coming home

These days have been wonderful. Coming home to a pantry full of food, asking my mom if she has this ingredient for baking and finding it always available, sleeping in mold-free rooms, strolling along La Jolla Shores with my family, making spontaneous road trips to Irvine just to get 85C bread, and waking up at comfortable hours and making my mornings as long as possible (I count mornings as the time before I do anything that requires work).

Yes, being at home in San Diego has been quite the treat. But my point in writing today isn’t about telling the world how luxurious my break has been (though I love it), but to examine something that I’ve noticed after years of coming back home that could be a personal thing or a shared thing.

There’s an aspect of coming home that’s double sided. Whenever I come home I experience a constancy and slowness that I extremely appreciate that is very hard to find in college life. However, my brother and I were talking about this the other night, and we found that the comfort that comes from this constancy lasts about a couple days to a week. Then the coin starts to flip.

There’s a point where constancy starts to look more like stagnancy. I’ve experienced these hints of stagnancy when I feel that I am still treated like the Sarah Lee people knew four years ago. When I’m put into group environments and I people act as if we never left, as if they’re ignoring the many stories added to who I am today. Is this just a cry to everyone saying, “Look at the real me”? Maybe. But I’m hoping what speaks out the most in the post is not a pointing of fingers. Besides, the fingers point to me as well. What I mean is that I play a part in this whole coming home deal. I realized that part of coming back to old relationships is patience, and understanding that there is no way others at home could fully understand my experiences.

But I want to continue to emphasize a need that I have to keep in mind as well…the need to simply listen, and to hear people out, and to not assume that one knows everything, their tendiencies, their flaws, their strengths, and at least come to a better understanding after listening. The environment I seem to come back to is set with traditions and often times those traditions, going back and doing things like we always do, doesn’t create the best environment for hearing people out, and knowing who people are today.

This will serve to be a reminder for me, to look at people even I think will never change, and to see them as dynamic, and multifaceted people, who are more than I have known them to be.

black, white, & gray

i'd prefer things black and white. 

life's just easier that way. one thing is completely right, one thing is completely wrong. good decision vs. bad decision. even for viewing people too. she's smart, chinese, athletic. he's an activist, christian, latino. sticking to those all-encompassing black & white  labels works much easier in my brain. 

but for all humans like me :P as i live each day, most things in life seem more gray, hazy, a bit foggy. i had a conversation this week that has inspired me to write this. as i talked with her, i saw how both of us pretty much had to step out of black&white thinking. our lives seem to be revolving in a stage where gray seemed to take the dominate stage. 

however, i'm beginning to appreciate the color gray a little more. only in the conceptual sense, i like purple the best. but why the heck desire gray, a much harder place to be in, a much more vulnerable place to be in? i admit, of course i'm not happy about not always knowing. but i'm appreciating. there is beauty in gray. gray times in life allows for exploration and discovery through active questioning and seeking. gray allows for growth as i realize, dang, i really don't know it all. as a Christian, i've seen overarching exploration, discovery, and growth, is a building of trust when gray is all i see.

i wonder if God allows me to walk in gray for that very reason then. to learn how to trust. in those moments where i hear/read great inspiring truths and all of a sudden the details of reality clash with these truths and i find myself in gray...i wonder if it is in gray that i learn to trust. 

oh and how convenient, i stumbled upon a quote this week that relates to this topic. henri nouwen says this:

"Mostly we have just enough light to see the next step: what we have to do in the coming hour or the following day. The art of living is to enjoy what we can see and not complain about what remains in the dark. When we are able to take the next step with the trust that we will have enough light for the step that follows, we can walk through life with joy and be surprised at how far we go."

hmm, trusting that there's enough light for the next step. walking in gray might just be worth it.

my thing with quotes

different things capture me. the sky, a good movie, a crush, pretty stationary...etc.

but there's something about words that especially captures my attention. quotes in particular have this uncanny ability to say mountains within a few phrases, to cut to the heart in one sentence. at the beginning of my freshmen year i started a "quotable quotes and verses" poster that i had hoped would carry on throughout my time in college. whenever i read/heard a quote from somebody (famous/anonymous/friend...didn't matter) that absolutely blew my mind or spoke eloquently to what i was going through..i'd write it on that poster.

so, i've kept that to myself pretty much for the past two and a half years. but then recently i thought, "hm, i have a blog. a very sad blog that has been ignored since the summer pretty much ha. hey, why not share some quotes." and so here starts a new phase of this blog...from india to quotes. smooth transition huh. 

anyway, these quotes  won't just be outtatheblue type quotes. they're ones that are going to be relevant to my life. and maybe, i'm hoping, relevant or thought-inspiring for whoever reads. and for whoever doesn't mind reading less eloquent writing, i'll be sharing my response/agreement/disagreement/application to these quotes as well :) fun stufff...

ok with that intro done :P here is my first quote. the topic is on the identity of christians as children of God.

"We are children, perhaps, at the very moment when we know that it is as children that God loves us--not because we have deserved his love and not in spite of our undeserving, not because we try and not because we recognize the futility of our trying, but simply because He has chosen to love us." -Frederick Buechner

~~~~

what struck me first was the line, "...and not because we recognize the futility of our trying." it put into perspective the utter nothingness i can show or bring to God that would influence his love for me. one thing that has become apparent to me as i learn more about the God of the Bible, is that a fuller understanding of Him, must be preceded with an openness from me. and openness most often requires humility, a letting go of what i hold onto as more worthy or better than.

here's the twisted-ness that happens though. just because i know that humility is the attitude that allows for a relationship to happen, does not mean that that knowledge ensures that God loves me. it's mind-boggling to think about at times. but what a slap in the face! what a reminder to me of the unmerited love of God...that seriously, logically, i will never understand. and what a reminder that mere knowledge of certain truths means nothing. no matter how good those truths are. 

the quote is especially relevant these days especially after coming back from urbana, a large christian conference i went to over winter break where definitely...a lot of very good knowledgeable things were presented to me. what an easy temptation for me to think that i am better now, or that God and i are tighter, just cuz i received certain pieces of good information about Him. 

dang it, so right now i was just reminded of why i don't like blogging sometimes. i always feel like there is so much more to explore over certain topics, but writing it all out takes too long or i get lazy. hm. and i also realize that readers of this blog reaches a wide variety of audiences...so my language may resonate with some more than others. well! if you're curious enough, i'd be open to longer discussions over these things. anyway, with that said, hope you enjoyed the quote. til next time :]