lent day 1: convenience

so lent day 1 already ended, and we are fast onto day 2. something i've been learning is that living a life that declares a lifelong followership of Christ is one that will not be convenient. ever. sorry God that i ever thought that. i don't think anyone ever told or promised me that it would be, but somewhere in my early years of faith i think it was assumed that i could still live a convenient life while following Christ... and of course, remnants of that stuck with me till now.

yesterday, on ash wednesday, it became so apparent that living a life of convenience was so wrong. several of my coworkers attended ash wednesday services on their lunch hour, and returned to the clinic blessed. as i was leaving work around 9pm, one of my coworkers asked if i had the opportunity to make it to lenten services. she said she was so busy she couldn't afford to leave in the middle of the work day. since my church doesn't have special services, i didn't think that i had anything to attend. but in that moment, i realized i hadn't spent time with God that day either, and even more, it isn't about attending services.

so often i try to find excuses to not attend meetings due to inconvenience-- whether it's for work, to meet a friend, or a church gathering / service. life today is all about convenience. i have a smartphone and text because it's convenient and allows me to multitask. i schedule back-to-back appointments because it's easier to get it all done at once. but not often enough do we ever stop to realize that life isn't about convenience and meetings. it's about the relationships. and when you're in a relationship, cathy, you better be ready to be inconvenienced.

when did you think meeting with God would be convenient, cathy? if everything was always out of convenience, your relationship with God would be non-existent. you'd miss all the blessings. convenience puts the individual control, and God doesn't work out of convenience.

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on another topic, i got legit rebuked by my dad last night. i don't think i've ever heard him speak so sternly to me since my naive childhood days. i told him about my car situation, the suspension falling apart, how i haven't had it checked out yet, how i'm still driving it, and how every time i drive over a bump greater than 1 inch i fear for my own life, hoping that the suspension won't give out on me. i squeezed 19 years out of my last car, so 15 years still seems too early to exchange cars. as a chassis engineer, i'm sure he knows way more than i do about suspension safety, but i'm just not ready to let go of my current car yet. if it wasn't 11:30pm when i spoke with him, he may have driven to aa to take my keys away from me, like a teenager caught staying out past curfew. sorry dad for infuriating you... i promise to get my car checked out... soon...

happy fat tuesday!

happy fat tuesday!! tomorrow is ash wednesday, which begins the lenten season. for those of you unfamiliar with it, it is the six-week period before Easter extending for 40 days (excluding Sundays). it's a time for us to reflect on Jesus, repent for our sins, prepare ourselves for the Easter celebration, and renew ourselves in Christ.

i like to equate this time of anticipation to the time between thanksgiving and christmas. in a sense, it's a much more exciting holiday because easter celebrates life... well both do i guess... but easter celebrates invincible life. haha. anyways, enough of my nonsensical ramblings.

let's talk about lent and what i'm actually doing! this year i'm trying something new. i'm going offline for 40 days. unfortunately, since society nowadays is so dependent on the internet though, a pure offline period of time would not be perfectly feasible unless i moved in with the Amish people. but how nice it would be! well, such is life. i'm not Amish.

so this is what it means: i'm disconnecting e-mail from my phone for 40 days. i'm also not responding to text messages. i'll read them, but i'll call you back if your text needs a response. (with the exception of two people in this world, because with them and the context we need to communicate via text in, it will be inevitable and purely inconvenient.) so for you this means: please no last-minute updates or changes in schedule via e-mail. i won't get it on my phone. i'm also limiting my time on e-mail to 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes before bedtime, and 30 minutes before life group on tuesdays. this means not all e-mails will get a "reply", but i will respond to those necessary, and the ones that i can, i will take down your message and reply via phone. gchat and twitter will also be turned down, but not off... only because some of these undergraduates who are my friends only live on the internet and i have to keep up with them somehow...............

so why all this "inconvenience", you ask? it's because i've recently realized how unrelational and impersonal our society has become... and how much miscommunication happens through watered down "efficient" e-mail processes. and i absolutely hate it. friendships have become valued by quantity at the cost of quality. there's much white noise in my life through unnecessary text that feeds through my eyes from multiple sources.

ultimately, it all boils down to one thing: more peace and silence in my life to get refocused so i hear less of the world, and more of God's voice.

so... call me; let's meet up. let's really get to know and encourage each other, rather sending fluffy texts. :)

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a challenge to start: if you can call me and catch me during the day on tuesday, you will be rewarded one paczki!

epic v-day emails from dad

woke up this morning to this e-mail i received from my dad:

good morning dear daughter,

happy valentines day! i wish you soon have a valentine like jeremy lin. please watch the video i send you yesterday of him. (it is so good, right? what a good man.) anyway, until that day, please know that you are my biggest valentine always.

love,

dad

this was the only valentine's day card i needed. totally made my day!

patients, patience.

some days, i seriously think i could write a book on my experiences from work. i guess that's one of the huge blessings of working at a non-profit. with the majority of employees in non-profits in their "retirement job", they've seen and lived the world, and now are ready to settle down a bit-- serve the community, give back, whatever they want to call it.

so its interesting, b/c i get intense discipled by my co-workers and bosses every day at work. more than getting professionally discipled, i feel like it's been been a humbling experience when i realize that most of my co-workers have lived at least twice my life, most of them, three times. they've already had a full career and retired, or at least at the end of their careers, and i'm only at the beginning of mine. some of them are old enough to be my grandparents-- it's awesome. so what do i know about life and people? absolutely nothing.

so i trade them my knowledge-- most of the time, not even related to my degree that's worth 6 digits, nor the job opportunities that i've forgone who were willing to pay me back the 6 digit degree. i trade my fundamental knowledge on how to turn on a computer, print from a computer, my other advantages from having grown up during the tech boom, in turn for life advice. in a sense, i guess its worth it.

from another perspective, i don't know why in the world my boss would have ever thought it was a good idea to trust me to my position. i've barely entered my 20's, barely understand life-- actually, i don't, and here i am shaping the career perspectives of pharmacy and medical students and managing the delivery of care with physicians. it kind of worries me-- what am i shaping these people to become? and who am i to tell these physicians and pharmacists anything?

anyways. tonight one of my pharmacy interns made one of our patients cry. not cry, hyperventilate. it wasn't his fault-- she misunderstood him, and felt that we were trying to ask her to leave our clinic. (TOTALLY not our mission.) i went in to talk to her, and it didn't help at all. the damage had been done-- she stormed out of her exam room. by the time the nurse went in to see her, she was hyperventilating, and couldn't even communicate with the nurse. since it was interfering with our ability to deliver care effectively to the patient, our clinic coordinator had to go in to see her to calm her down, and before she went in, she came to get my side of the story. after we got her to calm down so that she would at least listen to what we were telling her, i sat with her for another 30 minutes as she was waiting for the doctor in the exam room. then the story came.

she was being sued by a private practice in the area, because she had an unpaid $70,000 bill when she had a heart attack 6 years ago. she was going to court next week, she lost her house, was forced to move home with her parents who are both mentally ill, and she lost her best friend last november. in other words, she is homeless. of course no one wants to be friends with someone who was homeless. no physicians cared enough to listen to her, only rushed her out of their office after quickly reassuring her that her symptoms were not serious enough for them to show concern. the problem: she didn't want a diagnosis-- all she wanted was to be heard and cared for. something that no one else in this world had been able to offer her. no wonder she felt unloved when she came in tonight!

we've turned healthcare into a business over the years. we've lost the CARE in healthCARE. it's a healthbusiness. it's sad, it's disgusting. what was absolutely shocking though was when i tried to offer her truth from the Word. rather than reassuring her, i read a parable to her. then she asked me to read her another. and another. after a while, i asked if i could pray for her, and she nodded with such eagerness. as we were praying, she began weeping again. this time, she wasn't hyperventilating though-- i could tell that she had a new peace and desperation within her. i asked her if she would like to come meet me on my lunch hour every week to study the bible with me. it was the first time during the night that i had seen her smile. i scheduled her weekly appointments to see me-- but rather than discuss her healthcare, i want to discuss with her the prescription that Jesus gave us. i want to make lunch for us, because not only do i want her to be my patient, but i want to be her friend.

lastly, i asked her if she went to church. she told me she couldn't, because she didn't have a ride. i invited her to come with me, offering to pick her up, and honestly, i have never in my whole life seen anyone that excited to go to church in that moment. not even a new believer. it's gonna be challenging-- she lives at least 25 minutes away, but i really do hope that she comes with me one of these weeks. please pray for her!

seriously, wow. i was so blown away by God tonight. He is opening doors and He is SO GOOD!!!

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my sacrifice, o God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, you, God, will not despise. Psalm 51:17