The Dying Rooms in China

Please watch this documentary. It is heart-wrenching, but also eye-opening, and tells the untold story of abandoned girls in China. These girls need a home, a family and really, love. So that they don’t die slowly and unremembered.

the deprivation of the Romanian orphans

the earliest study on the long-term effects of institutionalization were done on Romanian orphans. This video describes the journey of one Romanian-american man, John Upton, to rescue as many orphans as he can. One sentence which will stick in my mind is when he saw the orphans doing toilet and meal time together in decrepit conditions and kept on repeating, “These are human beings…these are human beings.”

the loud beggar

And he called out, saying, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” And those who led the way were sternly telling him to be quiet; but he kept crying out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And Jesus stopped and commanded that he be brought to Him; and when he had come near, He questioned him. “What do you want Me to do for you?” And he said, “Lord, I want to regain my sight!” And Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight; your faith has made you well.” Luke 18:38 – 42

How desperate are we to receive our sight? If we were that beggar by the side of the road, would we continually cry out in a loud voice even when we are told sternly to keep quiet? Would we be unashamed of how we look in front of other people? Do we consider it a lost cause because doesn’t Jesus have a million other things to attend to? Or do we really believe that in the midst of the crowd, He will call us out and touch us? Could this be our moment? The one moment of healing? And will we recognize that moment – when He passes by?

I am guilty of being the quiet beggar. The one who sits placidly and yes, waits, but doesn’t contend. The one who is too embarrassed to be so forward – and I think, “well if God wants to do it, He’ll do it anyways. I don’t want to bother him.” And yet, if that beggar remained quiet, he would never have received his sight.

I was convicted of this this past weekend – of just letting life pass me by, without violently grabbing hold of it. Without apprehending God to please give me sight, without the zealous motivation to fully live, to just be semi-content (or is it lazy?) to stay where I was – in blindness and apathy.

If Jesus passed by, would we cry out loudly even if we do not have the eyes to see Him.

get life wisdom from a fortune cookie

 

We (Esther, Angela, Shiyi and I) played this game during core team this past weekend where we took a fortune cookie from our take out Chinese food and gave it to someone for encouragement. My three were right on point.  who knew that God could speak through a fortune cookie: the way to live life is to be childishly bold, forging your own path no matter what anyone else says because now is all you will have. v. grateful for the wisdom from fortune cookies

Seth Haines | Recovery Room: The Internal Frantic Monster (Or, My Addiction to the Egg Timer)

When I was in 3rd grade, I took my mom’s white mechanical egg timer (with one of those old-school dials that turned and ticked) from the kitchen counter and developed a plan to time each aspect of my morning routine. I set myself some “reasonable” goals—ten minutes for my hair, fifteen minutes for breakfast, three minutes to brush my teeth—and began to carry the egg timer around with me while I got ready for school.

Now, this was not about competition. There wasn’t a timeliness goal in my head. This was more a perfect storm of neuroses: my anxiety and my longing for self-perfection, exploding in my nine-year-old little-girl-brain. The timer would go off while I was still tying my shoes, and I would scream, “I’ll never be on time to school! I’ll never be on time to school!” throwing my shoes at the wall.

My parents (wisely) took the egg timer away from me after two days. But I still feel like that little girl sometimes, carrying my grown-up versions of egg timers, begging their little tick-tocks to assure me that my life is good enough, that I’m performing the way I ought to be.

I am addicted to my own franticness. I am addicted to performing enough, in the right amount of time, in a way that the people around me say is good.

via Seth Haines | Recovery Room: The Internal Frantic Monster (Or, My Addiction to the Egg Timer).

Eric Metaxas: Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God – WSJ

In 1966 Time magazine ran a cover story asking: Is God Dead? Many have accepted the cultural narrative that he’s obsolete—that as science progresses, there is less need for a “God” to explain the universe. Yet it turns out that the rumors of God’s death were premature. More amazing is that the relatively recent case for his existence comes from a surprising place—science itself.

via Eric Metaxas: Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God – WSJ.

mercy – matt redman

in the week leading up to good Friday, may I never lose the wonder, the wonder of your mercy. 

the close distance of eternity

“I tell him it won’t be any time before we are reunited — but for the mortal it feels impossible to understand the close distance of eternity.”

For the mortal, it feels impossible to understand the close distance of eternity.

I click the red ‘x’ as Mom’s smiling face disappears into pixels on my blank screen. and spontaneously burst into tears. Maybe it’s because of the way we nonchalantly talked about how I was going to be all the way in China for the next 2 years (or who knows how many more) and she wasn’t going to be visiting over Christmas. Maybe it’s how she asked concerned if there were going to be other people there I could celebrate Christmas with. Maybe it’s the way we both pretended to be brave over ghangout, that it didn’t seem like I was going halfway across the ocean and wouldn’t be home for Christmas in the first time in forever.

I always had had problems with saying goodbye. Since freshman year and when I started leaving home, I would always cry silently to myself while loading my baggage onto the conveyor belt, turning away from the glass windows so Mom wouldn’t see me cry. I had to be brave. I still do cry now, even after 3.5 years of leaving at airports. This time is not going to be any different. But this time, there’s no time limit set, no spring break to fly me back for. The earliest will be 2 years, the longest – not known.

all i can say is it won’t be any time before we are reunited — but for the mortal it feels impossible to understand the close distance of eternity.”

In eternity, we will be together. In this life, I don’t know when. Or for how long we will talk over disappearing pixels on my computer screen. But, I do know that for the mortal, it feels impossible to understand the close distance of eternity. And while I struggle to hang onto the final strands of the moments we share together, I whisper close to Mom – soon, mom, very soon.

I guess it’s the time of life when everyone gets really emotional, just like how PMS hits just before you get your period. When all of a sudden, you are conscious of endings. That we are all finite and no, this is not forever. And while all the seniors are pounding away on their theses locked up in Firestone, here I am tearing over the fact that this is all ending. That one day, we won’t be waking up to Spelman but in apartments in NYC and villages in Fuzhou and a house in Waterloo.

But as Ann Voskamp beautifully put it –

The frame around life, the death boundary around life, makes us appreciate every life as art.

We are in awe of breathing, of the gift of being, because it’s fleeting.

We love life more, the more we realize all this lovely life is transient.

I agree – the graduation boundary around my time at Princeton makes me appreciate each moment as art. Aware of the fleeting time, I can embrace each moment as beautiful.

My uncle with prostate cancer, my sister with a minor concussion, my grandparents with stubborn souls bowed to idols – all make me realize the fragility of life. We balance on the teetering edge of eternity – unaware. I cannot hold onto to anything but –

He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together

I thank God that He holds my last few weeks here at Princeton – and that He makes my time significant. As I press into Him, He holds me close and reminds me of my finiteness – and His infinity. The infinity that I cannot possibly grasp with all my imagination, the infinity that I am dumbstruck by as I gaze up at the octillion stars that pepper the sky above, the infinity that I ponder as I think about death and the space that yawns beyond that. He reminds me that it’s okay that I can’t. That’s the whole reason why He came to die. Because of the yawning infinite gap that extends between me and Him. the one that I could not cross.

So, as time nudges us through the days leading us through Holy Week to Good Friday – the day that the infinite God became finite and tangible – I remember that I could not cross except for the cross. But because of the cross, He has welcomed us into His eternity.

For us mortals cannot understand the close distance of eternity, but God in His Good-Friday-nearness has closed that distance

– until eternity.

How to Recover the Lost Art of Dying Well: What Kara Tippetts Taught Us | A Holy Experience

“I tell him it won’t be any time before we are reunited — but for the mortal it feels impossible to understand the close distance of eternity.”

For the mortal, it feels impossible to understand the close distance of eternity.

I tell Kara I will sit with this, fly with this.

And Kara tells me: “I will be praying for your travels — There is so much that makes us finite, but the gift of wonder we have been given over the infinite is amazing.”

Kara wrote me and told me — We must always have an imagination for the grace that will meet us.

via How to Recover the Lost Art of Dying Well: What Kara Tippetts Taught Us | A Holy Experience.

watch Frozen at Carolyn’s Home Spa

This weekend, I had the privilege of staying over at Carolyn’s home spa. She cooked me asian turkey kale noodle soup and there was a smattering of tea eggs, beef that her grandma had cooked her and spicy mung bean starch that Yue had brought over. As Carolyn cooked, Sandra recounted to me the horror stories of teaching through TFA, but also the delights that come through the pain. Yue had just gotten married a couple of months ago, so she shared her insights into the mysteries of the married life. This is the kind of girls’ night I envisioned myself having as a 22 year old. In your older friend’s own apartment talking about marriage, work and life.

Being the domestic mom that Carolyn is, she then proceeded to bake raspberry whole wheat oatmeal scones. My kind of jam. It felt so good to just chill while someone else baked, for once in my life. As I shared with Yue and Sandra my fears and hopes of teaching in the orphanage next year, they comforted and encouraged me, promising to give me all the teaching resources they could. Also, they told me that teaching is so worthwhile – it’s basically an avenue to love the children, and though you may not see the fruit now, you have faith that it’s making a big impact in their lives. Repeatedly putting a block in Min Dong’s fingers and trying to make him slide it onto the wooden pole might not seem like it’s making any difference, but to Min Dong it might mean the world although he can’t express it.

I was very inspired, and it was the perfect pick-me-up to a tough week. When Sandra left, Carolyn put on a IHOP Jon Thurlow set and did a full-out manicure complete with cuticle cream and tweezing off dead skin for Yue and I, while we munched on the freshly baked scones. She adamantly decided that Barbie pink would suit me as I needed a “girly color”. I didn’t object, only when she begun to spread confetti-like sparkles on my nails, which I protested to it being way over the top.

Of course, the Barbie pink refused to stay on as we got changed into our jammies and put on Biore nose strips. I had had traumatic experiences with those nose strips as a kid, but was willing to try them again. Surprisingly, they were a lot less painful than I remembered. Clambering into bed after the nose strips were ripped off, and a soothing ‘snail’ korean mask was delicately pressed into our skin, we pulled out a streamed version of Frozen. Carolyn was appalled that I hadn’t watched it yet, and decided that this would be the night that I watched it. So, while we waited for the masks to do its magic work, we settled into choruses of “Let it go” and “Do you wanna build a snowman?”

Indeed, perfect love does cast out all fear, as Ilsa and Anna so profoundly learnt. That was ringing my head as I snuggled into the covers after the movie ended. There is no fear in love, and when we know we are loved, we don’t have to be afraid of the future, of being ourselves, or really any sort of rejection or disappointment. We know that we are covered in God’s love, and in Him there is no fear. And so with a full stomach, supple skin and satisfied heart free from fear, I slept the night in Carolyn’s home spa. I am blessed – to be 22 and to live this life, but mostly that I have God and He loves me. What more could I ask.