Tests, Suffering and Living a Good Life

I find reminders of how long we've been trying to be sort of funny. It's like a a weird time hop type of experience. I noticed this week that the cheap pack of 50 pregnancy testing strips I bought through Amazon expires this month. It's weird to think as we were starting out last year I thought, "Are these too many? What if I end up not using it all? What if I get pregnant this month?" and so on. I now think about taking a pregnancy test daily just to use up as much as possible. I was no where near using even half of these, given how little I ended up ovulating last year.

I truly don't think of this in sadness, but just in a funny/joke sort of way. There aren't enough jokes about this experience. I guess this type of thing could rub people the wrong way, but if I can't laugh at myself I figure I'd make for a terribly serious mother.

I recently listened to a Tim Keller sermon on Christian Happiness (Romans 8:28-30). I mean he basically takes Jonathan Edwards's sermon (which he wrote when he was 18 years old ya'll!) and sends it to our modern ears. There is so much material in it, that I only mention it here so others could seek it out. The TK sermon was free in the Redeemer app, and the JE sermon is Googleable. More relevant though, it applies to my current thoughts of how we expect life to go. This Romans passage does not promise that bad things in your life will lead to a better life circumstance. It's not necessarily like, my struggles with conceiving now will mean I will all the more have a sweet pregnancy later or that my children will be perfect (ha!). This, in fact, is not the promise of the Christian life at all. There's a possibility I will never be pregnant, maybe even never have children. In fact, the passage is not about us. It says that bad things in our life will make us like Jesus, and ultimately (in totality) we gain a good life. Good life does not equal good life circumstances. Often, I find, the opposite is true, especially in my life. Christ did not suffer so we would not suffer, but so our suffering will make us like Him. Suffering is not pointless, but a means to be unified with Christ. And there is nothing we can do to stop it as Christians loved by God. The more I can contemplate this, the more true joy I can have, this moment, right now, no matter what.

Where we are in the process:
My Reproductive OB/GYN is on maternity leave. I haven't thought about this too much, since it seemed like just such a fact. But that is kind of ironic isn't it? She's not taking too much time off though (only 8 weeks poor lady doctor :( ), and will be back in February.

Before she left, she had me do this type of glucose test, which I actually haven't done since the summer after my Freshman year in college, when I was first diagnosed with PCOS. It showed that even with the medication I take to control such things, my insulin resistance is still rather high. And this could definitely be affecting how I even respond to the Clomid and Letrozole. So we had a chat and she told me I needed to lose 20 lbs or so and then we could reconsider trying the ovulation induction (taking meds) again. I'm seeing her again in late February to see how far down the road I'd gotten. This was a bit of a relief actually, because prior to this convo we were starting to talk about considering IVF. Planner that I was, I was already starting to weigh the financials and what my spiritual discernment was on the ethics.

Weight loss journey:
I had already lost 15 lbs since I started exercising and going to Weight Watchers in July. So now I've joined a gym to try to up my game exercise wise. Let me give you some perspective on my decade long weight loss journey. I was my heaviest when entering college. Then when I was diagnosed with PCOS, I started medication and seeing a nutritionist and I lost 50lbs...almost like without trying. And since the end of my Junior year, I've been gaining a little bit of the weight back at a time. I was about 10 lbs up at my wedding from that low. Marriage added another 5 lbs to that. Then LA living basically added 15 more. So I'm essentially, trying to get back down to that 50 lbs weight loss low, which btw, is still not my ideal weight BMI wise. Weight Watchers has really been helpful in this arena. The weekly group meetings is probably the cheapest group therapy available (aside from Veterans I suppose). There are people there who lost 75 lbs, and there are people who are just starting and taking baby steps. It seems silly while I'm there, but it's actually helpful.

Better Loser than a Winner

I've been a little sick, and for the first time in a long time, I can afford to stay home, because I have enough days to take that time off. Mainly because I've been working like a mad woman on this project. Worstly, the weekends I worked are apparently not even going to be reimbursed in any tangible way...but that's another subject entirely.

I watched Bridesmaids this weekend with one of my bestest friends and bridesmaids :). By the way it was as good as all the hype suggests. It was insanely hilarious. It's honestly a bad title though, since it was less about wedding madness and more about women friendships and all the insecurities and affirmations that go along with that. It kinda really affirms how without our friendships, especially the female ones, we easily become emotionally and spiritually dead. It's important within God's plan of community formation to have friendships that go deep.

Anyway, what weirded me out a little bit, was how much I kinda wish I was going through a crisis like the main character, Annie, does. I wish I was in a position that someone has to really slap me around to get my act together. In a lot of ways, I find myself to be a better loser than a winner.

I can honestly say I had no real friends until college. I'm not saying I was friendless, but my friends before then were friends out of survival. We had the same classes/interests/test scores, so I stuck around with them on social occasions so I could be as "normal" as possible. But it's not like I felt like anyone would want to hang out with me or me with them after school. This reverberates through to my life today, as I still get acute social anxiety when I'm going to a party or even just hanging out with some people. Even though it's painful to work through the fear (it's so silly fear of what? not being liked!), I'm more comfortable in this uphill battle.

Never would I have ever imagined that I'd be in a city like New York. I've lived here non-stop (except for week-2 week vacations) for almost 7 years now. On top of that, I would never have imagined that I would be so stable. I've stayed employed through one of the worst financial crises in history. I bitch and moan about my job, but man it's stable. Not only is it stable, but I'm thriving in it. I've been promoted twice, I get a good bonus, I have six months saved up. I support my husband. Even with all the politics I have to deal with, in general everyone at work likes me. Redeemer feels like my home church, and I've been there long enough to plant some roots and recognize the people around me, from babies to the more senior and the majority that is in between. I meet up with friends and they want to meet with me too. My husband is loving, kind, and cares about my character. If you told me this would happen, even just 4 years ago, I would find it very hard to believe. This is what I would've termed as being a winner.

Tim Keller had a sermon my freshman year about the two great tests of life. One test is when things are going really shitty, and one test is when everything is going really well for you. I remember him saying that the latter is the more dangerous one, since it leaves you less needy. Less needy means less room for Christ. On top of that, the Gospel teaches me that I'm both a loser saved by grace, and a winner wearing the righteousness of Christ.

Just like any sinner, I have my preferences on which side of the Gospel I want to emphasize in my life. Being a loser is clearer to me. I know better how to analyze my life and find the specific sins, and work through in counseling the solutions. I play the victim very well, and also the savior very well. Then I realize I'm saving myself, and then EVENTUALLY, find that the Lord has bound me up like a sheep and saved me despite myself. This is comfortable, this is normal based on the previous 2 decades of my life. Depression, anxiety, and trials are a gift from God.

But what about the place where things are going well. I feel I am in muddier waters. What is it like to live life in perpetual dependence on God, when the life of winning lulls you into thinking this is through the work you've done. Worst of all, it tempts you to think you're better than other people who can't seem to get it together.

Reading through the Bible is scary, when you're in a place where you are the opposite of the poor, orphaned, and the foreigner. It's like being the rich young man who comes to Christ and asks how to get into the Kingdom of God. Jesus turns to him and tells him to follow all the commandments. The young guy says, of course I do that! Then Jesus tells him to give away all his riches, and to follow Him. Then the young guy turns away utterly dejected. Whenever I read passages like this, I feel like Jesus is talking right at me, and I feel rather dejected. It's like he tells me, what are you doing to empower the disempowered, lift up the oppressed, and pour out your wealth to those who have none? This isn't just about tithing anymore (which is this box we all check anyway), it's about what am I doing with my life to glorify God? This judgment is very real, and I clamor my way to the cross to repent and be still to receive the grace which is mine too.

Being blessed with all these good things in life in recent years yields more questions for me. Am I a better steward of His riches, or have I already received my reward on earth? These rewards include not just money, but other less thought of caches like power, time, friendship. I had a crisis recently about how hard it is to be a good friend. It was easier to be real when I was a loser, but it's less easy to be real when you have much more to lose. No wonder people fondly dream of the college years, when there was definitely less to lose.

Anyway, this is complicated. And Tim Keller (AGAIN, I know..) gave this illustration in yesterday's sermon about wisdom. God made this world good, and with a created order, on top of that we are fallen and everything is ruined, but on top of that we are redeemed and God is working RIGHT NOW in this fallen world. To be wise, you not only need to know that there are things you definitely should do (order and laws in the world), and that sometimes things are worst than ever (fallen world), but all of that is part of God's plan and He ultimately works good through it (redemption). They need to exist together, because life is complex, and to think otherwise means you are a fool.

I guess I'll end this on a high note..sort of :). I'm a sucker for hymns keyed in minor. I don't know what it is, but it's the complexity of the soaring words of the hymn plus the melancholy minor makes it more real to me. Favorite verse is the following:

Come, ye weary heavy laden, lost and ruined by the fall. If you tarry till you're better, you will never come at all. I will arise and go to Jesus, He will embrace me in His arms. In the arms of my dear Savior, oh, there are ten thousand charms.

We are all winners and losers that need Jesus. When you feel like a winner, be assured that you are a loser, and when you feel like a loser, be encouraged that you are a winner.

Marriage Lesson Number 1 for Xaris

^"22Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. ²³Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, ²⁴since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving." - Colossians 3:22-24

We all know how this passage has been used for evil and injustice in the past. And it's really too bad, because I feel like whenever it's brought up, it's tainted with that. But that's the work of the enemy, and we must overcome the evil because we are the sons and daughters of a victorious God. And on that note...

My gracious husband brought this verse to mind for me in these last few somewhat tumultuous work weeks. It's strange that work and faith issues should come up only now and so suspiciously right after beginning a new life, a new normal and getting over other issues (clearly wedding, family, relationships related...and still there, just not prominent). But I guess that's how God wants it to be right now - obvious.

I had a less than stellar year-end review, which would usually not be so devastating for me, a decidedly above average but not too overachieving kind of person. Unfortunately, my work knows my potential too well, and despite having a perfect record of completing projects and giving the client what they want, they knew I could do better...and told me so, which is their job after all. I would've been promoted again this year, but didn't make the cut because of this (btw this was a bigger deal than last year's promotion because I would start managing people at the Senior Business Analyst level). There are lots of reasons of course, but the main ones being I was planning a wedding and I don't really prioritize work.

Somehow, this review felt different from all the B's I've gotten from good ol' Stern that made me feel subpar. For one thing, I was viewing work differently.

Ben and I have always talked freely about money as it related to heart issues and the practical workings of our individual finances. And our transition to one unit is probably much smoother than a couple who'd never even talked about it before. Just like anything though, you really don't know what you're talking about until it's actually happening to you. I thought a lot about the consequences of marrying someone who doesn't have an income. Being the woman AND the sole income earner for a family of 2 in NYC. My money is now really not just my money. Aside from accountability with how I spend it, there is now an implicit accountability to how I earn it. Yes, we depend on my income and employment, which doesn't necessarily mean a dependence on just me (more like a dependence on the gifts of God) but that doesn't mean I can ignore how this correlates to my performance. What if I were to lose my job today? This thought means something more real and different now than it did when I was single. Before, I would survive on savings, maybe ask my parents for money, maybe move to Jersey City for awhile if it really got down to it...but now I can't just go and do those things. I have not felt as insecure about my job since I didn't have one lined up my Senior year at NYU. Even through the financial crisis, I felt like I was in this little bubble of safety, working for banks without being an employee of one, being seen as revenue instead of cost minimizing, it was the last of my fearful thoughts. Now, I feel the pressure, even when it's not being applied, that I have to do well because someone else depends on me.

Now, I have to care about what work thinks of me and how I'm performing. There's a bad way to do it of course, but there's the elusive good, God-fearing, honoring way. The way that actually loves and serves people. The way that uses the standards of the kingdom of God not the broken, worldly standards of greed and ambition. I'm not just talking about loving people well, I'm talking about doing my job as excellently as I possibly can to make someone else's life easier, or to show that I care about what they care about. To be for the flourishing of the city. Because when the city prospers, I prosper. And in this time of financial vulnerability (which I didn't plan on for myself when I was single in post-graduate life...I did graduate from Stern after all, yes the arrogance of this is clear), I can find the lessons of complete reliance on my God who I don't believe has taken me this far just to leave me. He remains ever faithful and good. And I remain foolish if I think I can make plans without being flexible. If I think I know best how my life should go. I only have to look at how my life and how it has gone waaaaaaay past any dreams or goals I had for myself. I am not in charge, and that's a freeing experience to realize.

I went to a Financial Services Ministry event at Redeemer, where they appropriately talked about the parable of the talents. It's such an accessible parable, but it really has some powerful implications...much like any of Jesus's parables really. Notice that every servant is given a different amount of talents, because God knows what we ultimately can handle. The 2 talent guy and the 5 talent guy both increased their profits 100%. Notice too that no one lost anything, it's either you didn't do anything with your talent and got yelled at or you gained an unbelievable amount for the Master. The kingdom of God is the perfect investment, there's nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Either way, the servants were just stewards of what they'd been given.

So I've been put as a "slave" here on earth, as a worker, as a business analyst. I will do the work I have been given because it will ultimately please my true Master and Lord. I will do it with all the talents I've been given and not be like that 1 talent guy in the parable who just buries it in the ground. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain, by serving in my work. It is for Him that I work, not my manager, not my husband. This life is just a gift.

It isn't easy to live this out, but I'm excited by the possibility of growth.

Disclaimer: It isn't lost on me that Ben and I are in a much better financial situation than a lot of people in NYC or the world for that matter. The lifestyle we live would probably be called excessive in most developing countries. It's a social problem, and I plan on being part of the solution in different ways. But hopefully you all know what I mean by financial vulnerability.

Transition Remix

I realized that I may need to start forcing myself to write again. Work has just gotten slower and slower and I'm unable to find an anchor. PLUS, I realized (and this may make me sound stupid by how obvious it is) that I'm undergoing yet another huge transition cleaving more and more to Benjamin. AND, it's May again.

Last year, I was really stressed out about my family coming to New York and meeting Ben for the first time, getting all this attention, attention, attention from a large family, and generally getting ready for graduation itself to be a let down...and it was. It was not fun for me and seemed not really the way I would've wished to finish off 4 of the most important years of my life. I felt rather alone, lost and off-kilter.

Engagement is obviously something I joyously looked forward to and hoped for and differently so than Graduation. Though, I don't think I thought about Engagement as much as Graduation in terms of what this would actually look like, feel like, seem like. Confusion and being lost comes with every transition in varying degrees. I am so confused that I think I have to remind myself that it's completely normal to be confused. It's completely normal to be so happy yet anxious at the same time. That this is a GI-normous deal and whether I know it or not, I am dealing with a lot. I am in need of so much grace. I've been getting really good at making myself feel guilty these last couple months, but the penalty for my sin has already been fulfilled, and I must surrender.

Like always, I need to figure out how I'm not relying on Jesus. That's just a lot harder when I'm finding new footing in general.

Healthy Weight Loss plus Nouwen/Love/Loneliness

So I've lost about 10 lbs now, using the The Daily Plate. I'm amazed at how easy it has been for me to do, just because it's very convenient being at a computer all day. This is the graph of my progress (but because I'm a lady, I'm not going to publish the numbers that correspond ;-p). Weekends I usually don't log stuff in, and you can tell by the graph because it'll be the lowest weight I've ever been and then on Monday it goes up. Also a lot of the net calories on Fridays are weird, because I usually didn't finish off the day. But so far the process has really worked out overall as a balance between watching what I eat, and yet still being able to eat cookies ^_^. It's cool to see that a decrease in net calories (either eating less or exercising some off) really leads to a decrease in weight. Also, there's that huge loss on March 6th only because I finally got a weigh scale from craigslist and started to weigh myself every weekday.


Started reading "Reaching Out" by Henri Nouwen. Some really convicting quotes:

"Friendship and love cannot develop in the form of an anxious clinging to each other. They ask for gentle fearless space in which we can move to and from each other. As long as our loneliness brings us together with the hope that together we no longer will be alone, we castigate each other with our unfulfilled and unrealistic desires for oneness, inner tranquility and the uninterrupted experience of communion."

"But real oppenness to each other also means a real closedness, because only he who can hold a secret can safely share his knowledge...An inimate relationship between people not only asks for mutual openness but also for mutual respectful protection of each other's uniqueness."

"There is a false form of honesty that suggests that nothing should remain hidden and that everything should be said, expressed and communicated. This honesty can be very harmful, and if it does not harm, it at least makes relationship flat, superficial, empty and often very boring."

GAH! I am just utterly struck by my need for the Gospel to be true, otherwise I collapse into nothingness. Otherwise, I demand intimacy from other people, and suck them dry. Well, lets hope I grew out of that somewhat, but at the end of the day, I still struggle with knowing what is appropriate to find in community and what to ultimately find in God.

One of the women in our Fellowship Group is currently pregnant and might give birth any day now. She was remarking on how weird it is that as an adult, she has experienced all kinds of love (parents, sibling, friendship, husband) and then you have a baby, and that's a completely new kind of love. I'm only 23, and have not experienced all the kinds she has, and I think the more love I experience from people, the more wisdom I must have in knowing how to deal with that. Like everytime I start loving another person or start loving a person more, I realize that it just means I need to love God all the more. It doesn't necessarily mean I demote the person in my life, it means I must place God higher than even that. I think that's how the Church of Christ is built up to become more and more like God. That's really hard to figure out, especially with a heart that's so selfish and sinful. You start to realize how high, wide and deep God's love is, and his capacity to love is infinitely greater than I'll ever get to. It's kind of like looking at my grandparents and knowing how much they gave up for their children and grandchildren, and thinking..man, could I do that?..but times infinity.

I didn't grow up with any deep friendships. And I think that has a lot to do with what God thought was best for my maturity. Things like that aren't just throwaway facts of a terrible childhood, but crafted by God to be that way for His own glory.

This idea brings hope and comfort, but it doesn't make the pain of the process go away. That's what makes counseling so necessary. And as Nouwen points out: "The real spiritual guide is the one who, instead of advising us what to do or whom to go offers us a chance to stay alone and take the risk of entering into our own experience." Basically, don't waste your sorrows and ultimately deal with loneliness by entering into it with just you and God, and use the opportunity to see more of God and His glory and love. It's surprising how faithfully God shows up when we truly ask Him to.

Flashbacks

I realized I kind of lose the real sense of time passing when I don't have major anchors to tell me so. I read some older posts of mine, just to find some kind of grounding. It seems to me my posts were just a little different. Thought I'd post some samples below:

"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.'...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." from "Conformity"

"I completely know the answer to the question marks, but I still feel them. 'Was there, then, no strength in growing up? No solace in being an adult?' I was also reading Dynamics last night. And it was a part where he was talking about the Holy Spirit and the lack thereof in the church...He made an interesting point that the Holy Spirit is like being face to face with God, all the time. ALL THE TIME, face to face, YOU and GOD. After that I read some Puritan prayers about the Holy Spirit. Obviously, I've been having good times with the thought." from here

"'However important [growing my character] may be, this process of repentance trains us in habits of the soul that are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God.' (from a 1 John Redeemer study). As Tim Keller says about relationships "Love is an action first, a feeling second." How could we expect any more from ourselves in our relationship with God? If loving God and being in a relationship with Him means forcing myself to sing a hymn, say a prayer, or read out stale sounding words, I'm going to freaking do it because it was what I was made to do. Like with most things, the focus isn't on receiving or even giving with excellence (that's covered by God in His covenant with us), really the focus is who you're giving to. That's what eros is, and that's the metaphor God likes to use with Christ as the groom and the Church as the bride." from "Life is Repentance (Rejoicing)"

Thought Stream

For me, I think what sucks about not being in school anymore, is the constant re-establishing/re-orienting/re-thinking/re-considering/re-prioritizing. There's just more structure for this stuff in school, almost manufactured. Now, I feel like at least every few weeks (much more frequent in the beginning) I find myself being challenged my something. It could be something I read, something I realize, something a friend says, something a stranger says. I'm slowly getting it through my thick head that it's just life, and that I'm being a baby, but this is just really annoying and I never see it coming. Lack of outward stability is always draining. That's why an inward stability has been so much more important to me. I've really been grasping a hold of Jesus as my only constant and the one true thing that's getting me through this life. It's been getting easier. Whenever I realize something terrible about me, about the world, it has gotten so much easier to see God's glory in the midst of it. It gets to be that with any negative feelings I hear or feel, I immediately want to rush to Jesus to fill me all the more with His mercy and grace. To empower me to speak the truth and say, "Rejoice, for the kingdom of heaven is near!"

This huge internal dialogue is has been happening in my head. And when it doesn't...I get really worried...then I suddenly start thinking about the Resurrection again. I guess we're just not made to be robots. I'm constantly thinking and feeling.

Bites and Mint

So God is really trying to tell me something. I think I got bit by a spider on Sunday night. The bite was largely fine yesterday (thank God!), but it may be because I was drinking insane amounts of water, and took some aspirin (fending off the normal Monday headache). Today, it has decided to swell a bit more, throb in pain and puss out. At least, this time this is on my ankle, a completely hidden part of my body, instead of my face. Don't worry, I already called my good for nothing Dermatologist and setup an appointment. I hadn't been to a dermatologist IN MY ENTIRE LIFE, and this past 3 months I would have seen her 3 times. And every time I'm there for like 5 minutes, as she looks at me quickly, tells me it's going away, perscribes me some expensive cream and tells me not to eat spicy food or get flustered, then takes my $25 copay. Seriously, in 5 minutes.

On to the main purpose of this post.

As most of you know, I have this awesome (as in efficient, not necessarily wise ^_^) budget that I created on Excel. Of course though, it has some limitations. It's very time intensive when looking up and entering transactions and I've never been able to figure out how to effectively integrate my student loans on there. So I finally gave in and opened up a Mint account, something I had been hearing about for awhile. It's one of many free budget tools online. It hooks up into all your accounts (checking, savings, brokerage, 401K, IRA's, loans, credit cards, name the financial institution and it's on there) and compiles them all. I think the coolest part about it is the pie charts as shown below.


This was already something I was trying to do in my dinky Excel, but the chart is amazing. Say you have like a high-level pie chart with like Home, Food and Dining, etc. categories, you can click on a category (like Food and Dining) and it shows you what percentages of it were Restaurants, Fast Food, Groceries, then click on Restaurants, it shows you all the restaurants you've been to and how much you spent on it (my example is up there, if you can read it). It's insane! I never knew that I pretty much don't visit sit down restaurants more than once or twice in a month! I'm quite a restaurant fiend! To the right of the chart marks the frequency you did business at a particular place.

What's below the pie chart is also interesting because you can compare how much you spend to how much other people who use Mint spend in any city. And it even does it per business. So basically I can compare how much people spend in NY at French Roast on average to how much I spend in a month! There's really a lot more to it and here is a fuller review. I'm just highlighting what I think are the coolest features I've played with so far.

It's really easy to use, and once it's setup, it's setup automatically as in it refreshes the accounts by itself. I think the most tedious part in setting up is just looking through the transactions and putting them in the right categories. But a lot of them are really automatically there (like it recognizes Ann Taylor as Clothing). I'll probably keep using my Excel budget, just because it gives me a remarkable amount of control and I can see the impact of a transaction whenever I want to, not like wait around until it hits my account. But getting to play with the charts in this thing, getting reminders about when a credit card bill is due, and getting to check only this site to see if something has gone through (as in I don't have to go to all the different websites of all my different banks and credit cards) are good additions to the way I manage and analyze my money.

So yeah, this is another post on money...but I've got the time on my hands and the attention span to match. I don't know if any of you would actually go and do this, but I think it's super cool. Any interest out there? Comments?

Unstuck in Time

First of all, I got this today from a fellow worker. Thought I'd share.

Secondly, I had another one of those I-could-write-a-writing-the-essay-paper-about-this trains of thought recently. I warn you that this is going to sound incomplete, only because I'm not really connecting my thoughts, and really I don't have a point. Such is the freedom of blogs and not being in school ^_^.

Here's another quote from Sallie Culbreth :
People get discouraged because of the enormity of what lies ahead. Recovery is a huge undertaking that you may not even take the first step toward because it seems pointless. That's one of those lies that you must aggressively talk back to. No - you won't get there today or tomorrow, but you WILL get there eventually if you keep focused on those small victories, those courageous steps, and those tiny celebrations of joy that you find along the way.

I would argue Sallie is a little too people centric sometimes (she's all about the warrior metaphor with all its fighting and empowerment), but the newsletter that this came from was really encouraging. She's obviously talking about abuse recovery here, but really we're all recovering from the fall. We are all coping with a broken world.

I saw Donnie Darko recently. At the same time I've been reading Slaughterhouse Five. And it's weird that both have those themes of being unstuck in time. In the book, Billy Pilgrim learns how to view life not as sequential moments in time but instead just an amalgation of all those moments. So, if someone is dead at one moment, you don't see them as just dead, because they were a perfectly alive person for so many other moments in their life. However, Donnie still keeps the sequential element of moments intact, though the manipulation of those moments to the betterment of life is also at play. Donnie believes that God controls our paths in time, but in the end he chooses to do something that ultimately makes him take the place of God, by skipping out on Him somehow. Overall though, the movie dealt with the fear of being alone driving the need to believe in God.

This all made me think of what I had heard somewhere before (forget where), that God (the Father I suppose) doesn't necessarily view time as sequential. He is the same God of all times and all places, so he probably views time more like the way Billy was learning to view time. To us one moment of pain can seem endless, but God sees the entirety of our lives and His plan for us. He has the ultimate perfect perspective of time. But He can completely relate to our point of view because He became a man who experienced a sequential life, yet was still God and had supernatural knowledge of other moments in His life and everyone else's.

The way Billy sees time though, is missing God, so life ends up meaning nothing. Nothing but the momentary joys and beauty. It has no purpose.

Well, I haven't finished Slaughterhouse Five so I couldn't fully incorporate the book, but the themes are probably relevant. It's times like these that I wish I could write better. I kind of get to understand the whole idea of creating something new with old ideas. Alas, I hit my peak in the 5th grade (last time I was really praised for my writing and encouraged to develop it). I forget sometimes that I used to want to be an Editor, as recently as sophomore year in high school. Not that I regret my choice, but it's nice to realize that my brain can still work well within other subjects aside from business.

Money

For better or for worse, I've been reading and thinking a lot about money today. I've noticed that ever since I was thus gainfully employed, there are whole days where I have somehow devoted all my time in thinking about something money related. I just get into this attitude all of the sudden, and then I need to just keep reading and keep doing stuff in Excel until I figure something out. It could be tinkering with my budget, applying for (the right) credit cards, 401K fund shopping (even though I'm not even participating yet), or learning more about IRAs, CDs, MMAs, my own student loans and creating some crude models out of that information.

Truth is, I don't have much at all (which is depressing considering how much I make). I overspend, frequently. And that's really embarrassing to admit, considering everything I know about saving/investing. I freaking studied investor and consumer behavior in school, but I still fall into the same heuristics and the same American consumerist ways. I know I have time. I'm only 22 after all (almost 23!). But the math in my mind keeps guilting me with "Man, if you just started now, like TODAY, you could be a millionaire by the time you're 65."

Feeling like this today has a lot to do with this guy. He's really smart and really practical and really reasonable, and he'll tell it like it is (he has a post that's titled "Cook at home, you lazy ass!" HAHA). And this site really is useful, and I hope all of you (since it's geared toward all of you) will get a chance to peruse some of his basic posts. But if you spend all this time reading posts and contributing to forums like I do (because I have the time to do that now), I think it gets kind of overwhelming.

The good news is, usually I go on this smorgasbord of money thinking, then the next day, I just let the decisions I made take its course, not worrying about it again...The problem is this is when I overspend and not realize I undermine the decisions I've made if I don't stick with my budget. As in, I can't invest somewhere if I can't save anything. Sometimes I think I'm fine with paying such high taxes (I screwed up my exemption number I think because I'm paying about 30% of my income! I am far from a tax bracket where that's appropriate I think.), because then when I get a refund next year it'll be like I was forced to save that money if I scooch it straight into a high-interest savings account at ING. But then there's all that opportunity cost.

Anyway, that's the details. Point is, I wish I was better with my money, most especially because I actually know how to do that. I just don't do it!

Path

I always get a headache on Mondays. I think it's because I've been out and about all weekend and then on Monday, my brain complains that I've just been staring at a screen all day.

It's very difficult to keep any sort of perspective somehow.

My boss, John, is a really smart fella. He has quite a diverse resume and it surprises me how sometimes I expect him not to know the answer to a question he somehow still has something insightful to say intimating that he at least knows more than nothing about the subject. He knows what it has to do with. That's rare, I think.

Something that's really frustrating and different about working is that yes, ok I have always worked with at least some people who are smarter than me..ok, I can deal with that. But then, at school, it's kind of more clear why someone is smarter than you whether it be a gift, early childhood development, hard work, more time put in, etc. But at work, the differences are more subtle, and how to become a higher acheiver is subtler still. Before I could ask a kid like Guantong (really smart Sternie friend), say how did you know that? And he'll say something to the effect of reading this book, or doing that practice test. But if I ask John the same question, it'd be tougher to answer. Was it gaining experience on a construction site? Was it all that time he spent in London? Was it because he dated that one crazy Czech girl who worked with so-and-so? So it's frustrating for me, only because I really don't know what to aim for...and it seems I really do have to know what I want. I think I've been so content in just entering a machinery as a cog, that I've never had to figure things like that out. Not that it's normal to expect to know exactly what you want to be (not just do), but I guess I've just never been the ambitious type. I always feel like I've fallen into this path that God would have me walk. Now I'm having trouble figuring out what my next steps should look like. I know the end is God, but what does that mean about my job now? I am confused, as always.

It is what it is

I've been realizing that I think about a lot in a day, and it really goes unnoticed, even by my self-centered self. I've been thinking back and realized that graduation and rites of passage of any sort (from entering middle school, to having your first grandchild), kinda force you to redefine yourself, whether you like it or not. What is happening to me, ladies and gentlemen, is an identity crisis. Who knew college life had such a hold on me? Me!? The one who was always yearning for the yuppie life.

It helps that I don't like my job (there, I put it for all the world to see), and I'm doing absolutely nothing 90% of the time, but really, that is beside the point. It only makes this transition more acutely depressing and confusing. I'm sure most of you grads (most of whom actually like their job) would agree.

So out of the depths of confusion, listing some tangible things out kinda makes one feel better.

Things I have lost and grieve over:
1. Structure - I don't care if you went to Gallatin, school freaking gave you structure. There was a beginning and an end to everything. You were given a task to do, and there was a deliverable for every task (whether paper, presentation, or performance on a test). Even the idea that I know exactly when something is over, was a comfort because that meant no matter how bad it got, it always ended, whatever it was whether class or paper. Although I could have decided to end it early myself and take the consequences, those consequences again were structured and known. For instance, if I just walk out of work early without telling anyone and come back to work the next day and no one says anything, I'll never know the impact to my reputation, performance, likability, etc. Well, maybe there are performance reviews, but still it is more subtle. No one generally has the incentive to really tell me, "Hey Xaris, you did really well on those meeting minutes, I think I'll give you an A. You're progressing quite well, you'll probably get an A for the project." Even when I am given something to do, sometimes the person telling me to do it has no idea himself what it should look like, and I have to be intuitive enough to recognize that and ask the right questions and it really largely relies on me whether that thing is gonna get off the ground at all because he has no time to really be checking up with me.

2. Constantly being asked for an opinion/to be insightful - As a student, one is constantly learning and is constantly asked to display somehow what they are thinking. I know in Stern classrooms, the pressure is always on to participate and not only be intelligent but be insightful (it's that arbitrary 5-10% of a Sternie's grade in a grade curve system). Insightful about business? Hell yeah! Some of you have heard my ideas of the sovereignty of God in business and all of that was by virtue of being constantly asked about both all the time. Even in Navs, one is asked hard questions, and your opinion is valued and encouraged. Real world: not so much. I'm lucky to say anything at all about what I think and feel and be taken seriously. What sucks most is the dichotomy of having actually learned A LOT in the last 3 months of work, yet still being wholly unable to feel useful about it. I know actual things in the actual world now, not just theoretical case studies where we made impractical solutions for vague problems. And following a slightly post-modern path, these actual world things are totally relevant to the world at large. I was sort of surprised to find the other night that how the lighting design industry works is totally relatable to the back office processing systems of a prime brokerage. That clinical practice has a lot to do with being a business consultant. And weirdest of all, that all of it has something to do with the brokeness of the world and the healing that it needs and finds in Jesus. I used to think like this almost on a daily basis, nothing has really changed for the structure of how I view business (it's the power of economics that made me study it after all), I just know a lot more, and realize I can't do much at all in this world. In college, between school and my spiritual community, I felt empowered and helpful, people patted you in the back just for having good ideas and deemed you are ready for the real world because of your thinking; here on the other side of graduation I feel dis-empowered and helpless unable to do anything with the ideas I have, if I even manage to collate them and make a cohesive big picture for myself.

Nevertheless, as they like to say at work, "It is what it is". Were my mother to read this blog, I'm sure she'd struggle keeping herself from being patronizing (well, quite frankly, she doesn't struggle at all, she just is when I tell her about this stuff). I think a lot of my Jacob-like wrestling with God has consisted of feeling abandoned and holding onto him and beating it into my heart that just because I feel that way, doesn't mean I am. But this struggle is slightly different. This is feeling a lack of a purpose and self, and trying desperately, everyday, somehow to rest at the cross and know that my identity is in Him and Him alone. This Puritan prayer about Vocation goes something like: "thy love my fullness, thy glory my joy, thy precepts my path, thy cross my resting place."

Point is, just because God holds something back from you (joy, fullness, path, and/or resting place), doesn't make the lies true. Transitions are always designed for character growth. It's like that Craig P metaphor for student leaders. They're like toothpaste, you squeeze them and you see what comes out. The lies (and some truth) of my heart are coming out in full form, and I'm just trying to feed the pure truth back in.

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).