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.

sidenotes;
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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reconciliation

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i don't know how to start my train of thoughts! it's like jumping onto a circular train track that's going too fast for me to accurately judge the most appropriate time to jump. the past few months i've been reading "exclusion and embrace" by miroslav volf and "the cross of christ" by john stott on and off. i've also attended four sessions of therapy, and i've had to work through ten years' worth of conflict and hurt. i've most recently undergone a handful of conflict resolution with people who are very precious to me, and i've had to re-evaluate the armful of emotional investment i've previously committed to while feeling increasing fatigue and increasing bitterness and regret for the pain that accompanies love. in this context of emotional weight lifting, a few thing stand out to me at the end of this year:

1) i'm tired 2) i've experienced many miracles 3) i've only just begun.

i'm tired because i carry relationships in my heart and on my shoulders. they lift me up but also bring me much pain, and even as i wonder if it is worth it i find myself reaching out once more or offering myself once more or seeking to care once more. i realize over and over again that i am so very frustratingly human and that friendships require grace upon grace that i cannot possibly conjure up on my own.

i've experienced many miracles because within these relationships, i realize that reconciliation is a fundamentally un-human, divine act - and in that nature it is therefore a miracle. there is no logical reason to justify me desiring to willingly and actively forego judgment upon someone who has done me harm. reconciliation entails not only foregoing judgment but sacrificially extending a hand to the offender as a gesture of invitation to pursue a future relation-ship. there is engagement, activity, and work involved. everything in me resists the notion of suspending judgment upon injustice; there is a deep aching within me that tells me forgiveness and reconciliation are fundamentally wrong. in some senses i suppose they are: god's grace is the gravest injustice in the history of mankind and yet it is by this grace that my life was/is intended to be shaped by. 

i'm only twenty one and everything ahead of me is kind of incredibly terrifying. please be gentle with me, i'm filled with apprehensions and i'm twenty one.

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why do we all want to be saviors of the world because lol

despair

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if this is what despair feels like then it's bitter and sharp and brutally indifferent. i want to punch things and in the morning i want see purple and yellow shapes on my knuckles as an outward manifestation of what's inside. i don't care to pray, i've never felt so lucid and cold and dead inside. and i feel alone because no one can step in and feel these things and know with certainty that i'm not crazy. i hate explaining. i can barely validate myself, let alone legitimate myself before the many hands outstretched in a helpless gesture. i can only give you stale morsels because i myself am starving

i'm only fucking twenty one

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in a really not good place

complicated grief

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mine is a story of loss
and it is unfinished
of grieving things i did not know i lost
of future subjunctives and future unrealities that haunt
and shape the contours of my insides as i
wrestle emotional amnesia and concussion

sidenotes;
had first counseling session, secured a bomb winter qtr schedule, attended prison divestment conference, had two bouts of food poisoning (?) in two weekends, spent time with favorite people, came back to a clean and rearranged apt (!!), got professor's approval for research, researching postgrad options, hair is long enough to put in bun without hair tie, moopity moop everything is so weird and scary

apparently for half of my life i have exhibited most of the signs of situational depression. lol. always thought it was relatively normal to be sad about things often. guess not ???

reflections

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this quarter/year is off to a really interesting start.

1) i feel as if the most prominent responsibility characteristic of adulthood for me is to understand my emotions -- to reign them in, to live with them, to give them necessary space, to own them, to befriend them. i am reminded of a quotation by joshua harris that says, "if we want to feel deeply, we must think deeply... true emotion- emotion that is reliable and does not lead us astray- is always a response to reality, to truth."

2) something about foreign words/concepts is very attractive lol, two of my favorite words right now are conscientização (friere) & cariño (duncan-andrade).

3) today self care involves feeding myself pesto pasta with sauteed asparagus & sweet peas + roasted tomatoes & mushrooms, drinking citrus sparkling water, going rock climbing, going running, blogging, and updating my ipod.

4) pain is an interesting thing... it "becomes a strange friend...but even in hours spent examining it and learning from it and even befriending it, it is ultimately from an external source and until that source relinquishes its power, the pain remains." -dr. charlene jin from isaac's 6th symposium

5) commonsensical practices/habits that i learn in a romantic relationship are for some reason not so commonsensical in my platonic friendships and i wonder why that is. i want to develop a more substantive understanding of platonic relationships and how they in fact may be the greatest of all loves... but even as i do so, how do i reconcile this heart-changing information with the isolating potential of implementing it in friendships where we are no longer on the same page? this is a rhetorical question. i realize that the goal is not to be right but to understand and submit and meet in the middle to move on.

6) everything that i assumed i knew about committing to a fellowship is being shaken as i find myself in a reality in which i desire to withdraw for my well-being. and even in saying this i feel myself subject to the condemnatory judgment of my brothers and sisters...

7) i need to be conscious of my expectations of others and keep them in check. unfortunately i don't generally become aware of my expectations until they are violated/unmet.

8) i really freaking need to say no to things. because i'm hecka dumb and say yes to commitments and then regret it.

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nrk

31st

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today is the 31st. i give myself permission to cry randomly over stupid things like opening the fridge and not wanting to cook, or buying a cold pressed juice that turns out tasting gross, or when people miss my calls. today i give myself permission to post depressing melodramatic vague things on social media as a reckless and desperate vie for attention. i will avoid contact with people just because i feel like it and i will ignore the nagging need to explain myself. today i will indulge in angry unreasonable thoughts and let myself be irritated at all the halloween festivities. today i will also practice self care and exercise and cook even if i don’t feel like it. i will also try to tell at least two people about my dad. and cry about stupid dad jokes. i also hope it rains today because then it’ll be a rainy friday. and i will eat ice cream and watch tv or something. i might splurge on some new shoes. and i won’t sleep until midnight because this is the one day i’ll let myself do these things

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lol herp

wordsmith

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words are a tool. it is my heart that yields this tool and that can either be reassuring and life giving or terrifying and awful. sin is not sourced in my right eye to be plucked out or my right hand to be cut off, but rather sourced in my heart from which all things flow. maybe when words are difficult to come by it is to humble me and strip me of power

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so ya idk

rage

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rage feels like expletives tearing out of my gut and up my throat and past my biting teeth. it feels like thick hot fast blood shooting through my veins and it feels like recklessness trembling in my limbs and my clenched fists. rage feels like the cold amusement of remembering that my knuckles are made of soft skin and bones instead of steel. soft, ripped skin. rage is a violent and powerful substance that fills me from my gut to my throat, destroying my stomach, puncturing my lungs, freezing my heart, twisting my esophagus.

this week i have felt these things. today i did push ups until i couldn't and said fuck a lot and punched the mattress because i didn't want to destroy my knuckles.

sidenotes;

why do we react in anger to hurt? why do i scratch my eczema when i'm distressed? why do i have random thin scratches on the left side of the bridge of my nose?

life is moving at a very uncomfortable pace right now
emotional left fielders hecka messing with my sleep schedule and my study life

throwback

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lately i have forgotten the sweetness of being confident in God's love for me. he feels distant, unsympathetic, impatient, contemptuous. i feel like i'm drowning in my anger and that there's no way a holy God would dare reach through the layers of sticky and thick hatred to save me. i am beyond saving and left for dead. i have forgotten the crux of the gospel that embodied God's love and grace in the life, death, and resurrection of jesus who willingly died by the hammers and nails of our sin. i've forgotten the sound of jesus crying out that "it is done," and that guilt and shame and chains are no more. i don't know how to speak truth to myself but apparently my nineteen year old self can. today i finally filled the last page of my fifth journal and can move on to my sixth (?) journal and when i grabbed my fourth journal from freshman/sophomore year of college and randomly flipped to a page, here is what it said:

"there is something off when i pray, 'lord, i just want to please you.' when i am burdened with some kind of heavy desire to please god, what i don't realize is that i already am the purposed object of his concentrated love and pursuance...he sees me in the future, right now, as his perfect bride, ready for eternal fellowship with him. no pain, no tears, no sorrow. he sees me right now, at the spot he intentionally placed me in, after guiding me here and refining me thus far. he sees every tear and heartache and does not look at me in contempt. he sees my every weakness and my past, present, future sins--but in dying on the cross, he declared conclusively...that not only has my lifetime of sin been acknowledged in its full ugliness, but it has also been thoroughly eclipsed and overcome (not merely excused as to diminish its offense before God) by the lashes on jesus' back, the thorns upon his head, the blood in his lungs." -december 23, 2012

thanks, nineteen year old eunice

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is there something significant in the last entry of my fifth journal being about this particular phonecall idk

friendships

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“In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, 'Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,' can truly say to every group of Christian friends, 'Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.' The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.” 

― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

i recently bought a new bike (i am in love with her!) and i also bought headlights because i have evening classes; unfortunately i do not have a screwdriver so i wasn't able to install it, so when i came home a few nights ago, an old man came up to me and chided me: "if i may offer a suggestion: you really ought to have headlights and backlights, you are much too young to throw your life away with a mistake like that..." i admit that i am not often ecstatic and receptive when random people give me unsolicited advice, and that i am very capable of misdirecting the conversation and/or verbally assuring the person that i appreciate their input even if inside i am seething in self-righteousness. i use this caveat to introduce the topic at hand: correction and friendships.

while that old man was a stranger and i will likely never see him again, i wonder if i would have reacted differently if a close friend told that to me. lately i have been blessed (a word i use intentionally albeit with a weary sigh) with many opportunities for conflict resolution, some of which are still in medias res. sitting in the tension of conflict makes me fear for the friendship as it feels like the foundations are being tested; it particularly grieves me when the depth and growth of friendships is stunted because of the unwillingness of one party to be seen and corrected. in my search for guidance and direction, i searched "spiritual friendships" or "christian friendships" online only to find relatively few things in relation to "christian relationships." i wonder whether we have so glamorized romantic relationships that we have placed it on a pedestal, and i wonder if the potential of spiritual platonic relationships have inadvertently been overshadowed and dismissed.

do we understand the implications of desiring a "Christian friend?" when we ask God for a Christian friend, do we understand that we are not just asking for a buddy to bear our emotional pains with and to rejoice in victories together. we are also asking for someone who is likewise under the authority of scripture that commands us to "love one another," to "bear one another's burdens," to speak truth to one another to the purpose of sanctification.

i once heard "intimacy" described as this moniker: "into me i let you see." as a friendship grows in intimacy, you begin to see the messiness and ugliness in his/her life just as he/she begins to see into your life. at every point both parties have the choice to opt out and to hide areas of their lives from each other, but i'm beginning to think that there is great potential for friendships to be used of god and the holy spirit as a means of gracious sanctification, and that it would be foolish of me to idiomatically "toss the baby out with the bathwater" by throwing up guards and denying my sisters and brothers the space to see into my life and exhort me towards holiness.

with these guiding principles in mind however, what follows is the very messy and scary execution. i notice that while we may theoretically welcome correction, it doesn't necessarily mean that the friends around us know that we do unless we verbally create a space for them to do so. i also notice that i have a tendency to err towards the side of acceptance and encouragement and justify it as an act of grace and mercy. what i fail to remember in doing so is that to correct someone is equally if not even more so an act of grace (unmerited favor) - who do i love enough to dare to venture into a potentially contentious and destructive space with the purpose of pointing out sin, and who loves me enough to do the same for me? doesn't the gospel say we are simultaneously more sinful than we know and more loved than we can imagine? is the full message of the gospel manifested in our friendships if we omit the reality that all have fallen short and are in need the grace of God manifested in our friends' willingness to correct us?

some questions to ask myself:
-who do i allow to speak correctional truth into my life?
-who do i allow to rebuke me?
-why those people and not others?
-in what ways do i resist correction/rebuke?
-how do i move forward as i grieve the implications of friendships that may be damaged through correction/rebuke?
-how can i encourage certain friends to be bold in correcting/rebuking me?
-how can i correct/rebuke certain friends in a way that is translated as an act of love?

Verses on Correcting
The "one another" commands
Relevant Magazine's "How We Misunderstand 'Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin'"

sidenotes;
someone sat next to me at whole foods when there are plenty of seats elsewhere, so uncomfortable lol. he has broken social norms uhhhhhhhhhh
my brain and heart definitely have a lot more to chew on and engage with during the school year... when i'm idle i feel like a dead thing

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.

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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

amnesia

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"i am certain that the dimensions and content of my heart's landscape and layered architecture is undergoing some kind of pivotal activity. what will it look like? who will it hold? how much will it be able to hold? what beauty has been unearthed and what frightful things must still be uprooted and destroyed? what things have been built, are being built, are being torn down, reconstructed?" may 22, "effusive"

"i am certain," i said.

lately i have largely collapsed inside myself and withdrawn all of my processing into places where only choice few are capable of entering. the landscape and layered architecture of my heart is indeed mutating, but in ways that i am unfamiliar with. with wounds this severe my capacity for vulnerability exponentially withers away. processing this particular wound looks like repeatedly and knowingly traveling a well worn road where a traumatic event happened, reexperiencing the pain, and resurfacing with amnesia. and when i share with people it just sounds dumb coming out of my mouth and i feel more defeated with every word i speak. explaining hurt is really difficult when what i really need is for people to step into my pain without me having to walk you into it! exclamation mark!

sidenotes;

also i have this huge amount of affection in my heart for this one person and also a huge amount of hurt in my heart from this other person and idk how such diametrically opposed emotions can coexist, i feel so bipolar and contradictory. jk capacity to love and capacity to hurt may very well be more related than i give credit for. herp

apparently "intrusion" is a theme in how i understand interpersonal relationships. hecka introvert status

third culture, quadruple consciousness: the asian american church

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i think about these things when i hear the term, "the asian american church": immigrants, first gen, second gen, intergenerational silence, forgotten history, unaddressed ethnic identity, insular focus, service driven, teaching driven, silent exodus, international missions, family brokenness and hurt. these resources have a wealth of knowledge:

Tim Tseng, "Why Evangelicals Don't Get Race", part two

"Third Culture"

Philip Chan, "Empowering the Asian American People of God for Justice"

Nate J Lee, "Asian American Christians"

Therapeutic Gospel

blessed are those who mourn

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"nothing wounds like elusive love."

my bouts with loneliness feel like awful echoing emptiness inside my hollow frame. this space exerts gravitational pull on all things untrue and condemnatory, and as the voices which accentuate my unloved state get louder i find myself withdrawing like a wounded animal, unable to reach out for help. in these moments my deepest fears of being unloved by certain people surface. who do i reach for in these moments? why?

i am conscious of the way triggers layer and snowball, and of the richness which arises from the soil of my woundedness when i welcome jesus' healing presence into my tender mess. i am seeing that people in this world are so, so lonely. tonight i recoiled into jesus' arms and saw that i am blessed because i mourn, and that he turns weeping into dancing.

this summer has not been a bad summer. but it has been a lonely, fast, unrestful, and unfed summer. i have been like a delusional and disoriented sheep wandering the fringes of the pasture: ears ringing, eyes swollen, stomach growling. i need him to be gentle with me because i cannot see the tenderness in his eyes as he reaches for me.

sidenotes;
i have hecka bug bites

mundane

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"Throughout these forty days Jesus fasted from food so that he could all the more fully enter the divine feast. Then...God allowed the evil One to come to him with three great temptations...they were temptations for Jesus to access for his own use the three most prominent social institutions of the day -- economic, religious, political [turn stones into bread, leap from the temple and be caught by angels, and lord over all the kingdoms].

...but Jesus knew that domination and force were not God's ways. He rejected coercive structures because he intended to demonstrate a new kind of power, a new way of ruling. Serving, suffering, dying -- these were Jesus' messianic forms of power.

In those forty days in the wilderness Jesus rejected the popular Jewish hope for a Messiah who would feed the poor, bask in miraculous heavenly approval, and shuck off oppressive nations. And he undercut the leverage of the three great social institutions of his day (and of ours) - exploitative economics, manipulative religion, and coercive politics." Streams of Living Water, Richard J. Foster p.6-7

"wisdom as a charism of the Holy Spirit is far more than knowledge or information, more even than truth; it is truth applied to the heart and the mind in such a living way that the person is transformed" p.9

"we must recognize that the majority of Jesus' life - and of ours - is found in our families and homes, in our work and play, among our neighbors and in our everyday surroundings. This tangible world is the place we most fully experience the outflow of love, joy, peace, and all the fruit of the Spirit. Here and nowhere else. It was true for Jesus; it is true for us." p.21

i include the first two excerpts just for record keeping sake but want to address the last quotation. this summer i have been feeling, as i usually do during the summers, dry, purposeless, empty, dead. when i write, i write impulsively upon emotional waves and find that the act of writing feeds my soul as well. life circumstances will trigger my thought processes and my heart quickly follows as it connects long thematic arches and attributes it to God's work. but when life slows down, my heart, ill-adjusted to this speed, atrophies as its vision of life's grand meanings becomes frustratingly veiled.

so in light of the tone of my past two posts, i find that this summer is not a bad summer at all. god has placed me squarely in the midst of the social justice community in sd; i have found a new friend in jesús m.; i get to see my favorite people every weekend; i get paid; jackie is with me so that i'm not alone in the evenings.

things that give me life this summer: caring for people, thinking about the asian american church, meeting with trish and being rejuvenated by the kindred dreams i have in her, reading from nouwen and foster and lewis, sleeping, eating well, my new makana candle

swept, dazed

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i don't really know what i'm doing. after my quarter ended, and after three weeks of sleeping at home and hanging out with someone every day of the week, i came back to san diego to start my internship with CPI's SEJ program in mid-city. i had one week of training, a three day independence day weekend (highlights include playing with cats, munchkins, lbp, hiking in killer heat, going to la), and this week i started at my assigned site, ICWJ in north park. the past two weeks i have missed freeway exits at least once a day because freeways in sd are convoluted and patchily built. i hate sd freeways. today i helped load boxes into the truck for the refugees and none of the staff stopped to ask my name.

after getting home i eat dinner, feel lonely, chat online, go to bed. i spend a lot of energy listening with my heart and asking god to show me the hearts of my coworkers; he gives me insight with which i know not what to do but pray throughout the day in the cage (haven?) of my mind. i want to make heart connections but it feels out of reach because from what i gather from the spiritual climate, they don't seem to be very aware of the depths of their heart to be able to share. and to the extent that they are aware, they stash it away from the workplace. is it okay that the work i want to always do is heart work? i miss the women in tenderloin. i feel far removed from anything that gives me life.

e said that god has given this internship to me because he loves me and knows what i need - and i suppose that is to be in san diego, to be in the midst of social justice work, to be in the midst of people who have yet to know jesus, to have physical separation and emotional room to think and be silent. but in the midst of it i am more aware of my heart's longing for substantial human connection; i miss the company of those who nourish me, even if i see them on the weekends.

will you ask me what i've been learning? will you hold the things on my heart with me, because sometimes they're too heavy by myself? do you see me? are these not near fundamental human cries that we as humans have sometimes? do you hear these cries in the everyday interactions of those around you?

i feel like that moment of disorienting unfocus as i frantically try to focus my camera lens and fumble with inexperienced hands. give me the eyes to see that which i cannot by nature.

sidenotes;

sometimes i feel like an insane person

snapshots

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life has no glorified destinations on this side of eternity. we are nomads in no man's land and i am only twenty. here are multiple threads lying in my quivering palms, i'm not sure how god will hold them together:

i feel as if i live from obstacle to obstacle. i often feel the need to cohesively understand all that is occurring in my life so that i may articulate it to my loved ones, but when i am incapable of doing so it's as if i look inside and see emptiness and lies and fakery.

i enjoy walking around barefoot until my feet are raw and my mind is quiet and my heart is full with the richness of conversation with my favorite person. being known, being loved, knowing, and loving are gifts to me in this moment.

i don't know how i can experience such polarized worlds of emotions, but the god who authors romance also is revealing some hefty things. there is this one area of my life that i wish i could claim even a mustard seed sized faith. it is ugly and dead and i am seeing by the grace of god that this is one area that i do not allow the light of gospel truths to penetrate and take root. here i am only a sinner engulfed in anger; here i am a lost cause, i am the target of god's wrath. here the cross of jesus is small but in the darkness of his tomb i will await his resurrection. he brings life from death does he not. let praise arise from my mangled voice

in every moment i am where i am supposed to be. nothing can fall outside of god's sovereignty; to sit in the entirety of god's sovereignty is to consciously avoid diminishing his sovereignty in "bad" times and avoid augmenting his sovereignty in "good" times. he is fearfully and wonderfully sovereign in all things.

effusive

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tonight i am thinking about the role that expression plays in our human experience. how joy is effusive and cannot be borne alone lest it lose its luster and become unbearable because when another enters to share that joy, the experience is somehow sweeter, richer, and more complete. when a couple shares about the delight they feel in carrying the other person's heart, because to them this delight is weightless and precious - sometimes to be protected in secrecy but other times to be celebrated in public. or when the weight of life drags at our heels, pulls at our shoulders, lingers on our sallow faces - and all that is within is cry out "who will have compassion? who will suffer with me?" because this too, becomes sweeter, richer, and more complete when shared. the common factor of these two illustrations is in the act of entering into the sacred space of sharing. it's in the presence of others that we are able to unabashedly bare our unprotected souls and together experience depth beyond our individual sensory capacities. we enrich one another in the safety of relationships marked by tender and fierce, nurturing love.

it reminds me of the way that delighting in God is likened to a having joy like a fountain: it is pleasant, exciting, bright, overflowing, moving, public, exuberant. or like a candle that ought not to be hidden shamefully under a bushel in a dark room. in a similar way, i cannot help but give public and effusive praise about my siblings. we are each other's skeletal support; we hold each others' hearts and read each others' minds. we taste each others' pain as our own, we hear what has yet to be uncovered and expressed, we speak in a verbal language made of downright stupidity but understand all things nonverbal and unedited. idk how it happens, it's kind of magical lol

tonight i can give praise in a way i have been incapable of for the past many months; and because i asked for joy i have received it tonight in the space of my relationships with my sister and brother. they are my anchors when my other spaces are temporarily on hiatus, temporarily unsafe, temporarily distant, temporarily under construction. my written tongue, so dry and thirsty, has been refreshed in the fountain tonight. "come to me," he says, "all who are weary and heavy laden, and i will give you rest. do not labor for what i have taken away; i will give you Me when i take away. i will shower upon you gifts because i want to, but i am your living water and you need nothing else."

he gives to encourage life, he takes to prepare for life, he provides to nurture life. he is life! these past few months he has heightened my sense of emptiness, the space that was once occupied by relationships he has temporarily put on hold. this is a space i trust he will fill in abundance with newness, rebirth, intimacy, fecundity. i am certain that the dimensions and content of my heart's landscape and layered architecture is undergoing some kind of pivotal activity. what will it look like? who will it hold? how much will it be able to hold? what beauty has been unearthed and what frightful things must still be uprooted and destroyed? what things have been built, are being built, are being torn down, reconstructed?

sidenotes;

also e has been a place of safety and rest and is so precious to me :)

undone

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i am undone with big gaping holes
quicksand dissolving what once brought me life

these caverns pockmarking my 'sides

my in-sides my out-sides

holding captive, echoes

of unworth in its

awful empty

silence

lingering by the fragments of these chopped up

sentences are the frayed ends of my leftovers,

my remains, the imprints of my once vibrant reserves

now empty

i am inside-out undone

sidenotes;

i'm burnt out and needy lol
poems happen when words fail and last time i've resorted to inarticulate jumbles was february 2013

what does god's reconciliation with me and the world say about my practice of reconciliation in real life
do people link principles and knowledge to on the ground, gritty action and obedience with a lifeline thread of grace enabled by Jesus or a rotting rope of human effort and condemnation for failure