be loving

my friend loves to ask questions starting with, "on a scale from 1 to 10...," and his favorite question to ask me is, "on a scale from 1 to 10, how much do you miss me?" and my favorite reply is, "you're in the negatives. far below 0." hahaha, i'm kidding, of course :)

yesterday's sermon was about loving people and forgiving everyone. as children of God, who dearly loves us now matter how wretched we are, we are called to be compassionate, kind, forgiving, gentle, and patient, and binding all these virtues with love (colossians 3:12-13). when i was listening to the sermon, i felt very uncomfortable and slid lower and lower in my seat because my heart was bursting with so much guilt and shame. i asked myself, "on a scale from 1 to 10, how loving am i?" and my answer was the same as i had answered my friend -- i am way below the zero mark, drowning in the negatives. 

my pastor asked this question, "what's the point of loving only those you who love you?"

... stab.

ouch.

sigh. to be loving. it's.. not easy. but..
i should try harder.
i want to try harder.
i will try harder.

Dear God, thankYou for showering me with Your unconditional and steadfast love. please help me to be more compassionate, more kind, more forgiving, more gentle, more patient, and more loving. please fill my heart with a strong and urgent craving for all these beautiful virtues so that i may strive to be more like You. amen.

this past week

things that made me smile this past week:
-- a text from emory:
"i miss you already. 10 cents i know but i thought i'd make it worth it. don't smile too hard please."

-- a conversation with hermit:
buddy: mmm... i realized ur company seems to always be a pleasant one, hahaha. so far that is. it's a rare moon we chill. lol.
me: moon?
buddy: err, once in a blue moon. whoops

-- vchat with my best friend (kind of inappropriate but so funny):
me: i have a lot of stuffed animals on my bed. but i'm not creative with naming my stuffed animals. i just call them "mister bear" or "mister cow"
bff: are all your stuffed animals males?
me: ...... why, yes.... i guess they are.
bff: hahaha, that is quite telling of you.
me: well, i mean, they ARE on my bed.. i'd rather have the males on my bed...
bff: hahahaha!! at least i'm not discriminating like you. i have both male and female stuffed animals.
me: that is quite telling of YOU. i see you go both ways.

-- basketball jersey "photoshoot" with my (ex) roommate

-- a souvenir from hawaii. thankyou, pretty lady :)

things that made me so very grateful this past week:
-- praise God for providing my aptmate and i two new roommates! they'll be moving-in in july. they are cousins and seem very nice and clean! :)

-- an email from wake forest university. it has the #1 passing rate of cpa exams for the past 5 out of 6 years. i hope i can get in. tim duncan and chris paul are from this school. the school's basketball team is a part of NCAA Division I. man, i love basketball.

-- purchased plane tickets for my momma. she will be visiting sd in the last week of june! this will be my first time spending more than a couple of hours with her. it may be a little frustrating but i know it will be good.

-- a new friend has given me her old phone to use (my dumbphone's touch screen hasn't been working for the past 3 weeks). we don't know each other very well so it was very kind of her to offer her old phone. thankyou :)

... hmm, i kind of like reflecting and writing a list about my past week... perhaps i'll write a post at the end of each week... maybe.

momma's first gchat

i don't know what my momma was doing up past midnight tonight but i saw her name pop up on my gchat list. at first, i hesitated to IM her because when i had first IMed her a year ago, she had completely ignored me. i'd like to think that she ignored me because she didn't know how to respond, haha. nevertheless, i was so curious as to why she was up so late at night, so i took a chance and i IMed her. i waited for a good four minutes, and as i was staring at the IM box, finally i could see that she was typing back. yess!! she was responding back to me!!

our conversation was very short and limited. we both were taking a fairly long time replying to each other because we were typing in korean. i can easily picture her poking at the keyboard, haha. still, i was and still am so very happy that we were able to gchat.

i asked my mom why she wasn't sleeping and she replied, "내 마음이다," which means, "it's my choice." now i see where i get my sassiness from >.< our 5-minute conversation ended with her saying that this online chatting is fun and that she wanted to do it again. haha, welcome to the 21st century, umma! :)