been a while

So I really haven't reflected too much on my first year of seminary. Would have helped if I could have breathed much as I walked through it and reflected along the way, but I'm realizing that involves discipline that I don't quite have yet but really, really want.

This summer has been a crazy one. A couple weeks ago my brother called to tell me our dad had died. There was a complication with the heart surgery was having and he died. My feelings on this were and are mixed. To me, he might as well have been dead the last 4 or so years as I haven't heard from him once since soon after leaving the US for 4 years in Korea. I've been back a year and still haven't heard from him. And now I never will. Sadly there are mostly positives for my life in his death. When I meet people for the first time, I don't have to really explain my situation. The whole being half Korean thing comes up generally when I first meet people, and I rarely am the one to bring it up. You'd be surprised as to how many people make it something. I end up assuming it is on everyone's mind and then I end up saying something. Besides that, it often is said that I was in Korea for 5 years and then I end up having to explain my family situation. It reminds me each time of the rejection I have received from my dad for years and years, even before he ended communication. But now, now when people ask where my dad is, I still don't know but I can just say, "He died." Instead of getting pity and feeling ashamed, I'll hopefully just get sympathy and be able to move on.

A couple days after this news, my grandpa in Korea died. News of this was expected starting about a week or so before it happened. He was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer, lots of inside stuff and had had it for a while without knowing. Thankfully he didn't have to suffer too long but it was a major shock as he was active and seemingly healthy up until the day the doctor diagnosed him. This is often why in other cultures families don't tell the elderly about diseases they have, it doesn't help them and takes usually takes away hope. But either way, that was pretty rough.

So that's been my summer amongst some other push-you-to-the-edge kind of things. There hasn't been a lot of opportunity to let it soak in and deal and when I do have the time, I honestly don't want to let it soak in or deal with it. I'm the pressing on kind of type, just keep moving until I get hit by a truck of emotions and such.

I'm discovering wounds I didn't know about along with old ones re-opening and new ones on top of all that. It's been an intense few weeks.

But here I am, one month left of the summer and a long list of tasks I need to accomplish and a bunch of things waiting for me when I get back to school.

A trip back to Russia is also waiting for me in the next couple weeks. I can't wait to get back in the routine of school and all that. Things will be different, and I'm hoping for the better.

My family and I could definitely use prayers. My mom doesn't know yet about my dad as my brother decided we should wait to tell her so she doesn't worry about us while she's dealing with stuff in Korea. Ironic how our dad died and so did hers but we can't connect on it at the moment. There's pain in that too.

truly delivered from death

Each day, each moment we are alive (even alive in Christ), we are delivered from death.

On Friday, Dad took home two dearly loved brothers from this Asbury community. Two Indian students were in a car accident and died at the scene. One of the guys is the husband of a pastor at the church I'm attending. It's been an intense few days. My heart breaks for the wives, who were only married to these men for under 2 years each..

Each day counts, each moment counts. I've been given some amazing days recently, discovering more about who I truly am in God's eyes as I see myself through Abe's eyes. I've been able to learn more about who God is. And I've been able to find out more about Abe and how wonderfully God made him.

This will be an interesting summer, I look forward to its adventures but also forward to when the fall semester starts. Year one of seminary is about over. I don't think I could begin in even just a few blog entries to describe it al, but I hope I get an opportunity to try.

changes

Since my last posting, there have been some changes. Spring has come and gone and come again. I think it's here to stay now, except it's still pretty cold at times.

The other big change is that I'm in a relationship now...with a boy. It's a pretty big deal, mostly how the LORD's been moving in it. It's making me rethink a lot of things I previously believed (and was stubborn about), especially concerning relationships.

These days I've been considering PDA (Public Displays of Affection). So, I've been against this for over a decade. And now, in my stubbornness, I have fought with the idea. I thinks it's just a matter of how many have ruined such things. I never really saw my parents interact physically, no hugs or anything. I know that I never want to be that extreme. I also know that I don't want to be gross about it. And even though the relationship is new, it's a matter of approaching it all in a healthy way, I suppose. Didn't figure this kind of stuff would be so complicated. It's kind of fun to figure this stuff out, even though it's hard for me to accept that what I've thought for so long might be wrong. Hmm.. I was thinking how a banning of PDA really wouldn't be so good. People don't get enough physical affection in modern society, especially in the American culture that it could be detrimental. I still don't think it's ok to just go hugging anybody, but at the same time, maybe that doesn't mean we shouldn't not hug anyone...

Anyways, still thinking on it and figuring how Jesus would handle this. How would Jesus feel about PDA? hehe.

Currently there are only 3 more weeks of classes, crazy. This summer is going to be intense...wondering how it will go. Should be pretty exciting!

snow in April

Looking out the window, the cars are lightly dusted, a week into April. People say it's normal...but not to me.

I know, but forget that people read this thing..hopefully that doesn't affect what I write. But over the past few weeks I have turned to keeping a "real" journal, that's where all the really good stuff is..hehe.

This past week confirmed my beliefs on life being more about the company you keep than the activities you do. Also, I'm more of an event planner than an activity planner. And apparently my navigating skills are getting better (or I'm depending on the Holy Spirit to guide me more?), but I still need to just purchase a GPS--less google maps to print out (too bad they don't make those for getting through life).

Hmm...can't really focus now, in class, but really gotta pee..waiting for that break..

divided together

It seems like spending time with people who understand me causes me to withdraw. It should encourage me, right? But then I feel a time of rejection in it, from what was real the moment before. I can laugh and talk in the cafeteria but somewhere in my soul doesn't like that space, it's not right, not really natural. The food is fake, the conversation is often fake, the politics are real. Together here, we are divided, separated. I reject the food before it can reject me. In rejecting the food, I reject all it stands for. Does that mean I reject those that consume it? Those that made it?

The moments I accept who I am and who others are and that it can exist together, those are the exact moments I'm challenged as to whether I can really accept what's in front of me, I'm divided.

Is this the life I want? Is this what God has for me?

Is that trigger simply deception in my heart? I know it makes me want to turn and run. Is it a lie I've believed for too long? I only know it as truth.

To be vulnerable, to be willing to be hurt, is it too scary? Is my fear overriding it? To sacrifice the comfortable for the awkward so that I can be true to me, is it something I can do or am willing to do?

The moment I say it, it's out there, it's done, everything changes. Is it actually real? My own thoughts scare me. Am I ready for this change, this jarring of my reality, the one I've known for more than 2 decades? I think it's the last thing I have left that hasn't changed over the last 10 years. I'm not sure I'm ready to give up the only stable thing that remains.

It's not all up to me, the control isn't all mine. I may never really be ready.

My heart is exploding with the possibilities, yet my head twists and turns my stomach in imaginable ways. They are divided together, not allowing for the joy to settle and stick and permeate it all.

I hate the unknown, I really do. For someone who loves change and can't stay in one place for more than months or a year at a time, I really despise not knowing. Yet I believe in a God I can't see. How does that work?

Either way, I will rejoice in this time. I will search and find the joy I know is there. The miserable joy that keeps me going each day. I awake to see what happens in the next episode, will it be as dramatic or as funny as the day before? How will the action rise and fall and will anything be resolved today? Will any new characters be introduced? Will any roles change? I guess I must wait for tomorrow's episode..

not getting any easier

Life's so much easier when you don't have to deal with conflict or change..but I guess you don't get those opportunities to grow, huh?

survival

I think I'm in survival mode. And I don't think it will last very long.

Seminary spoiler: apparently people in seminary aren't THAT different from people outside of seminary. The dorm, though containing people of varying ages and backgrounds, still is like Satan's playground in the sense of single women, many of whom hope to be married at some point (some sooner than others). I think I just hit this point of, was it enlightenment?, last semester going into the winter break where I realized that it really isn't or can't be about that. It's something so obvious to see, and to live it is not the easy path..but I'm here to know God, to go beyond the barrier of just knowing about God. Drama will find you wherever you go, but what will you do when it finds you?

How can the women here come together under that instead of be divided by it? The gossip and speculations (not that I'm above these things) simply help us destroy one another, no where near building each other up. How do you go beyond this? The change has to start here and I suppose it's a one-person-at-a-time sort of thing. But something needs to happen. This place should be safer than it is.

---

Well, this week is going to be intense. I think I already had one of these earlier in the semester, but I've forgotten about what that was like and maybe it wasn't as bad but it was similar. Here I am again, looking at a similarly full week..and at this point I'm only concerned with survival.

Here's the song I'm listening to (over and over) right now:

"Hope Now" by Addison Road

If everything comes down to love
Then just what am I afraid of
When I call out Your name
Something inside awakes in my soul
How quickly I forget I'm Yours

(PRE-CHORUS)
I'm not my own
I've been carried by You
All my life

(CHORUS)
Everything rides on hope now
Everything rides on faith somehow
When the world has broken me down
This love sets me free

When my life is like a storm
Rising waters all I want is the shore
You say I'll be ok and
Make it through the rain
You are my shelter from the storm

You've become my hearts desire
I will sing Your praises higher
Cause Your love sets me free
Your love sets me free
Your love sets me free

This love sets me free
Your love sets me free
This love sets me free
Your love sets me free
Your love sets me free
Your love sets me free

"How quickly I forget I'm Yours/I'm not my own"..how true is that?

I'm already free in Him! Now I look to understanding what that freedom means..

attacks

Today just seemed like constant attacking..

Even to the end..he had to tell me..then attacks ensued or continued..

I think I need to take my tips from Joseph (Old Testament)..time to flee..

But running away is what I used to do..when is it ok?

unwilling

As much as I should buckle down and get my work done, I know it's not what I should do at the moment, I need to process or something. This might not be the best place, but it makes me feel less crazy, sometimes..

My room is a mess, clothes (mostly clean) covering the extra bed, my drying rack with only a couple dried items hanging on it, the other desk covered in all kinds of stuff, not even sure what lies beyond the first couple layers, four boxes sit stacked and squashed between the beds, waiting to be unpacked..

And then there's my mind and heart, full of who knows what?! I guess they are waiting to get unpacked to, but that's the last thing on my list, pushed further down, deeper to a point where I don't put it on the list. Too many urgent things, I manage to get in some conversations with God, at least I say stuff, and I read the Word here and there, much of the time in preparation of sermons or when I'm listening to a sermon. When do I get to stop?

I honestly am not sure what the sermon was about this morning, trusting in God or something. But some things that I think have been surfacing over the past couple weeks, yes, the semester is only a couple weeks old though it feels like a lifetime..

Have you seen the movie Penelope? It's not super new, but not too old either. Christina Ricci plays this girl who is cursed (basically through a generational sin) and born with a pig nose and pig ears. She's still cute, but the curse goes..until she finds someone of her own kind to love her, she will remain that way. Her mother keeps her behind this glass, in a part of the house, to protect her and suitors of the same upper class show up to see if they will marry her. Generally they go screaming from the house when they catch sight of her. I'm about to ruin the movie, but I'd still see it regardless, so don't let the spoiler stop you. Anyways, Penelope and her family basically are hardened by the condition she has, so set on making things right. In the end, she meets a guy who likes her for her but he's not rich. Well, you find out it doesn't matter because Penelope herself can break the spell. Sadly, this leads into the fact that her mother and father could have remedied the situation the WHOLE time if they had only really loved their daughter for who she was instead of who she could be. They all live happily ever after in the end, but today toward the end of the worship service, I really started to think about this movie.
As I type this, my sweaty hands, which are now stinging from the guitar playing at church breaking the skin at the tips of my fingers and now those tips gathering the salty sweat in the cuts as I quickly type and hit these sore pads against the keys of my computer..these sweaty hands that have plagued me since I was 5 or so..I hate them. They hinder me from many things, like I can't just shake someone's hand or feel ok with holding people's hands in prayer, and I even have to plan ahead for a hug. I'd have a lot less physical interaction to consider in daily life if I wasn't a Christian, those greeting times on Sunday are a nightmare, any time there's the possibility of hand-holding prayer fills me with anxiety and disgust, and guitar playing isn't too easy either.
Last night, on the way home from the Toby Mac concert, we ended up on the topic of my sweaty hands, I think because at the end of the concert everyone was asked to hold hands for prayer and luckily I had long sleeves AND only one person sitting next to me, so I was prepared and went for it. Sarah's friend Julie asked if I'd hold hands with my boyfriend (which I currently don't have, so don't get worried that I'm withholding info), and I said no. She went on to say that a guy wouldn't care. If a guy liked me, sweaty hands wouldn't matter. Apparently she suffers from the same thing though I doubt they are as serious. And she asked Abe, the only boy in the car, if she was correct. He said yeah, that unless the guy was really shallow, he wouldn't care. But I care. It makes me uncomfortable which causes my hands to sweat all the more.

I've been encountering many people over the last few weeks and months who struggle with letting God love them in the sense that they can't fully accept it. I'm pretty sure I have that problem, but I wonder if I can't even love myself? How do we love our neighbor as ourselves if we don't love us?

Has my heart hardened so much that I can't love myself, let alone allow anyone else to love me? Will I ever be able to? I'm ok with God. I trust God, I really do, but maybe I don't? Maybe I don't trust God enough to protect me against people, like the people I've encountered growing up who apparently regardless of whether they've been forgiven or not, have deeply wounded me. I don't trust people most of the time, I've gotten to be really independent. Sometimes I don't want to be like that, but it's all I know. It's all I know in family life, in ministry, in my academics..having people lean on me and ask me for help continues to perpetuate that attitude and if they don't know what they are doing, how do I trust them to help me?

I can either do it all on my own or figure out how to get it done. I know God is with me and people have totally helped me along the way. I know and believe I wouldn't be here typing this without God using many people in my life. It doesn't make sense in the end. The times I've been surrounded by people, I truly believe I couldn't have done it without them, but somehow those experiences quickly become peripheral and there I am again, me and God.

I guess it does all come down to trust. I'll trust God enough to sell my possessions and move to Korea without any idea of what to do next, and I'll trust God enough to come back to America and go to school in the middle of Kentucky..but can I trust Him to protect me from harm? He's not a safe Being, I know that..and that's what draws me to Him, but it's what repels me from people. How can that be?

I know this isn't ok, I know that something has to break. But what? And when? Better yet, how?

I kind of hope this is too long for people to read, so maybe a few will glance over these words, but I had to put it out there. It's like my public confession of faith, though it seems the problem is the lack of faith? The point is, if I didn't want to take a step closer to Him, then this wouldn't bother me, so I cling to that hope.

It reminds me of the "boyfriend" I had early my freshmen year of high school, I think it lasted like a month or two..in the hallway before school or whenever, we'd stand near my locker and when someone would walk by and he'd take a step toward me so they could get around, I'd always take a step back of equal or greater value. It was like there was an invisible barrier between us. It was even natural, I didn't know I was doing it until he or someone pointed it out. I don't think it made me stop. But I know I don't want that with God.

It's like I'm some wild animal, and God's not sure what I'll do next, like will I attack out of fear? So He approaches slowly, one slow step at a time, with His hand out, in a non-aggressive way, for me to sniff at until I'm comfortable. Am I going to back up and run off? Am I going to stand my ground, ready to fight? Or am I going to move closer to Him?

I want to move closer..

Am I Asian?

Sitting in this Advanced Issues in Cross-Cultural Counseling class really causes me to wonder how the heck I've functioned decently for as long as I have. The issues are being brought up and dealt with so differently between Western and non-Western cultures that I can see me acting in each. Weird.

I can see how that gap is really difficult to jump across but using certain labels such as "denial" are very dangerous. Something in the "other" culture could be denial on one culture but it's not in the other. It's very much like the gap between Christians and non-Christians. How do we stand in the gap of that when we are Christians and we believe strongly in that? But the thing is, we HAVE TO STAND IN THE GAP. We have to be in the place to see both sides and understand both sides. Yes, we are going to believe one and relate to one but we have to pull the two together so that the "other" can join us in the gap and hopefully choose Jesus. When it's cultural, which side they believe is not as important, what's important there might just be to get them in the gap. The gap is a rough place.

Honestly, if I understand myself as "Asian" many of my actions make much more sense. But if I only use that lens to view myself then it wouldn't make sense. To sometimes replace that with an "American" lens then there is a balance and it makes sense in why and how I respond as I do.