It's better to help people than garden gnome...*

I had been doing just that, thinking, in my hiatus..

Recently I had struggled with time management. It felt like deja vu, but I am sure I felt this before when I was ten years old. I was a hyperactive kid with more church, more school but less play activities more than anyone in the house. And God shut me down by putting me in bed, lying and only reading, for two months. But this time, my over-achiever self had brought me into a long night of prayer and asking God for discernment, question myself about my motivation (which is very important to me before I ever decided to get involved in anything).

My motivation did not change. It's not the pressure of turning thirty, it's not a desire to do more with the time I have as a single person, it's not my need to connect with others, it's because I want to give all I have for God. When God was not there, so why should we?

But that night I asked God what I should do with everything on my plate, and I realized that all I heard was the word "prioritized". So I did. Although prioritizing causing me to lose a friend, or at least losing his faith in me and causing him to be disappointed with me. But, a girl's got to do what a girl's got to do. I am now in a more ease situation, as if a fifty pound weight was taken from my back. I hope I will be better at that, to just say no to people when they're asking for help; not because I care less, but because a person has a limit of capacity.

For the last three weeks, perhaps, my mind had been taken to the future that I was completely distracted and could not focus on the present. I know that what we have is only the present, and that the future has its own course that we have no control over. Thank God I have a friend to remind me just that. That God had placed us in our path for a reason and that reason was to glorify Him and to seize every opportunity to worship Him with our lives. So I did. Thank God for a good friend.

And this sentence from a my favorite book had settled in my mind for awhile now:
I felt that night, on that stage, under that skull, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone. I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live, What exactly made worth of it? What's so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's so great about feeling and dreaming? (ExtremelyLoudAndIncrediblyClose, JonathanSafranFoer.) My good friend's dad is dying, so he said, of throat cancer that came back to attack the entire body after a glimpse of recovery. It seems to me that God took good people first to be with him, which, I could see why, and somehow I am envy of, because they will be able to see God's face sooner. This dad is an amazing servant of God, who devoted his life for service to his patients (he's a doctor), a wonderful father for my friend and his brother, an honorable husband, and a walking encyclopedia who knows everything (for me, at least). To this day, my prayer for him is that God will grant him peace of mind, less pain, and a heart that's ready to embrace anything that could happen. I pray also for his wife, to give her strength and comfort in the difficult time.

Last week, I experienced yet another HolySpirit moment. I was overwhelmed with just how powerful the power of believing is. How powerful faith is. The assurance that we got from being able to raise dollars, to raise support, and to increase involvement for three huge ministry that with a regular mind, calculating the cost only would made one feel like a moron. But with God, everything is possible, and when the idea came from God, He will provide. I am once again was reminded just how great my God is.

Other than those thoughts, I am still struggling with many things, including temptation, thinking about the definition and concept of leadership, and the role of women in church. I am also still in awe with God's blessings of friends, his idea of family of faith, and his direction that had became clearer everyday for my life. Those things, I will dig in the next post.

Jesus loves you.

(*)Sometimes my title doesn't seem to have any connection with my post, and it's not embedded in the entire post but it is in one way to me. The title was a quote from the movie Amelie, when she encouraged her dad to travel more, and to let go of his never ending grieving process of losing his wife by making a garden gnome a friend. It is also telling me about God's direction in my job, and what I am asking him for me to be a servant who helps people.