look me in the eyeball!

Random thing that I just felt like sharing (even though I really wanted to write about something else - but that's okay, I'll save that for later today):

I've found that I really don't like it when people don't look me in the eyes when I'm talking to them/we're having a conversation. It makes me feel like they are a) not really paying attention to what I'm saying, b) reluctant to talk to me, and/or c) uncomfortable around me. I feel like this happens more with guys than with girls, but it could just be a personality thing. And I guess if it's a personality thing, I should be more accepting...but yeah. It bothers me. And of COURSE, I know that sometimes I am rude and I berry-berry people (a.k.a. I fiddle around on my Blackberry while talking to someone, but I REALLY try to limit it to only if it's really really important!!!), so I am trying to take the plank out of my own eye, but this isn't about like rudeness or sin or something LOL...I just wanted to say that I like to have engaging conversations that involve eyeballs looking at other eyeballs.

K. :)

Something more substantial tomorrow!

11am recitation

We had the most insane discussion today.

To preface, let me tell you about this recitation. Pretty much I have the most amazing TA ever. Like, I'm not sure what I'm going to get on my 2nd paper so perhaps I will feel a little less enthusiastic if I didn't do so well, but grades and formalities aside, like wow. She's the best! She has all these little quirks about her - the way she dresses, the thoughts she obsesses over, the way she fans herself with her hands and has mini-freakout-sessions in the middle of a comment or anecdote, the way she exclaims the f-bomb and the d-word every other sentence. It's crazy! She's crazy! And every time I walk out, I'm like wow, what the heck just happened. But it's not like a whaaaat I am so lost and I hate this class. In fact, I walk out always thinking, this is what an English class should be about - discussions and sharing and freaking out over language together and all that jazzy stuff that makes English so addictive.

Basically, she posed the question — What if our professor walked into class on Monday, held up a book/text/whatever, and said, "This is crap. There is no meaning."? What would we think, how would we react?

And we were just like, well...we would probably think she was having a bad day or something. Maybe we would care, maybe we wouldn't care. Maybe we'd get riled up, maybe we'd dismiss it as just an opinion. But we agreed that there is meaning to each and every one of us, so whatever she said wouldn't affect us.

Of course, how the discussion actually went, with all of its little intricacies, I can't clearly explain or describe - you kinda just had to be there. But it was such a meta-literary/meta-something moment (I'm not sure if that makes sense) where you were sitting in a literature class, where you're supposed to constantly be digging out or creating or offering or imposing or interpreting meaning out of everything, every word, comma, space and yet, there we were, discussing the possibility that literature itself at its core doesn't have any meaning at all! What the heck!

And perhaps for those who hate books/reading/words and think that all English majors are good at doing is making something out of nothing or BS-ing their way through assignments, you've always thought this, so this is nothing mindblowing to you. Literature has no answer, no conclusion. It's too subjective, it's not logical, it runs circles around itself. THERE IS NO MEANING.

But you know what? If literature had no meaning, words would have no meaning. And if words had no meaning, the Bible would have no meaning. And if the Bible had no meaning, my life would have no meaning. So basically, not to say that literature = eternal truth or that Bible = fiction, but foreals yo, there IS meaning in literature and language.

I could go on and on and on and on about how much I love my TA and how much I love English and how much I love the Bible, but I think I should stop and do work now...

As my TA would say, "D___!"

bad habit rabbits

From today forward, I am going to try my hardest to break my bad habits and begin refining myself to become more of who I want (and hopefully who God wants) me to be.

1) No matter when I get home, even if I'm on the brink of falling asleep, I always turn my computer back on and do random things for another 20-60 min before I end up going to sleep. Most of the time, this extra time spent on the computer doesn't really result in anything productive or edifying (usually a lot of Facebook/Gchat), so unless I actually do have to make this extra time meaningful (i.e. finish up an assignment/a very, VERY important conversation), I need to stop doing this.

2) I always have chapped lips and hands (especially during the winter seasons). Therefore, I need to start wearing lip balm and lotion everyday. Softer hands => softer heart? lol jk

3) I subconsciously/consciously compare myself to others in a ton of different areas. This needs to stop for obvious reasons.

4) I'm getting better about this, but it still flares up from time to time...I can't always just be planning, planning, planning, and thinking about doing things — I just have to do them. (So perhaps this post is useless, but let's just say it's for future reference and so people can keep me accountable :))

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edit: 5) No more craziness, no more impulsive irrationality. I need to reform my thought life.

the rhetorical question

I was reading through Hosea at servants' meeting two weeks ago, and a passage really stuck out at me:

How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, Israel?
How can I treat you like Admah?
How can I make you like Zeboiim?
My heart is changed within me;
all my compassion is aroused.

I will not carry out my fierce anger,
nor will I turn and devastate Ephraim.
For I am God, and not man—
the Holy One among you.
I will not come in wrath.

(Hosea 11:8-9)

The book of Hosea can be kind of scary at first because God is essentially hardcore rebuking the Israelites for essentially pimping themselves out to other idols/nations/etc. (hence the symbolism through Hosea's prostitute wife?) but this one section entitled "God's Love for Israel" is just so encouraging and enveloping. What calls to my heart in this section is God's use of rhetorical questions — He asks, how can I give you up? How can I hand you over? How can I treat you so coldly and fiercely when my love for you runs so deep? It has that same heartbroken tone as when God calls out to Adam and Eve (after they have eaten the fruit of knowledge and sinned against God), "Where are you?" These questions also sound like they're from the exact same heart that the father has in the story of the prodigal son — no matter what the son has done, how can the father give up on him? How can God just let Satan take ahold of us?

He can't. And that's the point.

I guess the point of the rhetorical question in general is that it's not one that necessarily needs to be answered; it's used for persuasion, so the point is oftentimes to stun the listener into silence, into consent. And God's pretty good at persuading us that He wants to be with us no matter what, so He's always trying to get us to be repentant and ready to come back to His embrace. That's where we belong, and God wants us to see that.

There are a ton of other places where rhetorical questions are used to make a point. I never really noticed before until I started jotting down some verses in the back of my planner so that even if I forget to take my Bible with me to classes, I still have the Word of God somewhere handy on me; and there are quite a few that use these questions so powerfully.

For example:

"Why are you so downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God." (Psalm 42:5)

"Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom." (Isaiah 40:28)

"Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of? Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived? Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by miraculous signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?" (Deuteronomy 4:32-34)

Jesus asks, "Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work." (John 14:10)

And of course, my favorite: "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31)

I don't know about you, but I'm just stopped when I'm faced with these kinds of questions. Do I not know? Have I not heard? Do I believe that God isn't enough to triumph over my fears and trials? Do I really have reason to be stuck in a gloom? And the answer is a resounding "NO." But I don't even need to say this out loud because it's unnecessary — God knows the answer He expects, and I know what it is as well.

God is constantly saying to us, Am I not the LORD your God? Didn't I create the heavens and the earth? Did I not wash away all your sins when I sent my son Jesus to die on the cross for you? Did I not search for you when you fell away? Did I not heal you when you were deeply wounded by man, deeply corrupted by sin?

And before we can muster up a humbled "yes," God is already one step ahead, smiling down at us, saying, "That's what I thought."

And I love that bold-attitude side of Him :)

shakespeare is so gangsta, i'm so thug

Okay, I know this is sooo literarily immature of me, but it gets me every time:

Marcellus: Holla, Barnardo! (line 17-ish of the Oxford edition)

Holla to you too, son!

hm.

I realized I have a whiny voice in certain situations talking to certain people. Dang, I must be annoying...

But if God can be pleased with this one whiny voice proclaiming His name and shouting praises for the rest of my life...then I don't see a reason to change.

Psalm 145.

looking for:

I had a random thought today —

I don't know if it's that time of year, you know, when the weather gets a bit chilly and those walks back home at 1 AM from whatever study hole seem slightly darker and all you want to do is sit around at home and drink coffee and muse along to music...but I think I am starting to understand what P meant when she randomly told me at the beginning of the year that she wanted a husband.

Okay, let me preface this with two very clear statements:

1. I do not want to get married early, let alone anytime soon.

2. God is and will always be more than enough for me in the emotional sense.

I'm not saying that I legitimately wish I had a significant other because I feel "lonely" or because I have all this free time on my hands - in fact, I think it's the complete opposite. I am (or at least feel) just so busy that I simply can't stretch myself out over a ton of people (even though my heart goes out to a ton of people, and I wish I could devote 3 hours to each person I meet up with)...and so I don't know, I almost wish that I could just come back home and have the company of just one person, without having to exert too much energy constantly talking or doing fun things. I want to do boring things together: I make dinner, he does the dishes and takes out the trash, we read/do work and maybe take a break to watch a TV show or a movie (if it's the weekend), listen to the rain, etc. Nothing earth-shattering, just the simplicity of having one person always be there to share in the mundane moments.

Is this weird? Maybe I just need more prayer and more sleep. LOL k.

romans 3:23-24

Yesterday at service, P. Young made the church pray for the leaders (pastors/servants) for like 5-10 min-ish and it was really weird being at the front of B-1, facing the congregation. (I don't think I looked straight ahead even once...) And you know, I don't know what it is about praying about family group/serving/young'ns like the freshmen (babies!!!) and sophomores (still babies!!!) but every time we do something like that, I just burst out into tears. It's kind of ridiculous, and I hate it because my nose turns super red and I'm just a mess!

And you know what else? I'm not just a mess when I cry, but I'm a mess in general - I'm broken by my sin, stifled by my insecurities and jealousies, plagued with apathy and inaction, drained through physical/mental tiredness 7-days-a-week, and yet, somehow, somehow, I can give off the impression that I'm put together, that I know what I'm doing, that I have "wisdom" to share and "love" to give. What the heck. Seriously. And I say this incredulously because I know that it's definitely not me doing or saying anything worthwhile, it's the Holy Spirit. It's God being generous enough to bestow me with the privilege and the opportunity to serve the people around me, and even more than that - with the strength and the power to actually do something with it.

I really don't know what I have to offer as a co-servant, as a(n older) sister, and yet, every once in a while, God surprises me through a small comment or action and it's just so weird (SO WEIRD.) And so so so encouraging.

Dang.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

community

Yeah, the TV show is pretty good.

But more than that, I ♥ my family group.

The question came up in Bible study today (today being Tuesday) - Is it true that you have to know someone in order to love someone?

And you know what? Not necessarily. I don't know all my members' dreams, their fears, their pasts, their present struggles all that well quite yet, and still, I love them. I've loved them since before day 1. And maybe as I do get to know them, it might (ironically) be harder to love them at first, because of my own insecurities or prejudices or preferences. But love prevails - it covers over a multitude of sins, it breaks through barriers, it encourages and envelops. I think it's more true that as we love someone - not by our own capabilities but through God's infinite, abounding love - we want to know more.

So, openness is what we need. The ability to be crazy and emotional and raw and vulnerable, coupled with an environment that allows for healing and correcting and sympathizing and learning and laughing and being silly and singing "Don't Stop Believing" and "My Life Would Suck Without You" - that is the community I hope for this year :)

you know what i miss the most?

The knowing, silent glances - a slip of a smile before returning to our present individual conversations.

You know what's the hardest?

Having to hear someone talk about you like they know you or something...and pretending like I don't.