strange and vulnerable

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it is a strange and vulnerable, uncertain and wonder-full thing to receive, as if it were a virtue to refuse and maintain a posture of giving -- a posture which stinks of self-appointed sufficiency and underlying floods of need and brokenness, masked in the facade of humility. so vulnerable. because when we receive we open ourselves to great suffering; we become a candidate for heartbreak. but when have we ever not been candidates for heartbreak? let us be eager volunteers, striding forth into vulnerability and humility as we partake in Christ's vision and allow Him as a man of sorrows to tenderly speak into our sufferings. will we allow Him to be near us in our suffering, & allow that aspect of His character as comforter standing in solidarity to be made real to us? how else than through suffering, vulnerability, heartache. we are such timid creatures terrified of pain and suffering, and i am grateful for a God who sings victory and fearlessness over us, whose perfect love, which subjected Him to the greatest posture of vulnerability in history, casts out fear

on another note, i am presently aware of a inner resilience not of my own, preventing panic and dismay from caving in upon my heart as i foray into the roles of influence that He has so graciously placed into my lap. i am also presently aware of a quiet voice that says "peace. step forth because i have ordained all of this. i have placed certain people in your life to speak and act my love to you -- others, i have not. i have placed certain positions of leadership into your hands not because of your abilities but because i will be doing the work and i choose you to see it all. let them love, let me lead. follow me."

sidenotes;
i have a cluster headache ):
God is moving!

gomer

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how desperately we need His grace. He loves us when we think we are god. He loves us when we spit in his face and don't even know it because we're busy polishing our own images for a perverted sense of gratification. He loves us when we unceremoniously chuck him onto the rusty back burner - what injustice, what shortsightedness, what vileness, what wretchedness! this is a God who told hosea to love gomer. he told hosea to choose gomer everyday and to consciously and wholeheartedly make gomer the object of his desire. this is the God who loves us and we are so, so in need of His grace

sidenotes;

like sweet rain on my heart
also welcome week i'm so tired are you done yet

ten ways to love:
"speak without accusing james 1:19
pray without ceasing colossians 1:9
promise without forgetting proverbs 13:12
give without sparing proverbs 21:26
answer without arguing proverbs 17:1
trust without wavering corinthians 13:7
share without pretending eph 4:15
enjoy without complaint philippians 2:14
forgive without punishing colossians 3:13
listen without interrupting proverbs 18"

pursuing justice

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"We sometimes see the gospel and justice as separate, like two sides of a teeter-totter. We think talking about the requirements of justice or the material aspects of life, raising that side of the teeter-totter, will diminish the gospel and our focus on the spiritual aspects of life. The assumption is that if one is highlighted, the other is diminished. This kind of either/or thinking, or dualism, is actually a heresy historically referred to as Gnosticism.

This is not how the Hebrews understood God, however. To them, the spiritual and material sides of life were united and integrated. When we think about the gospel this way, our picture changes. Rather than being in competition, as with the teeter-totter analogy, the spiritual and material aspects of life can be pictured as the two sides of a train track--meant to be inextricably connected in one purpose." (39)

"God absolutely uses short-term mission trips, and many of the career missionaries and international relief and development professionals I know were first given a 'taste' of their calling on a short-term missions trip when they were in high school or college. This illustrates exactly why I believe we need to continue to fund and send folks on short-term trips, while at the same time redefining our expectations for what they will accomplish and what they mean.

I believe we need to call these trips by what they really are: Learning trips. Exposure trips. Relationship trips. Engagement trips...Redefining short-term missions trips is about ridding ourselves of the illusion that we can change the world, and instead admitting that the world might need to change us." (151-152)

"Today, however, there is a growing desire among Christians of all sorts to discern and differentiate the social awareness of the historical social gospel movement from the specific theology that under-girded much of the movement. there is a desire to mend the artificial divide--the false dichotomy--between material and spiritual and return to a robust gospel message that includes the proclamation of Jesus and the embodying, person-transforming, society-changing love of Jesus." (209)

"'That which dominates our imagination and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshiping we are becoming.' [Ralph Waldo Emerson]" (224)

"We forget the sustaining power of grace that was given to energize and motivate us to change the world. Covering grace without sustaining grace can make us consumers of grace. As if grace were a product, we keep it for ourselves." (255)

"To discern the path God would have you walk, begin with repentance. Lament the problem of pain and the ache of injustice in the world. Ask God to lead you, and listen long and intently for His answer. Be willing to obey unreservedly, no matter how big or small, no matter how heroic or mundane the task God sets before you or the path God calls you to walk." (289)

-Pursuing Justice, Ken Wytsma

sidenotes;

be [present] where you are [and love where you are by actively seeking peace of the city]. be where you are.

dysfunction

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it's not just generation gap, culture clash, dysfunction, unpredictability, and a shrill voice. it's also stewing and explosion, brooding and freezing. it's love language of polar opposites, trigger differences, anger expression differences, processing differences, conflict resolution differences, too many differences. reaction differences, interpretation differences. just differences

sidenotes;

this is really uber hard

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

summed up

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this morning i woke up and rolled like a dying zombie onto my side, surveying the events of my life (because i often do this because i donno) in a groggy attempt to stay awake. and after a shower and some breakfast i came to realize that God's work in my life thus far can be summed up in the following statement:

struggles and heartbreaks are the avenues through which God makes my heart more tender and enlarges its capacity to readily step into the pain of others: starting with pain that i understand and expanding to pain i don't necessarily understand. & He does this because Jesus, as a man of sorrow, saw me in my wretchedness and determined to make me lovely, and so he stepped into my wretchedness and became my wretchedness. he gently and radically embraces me in a love that i in turn dwell in - i wash myself in it, i clothe myself in it, i inhale it. & as i exhale, it is His sustaining love coursing through my veins that blesses others with its rich fragrance as it has blessed and protected and saved me. He is my perfume, my sustenance. God is so good to me.

sidenotes;
< 3 my heart
also, painting with my silly sister is therapeutic
my silly brother is great because he takes pictures with me
& my "when helping hurts" & "life together" arrived YESSSs

edit// 9.10.13 bought a new outfit, & found awesome social justice books at the library
today was a good day (:

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

enemy in the homefront

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Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. 1 Peter 1:13

Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. 1 Peter 2:11

The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray.1 Peter 4:7

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings. 1 Peter 5:8-9

these verses are always so pertinent when i'm at home, because that's when i let my guard down

sidenotes;
today life is sweet

hardest

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hardest person for me to love, ever

sidenotes;

iono fam

opaque

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i would like to dissect the psychology of blogging/online diary keeping as related to the increasing isolation we discuss in humanities classes. why is it that we feel "safer" being vulnerable and transparent on the internet? does the dividing wall of the screen somehow justify unfiltered disclosure of intimate struggles? do we do this at the expense of real life, interpersonal relationships? what is it that we're sacrificing here? is online vulnerability a means to achieve something, or has it become the unintended goal? what is the future we are painting for the next generation entrusted into our hands? how can we victoriously use the internet as a mere resource for our spiritual, mental, and emotional growth so as to forbid it from becoming our crutch - not to mention a false god which we worship in parched dependence?

sidenotes;
listening to natural self, radio citizen, & rdj2 < 3 so heppy

left field

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my heart? wait how did this happen i'm so confused

sidenotes;

lol

ten times harder

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why is it that i love speaking truth and encouragement to everyone else but when it comes to myself it's ten times harder this is so dumb

sidenotes;

so dumb

cultureshock

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I proclaim righteousness in the great assembly; I do not seal my lips, as you know, O Lord.

I do not hide your righteousness in my heart; I speak of your faithfulness and salvation. I do not conceal your love and your truth from the great assembly.

Do not withhold your mercy from me, O Lord; may your love and your truth always protect me.

Psalm 40:7

being back home is strangely anticlimactic in a stifling and surreal way. the lack of urgency here feels like a heavy blanket over my head. i am confronted with the short attention span of my humanness, because being physically far-removed from tenderloin/berkeley gives my brain a false sense of security and peace -- false, because this security and peace finds its source in the comfort of luxury. poverty is no longer manifest in the physical world here. i can't see poverty prowling the dirty streets. i can't smell poverty making its angry, foul demands at me for attention, nor can i hear poverty shrieking profanities down drug infested streets. just because i am in irvine doesn't negate everything my heart has inhaled this summer. and as i sit here in coffeebean, i feel dismay begin to claw tightly around my heart as i begin to feel more and more alone in the heart mentality that has so violently dug deep into who i am.

"the culture shock will likely be in the mentality, the rhythm of life, the degrees to which people understand or engage with what has been so close to your heart this summer." -nhsieh 

"My prayer for you as you return is for protection and that God would be your strength in spirit, soul, and mind. I myself am going through the difficulty and the spiritual attacks that come with returning to life after a mission trip, or conference, or any intense spiritual journey the Lord takes us on. But lets not let it be just a returning, but a sending out into a new mission field. You have been equipped with authority and with power and with truth. I pray that your identity in Christ will be secure. Praying right now against physical ailment, against temptation, against worry and anxiety and depression, and praying against discouragement and impatience with the self-sufficient, comfortable and ignorant condition of the heart of so many people in socal. I pray that even now God would use your experiences to reach those who you share it with to bring glory to His name and that to those who won't understand, God will give understanding in His own time." -pferido

 

“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.” -Miriam Adeney

sidenotes;
this is a place of aloneness that i am fearful of staying in; i don't have strength to maintain a posture of satisfaction when i face the daunting silence that echoes back to my question, "do you know? do you know what i have seen this summer?"

ever deeper roots

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ever deeper roots, ever sweeter communion. may ever louder praise incessantly flow from my heart. may all know that you are king. ever more, always & forever.

inner chaos

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“As soon as we are alone,...inner chaos opens up in us. This chaos can be so disturbing and so confusing that we can hardly wait to get busy again. Entering a private room and shutting the door, therefore, does not mean that we immediately shut out all our inner doubts, anxieties, fears, bad memories, unresolved conflicts, angry feelings and impulsive desires. On the contrary, when we have removed our outer distraction, we often find that our inner distraction manifest themselves to us in full force. We often use the outer distractions to shield ourselves from the interior noises. This makes the discipline of solitude all the more important.” -Henri Nouwen

if i have a daughter, what would i tell her when she experiences her first real heartbreak? i don't know

i finished my last final as a sophomore. i'm now a junior. i am looking forward to a summer in sf. but tonight i would like to watch a good movie, eat comfort food, and cry in bed until there is nothing inside to cry out. even though i'm not sure what there is to cry about. i just know i need a good cry

developing trust in an eagerly responsive God

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last night at post fnf we were talking about our worst traits, and one of us pointed out that we all had similar responses: passiveness, indecisiveness, fear.

i feel that these traits are reflections of the broken order within us. it is the nature of the fall that we rebel & try to wrench control from the King's throne. in doing so, we obsessively and feverishly vie for definitive assurance of future consequences of our present actions. but because it is also the nature of humans as subject to the power of time & the fallen world, we can never know the future.as a result, we become paralyzed into inaction and unfounded fear. we default into worry, which is the complete antithesis to trust in God.

but the radical nature of the gospel changes all of that. because of our relationship with god, we are placed in a realm of fearlessness, where we can step forth in boldness knowing that His perfect love for us casts out our fears. we can know that our relationship with God is a responsive one.

"ask, seek, knock;" "abide in me;" "seek first Me and My righteousness;" "take delight in me;" He says. "& i will give. i will open. i will abide in you. i will give you the desires of your heart."

we serve a God who moves mountains, calms storms, and ultimately overcame the world because it is under his dominion. we can start with faith like a mustard seed and see how God proves to be faithful, and with time we will come to see that we have accumulated a substantial amount of proof that God responds to the cries of his children and is pleased by our baby, timid, uncertain steps of faith. we will come to see that our faith is no longer just a mustard seed; that our fear is no longer our dominating instinct. the broken order is being restored and the scales are falling from our eyes. we can rest, we can beseech him on our behalf, we can act. we are free.

sidenotes;

wakawaakakwakaa

second death week live updates

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sunday 5am // to bed i go

monday 2:24am // i'm feeling pretty despondent about my life right now lol. why skewl
monday 3:41am // so miserable
monday 5:30am // sad lyfe

tuesday 11:47pm // heartbreak is really messy. these past four years i have learned how messy emotional investment and how close it hits home and how it's like walking a tight rope to navigate through it all except it's more like falling from the tightrope and fighting for life in the raging waters and losing strength and letting the current take you while you stare blankly at the sky. i've also learned how nobody talks about it openly. and i donno how good that is because i'm starting to wonder what things would be like if older sisters invested in younger sisters more actively. also i'm really sleep deprived and i'm relatively more dramatic and snarky when i lack sleep don't take me 100% seriously

wednesday 2:23pm // i just realized that i forgot to go to a class yesterday how did i forget to go to class how i don't understand. also facebook makes me so discontent guh

thursday 4:00am // hahahahahhaha it's 4am hahahahaha
thursday 12:00pm // i am so fail i woke up at 10am guhhh. praise god though, i was able to word vomit four pages in two hours which is... twice the speed i usually write. not sure about the quality but at this point i don careee
thursday 2:15pm // wau cutting it so close. i officially dislike apple computers omq. regardless TWO ESSAYS & TWO PRESENTATIONS DONE, TWO MORE ESSAYS &THREE MORE FINALS TO GO

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

clamoring

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what does it look like to put god in a box? how do we seek to discern his voice while avoiding an inclination towards either the extreme of ignoring wise affirmation from brothers and sisters or depending solely upon opinions of brothers and sisters? who is it that i ultimately fear, and why? when does being cautious and thoroughly thoughtful tread into the world of cowardice and distrust? how do you discern boldness from recklessness and/or stupidity? to whom do i feel a need to prove myself to, if at all? in the stillness & quiet, god i wait for you. my desperate heart, be still, be quiet

sidenotes;

weh

counterintuitive faith

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where do i even start?

i serve a God who is gentle and patient with his children. just as he patiently answered a distrusting gideon’s impertinent demand for confirmation, and how he patiently encouraged a disheartened elijah & a fearful moses, he will prove faithful to be patient with me. he knows the manifold fears intrusively clamoring in his children’s hearts, and his presence remains stalwart in the fluctuating levels of conviction and uncertainty, of fearlessness and of overwhelming terror. he is entirely unafraid and capable of meeting me in the messiness of my humanness — after all, was this not the sentiment in jesus’ life and mission? he who knew no sin came down to earth, took on human form, and walked about on this earth. everything he did oozed “i love you, i’m for you, i’m with you. follow me.”


it is in the character of this very real and literally down to earth God that i can draw my sense of well being from. i would be lying if i said i was fearless, or that i feel completely sane making the decision to live in tenderloin for twelve weeks, or that it’s easy for me to ignore the warnings of friends. i ask myself if i somehow lost my brain whenever i see in my mind’s eye the red quadrilateral of thriving crime on the sf map. i have the street smarts of a manic deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming race car (& although this is an exaggeration, i can’t be too sure). my brief exposures to inner city environments are insubstantial: a timid exploration of a small block in santa ana during homeless ministry, a onetime foray along the downtown sd streets filled with sleeping homeless on my way to a jazz concert, an uneventful encounter with a crazy man in fancy downtown la jolla after 7pm, a fleeting & horrified glance at an armless man kissing the ground for measly NT coins in taipei’s bustling & otherwise apathetic shilin night market. i wonder if he’s still there. in short, i got nothing.


i suppose that’s the nature of faith: it is thoroughly counter intuitive. i don’t go into this ill-informed & i still am painfully aware that worrying about my physical well being in the public sphere is a novel and unwelcome experience for me. i feel crazy, but there is something in my gut (rather, Someone in my heart) that tells me He will be faithful to my meager attempts to obey. He multiplies bread & fish, He moves mountains, & i get to be there to see it. my world is going to be flipped unceremoniously upside down & i will be uncomfortable and terrified. but i do know that i serve a really, really big God. and i know that He loves me. that’s what i got. it’s everything.

sidenotes;

i'm tiredddd

renewal

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Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:5

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Philippians 4:8

People no longer ask “Is it true?” but “Does it work?” and “How will it make me feel?” Those latter two questions serve as a working definition of truth in our society that rejects the concept of absolute divine truth. Truth is whatever works and produces positive emotions. Sadly, such pragmatism and emotionalism has crept even into theology. The church is often more concerned about whether something will be divisive or offensive than whether it is biblically true...Too many people go to church not to think or reason about the truths of Scripture, but to get their weekly spiritual high; to feel that God is still with them. Such people are spiritually unstable because they base their lives on feeling rather than on thinking...Salvation involves the transformation of the mind. -Macarthur 

Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God...It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communion with God. -J.I. Packer 

Satan wants to turn your mind into a cesspool and have your mind occupied with that which ultimately must corrupt, defile, and spoil the whole body, distort the life, and produce sin. The battle is not first in the field of action; it is in the field of thought. Transport yourself to the pasture, consider the cow chewing her cud, and learn that lesson from nature that the psalmist learned. Your delight must be in the Word of God, and in His Word you must chew your cud day and night. If the battle is lost, it is lost because you do not meditate on “ these things.” J.D. Pentecost

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in my journey of introspection and prayer, i have always been stubbornly inclined towards the framing question, "why?" i ponder about something for hours which become days (and eventually i surprise myself with the realization that months have passed and i have not given this issue rest). i wonder at why i react the way i do to certain situations, to people; i wonder whether my reactions have any credibility, what they say about me, what they say about God's work in my life. it is a knee jerk reaction and i find that it is a wonderful process of sifting through all that is in my mind to discover truth which i can embrace. sometimes though, i am distracted by the goal of finding an emotionally satisfying answer to these "why" questions that i become frustrated and dwell obsessively upon the lack of a conclusive discovery that can shed light upon the whole process.

i am learning that my inner life is never as linear or logical as i would like it to be; it is not an input-output system. it gets messy & that's okay. i can bring these messy things to my Father and have Him shed light and untangle in due time. in the meantime, i can content my soul with the captivating work of dwelling in Him.

sidenotes;
mmmm, yes. :)

contradictions

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“Every time we make the decision to love someone, we open ourselves to great suffering, because those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. The greatest pain comes from leaving. When the child leaves home, when the husband or wife leaves for a long period of time or for good, when the beloved friend departs to another country or dies … the pain of the leaving can tear us apart.Still, if we want to avoid the suffering of leaving, we will never experience the joy of loving. And love is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking.” -Henri J.M. Nouwen

i am, frankly, a mess. i am a bundle of contradictions made up of unspoken heart desires and rational trains of thought that rage forth and then timidly meander about without direction, conviction, heart. i come once again before the throne of my gentle king and desperately pry my hands open, fall to my face, bask in nothing but His love for me.

ponder; what does it mean to worry? to dwell obsessively and be preoccupied with something to the point that it hinders your sense of emotional stability in everyday life. i suppose this is why philippians 4:8-9 comes right after philippians 4:6; it is unreasonable to expect us to just "stop thinking (worrying)" -- rather, we must replace the thoughts with things that are "true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy." i guess it just goes to show that god created us as singularly focused beings; we were made to worship, to fixate our gaze/orient our beings towards something. if that something is not God it will inevitably be something else. there is no way for us to not worship, to not meditate on something.

sidenotes;

sigh. walk on
i'm weary
five classes, never again

daddy

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i had a wonderful dream that daddy was hugging me tightly and i was safe and warm and content

this week i barely read the bible. i might have gone through one chapter in 2 kings. but i also find that this week, in the midst of my sleep deprivation and my stress eating, i was intimately aware of His presence and His patient, father-like love for me. this week was a blessed, first-hand experience that my relationship with Him is not so much about being able to spew a sermon off the top of my head about some hotly debated theological issue, but about a sweet, simple, quiet intimacy -- a lens through which i am able to see myself, see other people, see situations, and see God as He sees all. because of this intimacy, i can call out to Him with the simple cries of a child interspersed throughout the day: "help me" -- knowing that He hears and is not pretentiously turning His nose at me with disapproval.

ponder; i find it slightly off when people tell me, "i pray from this time to this time, and i read bible everyday" or "i didn't read today" or "i didn't pray today" [therefore God must not be pleased with me] ... do you know God's heart towards you? that His heart towards you doesn't depend on what you do -- rather, reading bible/praying/going through the disciplines of the faith are vehicles through which you see God's consistent heart -- not marks that determine your status before Him?

i am blessed in this moment of quiet intimacy & sweet awareness of His presence. i know i am not always going to feel this way.

sidenotes;
going home for the afternoon today :) going to smother my siblings in hugs and go running and drive my car and make dinner for mommy

beloved

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"The greatest gift you can give to another human being is a secure you in Christ because that's the only way you'll ever liberate them to be all that God's called them to be." Christine Caine 

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” -A.W. Tozer 

“When we claim and constantly reclaim the truth of being the chosen ones, we soon discover within ourselves a deep desire to reveal to others their own chosenness. Instead of making us feel that we are better, more precious or valuable than others, our awareness of being chosen opens our eyes to the chosenness of others. That is the great joy of being chosen: the discovery that others are chosen as well. In the house of God there are many mansions. There is a place for everyone - a unique, special place. Once we deeply trust that we ourselves are precious in God's eyes, we are able to recognize the preciousness of others and their unique places in God's heart.” -Henri J. Nouwen

i am increasingly finding that as i delve deeper into the radical and living knowledge of God's heart towards me, and as i allow this meditation to contagiously permeate everything from emotions to thoughts to actions, i am simultaneously becoming aware of a desire that everyone in my life would also come to a knowledge of this love. it is my dream and desire and desperate prayer for young girls embrace and claim their identity as His beloved; for earthly fathers to know this for themselves so as to communicate it to their wives and children -- daughters and sons who, given an earthly modeling of Christ's tenderhearted gentleness and the protective but emboldening nature of His love, can stand before the lies of this world and step out in fearlessness to heal brokenness.

ponder; is this not a core question we all come to wrestle with at one time or another: does anybody care? to delve into deep and scary places with me? i am so blessed to have people in my life who care.

sidenotes;
stinky people who sit in front of me makes me so incredibly nauseated ):
i miss my siblings and my sisters and brothers in irvine. my heart is in irvine. i miss the company of those who really know me

stream of conscious death week updates

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"The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity and held safe in an everlasting embrace... We must dare to opt consciously for our chosenness and not allow our emotions, feelings, or passions to seduce us into self-rejection." Henri J. Nouwen

"To wait open-endedly is an enormously radical attitude toward life. So is to trust that something will happen to us that is far beyond our imaginings. So, too, is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life, trusting that God moulds us according to God's love and not according to our fear. The spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, trusting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination, fantasy, or prediction. That, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control." Henri J. Nouwen

“But intimacy is not found on the level where fear resides. Intimacy is not a happy medium. It is a way of being in which the tension between distance and closeness is dissolved and a new horizon appears. . .When Jesus says: ‘Do not be afraid; it is I,’ he reveals a new space in which we can move freely without fear. This intimate space is not a fine line between distance and closeness, but a wide field of movement in which the question of whether we are close or distant is no longer the guiding question.” Henri J. Nouwen

monday 4am // i am grateful for the gentle rain on my concrete windowsill while i write my essay after a few consecutive days of unbearable heat. i am grateful for the presence of His inexplicable peace at this quiet hour, and that my little succulent plant in the tin bucket sits on my desk in resolute, stout victory, reminding me that growth can be imperceptible but is so very beautiful.

EDIT monday 1pm // praise be to my Father God who is so inexplicably able to sustain me in His mysterious ways. i don't know how He does it. i slept at 5am after writing 5 pages, woke at 8:45am, and finished at 12:30pm, ending with a grand 8 pages. i don't even know how. i am thankful for the soothing rain today because it quieted and uplifted my heart & if i didn't know any better, i would very well have assumed it was a rainy friday. what a sweet and gentle Comforter i serve, at whose feet i find perfect joy.

EDIT tuesday 2am // okay God. coming before you to ask for more strength. can't keep my eyes open and i still have so much to do.

EDIT tuesday 8am // after sleeping at 5:30 am this morning, i was woken at 8am with an awful calf cramp (that still kinda hurts right now... iono). i finished my second essay about hyper-sexual portrayal of super-heroines at 10:30am. busted out 1 of 2 of my tuesday reading responses. tuesday, bring it on.

EDIT tuesday 12:45pm // i am feeling increasing dislike of my ethn185 professor for her merciless (ab)use of her professorship in the display of power and fear: pop quizzes and strict punctuality and relentless assignments that, i feel, disregard my busyness outside of these brief times on tues/thurs of lecture.

EDIT thursday 3:28am // how quiet it is in my apartment. how unhappy my tummy is for drinking caffeine. how peaceful my heart is for no reason. presently undergoing essay #3.

EDIT thursday 4:38am // i have my intro and a bombtastic thesis and shall now commence to word vomit like none other.

EDIT thursday 7:38am // i don't know how i am still alive lol

EDIT thursday 10:30am // good morning

EDIT friday 10am // i'm so tired. have used up all of my brain for the first three essays

EDIT friday 5pm // done done done done

sidenotes;
i can do this. He will bring me through.