Waiting

I don't really like the word "Waiting". I think for me the word itself is not enough to describe what's really going on. It sounds stagnant, like nothing is happening.

There are times when I can't stand waiting, like when it's been an hour and the doctor still hasn't seen me yet, while I've been sitting there on the examination table with no pants on. There are times when I don't mind waiting, like as I wait to see if I'm getting my period next week. Knowing the science behind my uterus, I'd rather the egg really make sure it's going to be in a good spot, and in my mind, time is helpful for that. Well, it doesn't prevent me from starting to take the pregnancy tests though, hoping to see some glimmer of a positive.

I'm led to think about this song. The very first time I heard this song was from an unemployed African American lady who was living in a AIDS/HIV hospice. I was going to a CG run by David and Susan Plant at the time, back when they lived in the Village. And that group would run a worship service at the Bailey House once a month on a Sunday. To be honest this lady didn't sound very good, but I knew so much of what she was singing was coming from a real place of anguish and yet hope. It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever experienced, was hearing her sing that song. "I just can't give up now, come too far from where I started from. Nobody told me, the road would be easy, but I don't believe He's brought me this far just to leave me." Such faith, I thought. It's such an active type of waiting.

I think the weird thing about waiting to have a baby in the last 10 months, is how separated this is from what I need to seem like when at work. As I wait to have a baby, I am waiting to have a drastic shift in my life, waiting to stay at home with a living creature with all these needs. But at work, I need to seem like I'm not waiting for anything, I need to seem like I'm still working for that promotion, working to improve my skills. And to be fair, it's not like I'm not working for that. It's not like I can half ass work. Honestly, the work itself may be frustrating, but the people I work with are really great. And I'm doing well, if I can take the managerial feedback to heart. I've already gotten a small raise, I haven't even been there a year. Ugh, they're crazy. I get lucky in Corporate America yet again.

Meanwhile I have to go to all these doctor's appointments. My work starts at 7:30am. All my appointments are also at that time, and I usually am not done with it all until 9am to 10am. Designed for those working at 9am I guess (What is that like?! I have never had a job where I started at 9am.). Thankfully, my work instated last May a work from home once a week policy. And then all of a sudden in August, the building we were in was deemed not seismically safe, and everyone either can now work from home or move to an office in Simi Valley (1 hour away from me). It cannot be weirder how this is happening right now. I mean, this sounds made up. If I get pregnant, I'll have NO issues hiding morning sickness and whatnot until I was ready to tell my manager. And the more I can delay that, the more I can delay conversations about what will happen when I'm on "maternity leave".

I seeked out a mentor at work, more as a to-do because my manager told me to, versus actually wanting one, since it didn't make sense to me to get one if I wasn't really wanting to change jobs. So I found a mentor in a pregnant lady who's a Director level, and who is currently on maternity leave. I told her my plans and what I was going through. And I was slightly embarrassed, because I didn't want to sound disappointing for leaning-back(?) as they say. She is one of the smartest ladies at work, which is something to say in a workplace where I've found the talent lacking, with an MBA from Wharton and everything. I couldn't help being awkward when I told her. She wasn't mean or anything, but I could kind of sense the "Oh." feeling I was getting from her. It was a reminder that the judgment from corners that don't really have a say in my life will be coming, so in a way I am relishing this time when the world does not need to know.

Then again, I hope this waiting for baby does not have to happen for long!

Did lots of listening today

I just heard about Yale's free courses online. I think ever since I've left school, I've been looking for ways to learn about things in a structured format. The problem is, I'm really not self-motivated enough. I really need to sit down and figured out a plan and stick it into my calendar or something. I think my sense of doing things is largely influenced by what people tell me I can or cannot do. Big surprise right? Unforunately, when no one tells me what to do, I don't do anything.

So apparently, Redeemer has a free sermon up every month at their sermon store. I listened to this month's and it's basically the Tim Keller "Core Lies" sermon. "The essence of sin is a lie." "First step of sin is not disobedience, it's the resentment of obedience." My favorite is his explanation of why the doctrine of Original Sin is a good thing because "We can hate evil without hating ourselves." It does not mitigate our greatness nor our evil. Anyway, good stuff!

Being an Immigrant

In regular NPR fashion, WNYC has been doing this Becoming an American series every morning ramping up to Thanksgiving. Obviously, it prompts me to think of the choices I've made to become a citizen in more ways than on paper. This one Indian girl with a very Indian name talked about how even now as an adult she still feels only half-American, despite spending most of her life here. Compounding this with Megan's post on creating a new kind of citizenship, and going to Grace's Korean home for Thanksgiving, serving with a large contingent of Asians at the Bowery Mission on Monday, I've thought about my pinoy-ness at odd moments in recent days.

It's weird to become self-aware of the fact that I am a Pilipina, in my current way of life, it's a bit of a reach. But what's cool about being in the working world, is I really see a lot of normal wage-earning Pilipinos running around, speaking my language, cracking jokes they think no one will hear. It reminds me so much of my parents, and how they're exactly like these folks, most especially since I'm involved in work that my dad precisely used to do. I look at the IT project leader sometimes with his thick accent (not pinoy btw) and I think of my father. This one Finance pinoy manager has a distinctly nasal quality to his English, and I caught up with him on the train once. Turns out, he lives on Long Island, his daughter is a Senior at NYU and will be going to law school. We also talked about Stern summer interns he had hired, one of which was really bratty. We talked about where I was from in the Philippines and the major development that's happened around my childhood home and subdivision, we talked about development around my old Catholic school, what it was like the last time we were there, the new mall, the infamous LRT.

Something the NPR series pointed out for one guy was the fact that most people will assume you're American. That is, if you are assimilated enough. It was weird when I became a citizen and was telling people about it, most people were surprised. Most people don't know how hard and costly it is to become one either. But because I really do have minimal, what I affectionately call, "immigrant moments" where diction or lack of knowledge betray, I seem like a perfectly normal young American. And indeed, I am. Thus, another point of tension part of the wider one of justification and sanctification.

It was hard growing up in Arizona. I had to go through a lot of misunderstandings about my identity. There was this one kid, Ryan (from Alaska..go figure), who seriously, seriously thought I was making up my ethnicity, even after I showed him a 25 centavo coin (probably didn't help that it was gold and has a butterfly on it, making it look token-ish)...until he met my mom (he lived around the block from me) then he was very, very nice to me. His father was an A/C repairer and fixed our central air. A lot of people thought I was Native American, or Mexican, or Hawaiian...rarely would they figure it right the first time. Then there's my blessed name, and people would think I was Greek. My parents seemed like anti-social people and do not, to this day, make friends with my friends' parents. My father is going to go into high stress, if he ever has to meet Ben's parents. It sucks to think I caught a lot of my shy tendencies from this. I'm too different, I'm too complicated, we have so little in common, better not try to bridge the gap. I have really cramped small talk skills. I didn't have a lot of examples of people standing around talking about nothing while their children play. I can't help but make small talk something more serious, otherwise I want to kill myself out of the madness.

Really though, my parents are great people. My father is a hilarious, jolly human being with a amazing servant's heart. My mother is a super empathetic, encouraging person. They both talk endlessly about politics, art, travel, business, and all implications of life. They're intelligent people. But place them in Arizona and I don't think my father specifically has found much community, even after 13 years. He really only talks to the dog, my mother, and sometimes his children. He writes these amazing emails about food, filled with rich history. He really is a great poet, his Tagalog is the deepest I'd ever dare read (he won many speech writing awards in school).

I know this has turned into a I love my parents fest, but really I'm just trying to make a case that being an immigrant makes things complicated, even for fluent English speakers. Arizona was not only so different from the Philippines, but it was a different America from the movies we saw. There are no brownstones, green lawns (except if you specifically look for it), brick houses with long driveways just white stucco, pink buildings, and red mountain landscapes. Nothing was familiar. I found myself constantly grasping for something that I could feel was mine and intimately connected to my identity. Well, duh, of course I know this happens to everyone, as we don't belong in this broken world. I'm just trying to express it in my terms as an immigrant.

Really, this is a process of not forgetting. I need to remember what it was like when I felt so left out of the world, that I thought I and/or God made a mistake. I spent a lot of time waiting for life to be over. I need to remember that Jesus walked the earth feeling exactly what I felt yet even more so, and died for the world anyway and was ultimately on the cross left out of the only community we really want to be in, the Father's. He not only welcomes, He knows. So that whenever I feel distant from things that I once felt intimate with (whether people, hobbies, or culture), whenever I feel like I'm being fake and it's obstructing my connection with people, I know that these are mere shadows of the deepest intimacy I've ever had and that is with my God. It is impossible for me to fake who I am with Him. It's ok for me to be confused about who I am too, since I don't determine that, He does. I always belong anyway, because I belong to Him.

Alright...

Laura Z tagged me.

The Rules:
1. Link to the person who tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 random and / or weird facts about yourself.
3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.


1. When I was smaller in the Philippines, we didn't have a car and we only ever took public transportation or taxis. So whenever I had thoughts of running away from home, I would think of hailing a taxi and just telling it to make random right turns, until we eventually reached the provinces...I didn't think through how I would've paid for it though.

2. I like peanut butter, but I hate peanut butter with chocolate (i.e. ice cream, Reese's, granola bars, etc). Blech!

3. There is never a morning that I don't want to sing (even if it was a sad song)...but I most certainly never do because I don't want to bother people with my morning voice.

4. I wish I didn't have to wear clothes.

5. I have dyed my hair blond and reddish brown (and it was disgusting), but all I ever really wanted was to have really dark blue-violet highlights that would only be really visible in the sun...too late now.

6. I want to live in Japan someday, 6 months in an urban area, and 6 months in a more rural area.

7. I love long walks in the rain (as long as I have appropriate coverage and footwear and I have nowhere to go).

Tagging: Alison W, Alex S, Elizabeth S, Jas, Erica, Stephanie D, Josh P

I know more people on Xanga, but I don't have access to it at work...most of these people don't really post anyway so whatever. Just trying to follow the rules.

Conformity

Due to different forces: my own sense of conformity, lack of xanga access at work, etc.; I've decided to create this blog. It's quite apropos really, I did just graduate and it's a good cut off point for xanga, which I remember I started because my girlfriends in high school wanted to keep in touch during college...se la vie.

Basic facts: My work is based in Jersey City, though I do come into Manhattan for meetings at times. The commute is about 1 hour.

Work has been good...before it's sunk in that this is real. This is my life. It doesn't help that I don't get much work to do around here, but really it's workings of the Spirit. I've probably made the subtlest change out of anyone I know who graduated. I didn't even move apartments, change roommates, change neighborhoods, change churches, change friends...nope, pretty much all similar. But definitely not the same, it's never the way you think it's going to be. People are always telling me that graduating from college is a big deal, and I think it took me awhile to let it sink into my flesh.

Ben got me reading this book "Dynamics of the Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal" by Richard Lovelace. Here's a good quote: "The lifelong process of mortifying sin involves a gradual detection process by which the particular forms in which sin expresses itself in our lives, our characteristic flesh, are uncovered to our view. Some of this discovery of sin occurs early in our Christian lives, but the subtlety of indwelling sin is such that many of its deeper roots remain under the surface of consciousness, where they will continue to distort our lives if they are not uncovered later."

I sometimes long for the days when sanctification was easier, more cut-throat, whole limbs being thrown into the fire. "Oh, I should really stop doing that, it isn't healthy." But now I must be in lacroscopic surgery with the delicate instruments of prayer and the Word. Everyday is a constant spiritual struggle to hold fast onto Jesus. I feel too weak for the call of holiness, and I fear failure and letting people down. My life has changed dramatically and I fear that I can't handle this, despite all the encouragement from people who have said otherwise.

That being said, I know I'm making the right steps. It's daunting to fully realize the idea that this is hard, without being difficult. And everything is just going to take awhile, I have no control and completely dependent on Christ (despite my seeming independent living in the world).