The Laundry Post

This is the post that happens when you are waiting for your laundry

Today, I was reminded of what my dad once told me. He said that it doesn't matter if your singing voice isn't good, as long as you sing with your heart. (He probably said this because my mom often tells me that my singing voice is bad, and so he wants to clarify to me that it doesn't matter if it's bad; what matters is that you are singing with your heart, because people can hear that.)

Then I thought of the poem: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

because the caged bird sings with his heart, for freedom, for hope.

As I read the poem:

The caged bird sings

with fearful trill

of the things unknown

and longed for still

I remembered that I am not a caged bird, but that I am already free. God has set me free.

I praise God that I am made free and can have confidence in my identity in Him. This is why I sing. This is my story; this is my song:

I Know Why the Free Bird Sings.

Thankful for My Dad

I was debating whether or not to share how wonderful my dad is, but I have decided to share because God has given me my dad, and every good and perfect gift is from God. and my dad is definitely a blessing in my life. I wouldn't be who I am today without him.

As a brother mentioned, we don't love God only because we love His gifts, but we love the One who gave the gift. As in, our focus is still primarily toward God and not basking in how awesome we are because we have this gift. Thus, realizing what we have is not to feel more secure in what we have, but to realize how good God is for giving us these things that we often forget. And so here it goes:

I was just reminded yesterday of my dad, when my spiritual mentor told me "You have a good dad. Did you know you have a good dad?" I said yes, that I knew. And I did know, but there is just something different about someone else telling you that you have a great dad, and when multiple people tell you the same thing, and when people also tell your mom that she has a great husband. It makes you step back and wonder if you missed something about your dad that other people are seeing. And so I spent today realizing the extent of how blessed I am to have my dad.

My dad, in four adjectives, is generous, open-minded, thoughtful and responsible. He is also supportive and loyal.

It is because of my dad that I'm not afraid to be passionate and to have a vision. If I have a desire or a goal or a vision, I know I have the freedom to go after it with support (still with wisdom of course). The best example that I have is when I was obsessed with tennis. I played since I was 10. I didn't make the team in 7th grade, but then in 8th grade and 9th grade, I made junior varsity. After my first season in high school, I made it my goal to make Varsity for sophomore year; I was determined to do anything to reach that goal, and my dad was supportive. He was the one who drove me more than an hour away each week to get private lessons from a famous instructor. He also bought a tennis ball machine and would take me to practice on the weekends and whenever I had time; a few times I think we even practiced at 5:30am before school. I also attempted to play in USTA tournaments and he would drive to those as well. Tennis is an expensive sport if you want to be good; it was a very big investment, both financially and time-wise. I never made it to Varsity. I was 1st or 2nd JV sophomore year, and I stayed in JV junior year. As senior year was nearing, I wanted to finally make varsity; we got new private coaches, and I enrolled in intensive summer tennis programs to train--all of this the summer before senior year. But then, during the two weeks of tryouts, I knew I wasn't going to make Varsity. And my heart was already drifting towards other endeavors, like self-studying for SATII Physics so that I could be an engineer. I told my parents that I felt like quitting tennis because I wanted to study more for physics, but that I felt like I just invested so much money and time this summer that it would be a waste. My dad supported and encouraged me to quit, saying that this was a paradigm shift. It's not a waste; all that money we spent is not a waste. It's a paradigm shift; when it's time to move on, it's time to move on. What was important before may not be important now.

And that's how I think about life now; my dad has given me that open-minded perspective on life. Nothing is a waste; sometimes it's time to move on; don't be too late to move on, you have to move with the shift. And when I think back to my tennis days and these lessons, I know that my dad is supportive of my growth as a person, and will support me in whatever direction I choose.

Praise God for my dad, a huge blessing and impact on my life. This post may sound like I'm just praising my dad, but in my heart, God is getting all the glory. I'm not just praising God's gift/blessing, but I'm praising God.

Praises Post Series

Exactly what the title says.

I was reminded today of what sisters have said about how sometimes in our sharing, we tend to share struggles a lot more often than praises, and I think even in my thought life I tend to do that. So, I'm going to use my blog for a while to praise God for how good He is!

Woke up early today to buy double-sided tape from the Cornell store for Senior lab. It was such a nice sunny day to walk outside. Praise God for that, to even be able to enjoy the weather and waking up "early".

Leaving Ithaca one day

Life is so weird. It's like it doesn't even matter. Like nothing really matters at all.

You grow up in a place or two, and then you move onto college, and then you move somewhere else. It's so weird. It's so weird to think that all my college friends come from different places and that half of us will probably go back to our original places, and half of us to new places.

Sometimes it's difficult to zoom in and out on my life like that and remember that my life is bigger than just this small time frame that my mind is focused on, and that this world is bigger than the engineering quad + collegetown + small section of new jersey. Whenever I go into zoom-out-on-life mode, I lose some of my rigor for things like school, and become unfocused. But I can't really snap out of it right now.

Today I thought of what one sister said to me a month ago. I was complaining about my feelings or about life, and how everything is so complicated and ugly. And she just replied: "[Jamie] You are very blessed". That's it. Just a one line reply in the email.

I looked at that line. and felt kinda ashamed.

And then I think of different people and their different lives. I thought of the young girl in Shanghai who was massaging my feet, --and our conversation, and how she said to me in Chinese: "ni hao xin fu o" (o, you are so fortunate). And how sad her eyes were so sad afterwards.

It's so easy just to think of all these things, and to think about the world and the brokenness, and then not want to do any academic work even though every motivated person out there will tell you that your academic work is necessary for helping people in the future. Either it's a training and discipline, or, it'll help people directly (through $$$). But somehow this isn't satisfying enough to motivate me.

Maybe because, everyone in the end always remembers that helping people in this life isn't as important as helping people in the next life (aka, to receive salvation). But, it's always easier to think about helping people practically than helping people spiritually. Because helping people spiritually means we need to help ourselves first, and then we realize that we are able to help people around us now/already, because everyone always needs prayer, to know God. And we ourselves need the most prayer to know God.

I don't think I'm doing well spiritually. Pray for me.

[EDIT]

I just found the answer to life in Psalm 102:11-12

My days are like the evening shadow; I wither away like grass.

But you, O Lord, sit enthroned forever; your renown endures through all generations

I need to look at God more. I bet if I saw Jesus and how beautiful He is, and how holy He is, I would have no more questions about anything in life.

I need to see Jesus. forreals

Love and Hope

You are the Father to the fatherless

The mother to the orphan child.

You are the open arms to the prodigal,

Grace to the harlot daughter

You are the kiss upon the widow's lips

Life inside the barren womb

You are the vision in the eyes of the blind

The song inside the ears of the deaf.

Shores of Grace by Nic Billman

We don't have the ability to love everyone in the world, but God does. Every time I sing this song, it makes me think of particular people. People who are on the verge of divorce, or the middle/highschoolers in hurtful situations. And it makes me love God even more, knowing that He loves those people and hasn't forgotten them.

And a tidbit about hope. Another favorite quote that popped into my mind today. (I never forget my favorite quotes).

And whenever I see a first novel dedicated to a wife (or a husband), I smile and think, There's someone who knows. Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don't have to make speeches. Just believing is enough.

-On Writing by Steven King

I thought of this quote when I was worshiping, so it must be related to the previous song. I was thinking that I'm so incredibly blessed to parents who really really believe in me. My dad always supports my decisions. My mom always tells me that I can do it. Even if she doesn't tell me that, even if she tells me the opposite, I still know she believes in me. It's like she believes in who I am, even if she doesn't believe in my abilities.

I think you can believe in someone without believing they will succeed in that particular thing. It's believing in who they are, and who they can become. It's believing in their potential in God's Kingdom. That God can use them, and that they can grow to love God obsessively and leak love everywhere. even if they fail in the immediate thing ahead of them.

And I just wanted to note that this is so weird that I'm thinking about hope and believing in people's potentials. Because a few weeks ago, I would have rolled my eyes at this stuff. When people told me "Jamie, I believe God will____[change]__ you", I was like okay thanks. but in my head I was sort of like whatever, that just sounds corny. The idea of hope was kind of foreign to me. And sort of disgusting because it was opposite of the pragmatic satirical sarcastic smart-ass comment mindset I had. Sort of like "don't be ridiculous and talk to me about hope. be realistic; I know how life works, and it works like this: just do it. Stop the psychobabble"

Amazing how a godly mindset is the opposite of a worldly mindset.

It's been a month!

It's been a month since I last posted! I decided not to blog for a month, for a variety of reasons, none of which I remember unless I look in my journal. The only reason I actually remembered during the month was that I told myself I didn't want to blog for a month, and therefore I was definitely going to keep my word. It was kind of silly, and there were definitely several times that I really wanted to blog, but didn't want to go back on my decision because I wanted my decisions to matter and my will to be powerful. I wanted to know that as long as I decided to do something, that it would be done.

Okay, so, it wasn't that big a deal. But the reasons for doing it, and the way I felt about it, reflects my heart and reasoning for many other decisions and aspects of my life for the past month. In other words, it's hard to let go of control. Not because of the control, but because of the things that fuel the control. fear, anger, hurt, pride, jealousy, selfishness, and the list goes on.

I just read on someone's blog "The reason we do not often receive revelations from God is because we are full of self. We resist revelations for it is often against our nature, ambitions, senses or emotions".

It's true. That is what I have been consciously aware of myself doing this past month. Because thinking takes up too much time. And being convicted makes you feel horrible. And really really loving God makes you count everything as loss. And I think I have a lot right now. But I guess, not enough apparently.

I realized this past weekend that I don't really believe that God loves me more than this. In my mind, I looked at something and was sad because I realized I don't have that and I didn't believe God loved me more than that. And then I looked to God and asked: "God, do you love me more than this?" I didn't wait for an answer. It wasn't a question; it was a complaint. I was sad.

Today someone prayed for me that God would convict me that I need to stop and spend time with Him in His presence, etc., and the whole time he was praying, I was actually afraid of the prayer. I was like: oh no, he's praying the prayer. I was like shoot, it's over. You prayed the prayer for me.

Anyway, this is the update of my life. It probably sounds worse than it actually is, because these are just my revelations, which tend to be convictions of what I'm doing wrong. I also have a lot of praises, like how God has been changing me this past month. How He always seems to know how to soften my heart. How He sends random people to pray for me and speak prophetically into my life. And how I've been learning so much more in school this semester and actually understand a lot of things and therefore enjoying it more, and how I'm making more friends in my major, which I think is absolutely exciting. and how He has healed my heart, except sometimes I forget He has and I try to use it against Him. hehe. Well, so there it is. The update on my life. A brighter conviction this week, was that I should stop using sarcasm to vent out my frustrating feelings towards life. and instead use my words to build people up. I almost felt sad that I was not treating people right. Like the people I see every day are the people that God absolutely loves. Like He looks upon them with fierce jealousy. They are His.

But it's still hard not to occasionally spew out sarcastic satirical vent-ish comments. It feels so good, as if I knew how life worked and how people worked and had the right to comment out of jest.

What comes out of your mouth reflects what's in your heart. If your mind is transformed, you won't see life the same.

okay this took way too long; I will limit my blogging, or limit my length from now on. This was like my 1 month garbage dump, trying to say a hundred things at once and connecting them all

Good quotes

From Ender's Game. Context: Peter and Ender are brothers and rivals;
Ender is talking with his sister Valentine, --the middle child!

"You don't understand", he said.
"Yes I do."
"No you don't. I don't want to beat Peter."
"Then what do you want?"
"I want him to love me."

This one is from Searching for God Knows What

And this is the thing about life. You go walking along, thinking people are talking a language and exchanging ideas, but the whole time there is this deeper language people are really talking and that language has nothing to do with ethics, fashion, or politics, but what it really has to do with is feeling important and valuable.

--

This is how I've been feeling the past week. I don't want what I say I want, and I don't want what I'm going after. It's not about beating Peter; it is much deeper, much much deeper.