不能表達的坦白

我想你很愛我。
除了我感覺不到以外，台灣和家相關的各處角落，似乎都對我大嚷這個訊息。老媽在電話裡不斷的強調、回家時桌上出現的菜閃耀著、成長過程裡不缺的物質，還有幾年前，某一個你隔日就否認的夜裡聊天，你親口說你愛我。

我一直都很感恩上帝給我一個很聰明、很有自己想法的爸爸。從小就很用心的要努力工作、希望可以給我更多自由的人生選擇。是這樣嗎？這是你一直以來的希望和目標嗎？我沒有從你口中得到證實過。

我承認我很不了解你。
成長的年代裡，一天裡的大部分時間，你是一個上班族。我不知道你上班是什麼樣子，不知道你辦公室長什麼樣子，腦海裡幻想你上班的模樣是參考電視上戲劇裡演員在辦公室上班的情景。晚上的你回家了，客廳裡有你讀報看電視的身影。我不知道看著電視政壇評論的你心裡想些什麼。

你在想什麼呢？曾經想過什麼？現在又在想什麼？你想要和我分享你的想法嗎？還是你的心是我進不去的地方？

課堂上學家庭理論，一個一個的現象與名詞把我的心刺得好痛好亂。我好想跟你把誤會談開、把誤解消除，我們可以不親近，但是不必互相猜測也不必彼此傷害。你對這樣的想法和提議，也有共鳴嗎？

我心裡揪著想像你會不會回我一個冷瞪與沈默。

或許，如果那是你真心的答案，我也願意你清楚直接的陳述，然後我可以調整自己的步伐和世界，讓我們接下來都可以有和平的生活。

雨

竟然下雨了！
窗外滴滴答答不小的雨聲，讓北國的冬天有了一點冬天的感覺。

晚上上課到一半，屋頂突然傳來奇怪的婆娑聲響。眾人傾聽了一會兒，某個同學率先喊出「下雨了！」接著人群鼓掌叫好。「是因為之前的大火吧」，我心裡思索著歡呼的緣由。騷動很快的平息，課堂再度回到family stress theory裡。

在匹茲堡時，下雨是家常便飯。台北所謂的春夏秋冬，更是有梅雨、雷雨、颱風川流不息。加州反而是最與自然脫節的地區。沙漠地帶一向是帶來豔陽晴天，偶爾的十分鐘雨勢就足以讓氣象預報宣稱這是個雨天。

外頭雨勢彷彿不會間歇一般，我樂得享受這種鮮少有的天籟。伴著桌前數十疊的paper，今夜是個很有感覺的冬夜。

Love thoughts

Love Is a Choice
by Rick Warren

… That you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Deuteronomy 30:20 (NIV)

*** *** *** ***
Love is a choice and a commitment. You choose to love or you choose not to love.

Today we’ve bought into this myth that love is uncontrollable, that it’s something that just happens to us; it’s not something we control. In fact, even the language we use implies the uncontrollability of love. We say, “I fell in love,” as if love is some kind of a ditch. It’s like I’m walking along one day and bam! – I fell in love. I couldn’t help myself.

But I have to tell you the truth – that’s not love. Love doesn’t just happen to you. Love is a choice and it represents a commitment.

There’s no doubt about it, attraction is uncontrollable and arousal is uncontrollable. But attraction and arousal are not love. They can lead to love, but they are not love. Love is a choice.

You must choose to love God; he won’t force you to love him (Deuteronomy 30:20). You can thumb your nose at God and go a totally different way. You can destroy your life if you choose to do that. God still won’t force you to love him. Because he knows love can’t be forced.

And this same principle is true about your relationships: you can choose to love others, but God won’t force you to love anyone.

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One of the friends wanted to become a missionary at Afghanistan. She applied for the teaching position at international school over there. God's calling was so strong in her life that she constantly felt for the poor, the sick, especially in that area. And it comes to this guy whom she's dating now.

"I will see if God lets our relationship grow during this period of time. If it does, that means God wants me to stay here with him and not go to Afghanistan," she said.

Like what the devotion articles says above, people think love is something that just happen to you. It's not even rare to see that attitude in Christian circle. I wonder if we sometimes are just too afraid to admit what's really in our minds. Take the friend as an example, a good question to ask her would be, "do you feel backing off about God's calling because you dream to get married and you don't want to miss it if it can happen with this relationship?" Wanting to get married is not wrong at all. However, if that dream is so big that we are willing to pull off all other aspects of growth in our lives, then it may cause problems in the future.

Love is a choice. God gives us free will, and choosing who to love is definitely within that realm. It's not to say that God has nothing to do with our relationship lives. He definitely bless, guide, and is in control of it. However, stop using God as an excuse to explain why relationship improves or deteriorate. We, are the ones that are responsible for that.

Need Energy and Help

Getting up early in the morning has been hard for me recently.Keeping focusing on studies at night has been hard for me too. I can't blame other people or external circumstances. They are all my own choices.

I want to be different. I want to be someone who is responsible for what God has given to me as my life tasks. I want to be authentic, honest and have integrity. I want to accept myself and not feel shameful about what I have done. My foolish decisions happened before were stupid but not destructive to my status of being God's beloved child.

I want to keep alert as walking on the study journey. Couple thousand dollars need to be spent meaningfully. Paper, textbook, test all that are working for my personal growth and hopefully can be applied to whatever ministry I will be doing later.

Flyer

It has been the sixth flyer after starting my current job. Every time I feel really stretched to come up with a nice design. However, so far, every time I'm done, I am pretty happy with the outcome.

With no exception, today is another day that I feel my ideas look great in my mind, but not good at all in the software canvas. I have different ideas of how I want to outline the picture, using different stokes, but I can't even figured out how to bring a picture to front from the background.

Having been absent from work make yesterday the last and only day to work on this flyer. Fortunately, editor said I can turn that in later. Will try to get it done by tomorrow!

Vancouver Airport Walk

Last Friday early morning, I flew to Salt Lake City-Vancouver for 4 hours and then back. First time to Vancouver, I totally forgot only S. California feels like Summer in late November. Other cities are actually "normally" cold during this season. The problem of wearing sandals, short sleeves and light jacket was that I ended up with freezing toes.

Irresponsible lawyer forgot to withdraw my h1 petition. The new h1 visa kicks in in October and terminated my student status. Normally it's not a big deal but with a job at school, I ended up not working for 3 weeks. 3 weeks of unemployment means 3 weeks of no income. To change status back costs $200 plus plane ticket to leave the country and come back. ISO adviser unfortunately seemed really unprofessional kept telling me that it's not her problem and she shouldn't be working on this issue. Lawyer on the other hand wouldn't admit it's his fault which was exactly what I expected.

I've noticed that I tend to get depressed, mellow and maybe even scared when a change is happening. Even though flying to another city/airport is really not a big deal, I still got really tensed the night before. Joe said he would be the first one to fly out if there's any problem. And, he will never ever send me to Canada if I won't be able to come back.

4am, early in the morning, I showed up at LAX for my "Walk at Vancouver Airport Trip". It was smooth actually. The lady at custom even figured out that I flew here just to get the paperwork straight by herself. The weather at Vancouver wasn't great. I saw snow from the plane but didn't get to see any pretty maple scene.

Oh, one little command, the biscoff cookie from Delta airline is super delicious! Back to work, and back to school. Normal life, here I come.

How to Resolve Conflict with Your Spouse (Part 3)

How to Resolve Conflict with Your Spouse (Part 3)
by Rick Warren


Wisdom … is peace-loving and courteous. It allows discussion and is willing to yield to others … James 3:17 (LB)

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If you’re going to pull together when you’re pulled apart, you have to:

Concentrate on reconciliation, not resolution. Reconciliation means to re-establish the relationship; resolution means to resolve every issue by coming to agreement on everything.

That’s simply not going to happen. I don’t care if you both love the Lord and are both deeply in love with each other, there are some things you’ll never agree on because God has wired each of us differently.

But you can disagree without being disagreeable. That’s called wisdom. The Bible says in James 3, “Wisdom … is peace-loving and courteous. It allows discussion and it is willing to yield to others.”

The Bible says it’s wise to compromise. You can have unity without uniformity. You can walk hand-in-hand without seeing eye-to-eye. You can have reconciliation without resolution of every issue.

Some of you are worn out from the conflict in your marriage. You want to throw in the towel. Don’t do it! It is more rewarding to resolve a conflict than to dissolve a relationship.

Let me close with a couple of suggestions:

1. Get help. Many marriages are miserable, and they go year after year with the same old problems because the couple doesn’t seek professional help. Don’t go to just anybody; get a godly counselor who bases his/her practice on God’s Word.

2. Let God help. The other thing you need to do is get help from God. You can’t do this on your own. I’ve seen these steps work, but you need Christ’s power to work them.

Many marriage conflicts could be solved overnight if both the husband and wife would kneel before Jesus and say, “We humble ourselves and humbly ask you to make this thing work. We submit our egos to you and our hurts to you. Jesus, do what only you can do.”

How to Resolve Conflict with Your Spouse (Part 2)

How to Resolve Conflict with Your Spouse (Part 2)
by Rick Warren


Live together in harmony, live together in love, as though you had only one mind and one spirit between you … in humility think more of each other than you do of yourselves. Philippians 2:3-4 (PH)

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If you’re going to pull together when you’re pulled apart, you have to:

Convene a peace conference. Conflict does not resolve itself. It must be dealt with intentionally. Conflict gets worse when you leave it alone. Jesus says don’t ignore it. Deal with the issue while you can. If you’ve got something wrong with somebody or they’ve got something wrong with you, God says you go to them.

When? At once. Postponed conflict only gets worse. Another verse in the Bible says, “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26 HCSB). I think that means 24 hours would be the maximum amount of time you should let something go unresolved. You need to settle it as soon as possible, before it festers and turns into bitterness.
Consider my mate’s perspective. I can’t just look at my own viewpoint, my own situation; I have to look at your viewpoint too. This is very difficult because it’s not natural. It requires an intentional shift where I have to change my focus from looking at my needs to looking at your needs. It takes God to do that.

When you understand where people are coming from, it’s so much easier. The better you understand your mate, the less conflict you’re likely to have with him or her.

How do you learn to understand your spouse? Listen. Listen more than you talk. This again is not easy for many of us. It’s not easy for me. Some of us get so anxious to make our point, to tell our side, to defend ourselves that we don’t even stop to listen to the other person’s point of view or what they are saying.

You are most like Christ when you ask, “What are her/his needs and how can I meet them?” When you’re angry, you’re preoccupied with yourself. But when you’re like Christ, you look to each other’s interests and not merely your own. One of the most powerful peacemaking statements you can say to your husband/wife is, “I’m sorry. I was only thinking of myself.”