Roses.

Have you ever stopped to smell the roses? They’re quite fragrant.

Today, I finally got myself out of the house where I have been chillin for the past several weeks. When I’m not at church or in La Jolla for meetings, I’m usually at home hanging out with my family, cleaning the garage, taking naps, doing my online classes, and watching TV. It’s crazy how much you miss out on what’s happening in the rest of the world beyond my driveway.

Anyways, earlier I got out of the house to spend time with my friend, Mae. We had breakfast at Hash House then when to Balboa Park to check out the free museums, enjoy the weather, and spend some quiet time with God. It was so nice to hang out with her, catch up on life, and most importantly take time out of our “hectic” lives, share our struggles and be an encouragement to one another. We had an hour of silence at the Rose Garden where we spent time in prayer and reading the bible. It’s amazing how beautiful roses are when you stop to really look at them. The colors are so vibrant. The petals are so intricately wrapped around each other. The fragrances are so unique to each species. It’s definitely an understatement to say that God is an awesome Creator. If words cannot explain how much beauty is in a simple rose, how much more our Creator? The God of the universe? Our Father, Redeemer, and Friend?

I wish I had more to say, but I don’t. And I’m not too good with words…not like macho blogger, Bryant Soong. All I know is that sometimes you just gotta stop and smell the roses.

Marriage.

If you’ve ever wondered, “why doesn’t danielle just move to norcal?” you are at the perfect place! Buckle up cuz you’re in for a fantastic ride where all your questions will be answered!

Question 1: Why don’t you move to norcal to be closer to Bryant?
Answer: As long as Bryant is not my husband, my family comes first. I love my family to death and for me, family comes first (after God of course). So until Bryant becomes my family, my priority is to be with my family.

Question 2: Don’t you think being away from your family will be a good and necessary growing experience?
Answer: I think it’s good, but I don’t think it’s necessary. I think my four years living in la jolla has given me a sufficient understanding of what it’s like to be on my own. Sure, I still saw my family at least once every week, but hey, that’s why I said SUFFICIENT. You may have a different opinion, but I think that at least for me, Danielle, I do not think it’s absolutely necessary for me as a person to have the experience of being away from my family to mature.

Question 3: Since you dad’s military benefits are paying for your tuition, why don’t you use the the money you’re saving towards supporting yourself, like food and rent?
Answer: There will not be extra money just because I don’t have to pay tuition. My family is not financially stable, meaning that we never have extra money. Seriously, my family is living on faith month to month. So I actually would be helpingmy family a lot to just live at home. And if anything, I could save more money for a nice wedding.

Question 4: Then why don’t you two just get married already???
Answer: We are definitely praying about it. We want all our decisions to be motivated and driven by God, not by our own logic or by money or security and so on.

SO with all that said, the only question that remains is, “What can we do to help?” That’s a great question. Here is my answer: pray for us or with us. We, well for me at least, appreciate all your well thought out plans and strategies and reasons for why I should move to norcal or why we should get married ASAP or why we should wait a little longer and so forth and so on; BUT, what would REALLY help me is for you all to pray that God would fill us with wisdom and discernment regarding our future. It would be great if you can pray that we would be deeply rooted in Him as individuals and that we would be faithful wherever we are in whatever He has called us to do. That is my humble request to all of you.

Thanks for all your love and support. We love you lots!

I’m overwhelmed.

I need to journal. And since writing takes too long, I will blog it. It’s okay that the world knows what I’m going through. =]

These are 3 key facts to understanding my rant: 1. I found out I don’t have enough units to graduate, 2. Bryant decided to go to nursing school, 3. My grandpa passed away a few weeks ago.

Here I go…

I am too prideful to take another quarter of classes. After my GEs and major are done, I still have 13 units to do. My plan was to take 5 classes over the summer: 3 at community and 2 at UCSD. That sounded like a great plan because I need to get a job while I’m volunteering with my church and IV. I need a job because I need to save money to get married. Seriously. I need money so I could buy my own dress, get my hair and nails did, and have delicious desserts. Other than my pride, that’s another reason why I cannot afford to take another fall to graduate. I need to graduate already so I could get married to Bryant faster and not have to deal with this long distance relationship because it SUCKS. I hate missing him all the time and not being able to get boba after a midterm and I hate not being able to sock him in the arm when he says a corny joke.

So I need to take 5 classes so that I don’t have to suffer through major senioritis in the fall and also because I need to start working to start saving to get marriiiiiieeeed!

But I feel like I’m missing out on life right now. I feel like I’m so caught up with setting myself up “well” for the future that my life right now feels so busy. And Christianity… man, following Jesus is hard. After being home for over a week and coming back to all the school and IV craziness, I really didn’t feel like being Christian. But I think what I was really feeling was just tired. I associated Christianity with leadership and because I didn’t feel like being responsible for taking care of so many people and so many ministry related things, I felt like not being Christian at all. The fact of the matter is that I feel like following God is so much work and I was too sad to do any work. But during that week, God really spoke to me about allowing Him to take care of me and to recognize that I don’t need to work and to check off a to-do list in order to be close to Him and to find favor in Him.

It’s so hard because as I plan for the future, I feel myself getting carried away with all the “doing” of things. I keep thinking about all the things I need to get done, that I want to accomplish, and I haven’t really put much thought into how God fits into all of my plans.

What is freedom? Because I really just want freedom to enjoy my last quarter at UCSD. I want freedom to be excited about marriage without feeling guilty that I might be idolizing my relationship. I want freedom to spend time with my family over the summer and not overwork myself. I want freedom to not worry so much about what next year will look like for me. I guess I just have so many fears about the uncertainty of my future that I’m trying to make all these plans to control it but it’s just not going my way!

Surrender. I just heard God whisper, “Then surrender.” If my plans aren’t giving me joy, then I should surrender because God knows what’s best and His way will give me life abundant. Easier said that done. My gosh…

I just want to go to NorCal.

Money.

I found this sermon about money and desire… I think it has some very convicting points.

http://www.expository.org/1tim6a.htm

 

It’s sad.

Today I went home for my sister’s birthday dinner and to my surprise there were more relatives than I expected. After dinner, the aunties were sitting around the table and I joined to sit next to my cousin who is a high school senior. We started talking about college and his fears and expectations when all of a sudden the aunties decide to interrupt our conversation. Eventually they ask me when I’m going to graduate and when I told them it was this year, they popped the fatty million dollar question: What are you going to do after you graduate?

Guess what I said?

“I don’t think I’m going to grad school. I want to be a missionary.”

Guess what they said?

Nothing.

They looked at me with disapproving looks and turned to each other and started whispering about how it’s such a waste to go to college, especially at a four-year university, and to decide not to pursue a professional career after college… a WASTE they said.

The sad part isn’t the fact that they just looked at me with disapproving eyes; it’s the fact that they’re all Christian and yet they put so much worth on financial stability, professional success, and basically financial stability. The American dream is driven by the desire to own a nice house, drive a nice car, raise nice kids, and to raise them to pursue the same dream. In essence, the American dream is driven by money, right?

Check this out:

1 Timothy 6:10 (NKJV)

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

Everything requires money…food, shelter, kids, pets, cars, gas, clothes, weddings, divorces, presents, travelling, pretty much everything; however, God promises to provide for us. He is the only One that gives life abundantly. But we have to trust Him, not just to always make sure that there is food on the table, but we have to learn to trust Him with our lives. We need to follow His lead, listen to His voice, and obey His every call. Some may be called to the business mission field, but that calling is not for me. And to spend thousands of dollars and suffer through tons of lectures and homework to figure that out for myself is money and time well spent.

So I’m not going to get a masters in communications- so what? No grad school- who cares? College has been the place where I’ve experienced God in radical ways. It is where I encountered His transformational love. It is where I learned to love my family more, learned to be a light in my community, learned to seek more of who God is and who I am in Him. College is where God rescued me from sexual immorality and bondage to lust. College is where I met my wonderful boyfriend, enjoyed amazing roommates, adopted a cool lil brother, shared life with awesome brothers and sisters, witnessed God transform the hearts of those who were far from Him. College is where I experienced God’s amazing grace.

That, my friends, is not a waste… it’s what I call: A MIRACLE.

Anticipation.

BABY’S COMING!! Yup, I am going to be an AUNTIE… wait, I’m going to be better than auntie. I am going to be a GODMOTHER! Big congrats to my beautiful big sis, Danalee! I am sooo excited for Rilee Claire to come in a couple weeks! YAY!

Rilee Claire's a'comin!

Owned.

I didn’t realize how out of shape I was until I got owned by Jillian Michaels this morning… after the first ten minutes. So I said, “Screw this!” and I stormed out of my sister’s room. :(

He is faithful.

A couple weeks ago I agreed to speak at one of the Summer Night’s large group. We’re going through the book of Daniel in our series titled “Courage Under Fire”. I ended up choosing to speak on Daniel 5 with the mysterious writing on the wall and let me tell you, that was one of the most difficult passages I had ever gone through. I was so nervous and even though everyone was so encouraging saying things like “you got it” or “God will speak through you” or “you’ve already spoken twice before” I still couldn’t shake away the nerves… especially since I only had 2/3 of my talk written two hours before I had to preach it.

I sat in Andy’s room yesterday at 6pm feeling so inadequate and unprepared. He kept asking me questions like “What does it mean to honor God?” and “Why is this message important to you?” and I just sat there stumped and frustrated. But God works in miraculous ways. To make a long story short, God told me He had different plans for the night and ended up giving me pieces of his message through the words and prayers of Andy, Dora, and Brian. He gave me so much peace to surrender myself to Him, that even if I was going on stage with just the passage in front of me and basically no outline and no practice, He would be moving powerfully in the hearts of those who were there. He had a message to give them and my inabilities and weaknesses was not going to stop Him.

I realized that one of the most powerful things is not to try to speak truth to someone, but to give them space in order for God to speak His truth into their hearts. Us humans, no matter how “good” or “righteous” we may seem, are really so limited. But it’s so amazing and so sweet to be able to experience God’s strength and God’s power and God’s love and grace and comfort in our weakness. All we need to do is have the courage to surrender our everything and to allow His light to invade the most secret and darkest places of our lives.

It’s about time.

Shuttle handles!

They finally added these on the freaking high bars of the UCSD shuttles! Best welcome-back-to-school present I’ve ever gotten.

This is going to be one amazing senior year…

Just do it.

This morning it hit me again how overwhelmed I’m feeling being back at home with all these things to do. Same list: pack, move, clean, make/send thank you notes/video, get ready for Summer Session II, yada yada… so God brought me to the book of James. I planned on only reading the first chapter, but then I couldn’t stop reading and I read until the end of the second chapter where it talks about how faith is dead without works.

It almost seems like the Bible is misleading at first saying that all you need is faith, and then later saying WAIT, your faith doesn’t matter if you don’t have the works to justify it. Okay, I haven’t fully analyzed this concept or anything, but what hit me today as I was feeling overloaded with everything that I need to do was the fact that if I really say I have faith, then it’s only natural to be expected to SHOW it. You know, like when kids are always questioning what you say and they tell you to “prove it”.

If I say that I have faith that God will help me with everything I need to get done, then I need to start doing things even if the workload seems impossible. I need to just do it and keep doing it, in faith that everything will work out. Pack. Move. Clean. Write thank you letters. Send them. Get ready for school.

Alright, I don’t know where I was going with this. I need to go pack.