Sophie's thinking that she's actually gonna be home sick this year.

She wasn't last year?
No, last year she was so glad to be away. She didn't like it at home, or at school. High school wasn't a good time.

So what's different now?
This summer, was awesome. ^^

Thank you so much to all the people that made it that way! The summer got off to a really lonely start. Most of my friendships during high school were exceedingly shallow. Friends were only around to hang out with, and it didn't help that i was somewhat depressed for the last 2 years at high school and just didn't care. Nobody had really been there for me, but I guess I never actually opened myself up to anyone either (well, except a few very special people ^^). After going to college, there wasn't anything really to keep most of the friendships I had going, and they faded away.

So anyways, I’m really grateful for Lulu, for being one of my close friends during high school and keeping that relationship going this summer even though she was in China for a long whilesies. Haha, it was nice having someone to share the misery of having teeth out with too, and celebrating our newfound ability to chew again, at Applebees last night! ^^

(sidenote: it’s really hard not typing this stuff out without writing as if writing to the person… since I know some of these people don’t really read my xanga…)

Eric Chen, is amazing ^^. Or should I saw awesome, since I use amazing negatively sometimes? Hao ge ge!! I suppose I’ve known him forever, and he’s always offered himself up as a friend I can talk to… but I guess, in a way, I never really tried to develop that friendship (perhaps cuz of the anti-guy sentiment pervading my house), buuuuuuuut… SOOOO glad we hung out this summer. He’s the one that kinda broke the loneliness-at-home cycle for me. yay! And yea, there’s other stuff and more specifics, but… not for the whole world to read.

and MAAAAGIE! so cute, so loveable, sooo Maggie! hehe. It means more to me than you would expect for a person to just say they enjoy being with me. I guess I still suffer from some of the pains of being rejected a lot when younger… In high school we were just, uhh, cute together. I guess, haha, but I’m glad we’ve had some nice longer conversations this summer. I never seemed to know what to talk to you about before! And yea, it’s nice having someone I’m okay just being silent around too.

and Nikki, who I’m pretty sure actually reads this. I love you ^^. Haha, I think I’ve already told you the stuff I’d want to say. Love the oddness =p. And thanks for making yourself available, even if you might not understand the stuff I go through.. And yea… nice to have someone who’s always online to talk to since I’m pretty much home alone all day every day other than meals and a bit after dinner. mm.. sad since that means you’re always stuck in your room in front of your computer. but when I can drive, we will hang out. ya.

 

(and whoa! when did I start having close female friends o_O. totally odded out.)

 

And then there’s the sort of unexpected friends…

Wes. In all 2 years of high school we barely spoke a word to each other. haha, sorry for the first impression I gave off! what’d you say… you thought I seemed uninterested? Anyways. I’m really glad I’ve gotten to know you better. It’s people like you I know I can be completely not-nervous/comfortable with cuz I can tell you really appreciate friendships. I haven’t really known you long enough to call you a really close friend, but you’ve been a good friend to me.

and Danny. Can’t say I know you well either; we’ve proly only seen each other for at most a week of our existences, but I’m glad we got to see each other this summer. It almost seems like a coincidence that was meant to be, haha. Would I be wrong in saying it led to all the conversations online? You are a muy cool brother in Christ. What can I say? God has used you to speak to me about certain things in my life, and it’s been really helpful. Thanks for always directing me back to prayer and back to God. Hoping to get to hang out more in the future.. urbana! =p

Mike… you. I don’t even know what to say about you, or where to put you (perhaps you don’t quite belong in this list?). Didn’t really see you much. Didn’t really talk to you much. I miss you. At the beginning of this summer I was scared I’d lost my friendship with you, that’d I’d have to let it go… So what you said to me (was it 2 nights ago?) really put part of my heart at rest, and it was nice seeing you again (I finally got to see your house!). I remember when you used to worry that I would forget you… I laugh at that, cuz I never will. I want to say that I will keep in better contact with you this coming school year… but I don’t see myself getting any less busy, or you having more time either. (I still think you’re crazy.) But whatever happens to our friendship in the future, you will always be important to me; you’ve made a huge difference in my life, in a positive way. So, thank you forever.

So those are the people who made the hugest differences in my summer… and really, God blessed me with so many other good conversations, and people who I’ve gotten to know better. This summer has been… unexpected.

and then.. of course, there's the amazing ways my relationship has grown with my parents! It, of course, made a huge difference in my experience here in PA to be able to really appreciate my time spent here with my parents. total awesomeness.

and this is so sentimental… and so not my online journal posting habit…

I was thinking about spiritual gifts this morning, kinda wondering what mine were. I know what I'm good at, music being the most obvious one of all. Whenever the topic of gifts is discussed in church, fellowship, or just among friends, people always look at me and comment that I have the gift of music. I've always just accepted that judgment, and not really thought too much deeper.
But really, thinking on it, I wonder if there is a separation between just being gifted in something and it being a spiritual gift. Music is a huge thing in my life, definitely something I have talent in and enjoy immensely, but as far as it being part of my spiritual life.. it doesn't really take on importance any more than fellowship, conversations, and things like daily bible study or just taking a walk and praising God for the beauty around me. It has never taken a special significance in my spiritual life or the way God uses me to bless those around me. While singing songs in church, I'm just as likely as others around me to just be singing words and not taking it all in and really praising God. The fact that my voice may sound nicer or that I can play an instrument well doesn't make my praise any more pleasing to God.
So thinking about all that,  I heard a voice say to me "You have the gift of prayer". It was... unexpected. Something I'm sure I never would've thought of on my own. Surely I can't say that since I feel most connected to God through prayer, that makes it my gift; prayer is our communication/connection with God. I also cannot say that God pays more attention to my prayers or that somehow my prayers are better than those of others, because that would just be outright untrue. But I know I have always found my times of prayer especially rewarding. Through prayer I have found wisdom, and found my heart being changed into God's heart; It has always been the way I've taken to best impact the situations and lives of others around me, because I constantly realize how little I can do myself. Throughout my life, and especially this past summer, prayer has been especially rewarding and fruitful. Often I feel like my whole life is in communication with God, that I am in prayer even when I'm not actually in the specific act of praying. But.. shouldn't these things be true about prayer for all believers? What makes something a spiritual gift anyways.. haha, i'm beginning to feel more and more like I barely know anything at all. (ah, and there will always be so much more to learn. ^^)
So prayer was a bit harder to think about, because of it's important role in the lives of all believers, but earlier in the year I was given something that I could grasp. Someone told me "you have the gift of writing/asking questions". Haha, it almost seems strange out of the context of that conversation. But it rings true for me whether it happens to be writing questions for a discussion, or asking questions to help someone think through something. If people come for advice or with difficulties, I will always be more likely to at at least start out asking questions rather than giving answers. Haha, often it may even seem like I don't have the answers. I've found that I'm able to help people more in this way... ask why if you must, but I'm gonna end this entry here before it becomes overly large and cumbersome. =p.

With just one sentence, he's put me literally at the point of almost crying twice in the past week.
Totally unjustly accused the first time, but still I was filled with a feeling of guilt and actually apologized! Hmm... totally wrongly accused the second time too!
He thinks he knows everything... he's a horrible listener. And he really still thinks food is gonna solve everything? Honestly, I thought he'd gotten past all that.
I was so happy he was finally trying to understand my culture, where I'm coming from... that kind of stuff, but now that he's finished that "project" of his, he acts like he knows everything... umm.. no.

How does he do it? I can be living in bliss, and all of the sudden he can put me down in the dumps feeling negative about absolutely everything! I don't think he realizes how much the things he does/says matter to me.

Me: Thanks for putting me down, dad.
Him: So, what's your favorite thing you've eaten this week, we can eat it tommorow.

such a repeat of every other time i've been upset.

Me: *crying*
Him: Here, have some fruit. Want a cup of water?

No, I don't want FOOD. I want YOU to listen to me. I want YOU to stop making me feel like i'm doing everything wrong.

What the heck am I complaining about... My parents are already better than a bazillion of other parents I know...

*sigh*.. the things we think/say when we're upset... Everything starts being taken out of proportion.

So yea, don't believe anything i say.... grr.

Relationships, finding the one. So many people's thought lives/worry lives are so dominated by just that.
Have you ever thought that Adam and Eve were lucky not to have had to worry about any of that? If they didn't immediately know that God meant them to be together then... haha.

At some point I stopped worrying. I know that if God wants me with someone, then I'll be with that someone eventually. I shouldn't worry about "missed opportunities", losing relationships that might've been, or needing to go out and find someone. I shouldn't worry about being alone. I've become content just waiting to see what God sends into my life, cuz it really is out of my control. I want to go about life and just focus on growing spiritually, learning about God, living His will, and doing the best I have to offer for all the responsibilities and commitments I have.

And yet, with all of that, even without the worries, my thought life is still pretty taken up by thoughts of relationships. Searching for the guy God's gonna lead into my life and wondering if the guy's perhaps... him! *pictures a certain guy*.

and then come the questions. Is it bad for me to be thinking so much about these things? It is an important decision isn't it? Aren't the thoughts pretty much inevitable? What makes me think I'm ready for a relationship anyways?

A couple conversations that i've had in the past two days have got me thinking about this stuff again. And for some of those conversations, the timing couldn'ta been better! It's really amazing the ways I see God laying out my life. It's been an interesting two days.

... where are all these random comments from people on my posts from 2004 coming from? kinda want to know who the random "THAT"S TRUE!!!!" person is. it's been interesting for me, looking back on those entries, seeing the old me.
I've changed so much. I'd like to think that it's just been a process of maturing, but sometimes I'm scared that a part of me has died. There's a part of me that has become untouchable, cold, hardened. Apathetic? No... disillusioned. How did it happen? I don't even know.
Things leave me unphased that should definetly have a lot more impact... It's like sometimes I'm just watching as life passes me by as if watching an overdramatic movie, just waiting for the end to come. And then something clicks, i blink and all the sudden realize that i'm living in the story. I realize that the things affect me and that i affect the things around me, and suddenly I'm taken up by the whirlwind of it all often to be disillusioned once again, and passed back into my spectator's seat.

I haven't been in the spectator seat for a long while now. I've been glad to be here, being touched and touching the things around me, but I'm still not what I used to be.

what am i? what's changed? has it all been for the good?

So here's wat's been up in the xanga world:

I was told that I might die at age 9...
Courtesy, it makes me uncomfortable...
Two things I will always wonder...
Parental Child Moments
Gossip... i really just can't stand it
prayer is one of the most amazing things, ever.
origins of lilmissbombadil
To Lost Friendships~ (poem)
giving up
I know why i pass out!
Don't believe me when I'm asleep
Beginning of Taiwan Entries

Ravi Zacharias begins, in Jesus Among Other Gods:
       "When I began writing this book, I little dreamed of how difficult a task this was going to be. The difficulty has really not been in knowing what to say, but in knowing what not to say.
       We are living in a time when sensitivies are at the surface, often vented with cutting words. Philosophically, you can believe anything, so long as you do not claim it to be true. Morally, you can practice anything, so long as you do not claim that it is a "better" way. Religiously, you can hold to anything, so long as you do not bring Jesus Christ into it. If a spiritual idea is eastern, it is granted critical immunity; if western, it is thoroughly criticized. Such is the mood at the end of the twentieth century.
       My earnest prayer is that when you read this, you will makes your judgement of the Christian message based on truth, not the mood of our times.
       Moods change. Truth does not."

<--totally stolen off of a friend's xanga. ^^ good stuff.

Girls are going around looking for mature guys to date, while a bazillion pleasure-driven guys run are running about and a bunch of the mature ones are abstaining from relationships. Excellent.

Haha, no complaining though. The maturity leads to the abstaining which leads to more maturity, and one day they will be the best husbands ever. ^^ sweeeet dude.

anyways, in the meantime if only i could stop liking said males... (haha, nobody specific, so don't assume this is about you or anybody else)

i'm actually rather "crush"-less right now. O_O amazing.

There really aren't enough words to describe all the emotions a person experiences through life, and so.. to make my own times of contemplation and journaling easier, I began to make up my own words. Mecho(meh-co) is one of them.

Here's the first entry in my handwritten journal on it:
"A: It's that feeling again.
B: What feeling?
A: There is no name for it, but if there was a name, it would sound something like... echo. And if I could picture it, it would look something like a canyon, except it wouldn't be the canyon; it'd be the echo. It isn't blaringly good or bad, but there's something sad to it. Something empty about it. A feeling of loss when nothing is gone. A feeling of loneliness with friends all around.
There's something very still about it... I almost confuse it with peace, except that I know I'm not at rest. My thoughts try to go in a bazillion directions, but they all hinder each other from thinking to completion, so it all stops dead. That's the still of it."

How do you begin to contemplate a feeling like that, if you can't even name it? So I named it mecho: melancholy-echo.
It's a reoccuring feeling throughout my life, and I usually ignore it, cuz it goes away once I'm busy, or on a spiritual high, or what not. But that always made me wonder. What if mecho is that feeling of emptiness inside that Christians say people without God are supposed to have. What if my occupation with my spiritual life is somehow just another thing I do that blocks the echo... and God isn't actually filling the "God-shaped hole".

So lately, in contemplation, I've journaled some more: (July 25, 2006)
"I can't ignore it anymore. It's not gonna go away.
It leads to the feeling that nothing is interesting anymore, but I'll do all of it for something to do. I'll talk to people, because I'm supposed to have friends. I'll go bowling cuz that's better than staying at home, and I'll practice my instruments, because i'm supposed to be doing my best and improving. In the end, perhaps it's just the wish that I could just lie in bed, listen to music, and stare at the ceiling; not that that wouldn't be interesting, but it'd be nice."

The feelings of loss and loneliness are self-explanatory now. People and things lose their meaning, that's what's lost, and if relationships lose their meaningfulness, then the world becomes lonely.

So the next few questions would obviously be: What makes lying on my bed listening to music and staring at the ceiling nice? And what makes things interesting?

"Escape from responsibility, totally. Just getting up off my bed is the start of taking care of responsibilities. I'm tired of worrying about things, tired of stress. It's obvious just in the way I'm somewhat apprehensive about going back to school. I'm not looking forward to classes and papers. I'm scared of the responsibilities of small group leading, grades, AIAS board, and applying to the architecture school. How nice summer has been.. doing things just when i feel like doing them, and otherwise, doing nothing."

So basically, it all comes back to that old problem of mine of not being able to trust God with my life and feeling like I have to have everything under control, leading to worry and stress.
And of course, if God was in control of my life and i wasn't worrying so much about everything, things would become interesting again, because life would have to be meaningful.

That's mecho for you.

So how does letting go work anyways? I always think I'm surrendering my life to God and trusting Him, but I'm obviously not.

Over this summer I've been discovering that prayer is one of the most amazing things, ever.

Often I forget to include God in my life. I get all tangled up in some problem of my own and the only prayer I remember to offer up is "God, take this problem away." I forget to ask for direction, to ask Him to give me wisdom and to show me my own heart, to ask him where I have perhaps fallen short. In the end, I forget to ask Him to change my heart, when He is the only one capable of doing it.
Heavenly Father, thank you for putting people in my life to point me back to you.
Off and on for a year, I struggled with emotions that I shouldn't have had. Yes, it was about a guy, what else would it be about... I ended up really quite confused, and began to feel quite helpless. That's right where I should've been from the beginning. I should've realized how helpless I was on my own will and understanding, and turned to God immediately. A  yearlong struggle was ended in one day when I was humbled enough to pray and ask for direction, when i was humbled enough to see my own heart and ask God to change me.
Lord, how great you are.

Today I'm seeing another one of my prayers coming to fruition. For years, when I was younger, I would pray for my dad to become less judgmental, to become more open-minded, and to learn the real meaning of caring. It was a selfish prayer really, asking God to fix him up, so I could have a better life. Later, acting on a promise I made to just try to get along with him, I began to learn to love him, to want to have a good relationship with him even if I could not like many parts of his character and personality. With the help and prayer of some Christian friends I learnt to change my prayers from prayers of selfishness to prayers really wanting the best for him. I prayed for him to grow spiritually, to learn to be true to himself, to be able to reflect on his own character, and to be able to be bold when standing for what he knew to be true. I prayed for these things, not for me, but for him.
Today he was telling me about how he was having difficulty understanding how he was becoming so different. He felt like he was morphing into something new and better, haha. In one day, I have seen him humble himself enough to apologize to my mom about something even though it was small, I have seen him reflect on the way he prays and confess that his attitude was sometimes self-righteous and wrong, I have seen him stand up for truth no matter how painful the consequences might be, and I have seen and felt his love for other people.
There is no way to explain the ways he has grown, except to look at God.
In the past year, he has even gone out of his way to read books and talk to people to try to understand the American culture and the ideas of my generation, in order to understand me better, as well as other of my age. And from the new attitude he has taken with me over this summer, I can say that his efforts have paid off.
Words cannot describe how proud I am of my dad. And perhaps for the very first time, I will be able to say "Thank you God, for my parents." and mean it with all of my heart. (It always bothered me... saying that, every thanksgiving...)
"I will stand by you." Wow.. it's amazing how much those words can mean, when it's not just about some "small" decision like choosing a college. This time the decision was one that could cause conflict, pain, and end in broken relationships.. for him more than for me. And yet, I know he would stand by me... because, He's dad.
(The words mean even more to me coming from a man I used to hate with a passion, a man that in the past seemed to be against almost everything I treasured.)
How he's changed... and how God answer's prayer... amazing.

And with the answer to that last prayer, I have learnt that God really does have his own timing for when He will answer our prayers. It took years, but that was God's timing, and in the process, I learnt to stop being so selfish and to love and understand my dad. That is the miracle of God's timing.