Godly Parents

My mom's friend's friend's friend took me to his home fellowship today. Basically it was like 60 people packed in an apartment living room, singing typical Chinese songs, probably stream-of-praise. It was like churchAndcell group all in one go, 30 min of worship, an hour message, then dinner, then discussion. Not much different from the US.

I am so encouraged because this couple that brought me to the fellowship is so nice to me even though they don't even know my mom or anything. They are so interested in getting to know me even though there really is no reason to, and they ask me how everything is, remember what I tell them, and really treat me like I'm their daughter or niece (even though they already have a daughter my age). The couple reminds me of my mom. If you are ever a guest in my home and you understand Chinese, my mom will try to give you 50 years worth of wisdom in her stories, all of which are amazing. Anyway, I really love this couple. They are so in sync with each other and so god-centered in the way they think and in their conversations. When you are around them, you can just feel the love. It is amazing.

My mom just got their phone number from some 3rd hand source and called them and asked them if I could meet them. And then called me and told me to go meet them. You gotta love Moms. They always want the best for you and are willing to go farther than you to get it for you.

This past semester, whenever I heard of (or saw) or thought of people falling away from God, or drifting from God, this protectiveness feeling would sweep over me, like I wanted to go punch the devil in the face and grab these drifting-away people from the drift. and protect them. But the only thing I could do was pray. One time I was reading someone's blog, who was drifting away. and I was reading her thoughts on her blog and found myself yelling at my computer to her out of anger/protectiveness because the devil was deceiving her. Another time, I found myself imagining myself slapping someone really hard who I knew was contemplating suicide. And many times I have imagined myself hugging /locking my arms around someone who was depressed, and not letting go, even though they have this nonchalant, unaffected expression on their face.

I forgot why that was relevant. oh yes, today I was reminded of the protectiveness feeling because I felt it, forgot towards who though. And then I thought to myself that the me from this past semester would probably be feeling very protective of the current me. and praying hard for me. and maybe crying on the inside. And this thought of me crying for me greatly encouraged me. and reminded me of what I used to feel and believe, and how real it used to be. And how much God cries for me.

In Detail

I haven't really complained elaborately for a while, though there are things to complain about. I don't really mean 'complain' though. It's more like describing my thoughts and feelings in detail to someone, except since there are currently more negative realizations and feelings, I call it complaining. And I think that perhaps only when you complain in detail and spit it all out, do you really feel better. Usually because the person listening to you says something Godly that changes your mindset. But sometimes simply because they cared to listen and understand.

Love. because listening is loving. And Love changes your mindset. And often the reason you felt like there was something to complain about was because you had forgotten Love. You had forgotten that you are loved by the One who cannot love you any more or any less because He already loves you fully. You are loved. Did you know that? You are loved. You are loved.

You are loved.

With that being said, it's great to complain in detail to God, to the One who loves you. and then encourage yourself afterwards with His Truth, like what the author of Psalm 42 does, and what I had originally intended this blog to do for me.

Lying for people

I hate doing it. But I've never really been strong enough to "betray" a friend to defend the truth. And most of the time I can't figure out something smart to say to avoid having to say the truth. So I just end up saying "I don't know", which is a lie. Or, "she's not here" when she really is.

I've already lied twice for two diffrent people here, and I felt terrible doing it. I also don't like doing it because I don't like it when there is distance/a barrier between "authority" figures and myself. Or when it's like they're on one side and we're on the the other side.

It's hard to tell the truth.
It's hard to defend the truth.

The Answer

I have found
The Answer is
To love you and be Loved by You alone

Went running with this song replaying over and over again, and I wanted to shout/sing at the people on the streets that line

Glad for Discerning Christians

After work, while walking/metro-ing back, a friend's strong opinion on the idea of 'best friends' rang in my head. Her argument was fairly convincing. I agreed with her but in my head I knew I was open to different opinions as well. And today, her convincing points made think a lot and made me quite insecure. I ended up bringing up this topic to my flatmates and both of them disagreed quite strongly with my other friend.

The Christian flatmate talked about how some people have identity issues, and that my other friend's idea isn't really healthy. The flatmate broke down some of the convincing arguments of the other friend.

So glad to have others around me who can remind me of the godly perspective when I get confused.

Discerning is really hard these days, especially with the subtle messages sent in movies. This one church next to my home (it's basically like a mega church in size), had a "sermon series" where they watched key clips of a popular movie each week (one week Avatar, one week Eat-Pray-Love, etc.) and then the pastor would summarize the movie, play a key clip and then talk about which parts are true and which parts seem to be true, but are slightly off. And of course, he would use the bible to support his point. And then he'd play the next clip or summarize the next part of the movie,etc. At first I was a bit cautious about this kind of service/message, since it's not very conventional to show clips of movies and have a sermon on discerning the movie, but then after coming here, I realized that we really need that. It's the little distortions that are the most harmful. Things that sound like it's Christian philosophy but is just a bit off. Of course I understand that almost all the people I know would still vote for a Church that goes through the bible. I really feel that at this stage, Americans need the former also, and probably more so... you need to help them/us discern the truth, and then we will be hungry for more of the truth and go read the word ourselves or something.

Anyway the Church is Princeton Alliance Church. Here's the sermon series if you are curious. (The link is to the current series: God at the box office. If you access it later on, you'll have to find it in the archives). I only heard the Eat-Pray-Love one which I liked. My mom said she liked the Avatar one too. Neither of us have watched the movies lol, but now we don't need to since they summarize the whole movie in the sermon.

Supervisor

First "review" today; my supervisor checks up on us (Jared and I) each week; we show her what we did, ask questions, discuss, revise the assignment and add more tasks, etc.

I came out of the review totally blown away. Everything was so unexpected. My supervisor wasn't trying to give off the professionally-nice-but-scary aura, that I kind of felt before. She talked like my mom when my mom preaches to me about life; she tried to guess what we were thinking and then encouraged us with the way life is, or how she first started at the company, or what things will be like when we start our careers. She told us we can feel free to walk around and talk to the other employees and make friends; the company doesn't force employees to work continuously all day. And she said that she is talking to HR to pay us some "allowance money" (something we were not expecting). After addressing any possible potential frustrations we might have had (but didn't voice) and encouraging us, and telling us why+how our work really helps the company, etc, she ended the meeting, but then quickly remembered and asked "oh, and how is Shanghai? Are you enjoying it?" She looked at us when she asked the question too. It was amazing. She covered everything. It was like she just read How to Win Friends and Influence People or something (which by the way, is so good, a must read/common-sense-that-we-don't-realize book). EQ man.

Basically she motivated us with external reward (money), internal reward (how important our job is to the company), and connection/friendship (her friendliness and encouraging us to talk to other coworkers, etc.) I think it kind of worked too. But most of all I was just blown away by how professional and capable/no-nonsense-ish she could be, while at the same time being so genuinely friendly and caring.

This happens a lot to me. I just think about people and am totally blown away at how unique or amazing they are. Really. I can think about my mom (or my dad) and just be in total awe. and probably at least a handful of other people or more. And sometimes, I just think that everyone is so cute, as in their personality or the way they are. And it's so cool that they are so unique and that they tend to have X type of opinions or feelings. I wonder how God sees us, and what He thinks of us. Wouldn't it be amazing to know/experience?

Significance

It feels really good when people are interested in knowing you. I'm not talking about girl-guy relationships, but any kind of friendship or acquaintanceship or interaction. It feels good when people are interested in getting to know you, when they ask you questions, when they want to know you, and the way they ask, their eye contact, tone, what they ask, etc.

You can pretty much tell from your first interaction with someone, if they care at all. and then along the way of the friendship/acquaintanceship, their interest level might randomly increase due to a variety of reasons, or slowly decrease. Or remain constant. Or slowly decrease and then at some occurrence/knowledge, spike up. Or increase exponentially, then die off. Etc.

The things that spark people's interest are quite interesting and vary from crowd to crowd, person to person.

At work, my Chinese coworkers are interested in me because I'm American, and because I go to Cornell.

Among the interns, at the house parties, I notice when I'm ignored and what type of person tends to ignore me, and what type of person I can have a conversation with. And I notice what other people do, gesture-wise, tone-of-voice-wise, and what they say, to carry on a fun conversation/interaction with those who would ignore me. Sometimes I take mental notes.

What's my point? What do we want? We want to be important, significant, to be loved, to be valued. And sometimes we feel that certain things need to be improved or changed for us to gain more recognition/respect/love. Maybe we need to dress better, to smile more, to open doors for people, to be funny, to be deep, to act genuine, to have more facial expressions, to be proactive, to help people, to study harder, to be on time, to be clean, to sacrifice, to be more responsible, to be interesting, to be able to fix things, to be knowledgeable, to read more, to speak more languages, to be taller, to be more athletic, to have better family relations, to go to seminary, to have firm handshakes, to have better posture, to be fit, to hug people non-awkwardly, to be a better writer, to have experienced pain, to have gone to places, to have influential connections, to have talent, to have straight hair, to have a taller nose, to have a beautiful voice, to be a leader, to be nice, to not care, to watch sports, to play guitar, to have money to spend, to be easy-going, to say profound things, to touch people's shoulders when speaking, to have whiter teeth, to be healthy, to have fewer issues, to have a best friend, to be in control, to have goals, to not have goals, to be a natural, to talk faster, to talk slower, etc.

I remember in high school, the last day of school of my junior year, I was really bummed out when the person before me who finished his final was able to give the English teacher a hug, but when I finished my final, the teacher didn't get up from her desk to give me a hug. I even waited for a few seconds. From that final on, I made it my goal to hug the rest of my teachers after my final in their classes to make up for the epic fail. My friends gave me tips, saying that I needed to hold my arms out so they know I want a hug. It was pretty dumb now looking back. Yet I still haven't improved much in social ability.

So yes, I have been taking more mental notes lately. It can be good if I use it as a tool to relate to people better. It can be bad if I base my self-confidence on how greatly I improve in the areas I take mental notes on.

This is all kind of pointless. Yet we have to adjust a bit to meet people where they are, to better relate to people, to gain some trust, to get into the world. But never forgetting where our identity lies, that God is all we have and God is who we need. That He loves us and His desire is for us.

Let it be real.

Btw: I am in Shanghai. This site is blocked but someone is posting for me.

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I’m blogging because I think it’s okay and perhaps even good to blog when you are struggling.

I still love God. And God still loves me. God still loves me more.

You love me more than I am able to love You.

Imagine that. Someone who always loves you more than you are able to love back. Someone who waits for you. Patience is not the literal act of doing, but it is love. It is not sitting still, waiting for someone while being super fidgety and anxious on the inside, with eyes looking all about for something interesting to occupy the mind/time. Rather, it is waiting with longing eyes. With all affection and energy turned towards the person. He waits for me because He loves me, because He is patient and gentle with me.

God. I feel like Hosea’s wife. I can’t believe I can so quickly/readily go back to God even after sinning. As much as I feel ashamed and unworthy, I still know that God is all I have. And because I know He loves me and accepts me back, I no longer feel ashamed and unworthy, but humbled and brought to repentance by His kindness. I feel fear, because I know that I am clearly in the wrong. And that I deserve any punishment He decides to give me. Yet I was not the one punished.

We need to know and repeatedly know the reality of God’s Kingdom. Otherwise, we might impulsively trade our inheritance for a bowl of soup. God is worth it. God is worth it Jamie. God is worth it. but I can’t always see that. Or perhaps, even if I know that God is worth it, I don’t always act like I know that. I do not do what I want to do ~Romans 7