What it looks like

A lot of imagery ran through my mind today as I was thinking about what love looks like, what "more of God" looks like, what the Kingdom of God on Earth looks like.

Love.
Images of my Mexico trip, when I visited El Pozo de Vida flowed through my mind, especially all the staff who help run the safe house for the trafficked-but-rescued girls. I thought of how some girls try to run away from the safe house. As a staff member, it's like, you love these girls and want to help them, but they don't even always want your help. It's like when you adopt a kid and the kid hates you and says you don't love them. The day by day life is hard. It's not just hard, but it's boring. You need to tell them to drink water, brush their teeth, and all the mundane things.

In summary, love is dirty. Love gets its hands dirty. And love is mundane. Love goes through the mundane with people. And over time, slowly but surely, you see change. Over a long period of time. But even after the girls grow up and are happy and healed and leave the house at age 18, sometimes they still get boyfriends and live in with them after a couple weeks of dating. It makes you wonder if someone can truly ever be whole if they were dealt a bad hand of cards in the beginning. But that's what love looks like. It looks ugly, but it's steadfast and never gives up.

Revival, miracles, Kingdom of God, more of God.
what does that look like?
Our cell group recently read Mark 8-10.
In Mark 8:31 , Mark 9:9, and Mark 10:33, Jesus tells his disciples that He will die on the cross, but all three times, the disciples don't get it. They don't get it because they're still thinking about how they can be the greatest. In Mark 9:34, they're arguing about who is the greatest, and then again in Mark 10:37, two of his disciples are still thinking about how to be the greatest by asking to sit on Jesus' right and left side.

Throughout the gospel of Mark, it just feels like Jesus is telling them the same thing over and over again, and they just don't get it. Jesus is continually trying to change the way they think about things, and He continually explains the Kingdom of God from different angles, using different analogies. But even then, they don't get it.

It's interesting to me that Jesus healed people instantly--like the blind, the lame, the dead, etc. But when it comes to transforming our mindsets and renewing the disciples' mind, it takes so much time. It was easier to teach the disciples how to pray for others for healing, than to get them to understand the Kingdom of God. But Jesus is patient and loving, and explains things over and over again.

that's what love looks like. Sometimes things only take an instant, and we see miracles. People may change instantly if things all of a sudden click for them. They may encounter God and change their ways. Or it can take years and years of renewing your mind.

But that's what love is. Love is patient. Love gets its hands dirty. Love takes time. Love is mundane. Love is a process

How are you?

I always feel like I need to be able to answer the question: "How are you?" in a deep way.

Not just when my close friends ask me that question, but even if I ask myself that question. It really really bothers me, when I don't know how I am doing, or I can't provide some deep blow-your-mind-away insightful response to that question.

Sophomore year of college, I had a roommate who was really bad at answering this question. My guess is because she wasn't really in touch with her feelings. She was more into her personal hobbies and interests, and probably didn't think about her feelings or how she was doing very often. Every time, I asked her how she was doing, she would hesitate and not know how to answer, and then be like: stop asking me that. 

I feel like a lot of people, when they're asked "how are you?", they'll just be like: I'm good. work is good/busy/tiring. Blah blah blah is going on in my life. going to XYZ vacation in a few weeks, so I'm excited. 

Like basically, they list off some events in their life, but they don't talk about heart-level stuff or deep revelations that God revealed to them about their heart. 

It's hard for me to consider someone a close friend if the friend doesn't share heart-level stuff. In the same way, if I am unable to "share" heart-level stuff with myself (aka, if I'm just unaware of what's going on in my heart), I get really bothered. Like why can't I come up with some deep answer to that question? Why is my mind going blank when I think about how I'm doing?

The past year has had a lot of highs and lows. Overall, more joyful and happy as a whole. But the "problem" with that, is when you're super happy in life, it's really hard to come up with a deep answer to "how are you doing?", because the answer is that you're just so happy. And you're really enjoying hanging out with friends and significant other. You enjoy church, ministry, cell group, friends, work, activities and you're truly living in the present and not thinking too deeply about how your "heart" is doing. Everything seems happy and fine. But for some reason, I'm not able to live like that very long. I don't feel alive or like myself if I can't come up with some deep insightful answer to: "how are you doing?"

If I can't answer that question deeply, I feel like it means I am not really connecting to the deepest parts of my psyche and heart. That connection is what makes me feel human and feel like myself. That connection and understanding provides meaning for me, like I understand who I am, what I am living for, and what my convictions are. 

This is why I have this blog. When I don't have deep insights/thoughts, I feel like I'm not really living. I'm not really alive. I'm just going through life, and will forget this part of life because I'm not thinking deeply enough to remember it. 

Anyway, this is a pretty confusing blog post, I know. One of my close friends told me recently that I don't really have good logic. I have opinions and thoughts, and attempt to put logic around it, but the logic doesn't make any sense at all. That's probably the essence of this blog post. But that's what makes me unique. I'm deep and complicated, because humans are pretty deep and complicated too.