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Have you ever

2011-12-10T22:17:00.001-08:00

seen someone and their life and their love and think,

WOW, I want to be just like them?

but shoot I'm not cool enough,

I'm not fun(ny) enough

I'm not friendly enough

goofy enough

Holy enough

smart enough

pretty enough

adventurous enough

enough.

But God says I am just enough, enough just as I am, because Jesus is enough.

And just like that, my heart breaks just a little, but in a good way.

2011-12-07T21:21:00.000-08:00

If you know me, then you know I love Top Chef. Hung from season 3 never ceases to crack me up. Padma looks so confused. Check it.

I am the true vine

2011-12-04T11:18:00.000-08:00

and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not beat fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the words that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever avbdes in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing...

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.
Abide in my love.

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

John 15:1-10

Thrive

2011-11-27T21:35:00.000-08:00

Been fighting things that I can't see in
Like voices coming from the inside of me and
Like doing things I find hard to believe in
Am I myself or am I dreaming?

I've been awake for an hour or so
Checking for a pulse but I just don't know
Am I a man when I feel like a ghost?
The stranger in the mirror is wearing my clothes

No I'm not alright
I know that I'm not right
A steering wheel don't mean you can drive
A warm body don't mean I'm alive
No I'm not alright
I know that I'm not right
Feels like I travel but I never arrive
I want to thrive not just survive

I'm always close but I'm never enough
I'm always in line but I'm never in love
I get so down but I won't give up
I get slowed down but I won't give up

-Thrive, Switchfoot

//feeling it this semester

On being a dodo head

2011-11-26T16:58:00.000-08:00

When I was little my sister would call me a dodo head because I was (am?) kind of a dork and most of the time my head was firmly set in the clouds. I was (am?) just sort of clueless. You know how some people are excellent at turning something dumb they've done into a story and getting other people to laugh about it with them, hence increasing their likability and coolness factor at being able to laugh at themselves and tell a good story? Yeah, that's not me. Most of the time I'm too embarrassed to tell the story, unless I know the person well enough and am confident enough to embellish and make them laugh. More likely than not, the situation is basically me defying common sense, and I'm ashamed that I have to be that girl. The one that makes people roll their eyes and dismiss under a pretense of aww don't worry about it, it's not a big deal when sometimes it kind of is, or has the potential to be.

Example from not so distant past:
I was supposed to meet my cousin in NYC, but conveniently forgot my cell phone. I called my mom through a pay phone to call my cousin (instead of asking her for my cousin's # to speak directly to her) and ask her location. Then I no nonsensically told my mom to tell my cousin that I'd "meet her in the middle." Then I hung up and began to walk. I promptly realized that "meet in the middle" is an ineffective way to establish a meeting location. Hit myself on the forehead in a Doh! moment.

Example from this weekend:
Went into Newark to meet up with my sister but first I had to take the bus from the train station to her dorm. There are two options to taking the bus. Option one is to buy the ticket in advance so that you do not need to worry about paying exact fare once you get on the bus. Option two is to pay once you get on. Silly me decided to combine the two options. Here's a hint: they are two different options for a reason. I got on the bus and instead of giving her my ticket showing her where I needed to go, I delivered my ticket into the slot where you're supposed to put cash. It says, "put cash here," and instead I put in my ticket. Go figure. The bus driver said, "Um, what did you just put in?" "My bus ticket," I said. She sighs, then, "You're only supposed to put money in there." Oops. Thankfully I don't think she was too mad.

Example from tonight:
I went for a run and almost got hit by a car because I wasn't paying very close attention.

I guess it's kind of funny and trivial looking back, except maybe that last example, but honestly it just makes me feel bad. One day the not so big mistakes might become a huge mistake, and what then? I always feel like I'm the brink of messing up, of missing the memo, and rather than push me towards asking for help, the opposite occurs. Since I already constantly feel in a state of vulnerability and looking behind my shoulder to make sure I didn't cause any accidents, it has stunted me from admitting my need for help and putting myself in a position to receive it. I think that this includes asking God for help, which is a huge problem, because I can't do it alone. And so I dig a deeper hole for myself because I refuse to ask for help and keep messing up and struggling and isolation and loneliness kicks in. Feeling alone is the worst feeling in the worl d.

I just completed my first half marathon (woohoo!) and it was an awesome energy to be around the 27,000 mass of people racing in the streets. What struck me though, was the fleetingness of it all. You train, and train, and in a matter of 2 hours it's over. Fans stand near the finish to cheer their loved one on, and wait 45 minutes for a five second glimpse. After a mere six hours, everything is over, the crowds are gone, and the only remnants that 87,000+ people were in that space are the multitude of empty cups scattered across the pavement, overflowing, creature-like trash bins, and abandoned "You can do it!" signs lying near the gutter. For those few hours though, everything--the training leading up to it, the sweat, the pain, the fleetingness of the race, was all worth it. My last long run the weekend before the race was 11 miles, and because I didn't have time to do it during the day, I ran it at night. The neighborhoods near my house are really dark, because the street lights are far and in between. I mapped out an 11 mile course in advance, but I had never run down some of these roads before, and running into darkness, on unfamiliar terrain, was a bit jarring. My feet were hesitant, and every jut on the road was a surprise, because I couldn't see the ground beneath me and anticipate the cracks. It was cold, and I was operating on memory that I was going in the right direction. At one point it was pitch black and I was going down a slope in the road, the inky silhouette of a barn to my left and an empty field to my right. I felt so alone and lost, even though I knew I wasn't lost. Then I remembered in John where it talks about Jesus as the light of the world, and I have never been so thankful that Jesus is light, and not darkness. He is warm, not cold. He illuminates, even while He is a mystery. For that, I am so thankful. It got me thinking about how blessed I am--that even though I felt incredible darkness and loneliness in that moment, it was a temporary state, and the final destination was home. But is that how some people feel all the time? Like they're living in darkness and in a state of constant spiritual darkness? It must be terrifying.

That was a long babble, I know, but I figure I'd make up for the months that I haven't posted, haha. This has been one of the toughest semesters yet in terms of growing mentally, doubting myself, and discovering what kind of woman God wants me to be. I know that I have to learn to not be afraid to admit I need help and ask for it. I also know that I need to grow in compassion for people, and to desire to love others in need rather than being selfish and looking out for only myself, which I'm not doing very well either. Mostly, I need to spend more time with God. Bottom line, if I want to walk the walk I talk. And because He is the creator of the universe, all powerful, and completely deserving of worship. 'Nuff said.

and just because Tangled is awesome, I'll leave you with this video. See below the video for the highest 'liked' comment. It made me lol :) Some peoples are so funny.

Instead of a show

2011-09-28T19:32:00.001-07:00

Away with your noisy worship
Away with your noisy hymns
I stop up my ears when you're
singing em
I hate all your show.

- Jon Foreman

Before I start, let me first make a disclaimer that this post might be messy and rambling. I'm kind of using it to sort out my thoughts and tie things together that have been circling in my brain.

Today in community groups we were studying and discussing the different types of self-righteousness and the performances we put on for others, for God, and for ourselves to justify our actions. In the process, we are lured into a false security that completely hinders our ability to apply the Gospel to our lives and minimizes the power of the cross through incorrect thinking that what we do affects how much God loves us. One of the questions we were to ask ourselves was as God thinks of you right now, what is the look on his face? I thought I knew that answer. The look on His face would be one of disappointment because I'm not good enough in so many ways. I'm prideful, jealous, perverse, spiteful, and grumble often. Instead, the answer in the booklet read, If you imagined God to be anything but overjoyed with you, you have fallen into a performance mindset. Because the gospel truth is that in Christ, God is deeply satisfied with you..based on Jesus' work, you are God's daughter. For some reason, this caught me off guard. I know I am saved by grace, not through works, but I didn't that God is okay and even rejoices with who I am, right at this moment in time. My line of thinking was that if God is glad with who I am now, then doesn't that mean I don't need to change? I equated God's satisfaction with stagnancy, like when you're stuffed and can't eat anymore, and you don't want to eat anymore because you're full. God's love however, doesn't work that way. It doesn't work on human terms. It doesn't start off small then increase to reach some kind of quota to 100%, it's just always at full. That fullness however, has no limits. He loves me the way I am, but according to my own standards, I don't think the way I am is enough, so I need to change. But it hit me that He loves me at this moment in time because it doesn't depend on what I do. That's the whole point. It doesn't mean that He doesn't want me to change and grow; it just means that who I am, good or bad, is enough, because Jesus is enough to cover it all. His desire to see us grow in our faith isn't so that He can love us more, but rather for the sake of our own joy in finding our identity through Christ alone, and using us as a vessel to build God's kingdom (which is for His joy, and therefore ours as well).

I realize that so often I put on a show. Even when I wish so badly it wasn't that way, my instinct is to put up a pretense. I'm ashamed to say that when I show my vulnerabilities to others, I'm still well aware of how others are perceiving me, and it affects the way I behave. I wish I could be completely stripped of pride and performance, and be completely honest and real, instead of a show. It acts as further evidence of my sinful nature, and how I cannot merely shed it by sheer human effort. It's just not possible. Putting on a performance to prove your righteousness not only undermines what Jesus did on the cross, but also underestimates God's ability to transform other people's lives. Let me explain. One of the reasons someone may put on a show of righteousness instead of honestly confronting the depths of their sin is a fear that other people will judge your brokenness. As Jesus transforms and reveals sin however, He also shows the depths of His grace, which should also transform our interactions with each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. To act righteous in order to cover up for ones sins because of shame or fear is a natural reaction, but it is also inadvertently saying that other Christians are not capable of not judging or understanding. Maybe we need to trust God more in what He's doing in other people's lives in addition to ours, so that we can trust each other with our burdens and have more candid conversations of what is really going on beneath the surface.

I hope my instinct to comfort won't hinder my duty to treat and care for the patient, even when that means hurting them temporarily for better results in the end. Sometimes caressing is not what people need. My friend Sharon wrote these words in her blog in application to her thoughts in med school, but I realize that it is also true in relationships. We imagine that comfort or "caress" is preferred, but it may not be what that person needs. In the same vein as what I said previously, we often assume things of God and of each other that aren't necessarily true. God wants to heal our brokenness and wipe away our shame, but just because he applies a little or a lot of pressure when we expect caresses doesn't mean He loves us any less or is unhappy with who we are.

I know that this post was a little sloppy, so feel free to challenge if any of this rings untrue or doesn't make sense. If you got through it all, thanks for reading and following along :)

Humidity (Humility?)

2011-09-28T08:40:00.001-07:00

Everything feels wet today. The air is pregnant with unshed tears, and where is the release? Us mere mortals cannot hold this pain that overflows in the woven baskets we carry. Through the crevices and cracks, hiding in the shadows of interlocking braids of grass. The basket sighs and sags sadly. It begins to leak. But still, we pretend (pride?), that it is dry. The air stinks of sour denim drying, drying, always damp, from this wet air.

2011-09-17T09:03:00.000-07:00

EF Educational Language Center has created a series of short films called "Live the Language" to promote studying abroad in different cities around the world. All of the films have beautiful lighting, camera angles, and an excellent and creative use of typography to showcase different experiences in each city. Different remixes of the same song are used, but the music shifts subtly to go along with each scene. Visit EducationFirstCampaign to see the rest of the videos. I loved the Paris one for its quirkiness and colors, but Los Angeles, Vancouver, and Bei Jing were my favorite. It was especially funny to see a white guy attempting Tai Ji Quen, a form of Chinese dancing meant to boost your health and steadiness. I will say though, that all the characters in the films are super attractive, and in a couple of them the girl just happens to meet a cute guy, whether she oh, 'just bumped into him' or 'just happened to ask him for directions.' He accompany her around the city and of course, romance blossoms. Hah puhleeze, so unrealistic. But nevertheless beautifully shot. Check 'em out.

In that moment I was found

2011-09-16T22:11:00.000-07:00

I have this image I can't get out of my head. She's dressed in white, the cloth falling around her feet, which are unswollen and whole. Her eyes are closed, but you know she's alive even though her chest is still. He sits at her bedside, looking into a face he knows so well, and takes her hand. He takes her hand, and her fingers instinctively close around his, as he gently shakes her awake. She smells sweet rice cakes and steamed egg, and knows that they are for her, so she opens her eyes and smiles at what she sees. His face is hidden but the air around him glows a hazy yellow, like the slant of the yellow sun in the late autumn afternoons. "Talitha koum," he says. "My precious daughter wake up. You're home at last."

Oh how we live such fragile lives

2011-09-02T08:04:00.000-07:00

When there's a death in the family, life changes somehow. Nothing sudden or big, but a subtle shift of what life was and what life is now. My grandma's death, still so fresh in my mind, is a testament to how fragile life really is, and how in the span of a couple of minutes, the heart stops pumping, and the body goes cold. The last time I heard her speak, she was in a state of half sleep half wake, and she opened one eye to look at me. Just one eye. Her eye was a soft gray, muted and softened with age and bleary from too much time. Too much time on the bed, and from not remembering.

What I remember of her from my childhood is opening my mouth to be fed, like a baby bird waiting for the silver spoon--a shallow bowl of Grandma's dumplings and yams and meat buns. Her words came out in a slow sweet way, happy. Once when I was five or so, I was crying, most likely over something inconsequential, when my grandpa took out the camera. He had a strange amusement with documenting us while we were crying. It was the same when my mother was little. When the camera came out I cried even harder, as I lay across Grandma's lap and she traced circles on my back. I could see her other hand shooing my grandpa away, her head tilted towards him to give him her fiercest look, which was never very fierce. Looking at the pictures now make me laugh instead of cry. I remember pulling on her wrinkled skin, a soft and never ending topography of lines. I rubbed a red dot on her arm, wondering why it wouldn't go away. I think it was a birthmark. She called me her treasure, xiao bao bei.

I was in my advertising class when I found out. My phone was on silent, and 6 missed calls from my mom, and 5 missed calls from my cousin later, I received a text from my cousin: "Grandma passed away :(" I thought I could sit through the last 15 minutes of class, but. instead I left and I drove home, gave my mom a hug. She asked if I wanted to pray with her for Grandma, who is now with Jesus. For a while, I had felt a little numb in my faith, and of all prayers I didn't want this one to be an insincere one, so I said no. The disappointment on her face though, made me wish I hadn't said that word, so I took her hand and said, "Okay lets pray." So we prayed--her first, me second. I don't know what I said but I know that I meant every word, that it was honest, and that's what matters. God felt more present than He had in a while. I'd like to think that that was Grandma's gift to me, to shake me awake a little and remind me that I should be sad, but not too sad, because she's in a better place--that she is God's beloved, and that I am too.

2011-07-19T20:15:00.000-07:00

Something silly I made in my video editing class. Hopefully it will make you laugh, or make you feel super embarrassed for me. Please, don't judge.

2011-07-04T15:20:00.000-07:00

fickle |ˈfikəl|
adjective
changing frequently, esp. as regards one's loyalties, interests, or affection

It's funny how fickle we can be as a collective society. I think I used to equate being fickle with little kids who can be easily swayed by whatever emotion is being worn on their sleeve at the given time, but I've begun to see how maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the opposite is true. When you're a child, the color you like remains so for a long time. It's not pink one day and green the next. It's pink pink pink, a fully committed decision that manifests itself in pink shoes, dresses, wallpaper, backpack, pens, hairbands, etc. When you're a child, the person you love remains the person you love, regardless. The person you hold dear to your heart may do something wrong that hurts your feelings, but at a young age, almost nothing can hinder that deep-rooted love and loyalty towards that individual. Some may call it being naive, but there is something so beautiful about that child-like faith. A child-like faith in God is the simple acceptance that God can do anything--and He can. Somewhere along the way though, we put on our fickle glasses that skewed how we see the world, and how we view God. Somewhere along the way we decided that we sprouted a second brain that understands the ways of the world and since we're so smart then of course! our thinking must be right. And even if this line of thought isn't voiced, it's demonstrated in our actions and our words, that we know better than our Creator.

"See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ." -Colossians 2:8

We've become fickle beings ready to chase a butterfly through a field one second, then the chipmunk to its hole the next, and all the while a snake lies in hiding ready to bite. As C.S Lewis put it, we are far too easily pleased in our pursuit for happiness. We settle for fickle joys that are as fleeting as a piece of chewing gum. You chew and chew until all the flavor is gone, then spit it out unsatisfied looking for another piece. So it continues. Fickle.

I'm struggling not to be fickle and to carefully examine my motivations to make sure that it's for the long run, for Christ and His righteousness. More often than not my motivations are convoluted with my own selfish desires and the temptation to please the world. Help me God because I can't do this alone.

2011-07-02T20:45:00.000-07:00

Umm, I think this is me? Sometimes.

Babysitting

2011-06-27T07:56:00.000-07:00

Recently I've caught a glimpse of how hard it is to raise a child. Children don't miss a thing. I'm helping to babysit my neighbor's daughter and most of the time she doesn't listen to me. I know part of it is because I don't put my foot down firm enough, and end up trying to convince her to do things. I'm giving her attention, which she wants, only it's negative attention. I try to speak calmly, minding my pleases and thank yous, but there is just no reasoning with a child. The other day she wanted to paint a flower petal, but then refused to paint it because she didn't think she could paint a good one. When I suggested we do something else, she insisted on painting, yet she wouldn't pick up the brush to paint. I could feel the craziness coming on. When my patience is tried to its last, I can hear my voice getting louder in frustration, and I put on the face. Even the most trivial tasks become commands. "Brush your teeth, now." *cue ferocious look.* And still, still that doesn't work. To hear a child say, "I don't like you" or "this is no fun" or even, "I hate you." Oh my gosh, it's horrible. Can you even imagine your own child saying that to you? It makes me on edge just writing it.

I've also been struck by how often we demand our children do things that we grown ups don't even do consistently (or at least I don't). Things like picking up after yourself, wiping the sink clean, brushing your teeth in the morning, putting your shoes away, etc. We expect our children to do these things, yet the example is not set. The kids are watching y'know, and they hold you to your own standard. How do you speak in love while disciplining someone, which sometimes requires picking up the screaming, kicking child and taking them to wherever they need to be? How do you be sensitive with your words, making sure not to dismiss their feelings when their ultimatums are irrational and purposely testing? As you're asking yourself all these questions in the moment, the child is suddenly okay again, holding your hand and saying sweet words. What the? It's a 180 degree turn around, so fast that I can't wrap my head around it.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

Happy Father's Day

2011-06-22T20:31:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday was Father's day and this year I tried to make it special by painting a photograph of my dad, sister, and me. It was taken in 1994 when Dad was stick skinny sporting the way thick glasses, my sister was still developing her fashion sense (plaid on plaid is not so advisable), and I was, as my sister graciously put it when I showed her the photo last week, "such a little dork." My face is familiar but my expression is not. Where did that rambunctious, carefree grin wander off to? Do I ever wear that expression on my face anymore? I hope it's not lost, and if it is, that I can find it again.

My father is flawed, as you and I are flawed, but I have never doubted his love. Has he been harsh in the past? Yes. Incredibly hard to please? Yes. Cruel? Sometimes, seemingly, yes. But in spite of all that, I am reminded of my earliest memory of my father. It's a good one mixed in with some tough love. From my journal:

"I think Dad had a soft spot for me when I was younger. My first really clear memory of him was being held while I was crying. Big gentle hands wiping my tears and holding me and walking in circles around the West Virginia house living room. I think it was dinner time. This memory blurs with another one so I'm not sure if it's part of the same memory or a different one. I'm crying, he's holding me, but then he tells me that I shouldn't cry anymore--to be stronger and that in the future when I do cry, he won't be there to wipe away my tears."

When I was little, that last part confused and upset me. Not there to console me? Did that mean he would stop being Dad? It was his brand of tough love, and sometimes it tasted bitter, but I think he recognized early on that I needed to be less dependent and more willing to stand up on my own. It still rings true. At church on Father's Day, there came a point in the service when we were supposed to greet the people around us. I shook hands with a couple of men, but for one man I decided to wish him a happy father's day, even though there were no children with him. He was an older gentleman with what appeared to be his wife, so I assumed that perhaps he was a father. When I said it, he didn't say thank you. He just kind of looked at me and then sat down. During the sermon the pastor congratulated the fathers, and then said this: "For some of you Father's day is not a happy day. Perhaps you never had a father, or memories of your father are not good ones." The wife of the man turned to her husband eying him, and he tilted his head knowingly. Later in the sermon the pastor shared a statistic that children with the mere presence of a father living in the house were less likely to become juvenile delinquents (or something like that) and again they eyed each other in agreement. It made me sad. Here was obviously not a very happy father's day. I don't know the story, but I recognized their glances of acknowledgment. This statistic had somehow been proven correct in his life. It made me grateful for my own father, and it made me realize that what I thought was cruel isn't really cruel. What's really cruel is being deprived of a father, period. I'm glad that this injustice doesn't have to be a permanent condition, and that Jesus is a comfort for the widow, a shepherd for the lost, a father to the fatherless.

Damp pages in a basement where moth and rust destroy

2011-06-13T20:00:00.000-07:00

Our basement has always been a half-hearted mess of decaying boxes and musty air. It is not exactly dusty, but after touching and breathing in that damp space, my fingers feel like they have wiped a chalkboard, a result of the unfinished cement ground leaving a barely detected but always present layer of white powder. In one corner are empty suitcases, some empty, others holding winter clothes in the summer, summer clothes in the winter, and still others are randomly filled with old childhood books. The basement flooded two years ago after a storm, soaking the bottom of unfortunate cardboard boxes lying on the floor, leaving soggy pages and bleeding ink in its wake. The various notebooks and binders were left open to dry, then forgotten about, and continue to lie there, blossoming mold and other curious fungi. Alongside my 1st grade drawn dog is a line of fuzzy mold from the damp.

The other day my dad became fed up with the mess (even though a good part of it is his as well), and the feeble excuse of, "there was a flood! Things are strewn about to dry!" no longer suffices. It has been two years since that floor. No excuses. Laura could never take being down there for long. The dense air triggers her ever reliable gag reflex. But ah, I guess I'm made of tougher stuff. I breathe in those dusty particles like nobody's business. Oh, and the sewage pipe was leaking two days ago onto the ground, so who knows what kind of brown residue is still there...no big deal. So tonight I trudged downstairs and began to sort out the boxes with my name on them.

Some of it is obvious junk-- school work that I'll never look at or use ever again, pages of doodles. Other stuff seems like junk but I keep for nostalgia or pride's sake. Like that A++++ (hah, kidding. Just an A+) on my 3rd grade Heidi book report, or my broken abacus, or the scripty comment on my Call of the Wild essay, "Tiffany, this is very deep." If not for myself, at least I need to show my future kids that I was at the least A) a mathematician ( I'll tell them "I practiced so hard on my abacus that it broke!" aka a flagrant lie), B) An A+ writer, and C) a deep thinking eleven year old. Right? So I keep the book report, the essay, the splintered abacus. And the Japanese picture books I can no longer read nor understand. And the National Geographic for Kids! magazines from 1998-2002. And the stick with the shark on the end that can open and close its mouth, nom nom. So on and so forth. Maybe one day they will become collectibles. Or just collect dust. Who knows? A few dug up items make me cringe, like the middle school gossip notes that unexpectedly drop out of a folder, as well the page full of doodled signatures I created for myself. In retrospect, these only highlight my inflated need for self-importance, but really, has much changed? Yes, but also no. I find the wind chime a friend gave me in middle school that had accompanied a letter apologizing and explaining why she had stopped being my friend. Two of the four chimes fell off within the first couple of days. The only two chimes remaining are the ones on opposite ends. No contact, broken.

The worst items are the miscellaneous ones. The ones that don't fit into KEEP or TRASH or DONATIONS. Things like the leather fanny pack from some obscure conference years ago. I don't want to keep it, yet what stranger would want a fanny pack?!, but throwing it away when I know my parents will probably still use it if given the chance. Like when they go to Europe this fall. Shoot, maybe I should throw it away and save them some outdated embarrassment that they will no doubt be oblivious to. It's still sitting on the shelf.

Now that I've given you a thoroughly useless account of the basement happenings, I'll end with this: In a heap of mostly forgotten items, what will you keep? What will you throw away? Why do you hold on to what you do? I tell myself I'll keep it for myself, for my future family to look at, but maybe, well maybe they won't care. Won't care about how Mommy wrote her alphabet when she was four, or about Fudge from The Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. Nothing. After all, it all does become nothing. "Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust can destroy". I find myself wanting to keep my accomplishments, my "treasures"--the trophies, the A+ paper, the carefully colored fifty states diagram. I want to throw away the college rejection letters, the D's (yes, plural) on my biology, chemistry, physics, algebra, calculus tests (can you tell I'm not a math/science person?). Yet rejection and failure are also a part of who I am because I am imperfect and broken and have too many weaknesses to count. Can I admit them to myself, to my kids, my spouse, my Christ? I have to at some point, so maybe I need to keep some of those D's as evidence in case said imaginary kids and spouse don't believe me (hahaha as if that could happen). Now Jesus I can't fool. Jesus knows all.

2011-06-02T21:56:00.000-07:00

My grandpa loves to see things grow. Fruit trees in particular, nice and tall and thick. Oranges, peaches, figs, persimmons, loquats. Cacti too, of the tall and taller variety. Big straight limbs that tower over human height. Notice I didn't say my grandpa loves to 'garden.' He doesn't care much for the overall layout or beauty of the garden. Empty milk cartons line the walkway, loyal soldiers recruiting and collecting rainwater. An empty box that once held a dozen asian pears is turned upside down and used as a stool. He sits hunched over a big metal bowl holding scissors and snipping avocado skins, eggshells, moldy orange peels, into small fragment to deposit into the compost bin. In the spring, he carefully mixes Miracle grow powder with water into plastic cups, and the liquid glows Koolaid blue. Other times he is crouched over, pulling pesky overgrown weeds, and occasionally the momentum of pulling up a difficult weed sends his ninety-four year old body teetering backwards, almost falling. "Stop doing things in the yard," they say. "You could get hurt. You could get hurt."

When my mom went to visit last month, she made it her personal project to eliminate the weeds once and for all. She bought forty bags of mulch to cover the weed laden ground and she and my aunt went to work. Grandpa protested. "Don't do that! If you kill the weeds then I won't have weeds to take out when I go into the garden." The garden is his playground. He picks out the weeds because he doesn't want them, but at the same time they are part of the scene, consistent and reliably there. If the weeds aren't there, it leaves precious little else to do that his body can handle. So I wish they had let his weeds be, and let his playground remain a place of his control. To every one else the garden looks untame and maybe a little sad, but Grandpa is happy with the way it is. He knows its ins and outs, from the glass greenhouse transformed into a storage for mismatched garden gloves and cobwebs, to the tomato plant held upright against a stick with a shoelace. Stop doing things in the yard," they say. "You could get hurt." Is the alternative better? Is it not better to have felt free in a world you understand rather than looking out a window into a garden you love but being afraid that a crack in the pavement will betray you?

My grandpa loves to see things grow, because he is a farmer, not a gardener. He loves to cultivate and sustain life, even as Christ sustains his.

Stuck

2011-05-28T20:44:00.000-07:00

What do you do when a non-believer asks you what Jesus says about hell, and you tell him what the Bible has to say about it, and he feels condemned and angry for saying what it's saying? Anger is the right response...if the person didn't feel condemned and judged then I would think that there is something wrong. But dang it if there was an easier way, if the truth were easier...but truth is never easy. It's not easy to look into your heart and acknowledge all of the sin that is there. I'm having a really hard time sharing the gospel with my neighbor. If we were peers then it might be easier, but he is a father, very intellectual, giving, kind, and very critical of Jesus and my beliefs. I feel small and inadequate, naive about the world and not sure of what I can do to help or make a difference. When he asks me about what Jesus says about hell, what else can I do but give an account of what I believe? There is no sugar-coating hell, though sometimes I wish there were. In his blog, Michael C Patton off of the GospelCoalition says it well:

"I have gone on record saying that I hate the doctrine of Hell. If there is anything in my theology that I could discard—if there was a theological “burn card”—it would be the doctrine of eternal punishment. It causes me great anxiety and disillusionment. I am sorry if that makes some of you uncomfortable, but that is just the way it is. That is me.

That is why I am somewhat jealous of people who can find their way out of this doctrine. That is why, in one sense, I am envious of those who have found ways to adjust or deny the existence of the eternal punishment of the unredeemed. Would that I could follow them, but my conscience will not yield to my emotions and allow me to."

So God give me faith to stand firm in my faith while speaking in compassion and love. Show me my own sin to convict me further of the great depravity of human nature, and that truly "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," and that by grace alone we are saved. Help me to only be satisfied with pleasing Christ, not man, and to pursue truth in every circumstance. Give me wisdom and insight beyond my years to be able to speak your truth, and if I am hated for it then so be it.

I pray that I can claim the promise written in Romans 5:2-4, "Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope for the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."

Self-Righteousness and Forgiveness

2011-05-09T08:01:00.000-07:00

Even though I know I am saved by grace, and grace alone, sometimes I still fall back into the works based attitude. This is the way our society functions, this kind of give and take consumerism mentality. Rewards are given for good behavior, and punishments for bad. Or if I give to and love someone, he or she will instinctually know how to give and love me back. I walk in with an unspoken expectation of how I should be treated once I give my share of affection to a person. Expectations can be both good and bad. Few expectations can mean that you think little of a person and don't expect much from the relationship while too many expectations can be too idealistic and seriously damage the relationship. Too many expectations also calls into question whether you're setting this person up on a pedestal to take God's place. The problem here is not necessarily the expectation, but the unspoken expectation. This is especially true between family members. Because they're your family, they should just KNOW, right? Wrong. My way of dealing with conflict is avoidance, not confrontation, so when I feel like I have been wronged, I hold it inside rather than expressing my hurt. I think that there are two reasons for this: 1) I don't want to cause trouble, and in a way it's easier to just (try) to let it go. 2) I have the wrong thought that sucking in my pain is the more noble path to take than mentioning it and possibly damaging the relationship beyond repair. 3) I've seen explosive anger before and it's horrible for everyone involved. I'm afraid of being that way.

Each time my feelings are hurt it accumulates in a self-righteous bank account that I bring to God and say, this person has hurt me in this way when I've tried so hard to be good to them. Help me to forgive, but also help them to realize what they did without me having to say anything so that I can avoid confrontation and makes this whole thing easier, okay? Okay, Amen.

Surely, God can convict individually, but in some situations it's like asking God for food when bread is right there on the table. Often times the person has no clue that they offended you. The person is right there, so why not express your feelings and try to reconcile? When hurt builds up and is not talked about, it can easily become resentment, and more sin is heaped on. People lash out in anger over inconsequential things because of the acquired hurt. Reconciliation is a huge part of fully forgiving someone, because each side knows what the other person did wrong, mutually acknowledges it, and forgives. The words, "I'm sorry," and, "I forgive you," are so incredibly neglected. When did we reduce the words "I'm sorry" to the half whine of a reluctant five year old forced to say sorry by monitoring adults? The power of these simple words and the meaning of it is manifested in Christ on the cross. It is my salvation. It's essential to practice sorrow and forgiveness not only to God but to fellow brothers and sisters and non-Christians. It's so hard, but often the way out is through. Through being hurt and talking about sin and being reconciled with one another. Christ never promised that it would be easy, but in the toughest parts of life, He promised to get us through them, and that we will never be alone. He's there to show us the way.

My Jesus is alive!

2011-04-24T17:25:00.000-07:00

You turn ashes into beauty
You are for me, not against me now
You found me somehow
You turn mourning into dancing
You turn weeping into a joyful noise
Oh rejoice!

I was dead in my sin
You came in
yeah

You made a way when there was no way
You covered heaviness with garments of praise
You wrote a song and You're singing it over me
I feel a dead heart beating now
This revelation makes me wanta shout (HEY!)
that Jesus has been sent
and everything is different.

Good Friday

2011-04-22T13:00:00.000-07:00

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
Heirs with Christ

So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him."

-Romans 8:1-17

Humanity has forgotten the meaning of the word "good." We have replaced it to mean watered down adjectives like "nice" or even worse, distorted the meaning of the word for our own purposes. In Genesis when God was creating Earth and all its inhabitants, he saw that "it was good." When He made Adam He said that he was "very good." In Hebrew "good" is "tov," is best translated to mean "functional," or "to serve a purpose." Good is the opposite of evil, and is made to please God because He is the founder of all things good. On "Good" Friday, Jesus died and paid the ultimate penalty to serve the purpose of reuniting humanity with Himself. It pained the Father to see Christ die, but it was for our good. Our good.

Today I was listening to the radio and the person said, "Today is good Friday, or as I like to say, good thing it's Friday because it's been a long week." I wanted to yell at her over the radio that "uh, no, you don't get to make this about you. Jesus died for you on the cross!" But Jesus was completely omitted and she made it about herself instead. But I do it too. I somehow find a way to make it about me. It was that way in Jesus' day and it's the same today. Oh what mercy has been granted me. I don't want to take this mercy for granted.

Picture This

2011-04-21T20:20:00.000-07:00

Where my feet have been these past few months.

Washington D.C

National Gallery of Art, DC

Hatsuhana Japanese Restaurant, NY

Teaberry's for my 21st :)

HOME

A Good Day

2011-04-16T23:51:00.000-07:00

Today was a good day. It was full of music and friends, laughter and dreams. I went to see Kina Grannis at World Cafe Live and got to hear her beautiful voice sing stories of heartache and doubt, fear and love. She is lovely. One of her songs was about her desire to be a certain kind of person and about the struggle in understanding that it doesn't just happen, even if you go through the motions of being the person you want to be. For some reason it reminded me of The Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery (of Anne of Green Gables fame). In the book, the main character Valancy is afraid to be herself, and is surrounded by family that put her down and treat her like a vase about to be broken. She spends a lot of time in her imaginary blue castle, a place where she is loved and is free to be herself. It exists only in her daydream, but unforeseen circumstances help her to overcome her fear and she finds her blue castle. For Valancy, it is a tangible place, but it is also a symbol of hope for what's to come and an anchor of peace and all things beautiful. My ultimate 'blue castle' is heaven, where a room is being prepared for me by my heavenly Father. My future blue castle on earth though, is a home with my own family where I can love and be loved, and a place to worship and serve God together. I'm so excited for that. For now it remains a blue castle, but a girl can hope right? At the same time I know I need to be cautious not to let it become an idol or a romanticized version of reality. Relationships are tough I know. I wrote a little poem to try to capture what I was feeling today. I hope it's not too sappy haha. The poem is inspired by Montgomery's book and today's music, but somewhere along the way I inserted myself into it too.

My Blue Castle

Wrapped in misty veils atop a hill
sits the blue castle.
Her face peeks through the window,
curled toes and jasmine tea.
The pane is glazed with rain,
rain glazed with glints of light
from her blue castle.

She was afraid of something,
but she can’t remember what as she dreams of
blue castles where a room awaits
with a crackling fire and a whimsy smile.

Where did that scared child go,
of the pale face and fearful eyes,
wide awake but sleepwalking through life,
barely staying afloat?

Where did that scared child go,
of the vacant smile and downward gaze?
In her place is you,
and you’re beautiful.

I used to be a china doll,
porcelain skinned with shadows
etched beneath the glass.
If you hugged me I would break,
because I didn’t know how to live.

My love, you brought me to my blue castle,
held my hand and led me through the gate.
You hummed a tune and I fit in the curve of your arm,
and hummed along.
In my room are violets and bluebells,
tinkling chimes of laughter.
And I know I am home,
home at my blue castle.

It ended before it began

2011-04-04T11:31:00.000-07:00

I ran a race on Saturday in Titusville on the D&R canal path. I didn't go into it with much confidence because it has been cold these days and I should have run more to prepare but lacked the motivation. Yes, even the anticipation of a race wasn't enough to motivate me to run long distances. But nevertheless I went, because I said I would. The starting horn blew and off we went, at first slowly because of the thick crowd, but eventually the bottleneck effect diminished and the pace became more steady. Focus on breathing, I kept telling myself. In through the nose out through the mouth to avoid cramps. Stay behind this girl, right behind her on her heels. Not to her side or halfway between side and behind. Directly behind. Don't waste energy on extraneous steps. Swing the arms back in forth, relaxed. The girl in front of me kept an even steely pace, and whether she eventually sped up or whether I slowed down, I'm not sure. I didn't stay with her, not because I was really that tired but because I figured I had enough distance left in the race to catch up eventually. So I decided to pace with the next girl after her. I wasn't clear how much distance had been covered already, but the end came faster than I had anticipated. And the girl I was pacing with sped up, but I figured I had time to catch her and was storing up my energy for the very last stretch. But what I didn't realize was that I was already in the middle of the last stretch. Shoot, is that the finish already? Why is there a crowd? Oh my gosh it's the finish! I quickly sped up because I had energy left, and I closed the gap between me and the girl in front of me, but it was too little too late. The fight ended before it had started. You're not supposed to have energy left at the end. You're supposed to expend it all in the final fight. Another 30 meters in the race and I could have caught up to her and passed her, I think. But it was over.

Prizes were awarded for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place of each age group, and the girl right in front of me ended up getting 3rd place for our age group (20-29). It could have been me. I was at once frustrated and annoyed, but it was my own fault. I tried to justify it, telling myself that it's no big deal. It's only a race, and there's always next year right? True. In life we're given a lot of second chances for each situation, but when it comes down to it, we only have one life on earth. I don't want to get to the end of my life and realize that it wasn't a life well lived, a race raced without a clear purpose. I was so concentrated on getting the details down right that I forgot the bigger picture of racing for the prize. To do the best that I can do and not get bogged down by the trivial things. And what exactly does a good life, a good race look like?

1 Corinthians 9:26 Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air.

1 Corinthians 9:25 Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.

I believe that this training involves a lot of discipline, which I severely lack, and a lot of love, which I am in not great abundance of either. If I do, it's only through Christ and not by my own nature. And the prize, oh the prize! Run in such a way as to get the prize, the crown that would last forever. One that does not tarnish or collect dust like my old xc and track trophies, packed away in a shoebox in the back of the closet.

Acts 20:24 However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me--the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace.

I admit I haven't been testifying, fully attesting to the power of the gospel and how it has changed me in my own life. But I am so encouraged that at my weakest moments, despite my greatest efforts to thwart or disobey, or rebel against a God who loves me, nothing can separate me from Christ. I may be running at a crawl (okay, that's not really running haha), but I'm not lost on the wrong trail. The most important picture, an illuminated path, the gospel, is unchanging.

Christ and the artist

2011-03-28T19:12:00.001-07:00

Charis-Kairos (The Tears of Christ) by Makoto Fujimura

Contemporary artist Makoto Fujimura is a Christian and well known in both Christian and secular artist circles. In celebration of the 400th anniversary of the King James Version Bible, he was commissioned, in a sense, to present abstract art alongside the four gospels. It is the merging of modern art with Scripture and is carefully crafted to illuminate the Bible in a creative way while still staying true to God's word. The typography and layout are beautiful as well, and I'm surprised something like this wasn't done earlier. It makes me really excited. Fujimura speaks beautifully about being beauty, the artist's place in the church, and being an artist and Christian, and how these two worlds came together to make the artist he is today. Some excerpts from his interview which can be viewed in full here:

On becoming a Christian and what changed before and after in his art work

"I knew that I had this awareness of brokenness that I didn’t have a solution for. The problem of an artist is that you create beautiful things and the beauty of it can haunt you because you don’t have a place inside for that transcendence. So an opera singer singing the best performance of her career will go backstage and weep because you know that you’ve been touched by something, but you don’t know what that is. I had this profound awareness that the beauty I am able to create, I’m alienated from. How do you bridge that gap? I felt that in that passage by William Blake, and the Gospel, this reality that was literally a bridge between heaven and earth, between my sense of alienation and what was happening inside and outside. That allowed me to hold everything together, to see that Christ indeed could bring those things together in my life."

What do you say to artists who feel a tension between creed and creativity and feeling like their creative artistic gifting prevents them from being boxed in with orthodoxy? How can you encourage artists that there is great joy and freedom according to the standards of Scripture?

"We take the word ‘discipline’ to be negative, but there is training that goes on in any form and you really have to deal with limitations of expression and those who make it are the ones who have recognized and began to create out of those limitations. So these boundaries actually have become your friends rather than your enemies, and that’s when your artist journey really begins. This idea of total freedom, untethered free expression is really a myth, and every artist knows that. I talk about all these words, ‘discipleship’ or ‘authority’ that have negative connotations because we’re so immersed in this freedom language, but are actually there to give us the ultimate freedom. You know the word ‘authority’ has the word ‘author’ in it. It’s authorship. When we realize that we have authority over our artwork because we’re the authors, that makes sense. On the flip side, if there is an author who authors our lives for the better, then it makes sense to allow yourself to accept the limitations given so that we can be liberated from ourselves. And so part of this discipleship is also this ability to understand from the macro perspective that we’ve been given the limitations, and even suffering that we go through, are ways in which we can become ourselves in the purest sense be sanctified to reveal what we have been given to do."

I'm still trying to understand what it means to be an artist, to be immersed in an artistic community, yet be set apart and have my work be glorifying to God. How to be a witness and show that my faith is not a limitation, but rather a liberation of the standards, limitations, and ugliness that sin has entangled the world. And to be all this while being relateable and genuine, honest, and steadfast. I guess that's kind of every Christians struggle. Gosh, it's difficult.

2011-03-23T09:17:00.000-07:00

There are many different types of rain, and today's is a cold rain. Not the mind numbing sort that hurries you to your next destination without time to think because your hand is shaking and your shoes are squeaking. It's the head clearing kind of cold.

Sin is a slippery thing. One action in isolation may not be a sin, but repeat it a ten times, twenty times over, and it begins to take control. It becomes a gnawing hunger, a bottomless pit that is insatiable. God takes the backseat and the addiction takes the steering wheel. Things begin to feel unsafe but you keep driving anyway. I run red light after red light an it becomes reckless, but still it continues. Until I crash hard. It's inevitable. My head snaps back, whip-like, and the airbag promptly punches me in the face. And then Jesus is there securing my neck and wiping my shocked tears away, but I can't even look at Him because I feel so ashamed. It would be perfectly in His right to sit there, arms folded like so and a smug I told you so look on His face. But that's not who my Jesus is. I ask Him why He's doing this. He, who made the universe and painted the skies and exists in all eternity could crush me with His fingernail. Instead, He chooses to attend to this dumb sheep who, despite being free to roam the pastures, chooses to chase after wolves in the woods.

I understand what temptation is, and what it does to me when I succumb, but I don't understand why I keep going back to it. Why, when I'm free in Christ, I often choose to go back to being in bondage, a slave to sin. It's ridiculous. Yet you see it so often in humanity. There's the abused wife that leaves her husband but then goes back to him, the child sex slave that escapes from the brothels but returns later voluntarily. It's frightening. And that's just it. I think it's fear that drives humanity back to it's shackles because they see the light but feel so unworthy of it and are scared to be seen after being unseen for so long. So they run. Back to what they know, not to what could be.

2011-03-12T18:54:00.000-08:00

I feel anxious, on edge. Here but not there, there but barely here. Restless.

Why do I feel restless?
..and reading Life of Pi is not helping much.

Anger and stuff

2011-03-09T21:00:00.000-08:00

It's easy to walk away from someone when they're angry.

"Just let him blow off steam."
"She doesn't mean what she's saying."
"Ignore him. He'll get over it."

But remember when that table flew, not of its own accord, and broken glass was everywhere--a mosaic of white dishes and bok choy and sesame bread and aching hearts? Remember when the door slammed and the engine started and the empty black pavement felt darker than the night sky? Or when fear moved in and decided to stay, even though I begged for it go away? I remember, and I can't ignore it, because I won't get over it.

I picked up the broken glass, bewildered and afraid. I whispered prayers into that night, hoping God would hear. How do I read between the lines of anger and sadness, anger and fear. How do I know it's 'just steam' and 'anger talk' when I've seen anger speak and it rocks me to my core? Tomorrow may be a new day but old habits die hard and scabbed wounds are still fresh and fragile. You brush it under a rug but what happens when the rug can't contain all of the hurt and madness and pain. It's not enough to pretend it never happened. It did. What now? Oh Lord, what now?

Raw Umber

2011-02-08T07:51:00.000-08:00

We are stones skipped over a frozen lake. Skeetskeet then stop. The sky holds its breath and sighs, it's steamy snout spraying icicles in the air; daggers that fall on the frozen lake. Ice on ice collide like shrapnel. I wait for the frozen lake to become unfrozen, the way chicken defrosts in the microwave on five minutes HIGH. If I were frozen underneath the ice, face up looking at the sky, I would beg the sun to stretch its arms just a bit further, just a bit further. But maybe just a bit further is too far. Its flames will engulf me and scorch me until all that's left is charcoal dust. Maybe I need to get over the sun. Through my ice paned window the world is fractured--a broken jigsaw puzzle of distorted colors and shapes. So I wait for the crack, the thaw that drips life into my frozen limbs. I wait for the skipped stone to collapse into water, to sink down slow.

One man

2011-02-03T23:15:00.001-08:00

He’s forgotten the refrain
Jesus saves!

-Embracing Accusation, Shane and Shane

So this was a lot of fun, if a little belaboring to try and get all the details right. I wanted to parallel the two apples and use words to capture that through one act we were separated from God, but through one death of Jesus on the cross, we are restored to a right relationship with Him. The repetition of the apple becomes a kind of symbol for our hearts. Sin is our human nature, a part of us, but when we accept Christ, we are changed and given an entirely new heart. Everything is outwardly the same (note the same setting for each apple), but at the same time everything is different.

The verse in the background of the 'sin' apple is a verse from Genesis three during the fall, when God tells Adam and Eve that there will be enmity between husband and wife, animals and humans. In turn, the verse for the 'joy' is John three "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son." Aesthetically I like how the green apple turned out better, because of the way the light hits the carved out letters, giving them a more three dimensional appearance. The lighting for the red apple is sepia, warmer and (I hope) more inviting.

Needless to say I ate a lot of apples today, haha.

One bite

2011-02-03T21:10:00.001-08:00

The father of lies
Coming to steal
Kill and destroy
All my hopes of being good enough
I hear him saying cursed are the ones
Who can’t abide
He’s right
Alleluia he’s right!

-Embracing Accusation Shane and Shane

2011-01-31T19:36:00.000-08:00

I almost never design for the heck of it. It's always for a school project or for work, and I'm always trying to meet some deadline. So I'm starting a series where I use actual food as typography. For this one, I ate my pretzels in a way that spelled "Hello." It took about an entire bag to get this one down right. I hope you enjoy.

I Have a Dream

2011-01-17T10:22:00.000-08:00

I can only imagine how many countless sentences have begun this way, ranging from the profound to the ridiculous, probably mostly the latter. Mine certainly falls in the latter. Yesterday I had a dream that the cast of How I Met Your Mother: Ted, Robin, Lily, and Barney attended a Barney (the dinosaur) themed birthday party. Everyone either dressed in all purple (Barney), green (Baby Bop), or yellow (B.J.)<--please believe me when I say I do not remember the names of Barney's sidekicks. I had to look it up on Wikipedia just now. To further prove this point, Baby Bop's name in my dream was Fala or something--Anyway, everyone on the cast of How I Met Your Mother was dressed in all purple, except for Barney, who was wearing his typical suit. When all the kids at the party found out his name was actually Barney, they all proclaimed that he dress like Barney the dinosaur as well, much to his chagrin. He was finally convinced by Ted to dress as Barney to attract the ladies who easily fall for men who will act the fool in order to entertain a kid. So not only did he dress in purple, but he rented out the full Barney the dinosaur costume. He instantly became the party favorite, and popular among the women, but he forgot that all the women there were already married. Bummer.

So what does it all mean?! How can I find the meaning of life through this dream?
...I can't. Sometimes a dumb dream is just that. Or maybe it just comes to show further withdrawal symptoms. Or maybe I'll just treat it as an ode to Barney, whom I haven't seriously thought of since I was six. Hah.

2011-01-15T15:03:00.000-08:00

I'm on a solid media fast for the next month. The only things I'm keeping are my blog and Top Chef and a youtube video here and there. Good-bye to facebook, twitter, Grey's Anatomy, How I Met Your Mother, The Office, random rewatches of Alias and other chick flicks, movies, and novels. This is a huge deal because I have relied on television and novels to the point where I don't rely on God. When I'm feeling sad, I read a book or watch a movie. Tired? Movie. Frustrated? Book. Bored? Tv show. Want excitement/adventure/romance/mystery? Book. Not only has it become an idol, but I think that media has been putting these messages in my head that sin is okay. In fact, sin is better then okay, it's grrreat. A lot of the tv shows and books I read glamorize and romanticize lying, adultery, premarital sex, cursing, etc etc. without showing the serious, long lasting consequences that sin has on the individual as well as everyone around you. And a part of me has come to believe it. I find myself more immersed in the ways of the world and less immersed in Christ. A problem? Yes, I think so. It has only been a day and a half and I'm already facing withdrawal symptoms. I'm not even kidding. I had a whole long sequence of strange, disturbing dreams that I would be ashamed to tell anyone about. I have been cranky and downcast all day for no apparent reason, snapping at my parents and feeling sorry for myself. I find myself going in to type "facebook.com" but stop myself just in time. I feel disconnected from the world--like the world is moving on without me and I'm stuck in some kind of limbo. It comes to show that when you try to refocus and really put God first, Satan is right there to try to counteract it, and works in small ways to try to distract you. But he will not win! No he won't.

When I deactivated my facebook a day ago, a handful of profile photos of friends popped up, and above each photo it said "_______ will miss you." And I said, "hah," yeah right! You miss someone when you really value someones friendship, and of the 700+ friends I have on fbook, I'm only good friends with a small percentage of that. Maybe they'll miss me. But if they do, they'll shoot me an email or call me up or ohmygoodness! come hang out with me. I thought that this distant feeling from God was because I don't love God enough. This is true, and I think will always be true, but the seed of the problem is that I love the world too much. I don't even allow any room for God.

"Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever."

-1 John 2:15-17

2011-01-05T14:28:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading "Columbine" by Dave Cullen which was published in 2009, close to ten years after the Columbine massacre on April 20, 1999. I was only nine when Columbine happened, and the only memories I have of it is that it was a massive high school shooting by two or more people, the shooters had been bullied, and a certain girl named Cassie had answered "Yes," when asked if she believed in God, and had promptly been shot to her death. Everything I had thought was wrong, shrouded in lasting impressions of media and confused students and being too young to understand what was going on.

I picked up the book because of a book blog recommendation, and was surprised to see that it had been published just last year in 2009. Wasn't ten years kind of late to be writing a full fledged account? But it took that long to get all the facts straightened out amidst the misinterpretations, cover ups, and to digest the aftermath of the horrible shock Columbine would inflict on the nation and world. At first I questioned why I wanted to read this book. Was it merely out of curiosity? I wasn't interested in getting to know all the intimate details about the killers and their warped, perverse minds. But I wanted to know why. What could compel two teenage boys to kill so brutally. Were they insane, driven mad with rage, trying to get back at people they hated? This book answered a lot of these questions, and also left me with more.

Cullen is an extremely detailed and engaging writer, and I had to remind myself that this was not just a story. It was real; It had happened. It documents the actual day, but also the build up to April 20 and what prompted the downward spiral that ended in murder. It follows the killers in bursts, alternating between their thoughts and plans with the stories of those that died or were critically injured. By midway of the book, it was almost 4 AM and I was reading in my bed, feeling physically sick. It might have been because it was so late, but part of it was my disbelief at Eric Harris' view of the world: of his cool hatred towards all of mankind, his desire to obliterate people, undiscriminating, in mutilating, tortured deaths. Worse was his delight in it all. It was really hard to read. After years of poring over his journal, leading psychologist determined that Eric was a psychopath. There are many symptoms, but ultimately psychopaths have a lust to kill, considering everyone inferior to themselves. They are also excellent and studied liars to cover up this desire, and often conscious of their own malice but lack the normal emotions to care or show any remorse or compassion. The other killer, Dylan Klebold, was more complicated. Unlike Eric, he was not charming and rather shy, and wanted more than anything to be accepted. Eric saw uniqueness as superiority, Dylan saw it as a weakness, enough to take his own life. In Dylan's journal up to the end, he wrote constantly about wanting to belong and about love. Yes, love. Eric had been the leader, Dylan the follower. While Eric invested his time making bombs and figuring out his master plan, Dylan made little contribution but went along, and only took on a murderous outlook towards the end.

Contrary to popular belief, Eric and Dylan were not really picked on. They were the ones picking on other people. They were not loners; they had friends. The night before the shooting, they went out to eat a steak dinner with friends. Their parents were supportive of them, loved them, and disciplined them when appropriate. There had been warning signs. A former friend of Eric's had made death threats to Eric on Eric's website, and a police report was filed, but an investigation that should have continued was somehow halted. On April 20th both killers committed suicide 45 minutes into the shooting, but the SWAT team did not know this, and it took another three hours for everyone to be evacuated. Amidst all of the accounts of students, some were at first hazy, then solidified upon repetition, but unreliable. These accounts are what made it into most news stories and repeated again and again. One story was that of Cassie Bernall, who was shot and died after presumably proclaiming her faith. In fact it was another girl, and she had been shot but survived. It's true that Cassie was a Christian, and right up to her death a witness said she had been praying, but she never got a chance to utter a word to her killers. Even after the facts were set straight, Cassie's pastor declared her heroic story to be immovable. It was the story that the church stuck to, and her mother wrote a book about Cassie, entitled "She Said Yes."

And here I'll add in another opinion about Cassie's death. When the real story came out, people who had believed the previous depiction were resistant and had a hard time accepting truth. Understandable. People wanted to paint an ideal picture of her death, and to make her a martyr for Christ to bring some kind of comfort to themselves. By feeding into a lie however, it is dishonoring to Cassie herself and how she died. Cassie hadn't answered a question and said "yes" to a killer on the day of her death, but she had testified in life to becoming a Christian and saying yes to her Savior, Jesus Christ. I think that that is more than enough.

The facts were at times sickening to read, but the stories of the murdered, the injured, the families, and even the killers were heart wrenching. Sometimes I shuddered in disgust, other times I cried. I finished the book knowing a lot more about Columbine and the details around the incident, stripped of its mystery. But more then anything, I finished the book with a burden in my heart that this is not how things should be. The book carried many stories of hope, but I acutely felt the helplessness and brokenness of humanity. More then anything this book reminded me of how much we need a Savior.

New Years Stuff

2011-01-01T16:56:00.000-08:00

Sorry Calvin, you're wrong!

So I almost always make new year resolutions, but I also almost always forget them before the month is even over. This is a cycle that repeats itself, so while I'm making the new year resolutions, I'm very aware that soon it will be a distant memory, which makes me take them less seriously. But I want this year to be different. For a while now I've known that there is something very un-joyful about myself. Yes, I smile a lot and generally laugh a good deal, but that does not necessarily equal joy. Real joy is found when you put all of your hope, all of your identity, in God, and He gives you his heart in return--to see through His lenses and shed, no, die, to yourself. It's really hard, but I'm hoping that God will give me the strength to fight for joy. I'm thankful that I read Grace's blog about this, and that a minute later, coincidentally, I saw a short video clip off Jenna's blog about the importance of prayer. Since I know if I make a long list, I won't be able to focus on any of them, I'm going to keep my 2011 new year resolution list short and to the core of things.

1) Have a prayerful life
2) Rediscover Joy
3) Stop slouching.

Notice that for the first resolution I didn't say pray more. I don't want prayer to be separate from life. I want my life to be a prayer such that in everything I do, it wouldn't be just to do for the heck of it, but with God behind it in my thoughts and in my heart. Rediscovering joy involves prayer and doing devotionals, but ultimately asking God to fill me up with His Joy. I think the rest: loving people, serving, wanting to fellowship, etc. can flow from this Joy. and the third one...well. it's just not very attractive, plus I don't want a bad back. Posture is important!

So that's it. Those are my two new year resolutions. Now on to things that I am thankful for, which is a much longer list (Not because I am a very thankful person, because I complain way more than I should, but because I'm forcing myself to recognize the things in my life I should be thankful for).

I am thankful for:

MY FAMILY. I got to spend time with my grandparents, aunts, cousins, sister, and mom in Los Angeles for a week, and it was a blessed time. I am so grateful to have a family who loves and supports me and feeds me good food. Itadakimasu!

FRIENDS. I know I am not a very good friend sometimes, and it amazes me that people still want to be friends with me! I thank God for my current friendships and my past friendships, because through those I learned how to be a better friend, even if I'm sad that those friendships died.

FELLOWSHIP. I don't spend enough time in fellowship with people at school, or people at home. To be honest a part of me doesn't want to sometimes because it can be uncomfortable if I don't know the people that well, and I'm afraid of not belonging. But this is very selfish of me because it's not about me. It's about God. And he does not withhold fellowship so I should believe Him and make myself more available.

MY FUTURE HUSBAND. I've been thinking about this a bit over the last month, and I can't wait to meet my future husband, whoever and wherever he might be. He already has my love even though I don't know him yet! Sorry of that is overly sappy. But I just hope that I'll be patient and not be careless with my heart in assuming/jumping to conclusions as to who my future husband is.

GARLIC & ONIONS & SALT. Oh my what would we do without these three foods? Garlic is delicious and infuses food so yummily. Onions taste so good and smell wonderful too. And salt. SALT! I had completely saltless soup at one point last week and it wasn't so great. So yes, salt definitely makes my thankful list this year.

VEGETABLE PEELERS. I was peeling carrots today and really enjoyed the exact, neat way in which the peeler peeled those carrots. In straight lines, getting the job done so efficiently. I bet that carrot was grateful too. No unnecessary nicking of orange flesh to cause it pain. I remember when I was little and I didn't know how to use a knife to peel apples and pears. The peeler was so easy that even my six year old self could use it!

and of course, I am thankful for Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior, who embraces me each and every day and tells me I am forgiven. I am forgiven.

Near Misses Part II

2010-12-25T23:54:00.001-08:00

Airlines have seriously cracked down on everything. When my mom and I flew to LA on Continental, they stuck tight to the two item carry on rule, no wiggle room allowed. In the past I was allowed to bring my carry on luggage, a backpack, and a purse, but this time they didn't allow it. But wait, let me explain the back story.

During this trip my cousins, sister, and I planned a snowboarding trip. Unfortunately this required lots of gear. My sister had left for California a week before me, and hadn't brought her hiking boots to wear in the snowy mountains. Since I had to bring my rain boots + her hiking boots + other snow gear, I opted to bring a larger carry on. After looking online at the carry on requirements, we decided that this suitcase was within the allowed size. When we got to the security entrance checkpoint however, the lady stopped us and told us to try to fit the luggage into the carry on measurement thing to see if it was too big. The suitcase was fat because I had piled on the rain boots and hiking boots, so it was too fat to fit into the measurement cage. So my mom and I opened up the suitcase to see what we could do. The only option was to take off our regular shoes and wear those troublesome boots. I donned the rain boots. She wore the hiking boots. The whole time we were standing there, laughing ridiculously. We must have looked like fools. We certainly felt like it because, well, it wasn't raining, and we weren't going hiking, but here we were in the middle of the airport, under the scrutiny of two nitpicking guards, wearing these thick out of context shoes. The two guards just stood there stoically while we laughed, which made it even more bizarre. After taking off the top layer of shoes, the suitcase fit the size requirements. But wait, there's more! We approached the guards expectantly, waiting to be let through, when the man stops us with his broken English. "Only two carry on. Two!" He points to my offending handbag accusingly. I sighed and opened my suitcase, again. I smashed the purse into my suitcase, stood up, fish rain boots and all, and walked towards the guards for the third time. Thank goodness we were ushered in. I half expected them to point to my butt and say, "Sorry, too big. Can't let you in." And I would have responded, "Sorry, can't help you there." Hahaha.

Everything on the plane must be paid for now. You're hungry? Want some TV? Too bad, you gotta pay. What ever happened to the good old days when meals came with the ticket and screens dropped down to play a movie? I guess those days are officially gone. Oh well, I'll live. I guess I was just one of the few people who actually kind of liked airplane food. If that makes me weird then so be it.

Near Misses

2010-12-25T22:01:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas! I'm blogging from Los Angeles because I'm here for a week visiting grandparents. The past couple weeks have been a little crazy, but in a good way I think.

I'll start with finals. My finals week wasn't supposed to be very stressful. I had two in class final and three projects. My first final was Tuesday night for graphic design art history. Or so I thought. Tuesday morning I get an email from my creative writing teacher asking why I wasn't present for the final last night. She thought something had happened to me because I've been present for every class, and it was uncharacteristic for me to be absent for the final. Thus began my freak out mode. I had thought that my final for that class was the following Monday. I checked the official finals schedule and sure enough, it was the following Monday. But on the other website she had made it the previous Monday, even though Monday was still considered a reading day. I hurriedly emailed her asking if I could turn it in two days late, and she graciously gave me till Monday to turn it in. Awesome. The testing screw ups should have ended there. They didn't.

Tuesday night was the art history final. All went well. Or so I thought. My teacher pretty much mapped out everything that was going to be on the test, and we had to know slides, unknown slides, definitions, quotes, and write an essay to top it off. On Wednesday morning as I was going to class, I was thinking about the Tuesday night test and realized that we hadn't been tested on term definitions. Offhandedly I mentioned it to classmates in my Wednesday morning class who had taken the test as well, and they told me that there were terms to define. I was really confused. What the heck? It turns out that I completely missed that section in my eagerness to write the essay which was the last section. Shoot. Thankfully since my Wednesday morning teacher was the same as my Tuesday night one, I asked him right after class if I could do (I was going to say "redo" but I can't redo something I never did) the section and he let me.

You would have thought that at this point I had learned my lesson at being careless, but I hadn't. When I went to take my marketing final, I didn't realize that they had changed the room the final would be in, and it wasn't in the classroom where the class was normally held. Therefore I went to the room and no one was there. Please not again.I feverishly (yes, feverishly. At this point I was frantic) ran to the computer lab and looked up the right room number. I was only ten minutes late but managed to be the last one in.

After the first incident with my creative writing class, one would think I would be super grateful and thank God for His mercy and grace. Not so. I was grateful to my teachers, but felt a sort of entitlement because I had been a good student throughout the semester. As if I deserved their understanding. After the second screw up and my teacher didn't give me a hard time about it, I was thankful that I had remembered to mention it to my classmates, otherwise I would have completely missed 20% of the test. But I credited myself for having discovered it myself. It was only after getting my marketing classroom screwed up that I thought okay God, you have my attention now. Everything worked out for the good, not because of me but because God was in control. It was actually a blessing in disguise that I had an extra week to work on creative writing stuff. When I was talking to my classmates about the test the morning after, I wasn't even being serious. It was just something to talk about. But if I hadn't said what I said at that moment then I would have been in trouble. For my marketing final, when I entered the business building, I was alerted to a possible room change when I heard a random, agitated student outside the building talking on his cellphone about a room change. God was truly sovereign, and He showed me that through all the mess ups, and he allowed me not just one, but multiple do-overs. I didn't deserve any of it, because I had messed it up on my own. God reminded me that yes, I am careless and absent-minded and prideful, and I just can't do things right on my own. Sure, I can be more careful next time, and I should be, but I'm bound to make mistakes that I can't really go back and correct, but God provided a way so that I could get myself out of it. Thanks God, and I'm sorry that I'm so quick to attribute things to myself--to try to pull myself up by my own bootstraps without noticing that you provided the bootstraps in the first place.

So this is the lesson: 1) Don't be like me and not pay attention to when/where/what is on the final. 2) When you mess up when/where/what is on the final and God bails you out, give Him the credit. This is assuming that you completely bypassed #1, but even when you do pay attention and get the whens wheres and whats right, thank God that you did. Don't take it for granted.

Stay

2010-11-29T11:39:00.000-08:00

I feel the holiday season coming around, and it's something I feel deeply, a kind of eager anticipation, but also a little ache as well. Eager because I can't wait for break and not having the weight of projects and tests and meeting expectations. Ache-y because Christmas always brings a little bit of nostalgia, but for what I'm not sure. Maybe for things that have changed since last Christmas--changes in relationships and locations and growing up. Christmas is kind of like a dependable marker for time passing. There have been wonderful Christmas' in the past, but there have also been bittersweet ones. It's kind of a bummer when you give and don't feel anything in return. I know Christmas is not about that, but I feel like it's so pounded in my head by ads and media and just, the way things are, that it's hard to dissociate the two. I wish I could just make it about Christ and his birth and be completely joyous and content with that.

I just finished reading the book "Some Things That Stay" by Sarah Willis, and it struck a chord in me. It asks some serious questions about what home means, death, life, and faith. I don't really agree with how the author chose to portray all the Christians in the novel, but it brought up some really good questions/thoughts about God and fear and grace from the viewpoint of the protagonist Tamara, who is not a Christian. It made me a little sad by the end of it, but it was a wonderfully written book, full of interesting descriptions and nuances weaved throughout. I wish I could write like this. Also, take a look at that cover! Tamara's father is a landscape painter and their family never lives anywhere longer than a year because her father needs new inspiration for his paintings. Tamara and her family long for a place, a home to call their own. I think the cover does such a good job of speaking about this yearning found within the book. The brush strokes paint over the title, almost completely covering "That Stay" to show that for Tamara's family, "staying" is only transient with an expiration date.

And speaking of things that stay, I'm amazed at the capacity of memories that stay even as the years stretch on. I'm equally amazed and a little disappointed at the ones that don't. This weekend my cousin, who is now thirty, came to stay with us for the weekend. The last time he stayed at our house was fifteen years ago in West Virginia, when he stayed with us for the holidays. He was only fourteen then, and I was five. I remember that he often had indigestion, that he loved nerds and he stole them from his stocking over the fireplace long before Christmas came. He could spin a pillow on his index finger, and I would stare, fascinated, as that silk red pillow spun. He gave our family a Pocahontas cup for Christmas, which we still use now. It has survived while others have died, shattered in a moment of carelessness while washing the dishes, or the jab of an elbow on unsuspecting glass. Fifteen years later, he still has indigestion. Some things just stay the same. Haha.

Our entire family had Thanksgiving together for the first time since 2002. I didn't realize this until my sister pointed it out. In 2002 my dad had moved to New Jersey while we were still in California, waiting for the year to end. To save money he didn't come for Thanksgiving but came instead for Christmas. In 2003 my sister stayed in California for college and the rest of us were in Jersey. Then she stayed there after college too, when she worked. So eight thanksgivings have passed where all of us weren't together. That's a lot of Thanksgivings. Boy, does time fly. But anyways, I was and am thankful that God brought us all together again. It's such a simple thanks, but it's enough.

Bookworm, Artist, and the Strings Between

2010-11-24T21:32:00.000-08:00

I am a bookworm. Yes, it's true. But it's not something I advertise because I'm not an avid reader of the great classics or deep philosophical novels. I read a lot of YA literature, which makes me feel a little ashamed for some reason. Some of it is honestly crappy writing, and I'll get through 1/4 and then decide not to finish, but there's some really good stuff out there too: fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction and the such. Actually I wouldn't say that I favor YA books over others. A good book is a good book, no matter the genre. See the thing about good young adult literature is that some of them are pretty easy reads, but challenging in that they do make you think about life and what it means while still having fun with the characters and sparking the imagination. And if it's a fantasy or science fiction novel, magic thrown into the mix always makes it exciting. I guess I'm a little bit ashamed of my choice of books because sometimes I feel childish and that I should be moving onto the great classics that are "honor worthy" of Jeopardy questions and have deep hidden layers of meaning, but I read to be entertained as well as to think, and struggling through a book is not my idea of fun. Given it's all subjective and what I think is a bore might be beyond fascinating to someone else. I am also well aware that I miss out on some really great books simply because I don't have the patience to sit and read enough to get into them. There are a lot of books I wouldn't have read if it weren't for high school language arts classes, and I'm grateful because they were great books. Among them? Native Son, Huckleberry Finn, Crime and Punishment. The latter two were resonating for very different reasons, and it's true that the underlying meanings behind their actions were interesting and incredibly telling of humanity. I must admit though, that I like to read books with female protagonists because I find them more relatable, but I think I should probably broaden my scope more. Here are a couple favorites that stick out.

Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery
If you haven't read this series yet, please do. Anne is such a wonderful character, brimming with imagination, personality, passion, and woeful humor that endears her to everyone. I know she certainly won me over. It's such a classic. Read the rest too, they're great, especially Anne of the Island because Gilbert makes many appearances :) hehe. Also check out her "Emily of New Moon" series as well as "The Blue Castle"

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
I haven't read this one in years but it's an excellent book. The details of this other world Ender is in are carefully crafted, and Ender is so...human. He's still just a boy but is thrown into extraordinary circumstances. A book about survival, perseverance, and war both externally and within oneself. Also read "Ender's Shadow" for Bean's story/perspective for a different take.

Daughter of the Forest by Juliette Marillier
I saw a lot of people recommend this on amazon, so I gave it shot, and I'm so glad I did. It is a retelling of the childhood story of the seven swans with a darker plot of greed, betrayal, loyalties, love, and the bond between family. Marillier tells the story beautifully, with developed, believable settings and characters that startle resonate with you in their combined fragility and strength. It was moving and I loved the main character Sorcha. One of my favorites. The other books in the Sevenwaters series are beautiful as well, but I think this one is the best.

MEMOIRS/AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

I love memoirs and autobiographies, and regret that I have not read more. Besides "Memoirs of a Geisha," which everyone pretty much knows, here are some other good ones.

Open by Andre Agassi
Agassi had always seemed kind of a jerk on the court, at least from what I read about in his younger days. I tended to have more respect for players like Pete Sampras or Michael Chang, the former because he was always consistent and had an awesome serve, and the latter because he was well, Chinese, but also the underdog. And who doesn't like rooting for the underdog? Anyways, this memoir was honest, real, and refreshing. I still found myself a little skeptical of some things he wrote, but Agassi honestly reflects on his life thus far, the goods and bads, and his love hate relationship with tennis. A good read.

Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah
I read this one a long long time ago and still remember it because I really felt the author's pain and desire for approval and love as she told her story. Her story becomes your story as you empathize with her and everything she has been through.

So there are a ton of other books, and I'll occasionally make other book recommendations in future posts. I know this is a long blog entry so far, but stick with me here. I rarely talk about art and what graphic design means to me personally, but I'm making an attempt. I never considered art as a profession in high school. I took one art class (sculpture and ceramics) freshman year, and that was the only one I took in high school. I liked it, but wasn't super passionate about it. It was only when I came to college and figured out I didn't want to be a journalism major, that I decided to give graphic design a go. At first I was pretty bad. My typography was a mess, composition not too great, and drawing on the computer seemed pretty impossible. I think I've improved a lot since sophomore year, and I've grown to like and really appreciate what good graphic design can do. It's not just about visual appeal but about practicality as well. It must speak directly to the audience, and in that way serve a function. I also love words, I love stories, I love a good book. Those were in my life before art ever made a serious appearance. Good design and a good book are parallels in that each should tell some kind of story. Design through the typeface chosen, colors, composition, image, and words. A book through the characters, plot line, climax, diction, conflict, and words. Ultimately words. Because words have the power to move hearts and convict and bring joy and sadness and tears. And these words are only words written by man. I praise God for words.

I know this last paragraph was kind of disorganized and maybe didn't seem to have a point, but I'm still trying to figure it out too. To draw connections between design, words, culture, and to figure out what exactly it is I'm passionate about. I'm still learning, and this, I think, is a very good thing.

2010-11-06T10:14:00.000-07:00

My mom sent me the cutest text. She almost never texts, so it was a nice surprise.

hi tiff,
i had spare rib tonight. it stuffed me. i exercised in the hotel. i'll call you when i get on the train the time i'll arrive. tks for picking me up.
-mom

Wow look at mama hsieh using slang "tks." haha I don't even do that.

So I feel like recently I've been in a little bit of a slump, both spiritually and academically. Sometimes it's just hard to stay motivated and I slack off like crazy. I can honestly say the only thing I have ever been super disciplined in is running. It made me a little sad because life is so much more significant than a running race, yet I spent so much more time and effort to train for a measley 5K, mile, or half mile which is over within the span of a couple minutes, or at most half an hour. It was over so quick, but I knew to make that time count. Relative to a lifetime, those few minutes spent running the race pass in a blink of an eye. Relative to eternity, life on earth is just a split second in comparison. What will I do to make it count? Am I treating it like a race, training with diligence, encouraging other people on my team, and being aware of the opponents that try to take me down from behind? Am I feeding myself with food that will make me stronger rather than weaker, am I working on my form to make it more efficient, breathing in through my nose, out through my mouth, steady, so my stomach doesn't cramp? And most importantly, am I relying on all these things I do to take me to the finish this race of life, or is it all in perspective? The perspective that it is all meaningless if I'm not looking to my Maker as the center of it all, holding everything together.

So it's something to think about.

bring a flashlight

2010-10-25T08:56:00.000-07:00

So I've realized something since the last post a couple days ago. I'm trying to knit in the dark, but wouldn't it make sense just to bring a flashlight? Haha, yes I know, corny. But it's so obvious. Bringing a flashlight can look like a couple things. It can be reading God's word and drawing truth and light from that (God is light and he drives out the darkness), or it can mean bringing someone else who can carry a flashlight and help you out, encouraging each other and spurring one another on. And then maybe a third person to bring batteries as a back up. Sounds good to me. Yesterday God revealed a lot of cynicism that had been growing in my heart, but instead of actually being the hands and feet of Christ, I sat back and complained and let my bitterness breed contempt. It's pretty awful and I hadn't even realized it. I'm only one person, but if everyone can come together as the church and work together, that's when things really happen. Put your hope in God, Tiffany.

Writing poetry is hard stuff. I'm taking a creative writing class and we have to write at least four times a week and turn it into dropbox each time. I can go on and on about my life, but no, she wants it in poetry form, which makes it a little trickery. Gots to think of lines and very specific word choice and sound and rhythm blah blah blah. I can appreciate it, but it can get wearisome. It turns out that I'm a lot more trite/cliche than I originally thought. My original thoughts were pretty unoriginal. I wish I were a funnier person but alas...not so. Haha.

But here is a poem that was one of the better of the bunch. I hope I never have to date this many boys. Only one or two men are good enough for me. I hope it makes you laugh and maybe think.

Like the Boy of Her Dreams
after Mitch Sisskind

My cousin tells me Gunther was an ugly boy.
Acne mapped his face like bloody constellations
Toes pruny
No, he wasn’t smelly
But he always had poppy seeds stuck in his teeth,
trails of his morning bagel from 3rd Avenue
and cuffed trousers because he could never find pants
that were short enough for his even shorter frame.
Yet beside Hector, my cousin says,
Gunther was like the boy of her dreams.
Gunther was like the boy of her dreams beside Hector.
For my cousin tells me that Hector was an ugly boy
because he never paid or opened doors.
Chivalry is dead, he said,
And he lived by it too.
Really you don’t need to pay on the first date (it was crappy).
You don’t need to do anything at all.
Yet beside Alex my cousin tells me Hector was like the boy of her dreams.
Hector was like the boy of her dreams beside Alex.
For my cousin tells me Alex was an ugly boy.
He cracked his gum wickedly, charming the girls with his crooked grin
but smooched too long behind her back
and had a book that ranked them all on a scale
like cows in a meat market auction.
His words could be sweet as Splenda,
Sugary but fake, sitting on the tongue to leave a bitter kick
after it’s all over.
Yet beside Sam my cousin tells me Alex was like the boy of her dreams.
Alex was like the boy of her dreams beside Sam.
Beside Sam’s stalwart hand my cousin tells me
Alex was like the boy of her dreams.
His stalwart hand composed and conducted the rhythm of her soul
weaving a haunting tide of false reveries
Passion ignited
Then smothered in a fury of soft white ashes.

When things fall apart

2010-10-23T16:11:00.000-07:00

Why does it feel like things are falling apart? It feels like the knitted blanket that surrounded us some time ago is unraveling, unraveling, being pulled by some invisible dark force bent on destruction, planting seeds of lies. The father of lies. And in heaps all around us are yard and yards, miles and miles of yarn, connected but apart and broken and split. What purpose does it serve just lying there unwoven. It cannot clothe, cannot cover, cannot be washed, cannot offer warmth to a heart dry and aching. And oh, it sits there, rotting under a tarnished sun. I wish I could pick up those double swords and knit deep into the inky night, but my hands bleed and my heart weeps and I can't even see the needles so they prick my fingers, pinpoints of red, and there are gaping holes that open to engulf me in a tide of helpless thoughts. The father of lies.

How can it be like this? The church should be together, unified, like each stitch of the needle, one after the other, soldiers prepared for a holy war, and each member is needed, essential to complete the body. Instead I see all these ugly holes, and something in me trembles with the unwavering feeling that this is not how it should be. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

in Him all things hold together. Oh Lord, please hold us together, reconciling us to you and to one another in your name.

The other day I was looking at journals in the bookstore to buy one for a friend, and I came across a beautiful one with gold flowers, and embossed on the front were these words: "believe in yourself." I know it means believe that you have the ability to do great things; it's meant to be a self-esteem booster. But if I were going to take it literally, this is what it would look like: Believe that I can do all things through myself who gives myself strength. Believe that through believing in my abilities I can overcome all things and cure all my illnesses of health and soul and mind. "Believe in yourself" translates to "I can save myself," which is a lie lie lie. It makes me so sad that our world spouts this nonsense instead of placing their trust, their belief in someone who is so much more capable, and who holds us, and the universe in the palm of his hand.

2010-10-18T12:38:00.000-07:00

the green eyed monster is an ugly, ugly dude. worst of all, he creeps up unexpectedly and explodes in the brain, smearing green guts everywhere, branding the heart with a seal of loathing and unrest and dare I name it? Yes, even a twinge of hate.

But my heart is not his. The green eyed monster will die an even uglier death than he is ugly, and he might reappear, but only for a time. My heart belongs to a King, creator of heaven and earth. My Lord and Savior, you have won the battle for me, and you wipe away the stains of green, yellow, black, of all the different monsters of my world, and replace it with red--your blood shed on the cross for me. And it's a red that cannot be removed in any circumstance. Neither life, nor death, nor angels, or demons can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

:)

Surrender

2010-10-03T20:23:00.000-07:00

oh hay
I like your beard.

de de de de.

I had to get that out. This strange beat has been stuck in my head. It's not part of a song or anything I can think of..I can only describe it as four splat-like beats one after the other. It's a cool kind of splat though, quick and snazzy and hip. I promise I'm not crazy, just weird.

God is doing some incredibly awesome things in my life as of late. He is always doing amazing things, but either I'm too blind/stuck in my own world to see it or I have never prayed that God would stick me there at the right place and right time. So much of it has to do with obedience. Go where you're called to go, talk to the people the Holy Spirit is nudging you to talk to, and so much can unravel. It can only be described as a miracle. To be honest, in the past talking to people, even friends, could feel like a burden. I was in a strange catch 22 where I did not want to be around people because it was just easier, but when I was alone it was lonely. These past two weeks have been filled with this desire, not of my own, to talk to people and my eyes have been opened to how much people really need to hear about God's love and grace and most of all, what was accomplished with Jesus dying on the cross.

As I surrender to Christ, I hope not to be puffed up with pride but to walk (or even crawl if need be) to greater degrees of glory, not because I am competent but because Christ is more than competent. Could it be that I can reflect the image of Jesus more and more as his love and glory is revealed to me? According to 2 Corinthians 3, it is so, and I am so so thankful and overjoyed that I am forgiven and continually restored. Restored! Oh, bliss.

afraid

2010-09-19T10:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.deviantart.com/#/d2z0yx3

I know I've probably posted about this before, but I'm learning more and more how much of a scared individual I really am. I was not taught this way; my dad is boisterous and brave when it comes to confronting or talking with people. He goes after what he wants and diligently studies topics that he's interested in, pursuing them over the span of years to perfect his interests. He's not afraid to ask, to act. Me? For some reason I am scared, crazy scared to put myself out there. I guess to some extent we all are, but it holds me back from just being me and being comfortable and straightforward with people. This fear manifested itself when I was little, and it is has been a consistent streak through my life. Everyone has their fears when they're little, but I let it dictate my actions instead of learning to conquer them. In our West Virginia house, the kitchen was attached to the stairs that led downstairs, where it was pretty dark. My seat at the dinner table clearly showed that dark stairwell, and I was so afraid that clowns, yes clowns, would peek around the corner and come up the stairs and into the kitchen. Clowns, of course, scared me. For the longest time I had to eat in my room because I was so afraid of these imaginary clowns. When my parents hired a babysitter, I cried the entire time she was babysitting. When my parents came home the babysitter said never again, and my parents had no choice but to call my grandparents in Florida to come take care of me for a couple of years. Day care hadn't worked because I just cried the whole time as well. I was also scared of water when I was a child, so whenever we went to the beach or the pool I would stretch out my arms to try to prevent people from going into the water, and when they did I would start to cry. Scared, crazy scared. Of strange people, of the new, unfamiliar. There was no "getting used to it" for me...I just couldn't, or chose not to. Now it's different, more hidden because we're supposed to cover it up and act like it's all together, but inside the great unease is still there. I am afraid of people, yes people. I guess I'm afraid of being judged, but I'm also concerned with how I'm perceived, whether or not I'll be liked, whether they'll like someone better than me because maybe I'm not interesting or clever or funny enough. Instead of crying now, I avoid. Avoid because it's so much easier than trying, but I always remember, and I am a slave to my own fear.

This weekend was the Restored conference, and we were expecting a huge turnout. Reality didn't meet expectations though, and only about 50-70 people came. It was discouraging, but God still blessed it nonetheless. Shane and Shane led worship and it was so true to who God is. Pastor Tullian Tchividjian was such an amazing speaker, and he really helped me to see how important and central the Gospel is to Christians. It sounds so obvious but I feel like, myself included, Christians think of the Gospel as the initial step, and then move on. We treat it like A-B when it really is the A-Z of this life that God has given us on Earth. The Gospel is a constant reminder to how we have been called to love others in light of Jesus on the cross. It's so important to remind ourselves of the Gospel each and every day to strike down the other idols and voices in our life. I really loved this one thing that Pastor Tullian said. It's so easy to seek and want the approval of others. It feeds our pride and makes us feel good, but it becomes a huge idol because we begin to need it to feel happy and satisfied with ourselves. Through recent events in his life, he came to recognize this idol and to turn back to God for everything he needs. Because he already has everything he needs in Jesus, he doesn't need to seek the approval and nod of everyone else to be fulfilled. He has nothing to lose, because no one can take anything away from Him if all his hope and needs are stored up in Christ. It also allowed him to love other people more, because he could love without expecting anything in return. He was set free from expecting or feeling entitled to receive love back, because he doesn't need their love in order to be complete. This was truly a revelation to me and so incredibly convicting as well.

It's okay to not be okay, because God is okay, more than okay. He is wonderful and all powerful and loving, and my name is written on His heart. I know that while in heaven he stands, no tongue can bid me thence depart. So I am still so crazy scared, but it's okay because I'm even more crazily loved, and this truth, the Gospel, shall set me free.

haha very funny

2010-09-08T12:47:00.001-07:00

So there was a family of tomatoes walking down the street, Daddy tomato, Mommy tomato, and Baby tomato. As they were walking, Baby tomato fell behind. Daddy tomato, being hot tempered as he was, went back to scold Baby tomato for being so slow. He walked up to him, squashed him, and said, catchup!

Get it? Catchup=ketchup=squashed tomato? Okay, you get my point. I know..horrible and not so funny. But it's the only tomato joke I know. Our cherry tomato harvest for this year was fantastic. Every time I go home I bring back a big bagful. They are so delicious. I just came across a really BIG cherry tomato though. It looked like it was on steroids or something.

Look at the big one compared to the normal little one! I think the left one is Papa tomato. I would be scared.

7 PM on a September afternoon

2010-09-05T07:59:00.000-07:00

Driving at 7 PM on a September afternoon,
down a long straight road.
Fields, pavement, me and my
dented 2002 gold Avalon car.

The sun filters in through the trees
trickling light, sifting, basking
us in a golden liquid. So gold that I
I could turn into that mineral: gold
except, gold is cold, and I feel warm
under this sun.

Slanted hues, unnatural.
Long yearning shadows of a time to come.
Only at 7 PM on a September afternoon.
Down a long straight road.
Fields, pavement, me and my
dented 2002 gold Avalon car.

It's an old kind of light, if light had an age.
The kind of light that warmed souls
as they sat drinking in the clouds and grass
and that fiery orb of yonder.
The kind of light that was spoken into being,
and it was good.
I feel a kinship with the yawnings of time, and it makes me feel
Alive.

I thought I saved a kitten but

2010-08-31T18:14:00.000-07:00

I was running yesterday (funny how a lot of my blogs start out with 'I was running') and I came across a kitten on the sidewalk. It was the puniest kitten i have ever seen. It was so skinny that you could see the bones moving in the main part of the body when it moved. There was gunk in its eyes (I later learned that this was due to respiratory problems) and it looked like something had ripped out a patch of fur from its side. Every time it tried to meow, no sound came out, but you could tell it was trying. It looked frail but was still walking around and came up to sniff my shoes. When I looked closer though, I realized that not only was fur ripped out, but there was an internal organ sticking out of the wound. It looked like it had dried out and wasn't bleeding anymore, but it looked bad. So here is my dilemma: let nature take its course and probably let the kitten die, or take it to the shelter or vet. Well there was a plastic bag on the street so I tried to put the kitty in there. Didn't work, plus it would have been kind of awkward to carry no?

Ikeptrunningbutdon'tworry i. came. back! This time with a cardboard box, yellow rubber gloves, and an address that would hopefully save this little sweetie's life. I was so scared that the kitten would be gone when I got back, but he was hiding out in an overturned trash can to avoid the intense heat. His wound was bleeding because he had chewed and torn and licked it. So here I was trying to coax this kitten out of the trash can with my head practically in the trash can, and out pulls a car from the house that these trash cans belong to. I must have been quite a sight...a crazy lady talking into a seemingly empty trash can. Luckily I explained the situation to her, so we both stuck our heads into the trash can to get the kitten in the box. Well I ended up carrying her and putting her in the box, which I hated doing because I didn't want to injure him further and also because I could feel every bone in his body as I lifted him up. I took him to the shelter and when the lady looked into the box and saw the wound, she said that he was dying and might not make it. They took it to the vet in an animal ambulance, and I said I would call back the next day to find out what happened.

I called today. they told me they had to put him down because it was too involved. Basically fixing up the kitty would have cost more than they were ready to pay. How much would it have cost? Would I be willing to pay the price? I can't say that I would. But what if the cat had been a person? A stranger? What would the price be then, and would I pay it? How far would I be willing to go to help or love someone? How deep does that capacity go?

2010-08-27T09:07:00.000-07:00

into marvelous light i'm running
out of darkness
OUT OF SHAME

2010-08-23T07:16:00.000-07:00

humans are so silly. why is it that everyone walks around as if they are okay when sometimes things are clearly not? when someone genuinely asks, "how are you?" i can recall the hundreds of times i've responded "i'm okay, thanks" when really inside i was not okay at all. everyone is so afraid of vulnerability we put on these masks of stoicism. if i had a cut and you had a cut and we both saw that the other person had a cut, wouldn't it make sense to just help each other out and love the other person? the only difference is that hurt or pain on the inside can't be seen. shouldn't it follow the same rules though? if you have a bruise on your heart and i have one too...lets share and cry together and just be honest and try to ease the pain. i understand that it's hard to be vulnerable, and it's unrealistic to think you'll be able to share and be friends with everyone, but if only we could be honest and not try to fudge our feelings away in public. We're human, and God made us to feel all these things. I just wish we could admit that more. When i feel heart ache it makes me long for heaven when we can worship God as a community, as a perfect church, and be happy. that thought makes me feel better because i know that someday that day will come.

i've realized that idleness really does bring on idolatry and sin. when i'm idle i fall into temptation to just do whatever i want, whenever i want to. and when my soul is troubled, i haven't disciplined myself to turn to God and just cry out to him like the psalmist in Psalms 42. Instead i distract myself with things that aren't worth my time and throw myself in these things with a kind of reckless abandon. this summer i have watched two shows that were cancelled before a satisfactory conclusion could be offered. first show was "My So Called Life" with Claire Danes, and the second show i've been watching is "Joan of Arcadia." Both have the typical teenage drama and cute love story, and i've always been a sucker for romance. There is something about a tv show where you know the two people who seem so right for each other will probably end up together eventually, at least for a time. the writers can't help but do what the audience wants to watch, and the audience wants to watch two people who are totally in love with each other. the producers pretty much have no choice but to make it happen. i get so engrossed in their love stories and the suspense that i totally tune out the love story that has already happened and is also in my present. God's love for me, Jesus' sacrifice for me, and the love that continues even when mine seems to stop. Oh if only I weren't so fickle, then I could truly absorb and be fascinated and this unfolding love story instead of the fake one created onscreen.

today i was at the gym on the elliptical listening to a C.J Mahaney sermon entitled "Troubled Soul," because well, these past two days, maybe even for a larger part of the summer, things have kind of been that way. the gym is kind of loud, what with all those machines squeaking and cranking under the weight of overeager exercisers. listening to music is easy because the volume of the song is generally at a constant and it's just the background music that swells occasionally. plus it's predictable. listening to C.J. Mahaney was difficult though. One minute he's speaking at barely a whisper, an the next second his voice is raised and he's talking in a booming tenor. i was constantly turning the volume up to catch his quiet intense words of wisdom, and then turning the volume down so my ears wouldn't fall off when he spoke with passion. sometimes i do that with God too. when He's trying to tell me things quietly, i'll turn up the volume to try to hear it. But he doesn't want the volume turned up, because he's trying to tell it to me softly. When he is trying to make a more obvious point though, i try to turn the volume down because honestly i don't always want to hear it. God's voice is not a volume we can just adjust at our own disposal though.

so school is starting soon. there are a lot of changes this year that i'm not exactly looking foward to. change and I don't go well together. we're like...chocolate and anchovies (haha i googled "two tastes that don't go well together" for that combination. see here. i could have just gone with oil and water but that's boring). but change can be good too. i must keep telling myself this, and hope and have faith that God will see me through.

7 things I gotta say

2010-08-18T08:15:00.000-07:00

1) email people back right away. It's not even that I forget, but I put it off for a day or two (or three or more) to respond. The first time I read the email I give it a cursory glance and look at it more thoroughly later. I don't really know why..it has almost become a habit. A bad habit.

2) call people back. Same deal as above. But for some reason I don't really like to talk on the phone. In middle school, I was all about it. Talked to some people 7x a day on the phone (which was craziness), but I didn't mind it at all. Now sometimes I just want to shut out the world. Sad huh? This is not what Jesus has called me to do.

3) stop watching so much tv. I watch a lot, even when I don't even like the show all that much. It's a distraction, it's easy, and sometimes I almost feel like I need it. Is this called an addiction?

4) Take responsibility of life. I need to spend my time more wisely. Just..my room is a mess. It only takes about 15 minutes to clean it but somehow I don't. I always plan to, but it never gets done. Devos too. If I'm looking for a Godly man in the future who loves God and is faithful and diligent and disciplined, yet I can't do that myself..what kind of double standard is that? And not just because of that, but because my God deserves it, and I am stealing that away from Him.

5) Serve whole heartedly. Love serving, love worship. This is a heart thing that I need to work on, that God needs to work on.

6) Pray. I forget prayer a lot. A lot. It's a direct line to God and I'm missing out.

7) Stop letting Satan tell me lies about myself, about other people. If I could stop listening to all the junk and just focus on what God says, that would be marvelous.

I have been struggling with all this stuff for a while. And I wish I could say I'm working on it, but I don't think I've really started, truly started "working on it" yet. But I really want to. I really do. So do it right? I'll try.

On thursday I went for a run

2010-08-13T21:29:00.000-07:00

to the library and saw two trees with their branches extended towards one another as if hugging, or shaking hands. It was the only part of them that was touching. We humans touch when we meet, shake hands and smile even when we don't know each other. In the Spanish culture people kiss each others cheeks as a greeting, even upon meeting each other for the first time. I thought of those two trees, who have stood next to each other for years and years, like companions, old friends, but for so long had never even touched. So the following poem I wrote is about the friendship of these two trees. It is entitled "Hello, My Friend"

Hello, My Friend

I remember when we were young,
toddlers by human measure,
Green and naïve of
the storms and snow
that would come our way.
We stood side-by-side
One month becoming two, three,
until before we knew it
thirty years has passed us by.

You were always scared of the thunderstorms,
of the vicious lightening that struck
close to the core and shook
our branches till we were sore.
I wanted to hold you, to touch you
and let you know that it would be okay.
It will be okay.

I wanted to but couldn’t.
Sometimes when our leaves turned bright
fiery colors of gold and crimson,
the wind would blow a part of you my way,
and gently, just barely, I felt a whisper of you.
We spanned thirty feet apart,
but we were too young and the distance too long to reach,

until now.

Last night I said good night, slept, and this morning I woke, to find
To find,
that you and I, me and you,
we were touching. We are touching.
Hand on hand, branch on branch,
me embracing you.
It took thirty years to bridge thirty feet,
but finally, finally,
“Hello my friend, my dear old friend. It is as if I am meeting you for the first time.”

welcome home

2010-08-12T11:41:00.001-07:00

my sister Laura is moving back to New Jersey and she just got back last night. it's nice. i felt like an only child for a while at home but i've decided i like being one of two children at home. but then

we're not really children any more are we? young adults? ..adults? Not yet. I don't think we're quite there yet.

Laura laughs at my jokes. Good to know i can still be kind of funny at times haha.

2010-08-04T13:32:00.000-07:00

it's You
and Me
moving at the speed of light into eternity.

Marian Bantjes

Contests and butts

2010-07-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about it and, well, our world makes everything into a contest and publicizes it in whatever way possible. College? Work? Sports? Understandable. But love? I guess love is sort of a contest. People want the best mate for themselves and are picky about who they choose and often come up with a list of criteria the other person has to meet blah blah etc. Shows like The Bachelor and The Bachelorette are essentially contests on screen to screen out who is best fit for the other person. What I don't really understand though is how or why you would begin and end a relationship on national television. and then there are the who can eat the most hotdogs, who can burp the loudest, who can sing the highest contests. Heck, I bet there is a contest for who can pee the fastest, longest, furthest or whatever. I'm really thankful that getting to heaven is not a contest. I..would not do well.

I have been taking classes at the gym recently upon learning that they were free. First was body combat, then was crunch time, and I just came back from a Zumba dance aerobic class. and WHAT THE HECK dancing is so hard! There were multiple points in the class where we had to shake our butt and hips. I can shake hands, I can shake my head, I can shake my hair, but butt shaking is not a regular motion for me. I tried, I really did, but I have concluded that dancing and looking great is very difficult for me unless looking great means jerking back and forth in a spaz-like manner. I hope I am not scaring off any future husbands here by painting such an unflattering picture of myself. I have other talents though so...let us focus on that. haha.

Summer is passing by so rapidly. I need more time please.

Disappointment

2010-07-18T16:57:00.000-07:00

It has been four months and this darnned ankle still won't heal. Please just hurry up :(

How I murdered my neighbor's goldfish

2010-07-15T20:38:00.000-07:00

Just kidding, I did not kill my neighbor's goldfish. Well at least, not intentionally. They are on vacation this week and asked me to fish-sit. So I faithfully go feed them once a day after work (I don't want to overfeed them, they could die! Look it up) but yesterday when I went to look, one was missing. Their tank is a big plastic trashcan filled with water and it has these pretty lily pads in there. It's quite nice because the fish can swim real deep and hide or stay cool. Anyways, one fish is missing. So I look around the trash can thinking maybe he flopped out. Nothing there. Look around for birds but it's a no go. Finally I look deeper into the trash can turned fish tank and see a slight shimmer of scales. Crap. IS HE DEAD NO PLEASE DON'T BE DEAD. I somehow convince myself he's sleeping. Fish sleep right?

Went home, looked it up. Fish definitely sleep, though not sure if sleeping on their side, which this goldfish was, is normal. Went back a couple hours later hoping to see the little guy awake from his nap. I guess I didn't really fully convince myself he was sleeping though, because I took a fly swatter just in case I needed to fish (hah!) him out. He was sleeping alright, except for eternity. Dead and floating at the top :(. I didn't do it, I didn't kill him! I promise I did not neglect the fish. I'm thinking maybe the other one is a bully and took all the food. Or maybe he was just old and the time was right. Carried him on the fly swatter to our backyard compost pin and buried him. Rest in peace. I dread telling the neighbor's when they get back...their little daughter is going to think I am a killer of goldfish, and hence, a killer of all things good.

On another note I was watching jeopardy the other day and there was a guy named Van. Alex Trabek, when preparing for the commercial break, said "And when we come back, Van goes next." VAN GOGH. bahaha. Laughed out loud. Poor guy, he probably got it a lot growing up. Or maybe not because kids might not know who Van Gogh is. Something I learned about Van Gogh in Contemporary Art History class last week: Van Gogh most likely did not intentionally kill himself. He had episodes of manic depression where he would lash out in weird ways like cutting off his ear or swallowing paint. On this particular day he was painting in a field, had an episode, and shot himself. When it passed he gathered up all his stuff in the field, went back home, and died three days later. Poor Vincent. But he is now a legend in the art world so he will forever be remembered.

I'm looking for the rain after the sunshine

2010-07-10T09:17:00.000-07:00

You always hear that after the rain, there will be sunshine. Sometimes it's used as a metaphor for after the bad times, the good will always come again. But does light need darkness in order to be light? Light could not be defined if it weren't for the knowledge of darkness. Scientifically, maybe, but when talking about God, it's not true. God's love, God's light, all that He is, preceded darkness, hate, sin. God just loves us, with or without the sin.

So I've always told myself that after the rain comes sunshine, as if the rain were a bad thing, the villain. Today reminded me that it can be the other way around too. Heat, sunshine, gives life and energy, but too much heat burns, scathes, can make things die. At this point it's the cooling rain that brings life, relief. After the heat wave this week so many plants turned yellow. They're panting, tired, and ready for a change. Then today the steady rain came to take them out of their misery. Hurrah, our grass won't die! Sunshine and rain, the good times and the bad, are all part of life. God has given each a role to restore parts of our life, even though we will not understand or even recognize it most of the time. Perhaps instead of saying to someone, "You're my sunshine after the rain," as a blessing, it should be "You're my rain after the sunshine."

Was feeling kind of down and tired this week and wrote a poem. The Title is "But,"It's kind of sad but hopeful at the same time. The hope comes from knowing that my hope is not in myself, in the people or the world. The hope is my hope that I will hope in Christ alone. "In Christ alone, my hope is found."

But,

You feel so far away
Like the light at the end of a tunnel, but
I’m on the other side
and I can’t move,
Move to be with you.

I want to be in Eden
Where it was all right in space and time,
And the world as we knew it
Stood still in its perfection.
This sadness weighs me down,
A shadow that has volume, shape, a life of its own, but
I can’t move it,
Move it from my side.

Why must I worry,
Why so downcast oh my soul?
I wish
I could be happy, but
If only it was so easy.
Is it so easy?

We were made to love you, but
sometimes it feels hard.
I can’t bring myself to open the book,
Your book.
A book of joy and pain and hope,
A book of You.

But, so many buts,
Excuses, lies, vicious lies
We tell ourselves.
We—a colony of lost people
Some are found but seem lost again,
Wandering blindly on a path that is marked but
Our heads are in the clouds,
Stormy clouds,
and we can’t see.

So I wait for the storm to pass
For the haziness to give way to light,
For my shadow companion to de-personify.
For these buts to be for me, not against me.
Waiting for:
I once was lost, but
now I’m found.
Was blind, but
Now I see.

I Started (Finished?) Writing a Song

2010-07-08T21:01:00.000-07:00

I wrote my first song today, haha. Been planning it for a while but never really felt moved to write it. But I wrote it, and maybe one day I'll share it. I just wanted to let you, whoever it is that reads my blog, that I did it, maybe just to validate to someone other than myself that it really happened. There's no melody to it, just words, but for now that's fine.

Recently I've tried rolling down the windows and blasting music REALLY LOUD while driving. It makes me feel cool, even though it's really not that cool. It's kind of obnoxious isn't it? When I was little and I heard music REALLY LOUD coming from another person's car, I always thought that person was so cool, so daring. I know, it's dumb. But then when you're a kid don't you kind of think everything is cool? Braces? Cool! Pop tarts? Whoa! Shiny new jelly roll pens? Oober double whammy cool (Okay, I admit that's a little much)! I thought all those things were pretty poppin. Over the last week though, typical pop music on the radio can get pretty tiring. The same songs with mostly pointless lyrics that I guess are kind of interesting when you're in the mood. When I'm trying to think though, I don't want to be listening to Kesha's MyFirstKissWentAlittleLikeThis. *cue wet lip sound. AndTwist. Just..ugh. Stop. Other songs just sound like loud hazy annoying noise. So I've started listening to classical. I barely even notice it's there sometimes, but it allows me to think more, and when I pause to stop thinking (because I really can't multitask and think and listen at the same time), there's some nice, non-noisy music playing in the background. Maybe I should take that one step further and play this classical music REALLY LOUD with the windows down. This way I can sound intelligent but lame, still think, and be cool all at the same time. Triple whammy cool. Now that's cool.

I think I like parenthesis a little too much. (They're so friendly though, aren't they? Sorta like a hug, but for words. Ah, a word hug. Also, in this post I've said "double" and "triple whammy". "Quadruple whammy" just doesn't work though. When the sentences within parenthesis get too long it gets annoying. And this is getting to be too long now so must stop.)

EDIT//
Wow I just can't stop talking today can I? Where are all these words coming from, goodness. Sometimes, once in a blue moon (Is the moon really blue?) I like to reread old xanga posts just to relive past memories and look at how I used to write. Gotta say, I seem so much happier back then in my writing. I sound super perky and bubbly. And now...wow now I am such a debbie downer. Seriously, I'm always complaining and grumbling and being so gosh darn emo. If I was me in another body but still me in this one, I would walk up to myself and tell me to just stop making things so much harder than they need to be. I think it's okay to be sad, angry, frustrated, down in the dumps. But at some point you just gotta say oh heck, enough with the grumbling and worrying, and keep going. Stop wallowing. Wallowing stinks and worrying will just shorten your life span anyways. It would stink to be extinct (oh hayyy that rhymes) earlier than I need to be. If God cares about the lillies of the valley then how much more does he care about me, about us humans? A whole lot more! So thank you former, younger xanga self for cheering up present, older blogspot self. I really needed that. If you were another person I would give you a hug right now, but you're my past self and it would be weird to hug myself so..yes. Okay, lets stop. Okay. I am talking to myself now.

later kids.

2010-07-06T20:18:00.001-07:00

I have this awful habit of responding, "oh really?" to things that people tell me. I'm waiting for someone to say, "yes, really. I just told you so." I will add this to my list of bad habits to get rid of. Oh really? Yes. Really.

2010-07-03T17:29:00.000-07:00

Do you remember, the night we set out
Under the moonlight, the breeze was perfect
We were younger then, and naive for sure
But I made a promise to never leave you.

You spent a long night
We’ve kissed the devil
Though we knew that God was never far away
I tried my best for you, please believe that
Oh did I meet your expectations?

We fell asleep then woke,
Suddenly you’ll find
That we were gray and old
Where do these days go tumbling
Oh they disappear
On us.

There are a thousand words I wanna say
But I’ll save it all for morning
Well now I’m fine just laying here
With you
X2

We fell asleep then woke,
Suddenly you’ll find
That we were gray and old.

You didn’t change much darling
No, you didn’t age
At all.

-Jason Min

2010-06-25T17:26:00.000-07:00

My grandmother.

There is something softening about old age. Age can really change a person, I think, and even though my grandma is changed, in a way she also isn't. Look at that picture, that face. There is a gentleness that radiates from her in her moments of awakeness that shines with a clarity I have known all of my life: gentleness. When she was younger she was kind of oblivious but in a funny way. And throughout it all, gentle. She passed that down to my mother (both the oblivion and gentleness), and I'd like to think some of it got passed along to me too. Funny and strange that she doesn't remember who we are but she still knows to smile for the camera. Smile grandma, smile. I hope she knows happiness.

2010-06-24T18:29:00.000-07:00

i feel like
i am walking in no direction.

is no direction a direction?

I'm looking for the sunshine after the rain

2010-06-13T22:51:00.000-07:00

I'm looking for the sunshine after the rain
I'm searching for the only thing I knew
I'm digging to find myself in you
On my knees
In the dirt
Only to find that you were right beside me
all along.
I reach for you with my muddy paws
With pools of sweat gathering at my chin.
Drip.
Running down my forehead, into my eyes
where it marries my tears.

As I hug you I smear brown on your white robe
My hair drips salt into yours
I am a mess, but you don't care.
You hug me anyways.

2010-06-03T10:44:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking quite a bit recently about motherhood. What it means, what it feels like, what it entails, the importance of it all. And oh, what a responsibility and a gift. I'm trying to pay attention more when my parents cook, when they fix something or make the wrongs right. Yesterday I watched my dad carefully put salmon on the grill, using a tool I had seen countless times before but never bothered to ask about.

"Dad, what is that cage-like thing you put the salmon in called?"
"I think it's called a fish basket."

A fish basket. Things like these, I want to be able to have, to use, to know. Something as simple as making fish on a grill. I want to know this for my child. Funny that in the past I never bothered to know this for myself. But I'd like to know if for the unborn future, to tuck it into a pocket and rediscover it later.

I can't wait to be a mom, but it's a scary thing too you know?

2010-05-28T11:50:00.000-07:00

Boys, more than anything, hate to be nagged. I guess I get it. It's a matter of trust, and nagging someone is sending the unspoken message of I don't trust you to get the job done and well, so I am going to say something to urge you to do it. And even if it's well meaning, even if it is a fair rebuking, it still comes out frustratingly wrong sometimes.

Actually when I think about it, I get rather annoyed and angry when people nag me too. So it's not just boys. I do have a tendency to nag. My poor, poor kids.

what it means to be ashamed

2010-05-23T20:05:00.000-07:00

The subject of shame has been on my mind for a couple of days now, and I wanted to write about it earlier but I guess laziness interfered. We were not made to feel ashamed. I know it's kind of like, okay so what who cares, but when I really think about it, that's huge. Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed, innocent before God and in direct fellowship with Him. Once they sinned they realized they were naked, they hid from God because they were ashamed. I've come to realize that it's not while I'm sinning that I feel bad even though I know it's wrong, but it's the after effects that hit me in the gut. That feeling of unbearable shame and guilt and wanting to hide because you feel so dirty and unworthy of Christ...we've all felt it. It's a horrible feeling--like there's this pressure on your heart you feel like crying because you've failed God, you've failed your family, you've failed yourself. It's so easy to be stuck in your shame, wallowing in it and not really knowing what to do, and punishing yourself in the wrong ways.

I remember in high school when I was addicted to korean dramas. It seems so dumb, pshh addicted to dramas. Maybe it's not as bad as being addicted to drugs or alcohol or sex, but watching these soap operas for hours and hours at a time was a kind of escape from reality, and I neglected my family, my school work, my faith. A lot of these late nights occurred Saturday night, and Sunday morning for church I would be so tired, and I felt so incredibly guilty. I felt so unclean, like I was wasting my time and life, and my addiction was a secret I kept to myself. Even if I were to reveal it to peers or an adult, it was always treated as no big deal. "Oh, TV? That's not that bad." But this shame of watching so much and then telling white lies to my parents was eating me up inside, and I punished myself with guilt and by not participating in communion because I felt so bad. My shame prevented me from coming to God, repenting, and laying it all down before Him. Sure, I would whisper a prayer promising never to do it again, but when I prayed that prayer, I didn't believe my own promises. They rang so hollow. I did not fully surrender it to God, and that is something I deeply regret. Instead I was caught in a cycle of sin and shame, sin and shame, and I didn't feel like going to church or reading the Bible, and I was too scared to tell my parents. I felt so incredibly stuck.

Enter this week. I went to church with my aunt last Sunday, and afterwards when we were having lunch I asked her if she went to church every week now. I know that in the last couple of years it wasn't consistently because she had to take care of my grandparents and found going to church inconvenient. She told me last week that she has been going almost every week now, and that for a long time she didn't go to church because she felt like a bad person, that she didn't have it all together. I turned to her and I said in my broken Chinese, "Aunt, church is not for good people." God doesn't care about your resume, your list of good deeds and having it all together in order. That's not what Jesus is about at all. He came to save sinners, to heal the broken, to show compassion to the poor and the weak and the people who do NOT have it together at all. It makes me so sad that for a long time she didn't go to church because she was ashamed of herself and didn't feel deserving to come before God or to fellowship with other believers. It's not about deserving it at all, because we don't, deserve it I mean. When I think about it more and take a genuine look into God's mercy and grace, I am brought to tears of humility. How amazing, how divine.

In so many ways I am still ashamed. Maybe it's more accurate to say that I'm not ashamed anymore, because I know that I am a sinner and that I am forgiven. Jesus covered my shame. He did this literally with Adam and Eve by making clothing for their naked bodies, but He did it through Jesus when he died on the cross for our sins, for our shame. I try not to take that for granted, but I still do. It doesn't penetrate my heart and register all the time. Actually most of the it doesn't, to be honest. I think I'm still scared a lot of the time. Scared of messing up and being vulnerable and being myself. Gosh, just being myself is hard, you know? I'm constantly thinking of how to be polite, of how to not offend, of how to come off cool when I know I'm totally not. Funny that being UNcool is now the new cool and "cool" sometimes comes off as being pretentious. But I don't know how to be either and I'm not used to really being myself around other people. So I'm still trying to figure it out and I have it completely untogether, but I'm hoping that God will change me and use me and that I will not be ashamed. I'm hoping that I can run into marvelous light, out of darkness out of shame.

joy

2010-05-16T18:46:00.000-07:00

[White roses in front of my grandparents' house]

How do you explain joy?

Today Joy was when I decided to attend my aunt's church in Los Angeles for the second time, the first time being a couple of years ago, to find welcoming smiles and genuine kindness and warmth among strangers. We had a time of prayer after service and I prayed with two people I had just met, but it felt so right and real.

Today Joy was when I was helping my grandpa garden in his backyard.
Today Joy was when I was helping my grandpa garden in his backyard and while weeding, found a green thing that looked like a grub (a big fat worm) but which, after asking my grandpa, I discovered was the beginnings of a plant that eventually flowers.

Today Joy was when my grandpa asked me who made the world--all those trees and flowers and people. I said "Shen, Grandpa. God created the world." He shook his head and said, "What if God doesn't exist, then who made the universe?" Inside I was worried. Was my grandpa, at age 94, a proclaimed Christian, now questioning his faith, if God exists at all? And my Chinese, sucky as it is, is not advanced enough to try to convince him otherwise. But then, no one can be convinced of God, God makes Himself known to the individual in His own ways and timing. I wondered what my grandpa was trying to get at, so I did the classic respond a question with a question. "Grandpa, who do YOU think made the world?" He didn't respond right away. He looked at me, thinking, and pointed at my watch. "Look at your watch. All the parts that make up that watch were intricately put together to make it work. Humans did that." He paused again. "Look at the world. You think all the parts just came together on their own and worked? No, someone must have done it. God did that. Where would we be without Him?" I smiled back at him, and in my head I was rejoicing. He believed, and even in his old age, even though he's too old to go to church because his ears are bad and he can't hear well, still thinks about God, about the world, and turns back to praise Him. So old and young, granddaughter and grandpa, with seventy-four years between them, looked at each other and knew, knew that we had God to thank for our existence. Something in me felt so still in that moment. Still with peace and gratitude and love.

Today Joy was when I went for my first run in 6 weeks since I sprained my ankle. I only ran for 16 minutes, and I was panting, out of shape but happy to know it and do something about it. Sweat on my brow and a little discomfort in the ankle, but it was okay. I know it'll be okay.

Today Joy was a quiet moment with my grandma. She was half asleep, lying on the bed. I sprawled out next to her on my grandpa's side of the bed, and placed my hand in her open palm, squeezing her hand. Her fingers curled around mine instinctively, and she squeezed back. Maybe unconsciously she knew that is what you do when someone holds your hand, but maybe she also knows that we love her. Even though she doesn't recognize me and barely says two words each day, I hope she knows that she is loved. We held hands for a minute and I looked down at my grandma's sleeping face and remembered, many years ago when her wrinkled, weathered hands held my five-year old ones and told me stories, fed me food, wiped my tears. Oh, Grandma.

How do you explain joy? Sometimes you can't really define it. Joy, like God, just is.

2010-05-10T11:35:00.001-07:00

it is the first official day of summer and i am here eating left over kobe beef from last night's dinner. was afraid to heat it up even for 30 seconds because the rare in medium rare might become just medium or done within that short span of time. so the meat is cold but so delicious. funny how massaging a cow and feeding it beer can change the texture so much. oh wait shoot..does that count as animal cruelty?

i got an internship for the summer at terracycle, a company that takes waste and recycles it into other usable products such as bags, picture frames, etc. i'm excited but kind of scared. hope it goes well.

at the beginning of each summer i always come up with a mental list in my head of projects i want to start. the problem isn't starting though, it's finishing. i'd like to do more crafts--making earrings, clothing, and random stuff. maybe designing a product or two that'd be cool. i hope it's a full hearted effort and not half hearted. half heartedness can be so discouraging :(

i think that i will take a chance on this ankle and try finally, FINALLY, to go on a short run today. emphasis on short. haven't really felt the heat of the sun on my back and a face of dripping sweat in a while. yes yes, the queen of sweat is ready to sweat again. i would like to post more pictures. i will begin with this fascination that happened a few weeks ago but is now healing up. i apologize in advance.

i'll save you from having to see my bruised foot that i took on my phone that i don't know how to upload to the computer, so you're in luck. the blood from the sprained ankle traveled down and formed a purple ring up against my toes. i thought it was all pretty cool until joe told me it was dangerous because it could cut off circulation to my toes. then i was pretty scared. hah. well at least there's visual evidence that my pain was not in my head.

EDIT//

i just finished an artichoke and it has this totally sweet kick at the end. sweet not as in, "oh wow that's so sweet (aka cool)," but as in "wow that pastry is sweet" kind of sugar sweet. weird too because avacado's aren't sweet. okay i think you get the point. buy an artichoke seed, steam it, and peel off each petal thing, dip the end in mayonaise and eat the tip. trust me it's good.

2010-05-05T05:17:00.000-07:00

do you ever get this sudden need to write? this pulsating beat that you'd like to dance, to play along with as well, but the steps won't come, and the words are stuck? what do you do when you want to write, write something that will rock someone's world and change something, anything--even if it's so subtle that no one even notices?

oh yes, i would love to do that. but the words won't come. the right words just won't come.

“Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out?" Ron Koertge

2010-03-24T20:27:00.000-07:00

Give up sitting dutifully at your desk. Leave
your house or apartment. Go out into the world.

It's all right to carry a notebook but a cheap
one is best, with pages the color of weak tea
and on the front a kitten or a space ship.

Avoid any enclosed space where more than
three people are wearing turtlenecks. Beware
any snow-covered chalet with deer tracks
across the muffled tennis courts.

Not surprisingly, libraries are a good place to write.
And the perfect place in a library is near an aisle
where a child a year or two old is playing as his
mother browses the ranks of the dead.

Often he will pull books from the bottom shelf.
The title, the author's name, the brooding photo
on the flap mean nothing. Red book on black, gray
book on brown, he builds a tower. And the higher
it gets, the wider he grins.

You who asked for advice, listen: When the tower
falls, be like that child. Laugh so loud everybody
in the world frowns and says, "Shhhh."

Then start again.

The Poetry of Bad Weather

2010-03-16T10:46:00.000-07:00

Debora Greger

Someone had propped a skateboard
by the door of the classroom,
to make quick his escape, come the bell.

For it was February in Florida,
the air of instruction thick with tanning butter.
Why, my students wondered,

did the great dead poets all live north of us?
Was there nothing to do all winter there
but pine for better weather?

Had we a window, the class could keep an eye
on the clock and yet watch the wild plum
nod with the absent grace of the young.

We could study the showy scatter of petals.
We could, for want of a better word, call it “snowy.”
The room filled with stillness, flake by flake.

Only the dull roar of air forced to spend its life indoors
could be heard. Not even the songbird
of a cell phone chirped. Go home,

I wanted to tell the horse on the page.
You know the way, even in snow
gone blue with cold.
________________________________________
i was waiting for today, when the stormy skies would clear to open up the joyous blue skies of the heavens--waiting for the sunshine after the rain. i imagine those brooding, northern poets, bundled up by a fire, watching icicles drip from the roof, longing for better weather. each season has it's own unfolding beauty...but after a couple months of winter, i really look forward to warmth and to seeing cute green buds popping out of the rich soil. spring.

hazy

2010-03-11T19:16:00.000-08:00

when i come home i retreat, but not really in a good way. the things that are important kind of dim, and lesser things take their place. things like entertainment, books, nothingness, and soon i forget about what i need to do. it's like things are out of focus, hazy. it's so annoying, it really is, but somehow a part of me delights in It. It is this pretend place where work and studying can be put off in exchange for watching a tv show without it creeping up on me to bite me in the butt. but this pretend place also makes me sad. i feel like i'm looking at the world, admiring it thorough a pair of lenses, but not really being a participant in it. is this normal?

why are all my posts so sad sounding? do people enjoy reading this emo stuff? i think i'm just trying to figure it all out. who i'm supposed to be and where i am now verses where i will be. where will i be? i have no idea, and that's what scares me. it really does sometimes. do i have what it takes to be successful? and who and what measures success?

it feels hazy.
i feel hazy.
feel hazy.
hazy.

almost like i'm not really an outline, but rather a scribble of pencil marks, no defined line. so even if i tried to grab ahold of myself, i wouldn't know which scribble is really me. i think i'm just in a funk. don't worry i'll snap out of it.

Prone to wanter, Lord I feel it

2010-03-07T15:52:00.000-08:00

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

changing in the dark

2010-02-22T19:04:00.000-08:00

so today i felt so foolish. i think that this is becoming a theme, me being/feeling foolish. sorry for the seemingly pessimistic attitude, but really, sometimes, correction most of the time, foolishness works to counteract pride. and believe me, there is a heckuva of a lot of pride stored up in this one fist sized heart of mine.

went to the gym today after my night class, feeling all tough because even though i was super sore from flag football yesterday, i decided to do a light workout and get rid of some of that lactic acid stored up in my poor muscles. got to the gym and had to change into my t-shirt and shorts in the bathroom. problem was that the light to the one-roomed girl's bathroom was broken, so i had to change in the dark. finished changing and walked out into the room full of worker outers only to look down and realize my shirt was very apparently on backwards with the tag sticking out in front of me. embarrassed, i walk into the boys bathroom, which DOES have a light, to put it on correctly. walked out of the boys bathroom to see a boy sitting on the bench in front of the bathroom waiting for it to be available. i felt him staring as i walked past. i wish i coulda told him to read the sign on the girls' bathroom door--LIGHT NOT WORKING--to explain why i was in the men's restroom.

but wait, there's more. i wanted to run on one of the good treadmills and lucky me! someone just got off. there was another boy standing next to it though so i asked him if he was waiting for the treadmill. it took me 4 times to finish asking the question because for some reason i kept stuttering. he said no, and i got another weird look. started running on the treadmill and a minute later a guy tells me he has reserved it for that time. grrreat. i switch to the so-so quality treadmill (there are three kinds) but then! i see a good treadmill open again. get on it only to, again, a minute later, have a girl tell me she had reserved it. so i get off and see that the good treadmills, and the so-so treadmills are all taken. what's left is the crappy treadmill all the way on next to the wall. served me right. siigh.

but thankfully i didn't just wallow in my frustration but instead tried to see it as a lesson. don't change in the dark...it doesn't work, and i mean that in both the literal and in the "transformation" way. things always get messed up, put on backwards, inside out, upside down. you think you're doing alright and then all of a sudden you realize you've dug a bigger hole and there is no way out. you're living in your sin and surrounded by darkness. you can't seek redemption in a broken world. the only way to possibly really, truly change is to step out into the light, that light being found in Jesus. i hope that that's a correct analogy. please correct me if i'm wrong. and as to the treadmill situation, i was trying to get ahead without following the correct procedures. i wanted to get the best treadmill, but it wasn't my time. it took me getting kicked off twice to get it. i guess it kind of relates to my school work too. i desire so much to be a good designer, to come up with clever, original ideas. but if i don't put in the time, if i don't actively learn things, i'm not gonna get better. you can't really climb a ladder without the rungs. well i guess you could but it's a lot harder.

John 3:19-21

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."

___________________________________________________________________________
saw this going around on tumblr. it's quite true, except sometimes i really do laugh. lol. did i just laugh? um, no.

(via larrylin)

prayer

2010-02-16T12:09:00.000-08:00

my prayer life sucks. it's not even that i deliberately decide not to pray but that i'm not really thinking about it. i forget to talk to God, I forget the power of prayer. Why? Maybe..well maybe because i've never directly, whole heartedly given credit to God when my prayers are answered. a part of me thinks that it was my doing, that somehow i was powerful, proactive enough (ha!) to make things come about the way i wanted. but..prayers aren't about getting what you want. it's presenting your requests to God in faith that He will do what He wants accordingly. it's asking for God's will to be done. it's to listen to what HE has to say instead of listening to yourself, the voice that often speaks lies, all day.

"If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land."

2 Chronicles 7:14

_________________________
Desire

this is my desire
to honor you
is it really?
Lord with all my heart
i worship you
am i really?
my tongue speaks a word
but my heart speaks another.
selfishness, envy, lust
Desire.

why do I desire another when It says
that you are enough.
another this, another that.
when is it enough?
to fill this insatiable hole called
Desire.

i do desire you, i do.
but
i am a fool.

brevity

2010-02-10T15:44:00.000-08:00

i have decided that my blog posts need to be shorter. simplified, but still edgy, to the point, and (hopefully) well written. clutter is one of my problems. when my room is at its worst, it is a clutterfied mess full of random junk and just...clutter. and in class a lot of the times my designs are too involved, too many ideas culminating into one thing with a bunch of concepts. stick with one tiffany, sheesh. weed out the unnecessary, clean up the over spillage. so that is my plan. simply simply simply, without losing the heart of it.

oldie but goodie

2010-02-08T08:57:00.001-08:00

why do people say, "oldie but goodie?" it's like saying, hey this movie/music/whatever is old, but WAIT, don't write it off, because it's a goodie. as if old things need to be defended. i guess it says something about the way we think. in with the new, out with the old, but we forget that many times the new wouldn't exist if it weren't for the old. and sometimes the original really is the best. sorry for the ambiguity haha. what i really mean to talk about? TITANIC.

i rewatched this movie after years of hearing people saying it's overrated, that everyone has seen it, that it was cheesy. perhaps it is all those things, but it is still in my opinion, a good movie. i first saw it in theaters when i was 8, and by the end i was sobbing, a wet puddle of a mess. and afterwards i had to pee so bad after holding it in for 3 hours, but someone behind me had to go real bad too, so i let them go first...there was something about that movie that made something in my quiver. it struck a chord, but my eight year old self couldn't explain it. now that i'm older, i'll try. the love story is great, but what really catches me each time i watch it is the raw humanity that it captures. in the desperation, panic, and confusion that ensues after the ship hits the iceberg, you see hate, anger, selfishness, recklessness. on the opposite spectrum you see love, kindness, compassion, sadness. the whole range of complex human emotions is shown in that last hour of the movie. i ask myself, who am i most like? who would i be most like if i were on that ship, knowing i might only have one hour left to live?

would i be like Rose's fiance Cal?-- relentless in his pursuit for revenge, selfish, doing anything possible to save himself only to realize that his money is now useless. Or Captain Smith, retreating quietly to his room, given up before the fight and spending his last hour pretending to steer a ship that is unsteerable. perhaps he was remembering better days, better journeys. like Jack, selfless, in love, and always putting his beloved first? like the old couple who accepted that death was coming, and were content to die in bed, clasped in each others arms. or Rose's mother, always looking down her nose at the poor, heart frosty, holding her pride close. or molly brown, who wanted to assimilate with the rich with her "new money," and had a good heart but was not at the right time, or surrounded by the right people to be of much use. how about the orchestra on deck till the end. they knew what was going on but they chose to stay and try to calm, soothe, with music. they did both harm and good. harm because people hearing the music might suppose it meant everything was fine, and good because it provided some sense of beauty amidst the terror.

i hope i would not be that coward of a man who ordered the ship to go faster to make headlines, dismissing warnings that it might be dangerous. and when the ship was going down, he snuck onto a boat meant for women and children, hoping to go unnoticed, too ashamed and scared to own up to his faults. would i be the seaman who noticed this coward sneak on the lifeboat, take a long hard look at him, and have mercy on him? that same seaman, Will, later in the same hour shot and accidentally killed one of the crowded mob while trying to keep order. he looked at his gun in disbelief, put the own gun to his head, and commited suicide out of shame. who would i be? who would you be, in that last hour?

i think one of the scariest things was that though the ship was sinking, most people, especially the rich, did not realize it. they were blinded by their security, blinded by their wealth, by false promises. one of the third class passengers, in rushing by the orchestra said, "I know i'm in first class when I get to drown by music." the orchestra continued to play, people were drinking, being merry, sitting on their comfortable chairs. it was not until near the end, when the water started rushing to the top floor, when the ship started to obviously tip, did they realize that all the brouhaha was for real. and i bet some people grabbed their riches, their possessions, their dogs, things that ultimately did not matter. like Rose's fiance maybe they thought these things could save them, but they could not.

the titanic feels like the distant past, but it is our today. Matthew 24:36-37 "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." just like the titanic, the hour will come unexpectedly, but it will come. what will you do before that day, who will you be. will what you are doing make a difference in eternity?

Fact: Only 700 people were saved out of 2,200+ people. There were enough lifeboats to save half, but like the movie depicted, the boats were not filled.

Rose: "Fifteen-hundred people went into the sea, when Titanic sank from under us. There were twenty boats floating nearby... and only one came back. One. Six were saved from the water, myself included. Six... out of fifteen-hundred. Afterward, the seven-hundred people in the boats had nothing to do but wait... wait to die... wait to live... wait for an absolution... that would never come."

Fortunately, we have that absolution. absolution-noun: a formal release from guilt, obligation, or punishment. when Jesus died on that cross, he forgave us and wiped us clean. By his wounds we are healed. Do i fully understand this yet? No, but I believe it. Unbelievable as it sounds, I believe it.

self-portrait

2010-02-02T14:38:00.000-08:00

on the first day of my conceptual art class, my teacher asked us to give a one sentence self-portrait. she did not mean a laundry list of characteristics, she meant one line on your identity as a person. what a loaded question..and we only had about 3 minutes to do it too, go figure. not long enough if you ask me. so there i was, wracking my brains for a witty, clever answer. i wanted to impress my teacher, first impressions going a long way and all. 1 minute, 2 minutes, 2 1/2 minutes ticked by, and i started to get nervous. i could not come up with anything remotely satisfactory. in the last ten seconds, this is what i quickly scrawled, "I am just a girl, and a girl that doesn't know much, but this I do know: Jesus Christ, my Lord loves me." and as i turned that paper in, i felt disappointed. i felt like it wasn't a good enough, clever enough answer.

since that class 2 weeks ago, i've had some time to think about why i felt what i felt. i'm not ashamed of being a Christian, not ashamed of Jesus, but i think i am afraid of being a fool. i am afraid of being looked down upon, regarded as obtuse and unintelligent. what i failed to realize then and what i'm starting to realize now is that to be a Christian is to look foolish in the eyes of the world. 1 Corinthians 1:26-31 says,

"For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.""

God chose me, foolish girl that I am, to be a witness to the world. and i'll look dumb, i really will. Christ crucified is foolishness, a stumbling block for non-believers, and i can't do anything about that. fortunately, God can. i'm learning, slowly but surely, that in the eyes of the world, i'm not that big of a deal, and that's not that big of a deal. so i am a fool, but hopefully a fool that loves God and loves my neighbor.

so i ordered one of my textbooks about 3 weeks ago and it STILL hasn't come. so i finally called usps today to see if they could tell me what happened to it. the first two times i called i got automated messages. you know, those annoying voices that say, for blah blah blah press one, for blah blah blah press 2. you get the picture. anyway, after trying two telephone numbers, getting robot voices, putting in my tracking number with no fruition, i finally got frustrated or as anne shirley would say, i was in the depths of despair (i know i know, a little too dramatic). when the robot girl asked for my tracking number yet again, i said angrily, "it's not working!." those robots are pretty smart because i think she got the picture. there was a pause, then, "please hold as we transfer you to an assistant." thank goodness for that. i talked to a real, live person, hallelujah! she figured out that the person wrote the wrong zip code, off by a digit, and it probably shipped to the wrong place. lost in translation. so many things are lost in translation, languages, rumors, directions, traditions, the Gospel. it really can be detrimental. i guess i should be thankful, it's just a book that's lost, not a person. oy vey.

i need to start taking more pictures. if only i felt like they were any good...haha.

found this sweet sweet video promoting typophile film festival. as a graphic designer, this is what i aspire to be!

Typophile Film Festival 5 Opening Titles from Brent Barson on Vimeo.

tiffany

behind the tree

2010-01-21T16:45:00.000-08:00

i see the most beautiful and quirky poetry when i go running. let me explain.

my run the other day felt horrible. my legs were like slugs, heavy and oozing slowness, but nevertheless it still felt good to sweat and know that i tried. i'd like to think life can be like that sometimes...that during the trial it feels so rotten, so incredibly hopeless, but when it's done you can look back and say, "wow. by the grace of God i made it through," and that is truly beautiful even if it sucked along the way. after my run i was stretching by a tree that was right in front of me. across the street from me was a sidewalk, and i noticed two people, a boy and a girl, walking towards each other. they looked like they recognized each other but i couldn't quite tell. as they were walking towards each other they met perfectly behind the tree blocking my vision. and then they stopped. and all i could see was that tree, with no one going either way. i didn't see the hug that might have happened, perhaps the peck on the cheek. but a moment later they walked away hand in hand. if i had been two inches to the right or left of that tree trunk, it would have been another ordinary scene of a couple meeting and walking away together. but oh for that tree trunk. it turned it into poetry or good music, intricately and deliberately composed.

a while ago i was listening to a piper sermon about when you're in despair, your heart is troubled, and God feels so distant. you cry out to feel Christ again, to yearn for His presence and peace and joy. Psalm 42:1 "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God." i remember when i was young we sang As the Deer almost every week, but I never really thought about what that meant, what that feels like. If you're a long distance runner, after running a good 10-12 miles in the summer heat, you KNOW what it feels like to be truly thirsty. your throat screams for water, cold, hot, lukewarm, it doesn't matter. and as you take that first sip,your whole body gives a sigh of relief. it is like a dry, cracked desert embracing a summer rain. to desire Christ that much...i wish i felt that more. too often i am apathetic, putting things off, filling the God shaped hole in my heart with lesser things. worthless next to My Creator. why do i keep doing it?

i realize that i've been heavy on the similes and metaphors for this post...from "legs like slugs" to "my soul pants for you like a deer pants for water" (though that's the Bible, not written by yours truly thanks very much) to a "dry cracked desert." who do i think i am, emily dickinson? hah hah hah. i have this prideful tendency to think i'm some deep, witty person (not in person, on paper!) but this is truly not the case. at least i hope i'm not writing a blog just to hear myself speak. i don't want that, but cringingly ( don't think that's even a word), sometimes this is so.

my sister got into dental school!
hurrah! this is some very good news! :) go brilliantly smart and hard-working sister! how i aspire to work and be as proactive as you are...sigh.

hiding

2010-01-19T10:53:00.000-08:00

i have been hiding, really. Hiding behind my television, behind my family, behind myself. And amidst all this hiding i know that God desires those quiet times with me and that he sees me, but shame and fear and a lukewarm heart drives a wedge into my relationships, both with God and with other people. so this is my prayer: Oh Lord, would you take away the idols in my life that i turn to, and instead of hiding in them, that i would hide in you. take away all the safety nets that aren't found in You. i pray for prayer, for grace, for a stirring of my heart that only You can do. For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother's womb, and all the days of my life are in your hands.

You are my hiding place
You always fill my heart
with songs of deliverance
whenever I am afraid
I will trust in you
I will trust in you

Let the weak say I am strong
In the strength
of the Lord
I will trust in you

i struggle with:

2010-01-07T20:06:00.000-08:00

myself
God
understanding
why?
evolving and
changing
joy
love
peace
the past
the future
how?

maybe i should just give it up//surrender to the one who really knows how//to take care of it all.

Grandma's breakfast

2009-12-17T10:03:00.000-08:00

1 banana
1/2 avacado
1 egg
vitamin pills
medicine pills

throw it all in a blender

she can't eat solids anymore, so everything is thrown in a blender--meat, eggs, vegetables, fruits, medicine, etc.--and spoon fed to her. she is ninety years old. but she can still walk, can still open her eyes, can still sing some songs, and when she's up to it, can name all her brothers and sisters and kids' names. her eyes are closed most of the time, yes when she's sleeping, but also when she's eating. it's like her eyes are too weary to be opened all the time. i like to imagine that behind those closed lids though, are memories, memories that she plays over and over in her mind and heart, even if they now go unheard.

2009-12-13T13:55:00.001-08:00

you were made for someone, not everyone.
so be careful not to make everyone into your someone.
and not to make someone your everyone either.

i read this on someone else's blog. i think it was said for sappy, soul mate type purposes but i also saw it as a response to the things we idolize in our lives. we're so quick to give ourselves away, and to what, to whom? is it/are they worthy? if it's not God, reevaluate. is it more important than the Creator of the universe, the one who calls us by name?

yes, we were made for someone. and that Someone is Christ.

Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God?
Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men,
I would not be a servant of Christ.

-Galatians 1:10

__________________________
edit

i'm a daughter, a friend, a sister, a cousin. i haven't been doing my part in these relationships. i've been so lacking and never really realized the full...i guess seriousness of that. i know we can never fill these roles perfectly, but isn't it up to each of us to try?

life?

2009-12-11T08:51:00.000-08:00

what does it mean Lord, to truly live?

because i got a feeling that this ain't it.

__________________________________________________________

originally i had the post at just that, but i thought that maybe i shouldn't resort to dramatic antics and instead try to sort, to shift through my feelings to maybe get to the heart of it. loneliness is something that's been with me for a while. the first time was really in middle school, in the first few weeks of 8th grade, when i just felt this emptiness well up in me and spill over. i had a good group of friends, i was doing what i usually did, but i'd go home every day crying, and i didn't understand why or how. i came to understand later that even though i was surrounded by people, i felt so alone. after another few weeks it went away, but there would be more of these moments in the future.

freshman year. a new state, a new school, a new me? i felt so out of it, and out of practice for making friends. after about a year and a half i finally felt like i had found a place at high school.

and now, now i feel it creeping up on me again. loneliness is not my friend. but i feel like it's something i've grown used to over the years, and it is no stranger. i think though, a lot of the times it's me. i take myself too seriously, and sometimes my flaws become so magnified in my head and heart that God's grace and love is squeezed out a bit. too much selfishness going on here. self pity is selfishness, and a kind of boasting too, because it's saying look at me, i'm so pitiful. pity me, feel sorry for me, and i loathe to be in that trap. i was listening to cj mahaney's sermon yesterday on troubled souls and it really struck a chord. every one has this internal conversation going on in their heads. it never ceases, even though we may be unconscious of it. and...is it a wonder we get so troubled? this internal conversation is what we hear most in our lives, and we listen to it. we're so busy listening to ourselves that we don't talk to ourselves enough. a troubled soul will tell you that you're not good enough, that God isn't powerful enough, that hope is not really there, that your friend? not really your friend. but if we talk to yourself, if we spoke truth, the Gospel into our lives, our souls would be a heckuva lot less troubled. mahaney pointed out something else that i've felt a lot too but could never really explain it. when we're praising God through song, a lot of the times it all becomes so clear in our heads. i know that after i worship, my heart is a lot less troubled, and more than once i've gone to that person that i was upset with, given them a big hug and told them that all is forgiven. why? it's because when we worship through Biblical songs, we're speaking truth into our lives as well as worshiping the Lord. praise God for that.

i know i've been rambling on and on. but the point is this...we're all going to go through loneliness, we're all going to have troubled souls at some point. but we can have the assurance that even the greatest theologians like John Edwards and Jesus' disciples had troubled souls and felt like God was far from them too. it doesn't mean that Christ doesn't love us, it doesn't mean that we have been abandoned. because He hasn't. maybe he is just pruning us, like the gardener prunes his vines. when we grow back, we'll be sweeter and be able to glorify God better, even though the pruning process can be excruciatingly painful.

so my heart is still sad, i still feel troubled and burdened and i still don't really know what to do except pray about it. but praise God anyways, for He is good.

wasting time

2009-12-08T12:14:00.000-08:00

is so easy. i've done nothing for the past few days...reading books, listening to music, reading random people's blogs, and when i run out of things to do, i sleep. i'm trying so hard to not do my work. everyone else is studying they're butts off for finals (i think), but here i am. and i can't concentrate. it's like there's this nervous tick in my head, this restlessness, and i don't have the heart to sit and concentrate. so instead i enter into someone else's life for a day, or two. or three. through a book, or two. or three.

sigh.

you wrote a letter and you signed your name

2009-12-06T19:16:00.000-08:00

I read every word of it page by page
You said that You'd be coming,
coming for me soon
oh my God I'll be ready for You

I want to run on greener pastures
I want to dance on higher hills
I want to drink from sweeter waters
in the misty morning chill
and my soul is getting restless
for the place where I belong
I can't wait to join the angels
and sing my heaven song

-phil wickham

i can't wait for this beautiful place where we can worship God forever.

why do you like or love someone?

2009-12-05T12:39:00.000-08:00

i've thought about this question a good number of times. if someone were to ask this question, the answer to why you love someone should sound really special right? traits that no one else has that makes this person really different. but the answer i always answer sound so generic, so nondescript and unworthy of the person. i know they're special and i know i like them, but why? but maybe that's just it. maybe we aren't supposed to put a why behind it, to try to explain it. perhaps there's no real rhyme or reason to it. maybe it's unexplainable.

God made us, and loves us. God made us because he loves us, and that full expression of his love is made complete when we turn around and worship and glorify Him. because since we were made to love him, then loving him should give us the greatest joy and pleasure. but WHY does God love us? we're so...wretched sometimes. and we are born into this world in sin, hating Him. yet he loves, loves us. it's unexplainable.

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

1 John 4:9-10

It's falling from the clouds
A strange and lovely sound
I hear it in the thunder and rain
It's ringing in the skies
Like cannons in the night
The music of the universe plays

You are holy great and mighty
The moon and the stars declare who You are
I'm so unworthy, but still You love me
Forever my heart will sing of how great You are

Beautiful and free
Song of Galaxies
It's reaching far beyond the milky way
Lets join in with the sound
C'mon let's sing it loud
As the music of the universe plays

All glory, honor, power is Yours amen
All glory, honor, power is Yours amen
All glory, honor, power is Yours forever amen

anne spelled with an e

2009-12-04T12:29:00.000-08:00

i've been feeling in a very bookish mood lately (my roommate sharon can vouch for me) and went to the local library to check out a whole bunch of books, just for fun. last night i stayed up until 4:30 reading Graceling, which was really quite a wonderful book, full of adventure, with that ability of a good book to suck you in and feel the characters' pain and joy. i'm 19 but i still love reading YA books...i hope that doesn't make my taste of reading sophomoric. there are some really good YA books out there! the author of the book Graceling, kristin cashore, has a blog (click here) with just life observations, funny videos and polls, and tips on how to write. i love reading blogs, they're so interesting. it's weird because for people's blogs that i read on a consistent basis, i feel like i know them, yet they don't know me. kind of creepy huh. haha oh well, blogs are put up for people to read aren't they?

on kristin cashore's blog i stumbled across a post where the opening lines were, "The other night, feeling overwhelmed by life, I crawled into bed early with Anne of Green Gables and a beer. And let me tell you, what I had there was a winning combination."

and minus the beer, i know exactly what she means. anne of green gables is my childhood book, and every time i open up, a wave of nostalgia hits me. what a great book. it reads like poetry, and the characters! they move with a quiet subtlety yet charm vibrancy which makes them so real, so human. so in light of reading so much about writing on her blog, it put the idea into my head to write a book. probably short. but a book. huh. what an interesting proposition.

i have a praise! yesterday at the last intervarsity meeting of this semester, i really fell into worship. i don't think i've had a really worshipful heart towards God for a while it feels. i just...felt this incredible need and longing for God. maybe it's because recently i've been thinking about how so many things just aren't...right. you know? like a broken piece of pottery. you see all the pieces, and you know that it would all look so beautiful if it just fit, but when you try to put them together the pieces don't line up and it's just off. and it makes me long for the way God initially made this world: perfect. but it also made me appreciate more that even though, even though our world is so broken, God restores and protects and loves.

there was an old lady who swallowed a...pie?

2009-11-25T21:11:00.000-08:00

yesterday i went running with my neighbor sammy to the library, and while i was waiting for him to finish playing his computer games, i saw a book on the shelf called "there was an old lady who swallowed a pie." i did a double take because dude, it's supposed to be "there was an old lady who swallowed a FLY," not a pie. i still remember in first grade when the teacher taught it to us, and we all carried around a picture of a different animal and chanted "there was an old lady who swallowed a fly, i don't know why she swallowed a fly, perhaps she'll die!" and when you think about it it's kind of depressing, but at least you know it's kind of fictional because who swallows a cow and pig and other animals whole right? right, not possible. ANYWAYS, i was reading this book about this lady who swallows pie and perhaps dies, and it's about thanksgiving. and first she swallows a pie, then a turkey, then a pot or something, then a cake, etc. and as she eats she gets fatter and fatter and fatter until she's this big chunky nasty blob. i must mention that the first thing to get super duper big is like, the upper area of her body ahem, and it just looked really disturbing. and like, i wouldn't have minded the offensive change from fly to pie as much if she had eaten weird things, but some of these things were legit things you eat during thanksgiving. like bread or turkey. and at the end of each page it said, "perhaps she'll die." now how is that for disturbing? kids will read the book and refuse to eat thanksgiving dinner because first off, they don't want to die, even if the books says perhaps. because perhaps means there's a chance no? and they don't want to be like this monstrous old lady, rolling around on the ground, bigger than an elephant. yah no joke. so anyways, there's my rant. i'm done with this old lady.

today is thanksgiving. for some reason, i'm not feeling very thankful. i don't know, my head and heart are feeling kind of muddled, like someone dipped a spoon in and mixed everything up. i don't know if that even makes sense. it's just a feeling of restlessness, like something is going to happen (good or bad i don't know) and i'm anticipating it. but at the same time i'm not sure what i should be feeling. oh Lord, what does it all mean? i can't quite make sense of it.

a prayer that i read (first from tim shin's blog then someone else's) that comes from valley of vision: a book of puritan prayers. it's beautiful and is such an encouragement. feels like cool water to a thirsty soul.

Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly,
Thou has brought me to the valley of vision,
Where I live in the depths but see Thee in the heights;
Hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory.

Let me learn by paradox
That the way down is the way up,
That to be low is to be high,
That the broken heart is the healed heart,
That the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
That the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
That to having nothing is to possess all,
That to bear the cross is to wear the crown
That to give is to receive,
That the valley is the place of vision.

Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells,
And the deeper the wells the brighter thy stars shine;

Let me find thy light in my darkness,
Thy life in my death,
Thy joy in my sorrow,
Thy grace in my sin,
Thy riches in my poverty,
Thy glory in my valley.

i long to be in this valley.

why you runnin?

2009-10-05T14:57:00.000-07:00

today i went for a run after a week of not running (boo) and i wore my new pair of nike spandex that i got for cheap from marshalls. the latter has nothing to do with my point but i just thought i'd add it because i got them for $15 which isn't shabby at all.

so i was doing my thing, sweating buckets, when i passed this 7 or 8 year old kid holding a lacrosse stick and violently hitting it against a tree. as i ran by he yelled angrily, "why yoo runnin?!" why am I running? why are you hitting a lacrosse stick against a tree, you little punk kid?, I wanted to ask. i guess he's not old enough to know that running is indeed a sport (if you want to argue with me on that we gotta take this outside). but this kid's question made me think a little. why you runnin? why do i run? in high school i ran for the competition, but now the competition with others is gone. it's just me. am i running to hold on to that last bit of running glory days or because i'm nostalgic for it? because i don't want the pudge to pile on and see my fear of looking like a triple chinned hippopotemus come true? because i've always thought athletes were cool? or because i truly enjoy it for the pounding rhythm of the pavement, marvel at the capability of the human body, enjoy the wind and the crunch of leaves and the colors and snow and rain and the humidity as the seasons come and go? maybe it's a mix of everything.

what do i run away from in life? i run away from people's anger, their criticism. i hate being wrong and letting someone down. this became really apparent to me today in rigby's class when he asked me a question i was supposed to know the answer to, and he said, "i can't believe you didn't know that. what have you been doing in class?" and then he asked another question i didn't know the answer to, and he said, "you just keep getting lower and lower i can barely see your head." and he didn't say it in a nice considerate way...i could see his opinion of me sinking by the seconds, and it crushed me inside. and as much as i didn't want them to, tears started forming and brimming in my eyes. and he kept asking me questions for the remaining two hours of the class, and each time i wanted to cry again. i think he noticed too. they were tears of frustration. i hate being frustrated. as i walked out of class i was kicking myself. tiffany by tougher. tiffany get some thicker skin.

why do i care what rigby thinks? because i fear and respect him. i care so much about rigby's opinion of me to the point where when i do something wrong i start bawling. but what of God's opinion and approval? doesn't His count infinitely, eternally more? i wish i seeked his approval more than anyone elses. my prayer is that as more and more of God's nature is revealed to me by His grace, awesome fear would be produced.

as for the whole color theory crying incident, these verses really encouraged me to be strong despite my weakness. i am weak but God is strong, and if He is for me who can be against me?

For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.
- 2 Timothy 1:7

Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.
- John 14:27

Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.
- Galatians 1:10

Fall has arrived. say hello =]

-tiffany

untitled because i can't think of a good title

2009-09-09T11:23:00.000-07:00

i looked through my last couple post and i've realized i'm pretty doom and gloom. haha i don't mean to be, honestly, but maybe i tend towards the pessimism more than the optimism, though on the outside i seem like a pretty cheerful person. it's encouraging to know that even when i'm grouchy, when i'm jealous, when i'm spiteful...God is still working in me and in the lives around me. it doesn't matter what circumstance i'm in or how good or bad i'm feeling...God is, and i love that.

brandon heath's song "give me your eyes" has been replaying in my head over and over again so maybe writing about it will help it stop. but then again..maybe it's good that it's constantly in my head because it serves as a reminder.

Step out on a busy street
See a girl and our eyes meet
Does her best to smile at me
To hide what's underneath
There's a man just to her right
Black suit and a bright red tie
Too ashamed to tell his wife
He's out of work
He's buying time
All those people going somewhere
Why have I never cared?

Chorus
Give me your eyes for just one second
Give me your eyes so I can see
Everything that I keep missing
Give me your love for humanity
Give me your arms for the broken hearted
Ones that are far beyond my reach.
Give me your heart for the ones forgotten
Give me your eyes so I can see
Yeah
Yeah

I've Been there a million times
A couple of million eyes
Just moving past me by
I swear I never thought that I was wrong
Well I want a second glance
So give me a second chance
To see the way you see the people all along

this song is such a reminder that we can see so many people throughout the day, but not really SEE them. not really look to see that they're hurting. and if you can't see that someone is hurting, you can't even begin to meet their need. and how often have we pretended that everything is okay when it's really not? how many people have we fooled? sometimes it's so hard to be vulnerable and raw and real.

on my xanga xanga.com/momentzzz a long time ago i once blogged about how it made me feel so sad to see some people in the hallways looking down at the ground while walking, not meeting the eyes of people, as if they were ashamed. afraid to look into another person's face and see themselves through that person's eyes and not like what they see. looking back i realize i wrote that post with the attitude that i was not one of these people. but the truth was, i was, i have been..and sometimes i will be. because the fear of man still grips me and i'm afraid of what people will think and don't really want to know. because a lot of the times i don't like what i see in myself. because though i'm being regenerated, i still trip up. and i still gotta admit to God that i was wrong. and during those times it's so hard to face God and confess. i think it's pride or just...shame. it's like telling your parents that you did something that disappointed them. it's so hard. but the Bible says "he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6)" i'm so glad it's not up to me, because if it were...i'd be a goner.

for (maybe) the last time

2009-09-06T16:09:00.000-07:00

My grandma is dying.
We are all dying, but she is nearing the end. She sleeps all day and eats very little, and when she is not awake, can barely muster up the energy to open her eyes. They are shut, no longer taking the world in, and the world can only nudge her to keep living, but no more. You see, the world cannot open her eyelids, make her laugh, put the spark of recognition in her eyes. Only God can. and now her eyes are dull, her shoulders droop, her head peaking out of a weary body that no longer recognizes itself. i remember two visits ago. i hadn't seen her in one or two years, and she could no longer recognize my face or say my name. i think she knew that i was family..knew that she had loved me, still did, if only she could remember why or how. she didn't remember anyone's name anymore, accept for instances of clarity where her eyes lit up and she said your name, making you laugh in relief and joy and gratitude at the sound of those syllables. but after that visit we knew not to ask any more. she simply...didn't know. we were at a family friends' house eating dinner and my aunt asked her who i was. she paused and looked blankly up, and said the only name she could remember, Eileen, her most beloved granddaughter and my favorite cousin. but eileen was not tiffany, and the tears welled up in my eyes and i couldn't stay in the room. Ecclesiastes is pressing on my heart right now.

Ecclesiastes 12

"Remember your Creator
in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come
and the years approach when you will say,
"I find no pleasure in them"-

before the sun and the light
and the moon and the stars grow dark,
and the clouds return after the rain;

when the keepers of the house tremble,
and the strong men stoop,
when the grinders cease because they are few,
and those looking through the windows grow dim;

when the doors to the street are closed
and the sound of grinding fades;
when men rise up at the sound of birds,
but all their songs grow faint;

when men are afraid of heights
and of dangers in the streets;
when the almond tree blossoms
and the grasshopper drags himself along
and desire no longer is stirred.
Then man goes to his eternal home
and mourners go about the streets.

Remember him—before the silver cord is severed,
or the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
or the wheel broken at the well,

and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it."

This passage is telling us in our youth to remember God our creator before we grow too old to remember or be able to acknowledge Him. "Before the sun and the light and the moon and stars are not darkened" is before we lose our sight. before "the keeper of the house trembles" and we lose our teeth. before the "sound of grinding is low" and we can no longer chew our food. before "men rise up at the sound of birds, but all their songs grow faint" and our hearing fades. before "the almond tree blossoms" with it's white flowers, and our hair turns white as age creeps up behind us. before all this comes to pass, remember Christ.

i'm going to go visit my grandma before or after Urbana through a connecting flight. my parents told me to prepare for it to be the last because she's going. my beautiful grandmother. i'm so thankful though that she accepted Christ as an adult and followed Him. so thankful that before she lost consciousness of time and thoughts and faces, God knew her and she Him. and even though i'm sad that her time to leave this earth is drawing close, i know that she will enter into something more beautiful and perfect than we could ever imagine. Christ is now as we speak preparing a home for her in heaven. soon she will be able to live again.

mistakes

2009-08-22T20:00:00.000-07:00

how many mistakes do we make in life? unfortunately, many. today i made a mistake, not a big one, but still a mistake.

i sold a book through half.com and the girl asked for expedited mail, so when i went to the post office i said "expedited mail please" and the lady said that would be $17.50 (wtheck!) because expedited mail means that the person receives it the day after you send it. ...but i figured this was what the girl wanted because she was in a huge hurry to get the book, and i figured half.com would reimburse me anyways. wrong. half.com's definition of expedited mail is sending it out 1-3 days earlier than normal, so you'd have to pay like, an extra two bucks to do that. USPS' definition is ship it out as fast as humanly possible so that the person gets it the next day. so i paid an extra $12 bucks, and when i figured out my mistake an hour later, it was too late. a waste of twelve dollars...i felt like i had lost something even though twelve bucks isn't a ton of money. still, i was thinking of all that i could have done with that extra twelve dollars. MY 12 dollars. i could have bought 9 pints of halo ice cream, gotten a nice on sale shirt from gap, saved it up, and the list goes on. and all this was going through my head because i felt like it was my money. All mine. And i had a right to do whatever i wanted with it. but as i was driving back (i seem to do a lot of thinking in the car), i realized it's not my money. it's God's. He's the one that provided it. so i apologized to God for wasting his money and tried my hardest not to feel resentful that i had spent an unneeded twelve dollars.

hey and who knows? maybe like me, this girl's classes start tuesday and she HAS to have the book by then. and if she gets it monday she will be so so thankful and amazed that it came so on time. and maybe this would save her a lecture from her parents asking why yet again, her books came in late. and maybe her teacher is super strict and checks to see that everyone has their books on the first day. and after the first day, there's already a reading assignment, and thank goodness she has her book which was sent on saturday and came on monday. maybe i will make this girl very happy. or maybe she won't give it a second thought. so many maybe's...so few definitely's.

i hate losing money, but i think i have to let it go more. i think it's time to tithe tomorrow. i keep forgetting, but maybe this incident will serve as a more permanent reminder.

classes start tuesday!

today i gave everyone the stink eye

2009-08-21T19:17:00.000-07:00

so today i went into new york with my dad and i felt like i was giving everyone i met the stink eye. i couldn't think of a better term so i drew on juno where i remember them mentioning a girl in there with a funny looking face that makes it look like she's always giving the stink eye.

SO, what does a stink eye mean?
well since i couldn't find a definition in the normal dictionary, this is what i found on urban dictionary:

	stink eye
	a surfer term meaning a glare or lingering dirty look ie: when that dude stole my wave I gave him total stink eye

and what does it look like? something like this:

that's pretty much the way my face looked this morning when i woke up. a misquito bit me right under the eye and my whole eye swelled up, making my eye smaller then it already was, red, and puffy. i won't put a picture up..it's not very attractive.

but other than that, NY was fun! haha. there was this really interesing exhibit called "waste not" that showcases an old chinese woman's belongings that she collected over a lifetime. She never threw anything away because growing up poor in China, she always saved everything in case there was ever a need for it. So she never threw away bottles, tooth paste containers, floss containers, shoes, watches, hats, string, plastic bags..well you get the point.

what a world

2009-08-17T21:29:00.001-07:00

included some pictures from my trip to d.c. haven't really been any where this summer so my wonderful cousin Eileen and i drove down this weekend. i don't have enough motivation to plan these trips myself so thank goodness for her. i wish i could take this initiative but...well i guess i'll just have to try harder haha.

d.c. was amazing. i've forgotten how fun it is to travel and see the sights and go on unexpected adventures. we went to "china town" only to find that china town was really just american restaurants with the chinese signs next to the english signs. ie: Chipotle, Subway, and every other american restaurant in the book. except it was china town because there are chinese words next to it. cue bewildered expressions from Eileen and i as we walked down the street desperately looking for a dirty chinese restaurant with scrumptious food. and there were no chinese people walking on the streets! haha. going to all those memorials made me feel so small, but in a good way. america's history is only like, 200 years old, which is relatively short compared to other countries, but i was still in awe of those memorials and old documents. it made me feel like a speck in history. i'm so excited for the people to come after us who get to see the documents when they're 300, 400 years old! coool i wish i could be them. i already feel like a speck in history next to those old statues...i'd feel like a microscopic fiber next to God. well..maybe more along the lines of invisible. sorry my nonscientific mind can't come up with a comparison that is super duper small. how amazing it is to be a part of history..WE'RE a part of history, if only for a blink of an eye.

traffic lights

2009-08-13T08:08:00.000-07:00

hello! its been a while. i kind of forgot about it and maybe i didn't have that much to say or was too lazy to say it.

while i was driving to hannah's house to pick up my lost but soon to be found cellphone, i was thinking of how many stop lights there are. so many darn stoplights. if i happen to be stuck behind a stoplight though, i always want to be first in line so that there are no cars in front of me to get in my way. yeah i know, pretty impatient, selfish, me first! mentality huh. which got me thinking...what IS the point of stoplights? well duur tiffany, it's to let other cars go too, you might say. but it also serves another purpose: to separate the long stream of cars so that the distance between each car doesn't get too short, causing traffic jams, collisions, and impatient tempers. If it was always green light then pretty soon it would be a whole line of bumper to bumper cars, honking horns, and cars shifted to park in the middle of streets. given, that already happens, but stop lights try to minimize it as much as possible.

in the same (or similar) light, if God always gave us the green light on our desires, think of how much in a jam we would really be. what comes to mind are relationships. say two people like each other a lot and start going out. months down the line however, they find that maybe they had less in common than they thought, they weren't spurring each other on towards Christ, and that connection they had or they had imagined existed between them is not quite there anymore. yet, you've spent months with this person, investing your time and energy and emotions. you don't want to let it go. but what if you keep going? this relationship that is leading no where but selfishness keeps you from giving it up. and sooner or later you're stuck in a jam--sort of like a traffic jam. but if we could listen to God more...stop when He says stop even though we so badly want to go. Wait when He says wait even though every fiber within us wants to leap forward. To listen doesn't just take discipline. It takes transformation...a transformation of hearts, which Christ does for us when we become Christians and begin our path of sanctification.

right now i'm reading Putting Amazing Back into Grace by Michael Horton, and he's tackling the much debated predestination issue.

"If the will is no more than an expression of character, it will never choose something contrary to the character of the chooser. Hence, our Lord's remark to the Pharisees, 'You are unable to hear what I say. You beling to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire' (John 8:43-44) You really want to obey the one to whom you are bound. That is the point. If God left you to yourself to decide whether you would choose or reject him, you would always refuse God as long as you 'belong to your father, the devil.'...I thank God every day that Jesus is not "a gentleman" who lets me have my own way."

I guess i had never really thought of it that way. If we had our own way we would never choose God because we were born sinners and we are bound to that. It is only by God's grace that he gave us a will to seek him instead of sin. it is only by God's grace that we are saved and nothing more. to believe in predestination is giving up any belief that humans did anything to make their way to God. it takes the power from humanity (as if we had any in the first place) and puts it into the hands of God, and rightly so.

self visualization project

2009-05-04T07:50:00.001-07:00

illustrator word visualization

2009-04-21T11:32:00.000-07:00