please

please say honestly, you won't give up on me.

and i shall believe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYht-Fpvu4g

this random thing

JP did a while ago, and for some reason I just felt like trying it.

It was one of those facebook tag other people chain things~

Rules:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search (http://www.flickr.com/).
b. Using ONLY the first page, pick an image. (i picked only the first or last image on the page)
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Mosaic Maker. Change rows to 3 and columns to 3 (http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php).
d. Save the image and post it on this note.

1. Pope John Paul & Mother Theresa MA14546175-0002, 2. Orange (365/340), 3. Mhhhh the sweetest candy cupcake from Crumbs., 4. Tahiti Lime, 5. When Waves Collide, 6. 082 - Mar 23 - Journaling, 7. Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation (CBCF) - Run for the Cure, 8. Seeking the truth, 9. Thoughtful Gorilla

The Questions:
1. What is your first name? Theresa
2. What is your favorite color? orange
3. What is your favorite food? chocolate - i think its the one food i have the most reoccurring cravings for.
4. Favorite drink? limeade
5. Dream vacation? hawaii
6. Favorite hobby? journaling
7. What you want to be when you grow up? i put in oncologist and got pictures of dogs/pets. so then i put in "cure cancer." haha.
8. What do you love most in life? seeking truth
9. One word to describe you? thoughtful.

school ties

just randomly watched this movie today. I remember Mr. Foster always using the story for examples and illustrations in AP English. I don't know why I like this particular moment, when everyone is mad at Brendan Fraser for not telling them he was Jewish/pretending he wasn't. You lied to us! they say. His response is:

i didn't lie to you. i lied to my father. i lied to myself.

conscious consumer

incomplete thoughts: there's a phrase that says you vote with your money.

it's true! where you put your money determines what businesses thrive and which don't. and in a way, buying products supports the system by which it was designed, produced, marketed. i was thinking about it, just because especially when we were in taiwan - my dad would always ask me after i bought something, where was it made?

its weird, even though I've always known this to be true, I don't think about it when I buy things. I just buy things that I like. And now that I've started trying to pay more attention, it's not easy! It's easier to buy something in order to support something (a business, or Taiwan for instance). To decide NOT to buy something is a lot harder -- I keep thinking, but i really like/want it! I supposed, I'm just not in the habit of thinking that way. But I don't think most people are; and that simply perpetuates the less than ethic business practices that allow companies to produce things faster and cheaper.

race for hope!

Caught the running bug!

Some friends from the cloister at the NIH just signed for Race for Hope in DC, a 5k on May 2 to raise money for the National Brain Tumor Society!

Just wanted to put out my support/donation link to see if anyone reading this would like to donate to my run! :D

Or even sign up to run with me!!

cherry blossom 10 miler

It was this weekend! 3 months of training culminated in a gorgeous day for a run, and an awesome team of cloister friends to run with. and if you're reading this, I'm sure the next thing you want to know was my time! so while training, made a remodified goal of 80 min rather than 75 like my crazy new years plan. Although, the year is not OVER yet, so there is still time for me to make that goal....

ran in 81:56, so didn't make the under 80 goal either, but my time was not bad! I'm not overly ecstatic about my time, I think I could have done better - spent most of the first 5-6 miles weaving through people since I was seeded in the last wave (didn't have a pace time entered when I signed up). Will try to avoid that for the next race... (the next race?!). Honestly kind of jealous of the guys who ran the race and made it in 78/79 min (my goal!) and didn't even train. sigh on being a girl...

but in better perspective - ran 8:12 splits, WAY faster than I ever imagined I could have run 3 months ago. and placed #855/8813 women - top 10%! :D

baptized!

I got baptized this easter! Just want to thank everyone who came out to celebrate this happy day with me. Although I've been a christian for a long time now, it was still really great just to celebrate being brought alive in Christ. (thanks to DHC for the photo, 3 of us praying together after the baptism)

Here's what I wrote up for my testimony, wanted to share:

I decided I needed to believe in Jesus in 6^th grade, because I didn’t want to go to hell. I was at a kids Friday night AWANA event with my friends and the leader (this huge white man) asked – if anyone wanted to accept Jesus he would pray with them. I was too intimidated by him so I never did. I officially accepted Jesus in eighth grade; praying a prayer privately to myself. I still went to church for similar reasons – not wanting to go to hell, get advice on how to be a better person, felt like I should.

It was during college that began to better understand what Jesus was really offering. But it was not so much through the exciting experiences with God I had, but through the darker moments. As a puritan prayer states – the way down is the way up; the valley is the place of vision. I often found myself chasing approval and attention from others (I still do); it felt almost like a drug, always wanting more, more, more. The acknowledgement that I got from others that my existence mattered was nowhere near enough to quench my longing, or to quell my fear that maybe it didn’t really matter that much. When I wasn’t getting what I wanted, I sulked and eventually just gave up. I went through constant phases of just wanted to be left alone, and to sleep, or watch tv; just generally not participate in life. Life fell into an emotionally numb monotony. I can’t say that I particularly disliked it, I was just – neutral. But what did seem unbearable was the repetitive stagnancy of each day; it was all the same, life without any discernable direction, just going in purposeless circles.

I had this habit of making myself feel sad – putting myself down, dwelling in my inferiority and all the things I couldn’t stand about myself. I knew I kept doing it because it satisfied some sort of twisted longing inside me – perhaps simply just to feel ANYTHING, even if it was pain. I knew I was being self-indulgent, letting myself wallow in self-pity; but I didn’t really care.

I finally realized- this is what Jesus came to save us from. This is death; these are glimpses of hell- less fiery than what I had once imagined, but more ominous. Above all, that Jesus had conquered death meant he offered hope. Hope that good would prevail over evil. That despite the heavy burdens and multitude of my personal demons – the battle was not lost! The fight that I had long given up hope on – was no longer impossible. Because Jesus had conquered death and hell, and He was with me. He gave me the strength to pick myself up and fight and LIVE. Jesus said, together we will conquer the death in you. Suddenly, what used to not matter (why fight if you know you are going to lose?) became infinitely important – that I fight and participate in life; not only for myself, but so that I could declare to others too that the battle was not lost! As death was conquered by life, I found I needed less and less for myself – ready to give more than I sought to receive. Overflowing with joy that I couldn’t help but share. The desire to love others deeply because I knew that I was loved. Alive.

I know what it is to be dead, and I know what it is to be alive. A few weeks ago Pastor Tom said – going from being dead to alive is a supernatural event. Of course it is! I thought. Clearly the resurrection of Jesus from a dead corpse to a living person was a supernatural event, duh! But in me too. To be brought from spiritual death to the fullness of spiritual life – could only be the work of my supernatural savoir.

oh c.s. lewis

recently got audiobook version of c.s. lewis's mere christianity. have always loved the book, but there is something about having it read to you in such a britishly matter of fact manner that is just soo funny. though I do have to say, after listening to him for 4 hrs straight on my drive home from Cleveland, my brain does hurt a bit--

some memorable quotes:

- on science: "Science works by experiments. It watches how things behaves. Every scientific statement in the long run, however complicated it looks, really means something like, "I pointed the telescope to such and such a part of the sky at 2:20 am on January 15th and saw so-and-so," or, "I put some of this stuff in a pot and heated it to such-and-such a temperature and it did so-and-so."

- on the old testament (very reminiscent of hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy i thought): "He (God) selected one particular people and spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God that he was- that there was only one of Him and that he cared about right conduct. Those people were the Jews, and the Old Testament gives an account of the hammering process."

- on love: "Another notion we get from novels and plays is that 'falling in love' is something quite irresistible; something that just happens to one, like measles."

some insightful quips:

"It [Christianity] has just that queer twist about it that real things have."

"God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than any other slackers."

"When a man is getting better, he understands more clearly the evil that is still left in him. ... A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is alright."

further thoughts -

the chapter on pride hit me really really hard. i can see every part of my being drenched in pride in an incredibly self-satisfied way. that confidence so strongly relies on the sense of being higher or better than others. always judging, comparing myself. and how annoyed i get when people don't respect me or i feel like they treat me like i'm stupid. some of mr. lewis' thoughts on pride:

"the more we have it in ourselves, the more we dislike it others." he suggests, that if we want to know how proud we are, just see how much other peoples' pride annoys us.

"Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind." he writes that "unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that are mere fleabites in comparison." which i completely agree with, but it just makes me cringe at how big of a deal today's church makes of these "fleabites" like homosexuality when "the worst of all vices can smuggle itself into the very centre of our religious life."

on vanity and seeking other people's praise - "It is a fault, but a childlike and even (in an odd way) a humble fault. It shows that you are not yet completely contented with your own admiration. You value other people enough to want them to look at you."

and lastly: "a proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you." and how much will you have missed out on!

cast iron, YUM.

Finally pulled out the cast iron plate Julia got me for Christmas to use. :D!!
because ... I bought pre-marinated pork bulgogi from H-mart yesterday.
aw man it was soooo good. Honestly, some of the best meat I've eaten at home before.

now thinking about the possibilities for using cast iron. high temp cooking!
I think I might need to try making steak sometime soon...

reading!

as to my new years resolution to read at least one book per month (it seems like quite a meager goal, but albeit realistic), I am making some progress. On my trip to taiwan I got a chance to finally really take time to READ. I forgot how good it feels to read; to get sucked into a book and not want to put it down.

so that inspired me to go on a book buying binge the other day. I went to b&n to buy a book. i was thinking about getting up in the air (i.e. movie based on book), but after flipping through it didn't look that enticing. So i ended up wandering around and found a table of "buy 2, get 3rd free!" books. Normally I'd think - that is way too many books to buy, and I need to stop buying books. But that day, I just thought, I think I'll read them all, hopefully.... So I came home with 1100+ pages of reading. But I'm already halfway through the first book! thanks to being sick and staying home.

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Books I've read (i'll try to keep updating on books i'm reading):
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. this book was incredible. It was the one that I couldn't put down. I bought it b/c i saw it at costco and it looked interesting so i just picked it up. its a memoir, incredibly a true story. The writing was beautiful and the stories were engrossing, but i think the most compelling thing about the whole book was that everything was real. It chronicles Jeannette's childhood in a family where her parents never had the resources, financially or emotionally, to take care of their children; the Walls kids band together to learn to take care of themselves, finding hope and optimism in situations that did not merit any. I was amazed once again by the resilience of children (of these children in particular), and at the same time angry that you had to find out about their resilience at all.

The Gospel According to the Son by Norman Mailer. JZ gave this book to me more than a year ago, but i never got around to finishing it. It's Jesus' life told from his point of view. I think what I like most about it is that he portrays Jesus as very human- not necessarily human as in flawed, but human as in able to be hurt, able to be weak, able to feel very deeply. It was sort of confusing, to read one person's imagined account of who Jesus might have been- to try to distinguish what was real and what was not. But in the end I think, Jesus was a man; Jesus was real. And we can't think of him as an abstraction; we all end up imagining our own picture of who he might have been. I think the last few sentences really resonate with who I imagine Jesus to be: "So I think often of the hope that is hidden in the faces of the poor. Then from the depth of my sorrow wells up an immutable compassion, and I find the will to live again and rejoice."

currently reading: Little Bee by Chris Cleave. "I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.
"In a few breaths' time I will speak some sad words to you. But you must hear them the same way we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive. The next thing you know, something fine will happen to her, something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile."