College Day ...#4?

I just realized this is my 5th day in college.

Bravo, Iana.

You'll do well this semester.

College Day #3

This is getting better.

But it's funny how quickly I can flow from one random group to another effortlessly, without feeling like I really fit in. I don't have a problem finding friends; it's finding the right friends that will need patience.

Regardless, I think it's here in the beginning stages of Cal life that my extroverted side shines.

But I've been realizing more and more the necessity of spending time alone. While putting myself out there to meet new people is exciting, being by myself is what keeps me sane. And most of all, it allows me time to be alone with God. To sit back, reflect on my day, and see the ways God has blessed me, challenged me, and loved me today. And my Cal life, although full of new friends, harder classes, and areas of exploration, must be centered around these times with God.

I need to remember that, as I take on this next stage of my life, I shouldn't fit time with God into my schedule, like it's an appointment or anything. Because then it gets burdensome...another thing to check off the list, something to be done with quickly so I can get to bed. Rather, I should make my schedule work around having time with God.

God, keep me in You.

College Day #2.

Slowly, slowly.

Slowly, I'm getting used to "my new life."

God, use me. Break me. Then mold me. And make me.

You have put me in this new situation to change me.

So strengthen me. Work in me. Keep me focused on You.

Help me to love it here; simply because you called me here.

I'm anxious. Forgive me for worrying about college, friends, and classes.

Remind me of Matthew 6.

Never let me forget that You are here. WITH ME.

Take my hands and make them clean

Keep my heart in purity

That I may walk in all You have for me

...

Oh for all the sons and daughters
Who are walking in the darkness
You are calling us to lead them back to You
We will see Your spirit rising
As the lost come out of hiding
Every heart will see this hope we have in You

College Day #1

This is going to be a lot harder than I thought.

I have never felt so lost and alone in my entire life.

And I'm scared, unable to focus, and just plain overwhelmed.

I know these are normal feelings when entering college... but that doesn't diminish the fact that I still have them.

But then I see this:

and feel better. a lot better.

If these people have faith in me, I should have faith in myself.

Or better yet, faith in God.

That He put me here for a reason, for his purpose, to do his work.

It's the first day. Things are bound to get better. I just need time to acclimate and adjust.

"You're in a new situation so you can become new and changed, to be made in the image of Christ. Unless you are the image of Christ today, you will be constantly changing." - Louie Giglio

This is just the beginning.

Moving on.

It's weird

to think my life here won't be my life anymore.

To sit in my bedroom, unshared with anyone,

and think I won't be sleeping here every day.

To hang out with my close friends,

and think that they won't be the ones I'll see every week.

To go to Berkeley,

and think, "This is my life now."

And yes, I'll return to this bedroom and sleep here. But it's not where I live anymore.

And yes, I'll hang out with my "old" (how wrong it is to use that word) friends. But they're not the friends I need to make here [at Berkeley].

And yes, I'll come back home. But only to leave again.

It's weird to really, truly understand that

"things will never be the same."

Here I Am.

Here I am;

finished with the most intense, life-changing year I've ever had;

conscious of the fact that my childhood and my high school life are no longer applicable;

seeing 2009 as a year of unbelievable testing, struggle, realization, understanding, and essentially unmeasurable growth.

Here I am,

understanding that although 2009 is finished,

I am not finished with it.

I wish so much that I began this blog earlier so that I could see my pains and struggles, my horrible and broken self in written form

...and praise God with even more joy than that which is already in my heart for every single prayer he has answered, every lesson he has taught me, every struggle of which he brought me out, every blessing he has showered on me. I look back on 2009, rejoicing in all the badbecause I see the light of the glories of God that have overshadowed them.

As I reflect on last year, I see more and more how God has worked in my life, and I am not finished (nor do I think I truly will ever be finished) realizing ...everything He has done for me just last year alone.

So, here I am,

exactly one week away from beginning the college life,

a good first week's start into the new year,

reflecting on how God has worked in my life,

here I am now asking God to work through my life.

So I'll stand, with arms high and heart abandoned,

In awe of the one who gave it all.

I'll stand, my soul, Lord, to you surrendered,

All I am is yours.

Looking for God, Refusing Jesus.

I need repentance and forgiveness.

Today, as passed by the gas station on my way to church, I slid my credit card at the gas station to fill up my blue VW car and saw an old man out of the corner of my eye.

A dirty, old homeless man fishing through the trash cans in hopes of finding ...anything.

Today, as I thought about what was going to happen at the new year's church service tonight, an unkempt, dirty, old homeless man asked me to spare a quarter.

I quickly apologized and told him I was out of change.

Today, as I hastily returned the pump and walked to my front door so I could get to church on time, the poor and unkempt, dirty and old homeless man asked me once more for ...anything.

A "sorry, no" instantaneously flew from my lips as I drove off, hearing his "that's ok! God bless you" response trail off.

Today, as I was preoccupied with how I would meet God at church, it didn't occur to me that I refused Jesus at the gas station.

God, I pray for your forgiveness. And that you would continue to open my eyes to YOU.

"Then the King will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me...I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did not do for me." - Matt. 25: 41-43; 45.

"So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him." - Matt. 24:44

"But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." - Luke 14:13-14.

"Yet for your sakes he became poor." - II Cor. 8:9.

"I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing." - John 14:12

College.

I'm ready.

To start anew, be challenged, bring change. To have fun, be an adult, be a college-aged kid, and be responsible. To meet people, be poured into, and pour into new people. To work, hard.

And I'm not.

i'm slightly scared out of my wits at the thought of an entirely new group of friends, leaving what i've known for the past eighteen years, at not belonging, at being challenged with things in which i'm sure to fail, and be transformed into someone my "old" friends don't recognize, or even more, don't like.

Oh, how invigoratingly scary transition and change can be.

Christmas time.

Every year, I struggle with how materialistic the world has transformed Christmas.

...Don't get me wrong. I love how b-e-a-utiful the city becomes around December and how happy my little cousins get when they open up their gifts. But I still fail to see the actual importance of it all.

Yet more than the superficial, watered-down Christmas, I am tired of the cliche Christmas Sunday sermons that preach essentially the same theme: "Jesus is the reason for the Season."

As if now is the time we should remember the importance of His birth, now is the time to celebrate His coming, now is the time to be joyful that we are surely saved.

And as if every other time of the year isn't.

Lead me to the cross.

Every other week or so, a random song grabs my attention.

And in my current struggles, frustrations, and questions with the call to discipleship,

Here's the one that is constantly speaking to me now:

Paradox.

It's weird:

to develop that fruit of the Spirit which is called self-control

and yet ask God to take control.

Plain and Simple:

I pray that God would use me

to comfort the afflicted,

and afflict the comfortable.

trans.for.ma.tion:

-noun: change in form, appearance, nature, or character.

I recently came home from another retreat.

But unlike most of the others I’ve been to, I knew this one would stick.

I’m still processing what exactly happened this weekend. But one thing I do know: the tears, the anger, the joy, the fear, the love, and the ultimate call that I felt has stirred in me something so life-changing, so transforming,

I have no choice but to move on from belief to discipleship,

To “throw off everything that hinders,”

To “run with perseverance the race marked out for [me].”

To “fix my eyes on Jesus.”

Hebrews 12.

Christian math.

I have recently come to the conclusion that the amount of my faith, if faith could even be measured, does not exist in proportion to my doubts.

That the more faith I have in what I believe does not mean the less doubts and questions that will arise in the future.

And, in relation, the more uncertainties that arise in my human, fallible and un-omniscient mind, is not reason to suggest I am losing faith in what I am certain of.

Because the definition of faith is "a simple trust in the Providence of God."

And the purpose of questioning and doubting is

to gain a deeper reverence for the character of God,

to obtain a greater understanding of yourself,

to reach a more enlightening conclusion about something,

essentially, to find the Truth.

But to place faith and doubt on the same platform would be to erroneously equate them. For in no way does what come from fallible creatures (doubt) balance that which is given by the infallible God (faith).

And to believe that, because I have faith, I will no longer doubt is just as grave a mistake.

Luke 17:5,6:

The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!"

He replied, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you.

A simple trust; a complex concept.

A Lighter Side to Darkness

A few weeks ago, I deactivated my facebook.

I don't really know what compelled me to this sudden alteration in my life, seeing as how the facebook application on my phone consumes most of my time.

But maybe that was why.

Either way,

I've been reading a lot of books to fill up my time.

And no, not the Twilight series. Not the junky books that require no actual thought (sorry, Twilight fans, but you gotta admit: a book that revolves around a faint-faced vampire lover doesn't have much substance). Not the books where they can make a movie out of it or someone can give you a summary and then you know basically all you need to. Not one of those books where you don't really have to read it carefully to understand it.

But in my search for the narrow gate, I've found myself engaged in books that make me stop and think.

About my life.

About my past.

"Dark Night of the Soul" was a concept explored by St. John of the Cross (homeboy's a Spanish priest back in the ...1500s?). I will attempt to explain to you, but just as a word of caution: but my words fall short. As St. John said in relation to this journey, "for only he that passes this way can understand it, and even he cannot describe it." Well said, sir.

Essentially, it's the idea that the soul inside us must pass through many trials, a period of darkness that is both "spiritual and temporal" in order to reach "a perfect union of the love of God, as far as is possible in this life."

But it's not just that a person goes through hard times.

It's this intense anxiety.

A feeling of loneliness in which you are isolated from everything, everyone...and feel like you're even detached from God. It's a spiritual desert; you are so incredibly thirsty for Living Water and find no oasis, you knock and the door doesn't seem to budge. You call upon God to save you, and you still feel like you're drowning.

Friends, family... it seems as if everything fails to console you.

This isn't for the new to faith, mind you.

It's for the ones who have been growing in faith and it seems like they've dropped the ball somehow. As if their spiritual life has hit a certain wall they can't push past.

Maybe the old ways that used to get us close to God (worship, daily Bible readings) no longer suffice. Maybe your relationship with him has hit its lowest point ever, and all you want is God to sweep you off your feet so you can be in love with him again...or maybe you just want to know he's real and still there.

But instead of a sign, you're left feeling angry and alone.

At this point, some people refuse to continue into the night. They're scared. Some just turn around and refuse to deal with the pain, others try to find another route and end up at a dead end or back at the beginning of their frustration.

Sometimes people don't even realize they're going through it.

And there's the few that choose to go into the darkness, trusting God's purpose for a more perfect union with him in the end.

Place me in all of the above.

For the soul to be wholly detached from everything, and even feel isolation from God,

for the soul to be in complete darkness,

all to reach this "Divine light of the perfect union of love of God."

...interesting concept, isn't it?

I'm still wrestling with this idea, and I'm happy to say it's rocking my world.

But like St. John said, it's pretty much impossible to describe.

It's one of those books you just have to read to understand.

Glorifying the Poor.

(Something that the Africa team talked about on the trip. It's nice to know we're not the only ones who see this.)

There's a tendency among the wealthy to glorify the poor.

This happens when leaving the ivory hotel to walk among the masses for an afternoon. The rich decree, "These Guatemalans, they're just so... just so happy and content, even though they have nothing." The intrinsic assumption is that those who want for everything don't want anything.

As it turns out, a band of six-year-olds running in the streets with their kites made out of string and a discarded plastic bag, or playing a rousing game of kick-the-avocado because they lack a can, are indeed having a good time. Most six-year-olds are happy. It's how six-year-olds are. They don't understand their muscles aren't growing because they have no protein in their diet. They don't understand that 20 years from now, their education will have failed them and they won't be gainfully employed. They don't understand that Horatio Alger's stories won't come true, no matter how hard they work. But for now, the score is 2-1, and there's an avocado waiting to be enthusiastically kicked down the street.

As it turns out, the new mother, 16-years-old, is happy. It's how new mothers are. She doesn't yet know that nursing her baby will rob her body of calcium, and soon her teeth will fall out. She doesn't fear losing her baby to chronic diarrhea nor fear the possibility that her baby will go deaf from untreated meningitis. She accepts them as a natural risk of starting a family. Having lost a sister or cousin under similar circumstances, she accepts them not as obscure theory like being hit by lightning, but as a genuine risk to her family. Having accepted that risk, she moves on with life and smiles at her baby.

As it turns out, the day laborer in the field is not happy. He is hundreds of miles from home, moving every few weeks, following the coffee harvest, the cardamom planting, or whatever he can find. He sleeps on the hard-packed ground with a wool blanket he carries with him. For shelter, he has what his employer provides, sometimes a tin roof, sometimes an actual building, sometimes nothing at all. He was in the fields, swinging his machete before the sun was over the horizon, and he'll make his dinner in the dark on a fire over a small aluminum plate that he also carries with him. He'll go to bed tired, cold, a little hungry, unhappy, and invisible.

There's a darker underbelly to poverty. It doesn't show up in the happy glossy aid magazines, it doesn't show up on the tour schedule, it doesn't make the news, you can't see it from the car, and it isn't glorious.

In some cases, families of low economic means are quite rich in terms of community, family values and work ethic. Poverty and struggle can be common enemies that unite a family. It's tough to stay angry with three of your siblings when you'll share a bed with them that night.

Given the opportunity, a poor Guatemalan would gladly give up their status as glorious poor for the chance to be glamorously rich. The glamorous rich that have given up their wealth to become gloriously poor are so rare their biographies are written and they are nominated for sainthood. To have started life at the bottom of the economic ladder and not become a malcontent is certainly commendable, but it is not glorious.

Poverty, the invisible sort, will never be solved until we are willing to see it.

Thanks Wayne. Taken from: http://www.asgreenasitgets.org/

Speak To Me.

I am your servant, and I am listening

Speak to me, Lord, speak to me.

I need your wisdom, your truth and comfort

Speak to me, Lord, speak to me.

Speak to me, speak to me.

Through your Word,

Through your Spirit

SPEAK YOUR WORDS OF LIFE

Speak to me, speak to me.

I am listening,

I am waiting,

SPEAK TO ME.

I am your servant, and I am listening,

Speak to me, Lord, speak to me.

My heart is silent, my soul is longing,

Speak to me, Lord, speak to me.

Grace.

I've been wrestling with the Bible for, well, ever.

But in one of my deep, disappointed-with-God moments a few weeks ago, I turned to the Bible to find answers.

And it was quite a heart-wrenching shock to find that reading Romans didn't give me the peace I thought it would.

The peace that everyone says you get after reading the Bible when you've had a bad day.

In fact, I fell into this restless tornado of confusion that I have yet to get out of. And the question that has been nagging me for so long:

What is grace?

What does it mean exactly, to be saved by grace? What about mercy? What's the difference between grace and mercy, if any? What the heck is Romans 5 even about? And most importantly, what does this mean for me in my life right now, for my familial situation, for my struggling with doubts and beliefs?

Maybe I'm looking for a set definition of grace, and there just isn't one.

I understand that, because Christ died for us, we are not subject to the law, and therefore have grace, which is a righteousness that compels us to do what He asks because of what He did.

Or maybe I don't.

Maybe I see the logical intricacies of it, but don't believe it. Don't really, truly understand.

Or maybe I have the whole thing wrong and don't understand what grace is.

Either way, I know I haven't got it figured out. And this struggle compels me to continue searching for the Truth. Thank God I don't give up so quickly.

New Lessons.

I feel like God has been teaching me a lot these past few weeks.

Yet the more I learn about myself and about God, the increase in the number of questions that tag along.

- I've realized that I have put my trust in the wrong things. But what should I put my trust in? And how do I do it?

- I've realized that I may be undergoing what St. John of the Cross termed "the dark night." But what do I do now? Where do I go from here?

When I feel like I've finally firmed my relationship with Him, He pulls the rug out from under me, shakes me, and reminds me that the search for the narrow gate isn't easy. Reminds me that I'll never figure Him out. Reminds me that I'll always be struggling.

The J side of me finds it hard to come to terms with that uncompromising fact.

An Attitude Change.

I turned in my first college paper today.

Four pages of my genius written in an hour and a half of class time. As you can tell, I have come to gloat about my triumph. Just kidding.

But in the paper we had to compare and contrast two poems (thank you Mrs. Malott!). I chose "One Art," which is about a woman who denies that the loss of a loved one is difficult, and "Desert Places" (I absolutely love Robert Frost by the way), in which the speaker deals with his sense of loneliness. Unlike the woman in the first poem, the speaker in the latter accepts his situation without reluctance.

I basically pointed out that there are some things in life that are inevitable (such as someone dying or feeling alone) ...that will happen whether you like it or not. what determines how the outcome will be is in the attitude with which you respond.

Which got me thinking.

There are so many things in our lives that we choose to deny because the pain just sucks so much, or we don't want to be in a certain situation and begin hating it. And yet, no one said life was going to be easy. The guy in the latter poem...he knew this loneliness was inescapable, that sometimes, you can search for something and not find because, well, you're meant to feel that suffering. So he accepted it. He hated it, but he still submitted because he couldn't change his circumstances. And although he was still lonely, there was a tone of peace and calm.

Continuing with this whole transition phase, I've been feeling alone and depressed for a while now...and in an attempt to change my current situation, i've been in a constant search to make close friends. but for the last couple months i have significantly failed. don't get me wrong; i still have close friends here that i can talk to about anything, at any time. i simply mean that, at this point in time, i feel detached and apart from everyone else..and that's something i just can just wake up one morning and change. yet now i'm coming to accept that, yes, i am in a situation where i am alone, and though i've tried to change it, i can't. and maybe, instead of beating myself down for not succeeding, i should ask myself why. why am i in this situation right now? what's the point of my seclusion?

and i came to understand that this may not be the time for me to create friendships, but rather work on the ones i already have...most especially my relationship with Jesus. While it is a period of my life where i am seemingly detached from the rest of the world, it's not so much a time of seclusion as it is a chance for introspection.

while i may not be able to change certain situations in life, i can definitely change my attitude towards them.