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

object of my hope ii

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Certainty is the mark of the commonsense life—gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, not knowing what tomorrow may bring. This is generally expressed with a sigh of sadness, but it should be an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God...We are not uncertain of God, just uncertain of what He is going to do next...But when we have the right relationship with God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectancy. Jesus said, “. . . believe also in Me” (John 14:1), not, “Believe certain things about Me.” -Oswald Chambers, 4.29 utmost

There are many who have rejoiced in the presence of God for a season; they have basked in the sunshine in the earlier stages of their Christian career; they have walked along the "green pastures" by the side of the "still waters," but suddenly they find the glorious sky is clouded; instead of the Land of Goshen they have to tread the sandy desert; in the place of sweet waters, they find troubled streams, bitter to their taste, and they say, "Surely, if I were a child of God, this would not happen." Oh! say not so, thou who art walking in darkness. The best of God's saints must drink the wormwood; the dearest of His children must bear the cross. No Christian has enjoyed perpetual prosperity; no believer can always keep his harp from the willows. Perhaps the Lord allotted you at first a smooth and unclouded path, because you were weak and timid. He tempered the wind to the shorn lamb, but now that you are stronger in the spiritual life, you must enter upon the riper and rougher experience of God's full-grown children. We need winds and tempests to exercise our faith, to tear off the rotten bough of self-dependence, and to root us more firmly in Christ. The day of evil reveals to us the value of our glorious hope. -Spurgeon morning meditation, 4.29

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. Psalm 43:5

interrogate my soul, strengthen myself in God

anchor: God's active outworking

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Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain. Psalm 127:1

god to david through nathan:

“Go and tell my servant David, ‘This is what the Lord says: Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in? I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt to this day. I have been moving from place to place with a tent as my dwelling. Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their rulers whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?”’ 2 Samuel 7:5-7

david's prayer in response:

“Lord Almighty, God of Israel, you have revealed this to your servant, saying, ‘I will build a house for you.’ So your servant has found courage to pray this prayer to you. Sovereign Lord, you are God! Your covenant is trustworthy, and you have promised these good things to your servant.” 2 Samuel 7:27-28

"Waiting is a movement. People who wait have received a promise that allows them to wait. They have received something that is at work in them, like a seed that has started to grow. This is very important. We can only really wait if what we are waiting for has already begun for us. So waiting is never a movement from nothing to something. It is always a moving from something to something more.

Waiting is also active. Most of us think of waiting as something very passive, a hopeless state determined by events totally out of our hands. But none of this passivity marks the waiting in scripture. It is active, because in our waiting we know that something is growing from the ground on which we are standing. Active waiting means to be fully present to the moment in a conviction that something is happening where you are and you want to be present to it." -Henri Nouwen, “A Spirituality of Waiting”

God, as he has divinely revealed himself in the word, is a God who is actively and personally involved in this world. He claims all the glory not by stealing the credit of human labor -- but because he is the one who is laboring, and he presents us with the privilege to work alongside him in obedient participation. he prepares people for ministry (moses, joshua, david, joseph, samuel, etc); he makes the situation impossible so that it is clear that it was he who granted the israelites victory or rescue; he graciously emboldens and encourages those who are discouraged or fearful (joshua, elijah, gideon, jonah etc). this is the God i serve and he requires me to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with him. he requires me to love him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength - he does not command me to know everything that is going on, to control everything, to ensure that things go according to plan. he knows that it is beyond my limits to oversee results so to work for his glory is to let him shoulder the responsibility of the "results." he is the sole active pronoun in the bible and i worship him by the inner posture of rest and dependence that i adopt as i embrace the daily allotment of work he grants me. to forget that he was the one who brought me to this point or to forget that he has promised to be with me in the future is to fail to give him all the glory by my lack of utter dependence upon him.

sidenotes;

i think i am always thinking about what season i am in. maybe today i can just sit in the season and be still and know that he is God
also i think God grows me most in my utter dependence on him and so it is through pain, suffering, loss, failure, discouragement, etc. that he strips away my sense of wellbeing and security in other things so that it may rightfully rooted in him.
if i were to sum up how i've been feeling since coming back from sf, i'd hands down say "needy"

processing vulnerability ii

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there is much on my heart but i feel like i'm not wearing glasses because everything is kind of fuzzy. things i am processing through:

-we project our childhood wounds into the present. a useful tool is to differentiate how we interpret present situations from internalized lens of interpretation; the key is not the interpretation but rather the lens. what do the lens say about you?

-we may sometimes (often, or always) be unaware of the ways our childhood wounds inform the way we presently think, feel, and act. are you walking around unaware of your injuries while suffering the pain?

-while triggers of worthlessness and self-images of pride/worth seem diametrically opposite, they are indicators of the same wounds. we overcompensate because we are fearful creatures; the things that we lean upon as sources of reassurance and strength say more about our tender spots than about the things themselves.

-God uses present needs and emotional states as resurfaced symptoms of deeply rooted wounds; if we are attentive to the surrounding triggers that jarred our sense of emotional well-being, we'll see that we may be presented to an opportunity to pinpoint root issues.
-your needs are uniquely yours and not to be compared, exalted, diminished, dismissed, or otherwise hampered. give yourself permission to see your needs as sites of God's tenderness
EDIT// -how i understand love today may be directly related to how i understood being unloved

sidenotes;

i feel reaaaaally tired

processing vulnerability i

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i seem to have a vast, churning internal world that i allow few people to fully access. it is hugely disconnected from my external world, and connecting these two worlds is a fragile bridge which i guard fiercely by trumpeted principles of "intentional investment" and "proven trust" and "introversion." while i love the way God has created my temperament, and while i am able to sit in my inner world (able to process), i am largely unaware of how to welcome others (who haven't "proven" themselves) into this space - & idk when this is required or if it even is required. the turmoil consumes substantial energy and leaves my muscles for movement between the inner and the outer atrophied. in other words, i not only have a difficult time communicating with others that i need company to cross the bridge, but i also have a difficult time communicating when company becomes a threat. in the first situation i find that i shut down and wallow in self-pity. in the second situation i find that i shut down and quiver in my bomb shelter of "duty" that shouts down my own needs in order to meet the needs of the friend (unintentional threat?) knocking at (stomping cluelessly on?) my bridge.

it is also easier to be retrospectively vulnerable by way of presenting nicely packaged stories of brokenness and healing than it is to be concurrently vulnerable by way of digging up messiness, airing it to communities of faith, wincing from the expectation of backlash, and receiving the confounding gift of acceptance and grace.

now, all that being said, i can content myself in embracing my God-crafted temperament, processing style, and needs. however, i need to practice my atrophied muscles and frequent that bridge. also i am falling asleep as i type this soooo lol

sidenotes;

mer

john stott & new quarter

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“I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as 'God on the cross.' In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross that symbolizes divine suffering. 'The cross of Christ ... is God’s only self-justification in such a world” as ours....' 'The other gods were strong; but thou wast weak; they rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne; But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak, And not a god has wounds, but thou alone.” 

― John R.W. Stott, Cross

“[Christian rebellion] arises from the doctrine of mankind made in the image of God, and therefore protests against all forms of dehumanization. It sets itself against the social injustices which insult God the Creator, seeks to protect human beings from oppression and longs to liberate them… it protests against every authoritarian regime, whether of the left or of the right, which discriminates against minorities, denies people their civil rights, forbids the free expression of opinions or imprisons people for their views alone.” 

― John R.W. Stott

“Jesus never concealed the fact that his religion included a demand as well as an offer. Indeed, the demand was as total as the offer was free. If he offered men his salvation, he also demanded their submission. He gave no encouragement whatever to thoughtless applicants for discipleship. He brought no pressure to bear on any inquirer. He sent irresponsible enthusiasts away empty. Luke tells of three men who either volunteered, or were invited, to follow Jesus; but no one passed the Lord’s test. The rich young ruler, too, moral, earnest and attractive, who wanted eternal life on his own terms, went away sorrowful, with his riches intact but with neither life nor Christ as his possession…The Christian landscape is strewn with the wreckage of derelict, half built towers—the ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish. For thousands of people still ignore Christ’s warning and undertake to follow him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so. The result is the great scandal of Christendom today, so called 'nominal Christianity.' In countries to which Christian civilization has spread, large numbers of people have covered themselves with a decent, but thin, veneer of Christianity. They have allowed themselves to become somewhat involved, enough to be respectable but not enough to be uncomfortable. Their religion is a great, soft cushion. It protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life, while changing its place and shape to suit their convenience. No wonder the cynics speak of hypocrites in the church and dismiss religion as escapism…The message of Jesus was very different. He never lowered his standards or modified his conditions to make his call more readily acceptable. He asked his first disciples, and he has asked every disciple since, to give him their thoughtful and total commitment. Nothing less than this will do.” 

― John R.W. Stott, Basic Christianity

tomorrow is the beginning of spring quarter. out of my solitude with God today, i will peptalk the future me for the next three months of my life:

prioritize your emotional, spiritual, mental, social, and physical health. know that it's okay and normal to be in your twenties and not have your life figured out. you fret and are easily overwhelmed and are of little faith; cling to the disciplines of the faith with the entirety of your being engaged because it is out of solitude with your Maker that you will 1) thrive and not just feebly survive and 2) be seen and fully known by your Heavenly Father who desires to carry your chaotic mess. interrogate your downcast soul and remind it to rejoice because God is worthy of this response, and because all things are purpose-full in the outworking of your salvation.

sidenotes;
this season of life as i currently see it is marked by blessed delight, adoration, fear, weariness, choked panting, deep breaths

1 samuel 29

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1 samuel 17-31 details david & saul's journey; the author intentionally juxtaposes the two men to highlight how they both egregiously fail and get themselves tangled in impossible situations, but they respond differently in where they put their trust. this is what sets them apart from each other -- not because one is intrinsically better than the other, but because one bows to the King in his helplessness. on 1 samuel 29:

"Saul goes off to consult a witch; David strengthens himself in the Lord his God. There is the difference. Saul never seems to repent, never seems to have a heart for God. David does have a heart for God and does repent. David, like most of us, finds that many of his turning points are during times of suffering and sorrow, in the dark times of his life. But in this dark day of David’s life, when he has no one else to turn to, he turns to God.

How does he do it? How does he strengthen himself in the Lord his God? We should note that the author gives us little detail here. He does not give us a formula, a series of fail-proof steps. We live in a day when people want a quick fix with a sure cure, and often by the performance of a set of neatly laid out steps – a formula. In the final analysis, I do not think the Christian life is lived by formulas, but by truths and principles. There are do’s and don’ts, but these are not formulas. Let us note here that David finds his spiritual strength in the Lord his God.

...If David strengthened himself in the Lord, we can probably infer that just as Jonathan did earlier, David must have reminded himself anew of the character of God and the promises of God. If God is who He is, in terms of His character (His attributes), we can be assured that what He promises, He will do. Paul put it this way:

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus (Philippians 1:6).

For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day (2 Timothy 1:12; see also Jude 1:24-25).

...David not only strengthens himself in the Lord, David inquires of the Lord. He seeks after God. He seeks to know the will of God in this situation, and then he does it. How different David is from Saul in this regard. David’s strength then seems to come from contemplating who God is, what He has promised, and what He wants us to do. David may have gotten himself and others into a lot of trouble, due to a foolish decision, but he also turns back to the God to whom he has entrusted himself." source

“Jesus of Nazareth always comes asking disciples to follow him--not merely 'accept him,' not merely 'believe in him,' not merely 'worship him,' but to follow him: one either follows Christ, or one does not. There is no compartmentalization of the faith, no realm, no sphere, no business, no politic in which the lordship of Christ will be excluded. We either make him Lord of all lords, or we deny him as Lord of any.” -Lee Camp

with all that i am, all my messiness and inabilities and stupid ways, i want this. bruised knees, callused feet, eager hands, heart splayed open and life surrendered to the King who reveals himself to me in the word as a God who delights not in my suffering but in my dependence on him, my trust in him, my obedience to his commandments. he delights in rescuing me. [list of god's saving acts]

sidenotes;
i am currently sobered by the enormity of what it means to follow christ and by the narrowness of this path. i feel grief as i think upon people in my life who choose not to surrender and follow. have mercy god.

limbo

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it's been brought to my attention that as God moves people into different seasons of life (through different struggles, life stages, milestones) -- that my knee-jerk reaction is to resist change and dig my feet into the ground that bows to God and moves regardless of my petty whines of protest. i am just about as equipped to hold onto certain relationships in certain seasons as i am to hold water in my shaking hands. this sentiment might just be particularly apparent because at this moment i feel like i'm in limbo - i have been groomed in this education system to be prepared for nothing. i am a twenty year old, unmarketable nobody with a lot of hopes and dreams and with little experience. i don't know how anybody gets from place a to place b in their lives; i have a feeling our parents knew little more than we currently do when they were in their twenties. i have a feeling nobody ever feels like they have their lives together in neat packages of achievements and structured predictability. i have no idea (this is probably a lie) why i feel so little peace recently; i have allowed the noisiness of life to shake me from my center of peace and joy and idk! i am sorely in need of some type of healing of some type of sickness because something feels really off

what do i know to be true?
what are my anchors?
jesus is always worthy of praise and rejoicing is he not?

sidenotes;

hohum one day this will no longer be an issue foregrounded in my mind 24/7

needy

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

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

sidenotes;

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

20

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i'm 20 and i'm a mess.

i am a mess of fears and desires, some experience and no experience, and plenty of imaginaries. but i also remember being 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. i remember always feeling like a mess of fears and desires.  it's strange how the visual closeness of those numbers in text form seem to violently and flippantly gloss over all that has happened between each of those numbers; but even as they cannot embody my memories, my memory does a similar thing. my memories are abridged and i'm left with a vaguely helpless sense of loss.

but i'm none of those ages, i am 20 and i'm a mess but i'm still here. i can also be melodramatic sometimes

"My hour in Carmelite chapel is more important than I can fully know myself. It is not an hour of deep prayer, nor a time in which I experience a special closeness to God; it is not a period of serious attentiveness to the divine mysteries. I wish it were! On the contrary, it is full of distractions, inner restlessness, sleepiness, confusion, and boredom. It seldom, if ever, pleases my senses. But the simple fact of being for one hour in the presence of the Lord and of showing him all that I think, feel, sense, and experience, without trying to hide anything, must please him. Somehow, somewhere, I know that he loves me, even though I do not feel that love as I can feel a human embrace, even though I do not hear a voice as I hear human words of consolation, even though I do not see a smile as I can see a human face. Still the Lord speaks to me, looks at me, and embraces me there, where I am still unable to notice it. The only way I become aware of his presence is in that remarkable desire to return to that quiet chapel and be there without any real satisfaction. Yes, I notice, maybe only retrospectively, that my days and weeks are different days and weeks when they are held together by these regular "useless" times. God is greater than my senses, greater than my thoughts, greater than my heart.  I do believe that he touches me in places that are unknown even to myself. I seldom can point directly to these places; but when I feel this inner pull to return again to that hidden hour of prayer, I realize that something is happening that is so deep that it becomes like the riverbed through which the waters can safely flow and find their way to the open sea." -Henri J. Nouwen

this just happened

yea

sidenotes;

five more days
1!!!

social media

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i'm fidgety and easily distracted, i have 30 pages worth of essay writing to do in the coming week and it may be prime time to panic maybe? i'm gonna look back at this post in a month's time and not even remember the details of this week.

also i find that i am often pondering about humanity in broad hopeless generalizations because i haven't the resources in my lonesome puny brain to comprehensively understand the complexities of why people do the things they do. i bring this up because i have become increasingly conscious of why i post things i post and as a result, i have made private many of my old posts and have also refrained from posting things after bringing it before God first and finding him a satisfying enough audience. at the end of the day this is why i must fall back upon the anchor of being still before God and rest in the assurance of his sovereignty. i post things because i want to build up my readers, and that maybe in my ruminations they may also be drawn to the Lord in my heart who is first to hear all my ramblings. my prayer is that in an age in which reality doesn't seem to be reality until it is sedimented in self-glorified, surreally plastic light on some social media platform, you and i would withdraw to contentment in the only one who is a worthy audience, and that we would use social media to draw people to the quiet place where God reigns in quietness and peace. with that, i shall return back to the confines of my hermit essay writing. halp me i want hugs and people :c

sidenotes;

y0lolol
haven't been sleeping well lately idk?

reminder

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i would like to quickly remind myself that jesus associates with the most unlovable people, with the most socially ostracized, with those treated with disdain, dismissal, violence. and in no way shape or form are these people easy to love after they have been force fed this disdain, dismissal, and violence. these people are sick with pain; the toxin of self-rejection and self-hatred runs through their veins. what comes out is an expression of what is within. do not romanticize what it means to love the unlovable. do not pat yourself on the back for loving half-assed or for loving the loveable. and carve the memory of your most unlovely state into the caverns of your blood-paid heart. God loved you when you were yet his enemy.

sidenotes;
lol?

anchor: chastised by the gospel

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Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? Romans 2:4

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. Romans 12:3

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. Philippians 2:3-4

And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” Hebrews 12:5-6

Search me, God, and know my heart;

    test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me,

    and lead me in the way everlasting. Psalm 139:23-24

i act the pharisee, the older brother; teach me lord to celebrate as i ought, as you have commanded and pleaded me to do so. impress upon me the weight of my sin -- greater than any other's -- so that i may wash my scales off in the still, scalding waters of your grace, so that i may enter the courts of your house with praise. do not leave me to my ways. fence me in and lead me in the way everlasting.  i have not clawed myself out of my eternal punishment to a pedestal from which i can condemn others. i have no rights. i have nothing but you. i am a slave to christ, redeemed and purchased by him.

sidenotes;
hm
three more weeks of crazy just three

anchor: God's ministry

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i am reflecting upon my work on campus and in class in many layers - today we we talked about the difference between scholar activism and scholar advocacy. we talked about the interconnectedness of scholarship (theory) and activism/advocacy (praxis) -- that the two are heavily interdependent. using a middle passage analogy, we mentioned how activism allows one to break the chains, but theory directs attention to how to steer the ship. who is steering it? where is it going? we mentioned how advocacy says "i have the answer" and attempts to change people's minds, but activism says "i don't have the answer" and engages self transformation and societal transformation. i imagine advocacy as a middle ground between personal theory formation (first part of activism) and collective application/response (second part of activism).

in this sense, i am engaging in all three levels.

the level most salient in my heart at the moment is the personal level and the subsequent desire to share this with my peers. i am acutely aware in this season of the journey God is taking me on to delineate what it entails to be a practicing Christian in this realm. in his essay "Moving from Solitude to Community to Ministry," henri nouwen brings us through a similar three tiered, interconnected process. as disciples, we are called to discipline ourselves into solitude with God to submit ourselves into a space where we allow God to do root-digging, identity work in us. this is where we develop our attentiveness to the voice which says "beloved." it is in this place of solitude that we are naturally led to community where we actively practice forgiveness of fellow "beloveds" to whom we allow the freedom to not be God - to make mistakes and to hurt us and to hurt. in community we inhale Christ's compassion as it becomes our lifeblood. the exhale of this is ministry; nouwen argues that ministry is not "something that you do (although it calls you to do many things). Ministry is something that you have to trust." we have to trust that because we are sons and daughters of God, and because he promises that whoever believes in him will do Jesus' work & more, we have the healing power of Jesus within us to heal those we come into contact with.

i find that in my interactions and conversations with my classmates, i feel a gut fear regarding my life as a practicing Christian. i feel a need to legitimate the Jesus within my heart. to perform for my classmates an intact argument for Jesus. the moment i realized this fear, i had to sit back and reorient myself into a posture of rest and trust instead of strivings and fear. i can trust that God has placed me in Ethnic Studies, that God has given me these opportunities to engage with this world, that God lives within me and will work powerfully not by my power but through my weakness and obedience, by his power.

God, here am i! send me.

[nouwen's article]

sidenotes;

meep

peace like a river

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

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

sidenotes;

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

also i am very loved :) hehe

grocery grace

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

sidenotes;

i cried a lot today

now i'm dehydrated

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

anchor: unity in Christ

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So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. Galatians 3:26-29

my thoughts initially began with a visceral disgust of academic, ethnographic research. i was thinking about the ways that there is something inherently violent in a research that presumes a detached (and therefore self-justified) privilege to submerge into a "culture," a "people group," and emerge with some transcendent insight. packaged, diluted, re-presented, commoditized, dehumanized, essentialized, consumed. ethnographic research, if conducted insensitively, can therefore be in many levels, an act of violation: violating someone's trust to excavate knowledge and then present it to the curious world in return for academic rewards and recognition. is it worth it? i concluded stalwartly in my heart: i will never deign to presumptuously claim an understanding of someone's lived experience in its entirety. i will be their friend, not their researcher.

maybe it was the spirit's promptings, idk. but i felt a gentle whisper against the disgust and anger fueling my conclusion. i began to think about the way i am sometimes driven by fear in my ethnic studies classes; studying alongside people of vastly different experiences and backgrounds. i fear their furrowed eyebrows, i fear their critical eye; who are you, a relatively privileged asian american christian from irvine, to say/know/attempt to understand anything about my lived experience? says the fear.

so i began to unpack this fear and reinforce the only thing that gives me worth in this life: my king and savior, Jesus Christ, came to this broken world to radically embody God's counterintuitive love by fully emerging in the human experience and dying a sinner's execution and atoning for the eternal consequences of sin. in his subsequent resurrection, we find the established hope of new spiritual life, following in the example Jesus paved, carved in the ugly scars that interrupt the skin of his hands and feet. through him, our horizontal relationships, once marked by difference and misunderstanding and hatred, can be reconciled in him. social differences -- race, class, gender, sexuality -- may not necessarily become invalidated and unimportant in him: but they now become not sources of strife but possibilities for reconciliation and a depth of understanding that supersedes all ethnic studies attempts.

i can submit to him and be used of him to help usher in God's kingdom of redemption and reconciliation. i don't have to bring anyone to God; i will bring God to them. i can fearlessly engage my friends with the depth of a gospel that says before him, race, class, gender, sexuality do nothing to further or damage our standing - a gospel that says yes, we are utterly wretched but are also utterly loved and Christ is the proof. a gospel that says: no, i may not be able to understand your lived experience, nor will i presume that i will ever be able to - but in Jesus' human condition we just might find someone who understands by his lived experience what it's like to be marginalized, demeaned, betrayed, and hated. a gospel that says we can love Jesus alongside each other, and in doing so we will have something that we can both equally understand, that we can both dig deep into our identities. let Jesus be our binding force and we can replace fluffy words like "in solidarity," and "ally" with "brother" and "sister," "son" and "daughter," and "inheritor," "partaker" and "participator" in the Kingdom.

sidenotes;
what does it mean for Jesus to be my anchor in every area. this is what it means
the only truth i know is what God has to say about himself, about humanity, about this world. to whatever degree ethnic studies is able to accurately analyze this world, i will become the best ethnic studies scholar i can be so i can engage with this community at their very academic and passionate level. i am so affectionate of this community aaah

i want to read the thoughts of these brilliant thinkers and as i do so, cling to my anchors and roots:
audre lorde
judith butler
bell hooks
toni morrison
anaiis nin

hannah arendt