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| I don't like the fact that your every action is broadcasted to your network(s) of friends on Facebook and I don't feel too secure with Xanga but I'll go with Xanga. I'll be breaking the chain by not tagging people, but I am bored so why not write 16 random things...
1) I've been drawing a lot this break. I'm not particularly good or fast but it is really relaxing. Since there's no piano, guitar, or even a kazoo, in the house, I have been drawing when there is free time. I suck at drawing things that are actually there, drawing from a photo is much easier and straightforward. My goal is to draw my friends, this obviously includes you, from FB if I have to. And I totally played Hotel California a lot on Youtube. Though you know my memory is not so good for lyrics. I can sing along pretty good now! I am interested in a lot of things but I'm never an expert or master at any of them.
2) My mother asked me if I am a nerd today. In the last 23 years she spent in the States, she never dropped her accent or picked up much English or simple pop-culture--including "nerd."
[An edit from 1/2/09 (happy new year!)]
OMG. Bob Marley did covers of a ton of songs... Hotel California being one of them. Gawsh, it's hilarious. Nice dreads.
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| Having just been inspired by Po-Ling's very honest blog entry, I think I will also try to reflect on the hike from Saturday.
I got up that morning, feeling tired and weak as I started looking at a real MCAT exam that they provide for free on the AAMC website. I'd put it off for many weeks and finally I was taking Dr. Shon's advice that I'd probably stress out a little less and have clearer decisions after I try a practice test. It was not bad, just rather long and trying on my already tired and head-aching body. I wondered if I would make it to the hike. I wasn't really feeling a strong need to "find God on a mountain" because I was sure he would meet me wherever I was. I decided I wanted to be in the company of the fellowship.
Funny, I got to the mountain/hill and was caught behind slower people who let me pass after a while. By this time, the faster people had way outpaced me and the slower people had disappeared out of my sphere of detection. I walked alone on the trail going to the waterfall and tried to quiet my mind. "God, do you love me? God, do you love me? God, do you love me?" like a tape recording that got faster and faster. "Well, do I love God? How do I know? How do I know God loves me? And, how do I know if my parents and sisters love me? If I disappear here on this mountain, would anyone still love me? If nothing can separate me from the love of God, then also feeling like that nothing cannot separate me from the love of God..."
And what would I do for Christ? How would I serve him with my life? All I really want is to let my life be the living sacrifice. Let others wonder at the illogical choices made to serve this man named Jesus. Not the tamed Jesus of our mothers' naggings to be proper and be safe and not the silenced Jesus of our churches where the Janes and Johns rejoices over unconditional love inside the four walls. Jesus, who was not tame, who was not a quiet pushover with passive-aggressive issues, who was bold, who knew what he wanted to say and said it bluntly.
The passion to live differently, love excessively, serve one master only... it feels far away. How could I have answered the call as a 15 year old? I found small ways to do it. I once told my mom that I wanted to be a missionary doctor when I was in high school. My thoughts worried her. I think she was hoping that when we had left the evangelical over-proselytizing church that had much challenged me in my young faith (maybe too young and too brain-washed to have much compassion for others) that I would stop obsessing over over-seas missions. But no, and every year my mom would quietly say no to my requests to go abroad with any missionary group. It was strange and I didn't understand. How could this be the faith my parents forced on me and then when I took it up, how did it become the demon to them in their eyes? C.S. Lewis had a way of describing it in the Four Loves. Maybe it was, Love is good, until love becomes a god? I could see that they feared my faith and tried to have the upperhand by laughing at my dreams. Would God still deliver me to what I thought was his calling? Could we honor our parents and God? Is he still at work even when my parents dictate the steps of my life without asking what I want?
In trying to please my parents, my mentor or my own desire to see results in research, my friends, and my fellowship I became really burnt out last week. Each part of my life is kept separated from one another and sometimes I don't have the assertiveness to take care of myself, my needs for sleep or time alone to reenergize as an introvert. Time is limited, my strength is limited, but I was not limiting myself. Like Dr. Shon said, I needed to assert myself and start respecting my bodies signs of stress and other signs of stress: inability to fall asleep, need to chew on something, always feeling tired, anxiety over small things and fear of judgment/reproach, internal threats of guilt, getting complained and whined on all too often for not spending time with friends, and lastly being highly irritable. I think few people ever noticed this last one because I do such a great job of restraining expression of negative feelings. But one night, I called my mom when I had all this stress and asked her why she was coming to visit. "Why are you coming? What do you want to do? Do you have a plan?" which conveyed to her the meaning that I was busy and didn't want her to come. It doesn't matter even if I cleared it up because she has no concept of me being stressed out. In high school she'd always ask me, "What does a high school student have to be stressed about? *laugh*" not knowing that the only stress I ever felt was not pleasing my parents and family. What my words wanted to say but hopelessly failed at that night was, "Why can't you ask about how I'm feeling? Not just, have I studied, have I eaten, have I slept and goodbye. Why can't you ask about the burden you've placed on my shoulders instead of telling me what to do when I obviously haven't yet complained to you for sending me to a school I didn't want to apply to." I am an expert in telling myself to deal with things I don't like, and I've told myself over and over again that my parents know no other way to communicate with me, that it is not in their ability to ask how I am feeling. I don't think that takes away from a person's need to be cared for emotionally or mentally. =)
Anyway, it's time to drift away once again from these thoughts and be distracted.
Until next time.
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| Lord we will wait for you this day with alacrity and with the patience of a quiet spirit.
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| My little sister is keen. She was the one to point out that I regularly listened to the same 3-4 albums for the last 6 years. I am stuck on Koo Chung's While We Wait and Bethany Dillon's Bethany Dillon and a few others....... Now at least, I've added Nickel Creek and Pink Floyd stuff.
I think I like my major so far. That's a good thing.
I received a very cute package from a very cute person today, *thank you* I'm all smiles that you still think of me.
Candy striper-ing, that sounds like something I want to try one day when I've got the time and no one to bug me.
I feel a song coming on.
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| But my one request, Lord, my only aim is that you reign in me again.
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