that I am tired, and he does not want me to be tired. I can overcome my tiredness just as well if I go out and play. Therefore though father tells me to go to bed, he really means: ‘Go out and play.’ Are we to treat the commandment of Jesus differently from other orders and exchange single-minded obedience for downright disobedience? How could that be possible?

The actual call of Jesus and the response of single-minded obedience have an irrevocable significance. By means of them Jesus calls people into an actual situation where fiath is possible. For that reason his call is an actual call and he wishes it so to be understood, because he knows that it is only through actual obedience that a man can become liberated to believe.“

My heart longs for this “radical” faith and abandon for a God that we have forsaken. Yet I fluctuate from inspiration to complacency so quickly it disgusts me. How can this be? I can’t wait to see lives and a church that actually desires Christ more than anything, that truly believes that to live is Christ and to die is gain. Oh, Lord – would you make that a reality!

Deathbed

I’ve been thinking a lot about death lately. Morbid, I know. I don’t think it’s a fear of death anymore, but more of a realization of how quickly it can raid without warning.

A little background, if you don’t mind.

As of late, I have been volunteering Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays at the CCACC Adult Day Healthcare Center that my church lends its building to during the weekdays. After failing to show much initiative in volunteering at an actual hospital and shadowing a nurse like I had initially planned, an interesting opportunity presented itself when my mom mentioned that Grace, the nurse caring for the entirety of the 55 elderly patients there, was really in need of some help. And with some coaxing from Valerie Yu’s mom (one of the directors there), I acquiesed (I just wanted to use that word) and started the next week.

Forget the slight problem that my Mandarin speaking ability amounts to that of a 3-year-old (not even, actually), and that about 80% of the elderly there speak only Mandarin. BAH, here’s to learning that blasted language once and for all!

My first day, Auntie Sue-Hwa walked up to me right when I came in and told me that I would be teaching English to whoever wanted to learn. The next 45 minutes consisted of me saying numerous body parts in English and struggling to make about 20 senior citizens understand in my broken Mandarin. Pointing to one foot, I would say, “Ee guh shi FOOT!” Then pointing to both feet I would yell, “Liang guh shi FEET!” They got a kick out of it. Imagine this for all of the important body parts (I forgot that the elderly’s memories are deteriorating fast and tried to be too ambitious, and they told me so haha). It probably as funny to all the elderly and to my translator as it was embarrassing for me. But they were incredibly sweet and kept saying thank you to me whenever I walked by (“Shieh shieh lau shi!”), and loved the little English worksheets I made for them (Real ESL teachers would scoff at my abilities, good thing they don’t really have any other ESL teacher HAH.)

When I’m not teaching ESL or playing bingo with them (Yo I can rattle off them Mandarin numbers now, no lie), I’m in the office typing up handwritten forms about each patient into the computer so that Grace doesn’t have to keep rewriting new forms and can just edit word documents instead. One thing I’m good for is computers and typing. Take that, Mandarin!

Anyways, the reason why death is on my mind lately is because everyday I come in, I type up all of their symptoms and ailments, and I am in shock of how much time ravages the body of a 70-year-old. Before I type up each patient’s form, I look at the profile on the front so I can get a picture of who I am writing about before I begin. I have grown to cherish a lot of these “old people,” I’ve realized that there is a very soft spot in my heart for the elderly. One of the few Cantonese ladies (cute as a button and as patient as anything) sat down with me and taught me how to knit, although my clumsy fingers couldn’t understand the twisting and turning for a good hour. There is one adorable Mandarin lady whose back is now hunched and she is shrinking by the year, but she is precious and smiles at me all the time and talks at me in Mandarin while I smile and nod. One elderly man always tries to help me whenever I clean up, opening up trashcan lids and rushing to open doors for me.

I’ve always loved it when I see old people in love, and I’ve seen it in full bloom between Mr. and Mrs. Lu. Mrs. Lu had a stroke many years ago, and lost all control of the left side of her body. Her husband is a cute little frail-looking man who has been taking care of her for years, pushes her around on her wheelchair, and rushes to her aid when she calls for him before she has to go into physical therapy. There is one 70-something-year-old man that comes everyday and helps out in the kitchen and taking out trash because his health problems aren’t serious enough to qualify him for the daycare, but he wants to be with his wife and take care of her. May we all find love like that near the end of our lives.

After spending time with these people in morning, I open up their files after lunch and find out that the bodies of these same people are plagued by hypertension, osteoporosis, cataracts, hyperlipidemia, hypothroidism, rheumatoid arthritis, and atrial fibrillation. Their minds are being eaten away by dementia and Parkinson’s – their spirits broken by depression and the fact that many can’t even control their own bowel movements anymore.

How quickly our bodies begin to turn on us. How quickly we  go from independent to dependent, even to the point of protective wet pads. We are not invincible, not even close.

I’ve also been reading a book called Intensive Care: The Story of a Nurse, which is told by an ICU nurse named Echo Heron. It was a random book I chose while at Barnes N Nobles to read while I was waiting there, but I ended liking it so much that I bought it. This book makes me both excited and terrified to be a nurse. I’ll go into it in more depth at a later time, but the reason I bring it up is because it has shown me how much death becomes a part of a nurse’s life. Echo tells the story of a woman who tucked her 6-year-old girl in for a nap and took a nap herself, and woke up to find her daughter missing. Only an hour later did she find her daughter floating lifeless in their pool, and ran into the hospital frantically carrying her dead child and weeping. Another woman falls asleep drunk while holding a lit cigarette and wakes up in flames and charred black. Another person is fine and healthy until he has a sudden aneurysm and his life is gone.

What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

It happens just like that, and our lives can be snuffed out. It is sobering to realize that it is by sheer grace that God keeps my sinful heart pumping when I wake me up every morning, that it would be completely just if God decided that my life on earth was to end today, that I could fall asleep while driving and suddenly die without ever graduating from Emory or marrying the love of my life or experiencing the joy of bearing children or being able to take care of my parents or being able to serve in medical missions. It is sobering to think that at any time, this sinful wretch could come face to face with the God of the universe, and what will I be able to say about my life then?

I do not want to have wasted it. I do not want to have built bigger barns of useless things, to have spent myself on what is meaningless, to chase the approval of men rather than the approval of God. I do not want to have lived a life where I was too afraid to tell anyone about Jesus. I do not want to simply grow up and buy more things and make a nice family and decorate my  nice house and make a nice salary, only to find out at the end of my life that I missed it.

I want to know Jesus, not just know about Him. I want to be fully content in Him, to be able to do bold things for Him. I want to see CBC come back to life again, to see and be a part of bringing His children back to Him. I want to be free of the sin that so easily entangles, and find my delight in the treasure that is Christ.

As I always end my posts with lyrics, here are the ones from Relient K’s “Deathbed” that inspired the title of this post. They are a little different, but I hope that you will take 11 minutes out of your day to listen to this incredible song.

I was so scared of Jesus
But He sought me out
Like the cancer in my lungs
That’s killing me now
And I’ve given up hope
On the days I have left
But I cling to the hope
Of my life in the next
Then Jesus showed up
Said “Before we go”
“I thought that we might reminisce”
“See one night in your life”
“When you turned out the light”
“You asked for and prayed for my forgiveness”

You cried wolf
The tears they soaked your fur
The blood dripped from your fangs
You said, “What have I done?”
You loved that lamb
With every sinful bone
And there you wept alone
Your heart was so contrite

You said, “Jesus, please forgive me of my crimes
Sanctify this withered heart of mine
Stay with me until my life is through
And on that day please take me home with you”

I can smell the death on the sheets
Covering me
I can’t believe this is the end
I can hear You whisper to me,
“It’s time to leave
You’ll never be lonely again”

But this was my deathbed
I died there alone
When I closed my eyes tonight
You carried me home

I am the Way
Follow Me
And take My hand
And I am the Truth
Embrace Me and you’ll understand
And I am the Light
And for Me you’ll live again
For I am Love
I am Love
I, I am Love

Downpour

I never thought it would come to this, but I think I’m actually beginning to enjoy exercise. [gasp!] I can’t say that I like running yet, though. I actually hate wheezing and getting tired after a half mile and trying to land my feet as gently on the ground as possible to minimize my thigh-jiggling. It doesn’t really work, sadly. But I do try hard.

And in a moment of delusion, I signed up for a Conditioning/Swimming class for the fall semester. You know, I thought that since it doesn’t cost any extra money, I can force myself to keep fit/learn how to swim the right way as well as boost the GPA a little, yes? Yet in the moment, I think I forgot the slight fact that I have never been able to swim more than 2 laps without stopping. Not even after a week at FCA camp 6 years ago where supposedly “all skill levels are welcome,” and yet I ended up in the lane with the sprained-ankle girl. Sad day. It’s like my lungs just have a little spaz attack whenever I try swimming underwater for more than 10 seconds, and all muscles just give out. I’m convinced that water hates me and just wants to go up my nostrils.

So yes, if anybody would like to teach me how to swim (I’ve already dragged Sandy to the pool with me and don’t think she’ll be wanting to come back again anytime soon), that would be just hunkydory. Or if anyone feels like going to a nice gym for free, I have lots of guest passes that are waiting to be used up!

Anyways. Here we come to the whole point of writing this post.

So today at around 4pm, being healthy exercising girl that I am – I decided to go jogging around my neighborhood, mostly to try out this new little trail Carmen’s told me about. So I’m running, running, (surprisingly it hurts less than usual, have we progress here??) and everything’s awesome and there are honeysuckles on the trail and I resist and just inhale the fragrance as I gogogo. And I get to the end of the trail and see rainclouds as dark as crap (no, they weren’t brown, but that’d be a sight, wouldn’t it?) so I start running back. And I’m jamming to the new Leeland songs that I just got today, finding it interesting that even though the wind is literally pushing me forward and lightning/thunder are crashing everywhere, that there’s no rain.

I’ve never been one to like rain – I always happen to be wearing the wrong shoes, my socks get all wet and smelly, my hair doesn’t air dry well, and I always have this fear that I’m going to be struck by lightning like that old guy in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The only exception was at Camp Heaven last summer when we just got caught in this downpour and there was no use trying to stay dry. And we just stomped in puddles and acted like the children that we are and danced in the rain until Jeff’s lenses popped out of his glasses and we prayed and God found it for us. I haven’t quite had a rain experience like that since then.

But today, I knew that once the first raindrop hit my arm, it was over. I was probably still a mile away from my house, and my iPod could have potentially been ruined but I kept listening anyways because there was something very powerful about the song that was playing and the rain that was starting to shower over me. And I can’t tell you exactly what that feeling was like – to have leaves flying all around me, rain pelting my face, thunder and lightning crashing within 2 seconds of each other, with these words pushing me on.

I was carried to the table
Seated where I don’t belong
Carried to the table
Swept away by His love
And I don’t see my brokenness anymore
When I’m seated at the table of the Lord
I’m carried to the table
The table of the Lord

Fighting thoughts of fear
And wondering why He called my name
Am I good enough to share this cup
This world has left me lame
Even in my weakness
The Savior called my name
In His Holy presence
I’m healed and unashamed

I couldn’t help but run with my arms opened towards the sky receiving the rain, wanting my selfishness, my vanity, my lack of self-control, my hunger for approval, my pride, my lack of trust in God – to be washed away like everything else. Why should anything else matter? Why do I look at the mirror so much that I have to write Bible verses all over it in dry-erase marker to stop myself? Why do I tiptoe around my actions, trying so hard not to make anyone mad at me? Why do I care more about what other people think about me than what the God of the universe thinks about me? Why do I still spend literally hours on Facebook when people are broken all over the world and I don’t know a thing about them or their stories?

I’m tired of this worldly guilt, of always feeling bad about these stupid things that I can’t seem to stop or start doing, and yet showing no external change in my life. Pray that I learn what repentance means and looks like, and embrace a life free from this sin that so easily entangles and can somehow makes me believe that anything could be better than Christ.

The song that was playing as I ran for dear life up the driveway to my house:

Oh praise the One who paid my debt
And raised this life up from the dead

Fight

The distinguishing mark of saving faith is not perfection. The mark of faith is not that I never sin.

The mark of faith is that I fight.

I fight anything that dims my sight of Jesus as my glorious Savior.
I fight anything that diminishes the fullness of the lordship of Jesus in my life.
I fight anything that threatens to replace Jesus as the supreme Treasure of my life. Anything that stands between me and receiving Jesus faith fights—not with fists or knives or guns or bombs, but with the truth of Christ.

-John Piper

Rest

I find that oftentimes when I go home for break, it is really anything but that. I end up running around and becoming busier when I supposedly have the most “free time,” and come back to school feeling more exhausted than ever.

This is perhaps the first break that I have truly found rest. And as I write this sitting at the airport waiting for my plane to load (I’ve always wanted to write something here because there is something magical about the airport), my heart feels pretty weird – nervous, even – maybe because this is the first official plane ride that I will ride by myself (without the amazing Jessica, who guided me through much of it), or I still don’t really know where the bus loop is to take the Marta back to Emory, or that May still seems a long ways away. But I think that it is mostly that I am frightened – that after all the time that I have had in Maryland to think, to read again, to find parts of me that I don’t want to be there anymore – that I might come back to Emory and be the same person I was when I left – with the same stupid worries, the same complaints, the same discontent that seems to plague me although I am at what I thought was my dream school.

I’ve been wondering why I feel so disconnected from people and fellowships and organizations that are so awesome on campus, why I still don’t know who I am and keep trying to change myself into what I think people want. All that worrying is beginning to drain me. While I’ve been in Maryland, I had the first chance in a while to read again purely for the sake of learning about what actually matters to me. When I was younger, I didn’t play sports – I read books until I started to have to wear bifocals like old people and kids would keep asking if I broke my glasses. There was actually a time when my mom would threaten to punish me if I didn’t stop reading. Yes, those were the dark ages. Although I really enjoyed myself at the time.

This break, I got the chance to get in touch with my childhood dork and finish 3 books– all of which made me realize that my self-indulgent problems are insignificant. The first was Don’t Waste Your Life by John Piper, which showed me that it is a tragedy to chase after anything but joy in Jesus. Whether I know it or not, and even though I am not in middle school anymore, I am always trying so hard to be liked, to be funny, to be “cool” – whatever cool means, anyways. May I learn that there are bigger things in life to care about. The second was a book I found in the nursing section of the library called Nursing America: One Year Behind the Nursing Stations of an Inner-City Hospital by Sandy Balfour. I am both inspired and scared by this book – inspired by the selflessness and skills that these nurses at the Med have for their patients, be they burn victims, trauma victims, or newborn babies – and scared that I am not strong enough to be a good nurse. Because of this book, I got past my fear of the phone and called up three women in our church who are nurses, and spent a good hour on the phone with them learning about their experiences as nurses. The consensus is that it is an incredibly demanding job, with you being on your feet for even 12 hours at a time and serving people who are in deep pain, but it is also so rewarding in knowing that you can see how your work directly helps those that you serve – which is something that you don’t always get to see upfront in other jobs. The third book was When Invisible Children Sing by Chi-Cheng Huang, which I’ve never heard of before but happened to be sitting right next to Balfour’s book. Chi is a Harvard med student who took a year off to serve the street children in La Paz, Bolivia – those who had run away from abusive parents to live and sleep on the streets. 90% of kids inhaled paint thinner on a daily basis, girls as young as 13 sold their bodies and aborted their babies like it was typical to do that at their age. I cringed as I read the stories of girls who had as many as 20 razor blade cuts on each arm and leg. I was and still am in shock that things like that actually happen, and pray that I do not forget their story once I come back to Emory.

Isaiah 58:6

Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter – when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

dancer?

Something I read today that both cleared up a question that has been plaguing me for the last month, and made both me and my roommate chuckle for quite a bit:

Does the Killers’ ‘Human’ have the silliest lyrics of the week?

Sep 25, 2008, 01:49 PM | by Simon Vozick-Levinson

It does, say I. Note that I am a Killers fan — even liked most of Sam’s Town! — and I am enjoying their newly leaked single, too. (Hear it here, for now, until their label disappears it like they already have from YouTube.) But check out the profound query posed by Brandon Flowers on the hook: “Are we human?”, he wonders, “Or are we dancer?”

Two things, Mr. Flowers. First: “dancer?” Are you having trouble differentiating yourself and your bandmates from…Dancer the magical reindeer? If not, I believe you might be missing a letter at the end of that word. So I’m gonna go ahead and assume that you are in fact asking whether you (we?) are human or, uh, dancers. Which brings me to my second complaint: What’s with the false choice? Yo, Brandon, no offense, but most dancers are generally human. Just sayin’. Unless we are talking about freaky robots or adorable LOLcreatures, in which case I think I just discovered the perfect video treatment for “Human” (below).

I’ll write a real post soon, but for now I hope that you enjoy this as much as I did.

Resolution

I remember when I was a younger, more dedicated blogger and mildly obsessed with Xanga that I would write these ridiculously long entries about everything I did in the past year. (Haha WOW, I just spent an hour reading over old Xanga entries. Might I recommend May 8th, 2005 and December 26th, 2004. And I will kill you if you say anything about my username.)

Shannon was saying to me yesterday as the ball dropped how sad it is that New Year’s becomes less and less magical to us as we get older. I don’t know how true that is, but I do know that much of the excitement was gone after we clinked glasses and made fun of Solange’s choice of makeup for the Hollywood New Year’s party. I didn’t think or reflect about the past year even in its final minutes, even though this year has been one of the most mistake-ridden yet transforming of these almost 19 years of life.

I know that I have to write this down or I will never get around to thinking about it.

In 2008, I :

• Ruined my first surprise birthday party ever, but realized that I was still loved by good friends.
• Went to my last winter retreat with the youth group and was pleasantly surprised.
• Learned that I can never hide things for long, and that even when I completely screw up someone else’s heart, he can still give me forgiveness and grace that only be found in Jesus.
• Learned alongside some of the best mentors I should ever hope to have in my life at DINFOS and got to know Natalie on a very personal and wonderful level.
• Actually started talking to people at Atholton and found that I actually like them a lot.
• Went to prom and had an incredible time.
• Got into only 2 out of the 5 colleges I applied to, but ended up going to my dream school all the same.
• Didn’t make All-State band for yet another year YAYY.
• Found that I love my mother quite a lot, and that it wasn’t worth it to fight anymore.
• Realized how sacrificial my dad’s love is.
• Lost touch with my sister in the middle of the year, but I remember now how close of sisters we can be.
• Loved the girls that I stayed with at senior week, and went to some of my first parties ever (don’t worryyyy)
• Found that no matter what we go through, we can still be friends and even good ones at that.
• Was a counselor to my 7-9 year-old girls at Camp Heaven and for once in my life truly had to depend on God.
• Worked alongside some of the most incredible people I will ever meet at Little Lights.
• Worked at the fair one last time. I still cry whenever I hear Lifehouse’s “Everything”
• Left Maryland and found a new home at Emory.
• Found one of the coolest and most hilarious girls I will ever meet in the form of my roommate, Liz Liu.
• Bonded with the girls on my floor surprisingly during Finals week.
• Realized that it is very easy for me to neglect the people I care about most.
  
• Had to think about for the first time, really, why I choose to believe in Jesus Christ.

The truth is, I don’t think I’ve ever kept a New Year’s resolution in my life. Maybe a month, at best. I wish that I could blame it all on my forgetfulness, but the truth is that I’m just a lazy woman that rarely steps outside of the things that are convenient.

But perhaps writing them out here will help me actually try. Eden showed me Jonathan Edward’s list of resolutions yesterday, and I knew that there wasn’t a chance that I could keep even one of them for a month, let alone a year. But I was reminded of how resolutions were never meant to be easy, and that the only chance I will ever have of keeping them is if I have some divine intervention. So here they are:

I resolve to:

1. Stop trying so hard to get others to love me, and to spend my energy loving others.
2. Have the courage to be honest with people, even if it results in other people temporarily not being happy with me.
3. Not allow myself more than 20 minutes in the morning to pick out clothes and do my hair.
4. Read at least 2 good books every month.
5. Write a song this year.
6. Stop wasting my life on Facebook and to only use it to build up relationships and encourage people. (instead of going through pictures for hours, which is actually quite easy for a little stalker like me) If I find myself doing the latter, I must close it.
7. Sign on AIM more frequently when I go back to Emory and make a conscious effort to keep in touch with those that I care about and even those that I might not.
8. Read, truly read, the Bible and try applying it for a change.
9. Learn more about the world and what is happening to people outside of these little bubbles of Maryland and Emory, and maybe then my stupid little problems will become less significant.
10. Stop buying things that I do not need.
11. Remember that since I do not always like everybody, not everybody has to like me.
12. Act like I know Jesus in how I speak to and treat people.
13. Learn Mandarin (to a certain extent!).
14. Keep up with blogs even when I start to get lazy.
15. Work harder than I ever have in school.
16. Try to learn how to play tennis, and to keep fit not in an attempt to impress other people but for my own health.
17. Catch myself when I keep stealing glances in anything that can be a mirror, and to stop scrutinizing myself. (this might take some time)
18. Sleep.
19. Not be a helpless child anymore.
20. Not give up when I break one of these, and to keep at it all the same. And to not rely on myself to attempt all of the above.

Here we go.

Good news

Merry Christmas, ya’ll. :] (Don’t be hatin’ on the ya’ll, what a great and efficient word. Try it sometime.)

In the past, I always used to think that Christmas was supposed to be a huge shebang and we’d invite lots of people and eat lots of delectable Chinese food and get food babies. This year is different though. Just about everyone in my family woke up after noon (except for my mother who can literally sleep until 4:30pm in the afternoon LOL), the house is quiet, no snow is outside. Yesterday night, we sat around the mahjong table for about 3 and a half hours as my dad stole plastic chips from us. ALTHOUGH I did win quite a few hands myself, let’s not forget that. I got kinda grumpy (rather, really grumpy) when it got to be around 3am because I have been getting too much sleep lately and can no longer stay up into the ridiculous hours of the night. Aside from that though, those 3+ hours were probably the first time my family sat down and actually talked to each other this break. The women in the family belted out Sound of Music songs and oldies and every other annoying song as my dad just looked at us and sighed. But even he cracked a smile when we started singing/yelling “BYE POP POP, PLEASE PRAY FOR ME. I WAS THE BLACK SHEEP OF THE FAMILY. YOU TEACH ME RIGHT FROM WRONG LAH!” (Don’t ask, it has a very rich history for all of us.)

Before the intense mahjong playing, my sister, papa bear, and I joined my mother at church and spent Christmas Even ballin’ in the church gym since no young adults came for the badminton day my dad leads. (HAH no one else would spend their Christmas Eve playing badminton. Except maybe Rachel Liao who refuses to be in my life lately SOB.) I realized that the athletic gene skipped right over me as I huffed and puffed and failed to be a baller. Especially while my sister and dad were dominating it on the court.

I didn’t give it much thought until my whole family was driving alongside each other while going home and we all made stupid faces at my mom in the van next to us – but man, I love my family. I laid in bed yesterday night thinking about what the heck I would do if one of my parents or my sister suddenly died. I don’t even know how I would start dealing with that. Kind of morbid, but it made me realize that who are we to think that God will keep us on this earth today, or tomorrow, or the day after that. It’s frightening how often we forget the fragility of life and how precious each day is. It’s been weird for me to have so much time on my hands, and man, have I wasted a ton of it on the internet. While adding links to my “Inspirations” thingy to the right, I remembered how I loved reading Jocelyn’s xanga and so I just typed in her name into google. And this popped up:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/03/29/no.facebook.lent/index.html

So random, but something she said really stuck out to me about her giving up Facebook/internet for lent:

“It’s a form of spiritual awareness that allows you to reconnect with God,” said Jocelyn Chiu, an Emory University sophomore and active member of her Presbyterian church. “By giving up something that used up so much of my time, I realized that I had been leaving my spiritual life behind.”

Setting up this new blog has actually sucked up a lot of time and I need to be a lot more mindful of it. Sigh yai yai.

I’ll leave you with something that I read in my Google Reader today from John Piper’s blog:

Do you try to connect with God the Santa Claus way or the Jesus way?

The Santa way says,

You better watch out,
You better not cry,
You better not pout,
I’m telling you why,
Santa Claus is coming to town.

The Jesus way says,

“I lay down my life for the sheep” (John 10:15).
“Whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (John 6:37).

disclaimer: john piper is kind of intense.

I never give Christmas enough thought. May we all spend some time on this quiet Christmas morning to remember not just the reason for the season, but the goodness of the news that Christ would humble himself from his throne – where thousands upon thousands of angels worship him every second of every day – to become a little baby that poops in his pants and will eventually grow up to become a blameless man nailed to a cross.

change of scenery

I had in mind a really poignant first entry to debut this new little WordPress baby, but have decided against it. I have switched because I’ve realized that I really am a little graphic design nerd and I enjoy the themes on WordPress. Not to mention all the cool little widgets you can add. And I have always wanted green grass on my website. Happy day.

Today is the first day of break that I have sat at home for the entire day. Usually sitting around all day really bothers me and makes me feel lonely, but I think I needed it to think. I have done more reading today than I have done in a very long time, the majority done on Google Reader and blogs. (which you should go and check out and subscribe to many blogs after reading this) I have discovered that David Crowder has a xanga and that he is absolutely hilarious. Read his unicorn entry if you want a good chuckle. And then his “Jesus is a friend of mine” entry. HAHA. He is rising up the ranks of people that I wish to meet.

Click to find out what this is all about:

I also stumbled upon Francis Chan’s journal on his website today. Not his video blogs, but his actual written blog. His entry from February 27, 2007 really blew me away:

“Am I really alive?

…Take hold of the life that is truly life – 1 Timothy 6:19

It’s the question I asked myself today when I read 1 Timothy 6. Have I really taken hold of the “eternal life?” Am I really taking hold of the “life that is truly life” or just occasionally experiencing glimpses of it. We often hear the expression, “This is the life.” It’s the saying that comes from a person sitting on a beach chair holding a Corona, or the dad wrestling with his kids, or the athlete winning a championship, or the truck driver eating a bacon double cheeseburger, …you get the idea. Everyone has their idea of “having arrived.” Christians quickly judge those who find “life” in things outside of God, but I wonder how many of us have truly taken hold of the life God speaks of.”

It scares me that I haven’t taken hold of this life, but it scares me even more that most of the time it doesn’t even bother me that I haven’t. John 8:32 goes,“And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” I haven’t felt free in a very long time. Actually, I’ve never felt more chained than I have lately. So I guess that means that I am quite far from knowing the truth. I’ve made a lot of mistakes – really bad ones, I’ve hurt people that I care about – more than I ever thought I could, I’ve put up mask after mask trying to hide from rejection and the complicated truth. I was just thinking today about the King of Hearts drama that we do at the Fair, and it breaks my heart that although we perform that drama 50+ times at the fair every year, I wonder if I have ever taken off those masks myself. I vowed to myself a few times this past year not to let myself look in the mirror after realizing how consumed I am with my appearance, how much time I waste scrutinizing my flaws and agonizingly comparing myself to other people. I pretend to be happy when I am broken inside. I act like I’m strong and in control when I am consumed by my fear. I tried to look like a better Christian on the surface, I tried to keep the outside of my bowl clean, but I am blind, so blind that God has to shout in my face for me to notice.

I was so angry when I found out that CBC spent $30,000+ dollars on a new gym floor. “How much could that money have done for the poor? How could the church just keep building onto itself and neglecting those in need?” But when Alex Cardenas asked me to help out with Warmhearts early on a Saturday morning, I shrugged my shoulders and told him I couldn’t, after spending more money on Christmas presents and myself than I have in my life.

It’s time to get real. I’m tired of being fake, of hiding behind hypocrisy. I don’t know how long it will take – I’ve been fake for so long that I don’t even remember what it feels like to be real – but it’s time to change.

This banner comes from John Piper’s blog and is one of my favorite verses. Thank God that His mercies are new every morning, or my messed up soul wouldn’t stand a chance.