Applying & Surrendering

In these weeks of relapse and rememory, I finally understood that the feeling and measure of readiness that I had been waiting these years for, were in vain. So devastating were they, the regressions, to a flimsy hard-won confidence in "progress." So telling was the collapse, of the false foundation.

Bones that have healed incorrectly over time must be re-broken.

So.

Much.

Time.

It was not right, they did not work, but it felt . . . tolerable.

Unlike the hard work of restoration, where she sought only respite.

Respite without return was no rest at all.

They could not have run with horses.

Those legs could not have walked on water.

They could not have followed to the ends of the earth.

They were crippled by their contest with God.

He still wanted to walk with her, take her hand.

Win what she'd lost.

They will rejoice in the re-setting.

They will heal in their weight-bearing.

They will work as they were made to.

The steadfast love of the Lord, is so unrelenting, so precise, even in Lam 3. So I am writing again, finally and longing just to bring, something that's of worth, that will bless your heart.

Watched Pixar's "Inside Out" Today

Lava'ed it. Cried, of course. Docter has created something special and valuable. A gamechanger –– in that it can change the conversation by providing a common vocabulary to lift an explanatory fog. He's telling the stories that will capture imagination across generations. Story arcs that depict full humanity. In Up, the protagonist was a dwelling place (house). In Inside Out, Riley('s mind) is a setting. This guy (a member of First Presbyterian Church) gets the elements of narrative.

Filing away:

• The facts and opinions boxes commingling
• Gravity moment
• Abstraction into shapes and colors and swirls
• Pearls of core memories
• Threshold moments – formative transitions
• Joy taking a backseat
• Sadness signaling for help/comfort
• Each character had a different driving emotion
• Emotions coloring memories & retouching them
• (In/voluntary) memories affecting emotions
• The troublemakers in the subconscious

CW EL PL JD DB AB

Outgrowing pains

The [boys'] trauma of leaving the orphanage was unexpected to me because I knew how much better these boys' life would soon be. I thought they knew too. But they had no idea. They couldn't conceive of anything other than the status quo. My whispering to my boys, "You won't miss that orphanage" is only a shadow of something I should have known already. Our Father tells us that we too are unable to grasp what's waiting for us––and how glorious it really is. It's hard for us to long for an inheritance to come, a harmonious Christ-ruled universe, when we've never seen anything like it. 

We just can't imagine "the glory that is to be revealed to us" (Rom. 8:18). That's why it's so important to have "the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints" (Eph. 1:18).

// Russell Moore

If I only knew what You knew.
Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.

May Flowers & Touchstones

This spring has been so peculiarly and particularly beautiful to me.

Every yellow flash of forsythia. Fivesythia. Sixsythia. Sevensythia. Fine, Eightsythia.

Giant Magnolia petals.

Every friend who is moving on. The babies on their way. Every change, attended with joy and not fear.

Not anymore. Never alone, and never afraid.

Preparing to say goodbye to my brownstone home of six (!) years. And the garden. Candles every night.

Grilling five out of seven days in a week.

The spontaneous garden parties. The children who have scribbled on its tiles with chalk.

Sending friends away for four months of well-deserved rest. Their absence blessing, providing for, and housing my big sister and me.

Mountainclimbing with her. Sifting through this season. With flaming hots a means of grace.

The bleeding hearts, tulips, hyacinths, hydrangeas that have returned.

Sinking into winter grief that did not in the end overcome them.

Enjoying pursuit.

Thank you for being so clear about what you wanted and expected. It makes me certain, that I don't have that to give, to you, now. How free and fair it felt to say that.

And to permit, nothing that you wouldn't want me to do with my brother. Nothing that you wouldn't do with a child in your care. How that was honest and generous.

Change.

I look at the photographs I have taken over the last few years.

And I see how life has become more colorful, beautiful, precious and memorable to me.

The sparkle. The gala that came and went. How God sent Bailey to help me.

Creating a machine that did not exist before. Being satisfied at my production.

How Nikelle, Peggy, and Jonny, were living with me altogether during Mother's Day weekend. Cuddle puddles. Family.

These DC two who have captivated my interest. Gifted me with a category for someone I could begin to consider forsaking all others for.

Chasing a lost child all the way around the world. Cinque Terre, Venice, Cebu, Manila, Guam.

Chasing chickens.

Sharing stories.

The calendar pages turn and turn. They were not wasted or given over. Even the pages I lost, Dad, you counted.

I am living in a kaleidoscope.

The beauty is dizzying.

It has not always been so. It will not always be so. And that's okay.

MT

I shared my testimony at morning service today as part of the MT training year.

Christine Kang-Hui

Christine and I crossed paths for only a (too) short, but oh-so-intense time. The time was like Christine herself: Very short, but oh, so intense.

In the year that I knew her, she was like the fortified hull of a powerful ship, cutting and plowing through the thick and defensive top-ice of my heart, to carve out safe passage, open the way to radical healing. Oh man, did she probe. Quite surgically, I recall. She had earlier in her life endured several of the similar pains and struggles I then faced; she knew the terrain of those ravines and credibly testified to the Lord's sufficiency, even there.

Did I believe her? She dared me to. It is hard to dismiss the words and the notice of a dying woman.

Christine was one of the first women to welcome me to Emmanuel. She saw right through my politeness and refused my evasive answers to "Are you okay?" and "How are you?" There were not many corners to hide in at our tiny evening service back then, and certainly not from her watchful eye. She saw through me, and also saw me––her attentive (and sometimes aggressive) kindness was so instrumental in lifting the crushing weight of my invisibility cloak. When I felt I had no fight left, she said she saw feist, story, and song in me and that she was determined to see it surface. She also told me that my ex-boyfriend sucked and that God was holding out for me, someday, family beyond my wildest of dreams. She said she hoped to be around to tell me, "I told you so."

I am thankful to Ken for creating and allowing the space for Christine to minister to me. He would take the couch when Christine invited me over to spend the night. Christine would always say to him, "Can we feed her?" this, "Let's feed her" that (and he did). When we went to the Fall 2011 Princeton Conference on Reformed Theology, he encouraged us to room together. She (absurdly) apologized for the gurgle of her machines and feeding tubes--as she often did for even slightly inconveniencing anybody around her, by her dying. Those were precious days of learning about Gods sovereignty in and over suffering. In the next few months, those around her watched her live out everything she learned of this, and watched her fight for her true and living hope. She was appropriately mournful, and astonishingly fearless, in the face of death. She planned her own funeral and helped everyone else grieve (what!!).

In dying well, as she did learn by grace to do three years ago, she again pointed us along the Way of life before us. I am so grateful to have had this strong friend who forged ahead and who promised to cheer us on from the finish line.

Yesterday, we feasted.

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As the Lunar New Year coincides with Gramma's birthday this year, the celebration would have been a much-anticipated feast.

Just a foretaste of our Banquet to come, at which we'll feast with laughter, though all hunger has been banished––sated forever.

Yesterday, we feasted.
Tomorrow, we'll feast again.

Happy birthday, Gram. Love and miss you so very much. It's any Asian Grandma's job to preside over the kitchen for the big events––you're gone now, but I'm learning to run with your torch, your love of lavish feasting, for any/all Family, with delicious and serious fooding. Yesterday in your honor, I threw a dinner party for 7 kids and 14 adults. We made 220 of 4 types of dumplings, 2 types of Asian greens, 2 types of 湯圓, 壽桃... We had peanut candy, tangerines, and red envelopes. I'm so glad you shared all those things with me.

Our 春聯 were 仁愛，喜樂，和平，忍耐，恩慈，良善，信實，溫柔，節制 because these are the fruits of Springtime, the gifts of Easter's renewal, the marks of the true flourishing we desire.

So much of me is made of what I learned from you, you'll be with me like a handprint on my heart.



Gram passed away Aug 2014 but is fondly remembered with gratitude and joy.

I wonder what banquet lies before her now.

Happy Birthday, 阿嬤!

Happy New Year.