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sublimetofu
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Name: Christina
Birthday: 8/25/1987
Gender: Female
Interests: jazzercizing the biznitches.
Expertise: burrito wrapping, driving stick, making up poorly concealed sexual innuendos, diplomacy and that honest-to-goodness no bs talk.
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  eat the orange
Member Since:
9/13/2004
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| You know the leak that I babbled about last entry?
It has not been fixed.
Management came and dug out large holes in our kitchen, exposing insulation, timber, and an excited colony of ants. They rained onto our kitchen like a popular 1980's song (men). Fortunately, they're no longer excited. Fortunately, they're also dead. But we've had our friends emerge here and there, in awkward places like food or the hand of another person. They are reminders that we (still) have holes in our ceiling. Large gaping holes.
Summer has been so different from DC. Out in the district, I needed God's faithfulness in my very, very real splash of political and economic cynicism. In a nutshell: I knew I was stewing in a "cesspool of corruption" and spiritual warfare was rampant. I felt my prayer life grow in leaps and bounds, because I needed prayer to SURVIVE. But in Urbana, i literally live underneath pastors. Surrounded by accountability and opportunities to "grow", it is easy to become busy and active and swirl myself into habitual holy callousness.
I forget what I'm living for. I forget I'm living.
I forget when I talked to the Ugandan at the front desk of my DC apartment, and he spent hours telling me about his childhood and rocky relationship with his father. He missed the heat of the African earth, even dirt was too fake in DC, he joked. I forgot when I attended a 3 day Conference on the Caribbean, a lone Asian girl in the sea of darker faces. But I felt their cries for economic freedom and their pride for their human capital and musical creativity resonated in the cusp of my appreciation. I forget hearing my footsteps resonate deeply past the deceptively innocent halls of Congress and then fall, muted, upon deaf ears as I walk into some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country that are several blocks away.
Sometimes I forget to pray that I will go. I see how privilege has blinded me, softened me into a contented pretzel tucked and crisscrossed into my own dreams and goals, stuck listening to Starfield songs on repeat, but barely hearing the obvious truth. All I want is to follow you. You walked into the darkest corners of cities and embraced everything I am. Where You want me, where You can be most lifted, where I can lift my broken hands and somehow point a crooked finger back at Your death upon the cross-- that is where I want to be, that's where I'll go.
I say this so often, but LORD, I do so in hopes that maybe once I'll be in a state where I'll truly mean it. Send me.
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| i awoke to the sound of tiny knocks and a tin drum.
groggy, i weaved my way to the kitchen. and dipped my foot in half an inch of water. a large stain had spread like sin across my ceiling, filling my lovely florescent kitchen light with water. christine must have seen it before she left and placed a bowl underneath. the leak welcomed my floor with enthusiasm. wet, yellowish enthusiasm. i nudged the metal bowl back underneath and went back to sleep with the brass band playing something jazzy snazzy.
i walked to class, thoreau and umbrella in hand. i charged across puddles, fought intellectual inertness of political theory, a vicious lsat diagnostic-- then sat back defeated, and so ownedsauce by the treadmill.
i shuffled michael buble on my walk home. darkness, rain and streaks of sudden lightning, accentuated by a crooning voice. why was i ever scared of the dark and thunderstorms? buble makes it all better, baby. i crossed a field and momentarily imagined myself struck and sizzled by lightning. cuando cuando and i stepped in a puddle of the road cuando. i opened my door and stepped into a puddle of my kitchen.
the stain had enveloped 4 different spots on my ceiling. i looked up. it hit me squarely in the eye. i didn't do that again.
i shoved more bowls in strategic spots. drank some miso soup and peas and bothered the landlord. i sweated in an empty apartment, watching television with good company. it rained again. the band played faster. i emptied the bowls and they played louder.
i went to sleep to the sound of the ocean with the sky shaking and birds singing.
Sometimes on days like this, I'm so absorbed in leaks. Not just the ridiculous state my kitchen is in, but my own personal issues, my leaks. When I try too hard to work through them on my own, I forget. I forget about more important things.
family, our state, poverty, national security, human trafficking, child soldiers, global terror, social injustice, China, Taiwan, Burma, South America, ethnic cleansing, racism, Africa. God. I forget about God.
Leaks spread. And there's only so much I can do before I can't stand the brass band, dancing around drops of ceiling rain in my kitchen, before I burn myself out and beat myself up with 'what if's and this quiet life of desperation.
Once again I'm humbled by the cross.
Once again I pour out my life.
Eat that Thoreau.
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| i watched the sunrise today.
there's something innately moving when you watch a small town stir awake. in the corner of urbana, far removed from the raunchy piecemeal locations in champaign, debauchery that is green street, the elitism of grainger-- in this corner of the world, all were sleeping and i stood outside on the balcony, watching a glowing morning break open with shivering precision.
"His mercies are new every morning". Its one of those praise songs that is best described after a night of incoherence, and tumultuous thoughts and excessive usage of SAT vocabulary (maybe its time to graduate the reference to GRE). "His grace is powerful, limitless". This made little to no sense as I sat, propped up against Jenny's couch last night, fighting and failing. When Herman Hesse's circumlocution finally hit the nail on the moment of understanding, mine hit the floor. For the hurt, the weak, the wavering, the hungry and the poor in all senses, the jaded and weary, the limelight dwellers, the brightly depressed and tightly suppressed-- this is our encouragement. Will five words and a common comma be enough for us to press on?
I breathed in the sunrise today. It was His grace manifested live in color, high definition, comcast cable and surround sound. So close to reality, but just scratching the surface of what the day really is and what is to come. Whether it is a day or my lame metaphorical reference to life, sunrises alone cannot get us through the day. It is the principle, the mover and shaker behind the sunrise, and His message of hope that moves us forward.
I threw some leftover small group cake at some squirrels. I dusted off the crumbs off my hands and squished past the balcony mat back to my room, back to a head-pounding business law case study, back to my patterns of lameness and humanity. In two days,
opportunities will be closing and I'm scared I'll be knocking on wood
and pulling inch long slivers of wood out of my hands, kicking myself
for not getting my foot in the door. But this morning eased me, put me just a little bit more conscious of how I'll stand Him with in my lifetime: Always under His grace.
On a more positive note:
In two days, I will be on my way to Wisconsin to see a couple of pretty stankin' cool kids that spend their Fridays, Sundays, and a good part of their lives at the youth group at Life Creek Church. In good company too. :)
Then I will be seeing the three gangsters, rolling out in their post-christmas bling, i'm sure.
The littlest one in
the middle, Julianna (1) will have no idea
who I am. Angelina on the left (2) has given me
so much sassiness before that I'm sure she is now
the epitome of a Terrible Two. Lisa (9) is probably taller than me, which is not an uncommon occurrence.
the one handed baby carry-- surely good parenting.
Low riders with 6 inch plastic rims. And as long as you wear your lace hat with enough street, you're game.
And I'll be seeing most of these ballers over break, hopefully.
The most obnoxious group ever to grace the ITASA UPenn Conference. Slow chanting and all-- amazing.
Keep it safe and keep pressing on!
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| This winter all started with facebook.
Like cocaine or peanut butter, facebook is lifechanging and addictive. However, aside from the merits of scrabble and sending hatching eggs with small mammals within it, facebook has been redeemed, at least within the Chou book. It began with a message.
Jon Lee, itasa remix superhero and will tiao's production assistant, hailed me from his cushy throne on rodeo drive. he asked if i wanted to help out at a winter retreat. It's right after Christmas, he wrote out in caps. "And these koreans are awesome!!!!!1" he enthused. Suddenly, several days later I found myself awkwardly talking to Roger Lin in the corner of my room, cross-legged on the ddr pad, trying to hide from the noise of pre-christmas celebrations. it smelled like feet. It smelled like feet put to good use bashing colored arrows on a pad in time to music. Feet that would find themselves in a car full of strangers headed to Wisconsin. You know Isaiah's Great Commission (chp 5)? To me, sending happens when you say "Sure, send me." and then a giantic trap door opens up underneath your feet (Bible scholars with their eloquent exegesises roll over in their graves). LCC winter retreat began and I fell down that chute, feet-first.
The theme was Restoration, spun by Mike Yeh as the spiritual dj-- chika chika blessings uhz uhz uhz (wow. i'm lame). After 3 days, I had been challenged, emptied, sleep-deprived, run-ragged to a point of incoherence, and oh so restored. I had been emptied to a point where I could do nothing else but fall at His feet. Forget the terminology 'caught off guard', this was like getting hit by a car. I would sit there blankly staring at my small group girls and wonder how i would answer that question. Would anything I say matter? Was my little black heart in the right place as I served them? I would sit back and watch them praise and listen to them talk and I would feel so helpless. These were girls that struggled with everything the world could inflict on a person. Who was I, a random, so awkward fool, to come in and tell them to "PRESS ON THROUGH JESUS"?
But He was there, speaking, wanting His children to see and hear Him. He told those girls they were beautiful as they are, that He had great plans for their talents and leadership and dancing skills and smiles and personalities if they would just put it all in His capable, firm hands. And I was just a Taiwanese-shaped telegraph, beeping out weird dotted messages, lost in translation at its greatest, but HE WAS THERE-- doing the same thing! He was working patiently through the kinks of my inabilities, my pride, my overconfidence, my desperation to please the world and not Him. He was using anything and everything dragged up from my murky manifest resume and empowered with more. And when He was done with me, I was broken and awkward. I was awkward and I praise God for it. Would it hit home that they didn't need to give me the Sunday School answer and that there WAS NO MODEL of a perfect Christian? All you need to be is raw and real in front of Him. He was speaking, moving in these girls, in this youth group, in this community. Man-- and I just sat back and soaked it in.
How quickly we
forget how deeply conscious we are of 'the world'! it sounds like an
emerson-knockoff paradox, but how narrow the world can seem when I'm nestled down in Urbana-Champaign. I go to class, go home, go to church, go to TASC stuff, putz around, and the World as He made it to be, loses its capitals. LCC shocked me. I went in uneasy, so unprepared
and so incapable, and I left thankful, rebuked, barely able to string what i learned
together in sentences, but confident in His capabilities. Curiously enough, to me Life Creek was God's
gift to embrace awkwardness. stride boldly into the state of crickets,
silences, stares, and hand turtles, He said. Because most often, it is
all in your head, nestled in your pride, suckling on your fear of
people. It is this fear of how people perceive us that drives us,
motivates us, and dictates how we should meticulously cut
ourselves into paper effigies that are so less of what we could be; what He created us to be is so much bigger.
And man-- we are tricky, scuttling
about in spiritual trench warfare. We hide ourselves in the public eye,
as we serve, as we praise. As we hide underneath the corpse of who we
ought to be as Christians, we nurse the deep wounds of who we really
are. And by Whose grace and patience do we finally realize the war is
over and toss the ideal aside? Reality check, yo. By His grace, we are
broken, imperfect sinners and wanted in His sight.
So, this winter I was amazingly awkward. I came out of nowhere and landed in Wisconsin. I was so clumsy with words, littering my speech with 'dude' and 'snap', barely biting back 'that what she said' jokes. I wasn't capable, proficient, or 'holy' enough and God knows I'm definitely not now. But God is capable. For the times when I was speechless, He answered-- not me.
And thank you to all who opened up your arms and said "S'all good, homeslice". You welcomed me and accepted me into your family just as He did.
Thanks LCC. Thanks Roger-- for your leadership and example. Thanks to all the female servants that truly embody the elusive "hot and holy". Thanks Jonizzle for catalyzing and grooving with the music. And thank you Team Plungers. You've taught and encouraged me so much in those three days. Holler if you ever mosey down to Urbana or Chicago. Prayers coming your way. :)
left to right: Tina, Carissa, Angela, Alyssa, Sharon, Ross Perot. (not pictured: Sally and her crutches)
photo scavenger hunt. witnessing angela take a massive deuce. go korean scatological humor! hurrah.
showering together = instant clean fellowship. warrants gang symbols and peace signs.
a sprinkling of the servants, missing a few. all UIUC alumni or students. also note massive piles of snow. THIS IS WISCONSIN. there were also blocks of cheese lying around haphazardly and everyone's facebook interests listed "cowtipping". Pretty awesome.
Photo scavenger hunt actually asked for a picture of 3 Taiwanese people. We're like celebrities. Or a freakshow. Equally as cool. (Note Gill's cut off face actually makes it four.)
OIL to come later and family updates are due with birthdays around the corner. Press on, homeslices!
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| Within the last 24 hours at home, I can already tell this will be a month of breaking, dependence, and growth. As if the last week or so of academic flaying wasn't foreshadowing enough.
Bring my heart close to You. Tear the thorns from my tongue. Let me be rocked by Your wonder upon wonder. To the floor. To the floor.
I'm ready to burn.
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