a school

the first couple times i subbed at this school, i had to say little more than "okay folks, we're gonna get started" to get everyone's eyes and attention. it was a nice change. i could relax a bit, sit in the chair, get some other work done while they self-managed. when i subbed for an econ/wh teacher for three weeks in january, however, i began to make some observations. or perhaps the observations were made of me.

the first incident was with the teacher i was subbing for. "are you ryan?" offering my hand. "i'm eunice, nice to meet you." "can you give me five minutes to finish this email?" of course i said yes. is asking someone to wait a power move? i don't know. he explained his unit(s) to me, sifting through messy piles of papers on his desk. eventually the students came in and i sat to observe his lecture. "if you get A's it's bc you are increasing your brain capacity and making your brain worth more so if you're a doctor and get paid more it's bc you deserve it bc you invested in your brain." and "if you get knocked down in the field, what do people call you? that's right, you said it, not me." and "i'll be out this month, this is your teacher, euniece."

if my insides weren't dying yet they were now. i sat next to him to review the econ project. "to clarify, my name is eunice, and i go by ms. h in the classroom." he apologizes and corrects himself to the class. could that have been avoided? i don't know.

for the next couple weeks, i stressed much, slept little, planned my ass off unnecessarily. partly because his lessons were shit, partly because it was my only way to resist what i perceived to be an ideologically hostile environment. i taught the students that economic markets were different than economic philosophies, and that marx's ideas were a utopian reality intended to fix perceived wrongs. it was the best i could manage, especially because whenever i said marx, a collective shiver seemed to arise through the room. it was like i said voldemort or something. in the world history class, i asked students whether it was okay for someone incompetent to declare war. at which point a student heatedly said, "that's your opinion. i happen to think he was right in the suleimani strike."

through those weeks, it was small moments that quickly began to erode my sense of well-being and safety. moments like these:

"i taught in south central la." raised eyebrows, downturned mouth, a reactive "oh wow."
or, while working in the faculty room: "hi tiff!" a white male. "i'm not tiff." "oh.... all good... all good... you looked like tiff from behind..." where was the ownership? apology? i don't know.
or, another, "euniece." from another white male.
or, a white male with dreads in the lunch room.
or, an older white teacher: "we should really send you to africa. that'll teach you to complain." what the fuck?
or, "i student taught at valley. that was a school." to which i pursed my lips and did not respond.
or, getting in my car and seeing a tesla in front of me driven by a student.
or, "freedom writers." after my introduction. to which i say "i don't like that movie."

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.

leslie

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on my first day of class god sent leslie to me. i had just finished eating my pad thai, fried rice, and shrimp roll and was walking to chat with my ethnic studies classmate whom i haven't seen all summer when i saw her across the room. she was an older white woman with unruly gray hair sitting conspicuously by the window, the single unmoving figure in the midst of just under a hundred asian students (mostly freshmen) who were conversing with thai teas in hand while waiting for the APSA board to call out raffle numbers.

distracted, i asked my friend, "does she come often?"
"yeah." my friend nodded.

"does anyone talk to her?"
"no but it's not like we can kick her out."

i didn't respond to that but told him that i'm going to go meet her. when i knelt next to her and asked if i could sit with her, she gave me a huge beaming smile and quickly moved aside her empty plate that seemed to signal to people that the space next to her was unopen. i sometimes do that to discourage strangers from sitting next to me, especially in the morning at class when i'm not awake yet. her body language was closed - she was hugging her knees and her face was empty and guarded, but the moment i asked her how her day was she brightened up and shared at a breakneck speed about how she spends her time, about her awe of the opportunities presented to us on campus, about her love of learning. i remembered that she had bright blue eyes just like melissa's. i noted that she didn't smell homeless. and when she told me about rape and murder and lies and attempted murders, her tone was distanced and impassive, as if it wasn't her story. she could've been telling me about someone else's nightmare from last night for all i knew. i was distinctly aware of the curious eyes of the students in the foreground. let them stare, i thought. the holy spirit is here, do you feel him?

it was as if God was welcoming me back to san diego and telling me that he has people for me to love on. here am i, use me.

sidenotes;

i am itchy like a monkey

via dolorosa

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my loneliness feels like

a pair of glasses, an unfurnished room, an asthma attack, a mental ward, an immigrant's journey.

it feels like a pair of glasses because (and here i am doing some intense projection onto the world and/or making sweeping assumptions about humanity) i find it hard to believe that there are people who never experience loneliness. because it is presently a salient theme in my life, i am particularly sensitive to spotting loneliness in other people in my life. i think we are created to be wholly and perfectly loved but by nature of the fall we feel that tension on this side of forever as it reminds us that we are pilgrims in this world, and that our hearts long for something that has yet to be fulfilled.

it feels like an unfurnished room that i imagine to be a white walled room dimly lit by watery and lukewarm sunlight from one unimpressive window. it feels sterile and i feel small. the sounds of my steps magnify as they travel from wall to wall in disconcertingly regular intervals. this is what it feels like in my mind when i am lonely, because my thoughts echo back to me with no new insight, feedback, or solution. it is infuriating and mocking and i hate hearing my own voice.

it feels like an asthma attack because i feel it in my chest as my heart constricts and then constricts some more in response to my resistance.

it feels like a mental ward because i feel stripped of my legitimacy as a logical, conscious person. i feel dismissed as a sorry little creature who has the misfortune of still existing. crinkled brows of pitying concern make once familiar faces strange.

it feels like an immigrant's journey because when i try to explain my experience to someone, it's as if i am speaking a different language. and as frustration spills out between the sounds of my mouth and chokes out the words i had so painstakingly put together, i find myself stripped of language and isolated from my friends. i become unable to invite them to care for me. i am denied a safe space where my loneliness is allowed to just be. i am an immigrant pioneering strange lands.

i have illustrated for you what it's like for me to feel lonely. it isolates me, makes me a stranger, and makes me illegible. and then i think about how Jesus was isolated when his disciples abandoned him, and about how he was made into an illegible crazy man claiming to be the messiah even to the point of death by crucifixion. he has beckoned us to receive healing in his wounds and has called us to be his disciples, demanding us to abandon our homelands (identities, falsehoods, idols) and cleave to him who is now home, family, lord, husband. we are passerby's in this world tasked with growing his flock and bringing them home. i am an immigrant pioneering my strange lands of loneliness, and as henri nouwen called it, i am learning to articulate the depths of my dark corners so that i may offer myself to others as a source of clarification. but to do that is to be alone and sometimes it's so so awful. via dolorosa!

sidenotes;
i have 13 freaking bug bites
zombie run app is amazing
heppy one to me and e :)
there is something in my eye!1!!!! >:
i can never predict when i'm gonna write something, it's often at dumb times like at night when i should be sleeping because i have work tomorrow.
so i often need to be cared for in tender and specific ways but very few people know how to do so and i hate having to be a teacher because it defeats the whole purpose of being cared for

needy

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this quarter i think i knew i was heartsick but i was blithely unaware of the extent. it was obvious when i laid my head to sleep but only met layers of fears and worries masked in outrageous and nightmarish fantasies of hypotheticals. it was most obvious when i woke up in the morning and lay paralyzed for half an hour to forty five minutes, weighed down by heavy limbs and a weak heart. somehow rest became an ordeal. in my heartsickness i also twisted my care for certain people as my desire to comfort leaked out as strained and silent begging. my hands, outstretched, reached to give what i thought i had but the silhouette it outlined on the ground was of profoundly empty and wretched and shaking hands reaching to grab and possess what i didn't have. i want to say i should have paid attention to the symptoms sooner - but that would suggest that i could have done something different, that i have the power to change this heartsickness. the wonderfully liberating implication of my helplessness is precisely that i have become cognizant of my sickness and my neediness, and now i can begin to receive healing. today god's grace has shed light upon the architecture of my heart/mind to reveal that it is currently characterized by lonely and chaotic streets running between buildings of quasi-processed materials. my atrophied lungs are hungrily filling with the realization that i was feeling lonely and it hurts like stabs of cold air. so simple, so painful, so freeing, so healing!

yesterday i spent time with e and today after sleeping 11 hours i ran some errands and then did devos near the lake and read henri nouwen's turn thy mourning into dancing for three hours at the bookstore. in kind of a clunky, awkward, rusty way, i am re-acclimating to resting while maintaining a vivid orientation of purposefulness independent of my task-driven schedule. also, today i was attacked by a canadian goose hahaha herp

sidenotes;

my awful migraine has somehow magically abated after i finished writing this
wau thanks brain
edit// 3.20; last night i had a dream that she was complaining about me as a "problem" on the phone to her sister and i was pounding the table with all my strength and screaming my protest and she completely ignored me.

peace like a river

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there is sometimes a claustrophobic bubble of tense smallness in my chest; i am particularly aware of its presence when the pace of the last few years of my life leaves me little room to sit back and pause to catch my breath. in that awful smallness i am aware of how fragile and fleeting the present is. i am also aware of how fixed the past is and how intenable and inscrutable the future is as it stalwartly frustrates all my feverish attempts to pry security to cling onto. my small hands cannot reach back and fiddle with the past; my small hands are too small to carry the weight of the present; my small hands cannot reach into the dark of the future to get any answers.

it is in this visceral "fear of smallness" and lack of control and direction that i find that i must direct my thoughts to the only Person worthy of my attention, energy, and hope. in this buzzing fear i am also aware of a God who holds my whole life in his hands: his presence was threaded through the fabric of my past, is a working force in my present regardless of the level of my awareness, and is promised reassurance for all of my future. i don't have to change the past because he has written it that way; i don't have to carry the present because he holds it for me, and i don't have to foresee the future because he will orchestrate it. as i meditate upon his worthiness of my trust, my emotions will align with the steadying nature of this truth. this, i suppose, is what it means to have peace like a river. give me battered and bruised and ugly knees as i use the transformative power of conversation with my Father to turn that claustrophobic bubble into a house of refuge and sanctuary. it is his presence in this bubble that transforms it. with him as the object of my faith i may content myself with being small in this moving river because he is my peace. whom shall i fear?

sidenotes;

this weekend was a place of reassurance and refuge and rest. praise bubbles up from the depths of my heart when i think about the way i am able to encounter God through the people who share the same King in their hearts.

also i am very loved :) hehe

grocery grace

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earlier today i received a whopping emotional punch in the gut. i felt (feel) like a contradictory bundle of pain, of encouragement; of fear and peace. these things reside within me and shamelessly insist on occupying space i didn't know i had. it was cold, the sun had set, my phone batteries were dying like my insides were after that conversation. and my eyes were puffy in the bus window reflection. i saw high school acquaintances at the grocery store. today god sent me an answered prayer in a stranger and a sister in christ when i looked into the eyes of the ralph's cash register as she smiled and said, "we serve an amazing God." -- to which i promptly began bawling in the middle of the grocery store, no shame. she rounded the counter without a word and gave me a huge hug. "God loves you so much. you are his beloved daughter." and in that moment the very real God of the universe reminded me in the arms of a petite, middle aged cashier that he sees it all.

sidenotes;

i cried a lot today

now i'm dehydrated

today i know God's love for me is real because e, gryoo, char, lgnuyen, e2, j, & the cashier.

grief

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if you ask me how to grieve i will tell you i don't know either. i will tell you throw out the "how to" because there is no "how to." there is not clean one two three's, no finish line in sight. it is messy and heavy and dark. it looks like the trembling contours of someone's back as they hug themselves on the floor and stare at the dust on the carpet. it sounds like the awful creak of the bed at 3:47am as the layers of a dream dissolves in a cold sweat. it feels like the opening and closing of empty palms and the fleeting desire to rip off the thing that is collapsing around your lungs and your stomach and your chest. it tastes like hunger and apathy and weaknesses at the same time, because when food tastes like nothing you are hungry and apathetic and weak. and if you ask me if it goes away i will say no.

but i will also tell you that it stays and it changes shape: that sometimes it will be loud and petulant, and other times it will be tired and retreat into silence. it will sometimes be extra-ordinarily heavy but there will be people to hold it with you. let them hold it with you. it's mostly a dull ache, and in the beginning it's ugly and muddy and hot with pain and cold with ache, but it will become burnished and vibrant. if you look closely there will be colors and it will become rich and warm and life-giving. it will at first rage and demand all your attention but later it will concede to welcome other things, and you will be at first terrified when you feel it welcome joy for a moment. you might hurriedly stamp joy away because won't know how to allow them to coexist. but let it learn to welcome other things, because it is changing and will continue to do so.

and you'll find that the heaviness has not changed, but the weakness in your hands and heart and back has strengthened. you'll realize that it wasn't the only one undergoing change - you with your different hands, heart, back, have gone through fire and pressure by facing that which we call grief but have no words for. and you'll find that it is all of a sudden, light. and bright. you'll likely look at me and wonder how that change happened and i will have no answer for you.

so if you asked me how to grieve i will tell you i really don't know. i wasn't lucid in the moment and everything was cast in a strange and surreal light. but maybe we can walk and learn together; in time you will taste sweet again, you will be able to sit in your dimly lit bedroom without feeling your chest crumple in. we can get there together.

sidenotes;
i can't write this essay
tonight my  heart is stubbornly elsewhere - in the past, in a different location, with different people
tonight i might be crumpling in

buckling down / zeal

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On the day I needed You, I called, and You responded

    and infused my soul with strength. Psalm 138:3

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Romans 8:1

I delight greatly in the Lord;
    my soul rejoices in my God.
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation
    and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness,
as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest,
    and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. Isaiah 61:10

i find myself mentally buckling down for what's going to be a long journey (with an initiation rite of sorts, filled with uncomfortable and merciless and inevitable growth pains) of transitioning into an adult relationships with the hardest people (person) in my life. this i do with fluctuating reactions: a gritting of teeth, a weary and accepting sigh, a leary tensing in my chest. humility, doggedness, resilience, bold defiance to sin and apathy. a bold defiance that i must step into timidly like a stranger's jacket. brace for impact, steel myself. i liken the image of "steeling myself" with wolverine, and the infusing of adamantium into his skeleton, with an unbelievable amount of pain that i am blindly and weakly bracing myself for. if only i was as cool as wolverine lol. i am grateful that he makes me bold - that in his mysterious fashion, he really truly entirely makes the frame of my body - my heart, my mind, my strength, my soul - characteristic of this curious (non)material that is boldness. i am daughter to a king of lovingkindness and longsuffering gentleness who clothes me in righteousness; how warm, how sweet, how secure is this blessed assurance. oh, my heart, how loved you are!

question; why is "idealistic" entrenched in premeditated connotations of unrealistic, irrational, childish? what marked the shift from a very realistic hope which echoes of paradise to an oppressive, dreary, and disillusioned "realism" of "adults"? why is the word "contagious" and "going viral" rooted in pathological history? is there a positive alternative that denotes inspiration, drive, passion, worthy of emulation, life-giving empowerment, rather than sickness and infliction and death? pondering the language we use in the construction of "adult" and "child" in the imaginative world (of aspirations, ideas, ideals, dreams) as it has been corrupted by sin.

in any case, i have resolved in my heart that i will choose not to be internally apologetic or abashed for my excitement, enthusiasm, idealism. i choose not to allow other people's reactions to me (whether they are taken aback, skeptical, bemused, dismissive, unphased) to dampen my fire. i resolve to be unapologetic in my zeal.

also i had a fairly strange dream last night. it consisted of clumsiness, a wedding, a piercing, fear, a ghost, tears.

words on my heart: risk, imagine, seize, rebel, pioneer, spearhead

sidenotes;
i need to work out
edit// okay i worked out. yayayay
also it's only 11:30pm. i feel like it's 2:30am. wat, pls body, wake up

edit// 4th annual binational conferencia 2013, holla student activism!

inhale, exhale / gangly deer

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i want to breathe in his grace, to bathe in the sweet fragrance of his love for me until the blood which sustains my every muscle is gratitude. until the veins that transport this gratitude is fortified conviction. i want ever deeper roots in the caverns of my heart, roots which will crowd out the cancers of pride and entitlement and self-righteousness. i am his house, and in his presence i will dwell, i will rest, i will wait. i want to exhale all which heals, lifts, soothes, empowers. and one day he will declare the sum of me to be perfect and whole, when i stand in his presence, in his house. i look forward to when i am in his courts. until then i will inhale, i will exhale.

this is a new sweet crazy. no longer like amnesia, more like a surreal dream that is life which surreptitiously and arbitrarily and mischievously offers all kinds of both gifts and broken things. thank you, god, for being the giver of all good things. my bones are strengthening, my heart is becoming eager, my hands are open. may this be my forever posture before a god who did not protect his son from suffering.

sept 2013: baby deer

sidenotes;

nutella hot chocolate on this chilly wednesday afternoon, after sitting in the sun and sharing in silly conversation with e
also i am grateful for mentors who challenge me to grow. because challenge accepted.

q; what's the use of being super sensitive if people around me are not? ugh dumb. feeling dismissed and unvalidated in, what i am presently calling, my "useless" sensitivity. only hurting myself. pls, so dumb. also i'm going to read this later and not even remember what happened, so, lol.

the wallflower who was not

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"there were several ways it could have gone. she might have visited everyday, and i could have been the one who knew her go-to drink. maybe she might have had different drinks depending on her mood, or the weather, or the day of the week. or maybe she might have disappeared for a year, gone traveling and come back a profoundly different person. to meet me, a mildly different person.

as it were, i only saw her twice more in that year, and both times i was in the back restocking materials, like i was doing presently. i entertained the possibility that she actually did frequent the cafe and it was just by chance that i wasn't working that day. that fate was mischievously dealing me unfavorable cards.

in any case, i decided she was intriguing in my mind, i gave her free reign, this unremarkable girl in mahogany rimmed glasses. so as i contented myself with not knowing, there she was, standing in line cradling her books while surveying the menu. nothing in particular was going through my mind when i determined to ask her name.

some severe case of tunnel vision handicapped my senses because there is a deplorable gap in my conscious memory between holding a bag of coffee beans in the back room to standing at the cash register.

'hi, what can i get for you?'
'just an iced coffee please'
'and your name?' the anticipation, the unwarranted joy-
she gave me a bemused and quizzical look as she opened her mouth, paused, pursed her lips. 'you were in my architecture class last semester. my name is' my brain malfunctioned, and i don't remember the name she said afterwards, even as i wrote it onto the plastic cup. she was perhaps an angel who dragged my fantasy to meet reality in a discordant and dissonant collision, an angel who was now walking out of the cafe with iced coffee in hand. maybe it was the sleep deprivation from late nights in the studio, or maybe the intoxicating scent of coffee beans, because i felt intrigue rush through my veins with an anticipatory and impatient pulse."

sidenotes;
part I
this is a story of objectification, romanticizing fantasies, a boy who doesn't learn his lesson, a nameless girl whose influence goes beyond her awareness, a critique of popular portrayals of romance, a facetious satire. because i've felt objectified; because i have been called unremarkable, because i people watch, because i remember names, because i don't know how boys think, because i often wonder at the inner world of strangers standing beside me. and also because i love cafes.

knots

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there are knots in my shoulders and knots in my heart. it is raining and the sound is cathartic and urgent as it spills onto our overhanging and onto the cobblestone underneath. because the knots in my heart are untangling themselves, and the increasingly awful grating sound it makes with each successive untangling serves as an emotional filter for the sounds i hear. the rain is agitated and restless, angry and irregular. labored release of great tension inside leaves me weak and tired, like the sound of retreating rain postponing its parting because it doesn't know how to bow out gracefully. doesn't know how to end this conversation. awkward. like a reluctant afterthought, cold leftovers on the kitchen counter, last-ditch decompression, or lethargic and noncommittal echoes of my dis-empowering hindsight

blessed rest, happy rest, i am on my way

sidenotes;
also this post had very little meaning, except for the vague mood i wanted to convey at 3am in the morning. /being a melodramatic and sleep deprived writer
i am so blessed. like sweet rain on my heart, a resolute hand on my back
this week is full of ridiculous shenanigans. like bureaucratic and distant adults in the university system. also sleep deprivation

baby deer and ghost again

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presently//
feeling like a baby deer in angry headlights

i got the crazies out of my system the last time but even so, navigating this new map feels strange and rusty like i had amnesia. like the vaccination shot's disorienting effects are only now receding, deaf to my silent screams of "i've had enough!" and it has left my bones weary, my heart wary, my hands shaking. but i'm trusting my gut & pressing in with prayer in this time of all things new and good. actively internalizing that i don't automatically default into the problem if i am not part of the solution, and that jesus and his grace is once again entirely sufficient. thank you, jesus, for your blood paid freedom.

edit// wow, rereading this makes me realize again just how deep his actions dug into me like shrapnel and tore apart things inside, like my perception of myself in relation to people i care about. actions which translated into "you are my problem. you are my temptation. you are all things bad therefore i cut you out like an abscess, or an addiction." never again

in the past//
but ghost, you are a stranger to me! i am feeling dismay while looking at this messy speed bump in my life. when people underestimate the scope of it all it is belittling to the awful extent of denying my reality, so i suppose on the same token i must doggedly resist the temptation to altogether cast away the need to dwell and process and walk through the aftermath. ghost, in your lingering, look: i am healthy, i am healing. i have friends who step into the dark places and face demons with me. ghost, i'm not running and i'm not scared. the longer you loiter the more things i will encounter and the more i will change. my King sings victory over me.

in the future//
we have the riches of God's love at our immediate and unreserved disposal, in all its heaviness and lightness and vibrancy and extravagance and liberating, cleansing power. there are things he hides from us only to peel away the scales of our eyes in due time. the more i receive of his love for me and for his children, the more i see how little i am, & the more i see how there is a spectrum of growth that he takes us on in all his gentleness and loveliness. what grace, what mercy! Jesus is King here & now, & he is restoring the world - he is more than enough cause for daily, effusive celebration! open the floodgates. Jesus is King.

"Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom

or the strong man boast of his strength

or the rich man boast of his riches,

but let him who boasts boast about this: 

that he understands and knows me,

that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness,
justice and righteousness on earth,

for in these I delight," declares the Lord.
Jeremiah 9:23-24

sidenotes;
mraaaaaw
war of my life, john mayer
scribbled paper, little dragon
i have no idea what i'm getting myself into lol but Jesus is King and he is so good to me!

also, i hate skin problems with a passion ugh can you just pls stop, pls, you are the worst thing that ever happened to me this summer. i loathe you more than my eczema ugh

suspended limbo

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the weeks preceding the new school year always feels like suspended limbo to me. like a huge pause button that makes my mind foggy and lazy, a time during which i look back to a surrealistically distant past and look forward to see just as surrealistic a future. it's a rhythm of life that i am ill-adapted to; i find myself consciously associating God's work with a faster rhythm of life: when i'm in school, with things to do and places to go and people to meet. why is it that home is my driest and heavy spirited battlefield? although i suppose i know the answer to that question and it comes in the form of generation gap, culture clash, dysfunction, unpredictability, and a shrill voice. i am dragged back to my high school mentality when i come home, but that just means it never left the dark rooms in my chest. the monsters like to come out when i come home. how shameless they are

nevertheless, i also often entertain melodramatic writing (perhaps because my inner world is a melodrama? a tranche de vie melodrama for the purposes of amusement? haha) and my words tend to throw things into stark, vivid relief. things are not nearly as awful as the picture my words paint.

today the shock is mellowing out into shy-faced disbelief because i am amazed by how intimately God knows my heart. today there is anticipation in my palms and anticipation in my stomach because i taste sweetness on the horizon

"Wear your sorrow like the lines on your palm. Like a shawl to keep you warm at night. Don’t mourn the love that is lost to you now. It is a book of poems whose meters worked their way into your pulse. Even if it has slipped from your hands, it will stay in your body. 

You loved a man who treated you like absinthe, half poison and half god. He tried to sweeten you, to water you down. So you left. And now you have your heart all to yourself again. A heart like a stone cottage. Heart like a lover’s diary. Hope like an ocean.” -Anais Nin

sidenotes;
currently:
elodie rama, strange island
emily king, georgia

on another note, i've always been number 11 on your list from the start, but that's okay because Jesus says i'm his number one and Jesus says he redeems you and me and i believe him

gospel & berkeley

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But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

how wonderful is it that even before i go up to norcal, i am reminded of the radical, earthshaking implications of the gospel?

jesus extravagantly proclaimed god’s love for me: he died an undeserved sinner’s death & lived again to provide me access to a new life in sanctifying preparation for eternal fellowship with my Maker. & because god did this in full awareness of my wretchedness--all that i am inside is laid bare before him, i have no one to prove myself to. i don't have to prove my trust in him at the cost of compromising my safety. trust does not equate to recklessness. i am grateful for the two sisters dear to my heart (shameless shout out, slo&cchen) for speaking sense to me and being gentle while i grappled with guilt (as well as my tendency to go all in, & my perception of what that means).

it is because of this gospel truth that i can boast in the cross and make decisions in a realm of freedom and fearlessness, without unwarranted guilt of disappointing him or putting him in a box. i can trust that he makes my ways straight & that his ways supersede, go before, and surround all of my ways. i am forever entirely in the King’s embrace : ) how is this not earthshaking to monumental extremes? how does this not make praise arise from deep inside without pause?

this is all to say, i am actually going to live in berkeley instead of sf. hahaha

& i have also come to realize in the past twenty seconds... that god is redeeming my wish to live in berkeley... HOWww GOD IS SO GOOD! senior year he took away my obsessive desire to go to berkeley and taught me to trust him by blessing me in SD and now he's letting me go to berkeley for a quarter, on his terms. this is too good, god. i see what you did there. a;slkdjf;alskjdf

sidenotes;
wahahaha
so blessed and safe and joyful to be in THE king's embrace
EXCEEDING PRAISE OMQ

not particularly important, but i wonder why i feel the need to blog. it is essentially an online diary, but with a public audience. i'm starting to realize how much i truly am a blogger -- ever since 12 years old! i have seven blogs serving different purposes, and apart from that i have two private journals that delve even deeper. i wonder why i feel the need to share things with people all the time -- joys, struggles, ponderings. i donnos. how come not everyone feels this need? i feel like an oddball wakawaka

heavy

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heavy things weighing on my heart tonight. on my body and my eyelids and my shoulders. they are like claws embedding into my chest with sadistic deliberation, or wretched demons forcibly wearing me down. i hear the dull thud of my scarred knees to the ground and my uneven breathing and the unspoken vulgarities in my gut. there's you and you and you, and i cannot be home to hug you and desperately will my encouragement into you through the strength i have in my arms. there's you and you and you, and i cannot flee from the abominable searchlight because i am awkward and don't know how to deal with attention. but even more so is the weight of my vague awareness that there is suffering of tenfold magnitude in all of the earth. the more i learn in my classes, the more my heart twists and the more i find my face to the ground with a wordless plea in my chest. knowing that these are burdens the king bears alongside me sometimes is emotionally unsatisfying in the present moment.

sidenotes;
i just wrote an analytic paper examining how my second generation asian immigrant background, my christian background, & lack of representation of asians in tv shows targeting teenagers simultaneously molded my subconscious wrestling with the role of fashion/clothing in my life; so enjoyable to think through these things

ghost no more

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it is april! a year from last year.

this whole journey has been so painstakingly full of baby steps: timid steps into all directions only to find the same oppressive pain there to cheekily greet my intrepid whimper for clarity and freedom. i have learned to embrace bewildering brokenness with a weary and hopeful acceptance like never before. i have learned how to not only communicate sincere concern for someone else, but to truly feel deep anguish and grieve with those who grieve. and as a culmination of it all, one hour ago God finally revealed to me a glimpse into a shrouded and acutely raw corner of my heart.

in sociology we discuss a theory called the "looking glass self" -- also related to the labeling theory. as children, we internalize identity markers in reflexive response to how "significant others" (those of instrumental influence) react towards us. accordingly, we build a sense of identity based on what others say about us, what others don't say about us, how others act towards us, and how others don't act towards us. this is the painstaking process of socialization that is constantly in flux with the people that have influence in different periods of our lives.

and as i sat there at pc, wondering if it was my hair that did the trick, or perhaps my new glasses, or my new white headphones, or my teal blouse that i bought after april -- wondering if the sungod water bottle and the agenda and the journal and the wireless mouse did anything to trigger recognition--i became aware of this destructive process in my heart. i have inadvertently made myself a victim to my own interpretation of his actions and of my subsequent understanding of the implications his actions (or lack of) have upon my heart & upon my identity. he became, by no apparent effort of his own, a defining power in how i viewed my worth as a friend, as a young woman, as a sister, as a person. rather, not he because he is dead in the practical sense, but my imagination and year old memories of him embodied a poisonous "significant other" in the back of my mind. the ghost haunted me as i walked about campus. ghost of my own making.

but no longer. i have been graciously made aware and by the power who raises the dead who dwells in my heart, i can call upon immeasurable strength to live in a realm of blessed freedom marked by the protective boundaries of Jesus' love for me and my heart, my soul, my mind. how truly jealously ought we to guard the gates into our hearts. i am blessed by this new understanding of this wonderful verse.

also, in a funny way i feel inexplicably joyful to be able to love on everyone God will put in my life in the future by relentlessly seeking after His heart for me with reckless abandon and undivided devotion so that my rock solid Christ-identity can serve as a spring of life for me and those i will hold dear to my heart.

Christ's love sears away our death grip/fixation upon finding fault, placing blame, demanding retribution: this is the beautiful implication of His claim on my life.

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. Proverbs 4:23

sidenotes;

god is so so good to me
nietzsche is freaking crazy

disquiet

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i am disturbed by my discomfort in silence. because when there's no one home i am all of a sudden confronted with unbidden inner chaos; i open the fridge door and close the fridge door. i look for something to munch neurotically on. i look at the clothes i've tossed on my bed and want to clean it but i don't. i am on the verge of tears but also fighting the urge to laugh hysterically. i want noise, i want heart talks, i want to rant and i want someone to listen and i want to listen to someone rant. i open a tab to go to facebook but close the tab before it loads. there is disquiet in my heart.

sidenotes;

finals sentiments

tales of a saturday's nothings with nobody

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it is fascinating to stop for a moment and consider the polarizing range of emotions i can experience in a single day of relatively few notable events. i woke up this morning feeling like the most antisocial creature in the world because i had, once again, miserably failed to wake up to my alarm. so i sat up and after a suspended moment of squinting at the obstinately self-righteous alarm clock, i promptly keeled over into the part of my blanket that had been warmed by the most unwelcome sun. after cooking some brown rice and yams, and after showering, reading about rehoboam's foolishness and remembering how God impressed john 15 on my heart the night before, i felt noticeably better. a saturday of catching up on reading didn't seem too daunting. and so i wore a dress because it was 80 degrees outside and headed over to a sun drenched booth outside tapex only to migrate to a booth in the shade after five minutes of glare on my laptop and heat on my shoulders. i was so glad for short hair.

i wondered briefly what my real intentions were, for cutting my hair, for wearing a dress, for studying in public. i donno. sometimes there are monsters i can keep at bay when i am in public places. but sometimes i am reckless and open myself to heartbreak when i am in public because there are faces i want to see and things i want to hear but i know it's all bad and awful for my heart. i wished for a best friend.

i found myself blithely braving through the dry history of u.s. healthcare activism and all the reasons it wasn't successful (namely, fear of socialism and entrenched racism). after that was done and over with, i buried myself in assata shakur's life of oppression by the very government that claimed the label, "land of the free." and by the time it was 6pm, i had just finished reading about her narrow escape from a gang rape when i noticed that a middle aged chinese man turned around twice to look at me. i glared at him with the nauseous disgust freshly evoked in my gut from assata's story. by the third time he turned around, i was packing my things to leave and he was opening his mouth to say something. i didn't stick around. as i walked past the shadowy eucalyptus groves, i struggled to stomach my disgust; he was ugly and creepy and i wanted to hug myself and squeeze out the memory of his face.

productivity took a woeful toll once i was back in my apartment; i listened to some emily king and some yuna and some daley. i also stress ate some ice cream and nutella while i was in the midst of that terrifying moment of paralysis and anguish preceding creation. i helped my friend brainstorm her essay and struggled to reign in my frustration. i wondered if patient people are just supremely convincing actors/actresses. i finished my newspaper illustration at 2:30am and am now writing for the sake of writing.

sidenotes;

i feel pregnant lol. i need to stop stress eating sugary foods.

i get so crazy when people don't respond to my emails/chats. why do you do that

i love pigma micron brush pens
i think i will write a spoken word piece sometime soon

front lines

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can we just stop for a moment and ponder what a great god we serve? whether we are aware of His very tangible and purposeful work or not, He is, nonetheless, working on the front lines of our daily spiritual warfare. He is working on grander scales than we can even dare to imagine. He sees the brokenness of this world and is at this very moment, bringing His sons and daughters together to wage war against the chains of injustice. He works in such a particular way that it is undeniably and oftentimes amusingly & obviously His handiwork. 

last night i had an interview with UCSD's IJM outreach officer, and i was, to put it simply, speechless by how perfectly timed everything was. there was a reason i didn't get into the physiology/neuro program -- and that was so i would become a sociology major who took soc2 as a sophomore instead of as a freshman. UCSD implemented a "diversity, equity, inclusion" requirement fall quarter of my freshman year, and out of all the classes, i nearly arbitrarily chose an African American lit class THIS quarter, of all quarters. God used these classes to plant a seed of passion for social justice in my heart -- and He perfectly timed my email to IJM because i made the deadline by one night. even more striking is that they were lacking in the graphic design/photography area and they were praying for someone to come along. it feels indescribably awe-inspiring to be part of God's kingdom movement as an answered prayer, as a prayer warrior, as a servant.

this. this is where my heart lies. in the midst of His work, using my talents and skills to please Him by loving on others, by helping others -- instead of trying to mold myself into another brainless hack that has no dreams, no joy, no passions.

"He works in the deep and hidden things when others are concerned with mere appearances. We have been the subjects of a great deal of secret, unseen, underground work. The LORD has spent upon us a world of care." -Spurgeon

sidenotes;

my hair :)

to red: food first