Summer's Possibilities

ooh the possibilities of empty summer days. Of hours in an empty house before the busyness and responsibilities set in. I have a stack of books I want to read on one side of my room, and a stack of unpacked boxes on the other. In the middle is my bed--and I'm still pretty tired from that hard semester. Downstairs is the computer full of facts and updates from already-missed friends and outside is a beautiful trail waiting for my feet to begin their daily trek. A dangerous array of good food inhabits the kitchen and a TV with a full DVR list awaits to be discovered. The Wii is lonely, it hasn't been touched since January, but I have yet to enjoy that new recliner chair in my living room. Paychecks need to be deposited but the beach needs to be enjoyed. Graduation presents to buy, coffee dates with friends to be scheduled. Sleep, read, veg, run, be productive--be still. To quote my wise friend, Lizzie, "Decisions, Decisions..."

I'm excited, but a little overwhelmed, by the possibilities this summer day holds. oh no! it's already past noon!

God speaks about His servant the Psalms:

"Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him;
I will protect him, because he knos my name.
When he calls to me, I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble;
I will rescue him and honor him.
With long life aI will satisfy him
and show him My salvation."

Psalms 91:14-16

I rejoice in this Divine Romance

Writing for Chained Hands

A few weeks ago, my school hosted a week focused on social justice and human trafficking. Each day, special chapels and events were held to raise awareness and compassion for modern day slavery. The week commenced with an ex-prostitute who now ministers to prostitutes on skid row. I had no idea that prostitution was still so rampant in Los Angeles and I was in shock at the brokenness and violence that takes place less than thirty miles away from our campus.

As I wandered in the midst of the crowd exiting the gym, my mind was flooded with questions. But something stopped my thoughts instantly. Along the walkway outside the science building, my fellow students were chained to each other with masking tape covering their mouths. From their captive wrists hung cardboard signs that bore sobering statistics such as, “Over 2 million people are enslaved today” and pointed out the reality that people just like us are “For sale: $70” even within the U.S. These two realities—prostitution and modern day slavery—overwhelmed me.

I found a quiet place to sit and pray and cry. After nearly an hour, I made a resolve. The painful reality didn’t go away and I still had a lot of questions, but I decided to use my God-given talents any way I could to help people out of chains—whether that be the chains of prostitution or the literal chains of slavery. I have decided to write the pleas of those whose hands are chained and to be the voice of those whose lips that are taped shut.

Beleive it or not, our world--our country--desperately needs a modern abolitionist movement. Please join me in doing everything you can...because God's children were never mean to be bought and sold or to be in chains.
Find out what you can do: http://www.stopthetraffik.org/

World's Best Writing Lessons

Essay I wrote for a scholarship application...

The best preparation for my career as a writer has come from encounters with people who barely know the English language. Tutoring Korean graduate students has taught me that writing is about more than creating grammatically correct sentences neatly formatted on a page—it’s about taking a unique snapshot into an unexplored corner of life and waking people up with words. As I prepare to fulfill my goal as magazine writer, I have found that the best training has not taken place in my writing classes, but in a small cubical discovering the stories that communicate life.
As an undergraduate consultant at Biola’s Writing Center, my job is usually pretty straightforward. I help my peers organize and improve their papers and tutor them regarding basic writing skills. However, when the graduate consultants get overbooked, it is my job to help the English Second Language graduate students who come in. I began my first appointment with a Korean ESL student, Sun Hi, begrudgingly as I realized I would lose some of my normal on-the-job homework time. When I noticed that my student was as old as most of my professors, I became uneasy about being in a position of authority. However, as I glanced down at the page of broken sentences she laid before me, I realized that I had a lot to teach her and I presumptuously regained my confidence. I read the paper out loud to her, stopping after each sentence to ask her to explain what she was trying to say. After several minutes of mentally sifting through her scattered explanation, I painfully tried to reconstruct something coherent. As much as I shudder to admit it now, I started to believe that this woman was truly unintelligent because she could not put together a single clear English sentence. As we progressed into the body of the essay, I realized I needed to figure out the main message she was trying to get across so we could work on organization. I started to pay closer attention. After reading two sentences with my grammar-cop mentality put to the side, my heart broke. Sun Hi’s essay explained her painful education experience growing up in Korea and her appreciation for America’s school system. Although masked by the lack of articles and jumbled nouns and adjectives, each sentence was vibrant with life. Her message was not only relevant to her teaching course, but it made any careful reader thankful for the freedom to learn. My attitude shifted instantly when I realized that I needed to learn from her. Sun Hi may have needed a little bit of help communicating in the English language, but I needed to learn how to communicate life.
With this new mindset, I became eager to make her message shine more clearly through her writing. We worked together to clarify the thoughts and emotions behind each phrase so that her life-changing message could be understood and cherished as it deserved. Now, each time I have the privilege to work with an ESL graduate student, I look forward to discovering their life and their culture and helping them find words to share their perspective with the English speaking world. For these students, writing is so much more than putting pretty sounding words on a page. They have a story to tell and a life to share and they are desperately seeking the tools that will allow them this privilege.
Even though I haven’t seen her since that first appointment, Sun Hi has become a hero and role model to me as I pursue my writing career. I want to communicate life and challenge readers in the same way she does. I no longer go to my writing classes to become writer, I go to gain the tools I need to write the stories that life puts in front of me.

Anxieties of Reality

The beginning of this semester was a really hard time for me. The very first day of classes I started having panic attacks for no apparent reason. Everything felt heavy, scary, depressing. This is a reflection I wrote as I was coming out of that time and never got a chance to post.

“Have you realized that almost everything we’ve read for this class is really depressing?” my classmate asked with a grim look on her face. We were waiting for our American Literature class to begin in which we were to discuss a story about a Chinese immigrant couple who lost their baby to customs officials. Once the couple spent all of their money to reclaim their “Little One,” the child no longer recognized his mother’s Asian face but ran back into the folds of the white woman’s skirt. Another classmate casually paged through the syllabus wondering if brighter pages were in our future. This incident keeps echoing in my head. I pondered why we would be reading such depressing literature when I realized that we were in the midst of studying “realist” writers—authors who made it a point to describe life the way it really is from the eyes of the common man. That makes the reading even more depressing. The bleak emotions that are being portrayed on the page is a reflection of what the world is portraying to the authors.

Do we really live in that horrible of a world?

I’ve been feeling a sense of heaviness in life lately that has sometimes felt overwhelming. When I think about all the souls that are hurting around me, the tears that stain pale faces, and the heavy burdens that are loaded on countless shoulders—it all feels so overwhelming. But then I have to ask myself, why? What view of the world am I functioning in to allow these thoughts to exist and control me? It certainly could not be the worldview that God is in control of even the smallest sparrow and works all things for the good of those who love him and ultimately for His glory. I have been falling into the false belief that there are no mends for the tragic tears, no redemption from the chains of fears, and no relief for the heavy heart. I know that God is the ultimate Healer and that He redeems us from even the worst of fears and sins. But all too often I feel like the realization of all the pain and injustice in the world falls too heavy upon my frail soul. When this happens I literally feel like a rigid blanket of burdens is being pressed onto my head. My muscles tighten and my heart—racing—sinks, deep in my chest.

I ponder what it would be like to be having such realizations without knowing the Truth. I want to get into the head, but not too far, of those authors who made such sad conclusions about the world and probably never found good enough reason to refute them. What a dark life I have been saved from. What a glorious redeemer I cling onto. I cherish the fact that, though it’s a struggle, I can always fight the lies that invade my mind with the truth that God is in sovereign and loving control. I treasure the Truth that, on most days and in most instances, keeps me comforted in the midst of a broken world.

Words from our Savior: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you. Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:22-32)

Lord, may these words be my anchor.

Comforts for the anxious:
Creation story: the whole cosmos was fashioned by God’s mighty and loving hand. This includes the human heart and mind.
Nothing can spin out of his control. Though his children suffer deeply, He is a loving Father who feels for them in their pains and wants them to run to Him for comfort.
Beauty- in flowers, in mountains, in humanity, in pain

Hymn of Comfort
This is my Father’s world and to my listening ears
All angels sing and round me rings the music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world, I rest me in the thought
Of rock, of trees, of skies and seas, his every wonder brought
This is my father’s world, and let me never forget
That though the wrong seems often so strong, God is the ruler yet.




Looking back: God used this time in so many ways. One that I am most grateful for is Him giving me a deeper compassion--specifically for the lost. In those times of anxiety, I truly felt hopeless until I remembered the hope I have in Christ. When I encounter those without that hope, it breaks my heart to think they are lost in that sea of anxiety with no anchor to cling to. I remember those feelings. He has also helped me to relate to fellow Christians who also deal with anxieties. Periods of Darkness are scary, but God will always be the light. Allow Him to use those times.

Searching for Sunglasses and Silver

Good news! I found my new sunglasses!!! I was driving in the car with my mom on the way to Costco yesterday when the sun offensively bolt into my uncovered eyes. Having a bit of deja vu, I remembered a time when i was in the idnentical situation, but was then a proud owner of sunglasses and was able to releive myself by sporting those beautiful, dark frames. It all seemed so recent, but I had earlier convinced myself that that memory was from my thanksgiving visit home and the sunglasses were lost at school. In a half hearted effort, i began to reach my hand into the crevace that formed between the passenger seat and the door. Suddenly, before going down more than a few inches, my fingers felt the textured, oversized case that housed my lost treasure. In great joy mixed with unbelief, I removed my sunglasses from their case. They felt even better than they had when I first received them for my birthday just a month before. When we arrived at costco, I carefully replaced the glasses into their hard covered home, buried in my purse, and made sure i could feel the lump against my side as I walked. I had lost them once, and I wasn't about to do it again.
The joy that these found sunglasses brought me is somewhat shallow, that I'll definately admit. But there is just something about an item that was once lost and is now found. I had searched long and hard for them, described that silly oversized case to countless people, and reached my hands into far too many dusty crevaces. I had even planned out people to call and places to look later that day and it took another glance at the glasses to convince myself that I need not continue on my search. In this sense, my joy springs not from the possession of the glasses, but the completion of a long, hard search.
Proverbs 2 urges us to seek out wisdom, understanding, insight. I've done a lot of seeking in the last week or so and, frankly, I'm exhausted. I still have one very expensive item of mine missing and no map by which to begin my hunt--I'm stumpted. So, as I reapproach this passage, my soul almost instinctually feels wearied and quite hesitant to take up the search. What separates the hunt for wisdom from the hunt for my lost sunglasses? Fortunately, wisdom is not lost. It is not hiding in a large black case in a dark crevace, or floating in the abyss lost airline luggage. Rather, "the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding" (Proverbs 2:6). So while I am called to seek understanding as if seeking silver and to search for it as for hidden treasure, this hunt does not depend on my memory or my wit, but on a gracious and unchanging Father who wants to show me compassion and bless me with all good gifts--including understanding.
And so I will search for wisdom as for silver, not silver lost that needs to be reclaimed, but silver that--though totally undeserved--a merciful Father is anxious to bestow on a surrendered child.