unwrapping summer: the absolute easiest way to make this a great, unforgettable summer | A Holy Experience

unwrapping summer: the absolute easiest way to make this a great, unforgettable summer | A Holy Experience.

[project shalom] stress: week 4, day 5

I call upon your name, you deliver me from harm, in the shadow of your wings, no fear comes. I turn to You alone, Jesus You’re my guiding light. In the presence of your love, I will abide.

– from ‘Refuge’ by New Creation Worship

I recently set up an email forwarding system from my Princeton account (which will soon be shut down!) to my personal gmail account. So, everyday I get about 200 emails that are forwarded from the recesses of my archives, and as I go through them, I am reminded of a particular season in my life.

The stressful weeks leading up to CLOSER, when I was juggling a thousand activities and classes while incessantly trying to send out recruiting emails. The occasional encouragement email which would brighten up my day. The late nights when I sent out panic emails to friends to ask for their help on a problem set. The weekend when I got desperately sick and had to send emails to my professors to ask for extensions.

You really get perspective when you go through a week’s worth of emails in the span of a few minutes. What seemed huge and insurmountable at the moment is now greatly insignificant. At every season in life, there is always to be something to be stressed out (then, it was endless p-sets and impossible schedules, now it’s real life problems like visas and money) – but also things to be grateful for. It really depends how you look at it. While you think it’s impossible, a little perspective will help you realize that if you wait it out, there will be a solution. Things will get worked out, p-sets get done, essays get written, visas get processed. 🙂

So, then the real question is how are we going to steward our emotions towards these circumstances? We are not responsible for what happens to us, but we are in control of what our reaction to these situations is. Will we worry non-stop about something we have absolutely no control over? Will we fill our minds with ‘what-ifs’ that never happen anyways? Or will we say, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble, therefore we will not fear”? Even though my eyes cannot see, I will step out of the boat. I will choose a reckless, inexplainable peace that surpasses all understanding. I may be going through the most crazy situation that doesn’t make any sense, but no one is making me stressed.

I choose it.

So, those are my thoughts about stress from the desk of Vivienne Tam 😉

what I do in my free time

I used to never have free time. As a student, my schedule was chock-full with lectures, with a carefully-scheduled hour of lunch in between (which of course doubled as a catch-up session with a friend), meetings, fellowship events and all the studying I could squeeze into the 2 hours at home before I hit the pillow.

The concept of coming home and having a block of time that is essentially yours to spend is quite foreign to me. It’s interesting how when you finally receive what you longed for all this while, instead of uncontainable joy, there’s irrational fear that you won’t spend it the way you should. It’s like a starved child receiving a chocolate bar all to himself, yet hiding it away in a drawer paralyzed with fear that he will somehow destroy it if he touches it. Too good to be true.

People always say that how one spends free time is telling of who you are as a person, or perhaps even what you want to become. I guess this meta-exercise won’t hurt:

I spent a lot of it today watching TEDtalks. To be honest, I got quite hooked. TED is a platform for sharing stories and when watching, I feel connected to the world – more informed, more intelligent. For example, today, I learnt about this neuroscientist who self-analyzed as she was going through a stroke and marvelled at how the brain can spontaneously destruct and repair – and be aware. I learnt that the smartest strategy of dating, as proven by mathematics, is to reject every guy up to the 37% mark between the ages of 15 and 35, then marry the next guy that comes along if he is marginally better than all the others (not dating advice I would personally take, but interesting nonetheless). And of course, being the nerd that I am, was absolutely amazed by the talk on the invisible world around us and how much of matter is really – empty space. 

I am currently in the middle of multiple books. One particularly interesting one is titled ‘The Science of God’, which debunks the myth that science and God are intellectually incompatible. Just to cite one example: critics often refer to the six days in Genesis as bogus because the world has been proven to be 15 billion years. Schroder explains that due to the rapid expansion of the universe in its beginning days and thus the stretching of time Einstein later calls relativity,from the perspective of the universe, six days that passed actually equates to 15 billion years in Earth time. Incredible. The other one, ‘Loving your kids on purpose’ is a reading requirement for Loaves and Fishes and is teaching me a lot about parenting. In particular, that parenting is more about the relationship, then it is about obedience – or power.

In fact, I was spontaneously given the day off yesterday – and found myself smack in the middle of Jurong Regional Library, with a 20-book stack of books (borrowed 4 of them and skimmed the rest) of topics ranging from DIY wedding planning to music therapy to getting published to “10 things your autistic kid wished you knew”.

At home, I play mini-tennis (meaning 2 plastic rackets and a squishy ball in the confined space between the sofa and the TV) with my 8-year-old cousin, although mostly because of her constant nagging. I try introducing her to the beauty of jayesslee, and let her dance to Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake it Off’. I go through my massive archive of 12,000 emails accumulated from 4 years of school, and send random emails back to friends to remind them of what used to be. I stir and sip instant 3-in-1 coffee, check my dumbphone, and make timed goals on orange post-its.

I find myself spilling over with ideas – thoughts on life, and this world, and where it is all going. And when I can’t contain it anymore, it comes spilling out onto paper – in colored scrawling in the margins of my Bible or in poem-rants I publish under ‘musings’. So, I write and wonder if I will ever be an author.

That is my free time.

In my alter-life, I am measuring poly-l-arginine onto a weighing balance in my lab coat, long pants and covered shoes. And you would never know I spent my free time like so.

Homesickness: An Introduction and an Invitation | Amber C Haines

I wonder if I know a little of what Adam and Eve may have felt, or at least I like to imagine it. Adam had a home with God, who was still on his breath. He couldn’t have known how marvelous it was simply to unfold and speak in holy tongue. God taught original language there but let Adam choose what to call the animals. When he woke to Eve, I wonder if he thought her like a dove. She wasn’t made from the ground like the rest but was made of his bone, strong. He loved her. He loved how he fit with her. They were whole there together at home, where a million metaphors began, all the ways to experience God.

via Homesickness: An Introduction and an Invitation | Amber C Haines.

The history of autism

What do we know about autism? What is its history and why the drastic spike in reported cases of autism? Watch this video to find out.

You can’t eat beauty, it doesn’t sustain you. What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion, for yourself and those around you. That kind of beauty enflames the heart and enchants the soul.

– Lupita Nyong’o

Chasing a Dream in the Midst and in the Afters – SheLoves Magazine

Sarah Bessey inspiring me to continue writing in obscurity 🙂

And, I kid you not, I heard God. That has only happened one other time in my life, in a real, feels-audible-look-over-your-shoulder-did-you-hear-that sort of way. But I heard (or sensed or felt or received a message from God, however you want to think about it, I don’t really care what you call it, I just know I heard God.), “You may never be published but that doesn’t change the way I made you. You’re a writer. Stop caring about the other stuff—platform, publishing, voice, approval of others—and just write. I’ll meet you there.”

via Chasing a Dream in the Midst and in the Afters – SheLoves Magazine.

Daddy’s girl :)

Recent nuclear deal with Iran

And this is why we need to pray for Israel’s peace.

beauty, from the mouth of a model

Cameron Russells, a beautiful model, gives the real story of what it is like to be beautiful – and insecure.