letter

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haven't blogged very often because i feel like i sound stupid. journal entries are scant and few. i also find social media increasingly undesirable and can reflexively hear my tone of voice become more dry and biting with every blog post i write.

dear future me,

hi. it's been six months since i graduated, five months since moving back, five months since working at sender one, two months since i started doing counseling, and one month since i've been rabidly searching for another job and a place to live. someone yesterday who is one year younger than me mentioned that she only has one more semester until she graduated. i feel like i am pushing through dense unforgiving pudding - time moves three times as slowly when i'm not being hurtled through the quarter system.

here are some nonconsequential things this past month: watched star wars vii, it was fun but also anticlimactic. i came home at 1:30am once, it felt nice. my iphone battery is jenky and so is my laptop. have been binge watching jessica jones. i have a new appreciation for functioning, warm jackets, fish tacos, and poke; still not particularly fond of onions though.

here are some more consequential things: i've changed in some ways that i didn't foresee and so have my friendships. i'm learning this is okay, but it feels kind of like peeling off old comfortable clothes and standing naked in the cold. in two years three of my friendship have taken dramatic turns. it is also an everyday struggle to choose joy and choose god; i usually blame it on the shitty toxic environment i live in and have little energy or desire to take responsibility for it. i just want to move out. dating is good, we're going on 2.4 years and looking forward to engagement because it feels like the next natural stage that we're eager to step into. engagement also sometimes feels like an expensive vase in my 22 year old clumsy fat fingers; we are grateful for community in san diego that figuratively/literally ushers us to fellowship/new life experiences with welcome arms. i still project my own timeline onto others though, it's dumb and i need to stop doing it. i usually do it anyways. career-wise, idk wtf i'm doing lol. that's okay too. i'm okay with the uncertainty in this area for some reason; other areas, not so much.

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postgrad slowpoke

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i can say no. i have the ability to say no. it is my prerogative to say no. i am allowed to say no. i have choices and options. nobody can corner or trap or pressure me into anything unless i let them. if someone throws a tantrum when i say no it is not my fault, it is on them. i am allowed to take care of myself. i do not have to bend over to defer to someone unconditionally. i can step back and turn around and go elsewhere, go wherever i want. all these things are hard to learn and i'm the slowest slowpoke when it comes to learning these things. time moves strangely after graduating

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what do you have for me in january?

greedy

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i want a job where i can work with youth, preferably at a nonprofit serving disadvantaged communities. i also want to move out to a place where i can have a private room and live with girls in the same life stage who aren't disgusting dirty and aren't loud. also somewhere that i can actually afford. what the heck is childlike faith. where is god in this idk i'm greedy and feel desperate and have baggy eyes

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bought la sportiva pythons bc my scarpa helix's rubber has holes. also ordered bridesmaid dress. and doing counseling and need/want a new laptop. wallet is sad ;_;

dreams pt iv

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i haven't done this in a very long time, and since the last time i did it, i have been burnt out, discouraged, and eventually became hopeless. it's interesting to see that some of my past dreams did come to fruition: namely the nationwide revival (more like nationwide awareness of racial injustice), seeing several SAMI branches being started, doing the campus wide social justice cafe night, and watching the ethnic studies now! coalition advocating for ethnic studies classes throughout california. i did not end up going back for berkeley for that internship i applied for, nor did i meet the activists i wanted to meet. instead i got an internship in san diego and met different people who eventually were the same people to write emails to congratulate me for graduating and to welcome the new sami leadership. i can now climb v5's and 5.11a-d's, and i did get a road bike that i named cariño. i did not run a half marathon yet.

i decided against starting a stationery business because i prefer using my art to bless people individually and not to earn money off of it. i'm not currently writing any novels, but i am writing an article for inheritance magazine. i didn't get a new camera, but i did get the chance to take photos for inheritance.

i still dream of rescuing two dogs. i also look forward to seeing younger girls become admirable and driven women of god who will in turn invest in other ladies. i dream of getting married. i also dream of teaching ethnic studies in a community college setting, and perhaps getting acquainted with the ethnic studies requirement that is being rolled out in lausd. i wonder why i do not feel like i have the emotional scope or willingness to dream on such a large scale anymore. i don't know what else to dream for. i dream to see my friend a.m. follow jesus.

november 2013 part iv
april 2012 part iii
nov 2011 part ii
feb 2011 part i

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meander

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since moving back, i've started around four or five different blog posts only to abandon it after a few meandering sentences. i have felt very un-myself lately, which means that i am likely changing and don't know how to process through it all. here are some things lately in my post grad life that i've noticed:

1) i never wished harder in my life than now for financial independence and autonomy. what is it about freedom that has made it become so valuable to me to the point that i effectively pine away for it?
2) there is a lot of anger in my heart. i see it when i cuss randomly during traffic or in my own reflection when disgust splashes across my face when i see certain peoples' posts on social media.
3) trust, hope, and joy have for most part become vague aftertastes of memories that both belong to me because they were mine and don't belong to me because they are so far away. i'm generally okay though, because i don't let myself sit in the emptiness for too long.
4) my heart seems to have atrophied, i don't suffer gracefully at all.

san diego

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things i miss from san diego:

1) the girls

2) dates with e in sd

3) double dates with gy & jc!

4) vh community

5) the weather

6) running at the beach

7) my apartment porch quiet times

8) the breakfast/brunch places

9) my ethnic studies friends

10) lexi!

11) pnick's messages

things i appreciate this summer:

1) short distance dating

2) short distance friendships

3) my clean room

4) time with e2 and j3

5) a part time job

6) biking around irvine

7) my car

8) not paying rent

9) trip to dc

10) sleeping in my bed

unglamorous

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postgrad life is as unglamorous as i expected it to be. it is like perpetual summertime, when i am undisciplined because i am unfettered from the guard rails of structure, schedules, demands and deadlines. moving back home is one of the hardest things i've had to do and it's hard to fight for joy and hope. when i look in the mirror i don't see a young woman who just graduated college and is okay with the uncertain future because she knows she is held safely in the hands of her heavenly father. instead i see a helpless and directionless adolescent who has no strength to hold onto the disciplines of the faith and little trust that it's okay to be hopeful for fear that it'll be taken away. life is hard to size up and it's harder to reflect on now. i also find that i have little fortitude and i realize that resilience comes at a high price 

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meh?? vat am I doing even???

blog list

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chinspirations.com/mhsourcepage

multiculturalfamily.co

grievingbygrace.wordpress.com

samlouie.wordpress.com/category/asian-shame

christianitydaily.com/articles/5261/20150803/honor-thy-father-mother.htm

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learning and stuff

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-learning the ropes of my new jobs

-learning how to love e short distance

-learning how to love mom

-learning how to grieve the loss of old friendships

-learning how to transition from short to long distance friendships

-want to relearn how to trust god's intricate work in the minutiae of my life

-learning how to budget

-learning how to make friends not my way lols

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yay for new candle with chri, purge cleaning and redecorating with joshua, making kimbap with family, spending time with e, sleeping with three pillows, biking around irvine, doing pullups, and stuff ya lol

reflections

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Trust in the Lord with all your heart

and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways submit to him,

and he will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:5-6

i'm a weird, limbo-like mix of past, present, and future. i only have a few days in san diego before i move back home and life has been so busy that i haven't prioritized reflecting on my life up to this point. the different threads of my life are messy and confusing.

it's strange that when i think about the formative events of my growth, pain and grief are probably the loudest voices. my freshman and sophomore years were largely characterized by the messiness of loss as i dealt with the fallout of an abruptly severed friendship. i leaned heavily upon the steadfast presence of the lord who spoke tenderly to me and washed away names that were graffitied onto my heart: "stumbling block, unwanted." as i transitioned into sophomore year the lord led me deeper into his heart of justice as i developed a critical understanding of the world as it has been marred by sin. i was on fire, i burned bright and latched onto the word "pioneer." i heard the voice of the lord so clearly as he called me beloved after my seasons of loss and commissioned me to call out the belovedness of others whom he loves so dearly. my life never felt so lucid and directed and safe.

and then in the midst of the work, fresh and bright-eyed from my sojourn out to tenderloin, i was called back from the pain of others into deeper spirals of my own pain. i began my journey with my loving gentle-man who held my hand through months of discouragement, burnout, and heartache. i blundered through my justice work and cried for relief from the compounded hopelessness from broken relationships. from junior year to senior year i did not wait upon the lord. i pounded my fists and searched feverishly for release until i was lost in my own mess. self-examen did not save me, relationships did not save me, rest did not save me. i didn't wait upon the lord, but he waited for me. he brought healing not in grandeur but in the image of a small budding flower in dead dirt and in the face of jesus as he died and rose for me. and all of a sudden it was may, and i was fumbling through the last stretch of my undergraduate career. then june came around and there was great joy and also great, debilitating fear. there is no safety outside of my father's arms.

i am the most uncooperative patient under the doctor's care; i lie about my symptoms and run from the operating table and fight with the hand that means to heal me. i go to great lengths to give voice to my pain and protest change; i am grateful that he is also my father and holds me to his chest. i am of little faith and great fear but my creator calls me to joy and fearlessness. thank you jesus, you are worthy of my praise.

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shizz

creator calls forth belonging

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Come, let us bow down in worship,

    let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;

for he is our God

    and we are the people of his pasture,

    the flock under his care.

Psalm 95:6-7

This is what the Lord says—

    he who made you, who formed you in the womb,

    and who will help you:

Do not be afraid, Jacob, my servant,

    Jeshurun,whom I have chosen.

Some will say, ‘I belong to the Lord’;

    others will call themselves by the name of Jacob;

still others will write on their hand, ‘The Lord’s,’

    and will take the name Israel.

Isaiah 44:2, 5

"there is a peculiar presence of grace and glory into which men should never come without the profoundest reverence. We may make bold to come before the immediate presence of the Lord—for the voice of the Holy Ghost in this psalm invites us, and when we do draw near to him we should remember his great goodness to us and cheerfully confess it. Our worship should have reference to the past as well as to the future...

He is ours, and our God; ours, therefore will we love him; our God, therefore will we worship him. Happy is that man who can sincerely believe that this sentence is true in reference to himself. And we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. As he belongs to us, so do we belong to him. 'My Beloved is mine, and I am his.' And we are his as the people whom he daily feeds and protects. Our pastures are not ours, but his; we draw all our supplies from his stores. We are his, even as sheep belong to the shepherd, and his hand is our rule, our guidance, our government, our succour, our source of supply." -Charles Spurgeon

as creator he is worthy of my reverence and worship. his fundamental identity as the creator entails that he is my place of most profound belonging. i am to be wholly his and in his presence all fear must wash away.

let it be

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"The path of the righteous is level; you make level the way of the righteous. In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you; your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul. My soul yeanrs for you in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. for when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness." Isaiah 26:7-9

The way of the just is evenness, a steady course of obedience and holy conversation. And it is their happiness that God makes their way plain and easy. It is our duty, and will be our comfort, to wait for God, to keep up holy desires toward him in the darkest and most discouraging times. Our troubles must never turn us from God; and in the darkest, longest night of affliction, with our souls must we desire him; and this we must wait and pray to him for...The intention of afflictions is to teach righteousness: blessed is the man whom the Lord thus teaches. -Matthew Henry

recently i visited a friend who has a two year old toddler; as we talked i asked my friend if her child was showing any personality traits and she shared about how her child would make noises of discovery and point out new things to her parents. these discoveries ranged anywhere from a spider on the wall to the sound of the ac being turned on to an unfamiliar water bottle.

i remember not so long ago that i felt a different kind of energy about life; my inner thoughts were intense, curious, always churning and so hungry for more and i was eager to unabashedly share about these things. i leaned forward in seats when i was in conversation, greedy for opportunities to pick at others' brains and to bear my soul to others. my desire for intimacy in relationships was un-bound: i was raw and vulnerable and i think i thrived in it. but now the thought of returning to that intensity like sandpaper, or like the thought of a messy room that i have no desire to clean. i find that i have somehow begun to erect parameters in my heart for these conversations. i no longer look for them with nearly the same amount of intensity and in fact, somehow along the way i have begun to value privacy so much so that conversation has become increasingly taxing. i wonder if it's because i feel both burned and weary from relationships that i err on the side of caution, it seems like as i have implicitly experienced what feels safe and unsafe, my heart began to unconsciously build boundaries. it now feels relieving to detach myself from expectant desires and take a back seat to let things be, to let people be.

dwelling

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i am learning as i interact in dissonance with different people than myself that i am a deep dweller. i dwell in my thoughts, i dwell on my situation, i dwell on things i care about. i dwindle and dilly dally and am convinced that by the practice of self-examen i will somehow gain something.

i'm not sure what the connection is between the acting of "dwelling" and the "dwelling-place" where we dwell, but it makes me think of the concept of being home. home is a place of profound but uncomplicated safety, welcome, warmth, protection, shelter, rest, communion, and play. home is where pretenses are shed and burdens are set aside to carve out a sacred space of communing. if i tease apart the word "commune," i think of the act of "coming together" - it is an active coming "towards" and is warm with the potential hope of embrace and connection. it paints a stark picture when compared with the act of turning away, of rejection, exclusion, and isolation. and so with the former image in mind, jesus is to be my home. when i am homeless, cast out by friends and family, rejected or scorned, i am to find my home in the wounds and life of jesus even as he finds a home in my heart. he is to be my dwelling place; just as he has created me to be a "dwelling thinker" and to be someone who places great value in healthy and thriving friendships (as evidenced by my frenzied agitation when denied this), i can be certain that i can also use these characteristics to both dwell on jesus and to invest in a relationship with him characterized by great depth.

blessed are the peacemakers

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You have heard that it was said, "Love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Matthew 5:43-45

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. Proverbs 13:12

Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. John 15:4

the past month has been so strange and painful and also sprinkled with vignettes of God's attentiveness towards me. i have a difficult time recalling what my spiritual walk has looked like for the past year; i remember being distraught one time in february 2014 as i hurt from a conversation on the phone, struggling to get through my ethnic studies thesis in the spring, grappling with my draining internship over the summer, feeling uplifted by the students i led at a summer camp, feeling rest-less going into fall quarter, drowning in grief from september through december as i sought counseling and sat in the midst of a dead relationships, and feeling hopeless, ashamed, and self-condemned all of january. why is it that i desired reconciliation and healing and life so much for the past year and a half? why is it that out of my own strength and efforts i felt as if i was repeatedly ramming my head into a concrete wall? as the pain of unfulfilled hopes and desires sat in the chambers of my withering  and writhing heart, i had begun to give increasing attention to that pain until i was feverish with obsession and until all that was inside was the sticky darkness of hopelessness. reconciliation and life was out of my reach and it was all that i desired. i made every effort to avoid going to fellowship and every prayer i could muster started with "i don't know how to commune with you anymore."

this particular arch of my life has been threaded into the greater story of God's work in my heart in such a methodically hidden way that all i feel is the pain of the sanctification. it came to a point in january when e asked me, "do you feel like jesus loves you right now?" and "do you love jesus?" to which i responded "no" and "i don't know." i didn't realize it was possible to reorient my identity around a conditional "i am worthy only if i can successfully pursue reconciliation." and because i failed, and i failed so hard, i naturally and logically became unworthy and unloved.

i cried out to God that week and in the following month, things have happened at a pace faster than i was used to. these vignettes come in the form of an email i've been anticipating for almost six months; a twelve minute facetime and several phone calls home; a painful situation that has caused me to feel homeless and has forced me to my knees in desperate prayer and dependence upon jesus; the sweetness of walking with e and seeing how god has used each others' prayers to draw us back to jesus; the sweetness of my friendships with a handful of sisters who love me well and lift me and carry me in prayer.

things i have been learning:
1) my desire for reconciliation and peace and life-giving relationships is such that it tears me apart when i cannot have it; i do not know what this says about me, but it seems to me that at the very least it says that God, as a peace-making God, has placed this within me and calls me to lean on him as he is the sole active outworker of this peace
2) blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are those who mourn. i am not happy when i mourn or when there is discord but jesus sees me and turns towards me.

lead me

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From the ends of the earth I call to you,

I call as my heart grows faint;

lead me to the rock that is higher than I. Psalm 61:2

Along the iron bound coast of our northern shores, lives are lost because the rocks are inaccessible to the shipwrecked mariner. A clergyman of one of the coast villages has with immense labour cut steps up from the beach to a large chamber, which he has excavated in the chalk cliffs; here many mariners have been saved; they have climbed the rock, which had else been too high for them, and they have escaped. We have heard of late, however, that the steps have been worn away by the storms, and that poor sailors have perished miserably within sight of the refuge which they could not reach, for it was too high for them: it is therefore proposed to drive in iron stanchions, and to hang up chain ladders that shipwrecked mariners may reach the chambers in the rock. The illustration is self interpreting.

Our experience leads us to understand this verse right well, for the time was with us when we were in such amazement of soul be reason of sin, that although we knew the Lord Jesus to be a sure salvation for sinners, yet we could not come at him, by reason of our many doubts and forebodings. A Saviour would have been of no use to us if the Holy Spirit had not gently led us to him, and enabled us to rest upon him. To this day we often feel that we not only want a rock, but to be led to it. With this in view we treat very leniently the half unbelieving prayers of awakened souls; for in their bewildered state we cannot expect from them all at once a fully believing cry. A seeking soul should at once believe in Jesus, but it is legitimate for a man to ask to be led to Jesus; the Holy Spirit is able to effect such a leading, and he can do it even though the heart be on the borders of despair. How infinitely higher that we are is the salvation of God. We are low and grovelling, but it towers like some tall cliff far above us. This is its glory, and is our delight when we have once climbed into the rock, and claimed an interest in it; but while we are as yet trembling seekers, the glory and sublimity of salvation appal us, and we feel that we are too unworthy ever to be partakers of it; hence we are led to cry for grace upon grace, and to see how dependent we are for everything, not only for the Saviour, but for the power to believe on him. -Spurgeon


No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:37-39

The devil cannot dye a soul so scarlet in sin but what the blood of Christ can make it white as snow. Satan cannot drive a chosen sheep of Christ so far on the mountains of vanity, or into the deserts of sin, but what the great Shepherd of the sheep can find that sheep, and bring it back again. There is hope for the mart sunken. There is hope for those that grovel, and that sink in the mire The infinite compassion of God can reach them, and the eternal power of God can lift them up. Spurgeon
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