A personal advent season. [Part 1]

Although Advent hasn't technically started yet (though it's really close!), it seems as though God has already begun preparing my heart for the season.

My family celebrated Advent with our own little family traditions every year.  Every night for dinner in the month of December we'd play a Christmas CD from our collection, light a purple or pink Advent candle representing each week of Advent, and then listened to my dad read a little devotional about some aspect of your typical Christian Christmas story - something about Mary and Joseph, or the angels, or the shepherds, etc.  It was probably our most consistent family tradition and was always one of my favorites as it helped me anticipate the coming of Christ by focusing on the true meaning of Christmas beyond the presents and cards and such.

But this year, I've begun to see how the season of Advent is so much more than the star of Bethlehem, King Herod, the wise men, and baby Jesus in a manger.

The wheels started turning when the pastor of my church here in Rochester off-handedly shared during a conversation around Advent in adult Christian Ed that a typical sermon topic preachers would speak on for the first week of Advent would be an eschatological message.

I did a double-take because that was certainly not true of my experience thus far.  A message on the end times during Advent?  It made no sense to me.  But as our church was finishing up the book of 2 Kings, the more we started to connect the dots, and the more I started to understand.

Our church spent the whole year going through 1 & 2 Kings.  One of the things I like and appreciate about our church is the approach of how we journey through the Bible.  On a typical Sunday after worship service, we'll spend an hour (called Adult Christian Ed) digging into next week's passage and discussing our observations and questions as a group.  At the end of Christian Ed, our pastor encourages us to use that same passage we just discussed in our devotional time throughout the week - reading through it several more times, memorizing a verse or two, praying through it, etc., so that we can go deeper into the passage and see what God may bring to the surface for us as individuals.  Then our pastor preaches on the passage the following Sunday.

So as you can imagine, we've spent a whole lot of time learning about the many kings of Israel and Judah, and by connecting one passage after another, I've gained a broader understanding of the history, the decisions kings made, the circumstances around those decisions, the consequences of their leadership, and the people with whom God made covenant promises.  We've made connections to the books of the prophets of their time, as well as the New Testament, tried to understand how the people receiving these words at the time would hear them, and scratched the surface of how these things could possibly tie to us today.

Obviously, to go into all the things I've been learning, it would take a lot more than one blog post.  So I'll just share a little bit about the end of 2 Kings:  everything is a mess.  The northern kingdom has already fallen, and people of the southern kingdom of Judah finally collapse under the Babylonian rule or flee to Egypt - the land God had promised to His people seems to be lost forever, and God does not even make an appearance in the passage.  There's this sense of great depression, loss, disappointment, and sadness.

But, at the same time, it's not exactly where 2 Kings ends.  In the midst of death and destruction, it ends with the release and survival of Jehoiachin, previous King of Judah.  But he's not just any king - he carries on the line of King David, the same line from which Jesus is eventually born many years later.

Making some of those connections have given me a deeper understanding of the season of Advent.  Sure, Mary and Joseph's stories are important, of course, but the anticipation of the coming of Jesus doesn't stem out of this great period of happiness or assurance.  Instead, Advent is during a great period of darkness,  silence, and uncertainty; a season of desperately holding on to the Hope that is to come when it seems easier to give in to hopelessness.

More on this in another post.

His pursuit.

Thinking about my basic need for community has caused me to think of my basic desire for someone to reach out to me.

It's not a new issue, and I don't think I'm the only one in the world who wrestles through this.  If I remember correctly, Libby and I used to call it "the dreaded 'i' word" (or something like that) back in high school.  We would talk about how much we would do our best to take initiative with others (particularly with a specific group of friends) and how we wished they would take more initiative with us.  Being pursued by others was often so scarce in my life that I even mentally prepared myself for the possibility that a boy may never actually pursue me in life (which didn't turn out to be true, but I'm glad I prepared myself anyway!).  And after some tumultuous friendships over time tried to mentally prepare myself for the possibility that friends I have may not ever really pursue me the way I hoped they would.

Back in middle school or the beginning of high school, my pastor gave a sermon about taking initiative.  He defined someone who takes initiative this way:  you're aware of a need and you care enough to do something about it.  He said that you needed both "aware" and "care" to complete it because you can be aware of a need but not actually care enough to do anything about it, and you can care about a need but not actually be aware of what the realistic needs actually are in order to meet them well.  I always thought that was a good way of seeing it.

Dictionary.com simply defines initiative this way:  an introductory act or step; leading action.  In other words, you make the first move.  You reach out to someone.  I interchange the words initiative and pursue in this post because to me, to pursue someone is to take initiative with that person again and again and again.  We have this deep desire for someone to pursue us.  We want someone to know us with all of our strengths and weaknesses and still want to spend time with us, ask about how we're doing, and simply think about us from time to time.

The problem, though, is if everyone wants to be pursued, then who's going to take the initiative?

It would be a whole different issue if I expected people to pursue me without the equal expectation that I would pursue others.  I can't just sit around and complain while I lack my own discipline to extend the very initiative I wish others to extend to me.  I realized that I have not been doing as good of a job with this over this year as I have in the past, and that it is one way I can improve in loving others as myself.  While I can't expect others to change, I know I can work on changing myself.

And as God has taught me before, it's guaranteed that there are going to be times where I take the initiative to pursue others and it feels like no one is pursuing me.  It'll be tempting to blame others, resent them, or hold a grudge against them.  But in those times it'll be important to remind myself that someone is pursuing me.  In fact, God took the initiative with us before any of us ever did.

The question, then, is:  am I willing to let go of my pride and expectations to open my heart and eyes to see how He constantly pursues me each day?  

If so, then the question becomes:  how am I pursuing others the way God is pursuing me?  Am I aware of others' needs and do I care enough to do something about them?

To breathe into.

Nathan recently asked me what and/or who inspires me.  I was a little caught off guard.  I don't really think about inspiration or the source of it in my life (besides Jesus, of course) all that frequently unless it's asked of me in some leadership exercise or group activity. It was really interesting to think about because when I thought about the people in my life, even though I care about them and they care about me, it didn't necessarily mean they inspired me.

Thinking about what "inspired" meant and looking at the word itself made me curious to find out its dictionary definition and Latin root (I had taken three years of Latin in high school, so it looked familiar enough for me to think it did have a Latin root).

According to Dictionary.com:

in·spire

 

[in-spahyuhr] verb, in·spired, in·spir·ing.

verb (used with object)
1.  to fill with an animating, quickening, or exalting influence: 
His courage inspired his followers.
2.  to produce or arouse (a feeling, thought, etc.): 
to inspire confidence in others.
3.  to fill or affect with a specified feeling, thought, etc.: 
to inspire a person with distrust.
4.  to influence or impel: 
Competition inspired her to greater efforts.
5.  to animate, as an influence, feeling, thought, or the like, does: 
They were inspired by a belief in a better future.  

And according to Wikipedia (and confirmed by Merriam-Webster dictionary):

The word "inspiration" comes from the Latin noun inspiratio and from the verb inspirare. Inspirare is a compound term resulting from the Latin prefix in (inside, into) and the verb spirare (to breathe). Inspirare meant originally "to blow into", as for example in the sentence of the Roman poet Ovid: "conchae [...] sonanti inspirare iubet"^[2] ("he orders to blow into the resonant [...] shell"). In classic Roman times, inspirare had already come to mean "to breathe deeply" and assumed also the figurative sense of "to instill [something] in the heart or in the mind of someone".

To breathe into.  To influence.  To produce a feeling or thought.  Who and/or what did those things look like in my day-to-day life?

When I think about it, there are certain aspects of people's lives that inspire me in certain areas or situations.  But when it comes to ongoing inspiration, I think of three specific people:

Pam.  I sometimes like to think that Pam's in my head.  As my older sister who has been my best friend since I was born, she's probably had the deepest influence on me.  There are some things I'm very aware are a result of her influence - like the fact that I don't drink soda very much is because of Pam.  Or the fact that I like to read for fun.  And there are other habits, patterns, mannerisms, and core ideals that I have that if you dig deep into my psychological realm you'll find come from her.  She's not just someone whose character and skills I admire, but more often than not I've also wanted to emulate.  Her deep compassion for people and their growth/development, her great talent for hosting and planning events, and her immense self-control and self-discipline when it comes to staying healthy and taking care of her body are just some of categories of things that I like to think she has breathed into my life.  Not saying that they're at the same level of where she is, but that the "voices" in my head that push me and inspire me to learn, grow, and reach further on a daily basis come from her.  I could write a whole blog series on my relationship with Pam, but we'll stop here for now.

Carrie.  Working under Carrie's leadership as a student and a staff worker has inspired a lot of who I am during my young adult developmental years.  She has the ability to understand where I'm coming from while also speaking to where I could be.  She's asked me the hard questions I never thought about, gave me challenges she believed I could accomplish and grow from, and has shaped the way I lead others and the intuition I have been learning to trust a little more.  I sometimes think, "What would Carrie do?" when I'm stuck in vocational situations with students, or even take pages from her book when it comes to ideas.  

Nathan.  To the dreams I used to dream, I say, "That would never happen."  To those same dreams, my husband says, "Why not?"  And to all the ideas that I think would be so cool if they worked, but the small chance of success would probably not be worth the bigger chance of failure, my husband says, "Let's try it."  My husband is not satisfied with good intentions or incremental change.  He likes to quote Revelation 21:1-4 (his favorite verses) a lot, but it's not something he believes is just magically going to happen - it's something he actively works toward in his daily decisions.  He inspires my future because no longer are the hopes of living life to the fullest beyond all possibility - with him, recognizing that the promises and power of God are not empty visions but realities that are just out of reach.  And for someone like me who is all too willing to let dreams die, that's pretty inspiring.    

Christmas cheer.

There were a few years when I was little, when my dad would use these pre-made paper links to celebrate Advent with me and my family.  Each night in December after dinner, we'd read the little blurb about an aspect of the Christmas story on one side of the paper strip and then would do the word puzzle together on the back side before my dad would lick the adhesive end to add to our paper chain that we hung on our real Christmas tree.  I absolutely loved that tradition of Advent celebration, but we only did it for a few years (I think the company where my dad ordered the paper strips from stopped making them) and Christmas just hasn't been the same for me since then.  We'd still light our Advent candles each day, adding a new one for each week, and my dad would go through some Advent booklet, but I longed for something more creative and exciting and fun.

Even though I do think the materialistic hubbub, shopping dash and overly-done crazy Christmas stuff can be a bit over-the-top and isn't the real meaning of Christmas, I still love the Christmas season and the things that come with it.  I love the decorating process, real Christmas trees, 24-7 Christmas music radio stations, and learning about people's quirky family traditions while enjoying my own.

This is the first year I won't be spending Christmas with my family.  This is also the first year where I felt like I had a chance to really be free in getting my creative juices flowing to start my own quirky family traditions, go all out with Christmas decorations, and celebrate the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in creative ways.  But November was quite a crazy month of emotional roller coasters, which made focusing on preparing for Christmas season the last thing on my mind.  And with so much traveling and planning for work these past few weeks, the most I've done this season is put up a Christmas wreath on our apartment door, set up a nice nativity scene on our windowsill, and sometimes listen to Christmas music on Pandora all day.  Nathan and I thought it would be silly to get a real Christmas tree since we wouldn't be home for most of the month.  Things went by too fast for me to think about sending any Christmas cards or gifts for friends, family and co-workers, and I haven't even baked anything.

Thinking and lamenting over how I haven't done anything for Christmas has got me thinking of some ideas for next year.  For example, we don't have many Christmas decorations (though we did get some as wedding gifts from some pretty brilliant friends!), but I was thinking maybe there would be some after-Christmas sales that Nathan and I could catch (hopefully there will still be sales after Urbana!).  Also, I got this other idea (initially as a joke) for if I know Nathan and I will be traveling a lot during December for work and visiting  family next year, maybe we can get one of those little Charlie-Brown-Christmas type Christmas trees to keep when we're home and to bring with us when we're traveling.  Portable Christmas tree?  That'd be a quirky tradition :)

Anyway, sorry about the lack of spreading Christmas cheer from the Bixlers.  Hopefully we'll be in a better place to do so next year!

The origins of a writer.

In the middle of the week of NYCUP's Spring Break Plunge, we watched the documentary Waiting For Superman, which talked about the brokenness of the education system by following the stories of a few children trying to get into charter schools.  I was excited to watch it because it's one of Pam's favorite documentaries and she has been encouraging me to watch it for a few years now.  I was surprised to find that it was actually pretty similar to The Lottery, a documentary on the education that we had watched at last year's NYCUP.  But one of the things I appreciated the most about Waiting For Superman were the little animations that visually further explained the breadth and depth of the systems and concepts.

By the end of the film I was shaken.  What in great heavens could I possibly do to be a part of restoring this extremely broken system?  The issues were so complex and so deeply ingrained in our nation that it seemed impossible to tackle or even make a dent.

But as these question marks of anxiety and worry swirled in my mind, Jonathan Walton called us to a time of prayer.  He reminded us that our God is bigger than this vast issue - He is sovereign.  Jon called us to pray and praise God for the ways we had been blessed - for the people who invested in our education, for those who made sacrifices on our behalf and those who believed in us.

My mind was blown by the deeper understanding of how great our God really is.  This issue was no surprise to our mighty Lord.

So as we started praying, I started counting some of the many ways God had blessed me over the years.  I realized how I managed to have such a good slate of teachers growing up, but as we prayed I focused particularly on one teacher and my parents.

A note I wrote to myself at the beginning of 5th grade.

Even though have many reasons to be grateful for my parents, I thanked God specifically for parents that really taught me to think outside the box and strive to go beyond what's expected of me.  Bringing me up that way really set a foundation for my inclination towards creative problem solving, crafty projects, optimistic/hopeful outlook on life, and encouragement towards others to do the same.

I give credit to them for instilling that in me in such a way that gave birth to my love of creative writing.  You know how in elementary school you'd get a list of spelling words and for homework you'd have to make sentences out of each of them?  I think I didn't really enjoy the assignment because it seemed boring.  A single sentence doesn't tell all that much.

My first recorded story made out of spelling words.  What a terrible story. ..and terrible grammar.

I don't know where the idea exactly came from, but one day in the fifth grade (I guess, since I don't have any previous record) I decided it would be more fun to write a story out of my spelling words.  It was obviously a little harder because now not only did I have to come up with one sentence, but I had to come up with extras in order to put the sentences together to make sense and flow together in a story structure (not that I necessarily consciously thought about these difficult factors).

All right, there's some improvement here.

I don't know if I asked my teacher for permission or I just did it and continued doing it ever since she approved it.  There were definitely a few times where I was too lazy and just wrote single sentences.  But for the most part my spelling notebook was filled with random stories built with spelling words as the blocks.  I think this was around the time where I started gaining more interest in not just reading stories, but creating my own...and not because it was some homework assignment.

Look at that, I wrote a terrible poem with my spelling words!

Even though I had all really great elementary teachers, I particularly praised God for my 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Hamilton (I wrote a previous blog post about her here), simply because of the influence and impression she made in my life.  She was a tough teacher that clearly loved her students believed the very best in each of them.  She taught us how to take notes in a lecture setting (she literally read history textbooks to us and we had to take notes on everything because she would give us a quiz on it afterwards), taught us about the life cycle of a fruit fly, gave us 20 pages of math homework nearly every day, and made us memorize poems and recite them to her for a grade - even on the bus on our field trips.

A stanza from one of my favorite poems I had to memorize in the 4th grade -
I actually turned the first stanza  into a fun song to help me memorize it...
I still remember the tune!

When I was moving all of my stuff to Binghamton last summer, I found that I still had about 1/2 (maybe a little less) of the poems I had to recite in the 4th grade.  I'm really glad I found them but wonder where the other ones went.  But every time I look at these I think about how much Mrs. Hamilton believed in me and sacrificed her time to continue developing me and other students.  She gave up her lunch time to give us "advanced readers" more experience in reading books of a higher reading level.  It's where I fell in love with Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables when we read with the girls and read The Hobbit when we joined with the boys while we ate the mini chocolate bars she'd hand out before we got started.  It was definitely my favorite part of the day.

From my elementary school autograph book

I really believe Mrs. Hamilton inspired me and shaped my character at such a young age of my life that many of those things have become a part of who I am.  I probably should give her credit along with my parents for laying the foundations and tilling the soil of my love for writing and desire to create characters, worlds, and stories that people would be inspired to be a part of as they read.

I want all kids to have a chance of having good teachers like Mrs. Hamilton.  Where would we be without them?  I praise God so much for the wonderful education I've been given.  Our God is truly a great God.

My one night of the blues.

I have four godsisters and one godbrother, a godmother and a godfather.

Okay, they're not really my godfamily anymore because I'm over 18 and technically an adult and so if my parents suddenly died (which God has been pretty merciful about so far), I obviously wouldn't need to be handed over to anyone to be looked after.  But I still consider them my family even though we don't talk or interact as much as we used to because I know they do still love me and would take care of me if I needed any help.  It also helps that our parents still have very strong ties and connections with each other.

I bring them up because I was thinking about some periods of time when most of us did spend a lot of time together.  For me I think it's where some of our family kind of dynamics really took root (well, at least me for me, it did - I can't speak on behalf of the rest of my sisters).  Every summer when I was younger my family and I would lead a team out to Arizona to the Navajo Reservation to host a Vacation Bible School for the kids and adults in the area.  We would go with different teams of people each year, all from different churches in the NYC/LI/NJ area, and there were a number of years where different members of my godfamily would come and join the team.

Since my older sisters and I were so young (elementary/middle school age) at the time, we learned a lot from our godsiblings (but especially my godsisters) who were much older than us.  I looked up to them so much.  They took care of me, gave me attention (which, as the youngest, I loved, of course), and taught me things I never knew how to do (I think Jess, the oldest, might have taught me how to braid and french braid hair - I'm not quite sure, but I definitely know I asked her to braid my hair a lot during those summers because I liked it so much).  I can remember significant moments where I was reprimanded by my godmother (I was so scared of her), and felt embarrassed by my godsiblings when I said something or did something to cause myself to blush or want to run away.  Great family stuff.  We bonded like there was no tomorrow.

I'm not being sarcastic, I promise.  I absolutely loved spending time with them.  We were out in Arizona for a good ten days.  And so, here's why I'm telling you the truth that I really bonded with them: on the night we'd get  back from Arizona (and only during the years that my godsisters were definitely there), after I'd get into bed because I was supposed to go to sleep, I would cry.  And believe me, I tried to stop myself.  Even though I was little I hated how sensitive I was and didn't like it when I cried, and it seemed embarrassing especially since I shared a room with my two sisters and couldn't really muffle the sound.

I remember being so embarrassed, too, when my parents finally came in and asked what was wrong because they heard me crying from down the hall - only for me to tell them that I missed my godsisters so much after not being around them for several hours.  You see, we had returned to NYC before dinnertime, and so I had just seen them several hours prior (do you see why I felt so embarrassed?).  I hadn't even gone a full day or even half a day before I started intensely missing them.  Their active presence in my daily life for ten straight days had such an impact on me that I couldn't help but feel some kind of vacuum from spending a night without them.  Ten days.  It was not even two weeks and yet I had such a strong connection to them that it seemed wrong (and completely silly) to suddenly have to depart from them.

Here's why I bring this up, though.  That experience came to mind recently because it's as close as it gets (especially as old as I am) to what I experienced last week coming back to my apartment in Binghamton from my mid-west and NYC Christmas adventures.

That's all I have to say.

The hospitality paradox.

If you take a look at some of my old notebooks, you may come across some lists of people's names.  Don't freak out if you ever see your name there on one of those lists.  I promise I'm not stalking you or anything.  Besides, if I met you during college, it's less likely that your name would be on one of those lists.

I love makings lists (I extravert J pretty strongly, so of course I would), but there's a good chance I made those lists for people I wanted to give something to for Christmas.

These lists were super long because they represented a spectrum of my social network - from my closest friends stretching down to acquaintances I've had very little interactions with. I'd list them all.  For my closest friends of course, I wanted to give something special that expressed how much I cared about them.  For the friends and acquaintances I didn't know as well, I wanted to embrace the art of surprise and give them something because I knew they wouldn't expect it.  Even though we weren't close, I wanted them to know I still cared and thought about them.

I'd be ambitious and write down the name of every single person I wanted to give something to.  Then I'd eventually realize that my budget didn't realistically fit a list that long, so I'd come up with a hierarchical budget based on how close I was to them.  And since I hated the thought of taking anyone off the list (as if I was somehow obligated to do something for whoever's name crossed my mind) I had to get creative about what I was going to give them.  I'd take what skills I knew I had and things I liked to do and put that into use.  One Christmas I spent hours reading short inspiring stories, printing out the ones I liked and rolled them  in wrapping paper and ribbon to look like little firecrackers and gave those to my acquaintances.  For another Christmas I bought gift bags and baked cookies to give away with a little personalized note.  Other times I'd make handmade Christmas cards.

I loved making things for people because I figured they'd appreciate someone taking the thought and time to make something specifically for them, even if it was small.  Don't you love those kinds of gifts?

Over time I've recognized the idealistic efforts as being impractical, but it's been an ongoing struggle with the concept behind it.  Essentially I want every person I encounter to know that they are worth my time and worth my efforts - they are valuable and important to me.  I want them to know that they are loved.  You don't need to spend any length of time or to do anything special for someone to really care about you - someone who loves who you are despite who you've been and cares about where you're going no matter how long or short you may be in their life.

At the same time, I'm often overwhelmed by how many people I want to reach, and it makes me recognize how finite and limited I am.  I've worked myself into the ground, trying to meet the needs of the masses and have learned (the hard way) that it's unhealthy and not possible to do so.  You can't be boundlessly available, you can't be friends with everyone, you can't please everyone, and you can't give everyone the personal attention the person wants or needs.

During my first few years of college I struggled with this because I didn't know how to care for all the people I loved back home when I wasn't physically around to be there for them while also care for all the new relationships I was developing on campus.  I felt like I was stuck and was being forced to choose between two very important worlds and hated how one or the other seemed to lose out.

As I've been learning more about hospitality and how it unfolds in my life, it seems as though there's a bit of that paradox as well.  With hospitality, you often find yourself wanting to meet the needs of the masses all at the same time - but how do you do that while giving personal attention or care to remind them that they are known, heard and loved?  As a host, how do you meet such a wide range of individual needs?  How do you meet so many physical and spiritual needs with such limited resources?

It's a paradox I keep coming back to over and over again as I meet new people, think of those currently in my life and often think of people I've known in the past.  But as a paradox, though it seems to contradict itself, there's an element of truth to it.

I think the truth is that while we are finite, God is infinite; while we are limited, God is unlimited; where we lack in resources, God provides in abundance.  It's the very thing I forget every time I return to this paradox.    Just look at how Jesus fed the five thousand.  And then did it again with four thousand!  At the same time, it seemed like those stories weren't focused as much on the crowd or the individuals within the crowd as much as they were focused on the disciples and how they were responding/interacting with Jesus.  Hm.  I guess it's something to look into.

In any case, there's no exact formula to know how to care for the many people your heart breaks for.  That was something I had to get over a long time ago.  But I've stopped making those kinds of lists on paper.  It doesn't mean I've given up on caring, it's just that the lists constantly change and are stored mentally rather than on paper.

And they're not focused so much on Christmas gifts.

Tribute to Mrs. Hamilton.

I was recently tagged on Facebook in my 4th grade class photo.  Thankfully, it's one of class pictures I actually like and ironically, I was tagged in it by the girl I used to have a sort of rivalry with.  I'm not really sure how it started, but I remember she used to say mean things to me and I would sometimes cry because I knew it wasn't right to say anything mean back, so I got really frustrated.  She was pretty smart, too, so I'd sort of compete with her to get the right answers or high grades or sort of be the favorite.  And then in the fifth grade we were in different classes and stopped talking until we got our autograph books at the end of the year and signed each other's saying genuinely nice things to each and apologizing.  She lives in Florida and recently got engaged.  Craziness!

Without cheating, can you spot me?

I also liked that I was tagged in my fourth grade class picture because Mrs. Hamilton was possibly my favorite teacher of all time.  She's a teacher I think about every once in a while, wondering what she'd say to me or how awesome our relationship would be if she was still alive.  I was telling my mom I was tagged in the picture and told her I miss Mrs. Hamilton and think that if she was still alive she'd definitely be a teacher I'd stay in touch with and grow to become really good friends with.

She was one of those really tough teachers that pushed you hard because they really believed you could do more than you think you could but was wise and gentle and you knew that she loved you.  I remember I was a little scared when I found out I was in her class because I heard rumors that she wore a wig and gave the most work and was the hardest of all the 4th grade teachers.  And it was true - even though we were only in the fourth grade she gave us 20 pages of math homework almost every day, made us take notes (like lectures in college) while she told us about history, made us memorize poems every week and tested us, even making us recite them on bus rides during class field trips.  I still remember bits of some of them.

She was a really great teacher.  I could go on and on about her.  

I remember sitting in science class in the 6th grade the day after my mom told me Mrs. Hamilton had died from cancer.  It was the first time I had ever really been in a foggy daze.  I chose not to pay attention to what was being taught.  I didn't take any notes.  I just thought about Mrs. Hamilton.  

I was thinking about her recently not only because of the photo but because as I've begun fundraising for InterVarsity, she came to mind as someone I know who'd support me in some way, shape, or form.  I wish I could give her a call to talk to her and tell her all of the exciting things that are going on in my life.  

I miss her.

Right from the start.

She has been to me what it means to be home.

Dear Anne of Green Gables,

Even though sometimes I laugh at your melancholy, overdramatic moments, I totally understand you.

Like those times you did something stupid like accidentally dye your hair green, or smashed a slate over Gilbert Blythe's head, or accidentally made Diana Barry drunk and you fell into the "depths of despair" - I was right there with you. Maybe I haven't had the audacity to walk the top of a ridgepole or talk back to older people to put them in their place like you do, but you definitely externally express what I often feel inside.

And those interactions you have with Marilla, after you've done something foolish and Marilla says "fiddlesticks" and tells you how everything is "nonsense" and that the practical and sensible things are better...that's pretty much what goes on in my head all the time - the clash between my "oh my gosh I'll never get over this" side and my "oh please, get over yourself" side.

And I get how you feel when you don't want people or things to change as you get older, and how it feels like you don't quite understand why or how people's ideals change.

But I admire the way you're able to speak your mind and stubbornly stick to your beliefs while simultaneously being able to imagine how people feel in order to understand where they're coming from. You can win over even the toughest people without compromising your values. I tend to keep my own opinions hidden so well for the sake of preventing conflict or making people happy that I often can't seem to find them anymore.
It's interesting to see how I identify with different stages of your life than when I was younger and first watched you grow up. I've seen how my own ideals have change.
You give me hope in a lot of ways, Anne with an 'e' - possibly in more ways than anyone may ever know or understand.
Love,
Tammy Chan
A big fan since the 4th grade

Cautious fearlessness.

I called my parents the other day to ask them about what I was like when I was younger so I could work on my memoir for creative writing.

The first thing the both of them said was that I loved climbing things. I'd always climb to the top of the jungle gym, even when other mothers warned mine that it was dangerous for a three or four year old to go that high. I loved climbing the tree in our backyard. My dad said I was a rambunctious child that ran around a lot and climbed whatever I came across.

My dad said I was fearless.
My mom said I was cautious.

She said when I climbed the jungle gym I was very careful with how fast and how high I was willing to go and very deliberate with where I placed my hands and feet. She said I always climbed trees and chairs, but I never tried to climb tables or couches.

I asked my parents if there was anything else they could remember or think of that could help. My dad said he remembers when I was one or two I fell asleep with my face in a pile of spaghetti. My mom said I would bully my cousin Mike but I would never pick on anyone taller than me.

I told them that those things weren't really helpful and asked them if they noticed any significant changes in my personality from when I was little to the way I am now.

My dad said I was less fearless now.

In high school I'd definitely agree with him. Freshman year in college? Yeah probably. But nowadays, I just might disagree a little. Just a little :]

Junior High Flashbacks.

So for my Creative Non-Fiction class I have an assignment where I'm supposed to write two contrasting scenes - both showing a different identity I have when I'm with certain people or in certain situations.

The first thing I thought of was who I am when I'm around any friends from high school. You know how my facial expressions explain everything and I shake my head with disapproval? Well, it's usually ten times more frequent when I'm with anyone from high school. With a handful of exceptions, most of them are pretty shallow relationships that I always wish I could change. I want my friends to know who I really am, and who I really live for and wish that they could experience the same things. But when opportunities arise I chicken out, with the same old weakness I have of being a people-pleaser. And our conversations end up being about something very generic or gossip about the people we know - two things I don't particularly enjoy participating in.

This assignment somehow inspired me to pull out my boxes of old things I kept from my high school years all the way back to my junior high years. And lo and behold, I came across a diary/journal I had kept back in middle school.

I didn't plan to, but I read the whole thing. I didn't fill the book, which was no surprise(I never finished writing in a journal until my senior year of high school), but what I read intrigued me. There were a number of things I knew I'd find in there, but there were a good number of things I wrote that kind of surprised me - either because I didn't know I thought that way back then or because there were some things that hadn't changed about me.

One common theme I seemed to pick up on besides my boring "I did this today" spiel was that I was really imprisoned by my own fears. Fear drove me a lot more than I remember. I don't remember being so scared to do or say certain things for the sake of keeping peace and harmony amongst my relationships or for the sake of looking "less cool" than I already was. I identified myself very interestingly - I always thought I wasn't as cool as any of my friends, but I never thought of myself as a loser because I clearly knew who I was in Christ. And my identity in Christ was what kept me from trying to do certain things to "fit in" with the popular crowd. I hung out with the popular crowd, but I never felt like I was truly one of them.

I actually laughed out loud at a whole bunch of stupid things I wrote - or maybe not stupid, but at least the way I wrote it sounded really silly. For example, I wrote about the time my ridiculous 8th grade English teacher yelled at me and made me cry for something I felt I was unjustly threatened for. In my diary/journal I told the story of what happened and then ranted about how incredulous it was, and at the very end of the rant I suddenly wrote, "I'll pray to God to change his hard heart." Hahaha I was so weird.

I realized later on that I was actually procrastinating from doing my actual assignment, but it was nice to check in and say hello to my old self. Just...if God ever takes me away unexpectedly, please don't read my junior high school journals. I'd be so embarrassed - although, it might explain some things about me that you didn't know, but I don't know if the risk outweighs the cost. You can read my high school/college ones. Just not my junior high ones.

Dang. I still have to figure out what I'm going to write for my Creative Non-Fiction assignment.

News-reading frenzy

Newspapers were never my friends.
Journalism was like a disease to me.

When I was in the first grade, we had to write a Current Events report due every Friday. It was a simple assignment: look through a newspaper or news magazine to find a story that interests you and summarize the five W's - who, what, where, when, why - in one or two paragraphs. Then hand it in. That's it. Simple, right?

I hated that assignment. I can't remember if I had a hard time figuring out the five W's or if it was boring to me, but I just know I struggled through those assignments. I actually remember getting into a lot of fits with my mom over them. She'd be cooking in the kitchen, and I'd be sitting at the table, flipping through the newspaper, cutting one out and then sprawling all over the chair, whining and complaining about how much I didn't like the news. Or, I'd write one word answers for the five W's like the info on a party invitation and then not show my mom, but then she'd ask to see it and tell me to do it over because Miss Puder wasn't going to accept it unless it was in paragraph form. Either way, I'd probably say 2/3 of the time in the midst of working on the assignment my mom would raise her voice at me and I'd get mad at her, burst out crying, and run downstairs to my dad to comfort me - which he did, every time. And then he'd patiently help me write a check-plus-worthy Current Events report.

Now that I think about it, whatever it was that turned me off from the news probably affected how I've viewed journalism up until recently. I never had any desire to read the newspaper, wasn't one to enjoy reporting facts, hated meeting hard deadlines and had no sense of adventure in trying to "find a story" when I could make up my own rules, write a story you couldn't find anywhere else except in my imagination, and could do it all in my own time on my own terms. That's probably the gist of what I thought of journalism.

But I've seen a slow but big change in my attitude towards journalism over these last few years: I've habitually watched the news with my parents whenever I'm home during a school break, I joined Binghamton's school newspaper, the Pipe Dream (and actually take the time to read it now), and I've made CNN and The New York Times as my internet homepages. But I think those seeds of change have catalyzed their expression particularly within the last few weeks because of my internship.

I thought commuting an hour and half to work and back home would drive me crazy this summer. But as I've discovered, it's a great opportunity to have 20-30 minute chunks of reading time. Sometimes I'll read my current book (which happens to be Get a Financial Life: Personal Financing in your Twenties and Thirties) or usually in the morning I'll read USA Today. Now granted, I wish I could read the whole paper, but a) I don't have enough time on the train/bus to read the whole thing, and b) Pam and I split the paper, so I only take the section that has the crossword puzzle in it :P Usually the crossword puzzle is in the Life Section, but often times (probably strategically done) the crossword puzzle can be found in the Money Section. So if USA Today was trying to get those crossword puzzlers to start reading the Money Section more, they've certainly succeeded with me.

At first I thought it would be a hard read - and yeah, sometimes I don't understand some of the numbers involved in things - but between reading a finance book, picking up on the politics of financial issues from The West Wing, and interning for a life insurance company, I've exponentially picked up on a lot of concepts and terms during this summer so far than I ever could have imagined. And the articles can be really interesting!

Anyway, it's a cool change to see in myself. I used to always be anti-math/finance or anything to do with numbers, but it's cool to see how God is stretching my mind and teaching me tons of things any normal person should be learning in a classroom - but instead I'm learning through the read-and-ask-people-questions method.

And on top of all of this, I'm improving my crossword-solving skills :]

Reminisce

Since we had so many new people at CCF on Friday, Pam had us introduce ourselves and share our favorite elementary school memory. It was terrible - I loved elementary school so much that it was so hard choosing just one of my favorite memories. It seems as though all my memories were good, even the times I cried because I was so sensitive.

I think I might randomly blog about my elementary school memories. They were good times and memories I'd like to record/remember and possibly read about later on. Plus, it might help me practice writing some stories :P

It was just me and parents eating dinner together one night last week. I don't know how we got onto this topic, but we ended up talking about what it was like raising me as a Pastor's kid (PK). I told them they did a really good job because I never really identified myself as a Pastor's kid - I never felt any pressure to do well in school, or to act differently than who I was. In fact, it made me feel special - at PaLM events especially because everyone who walked in the door would already know who I am without me having to tell them. It was like I was famous.

That's why one time Uncle Cliff (someone from my church) said that I was like royalty in the Chinese-American Christian realm. Haha.

Well, if I was Princess of the Chinese-American Christian realm, then I was Princess among the adults of my elementary school, P.S. 162, because my mom was like a queen. She was on the PTA since the year Sam had entered kindergarten, and stayed so involved in our school that she stayed on the PTA as a volunteer for at least another....2 or 3 years (?) after I (the youngest) had already graduated!

I loved that all the teachers knew who I was because of my mom's involvement or because they had my sisters as their students. It definitely made me feel special. I even knew the principal because of my mom.

I guess some might consider me a biter (am I using that term correctly?). Yes, it does make me feel special when people know me because of connections to my dad, my mom, or even my sister Pam. I'm proud to be associated with them. I never feel like I'm in their shadow, and I never try to use their reputation to build my own. To me it saves me the agony of hacking away at small talk when it comes to new people, desparately trying to tread the deep waters of keeping our conversation alive by searching for common ground.

As you can probably tell, I'm not one who particularly enjoys networking with strangers.

Man, just thinking about elementary school makes me smile. I can't wait to share more stories.

forget the money, babysitting these kids are priceless.

so my job this summer is babysitting these adorables for several hours for many many days. and oh man, has it been a huge blessing. the kids are samuel (4yrs) & isaiah (20mnths) tsai, who also have an older brother named joshua (7yrs), but i haven't babysat him yet because he's still been in school.

talking with auntie karen tsai, their mom, has been pretty awesome. we've been talking about a lot of different things that really made me admire their family all the more, especially how dedicated to God they are.
and their family is sooo cute! she was sharing with me how she and uncle john met, how they both love singing and how her kids love music. i thought it was cute how she said her kids love to sing but don't like singing in public. samuel (in the picture above) is kind of quirky to strangers. he's really really quiet. his mom told me how during his first time at pre-school his teacher said that he was really quiet and wouldn't say a word, only nodding yes or shaking his head no and saying nothing else to his teacher or anyone else in his class for...drum roll please...SEVEN MONTHS! unbelievable. it took him a while to warm up to them. it took me a day :]

now this one, isaiah, is such a cute one. he's a pretty good baby, too. auntie karen said that he's usually very clingy to her when around strangers, but as soon as i walked into their house, he was fine with me! i guess he and i clicked. he didn't cry or whine or anything at all when i first took him away from his mom to the park. today was my third time babysitting them and he was a bit crabby but he eventually warmed up again. and when his mom left he only cried for like, five minutes. then i carried him around for a bit and he stayed quiet in my arms. i think he likes me :]

and he speaks pretty well for an almost-two-year-old. he can definitely say 'mommy' really well, as well as 'ball' and 'please' (although it sounds more like 'bees'!), and on the first day i babysat them, samuel and i were playing this matching cards game of pictures from the Museum of Modern Art (i know, such a cultured kid :P), and isaiah was putting our cards back into the box every time we put our pairs down for go fish, when i totally thought i heard him say, "MoMa." i'm so serious. and then today, my phone rang while auntie karen was feeding isaiah his lunch (yogurt & oatmeal mixed together. [insert sarcastic "yum" here]), and auntie karen said, "oh, that's your ringtone?" and isaiah shouts, "ringtone!" and starts wiggling and bopping to my ringtone music. sooooo cute!

auntie karen was telling me in the car on the way to my house how predictable isaiah's sleep time is. once you put him on his bed, he'll have his hands all ready to pray (so cute), and then right after they pray, uncle john or auntie karen will usually try to sing to him, but he's so tired so he just rolls onto his stomach, lifts his head up, and waves goodbye. isn't that so adorable?

okay okay i've ranted enough about these awesome kids and their awesome family. here i'll tell you something about today. i babysat from 9-4 and came home and helped pam make dinner and afterwards i helped pam pack at least seven garbage bags into our car, full of STUFF from our closet. and believe me, people. this was a HUGE breakthrough. if you know my mom and if you've seen my house, you know that my mom is a huge pack-rat. and for YEARS she'll keep stuff and claim that she'll get around to cleaning it out and blah blah blah but NEVER does. so pam and i last week got fed up with our messy house and decided to do our own extreme house makeover, especially since some of the navajos will be staying with us in our house. we started with the living room, since for father's day everyone from both sides of our family were going to be there. we tossed everything into my parents' room (because we cleaned up all of our stuff...the mess was all of my mom's stuff) and she pretty much had to go through all the stuff. the living room was so different! and then today, pam took a stab at one of our closets and pulled out EVERYTHING in it and dumped our stuff into our room and mom's stuff into the living room so that the pile was so big that we could not avoid it before going to sleep. want to get a picture of how much stuff my mom keeps? pam didn't take a before picture of the closet, but here, i'll give you an idea. here's just some highlights of what we packed away into the car to give away:

• the stroller that carried all three of us chan girls when we were babies
• my graduation dress...from my kindergarten graduation
• my $5 denim hat that i asked my parents to get for me at a street fair (that actually started my love for hats)...when i was about 11 years old
• the chan girls' yellow booster seat
• my lamb chops playground figurines set
• the orange capri pants that i couldn't fit into anymore in the eighth grade

yeah. i know. just add tons of clothes and other stuff and there you have it: all the contents of one of our closets. and guess what? i thought we had given all of this stuff away like, years ago. it's pretty sad. but today, today was a happy day. my mom is making progress and not getting mad at us for doing this. that's good. she always gets a little ticked off in the beginning but then warms up to it. i take orders from pam like a dog. it's her who took charge, so she definitely deserves all the credit for this extreme makeover. i'm so proud of her and glad she got this going. i was tired of all this mess and looking at other people's houses and saying things like, "i wish my house was as clean as this."

now i can go to sleep smiling :D