A first

There's always a first for everything. I've never sat in a coffee shop on a sunday in place of church, but that's where i am today. I've had this battle for the last couple of sundays where it's next to impossible to convince myself to go to church. And for me that's a huge thing. I remember growing up, church was like your next breath. We rarely skipped church, unless you were sick or for some reason my parents didn't go to church. I remember when I first moved to the states and I had the freedom to be myself, and knowing that my parents weren't there to monitor my every move, i still couldn't skip church. I went through this major guilt trip and I would end up going whether i felt like it or not, today that's not the case.

Since the new year began, and the reality of my moving to Seattle is becoming more real, I'm beginning to disconnect. Surprisingly, church has been the first place i've started to disconnect. I would have thought my job would have beeen the first thing to go, but it's not. In fact I have no complains, per se, about work. Maybe it's because it's been really crazy that I don't have time to sit and complain...I can only hope that the next 6 months will be like that. I'm not quite sure why all of a sudden, i've lost interest in church. This place has been the ground through which so much good and other interesting, for lack of a better word, things have happened. But now it's like the string that had me connected to this place has finally severed and I don't have anything in me to try and re-connect.

I talked with my two trusted friends, Allan and Erin, and they both said the same thing. First, I'm glad they understood what I was going through, but they also encouraged me to not forsake my friends. If anything, I should still try and worship with them, I guess even if that's the only thing that comes out of it. My excuse was to say, I see my friends all the time so it didn't make sense why I should go to church to see them again...but I guess it's only fair to see my friends from another angle or perspective of their lives. Life is not one dimensional, in a nutshell. Obviously today, I just could not encourage myself enough to want to go, hence my being here.

As I lay in bed this morning battling with my two selves regarding church, i figured i should come to a compromise and at least attend my church maybe 2-3 times a month and the rest i can visit another church or do whatever...maybe that's more reasonable...I don't know. But that's where i'm at.

I think it will be interesting to see what things begin to disconnect. There are friendships that I've began to let go, but for some it will be painful to let them go.

In so many ways the next few months will be interesting, to say the least. But i guess it's only natural that i'm trying to protect my heart from too much pain when i leave, but then again who said pain was a bad thing? I think it only shows the extent to which something or someone is attached to your soul.

I'm looking for Hope

"...your dreams aren't going to materialize in the way you have hoped - even the ones you thought God gave you. Some will turn out better than you could ever imagine. Some will go belly up. And hardly any will match the picture in your mind." Paula Rinehart.

These words always get me. Maybe it's because they are so true. I can feel them at this very moment. That my life hasn't really turned out the way I thought it would. This is no complaint I'm offering. It's just an observation of my life. I can feel a sense of insecurity threatening to undo me, because I feel like so much is at stake, and yet it feels like it's really not upto me how the events of my life unfold. I can clench my teeth, tight fist with hope wishing that my dreams could come true, just as I've always imagined, but I've lived long enough to know that life doesn't work like that...and it's one of those really hard realities I can never escape from.

It just seems like the in last half hour, prior to writing this blog, there's some shifting that's taken place in my soul. A sense of who do I think I am to pursue this dream I've carried with me for so long? To think that somehow through writing music I can make some sort of change...I mean how is that even possible? I've waited for so long, but now I'm not even sure what it is I've been waiting for. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this gift. Sometimes it's so clear...I can taste it, other times, I find myself in this dark hole, without a sense of where the hell I'm supposed to be going.

I often think about Joseph in the OT, when I land in places like this. I think of how he had to wait for 13 years before the dream he had at 17 came to fruition. I can only imagine what he went through...the things the Bible never discloses...his struggle between what he was so sure of, but it took so long to get there that I wonder if he doubted. If he ever thought that maybe his brothers were right. Maybe, he wasn't really going to make that much of a change. I wonder how he got out of those moments. I wonder what it was like the night before he's whole life changed...did he sense that God was about to turn his life around in a way that even he could not have imagined? Did he see it coming? I wonder......

As for me, maybe the next half hour will be less hopeless. Maybe I'll crawl out of this dark hole and keep making my journey. Maybe I'll be here for a while. Who's to tell.

Hope...that's what I'm looking for. A sign that there is a bigger story, better yet that someone bigger than I am is writing my story and how it will turn out will completely blow my mind away. I don't want to live a meaningless life. I don't want to exist for the sake of existing. There must be a reason I'm here. There must be a purpose for my existence. I just don't know what it is.

To being 30!

I finally turned 30 this past saturday, and I'm extremely happy with myself and how old I am. I've never quite understood what the deal is with revealing your true age. It took me a while to realize that people here don't like getting old. I don't know why, but no one gets excited if they are referred to as old and once you hit thirty it's almost like there's no more hope for you. I guess by the age defying creams out there, aging has almost become a taboo. As for me, I'm completely happy and satisfied with getting old. To me it stands for gaining wisdom in life, for gaining some stability as to who you are, it's a day closer to my grave...another day I'm not afraid of. With this coming of age for me is a hope of fighting through my somewhat turbulent 20's and finally gaining some ground that I can stand on and figure out the rest of my life.

See, for the most of my twenties, I still lived as my mother's daughter. Which meant that everything I did was for her and my father of course. Even though I've been living in the states for about 10 years, 7 of those were lived with my parents voice still in my head. It took a very painful and confusing year and a half to finally stand on my own two feet and I think it's been worth it. Now, I see my parents as humans beings who are trying to figure out their life as much as I'm trying to figure out mine. I've come to love and appreciate them more than anything. I've come to admire what they stand for, how they live their lives with unbridled integrity, honesty and above all a desire to live for their Maker. I can now honestly say I have deep admiration for who they are and I see it as an honor to call them my parents.

So, when I think about my thirties, I think about taking life by it's horns or as my friend Dianna said, take 30 by it's balls! I love that and that's what I plan to do. I still have a lot of growing to do...God knows how much too, but I'm happy to finally get down and dirty and continue in this journey of understaning who I am and for what reason I was put in this planet.

One of the ways I've decided to take my life by it's horns is my music. Ever since I was a short, chubby kid, I wanted to sing. It's all I've ever found true joy and utmost satisfaction in. I've always dreamed of having my own CD and I've waited for long and I feel like the time has come. But at the same time I realize that no one has felt the same waiting pangs as I have and I've had to make the decision that I can't wait for people to catch up with me...I'm not trying to sound arrogant here, it's a reality, I believe. Waiting for people can sometimes be good, other times, I might still be waiting even when I'm in my forties. Anyway, the point to all of this, is that I made up my mind to record my own songs. Living in this age of technology, that's not like tryng to go to the moon. So I've spend a good amount of money, don't even ask me how much, to acquire the right equipment and I'll turn my tiny closet into my recording studio and see what magic happens. I just hope that someday, I'll be recalling the days when I was recording from my closet...let's hope they are coming.

So here's to being 30..to taking it by it's balls...to becoming my own producer....to pursuing this dream I've been pregnant with for God knows how long...let's hope the delivery is somewhere around here....

my tormented soul...

I've always thought myself as a very independent human being. Naturally, I think I have been. I went to boarding school starting in 5th grade all through high school then I left my homeland to come here for a better life...and indirectly for my family too. Consequently, I didn't grow up valuing relationships that much, a combination of always being on the move, poor social skills and a fear of people. But since moving here, I've had to form friendships...although probably the most effort I've put has been the last 3-4yrs...before that, I lived more on autopilot because I sort of managed to exist without really giving my soul to anyone...and if I did, it was pretty surfacy or I was scared s***less and kept to myself.

So these last three years, I've formed friendships with people from such different paths and each of them has affected me. Some have been good, others, I'm still scratching my head and some, I'm still hurting. The one thing I know is that receiving love or affection from another human being has affirmed me and given me a validation of my existence...something I had never allowed myself to experience. But now I'm falling into the trap of always looking for someone to approve me, a word that will make me feel important, I'm loved, I'm appreciated...I mean something...that my existence is noticed. Like any other addiction, no matter how many friends I have who love me, when I come across that one person that doesn't have the same affection, I put all my brain energies into wondering why they don't like me and maybe make a weak attempt at convincing them that I'm 'good'. But why? Why do I need to convince another person that I have a 'good' soul if they can't see that on their own? Is this how it was meant to be?

Along these same lines, I've come to realize that sometimes people's perception of me and what I to do with my life affect me. If someone thinks I'm not living life like I should, I take that really personally, often times I'm hurt, and there's a part of me, the part that is the chronic people pleaser, wants to change so I can fit someone's idea of who I should be. But should I really do that? Should I really live my life because it's what someone thinks I should?

I feel like this is going to be question I have to struggle with this year. Trying to tear my heart away from these tendencies of always hanging on what people think about me and letting that shape the person I become. When relationships don't scare me, I love them...it's when they become complicated, when I'm required to wade through difficulty, difference of opinion, that I literally want to be swallowed by the ground.

When the tough gets going...

I sometimes dislike friendships...mainly when they get murky and blurry when you are not quite sure where you stand with another human being and for me I always read things into the situation that might either exist or not. It makes me really nervous, uncomfortable and the coward in me always shows up and I'll retreat to the corner and whine hoping that somehow God will vindicate me.

When I was in London, I told Hannah how much I'm afraid of people, in reality I'm only afraid of them when I know we are not seeing things from the same light. I've never been a fan of conflict...I'm the kind of person who will maintain peace, even if it means I'll be squirming somewhere in the corner when another person is pushing me down. I'm getting better at it, but it's not one of those things that comes naturally to me. Maybe in this, my thirtieth year, I'll be much better at this. It doesn't help either that I'm a super sensitive person. As a child I sort of trained myself to recognize when people weren't happy with me, in which case, I'd do whatever was needed, for me to get back to their 'good grace', and even at 29, almost 30, I still get caught in that mindset. If for example a person doesn't talk to me as much as they used to...immediately, I start to wrack my brain as to what I could have possibly done for them to cease talking to me...yeah, talk about being twisted! I've always had issues with receiving my esteem based on how people respond to me, I think I've gotten better at this, but I still find myself trying to get approval from people once in while and when I don't, I sort of fall into this 'woe-is-me', no-one really likes me pouting...I know, I should be grown up by now, but regretfully, I'm not...I'm still in process...maybe when I'm 40 I'll have this down.

I really like to believe that I'm a very normal human being (which in my warped reality normal means perfect), until there's some friction or change in a relationship, then it's like all this disfunction ebbs out of me, mind you uninvited...I just hate it...I want to desperately maintain this composure of having it together...but reality keeps reminding me that I'm not all that. That I'm as f'd up as any other human being I know, and I don't need some special treatment no matter how good I think I am. It really is humbling to be human...it's all I can say.

One of the things I keep thinking about is that passage that talks about trying to take the speck out of your brother's eye, while there's a plank in yours. I think of that often when I think someone has done me wrong and I think they need to hear about it. I'm always trying to ask myself if there's someone I'm treating in the same manner as I think this person is, in which case, I have no right trying to correct this person who's wronged me if I'm doing it to another...to me it's the perfect description of hypocrisy...something that I'm pretty familiar with in practice. It's hard to be human and at the same time trying to maintain this whole idea of living out the Kingdom of God. Which lately has been the understanding that it's about having an alternative view of life. Often times, I don't want to be a Christian because it's so hard to maintain this balance...and I'm struggling right now to make sense of this...to grab a hold of this new way of thinking as prescribed by Jesus, and I have to say it's so difficult...sometimes I just want to give up. It's so much easier to payback someone the same as they've done to me, instead of coming up with a creative way to respond in which it allows the other person to really think about what they are doing.

At the end of the day, I think my desire is to feel validated as a human being. It's the feeling that I want to be recognized as valid and not insignificant. That I do count and that I matter, regardless of who I am. I think that's why tension always comes up with people...because none of us want to feel beneath another person...the trick is how do you let the other person know your validity as a human being without using violence and passive aggressiveness?