I am so lost as to what my calling in life is, what I like, what I want to be. And that's ok.

But what now? And why am I still frozen?

"Love"

People say that you can't define love, but I say bunk. You can. Love is making the good and/or the ideal of something, or someone your personal good and ideal.

In the context of relationships, things go wrong when we confuse how a person makes us feel so good with being true love. If we simply stop there, though, it's not love of the person, it's the love of self. This is false love. In these sort of situations, we love how the person betters our emotional and physical states, at the expense of the other person. Thus, we haven't made the good or ideal of someone else our own: we are still soley focused on our personal good and ideal.

Things go right when we feel so good about acting for the sake of the other's good and ideal. We love the feeling that we get when we serve the object of love. We do whatever we can for its good and ideal. For example, let's say a man saw that a woman had a problem. If he truly loved her, he would be totally concerned with her good and ideal. If she got better, he would find true joy in her good being met. Another example is how God loves it when we find our utmost pleasure and sustenance in obeying him. When "the food we eat is to do the will of the Father," we have reached our utmost capacity to glorify God.

The common elements between false love and good love are that we feel good, and we love feeling good. There is nothing wrong and everything right with feeling good. However, what matters is the focus and means by which we seek to feel good. Selfish love is more focused on the good of the self, while true love is focused on the good of the other. Do you love the feeling of someone making a big deal out of you, more than you love the feeling of seeing the good and ideal of the person being met?

"Don't judge your insides by other peoples' outsides."

I attended the final lecture for my Intro to College Teaching course, and left with a new perspective on my problems.

Right now, I'm trying to recollect my thoughts. Knowing what I should do with my life, or at least having a strong desire and goal in life is so fundamentally important, and I find that a lot of my problems come from confusion and murkiness in that department.

God, why am I so lost?

I am a spent match.

I would like to invent a machine
that reinvents me
with the push of a button.


To reinvent myself in an instant instead of fighting yet seeing the same issues every day,
To reinvent myself in an instant to rid myself of bad habits and personal demons that enslave me,
To reinvent myself in an instant,
would be bliss.


I would like to market a machine
that reinvents me
with the push of a button.


If I promise humanity with my newfound discovery,
If I advertise the ability to heal psychological conundrums,
If I woo companies and begin manufacture,
I could get rich.


I would like to get rich off of a machine
that reinvents me
with the push of a button.


Millions of lives changed in an instant for the better,
Progressive industrialism is the answer to all our problems,
I present the microwave oven of psychotherapy,
The drug of the ages.

HAHAHA! Click this link, you JHU Hope Chapel-ites. Seems like our sister Gail's been moonlighting as a professional wrassla'.

Ok, so it's not our Gail Kim, but I wonder what she'll think of having a WWE wrestler with the same name as hers...

What thing in my life shows that I am saved?

Is it my love for my brothers and sisters in the church?

Is it my love for any person that I encounter in life?

Is it my understanding of proper doctrine?

Is it the sum of my spiritual gifts?

Is it my service in the church?

Is it my struggle with sin?

Is it my prayer life?

Is it my faith?

My faith floats.

My faith melts away.

My faith is like snow in Kenya.

My faith comes in words that float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

But, butterflies live shortly, and bees perish with the parting of their stings.

I eat, I drink, I ask for prayer, I do everything to stay alive.

But do I do anything for the glory of God?

Nothing in me exists of which I can consider with pride and say, "This element of me warrants salvation, warrants peace, warrants my life."

Christ, where are you?

Make me into a dead man walking.

Bring this dead man to life.

Bring me to life, my Lord.

Jesus, raise my dead soul to life.

Shaking.

I read a post that made me shake because of its stark honesty. It made me shake because it's something that the person wouldn't ever tell me in real life. Needless to say, this episode reminds me of what my friend Jimmy always told me: "Xanga —or blogging, in general— is the ultimate truth serum."

God, we are depraved, every one of us. I have never felt so lost as I do now.

Snowstorm in April?

The heck?!

Been thinking.

Maybe I need a real break, a real absence of any responsibility in terms of academics. Up until this point, it's always been a shadow that has sucked out the joy from anything I've done... this shadow of grudging duty instead of the duty of delighting in my work.