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Psalms 34: 17-18

 ¹⁷ The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them;
   he delivers them from all their troubles.
¹⁸ The LORD is close to the brokenhearted
   and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

My mom and I have been doing small services throughout the summer.We try to do it everyday. Psalms 34 was today’s passage. We would worship korean hymns (to be honest, I usually don’t know what I’m singing about haha but worship is worship) and read a chapter of Psalms. I hated it at first, I would get frustrated with my mom.. I didn’t understand why we had to do it.. Slowly I started to enjoy it. Now I’m the one who reminds her that we need to have service.

God’s been changing my heart and at the same time challenging and convicting me in so many different ways. For a while my mom and I had a “not-so-great” relationship. We would always fight and argue over the most ridiculous things. Typical mother-daughter relationship.. After a lot of prayer and a change in my attitude, things have changed. We still argue here and there but God has definitely changed both of us.

So here’s the real reason why I’m writing this post. I know that God has been changing my heart lately. He’s been convicting me of my sins and challenging my faith. One of the challenges I’ve been facing has been family financial struggles. My dad never looks genuinely happy anymore, only a smirk here or there. He’s growing more and more white hair. The bags underneath his eyes are growing darker. Just looks so worn out. My mom keeps it in and lets out small outbursts here and there about our struggles. She just complains to my dad. I’m just the one who sits there and watches everything that’s going on. My whole family is being challenged. Money is such a scary thing. My dad recently told me how he would be paying for this year’s tuition for me. If you really want to know you can ask me. But let’s just say I feel heart-broken. As an only child most of my parents money go to me. I don’t know if I show it, but my parents spoil me as much as they can. I hope I don’t show it, I dont want to be one of those kids that people going around saying “omgsh that girl is a spoiled brat”. If I am.. I really don’t mean to be, tell me if I do act like that. I can tell money is becoming more of an issue for my family, and all I can do is pray to God that he’ll show my parents some mercy and help us get through this.¹⁷ The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles.¹⁸ The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. This is my cry out to you God. I don’t want my parents to keep struggling to pay off for my college tuition. If there’s a different way or if I need to do something please show me.

I have faith in you God, I may be crushed in spirit but I still have faith. Help me to never lose hope or faith in You.

I don’t know if this is really what You want. I don’t know if these are just thoughts in my head. But never have I ever even considered seminary or missions until this summer.

Last night I couldn’t help but pray over and over right before I fell asleep. I kept asking:

“God, I don’t know what You want me to do with my life. If You want me to go into seminary or if You want me to go on missions. I just don’t know, if You could send me a message in my dream or just something to show me exactly what you want me to do. I don’t even know if I’m willing to give up everything. Help me to give up everything and live completely for you.

I’m waiting God, patiently waiting..”

I am a very slow reader.. Except when it comes to school work because I usually have a certain date I have to read by. I actually used to never like “pleasure reading”… I didn’t understand what the “pleasure” in reading was.. I always just wanted to play outside or play with my friends. Not until this year.. finally.. I started to read for pleasure. I read about half way through  “Redeeming Love” by Francine Rivers. Two words : Michael Hosea. That’s the type of man I want to marry. Oh my goodness! The main character “Sarah” aka “Angel” was a prostitute all her life until Michael came along and married her. I know what you’re thinking… what type of guy would want to marry a prostitute. Michael married her because God told him to marry her. He could have chosen not to, but he obeyed God’s command and some how married her (read the book if you want to know exactly what happens).

Like “Angel” so many of us may be “tainted”, meaning we’ve done things that we regret or sins that we wish we never committed. I admit, there are a lot of things that I regret and that I wish that I didn’t do. Things that haunt me and make me fear that no guy would ever “love” me. This book gave me so much hope. I know God is talking to me through this book telling me that no matter what I’ve done, ultimately God has already forgave me and that someone will come along sooner or later. I just have to patient.

I hope you read this future boyfriend/husband, you have to love God more than me, but family and me come SECOND. Like Michael Hosea, you have to show me unconditional love and always take care of me. bahaha maybe this is too much of a fairy tale, but I know God will send me someone awesome. To think about it.. He could be right in front of my eyes and I just haven’t realized it yet..Hrmmmm

Since I’ve been back at home for the summer, I’ve been able to see a different side of my parents from when I used to just visit home time to time during the school year. There’s only one word to describe my feelings: heartbroken. Even after a long day at work, my dad used to come home with a smile on his face and we would eat dinner never running out of things to talk about. But it’s not like that anymore, I can see the dark purple bags underneath his eyes as he walks through the door everyday. Our dinners are either completely quiet or we argue about something stupid. It wasn’t until a couple nights ago when I really felt completely heartbroken. Almost everyday, my family eats dinner  together once my dad gets home from work. That day my dad looked extremely tired and stressed at the dinner table. An argument spurred up out of nowhere between my mom and dad. Within a minute or so it gets quiet and my mom starts crying, telling us that ” everything is so hard.. living like this is so hard.. life seems so hard”. I didn’t know what to do. I just got up, put my dishes in the sink, and then went up to my room. I couldn’t stand looking at her cry. I could hear both my parents arguing from my room. I remember hearing my mom begging my dad to convince me to transfer out of mason. Surprisingly, my dad defended me by telling her that I wasn’t doing bad academically and how he didn’t want me to worry about our financial struggles. I remember asking God that night “Why does my family have to struggle so much with money?” I felt so heartbroken to see my family so stressed over money..

Today, God reminded me to be hopeful and thankful through my daily devotional. Thankful for the things I already have and to stay hopeful that my family will overcome our present struggles. Now that I think about it, I feel so selfish to ask God why MY family has to be struggling when there are families that are struggling more than we are. This all lead to my decision in not taking my car to school this upcoming year at mason. I know that my dad’s car is going to breakdown completely soon and that my car will probably last longer than his. My parents won’t have to worry about buying a parking permit or gas for me. I thought I would regret telling my parents that I wasn’t going to take my car, but God gave me this feeling of joy and hope. I’m joyful because I know that it will save my parents some money. I’m hopeful because God will provide me with rides some how throughout this upcoming year. I have faith that God will help my family fight through our struggles. I pray that money won’t tear my family apart.

May I never lose faith in You.

I never liked doing daily devotionals/quiet times. I tried to do it, but end up getting distracted and telling myself that I would do it later and then end up never doing it. I used to hate reading the bible because I thought it was simply “boring”. At last.. I’m finally out of that stage. I’m finally doing devotionals on my own and the bible is no longer “boring”, but rather fun and interesting. It’s only the third day of doing it, I’ll try my best to do it everyday. If you are one of my friends reading this blogpost, please help me as I try to do this everyday.I bought 2 devotional books at JAMA to help me do DDs (daily devotionals). Both books are written by Bill Holdridge, who also spoke at JAMA. I actually went to the Bible Expositions at 7:30 A.M that was taught by him. I’ll admit that it was kind of boring, and I would dose of here and there, but this man definitely knew his stuff. It was obvious through his sermons that he was passionate about the bible. It’s only my third day with this book and it really changed my view on the bible. I actually want to read the Bible more because now I view it as an appealing and fascinating book.

I wanted to write a blog about Tuba City before this post.. but I couldn’t wait to write about my experiences here at Jama New Awakening Conference.

God’s been moving my heart so much throughout the past 24 hours here.. I honestly don’t know where to start.

I guess I’ll start by explaining tonight’s message by Reverend Jim Cymbala. He spoke for our Evening General session that just ended a couple of hours ago. To sum it up, Jim talked about Jesus’ miracle when He fed 5,000 people with only 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. Through this story Jim told us that we should try to act like Jesus: compassionate for other people. There are times when many of us just want to shove people away when they are in need, instead we should act compassionate like Jesus did and care for them. We need to stop being self-centered. And then his sermon ended with a BOOM. He ended his sermon by telling us that “miracles happen in Jesus’ hands when you give everything to Him, surrendering leads to miracles”.

At Tuba City, we had a youth rally night and because I wasn’t part of the youth activity I got to have a lot of one on one time with God. That night an older sister from our VA team had asked me if I had any prayer requests and the first thing that came to mind was to finally change and live my life fully for Christ. The reason why I’m bringing up this story from Tuba City is because I know for a fact that God has called me here to Jama (right after coming back from missions) to let go of my life and put in His hands. I don’t know what God has in store for me in the future.. Tonight I had thoughts about going to seminary or going on long-term missions. I’ve never had the ambition to go do these things until today. I’m not saying that I am going to become a pastor or go off to a far country to do missions, but I do know that from this day on things in my life will change. I will embrace whatever God has in store for me.