I repent of my pride because it’s through my brokenness that God truly works.

I repent of my idolatry–of wanting the approval of others–because it’s God’s love I should be seeking first.

To understand God’s love is to understand how broken I truly am and the grace and affection that He has given me.

To understand God’s love is to love others instead of using them for my self satisfaction.

It’s been more than two years since I rededicated my life to Christ.  It happened after taking a four-year hiatus from the Church.

What kept me away for so long was my unwillingness to deal with all the crap in my life that I had swept under the rug.  I hate cleaning my room, what makes you think I’d want to clean up dirt that’s been sitting for four years?

It hurt to come to grips with the sin in my life that had made me so jaded, but it would have hurt even more for me to leave it alone…because it wasn’t leaving me alone.  I was saved from the latter by God’s grace.  The former would have broken me without it.

The dirt’s building up under the rug again and it’s time to clean house.  By God’s grace, I will not be broken by it.

I’ve never visited Vietnam.  People have asked me if I would ever want to.

I’m not sure if I could ever visit there.  It’s not because I don’t know enough Vietnamese or that I’m afraid of the pollution setting off my asthma…

It’s because I know what happened there.

I’ve heard stories of what South Vietnam was like before 1975.  Then I hear stories of what its become since then.  South Vietnam isn’t what it used to be.  To be more precise, it just isn’t.

When I hear those stories about Vietnam, I feel kind of like Nehemiah did when he found out Jerusalem was in shambles–heartbroken.  Granted, it’s gotten better since 1975, but there’s a lot of pain that has come from that place.

There’s still a lot of pain there now.

For he has not despised or scorned
the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help.

Psalm 22:24

The hardest thing about accepting God’s love and adoration for me is confessing that I actually need and want that in my life.

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.  1 John 3:1

“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”
He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”
He said to him, “Feed my lambs.”

John 21:15

I’m slowly learning what it means to just enjoy the company of other people.

No agendas. No ulterior motives.

Because people are at their best when they get to be who God created them to be, not when they’re what I want them to be.

If God has my parents exactly where he wants them to be, then I don’t need to worry about them. I should still respect, love, honor, and pray for them, but that’s all I need to be doing. In fact, that’s all I can do.

Sometimes I get angry and bitter toward my parents for not being the Godly, Christians parents I thought I should have had growing up.

Sometimes I get angry because my parents aren’t where I want them to be.

But then I think about my dad’s journey here to the United States from Vietnam.

And then there was that chance meeting between my mom and my dad when he had to go pick up my mom’s family from the airport with my grandfather.

Considering my dad nearly drowned twice and my mom’s family was lucky enough to get flown to the US by the military–well, statistically speaking, neither of my parents should really even be here.

But I’m here because my parents happened to be in those exact places at those exact times. If a single second of that had been different, I might not be right here, right now. I might not have the same friends in my life who have been such a blessing to me. I might not be in other people’s lives where I’ve had opportunities to be a blessing to them. Heck, I might not have been at all.

So even though my parents aren’t where I want them to be, they’re exactly where God wants them to be.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8-9

Taking comfort in the Lord seems a lot harder than it sounds some days.

“I’m hurting right now and it’s not like he’s here to feel it.”

But the fact is that he has felt it. His friends flaked out on him when he needed them most. Yet another friend sold him out for mere pocket change. He took the fall when he deserved to be raised up and crowned.

It’s easy for me to believe that there’s no one out there that can share in my pain and carry my burdens with me. In fact, I find myself believing that all the time.

But there’s comfort in being able to say, “God, you know what this feeling is like, right? Right.”

I have the hardest time treating men like human beings. Well, that is if they’re single. That’s because I think every guy who goes out of his way to talk to me has an agenda.

I’m not saying every dude that’s trying to talk to me is trying to sleep with me. That couldn’t be further from the truth. But let’s be real here.

Ladies, if you’re single and you’re talking to another single guy, you’re probably gauging that guy’s dateability as you’re talking to him.

“Oooh. He’s a musician. Plus five points. But I wanna go to graduate school in a big city and he’s a small town kind of guy. That might not work. But I could just move after grad school. Smaller towns aren’t THAT bad. And marriage would be way down the road anyway.”

Am I right or am I just crazy?

So because I over-think interacting with guys, I can’t help but think that on some level, they’re doing something similar.

“Hey, she’s kinda cute. She’s majors in what? And she wants to go to grad school where? Helloooo, future sugar mama.”

Lord knows that if a guy like that tried to talk to me, I’d kick his ass. But I digress.

And if I start being too nice to a guy that I don’t want to date and he starts to like me, I’m suddenly in a position where I might have to hurt someone’s feelings. Not fun.

So my point is that I don’t know how to treat guys like they’re just guys and not potential suitors. There have been a couple of exceptions, but those are very, very rare. Anyone got any pointers for me?