emptiness

I was just thinking last night that I'm afraid of spending time with God because I'm afraid of what He'd do next!!

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Tuesday February 28, 2012

Letting Go of Our Fear of God

We are afraid of emptiness. Spinoza speaks about our "horror vacui," our horrendous
fear of vacancy. We like to occupy-fill up-every empty time and space. We want to
be occupied. And if we are not occupied we easily become preoccupied; that is, we
fill the empty spaces before we have even reached them. We fill them with our worries,
saying, "But what if ..."

It is very hard to allow emptiness to exist in our lives. Emptiness requires a willingness
not to be in control, a willingness to let something new and unexpected happen.
It requires trust, surrender, and openness to guidance. God wants to dwell in our
emptiness. But as long as we are afraid of God and God's actions in our lives, it
is unlikely that we will offer our emptiness to God. Let's pray that we can let
go of our fear of God and embrace God as the source of all love.

- Henri J. M. Nouwen

happiness is

There are a lot of uncertainties in my life right now, but I'm happy, and thankful that I'm back in a good place. I waited a few days just to be sure that my general sense of well-being was not due to badminton-induced endorphins. I last played on Saturday and haven't played since because I have airway allergies that are manifested in horrible coughing fits. Meds have helped, and I woke up coughing only about 4 times last night. I will play tonight, but wanted to say that I've been happy even without playing. All praise be to God.

terrible cough

Apparently the cough I have now is a kind of allergic reaction to a pollutant in the air.  The air quality in HK this past week was abysmal. Do the high and mighty here breathe from gold-plated oxygen tanks? I haven't been able to sleep through the night for the last few nights because I wake up every time I have a coughing fit. My meds are starting to help, I think, but wow, I've never had anything like this before and I hope I'll never have it again. I drank all that garlic tea for nothing!

Update


I think I'm going to get an air filter. Waiting to see if my brother wants one too.

thanks for the concern, but....

I had a short, funny exchange with an old friend who recently got married, at the end of which she said, "If you're brave enough, you should read some books on sex. I didn't, and I wish now that I had because they would have been helpful." I replied, "I don't think that's my concern right now, dear."

My friends make me laugh!

hearing back

I've been trying to figure out if I should do the _ _ _ at the earliest date, but it would be very time consuming and I just couldn't face the thought of spending all that time on it. God does answer (sometimes) when we ask for wisdom. I was afraid at first that I was being lazy (totally possible) and short-sighted, but I'm pretty sure now that even if I do decide to do it later, doing it right now won't be a good idea. I'll probably forgot what this post is about if I decide to look back at my old posts but, oh well!

My knees have started to degenerate and my physiotherapist has said no running, jumping or weights for awhile. I'm playing badminton this Fri and Sat nights but after this week, I'll go down to playing only once a week, and it's the bike for me during my gym sessions. The quad exercises she taught me are surprisingly difficult, and I can barely do 100 reps. Will work my way up to 200 reps per day. Yes, I'm supposed to do them every day. I guess that's how much I've neglected my quads.

Dodgeball vs Dragon Boat?

My church's dragon boat team is actively recruiting for this year's race and season. I'm thinking of signing up for dragon boat instead of dodgeball now. Dodgeball is fun but last fall, we had a lot of trouble getting enough guys to commit to playing regularly. We ended up having a ton of girls which would be fine if girls could really play as well as guys, but except for Dora, the rest of us really weren't very good. The guys who did turn up for any given match pretty much played in all the games while the girls had to rotate in once every 3-4 games, so it wasn't as much fun for us. Teams tend to field 1-2 girls per match while we had to play 4-5 girls at least, so we really weren't getting as much of a workout.

The dragon boat team, on the hand, will have three boats total, and I'm assuming that one of them will consist of mostly big men, and the others will be manned by weaker rowers out for some exercise and fun, so I think we'll all get a good work out.

I did enjoy dodgeball, but it looks like I'm going to have fun on the water this spring!

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Update: Brian's found another team whose girls want to put together a girls' team, so we'd play both on the coed team and the girls' team. That would mean more of a work out, but it would mean more nights out on court. Dodgeball matches will be played closer to where I live, but dragon boat would mean meeting a lot more people and the novelty of playing a sport I may not be able to play outside of HK....How do I decide???

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Update on the update


I'm going with dragon boat. Water practice is on Sunday afternoon and land practice is optional. This leaves my week nights free to do a number of things I may have to do to make myself marketable come the next job cycle. 

blame game

I am beginning to notice the small ways in which my job shapes my sense of identity: I can blame my bad sense of dress on my profession. In other words, because of my job, I can think thoughts such as: "Yeah, my outfit looks odd today. But who cares, the fact that I chose this particular job is also odd, so people won't be surprised if my sartorial decisions are strange ones too."

Funny, huh?

mind boggling

I'm learning lots of lessons now, but unfortunately, these thoughts usually run through my mind right before bed and they are often accompanied by unpleasant feelings. I usually try to fall asleep so no turning on the light to jot down notes. Whatever I do during this season of life, I should not make my decisions based on a desire to escape.

But on the other hand, I feel like it should be alright to escape what does seem to be a less than ideal situation--none of my peers is happy, not one--but then again, God calls us to more. Right now, I feel like I have peace to start exploring other possibilities. The decision is to explore possibilities, not to decide one way or the other. Taking small steps such as this one is manageable but still horribly difficult. I'm now slowly reading a book that is helping me through the process, and as it turns out, there are a lot of other people who are in similar situations, and they go through very similar emotional processes too! Some of them have come out on the other side and have landed on their feet, and are much happier in general.

Fingers crossed that God will not abandon me.

wow

I've been through some pretty tough times, but what I'm going through now is a little harder than what I've gone through in the past. Who said faith gets easier? (Yes, I'm thinking of YOU, haha.) I'm just hanging in there for now. Even L-theanine and a quarter-pill of melatonin could not keep insomnia at bay last night.

Thankful for friends who randomly pop into my life to let me know that I am loved.

And ps - If everyone experiences that moment when they think, "Mom was right," that moment has come for me but I will never tell her that.