The Long Day Is Over - Norah Jones

 Please play this song at my funeral. 

Birkman Basic Info

You enjoy creative tasks which involve using your imagination. By nature you are likely to be a strategic rather than a tactical thinker, more drawn to ideas and pure research areas than to tangible matters

You are generally thoughtful, insightful particularly with individuals, and a careful decision-maker who prefers to think matters through before committing to action

You respond best to a low-key environment which is structured to some extent but also encourages reflection. You are most comfortable in surroundings which are based on team loyalties rather than individual, competitively-based achievement

Every Good Endeavor _ Tim Keller

 "If we are to be God's image-bearers with regard to creation, then we will carry on his pattern of work. His world is not hostile, so that it needs to be beaten down like an enemy. Rather, its potential is undeveloped, so it needs to be cultivated like a garden. So we are not to relate to the world as park rangers, whose job is not to change their space, but to preserve things as they are. Nor are we to 'pave over the garden' of the created world to make a parking lot. No, we are to be gardeners who take an active stance toward their charge. They do not leave the land as it is. They rearrange it in order to make it most fruitful, to draw the potentialities for growth and development out of the soil. They dig up the ground and rearrange it with a goal in mind: to rearrange the raw material of the garden so that it produces food, flowers, and beauty. And that is the pattern for all work. It is creative and assertive. It is rearranging the raw material of God's creation in such a way that helps the world in general, and people in particular, thrive and flourish." 

"Before coming to the United States, I knew what others know: that the cruelty of its borders was only a thin crust, and that on the other side a possible life was waiting," she concludes. "I understood, some time after, that once you stay here long enough, you begin to remember the place where you originally came from the way a backyard might look from a high window in the deep of winter: a skeleton of the world, a tract of abandonment, objects dead and obsolete. And once you're here, you're ready to give everything, or almost everything, to stay and play a part in the great theater of belonging."

Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions 

"How much is a little girl worth?"

Rachael Denhollander

i wish we could be friends

your protection of me is love. but it also causes injury. every time i begin to heal, another slew of hurtful words tears open past wounds. vast difference from so much of the same. in the pain i will remember the steps we've taken forward. and i will pray that this wishing will some day become hoping instead. 

“Come, and see the victories of the cross. Christ’s wounds are thy healings, His agonies thy repose, His conflicts thy conquests, His groans thy songs, His pains thine ease, His shame thy glory, His death thy life, His sufferings thy salvation.”

– Matthew Henry

“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. — Habakkuk 3:17-18

Tears

These months are marked by dreary nights filled with raging thoughts. I see my fingers standing lightly above the keys, patiently waiting for a green light. Except nothing. I type and then I erase unable to get a grip on my own feelings and intentions. The insanity that fills my mind creates a bottleneck and any chance at coherence disappears. Ideas and realizations and memories jumbled together. My own head rebels against me.  I refuse to word vomit.  My mental draft inbox is overflowing. I refuse to let it sit and waste away to rot.  I need it to make sense.  I absolutely need to make sense of it.  But all I can do is cry. Then, a surprise. My groans and sobs create a language more comprehensible than the words that so often escape me.  I'm grateful that my prayers are known and understood before I pray them, before they come to even exist within me. The rhythmic pattern of my sniffling, muffled wailing, and then gasping for air speaks a much better and satisfying word. And though I am tired and weighed down by my heavy eyes, after the tears I am tremendously relieved. My heart stilled. I've come to express, finally, what a string of words could never fully communicate.

Helen Roseveare

"I found frequently that I climbed in glorious sunshine...my face set determinedly for the nearest peak I could see.  As I reached it, I revelled in the sense of achievement and victory and in the glorious view...Then, slowly, my imagination would be caught by the next peak ahead...and eventually the resolve would form to set off upwards again...

As I went down from the present peak into the valley between the mountains, I was often shadowed by the very peak I had been enjoying.  This I interpreted in a sense of failure and this often led to despair...I see now that I was wrong...The going down was merely an initial moving forward towards the next higher ground, never a going back to base level, so to speak.  The shadow was only relative after the brightness of the sun; the valley could provide a period of rest for working out the experiences previously learnt, a time for refreshment prepatory for the next hard climb.  Had I understood this meaning of the sunshine and shadow in my life rather than interpreting my various experiences along life's way as 'up' and 'down,' I might have saved myself many deep heartaches."

                                                                                                           

And Can It Be That I Should Gain?

He left His Father’s throne above
So free, so infinite His grace—
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam’s helpless race:
’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For O my God, it found out me!

Clive Staples Lewis

"Imagine yourself a living house. [You ask God to make some repairs.] At first...He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on...But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of...You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace."    -Mere Christianity
                     

               

my heart hurts because my mind suffers alone.

it's not that i don't believe. i simply reject you in my anger and confusion. no answer bodes well with me. i don't ask you because i've come to believe that i won't like what i hear. i lie. to myself. to others. i lie. i am not satisfied with what i see. every taste is bland. every touch too rough or too soft for my liking. the smell too pungent. the noise resounding in my ear is nothing but.

my approval and my understanding are all that matter to me. 

i scream, "you on the throne, get off!"  because at moments, i can't help but feel in the deepest parts of me that you might be, i daresay, incredibly incapable of doing your job. 

cruelty. injustice. powerlessness.

cruel because you reveal your strength in our weakness. cruel because hope comes after suffering. cruel because there's a gaping hole in our hearts. hearts that are impure and broken even as we exit the womb. cruel because we enter a world of pain in pain and at the pain of another. cruel because we learn from hardship. cruel because psychology says no one is to blame and yet according to your word, we are all to blame. cruel because we only know and see in part. cruel because the breach between infinity and man seems far too great.  cruel because you allow internal suffering.  cruel because freedom comes at too high a cost.

unjust because the innocent die atrocious deaths.  unjust because the innocent suffer for the sins of others. 

powerlessness because the already and not yet seems like a hoax. why must we wait?

why must we still see and experience pain and suffering? is suffering the only way? is there no other way...no other narrative through which your master plan can unfold? does the maker of time need time himself? or are you simply entertained? (going back to cruelty)

i am man.

i do not know.

i am scared of stepping out.

this is who i am.

this is all i know.

don't you pity me? does not an inventor continuously repair his malfunctioning device until it is perfect and pleasing to its maker?  have i gone past the stage of repair? am i a lost cause? have i spoken words that are meant to be unspoken? am i revealing feelings that are meant to be ignored? doubts that are meant to be concealed?

will i never be fully satisfied?
will i always distort the gospel for my sake?

will i always question? 

will the ground beneath me never cease to shake?

I lay down and slept; 
I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.
Psalm 3:5

     "Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. He will only do harm to himself and to the community. Alone you stood before God when he called you; alone you had to answer that call; alone you had to struggle and pray; and alone you will die and give an account to God. You cannot escape from yourself; for God has singled you out. If you refuse to be alone you are rejecting Christ's call to you, and you can have no part in the community of those who are called. 'The challenge of death comes to us all, and no one can die for another. Everyone must fight his own battle with death by himself, alone ..... I will not be with you then, nor you with me' (Luther).
      But the reverse is also true: Let him who is not in community beware of being alone. Into the community you were called, the call was not meant for you alone; in the community of the called you bear your cross, you struggle, you pray. You are not alone, even in death, and on the Last Day you will be only one member of the great congregation of Jesus Christ. If you scorn the fellowship of the brethren, you reject the call of Jesus Christ, and thus your solitude can only be hurtful to you. 'If I die, then I am not alone in death; if I suffer they [the fellowship] suffer with me' (Luther)."

-Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Embracing and Celebrating The Ordinary

 “Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.”

Click here for a refreshingly honest and encouraging read from the NYTimes.

On Dreams

I have big dreams. Bigger than my heart can hold. A deep and undeniable presence within me, my dreams weigh heavily and unbalanced. They morph. They scream with passion though I must be extremely careful for they have the tendency to scamper away at the mere peep of dissension. The faintest whispers of such outside voices are enough to do the deed. Voices that do not hesitate to remind me of my limitations. My humanness. They yank me down from cloud nine to planet earth, sometimes crushing me to the ground, slamming my face into the dirt. The pain is too much for me to bear at times, forcing me to shamefully reenter the puny box that I had shaped for myself. It's a home that I'd started building for myself ever since my first encounter with criticism. Brutal, unadulterated yet truthful criticism. I remember how badly it hurt. The lasting pain. A sting about which one desperately tries to forget without success. The exposure. The naked truth. A pair of eyes, though terrifyingly not my own, had shone light upon my capabilities, which were no more than scanty. My already overflowing bin of shortcomings being brought under the spotlight. Labeling, defining, measuring me. And what absolutely crushed me to the bone was the fact that I had no control over these thoughts, perceptions, and truth claims made about me. And so I learnt to hide. I am the tip of the iceberg concealing most of who I am, carefully revealing only an amount that I have decided through calculation that I can control. Withholding and disclosing at my own discretion. However during this process, I had begun burying my dreams, muffling the once loud and clear sound of my heart's deepest longings. Fortunately for myself, however, my dreams are and remain wild and untamed. They run freely and continue to grow without my mind's consent. And for that I am thankful.

I used to feel stupid. Embarrassed to have dreams of such immensity, but that guilt is slowly diminishing as I reflect more and more upon just how I've come to be such a dreamer. And that reason is undoubtedly my parents. They have taught me how to dream, and I mean really dream. I suppose all children of immigrants, to some degree, share this same sentiment. I wonder what was running through their minds at the airport in Korea, each with one carry-on in hand, a couple thousand dollars, and of course, a one-way ticket to the United States. My father had recently arrived back home after having worked in Saudi Arabia, leaving my mom husbandless for a year. I cannot begin to fathom the considerations and compromises which led to this ultimate decision. Were their families supportive? Who initiated the conversation, my mother or my father, about possibly emigrating to a place they've only read and heard about? What I would do to go back in time. To have been a fly on the wall during this life-shaping part of their marriage... After 24 years of living in America, I can only imagine the emotions and memories that now overwhelm them in their times of retrospection.

Being home after graduating from college is rather difficult. On the bright side, though, I can't imagine myself being anywhere other than in Albany to process the past twenty one and a half years of my life. This is namely because I have the two most helpful resources to guide me in a time of mental and emotional turmoil, assuring me that all the chaos that exists inside my head is absolutely natural. That I have no reason to fear what my future may hold simply because of the good and perfect nature of the One who holds my future. That dreaming big, in the right context, is healthy and necessary. That my dreams, too, hold both weight and meaning.

This Race We Run

You'd think the second time around I'd learn from my past mistakes, but I'm just as ill-prepared if not worse off than I was in my sophomore year, which was when I decided to run a half marathon for fun. What was I thinking?

As horrifically unprepared as I am, I want to make the effort to prepare myself mentally and spiritually during these final 3 days. Physically, the training has been difficult. I don't know if it's because of my new sneakers or because I drastically changed my form in the past couple weeks, but my shins, ankles, and achilles are not happy with me right now. Nevermind my so-called nutritious diet...completely threw that out the window on day 2, which is the way everything always seems to pan out in my life. le sigh.

Nevertheless, I think it would be fitting to fast until my race which is on Saturday. Fasting a few things, literally, but more importantly, fixing my gaze upon what motivated me to sign up again in the first place. Why this idea of running a marathon is so significant to me and my belief in God. I need to regain focus and appeal to the one who can heal me and restore me in all the ways that I'm looking for right now and in all the ways past. From one angle, I'm pretty much screwed for this half marathon; I'm nowhere near ready, but I think that's the point.

Simply Put

I need to get my shit together.

Sometimes

Sometimes I feel as though I'm in the middle of a terrible dream in which I've found myself trapped on the express train headed to an unknown destination. The pace of life moving faster and faster the longer I stay on. I look up to read where the next stop will be. I incline my ears to the speakers, desperately wanting to hear the automated voice determine my fate. But I neither see nor hear anything. And with a tired sigh, I sit down on the lavender seats, sitting across no one, finding absolutely no comfort in the fact that I feel, in that moment, completely alone.

I'd be lying to myself if I didn't say I was scared about my future. In fact, I'm petrified, but I don't want to say it out loud just yet. I'm afraid I'll fall apart once I hear my voice say those words as I release them into the world. Into my world, making it that much more tangible and real. Because somehow I've convinced myself that as long as the actual thoughts don't leave my lips, they'll remain a mystery and thus cannot be one way or the other. However trivial or serious, things left unsaid will remain that way, and will not come to fruition.

Sometimes, it's as if I'm having an outer-body experience, a bit like watching a movie about my life, and in this third person perspective, I see a scared, hurt, and stubborn little girl, eyes tightly shut, hands over her ears, too cold and calloused to cry. Too proud to open up and ask for help. In another scene, I see a disproportionate human being with a humongous inflated head on top of a tiny little body, arms and legs barely visible. Eyes wide open, but an apparent emptiness within. A posture communicating false composure. Clear discomfort heard in her voice. Shaking and out of breath.

Sometimes, for sanity's sake, I decide not to go to class and stay in my apartment instead. I realize that spiritual death is a real thing. I'm reminded of how much bigger life is than the realm of Grace Rhee. That life goes beyond New York City and the 80 or so years that most of us assume we'll live. Sometimes I become all dramatic because it's necessary. I hear my neighbors downstairs playing the same song over and over again, but just the introduction, trying to get the opening of a song on their guitar. And in this moment, when I attempt to envision my life in 5 years, 3 months...I see nothing but a large grey cloud...hell, I can't even see past tomorrow, but all I know is that I don't know. However, my unbelief in the only thing that makes sense in this world proves that I am completely unstable, and therefore to depend on my own efforts to plan out the most perfect life for myself would be absolutely absurd. Nevertheless, quite strangely, in my perpetual cycle of unbelief, I fling myself onto believing all the more as my eyes are opened to the vast areas of life that are, and have been, out of my control.