2012

With the year quickly drawing to a close, I've been looking back and I realized...this is the first year I haven't been able to cross anything off The List since I first started it 8 years ago. Quite tragic, not to mention depressing. And yet it was still a good year-mainly because of the month of June. So on to 2012 we go. I'm not one to make new year's resolutions, but this year I would like to work on forming good habits. I read this great article and was inspired:

http://zenhabits.net/fitguide/

It's about how establishing good habits, a month at a time, can change your life. I desperately need to cultivate better habits in my life. Usually I try to do too much at once and get overwhelmed so the change never actually happens. The habit I will be cultivating the whole month of January is this: to start off every morning with 15 minutes to God-5 minutes for a prayer of thanksgiving, 5 minutes for concerns, and 5 minutes reading the Word. I know..it's not much, but I think it's Good. Definitely a good habit to have. Anyone have any resolutions/goals/habits to work on this year?

i know

I know this isn't the most interesting blog in the world, and I don't keep it up to date at all. Eventually it'll become a proper blog but for now I really don't have the time or the mind to keep up with it. Right now it's just a random smattering of thoughts, me thinking to myself, as I try to keep sane. I don't like feeling invisible, or like a pawn, and I'm feeling both to the extreme right now. I'm so thankful for the jobs I have right now but I'm also very dissatisfied with it all. And my whatever-you-want-to-call-him is also making me feel rather extremely invisible--the one person who is never supposed to make me feel this way. Life is a fog and I just want to sleep until the sun burns it off.

The Longing

Contentment is a thing that seems to come and go with me. I capture it in moments; moments richly sweet and apparently slippery, as I can't seem to hold onto one for long. Joy and peace are constant but contentment is like hunger.

I have this cabin fever, this need to go, and explore, and meet new challenges, and without it I get restless. I can't stay in one spot too long before the classic TCK longing hits-the longing to go, to do, to be completely out of my element and learn, to EXPLORE...I don't think it's something a non-TCK could understand. It can be a really good thing if you don't let it take over. It has me firmly in its grasp at the moment, and I'm rather certain that is the cause of my current state of discontent and somewhat frayed emotion. Juggling a few part-time jobs and a for some reason undefined relationship and trying to be a light to my co-workers and do my best at all jobs is a little bit exhausting, especially with the longing knocking at my door.

Thankfully, I don't have to do it all on my own. As Paul wrote, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" (Phil. 4:13). People use that verse out of context all the time to mean whatever they want, but Paul is talking about contentment--even contentment is possible, through Christ--read the surrounding verses (Phil. 4:10-13).

If I could I would jump in my car this moment and just go. Just go. Come with?

bird in a cage

Closing her weary eyes, the world changes. Four white plaster walls became a light salty breeze again, a misty mountainous castle view, a colorful loud marketplace, a green field with sheep; each adventure coming together to form the closest thing she's ever known to "home."

The time of waiting, of in-between, seems infinite when it is upon her. The lightning laces across the sky and the rain sings on the tin roof as if it understands her frustration. Memories spring up and haunt both day and night, taunting, tempting her to join them in bouts of nostalgic depression. Like an exotic bird trapped in a cage, alone except for its memories of flight.

"Wait," He whispers, so quietly she could easily fool herself into thinking she didn't hear. "Wait here for now, beloved; be still, and quiet, and listen. Wait just a little longer; you can't imagine the riches I have in store for you."

6/27/11

I'm feeling rather defeated these days; inadequate, rundown, perhaps a bit blind. Tired. Disappointed.

"But take heart; I have overcome the world." -Jesus

I ran into this scrap from the blog of Adam Young (Owl City); I don't think he'd mind if I share:

"

If you stop fearing the Lord, you will stop fearing SIN. And when that happens, everything you deem unthinkable suddenly becomes tolerable, passable, admirable, moral, legal, and even applaudable. Dear Lord Jesus, help me to uproot such seeds of sin growing in my life and allow me to draw down daily grace so that I may glorify You with every fiber of my being. Take control of my soul, my mind, my emotions and my will. I long to follow You by all that I am even though it’s obvious I need more grace than I thought.

"

the boys and girls

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucyH0LOYD5c

A moment

I found a moment today; or rather, a moment found me. Collapsing onto my bed after a hard days work and with Zoe Keating playing in the background, I opened right up to 1 Cor. 9:22. Paul has a way of punching me in the face no matter how many times I read his letters. I am no Paul; and yet I was called to be like one much better; the best; the Perfect One.

I am a woman, and as such, I play the comparison game. But to whom am I comparing myself? Lately, it seems, not to anyone that matters. I will never be that cool girl, you know, the one with beautiful thick dreadlocks and tattoos and piercings; or that serenely beautiful girl; the flawless tall one, graceful and talented. As much confidence and love as I have for myself, for who and how God made me, I still idiotically find myself occasionally playing the comparison game with them, most of the time subconsciously. This time I am conscious of it, and conscious of the fact that I'm comparing myself to an image, an idea, a concept...imperfection; a mist, a vapor. What a distraction. What a blasted waste of time. And for what? What exactly am I afraid of?

Like Paul, I must be all things to all people. That means setting my mind not on foolishness but on Love. Love--which is patient, kind, rejoices with the truth, bears, believes, hopes, endures, doesn't envy or boast, isn't arrogant or rude, doesn't insist on its own way, isn't irritable or resentful, and is...fearless. Fearless. Now that is something to play the comparison game with. Thanks again, God, for using Paul to giving me another moment.

Zoe Keating: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIdgNJ4ufkU

What if

What if I truly loved my neighbor as myself? What if I let my walls crumble? What if I actually listened, even when I didn't feel like it, even when I found the speaker annoying? What if I purposefully, mindfully, remembered? What if I stopped being afraid?

What if we all did?

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

I'm sad to hear today that Gil Scott-Heron has died. Unlike most modern hip-hop and rap, this man actually had things to say worth listening to. No meaningless jibber with the backdrop of clubs, scantily clad women, or fancy cars for him; he would rather make you think. I'm no expert on the man, but here is what he's most known for:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGaRtqrlGy8&feature=player_embedded

Sympathy

I KNOW what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals —
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting —
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings —
I know why the caged bird sings!

~Paul Laurence Dunbar

Searching for an open door...

for the love of books

I am one of those who took hold of books at an early age and never let go. I am one who, on rainy days, was found reading with a flashlight under tableclothed kitchen table or makeshift bed-sheet tent. Black words jumping out of white paper illustrated here or there to paint a thousand new words upon the scene...it has always been fascinating. Words so often are inadequate but so relied upon in this world where bare emotions are too exquisite to be allowed flight. And so we unnaturally fumble around like light blinded fools looking for just the right words to express our true unrefined innards. With those words a story is told and a book is born. A book-a glorious thought-inducing collection of words that ripens with time as it becomes age-perfumed and curled-paged. What’s this about “electronic books?” “Electronic imposter” is more like it. Real books have covers, and weight, and pages that can be hand written in or accidentally spilled on; they can sing as the pages are flipped through, and the very best gain an alluring aroma of greatness as they mature with age. It’s late and I’m tired and I’m not sure this will make sense to anyone else, but I can’t sleep so I thought I’d write instead...

midnight

Remember all those years they told us we could do anything as long as we believed and tried our hardest? Remember the day you found out it was a lie? I was much younger, then, and already covered with the dust of travel, unconsciously resolving to be as “wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” The serpent learned nothing comes easy and hard work earns but a dime; an uncorked heart gets poured down the drain; speaking is hushed and dreaming aloud will be silenced. The dove learned to love, accepting its coupling with pain. Still I will dance circles alone in my room these nostalgic nights, when all I can do is wait for the beautifully despondent song of the train delivered by the midnight breeze.

a time for mourning

I despise sitting here helpless as one of my old homes is devastated by earthquakes and tsunamis. Here the slight warmth of early spring and sunny blue skies decorate the day, a thousand worlds away from ripped concrete highways and crumbling walls that now adorn my last home, Mito Japan. Why must I feel something near guilt as people say "I'm so glad you're here and not there"? I want to be there right now, very much so, but even if I was there, what could I do? I will do all I can do, here, now; I will share in the mourning, and I will pray. And I ask you to pray too if you will, particularly for all my babies (my students; I had 700+).

Giddy

I feel compelled to throw on a flouncy skirt and dance around my apartment with the music turned up, for I have just discovered Owl City is starting off his world tour in Nashville this summer! I still have no job and no money and thus no way (yet) to actually get to the concert, but the fact that the possibility exists makes me feel like a kid on Christmas eve. I'll be 26 years old by summer, but the child in me will never die.

Blue

My newest adventure is completely within myself. I’m confronted with a new set of problems. Not that any of these problems are new, mind you, but they have never grouped themselves together in quite this fashion before. And with them all coming together to form a great big unhappy family in my brain, I’m left feeling a bit depressed. Very blue. Colors are trying to change; grays a bit grayer, shadows a bit darker. Out of the shadows come whispers of insecurities, of inadequacies, comparisons, confusion. I feel caught up in it, trapped and alone, like a “poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.” Broken, but never put together in the first place.

No matter the storm there are rays of hope, something or another to remind one of the reality of this great life.

Yesterday’s rays came from an Owl City song; The Technicolor Phase, which (to me anyway) is about the fact that God created everything, including the colors that are everywhere, and that no matter where you go He will be with you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b7mT8ihGfQ

This morning the reminder came through Deuteronomy, chapters 4 and 8: “Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live” (Deut. 4:8a); and the beginning of chapter 8, particularly this verse: “Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you”(Deut. 8:5; but read the first 4 verses with it). I suppose I’m a lot like the Israelites; quick to forget unless reminded to remember.

One day it’ll all make sense.

Notes

I just want to post some notes I jotted down from last week's sermon because it was a really good lesson. I find that if I write things down, I have a harder time forgetting. So for the sake of remembering, and just incase you'll get something out if it too, here are some notes.

-There is no wound that God can't heal

-This year's theme: "Learning to Trust God"

-4 myths about trusting God:

1) If you can't see God working, you better make your own plan.

2) God helps those who help themselves.

3) Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands.

4) If you want something done right, do it yourself.

-->These are myths because God is worthy of our trust

-God is worthy of our trust because:

>He understands us

>He loves us

>He always has our best interest in mind

>He will heal us

-2 Chron. 20:5-12

1) Remember God's Power (v. 5-7)

-dwell on His faithfulness and power

-recall His work in our lives

-what has He done for us? (write down everything God has done for you in your life)

2) Remember God's Promises

-trust in His compassion

-find peace in His word

-what does God promise us? (write down all God's promises you can find in the Bible)

-Questions to reflect on:

1. What areas of my life need healing today?

2. Am I allowing God in, or keeping Him at arm's length?

3. What keeps me from trusting God?

---Satan loves to make us focus on our hurts to keep us from trusting God.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Too often as of late I find myself listening to lies-knowing they are lies-and wanting to believe them over the truth. When I hear whispers of "you don't matter, what you do doesn't matter, you are worthless, everything would be better off if you'd find yourself a cave in the middle of nowhere and never leave it," I want to believeit; oh I want to believe it. I want to believe it because I don't feel good, and I haven't in a while. I want to believe it because it's easy-being nothing, doing nothing, melting into the decay of the world...easy. Much easier to do, and to believe. But because of Love, while I am nothing, I am at the same time-and more-priceless. Because of Love I have been taken from rags to riches, a beggar made a spotless bride of Christ. So it doesn't matter that I feel worthless; the reality is Love.

More stuff

Just a few more things I’m selling on ebay as seller kuri-kuri21:

1. Red jacket; 3 button front, shiny

2. Orange sweater; warm, 2 side pockets, double zip

3. Dark jean jacket; fitted, lightly distressed and faded style

4. Snap front shirt; lightweight, shiny

5. Dark green bathrobe; long, hooded, zipper, two pockets with two dogs, one says good morning and the other says good night

Everything is in really good condition, and all bidding starts at USD 0.99.

I'm not turning this into some sort of advertising blog, just so you know. I just have no money at all and I'm trying to make some...until then, I don't have time to write a good post.

Selling stuff

I still have no job, but hopefully something will happen soon. In the meantime, I'm also selling stuff on ebay. I'm seller kuri-kuri21. Here are a few things I'm selling right now:

1) A summer dress/swimsuit cover up; bidding starts at USD 0.99. The auction ends on January 18 around 11pm.

2) A purse that I re-vamped with ribbon and hand-sewn button; pretty cute I think. Bidding starts at USD 0.99, and it ends Jan. 18 in the evening.

3) A vintage Lisa Frank lunchbox; bidding starts at USD 0.50, and it ends Jan. 18 in the evening.

4) Texas Instruments TI-30XA calculator; bidding starts at USD 0.50, and it ends Jan. 18 in the evening.

5), 6), and 7) Japanese cellphone straps; bidding starts at USD 0.99, and it ends Jan. 18 in the evening.

I have a few other things listed as well, and I'm adding things every day so if you're interested, you should check it often.