Jessie Lian Blog

Light of the world

2012-02-16T19:21:00.003-08:00

This has recently been my prayer. That because I have such a hope, I am very bold (2 Corinthians 3:12). That my conversation will be always full of grace, seasoned with salt. (Colossians 4:6)

You know, this theme of “light” is so cool though. Or more specifically, the word “shadow,” used in Hebrews 8:5 - “They serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven” and Hebrews 10:1 - “The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming- not the realities themselves.” And it just occurred to me what that could mean. I was sitting in a dark bus yesterday night, looking out the window. But when the bus stopped and the lights came on, the window became a mirror, reflecting and illuminating the couple sitting across from me. Then when the lights went off, it was dark again, and I could see nothing but some passing cars. And it struck me! Shadows can’t even exist without a source of light! I had always thought of the word “shadow” here as “foreshadowing” or a “reflection,” which is true, but to think, that all of this, all of me, can’t even be without a light source illuminating it?! Too cool.

“God is light; in him there is no darkness at all” - 1 John 1:5

And you know, if darkness is defined as the absence of light, then darkness can’t even be defined WITHOUT light - just as shadows can not be defined without a source of light either. Our identity is in Christ, illuminated by Him, quite so!

/ note on the design: I'm never going to call myself a "designer" if all I can do is take some pretty pictures and add a gradient to them, then throw in a transparent circle with some text. However, it's a happy hobby, and I absolutely love the way cameras bokeh. Yes, I just verbed that.

Here we go again.

2012-02-16T18:58:00.002-08:00

It's been a really, really, really long time. I'm sure that you were beginning to wonder whether I was still going to keep going with this thing. I began to wonder it too. At least near the beginning of January, I was still writing drafts, bits and pieces of beginnings. At least I was still keeping a mental note of the movies I was watching, the things I was learning, the AIESEC stuff I was creating, the crazy things God was doing. But then, apathy and writer's block hit me like, a block I would assume... (and as you can probably tell, it hasn't left, as my figurative language skills are not up to par).

But somewhere along the way I also began to scream for air. I felt so stuck, as if there was no more outlet for art and creativity amidst these accounting classes. I began to roll in my own pity, wanting nothing but to go out and see some mountains, walk on soil untouched by commercialized fur boots, breathe in air that's not artificial, taste raw wind. Experience God and nature for more than just a day in some remote camp-town in Georgia. See STARS. I just felt like right brain was starving from deprivation of english and art and philosophy classes. And all I wanted to be was impractical, waste money thinking about things and drawing little inconsequential pictures in a sketchbook. Yes, I am being a little dramatic.

But then I realized that I've been the one depriving myself, if anything. I have every capability to take out my sketchbook, to join the orchestra, to write (or blog), to take pictures and design, to read the news and pretend like I'm sophisticated. Ha, God knows I'm not good enough at any of these things to make a career out of them, but I haven't even been making hobbies out of them! And that was supposed to be the goal of this blog.

I have commitment issues. Everyone knows that. Especially the ones who try to get me to exercise, then give up after a few days. Listen though, I'm committed this time. I felt what starvation of the right brain feels like, and I'm not going back there.

Here's to second chances.

#thisissocollege

2012-01-09T21:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday night, when I was still a bit bummed about the fact that I had to leave home and go back into school and class and stress, I decided to go sit in a room and watch Up with a few other girls. And that night turned into four hours of just sitting in the same place and laughing, laughing until we didn't know what we were laughing about. And talking about quite girly things. If you boys are curious, it's true- girls really do talk about babies and dressing up and motherly things when they're together. We talked about having a Pride and Prejudice day, in which we'd watch the 5-hour movie and dress up in dresses made out of curtains and have a tea party in the middle of founder's garden. We stalked our own houses on google maps and tried on forever lazies and talked about the silly things we did when we were little (protesting by wearing bathing suits and laying out, convincing friends that they could walk to the beach and proceeding by walking down the street with nothing but a backpack and ginger ale, threatening to run away and being gone for hours then being found in the backyard) and mistook wires for fruit flies and took twirly pictures of ourselves and talked about death and bragged on social networking sites. And thus the hashtag, #thisissocollege.

And then I remembered how much I loved college and Athens and the people here, and that this was my second home, really.

And well, it shames me to say (since I should've gotten over this after the first month of college), but it hit me again today that I'm in college. College! Mainly because the classes I'm taking this semester are more difficult and more interesting and more demanding than they were last year. Last semester, I frankly breezed through a lot of it, spending most of my time looking around for clubs and fellowships than really studying, just because not too many of my classes were all that demanding. But this semester, I will definitely be spending a whole lot more time and effort studying and writing papers and doing projects. But the thing about college (that's a thousand times better than high school) is that learning can become, well, fun and exciting, if you're majoring in the right thing. When my professors today were talking about how we had this and this assigned and planned, I was actually giddy with excitement (and also about to pee my pants in fear), because I'm finally beginning to take classes I'm interested in with professors who're interested in it too. Which just makes for double the interest and double the fun. (Is it just me, or is my writing beginning to take a turn for the worse? It's becoming quite casually mediocre... )

So the classes I get to take this semester-
Chinese - I love this language. Probably because it comes naturally to me.
Speech and Communications (Interpersonal communications) - the professor is mainly the one who makes this class so exciting. He tried to do the "Wop" in the middle of class and failed miserably. He also told us to stereotype our classmates, which is always fun. Anyways, I'm excited to be able to analyze relationships and point out what's right and what's wrong, and to be able to do some research projects regarding these relationships too. Maybe it'll get me more friends, eh?
Intro to Advertising - I get to write a 12 page thesis paper! But really, it should be fun.
Macro econ- I AM SO EXCITED FOR THIS CLASS, mainly because of the professor again. But something awesome he said was that we'd be able to read the news after taking the class, because a lot of the news would make sense with knowledge of macro economics. And I want to be able to read the news, so badly. Two other quoteworthy things-
"So, who plays words with friends?"
"I don't care if you nap in here. I like naps. I learned that from my cat."
Accounting - Well. I'll go to accounting's first class tomorrow, so we'll see.

But yes! What's mainly exciting about all this for you, my reader, is that if I ever learn something awesome during class, or if I'm doing something interesting with research, then I'll be able to share via blogspot! So yes, this is exciting indeed, to be able to blog about learning and classes. It's definitely new for me, I'll tell you that.

Louie Giglio & Matt Redman's "Indescribable" (and skies)

2012-01-08T20:40:00.000-08:00

You know, I love the sky. Sometimes I just look at it and get sucked in by the sheer vastness of it. I love how it changes colors with the sun, I love it when it's so utterly blue, no trace of a cloud, that when you look up you feel like you're looking at a huge wall in a baby boy's room. I like the sun and how sometimes you can still see it through translucent clouds, and how you can't even take a glance at it when it isn't covered by clouds because it's just too brilliant and bright and it hurts your eyes. I love the way it looks before a storm when all the dark blues are stacked on top of each other and are shaped into perfect puffs, just less happy, and it looks like the sky's about to fall down because it's so heavy. I love it when it cries. I love it when it looks like a painting, with whites all smeared over the canvas and random brush strokes divinely placed here and there. Oh, man. It's beautiful.

But it just got even better when I bought the book "Indescribable" by Louie Giglio and Matt Redman, which has a lot of amazing pictures of our solar system, of nebulas and stars and other things of astronomy, and it blew my mind.

There were pictures where the solar system was rainbow, not even just blue.

"Hands that flung stars into space, to cruel nails surrendered."

And then there was one comparison of the sun to another star in the solar system, and you couldn't even see the sun on the page compared to the HUGENESS of that other star. It kinda made my head explode, because nothing like that could ever fit in my head. How humbling it is. And what an amazing thing to think that the God who is BIGGER than all of this still loves little old me.

Anyways, the book is breathtaking. My friends and I gasped at every page we turned, tracing the colors of paper, as if we could touch a bit of that magical pixie dust and make it a part of our soul. It's funny though, that God kindof already did put something magical into our souls- the holy spirit- am I right?

Anyways, I need to stop writing nonsense and start reading sense. Happy new year, oh my word!

God, God, God, oh, oh, oh.

2012-01-07T21:46:00.000-08:00

I don't even know where to begin. This post is going to take forever to finish and forever for you to read, probably. I'm sitting on my bed eating lucky charms and I can't stop because I can't bring myself to really start typing, since I don't know where to start. I'll try to make it as concise as possible...

This past week has been exhausting in so many ways yet so, well, beautiful, for lack of a better word. First a winter retreat with my church over the weekend, then right after that an international Christian conference with 45,000 people. Crazy things.

Where do I begin?! Where do I begin, except to say that God is so, so, SO good and so real?! It hit me the other day that it's amazing in itself that I'm saved from my sins and that I won't spend eternity in hell, but to think that that He's not just like "hey guys i'm really godly because i'm, well, god, so sucks to be you, but i'll spare a few and let you guys scoot your way into heaven just to prove how great I am," even though we'd still be praising Him even if He WAS like that. But no, He doesn't need to prove to anyone how great He is, but the greatest thing is that above all these things about how great and glorious He is, He LOVES us too! He loves us so much that He actually listens and answers our prayers, He loves us so much that He blesses us with every spiritual blessing (wow ephesians 1:3!), and He certainly had a field day spoiling His children with a vast ceiling of blue skies and and a blanket of a million bajillion stars. Not to mention that we can find JOY in Him! Just, wow. Wow. I just finished my lucky charms.

So firstly, winter retreat. I got off the bus with this excitement I couldn't contain, and so it spilled on over to my face and actions to the point of insanity; I just loved the thought of being in the same place as last year during break, and being able to retrace the steps I had taken in 8th grade during my first winter retreat, when I had fallen in love with the people of ACCCN.

And it was something of nostalgia and amazement, to realize how far I've grown from those old middle school days. Because here I am, a counselor for wonderful junior girls. I never, ever thought I'd reach this point. I thought Joyce would be my counselor forever and ever and ever, and no one would grow old, and facebook layouts would never change. And yet, there I was. Older.

I never realized how scary being a counselor was. Silences just get all the more awkward and longer. Questions seem harder to answer, and answers begin to sound more and more like gibberish. I felt so inadequate to be co-leading such mature girls.

But God never lets me forget that inadequacy is when He uses me best, because those are the times when I can do nothing but surrender. Hard lesson #6283. Seriously though, it was weird being at a retreat and trying to adjust to the fact that I wasn't there for myself, or for my own personal growth or enjoyment, but I was here for the youth (which I was not really part of anymore..!) How time flies. And how you really do grow in experience and maturity with age... you wouldn't think that there's that much of a difference when you're only a year or two apart, but man, you'd be surprised at how much can happen within those few short years!

And all these crazy things happened during the weekend. I won't go into exhausting details because I'm sure a lot of my readers already know, but if not, just know that God worked in crazy ways, through the speaker and the messages and the counselors and the team games and the prayer walk and finally, the sharing time, in which our youth (including the young ones!) just flooded the microphone in tears, pouring out confessions that had never been voiced before, laying out their exposed and rotting hearts for all to see. It was beautiful, really, to see the Holy Spirit convicting them like so, but it was heartbreaking, and everybody was crying and praying and hugging someone or the other, and I personally did not know what to do with myself. Such seemingly contradicting emotions- the pain and weight of all our sins but the overwhelming and redeeming joy upon realizing the grace of God's love, through Christ. Oh, oh, what beauty. Ask me if you want to know more.

But I must talk about Passion now. Wow, talk about being exhausted. I was already tired from the retreat, so to have to spend four straight days in the company of 45,000 overly enthusiastic college students was quite something. For those that don't know- Passion is this huge international Christian conference, and this year, there was 45,000 of us, all in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia, worshiping for four days straight. And it was incredible, being in the midst of SO many people, ALL shouting out to this great and magnificent God.

This was only a half... This was also when we were sitting at the very top, and it was almost scary to look down and see how high up we were.

But the fact that there were so many people also meant that you would always bump into them on the Marta and in random restaurants in Atlanta, and there were so many instances when we'd just break out in song, making the long lines so much easier to wait in and causing the impatience to just dwindle down. Like once, we were in the Marta, all squished together with no space to breathe, and then we just broke out in a loud choir of "Lean on me." Such an appropriate song for the time, and everyone's spirits just lifted. Or when we were trying to get out of the Dome and it was taking an abnormally long time, and so we just started yelling worship songs, clapping our hands and swaying back and forth, slowly wobbling forward. Oh, it was great. Great.

And there were some awesome revelations that God brought me this week.
One was how big He was. This happened on the first night, and it was a really silly and dumb question that popped into my mind while I was sitting on the floor and trying to take in the mere sight of 45,000 people, and I thought to myself, hm, I wonder if the sun can fit in this dome? And it actually took me a while before I realized that no, of course the sun can't fit in the dome, the sun is bigger than EARTH! And then I felt a bit stupid, but then I realized that God was BIGGER than that, and THEN I realized that the Sun is just an invisible, barely distinguishable dot in comparison to the entire solar system, and then it occurred to me that God is bigger still. It just kindof blew my mind apart when I realized that. And to think that I could ever think that my sin was too much for God to handle? Wow, if God is bigger than the solar system, then of course He's bigger than my sin!

Goodness! And another awesome thing that happened was during John Piper's message on the last night, when he was talking about how the sins in our heart seem big if our hearts are small, but the thing is, God makes our hearts bigger and bigger so that all our sins and struggles just get smaller and smaller in comparison to how huge God is. And I realized that it was a lie from Satan all along, to believe that I'd have to struggle and wrestle and fight with my sin until I die to the point that I'd never really be satisfied with God, because my flesh would always be in the way. But what a lie! God is big enough to make me satisfied in only Him! Not to mention that because of that, because I thought I'd never really be able to be satisfied in Him because of my own flesh, I've always had a hard time saying that I loved Him. But after Piper went on and on and on about Jesus's supremacy and painted all these beautiful illustrations and analogies about how the knowledge of Christ makes the Library of Congress look like a matchbox and quantum physics look like a first grade reading book (oh gosh, when the audio comes out, I'm going to listen to it again and again, and see if I can post it here), I realized that I could have no other response BUT love. It was only natural that I love such an amazing God, who loved me first. Man. I was just sitting there in the midst of 45,000 people, letting my silent tears react. Everyone else was too.

And finally, the one theme that really strung itself through the week was surrendering. "We raise our white flag, we surrender all to you. All to you." And we sung that, over and over and over again, along with being unashamed of the cross, and following Him (no turning back). What hard lines to sing. I had this dialogue in my head, where God was asking me all these things- If I called you to go to China and live in the persecuted church, would you do it? If I told you to go to Africa and live with the orphans, would you do it? If I told you to go to India and live with the trafficked, would you do it? And it wasn't just that either, it was if I told you to go witness to your co-workers in corporate America, would you do it? And my heart just exploded with rebellion. No, no, no. No. But after hearing Piper's message and realizing that I LOVE GOD, the holy spirit really began to work on changing those no's into yes's. Because the point isn't really that I'll one day go live in a foreign country with no food or shelter. It's to follow Jesus, wherever he leads me. And I love what Piper said about being "freed"- it's getting to the point where you're so in love with Christ that you'll do exactly what YOU want to do, and that just goes right along with the will of God. Oh, to know that it's possible to reach that point gives me so much encouragement. I'm so excited.

And something for a last wow- 45,000 poor college students raised 3 million dollars for the 27 million people in slavery (more than there's ever been in history). Lots of big numbers. It's like God really doesn't want us to forget how big He is.

And, well, that about sums it up. It actually wasn't that long of a post (just a bit delayed), mainly because I just didn't want to give too many exhaustive details about this and that, because I know a lot of you already know, or were actually there. But I'll say one last thing though, and that's that while I've been back at UGA these past two days, I've seen so many people wearing their passion bands (including the three other people in my speech comm class), and it's such a wonderful thing to bond over right from the beginning. It's wonderful.

holy in His sight

2011-12-28T00:44:00.000-08:00

When I first heard from the pastor at my college fellowship that I was holy in God's eyes, that I was blameless and free from accusation and basically on the SAME LEVEL as Jesus Christ in God's eyes, I was floored, melting in my seat with sheer unbelief and overwhelmed at such undeserving grace. What? How is it possible that through Jesus's death, I could be on the same level as Him? There's no way! But it was beautiful, hearing those much needed words.

And now, when I read through Colossians and actually saw it, written in hard text right on the pages underneath my nose, I squealed a little bit, with sheer joy. It's true! It's true!

This, friends, is something to rejoice in.

/note on design- first time trying to make one of these cool typography things! It's not the best at all, but it's the first of many more to come. It's definitely a fantastic and easy way to memorize verses, so I'll keep doing it. Makes great practice for font-finding too. Not sure why there's that red stroke around the font, definitely wasn't there in Photoshop. Oh, that's the other thing. Finally have moved out of inDesign, where I was used to doing all my high school newspaper stuff, and into Photoshop. Makes for better quality.

music obsessions: Charlene Kaye

2011-12-27T15:23:00.000-08:00

Oh boy oh boy oh boy. I haven't had a music obsession in a very long time. I've been searching for new music, too (which I've found plenty of), being in hipster-music town Athens, but nothing great enough to consider an obsession. Lots of new favorites, but no obsessions. Pause for definition-

Music obsession: When I find a song I like because of not only the tune and lyrics, but also because I'm drawn to the voice itself or something awfully unique in the music, and then this will cause me to look into that artist/band and listen to all the songs and albums and lyrics and videos and biography, and after having tirelessly looked through all of these things, I still like the artist, and will then place myself in the category of "loyal fan." This is a music obsession. And, it usually happens when the artist is able to make songs like poems, and add meaning to even the rhythms and instruments used and notes.

I've had very few of these, Regina Spektor being one of them. I've had many close calls, but usually it just happens that that one song I listened to was good, and maybe one more, but all the rest just don't vibe well with my tastes, which is always disappointing. Believe it or not, that actually happened when I bought Clara C's CD, but of course, she grew on me, and I can't hate anything she does now. Either that, or I'll get sick of listening to the person for too long, just because it all begins sounding the same. It's pretty rare for me to go out of my way to listen to an artist's other work, and even rarer for me to look into albums. I should probably get into that habit, though.

Okay, but here she is. Charlene Kaye. If you're familiar with Starkid, maker of "A Very Potter Musical" on youtube, she's in that. She's also buddies with Darren Criss, Warbler star on Glee, and has a few songs featuring him. Currently, she's released one album called "Things I Will Need in the Past," an EP with her band, and a single with Darren Criss. She is so utterly unique. And her lyrics are captivating and honest and poetic; that's probably what made me enjoy every single song to the fullest. But her style is an amazing mesh of jazz, folk, and rock (to make indie, I suppose), and her striking voice just fits in perfectly with it all; to be honest, she could probably just release a CD with just her voice and no instrumentals, and I'd still love it to pieces. But she could never do that, she's amazing with instrumentals.

This one is her most recent and her most popular one- probably because Darren Criss is featured, which is great; their voices mesh so well together. This is also one of her more upbeat, poppy, and happier ones.

"Dress and Tie"

The next two are songs that have beautiful music videos that her sister made (talented family?!).

"Magnolia Wine"

"Human" - this one is eerily relatable, making humans into gods, and the video is seriously breathtaking.

Other favorites are "Strike a Chord" and "Different Colored Eyes," which has an awesome Norah Jones vibe. Oh, I love it. Find more (and listen more!) at her website- http://charlenekaye.com and become a self-proclaimed loyal fan with me! She's releasing another album sometime around March of 2012!

family (plus six more) vacation gone good

2011-12-26T13:44:00.000-08:00

I found myself in North Carolina once again last weekend at Sugar Mountain, 2 hours away from Lake Junaluska. This time, though, instead of it just being me and two other friends, it was me, my parents and brother, and five or six other families, all stuffed into two houses for Christmas weekend. But there were two unfortunate things of this trip that I noticed even before we had stepped into the mini-van to embark on our 5-hour-long road trip. One, everyone on this trip was either my parent's age or in elementary/middle school, with my brother at 9th grade being the second oldest after me. So, hats off to awkward age groups- too young to drink alcohol and play cards with the adults and too old to really relate to the gossip and news of the young ones. Makes me wonder where on earth all the neighborhood friends of my age disappeared to. And two, the predicted weather for the weekend was 50 degrees- not the most opportune ski weather, and not even close to being cold enough for real snow. So at this point, the trip was looking pretty grim; my one redeeming comfort was that I could catch up on reading over the weekend.

Yet somehow, it ended up being a fantastic trip, and my age happened to be perfect, and skiing somehow managed to be the best fun skiing that I've had in a while. God is so good.

The skiing was perfect because, with the dreadfully high skiing temperature, hardly anybody was there. Which meant we could make continuous rounds, from ski lift to slopes to ski lift to slopes without having to wait in any lines or constantly maneuver around little children just asking to be hit. Of course, the snow was extremely muddy at places, and the little machines at the bottom of the hill were spewing out water instead of manmade snow, but nonetheless the snow was ski-able and made great practice for falling. Which also made great opportunities for analogies of life to be made, like how you just have to keep on getting up whenever you fall, or else you'll probably die alone in the cold. But I'll spare you the cheese. And my age was perfect because I didn't feel obligated to ride the lift with someone my age, and so I just rode with my dad, and we got to sing Christmas songs together as we went higher and higher, and we got to watch all our family friends ski down and laugh at them from above, pointing at the adults tripping over themselves and marveling at how good the kids were. So it was a swell time.

The sad amount of snow at the bottom. PS- the person on the lift in front is an old high school friend I happened to bump into, who I hadn't seen in almost four years! Crazy!

It got better at the higher slopes though. Scarier, too.

And I played lots of Scrabble, and lots of Monopoly, and lots of cards, and I watched half of Indiana Jones for the first time and all of Tarzan for the first time. But the best parts of the weekend were definitely the hours spent with the entire family. We had gone to a Chinese restaurant on Christmas night, and while waiting an hour or so for the food, many crazy stories were told and ridiculous games were played. One of the stories, though, was why my dad decided to go Arizona of all states when immigrating from China to America. Get this- he was trying to choose between Arizona State and the University of Michigan, but the registration fee for Arizona happened to be ten dollars cheaper, and so he picked that route. My dad was ten dollars away from moving to Michigan, and I was ten dollars away from growing up in the North! It blew my mind! How drastically different would my life have turned out if my dad had decided to move over there? For one, I definitely wouldn't have gone to UGA. I wouldn't have any of the friends I have today. I probably wouldn't have grown up Christian. But God knows best and is so, so sovereign, and He knew that ten dollars was all that it'd take for my dad to move to Arizona and meet Christianity, which had advised him not to abort an accident baby... me. It's little things like that that make the biggest difference, really. I might not have even been born had he moved to Michigan! Oye.

I'm in love with it all. Everything just fits so perfectly together, and I'm so thankful for that.

Approaching Christmas

2011-12-22T23:30:00.000-08:00

Christmas is so soon! I'm awful at wrapping, but this somehow worked out in the picture.

And to those who didn't get a present:

Much love to the small readership I have!

why calvin and hobbes has become a recent obsession

2011-12-21T09:04:00.000-08:00

Being home is weird. But being at college is weird, too. I can never wrap my head around this concept of time. I probably waste hours away just sitting, being in shock about where I actually am, about how I'm actually eighteen now and how I don't have to sit in a dreary windowless classroom from 8-4 anymore and how I can drive to the grocery store, all by myself. And how there are so, so many people I used to be best friends with but who I never talk to anymore. I can never get over it, all this change that just drops on me within the span of a few months. Makes me dizzy.

But to be honest, I've never had a great understanding of the concept of time. I'm always late (except to work- don't worry, future employers). Alarms have no impact on my life. I think Mondays are Fridays and Wednesdays are Tuesdays. I never feel a sense of urgency. I hardly ever remember things as a chronological timeline, but instead I just see it as a huge conglomeration of random memories that I'm often not sure even actually happened, just because it was so long ago and so... foreign to the life I live today. How does that happen, though? How does a redhead curly-haired friend whose house you used to visit everyday become a mature stranger woman within a few years? When did picking up ladybugs and caterpillars become gross and inappropriate? Why isn't it cool for eighteen-year-olds to throw food at each other in the dining hall?

"It's called growing up" is the answer that everyone responds with. And it's a great response, and the right response, but it doesn't change the fact that it's uncomfortable and strange. I don't even have a proper conclusion to all this growing-up talk, except that it's happening to me, and real fast too. And I can't stop it.

But at the same time, despite all these completely torn feelings inside of me, I can't help but to love it. Because with growth in years comes growth in God, and that just multiplies into joy. Not to mention I love that I'm past that awful awkward acne-ridden age of self-consciousness and self-pity. It feels good to feel comfortable in my own skin. Why we all go through that awkward stage in the first place, I have no idea. It probably has to do with the stinging yearning to just belong, to feel accepted by all the cool kids who drank at Starbucks and wore Abercrombie. But now, it just doesn't matter. We've found what matters, and that's what makes us more mature than our 12-year-old selves. God, first and foremost, then family and those few friends who stuck it out with you.

So I should probably stop dwelling so much on the past. It's great to reminisce and all, but maybe I should just embrace my newfound maturity and confidence. It's not much, but it's an improvement.

Yes, that last comic was unbearably sad. That was the last Calvin and Hobbes strip in 1995. But it kindof feels like where I'm going toward- growing out of fantasies and into reality, dropping play and picking up real work. Sad, but it's the progression of life, isn't it? But at the same time, it just gets more and more beautiful. So I can't complain. It's just, like I've said, strange.

Some other comic artists decided to make a few strips about a grown-up version of Calvin and his daughter Bacon. I'm not sure if this will be big enough-

It's intriguing and incredibly bittersweet to see a grown-up version of Calvin, who has always been a perpetual Kindergartener in my head. But I guess I was wrong. Even Calvin grows up.

So cheers to inevitability. But also to growth, development, and maturity.

Christ the head

2011-12-21T00:04:00.000-08:00

I was reading through Ephesians, and this verse just hit me:

After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church- for we are members of his body.

Ephesians 5:29-30

It feels like such a random verse to strike me, but it did. It did. I always get so blown away whenever I read verses about how much God loves me, because quite honestly, I often have a hard time believing that He could ever love someone like me. I, who'll even turn being ugly into a competition- "Who can be the ugliest, the most confessing of sins, the most honest, the most humble?" And it's... disgusting.

But to know that Christ, who is called the "head" in verse 23, cares for his body, who is us... the shocking thing of it isn't that the head feeds and cares for the body- that's common sense and, well, common. Paul says it- "no one ever hated his own body," and it's true for the most part. We want to take care of ourselves and our bodies. But to make these analogies and say that CHRIST is now the head and the church is now the body?! That is shocking. He'll feed and care for me just as the head will naturally feed and care for his own body.

But you know what, I'll take it. "Cool." Running away isn't even an option.

Cool.

Gone with the Wind

2011-12-20T23:49:00.000-08:00

Oh, what a beautiful film. I have to spew out all my thoughts while everything's still fresh.

What struck me the most was how attached I had grown to Scarlett by the end of the movie. During the entire first half, and basically the second half of the movie, I hated the guts of her (as I'm sure everyone else did), with all her playing with men's hearts for money and marrying boys she didn't love and complaining about death and war. And I kept on wanting to empathize with her, wanting to find something about her that would just win my heart, because every movie is better when you can love the protagonist and root for her. Otherwise, it all feels quite pointless, to watch a movie with characters you hate. It also probably has to do with my trying desperately to push away my own similar traits of greed and selfishness by hoping to live vicariously through the more perfect persona of a cinematic character, and that's quite hopeless if that character is practically the embodiment of greed and selfishness. All that aside though, I found myself crying out at the end of the movie about how tragic of a character Scarlett was and how I just wanted her and Rhett to be happy and together for goodness sake. And when Rhett said to her, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," my heart dropped and I cried "NOOO" and then I had to pause the movie for a second and say, "Well, I finally know where that line comes from." It's a bit of a strange sensation to finally find the source of a much-said quote without having known that it was even from a movie...

But alas. I'm still trying to pinpoint what, exactly, makes this movie so great, what makes it a classic, and why I'm so ridiculously drawn to it. The main character was a witch, the movie was unbelievably racist regarding slavery, and women were very much so objectified. Maybe it's just the honesty of it. Finally, the good and ethical and courageous one isn't the one under the spotlight, but rather, it's the dirty swindler, the shameless flirt with a ruined reputation, who gets the attention. And the goody-two-shoes mask that I wear hates the idea of that, but the human in me loves it. And what makes her three-dimensional amidst all this is that she still has a conscience, broken-hearted in tears upon realizing what she had done to Frank, to Sue Ellen, to Melanie, but trying desperately to hide it with a cold facade. She was so human, but without all that reputation and respect we try to powder our faces with. Then sprinkle in some war and famine, and it's a great movie. (side note: One of my favorite scenes was when she was walking through that sea of dead body after dead body... wow, gave me some serious chills).

It's magical though, really. It's not a good movie because of certain technicalities or directing tricks or nonstop witty dialogue. It's a good movie because it's a good movie. Which I suppose is what makes it a classic, too. I suggest you watch it if you haven't; the four hours go by so quickly.

lake junaluska: beauty located three hours away

2011-12-19T23:30:00.000-08:00

Travel blog post no. 1

Location: Lake Junaluska, NC

Dates: December 14-17

(note: this post looks long, but that's only because of all the pictures I tried to squeeze in)

So one of the friends I've made during my first semester of college owns a lakehouse up in Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, and he invited a few of us to drive up there and spend a few nights with him before break. And, it was beautiful.

The 2-hour car ride was beautiful.

You can already see the mountains peeking in from the horizon. By the time we got there, the sun was setting, so we only got to take a cursory glance of the lake, but that in itself was already breathtaking.

And everything was really festive,

and just happy-feeling in general. The first night, we ate at perhaps the only steakhouse in Waynseville, NC, a place called Sagebrush with the hugest burgers I've ever seen. Then we spent the night in this cozy cabin

doing wonderfully cliche Christmasy things, listening to Christmas music and drinking hot chocolate next to a cackling fire; it felt surreal. In fact, it always feels surreal whenever I'm doing things and feeling emotions that seem to be coming straight out of a movie. But then I forget that all those scenes in those movies and TV shows were inspired by, get this- real life. Real, actual life. And that practically every single thing I do could very easily be exaggerated, glamorized, and powdered up a bit to become this amazing Christmas story or horror film or romantic comedy, or all of the above, and that instead of wishing my life were more like Anne Hathaway's princess diaries story, I should just sit and enjoy my own beautiful life unfolding on the screen. It's like the whole the-grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side thing, when in fact, it's not.

After a night of bonding with one of the girls through singing in chipmunk voices, talking in a made-up language, reading through a kittens book, and telling each other bedtime stories about unicorns and candy canes, we woke up in the morning and drove to Blue Ridge Mountains for an amazingly scenic drive.

It was a bit overcast, but still gorgeous. And once again, surreal, especially to be sitting at the top of a cliff, looking across tiny patches of villages and knowing that many, many lives are unfolding underneath your eyes at that very moment. Insignificance is an understatement of a description to label the emotion, the feeling I felt when trying to absorb this creation. How, God, was it possible for you to have lifted up the ground with nothing but a mere command from your lips? How, God, did you find so many hues of blue to paint on your canvas of a world? And why, God, why, would you bother to listen to my crying voice amidst all these other voices, and how, God, how, can you call me beautiful and love me when you've already created such a high standard of beauty with your absolutely awe-inspiring, majestic creations?

The three of us just sat in quiet awe.

Then got back in the car and listened to the CD crying out about how He alone is God.

A very cool symbolic thing-

That white line in the top right corner- that's a river. And it looked so, so steep from across the valley, so we decided to drive over and take a look at this waterfall-like thing. And this was how it looked like from the bottom-

You would've never suspected this stream to have been part of such a huge waterfall. How symbolic and analogous is that to our lives?! Reminds me of that song, "Better than I," from Joseph the King of Dreams.

I saw one cloud, and thought it was the sky
I saw a bird and thought that I could follow.
But it was you who taught them to fly.

But He knows better than us, and He has a plan, and we can only see a tiny, tiny portion of any of it. But He has a plan. Like the bottom of this river. Then we drove out to what is apparently the most photographed view-

which is apparently this-

which, granted, is beautiful still. As are we.

Then we made our way to small-town Waynseville, home of adorable and cute trinket shops and cupcake cafes and toy stores...

So naturally, as college kids, we put bunny hats on stuffed dogs and monkey hats on humans,

gorged ourselves with barrels and barrels of candy (located at General Mast Store, Waynesville, NC),

and officially approved hospital messages.

Then we drove back to the lake to find this view after a cloudy and overcast day.

And we explored this house a bit, which also belonged to the family.

It felt ancient. It is ancient, with pictures of his grandmother's grandmother pasted on the wall, and brown spines holding yellow pages lining the bookshelves. When I walked in that house, I could breathe the history of that family, which sounds a bit creepy, but it's so many times true, especially because the walls lining the staircase were absolutely covered with pictures and pictures of his family, the whole family tree plastered on the peeling wall in candids of babies in diapers and stiff poses of awkward shoulder touching. It overwhelmed me with a sad reminder of how little I know about my own roots, of where I come from and where my parents' parents' parents come from. It's a bit disappointing, really. Which is why I've decided that I'm going to push the importance of family on my children so much, and capture every moment of them on printed photographs and not just on some virtual sharing site, so that they can show their children who'll show their children, and eventually, eventually, we'll own some house like this with pictures of all of us plastered on the wall.

Then we strolled on back to our house, took a nap, then played all the board games that they had in the house. It was a great night. And the next day, we woke up later than the first, but still eager for new adventures. We visited the World Methodist Museum, which is just on Lake Junaluska, and learned all you'd ever want to learn about John Wesley and his travels and quotes and churches, and it was shocking, for me at least, to reflect on how six months ago I had never even known that this guy existed or that John Calvin existed. I personally am not Methodist, nor do I conform to all the Wesleyan beliefs, and I'd consider myself more Calvinist than Armenian, but after walking through the museum, I realized how similar, or identical even, our awe and love and faith and NEED of God is, and that despite our theological differences, we're still brothers and sisters united in Christ. And you know, I forget that sometimes. I forget that we're all on this earth fighting the same good fight, serving the same Lord, living to glorify Him. Some great Wesley quotes:

“In using all means, seek God alone. In and through every outward thing, look only to the power of His Spirit, and the merits of His Son. Beware you do not get stuck in the work itself; if you do, it is all lost labor. Nothing short of God can satisfy your soul. Therefore, fix on Him in all, through all, and above all."

“Vice does not lose its character by becoming fashionable.”

Those words just ring of truth in my ears. That in all, it is God, and through all, it is God, and above all, it is God. And those words- that sin doesn't lose character by becoming fashionable- how true and ugly and disgusting that is, and how deceitful sin is! Gets me every time. Every single time I think I'm doing better- I'm not. I just realize more and more how precious God's grace is. Then we ate at a delicious southern-cooking restaurant, in which they served so much more than what the money was worth. It's called Granny's Chicken.

And we were already tired out by this point, so we headed back to the house again. Listened to some sermons and talked our hearts out about life and theology. Baked cookies and made blanket forts and worked on a jigsaw puzzle and watched a movie. The next morning, we awoke to this brilliant, brilliant view- perhaps the best weather of all three days. I wonder if liking blue sky and sun is inherent. It probably is- our natural inclination to light.

Imagine waking up to this every day, in all different seasons... wow. I don't know what it is that makes a sight of water and mountains and sky so breathtaking. Perhaps because I don't get to see this on a regular basis? But the people who live here year-round- I'm sure they get blown away by the sight on a regular basis too. Maybe it's just the sheer knowledge of knowing how small you are in comparison to creation. It's humbling. Pfft, humans.

So, we fed ducks and geese.

Well, she ran away from them mostly.

I mean, they're vicious.

But they loved us and we secretly loved them,

and it was a joyous way to end the trip. It was just what I needed- to get away from all that college life for a bit and just sit in the presence of mountains and lake. And sit in the presence of God. Not to mention there's something absolutely beautiful of coming all the way up here and talking about God when that wasn't even the purpose of the trip, when it wasn't meant to be some retreat or anything. He's just such a huge part of our lives that it was natural to talk about Him. And I love that.

Well, I suppose I'll end this first travel post on that note. It felt like such a long post, but I really didn't know what to do with all those pictures (oh, there's still more), especially since I don't have a facebook anymore. But that's a good thing.

AIESEC holiday cards

2011-12-17T18:35:00.000-08:00

I'm a bit behind on my queue for blog posts; I've been meaning to post on a more consistent basis just to make blogging into a more regular habit, but I haven't been doing too good with that. But that's alright. Expect a post soon about my trip to Lake Junaluska, NC!

I haven't talked about AIESEC yet. It's basically this global organization that I've been fortunate enough to be a part of this year, and it's based in over 110 countries and known as the largest student-run, not-for-profit organization in the world. Its purpose has a lot to do with leadership development and breaking cultural barriers, but it mainly just facilitates internships for college students and recent graduates in countries abroad- for affordable prices and for a great experience. It's pretty swell. And if you're in college, you should look into joining your chapter or starting a new one.

So our team at UGA (and any college) basically works to
1. Send students abroad
and
2. Sign contracts with local businesses to bring international students into the States for a few months

You can imagine how much experience this seriously builds, since it's all student-run. And I was fortunate enough, again, to gain a position as VP Communications, which is basically the advertising/information technology/brand development branch of the organization. My term doesn't begin until next January, when I get to build a team from scratch, but as a pre-management sort of project, I got to design holiday cards to send to all our business contacts. And for the first time, I managed to figure out how to use that blasted "pen" tool on Adobe products that confused the living daylights out of me when I first tried to use it.

SNOWFLAKE. You should've seen my first draft of that snowflake. It looked like... a circle.

Inspired by bokeh Christmas lights!

Simple option.

And, the more global holiday card. The shapes of the continents are a bit off, but I mean, tectonic plates are still moving, aren't they?

What's your favorite? Better yet, any criticism? If I'm right, our president chose the first one, unless she changed her mind last minute. I haven't been able to see the final product yet on the actual paper, but this is pretty exciting.

can't be boxed in

2011-12-10T21:48:00.001-08:00

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

I love that. I love that I can't fully comprehend my Lord. It's comforting.

it's a wonderful life

2011-12-08T14:00:00.000-08:00

When I had my Chinese final exam this morning: 8:00 am
When I woke up: 10:00 am

Oh yes, I yelled when I looked at my clock. Ran straight to the bus stop, still in glasses and PJs, flipped hurriedly through my Chinese book hoping some information would soak in, did some sloppy mental calculations of what grade I could still get if I didn't take my final, hoped aimlessly that the teacher would still be in the room, even though she had said that everyone should be done with the final by 9 am, tops...

It was a miracle. There was one lone boy still sitting in the examination room- the boy who was always 6 chapters ahead the lesson plan, who had a million of his own chinese textbooks that he read from, who knew the synonym for every word stated in class, who answered every question, asked every question, and there he was, still taking the test. And there my teacher sat, staring at him in frustration, waiting anxiously for him to finish.

"Can I still take the exam?" I whispered, completely out of breath.

She raised an eyebrow. "Sure," she sighed.

WHOASODFAS;FDLJAW;LEYAYYYADS;FIEC;AWAHHHH!!!

I finished that thing and left the room, dazed at what just happened. Still am a bit out of breath.

I was going to write a post about It's a Wonderful Life, since I watched it the other night and was blown away by how heartwarming and happy-feeling it was, but I feel like, like the guy in the movie, I just experienced the euphoria of something that went wonderfully right but could've gone horribly wrong. On a much, much lesser and insignificant scale, of course, but I really couldn't stop saying "thank you" with every step I took out of that classroom. And what's even better is that the dining had fresh strawberries for the first time, and the orange juice was perfect, and the sky was blue.

Oh, it was such a wonderful movie though. I want to watch it again and again and again, and I want to memorize all the lines and sing all the songs and think about all the great things in my life and all the people who have either passively or intentionally touched my life. It reminds me a bit of The Five People You Meet in Heaven- of all the unexpected people you don't remember but who you've somehow made a gigantic impact on. I want to just sit and map out a timeline of my life, pinpointing when I met this person and what I said and how I'm different because of it. But that's pretty impossible, so I suppose I'll just start with right now and keep this in the back of my mind from now on.

So thank you, overachiever Chinese classmate. Thank you, whoever thought to bring strawberries to the dining hall. Thank you, creator of blogger. Thank you, Jesus!!

On a side note, I always get very impressed when I hear about women being able to raise beautiful children and support a husband in all his narrow-mindedness and stubornness and selflessly offer honeymoon money... and Mary in this movie was definitely one of those women. So much respect for a fictional character.

I love Christmas in Athens

2011-12-03T20:02:00.001-08:00

I love Christmas in Athens, and it's not even Christmas yet. It's December third. But it's so MARVELOUS! the Christmas music playing in coffee shops and the lampposts wrapped in red and green and yellow lights and the dorm room doors decked out with stockings. It's marvelous.

And Athens folk sure do know how to throw a Christmas party. How perfectly heartwarming does this sound: singing to Christmas songs, decorating Christmas cookies, drinking hot chocolate, exchanging Christmas presents, and snuggling while watching a Christmas movie. How perfect is that?!

Even if some cookies were morbid,

or poop-shaped,

they were mostly just cute,

and even though the prettily wrapped presents went faster than the ones in small packages and newspaper wrapping, any present was still better than no present,

and to top it all off, Elf always makes the perfect Christmas movie.

(I don't own this)

I didn't remember a thing from Elf the first time I watched it, so it felt like it was the first time when I watched it last night, and I couldn't help but want to be an elf, with no care in the world but spreading Christmas cheer and making toys. I couldn't help but want to not care what anyone thought- enough to wear an elf costume into the Empire State Building and dance in the mailroom and sing in front of an entire store and tear off Santa's beard and eat spaghetti with syrup.

But then again, what's better than singing to Christmas songs, decorating Christmas cookies, drinking hot chocolate, exchanging Christmas presents, and snuggling while watching a Christmas movie, right?

explode in worship

2011-12-03T19:06:00.000-08:00

"You turned my wailing into DANCING;
you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with j o y ,
that my heart may sing to you and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever."
Psalm 30:11-12

But it's not about dancing for the sake of dancing, singing for the sake of show. I thought it was for the longest time, that worship time was all about making myself seem like the best worshipper of them all, but no no no, it's about making God the greatest guy in my life. It's about worshiping Him the way that pleases Him best, not the way that satisfies me most.

[[ HOW TO MAKE WHAT I MADE IN PHOTOSHOP ]]

1. Make a background at this nifty deviantart site: http://muro.deviantart.com (make background black if you want the same effect)
2. Export into photoshop
3. Add text with blend mode "Overlay"
4. Place a picture on top with blend mode as "Soft Light"

Tell me what you think! You don't need an account to comment!

christmas tree bokeh

2011-12-03T10:11:00.001-08:00

Tell me what you think; one personal thing to get excited about this Christmas: using all the lights to get better at bokeh photography!

solving riddles at 2 am

2011-12-02T10:31:00.001-08:00

Recently, I've been spending a good amount of time staying up really late in our dining hall and doing silly unproductive things. Like convincing people that the sillyband around my wrist is an "R" and not a squirrel or fish or bird. Or making eyeholes in newspapers but accidentally making them too big so that they'd be better fitted for noses instead of eyes.

And trying to shave people's beards with knives, and making atrociously frightening faces, and falling off chairs from having laughed too hard. And, of course, solving riddles. Last night, it started with one question. One riddle. It was this: Say there are two doors, and two guards, and one door leads to destruction while the other leads to everything good. One guard however only tells lies and the other only tells truths, and they both know which door leads to which. You can only ask one question to one guard to figure out which door leads to good; what question do you ask? (You can try to solve this riddle- let me know if you do!)

And so while we are all sitting in deep thought over this riddle, watching each other's hair turn gray and wasting many napkins and free mints as we tried to figure it out, we decided that the riddle-asker needed a riddle himself. And thus began the riddle exchanging. We stayed in the dining hall until 2:30 am, asking each other riddles and solving them, our hairs frizzing on end from the unnecessary thinking.

And it was a wonderful time, being a college student while collectively doodling with other college students. We must've looked quite ridiculous, the four of us jotting madly away on napkins and pulling our hairs out and asking questions like "are they naked?" or "were there supernatural kittens in the room?" But it was mostly just wonderful because all these riddles came from some era of childhood, from figuring them out with the sister and the mother in a mini-van on the way to Florida, or with a church group at a lock-in looking for excuses to stay up. It was like being transported back to before college, college, college, and being re-taught how to think about mysterious ways people might've died or why on earth does this man climb stairs on some days and ride elevators on other days or how is this prisoner supposed to know the color of his hat.

Because I'll tell you one thing interesting that one person said. He was trying to solve a riddle but then after an hour or so told us to keep asking him different ones, because his brain was beginning to become wired to think one way since he'd been thinking about that riddle for so, so long, and he needed to push his brain to think in different ways. I love making arbitrary connections to Jesus, so here I go: that's exactly the same way I feel about following this faith. how ridiculous I felt this past week when I was talking to a Sikh and an ambiguously spiritual person at the same table, telling them that yes indeed I do believe that the entire world came from two people and that yes indeed I do believe that Jesus was born out of a virgin and that no I can't fully explain the Trinity and how it works and that yes, yes, yes I DO believe that Jesus really rose from the dead, and they just looked at me with these eyes that said this girl is absolutely whack. And I thought wow, that really is whack. But that's only because this world's brain is so wired to believe that those things are impossible, and it took a serious re-wiring on God's part for me to even believe those things and understand that He's so much bigger than what my tiny pea-sized brain can understand. And it's taking some more re-wiring and more re-wiring for me to begin dropping my worldly priorities and dropping my self obsession and dropping all the things I had picked up in the past eighteen years. And just like how my friend asked us to tell him other riddles, I'm asking God to fill me up with.. Him.

And it is changing everything I've ever thought about humor, food, work, clothes, kittens, babies, marriage, sports, books, movies, writing, travelling, friendships, relationships, and life... it's absolutely consuming me.

how to be ugly

2011-11-30T06:51:00.001-08:00

I'm sitting here in my psychology class, sleep-deprived from (the first) late-night talk with my roommate and running on one cup of coffee that I didn't know how to make, and I'm listening to my professor ramble off characteristic after characteristic after characteristic of a leader. Assertive, charismatic, confident, energetic, good personal life, responsible, can cope with stress, decisive, good communicator, tall, self-sacrificing, etc, etc, etc... and I'm sitting here thinking, no wonder there's a leadership conference going on in America every other second, because it's way too impossible to be a perfect leader! And then my mind started running, first scolding me about how I'm hardly any of these characteristics and who was I fooling and why was I ever so proud to think so highly of myself. And then right after that my mind kept running and running, about what I could do to fix myself and what I could do to fool others into still believing that I am in fact the most perfect leader this earth will ever find and what I could do to make myself taller.

But I'm sick of facades. I'm sick of these masks I pull over my face that try too hard to lace together traits I've never had. I'm sick of spinning threads and dancing on unstable stilts supported by lies, I'm sick of prancing around with a resume plastered on my face- I'm good at this, this, and this, and you should be my friend. But most of all, I'm sick of pretending like I'm godly (although I'm not sure how many people I've actually fooled).

I'll tell you exactly what the truth is.
I'm late to church because I'm busy looking in the mirror and telling myself I'm pretty. I go out of my way to hug and welcome people not because I care, but because I want to seem like more of a friendly and personable girl. I spend hours on facebook looking at my own pictures and comparing them to others' because I want to look like the cuter and better one. I talk to my friends about how awful poverty is and how I'll give up all my money when I grow up, then go to one store or another and spend over a hundred dollars on things to accessorize myself. But then I'll brag to people in a blink of an eye about the money I donated or the money I used to buy some theological book. I steal people's words and ideas and try to make it seem like they were my own. Sometimes I really don't care about theology or Christian music or Christian books. I read people's writing and often the first thing that comes to mind is that I can do better, or I could do the same. I try too hard to beautiful inside. I don't know what it means to be in the presence of God, I don't know what it means to empty myself so that He can fill me up, I don't know what it means to spend hours in quiet devotion, I don't know what it means, no, not in the slightest. I don't.

I am human, and sometimes I try too hard to make it seem like I'm either not human or too human, but never just Jessie human. And I am so sick of it, and all I really want is to be in the presence of God and empty myself out and spend hours in quiet devotion, but goodness gracious I can't do anything when I'm so busy pretending to be someone else, even in front of the God who already knows everything about me! I'm sick of crying like a baby then bragging to people about it, and I'm sick of talking about being broken when I'm in fact not. And I am sick, sick, sick of trying prove myself or trying to fix everything all on my own, when Jesus has already done it all for me, so that I too am seen by God as just as righteous and just as obedient and just as clean as Jesus. And that is all I need to be.

I always thought it was glamorous whenever people became vulnerable like this, which is why I always tried to do it on the surface, but it's not glamorous at all. It's just ugly.

Anyways, I just wanted to share that with everyone (and admit it to myself) before I went any further with this blog, because I don't want this blog to be about making myself seem better anymore, making myself seem wiser or godlier or a better person in general; I'm very, very ugly inside, and I want nothing more than to lay it out on the table underneath florescent lights. All this time, I've been trying to glue this godly mask on my face hoping that it will become my face, when all along God just wanted me to take off that wretched mask and change my face Himself.

how Black Friday stays true to its meaning

2011-11-25T15:38:00.000-08:00

So after sitting through an awkward hour of eating

with my parents' adult friends who know no English, I decided to go Black Friday shopping for the first time in my life. How exactly did the name "Black Friday" come into existence? It has to do with the accounting practices- stores would use red ink to show negative amounts and black ink to show positive amounts. And because Black Friday is the beginning of the holiday season when stores would no longer have losses and start making the year's profits, they named this friday "Black Friday"- for positive profits.

Unfortunately for them and fortunately for me though, helping stores make positive profits was the last thing on my mind; by 4 am, I still had no souvenirs from my Black Friday shopping experience to prove that I had even gone. By 4 am though, I did have two pictures on my iPhone- neither of which were even taken at the Outlet or Northpoint, but instead... Waffle House!

This is as they contemplate things, like how Waffle House is used asan index by the government to evaluate how bad a storm is; it's usually open even through tornadoes and such because they have all sorts of supplies that let them do that, so if your local Waffle House is closed during a storm, then something is seriously wrong, and you should get out of that place. This is also when Anthony exclaimed, "There are too many voices!" And the clever waitress piped back with a "You should get that checked out."

And this is the 25-cent jukebox that we put quarters in to play Taylor Swift and Christmas songs. And so at 3:30 am right before we left, we put in a quarter for it to play Jingle Bell Rock, and we marched out of Waffle House to that song, singing all the cold way to the car.

There's something great and surreal about listening to Christmas songs in the back seat of a car at 6 am (it keeps getting later and later), loopy but absolutely satisfied and content at having spent the entire morning awake and with people you love. There's something great and surreal about being warm in a car but knowing it's freezing and foggy outside, muttering to yourself about how you had helped a friend buy dressy church clothes for the first time and how you couldn't believe that you had friends who cared enough to help you figure out if you needed to buy shoes, even if that meant staring at everyone's feet as they walked by or sitting in the middle of a store for an hour debating all the choices. And in the middle of all this was when my brain made the cheesy connection between Black Friday and real life. This day is the day for making monetary gains, and for me, it was the day for making relationship gains. It was like all the loneliness and seclusion of college life just got balanced out by the sheer company of people who cared about me and people who I cared about, and just like that, I was in the positive range again. The best part though was probably taking off my boots and peeling off my socks when I got home and dropping on my bed, exhausted, and ready for a wonderful night's sleep.

I woke up at 2 in the afternoon the next day and chose linner from the abundance of leftovers I found in the refrigerator:

and decided that there was also something great and surreal about opening your refrigerator and finding it practically overflowing with food. One of the many epic and wonderful things I contemplated today with a friend was how someone should invent an invisible tube that stretched from here to Africa, and we could just drop all our Thanksgiving leftovers in this tube, and off it'd go. I mean, it has to be possible; have you read Time's invention issue? Seriously, people are making lightbulbs into wi-fi and sour milk into clothes, and pictures can be refocused after they're taken and images from your imagination can be tangibly captured... this is a crazy, crazy world we live in. So crazy that people are willing to drive to a mall at 9 pm on Thanksgiving night and stay up until 6 walking in and out of stores they don't care about. Crazy.

fathers who aren't quite as evil as Darth Vader but still equally as awesome

2011-11-24T19:05:00.000-08:00

I feel very strange right now, and I don't quite know how to describe it. It's like this... tingly, victorious, absolutely INVINCIBLE sensation trembling through my fingers and toes... gee whiz, is this the effect that finishing the original Star Wars trilogy has on everyone? Because goodness gracious me I LOVE IT. Yes, yes, and yes, I am proud to say that I have crossed off probably the greatest movie series on my list! I'm thirty years too late, and I completely missed the infinite references and quotes that have been thrown my way my entire life (eg when my third grade friends would lick their hands and shove them in my face saying something about resisting the force, or when my parents came home with plastic light sabers, or when everyone told Luke that they were his father... just kidding I never knew anyone named Luke), and I had to pretend I knew who Chewbacca was when my friend dressed up as him to our Spanish costume party senior year... yes, I've lived a fairly depraved Star-Wars-less life. But today, I have finally entered something like adulthood, initiated into the cult of oversized hoods and plastic weaponry. I'm glad I have a blog to document this.

What I absolutely loved about it all though was the conflicting personality in Darth Vader. It made the villain a lot less one-sidedly evil. And oh, it killed me when he took off his mask so that he could see his son with his own eyes. Even though I gagged a bit when I saw how ugly and wrinkly he was, I couldn't help but to feel strangely in love with him and the cute, or I suppose "manly" would be a better word, father-son connection.

I had one of those parent-sibling moments this week too. My dad had dragged me over to the piano and begged me to accompany him as he played his Chinese flute, and so I obliged. We blew through a book of old Chinese tunes, me sightreading the familiar do-re-mi's and him playing from memory of his childhood. After we had finished the book, he looked at me with a huge grin plastered on his face and said, "Wait! Let me take out the erhu!" And so he took out that Chinese string instrument

and we played through the book again, plus another book of Christmas tunes. And we dramatized every single note- no shame. With the upbeat, bouncy songs, we bounced in our seats and stomped to the rhythm; with the sad, emotional songs, we swayed back and forth like seasick men in a storm, using the full 180 degrees given to us. "Good," my dad would say with a satisfied nod of his head after every finished song.

Later that evening, my mom jokingly told me that it had always been my dad's dream to do that, to play songs with his daughter. And then something dawned on me. Sometimes I look back at my poor life and wonder why on earth I had to sit through so many violin lessons, piano lessons, art lessons, gymnastics lessons, tennis lessons, physics lessons, and, dare I say it, ping pong lessons, and I usually can't really give you a real answer, because I've dropped all of them and do each one maybe once in every two months (excluding physics). But maybe God had me learn piano and violin for the sheer purpose of playing duets with my dad that one night- not to win competitions, not to show off in recitals, not even to play on the sanctuary stage- but to just love on my dad that once. And I'm okay with that. In fact, that's so much more beautiful than anything else I had in mind. Because finally, it's not about me. It's not about how much applause or recognition I can get, or about how good I can make myself feel with my music, but it's about my dad, and me honoring his one wish in a little piano room far far away from any kind of Carnegie Hall. It's a great thing, and Luke knows it too.

the bucket list of a blog

2011-11-22T13:38:00.000-08:00

Despite this being the fifth blog (and that's excluding those wretched middle school xanga days of cow cursors and glittery backgrounds), I promise I'll one day find a permanent place like Holly Golightly and her cat did (pause for applause for the movie reference- I'm training myself to become a movie junkie and quote arbitrary, inconsequential things from them like Abed does). I'll tell you one thing though- in an attempt to be more permanent and stable with myself, I've finally grown up enough to name this blog what it rightly should be named- my name. No more names that try to be creative and fail (craziex3 = combination of "crazy," "jessie," and "<3"); no more names that try to be offishly profound (tellmewonders); no more attempts at jessie wordplay (sayyessietojessie, thejessiepress); no more anonymous artsy, hidden-meaning names! I am Jessie Lian, and that's my name, and this is my blog. I feel like I've just aged.

This blog's bucket list of things to cover? One, movies. I thought I was doing quite well crossing those off my list, but after sitting through a two-hour car ride of being drilled on all the movies I haven't watched yet, I've realized that I still have a long, long, long way to go. Longer than the nine hours it took Frodo to reach Middle Earth (applause x2 for movie reference; I'm actually unreasonably proud of myself for having finally watched the LOTR trilogy). Not to mention that my dad nearly cried when he found out I hadn't watched Godfather, creator of his favorite soundtrack, and my mom yelled "Come ON!" when she discovered I hadn't watched her favorite movie, Star Wars. Even my parents. Two, music. I discover a lot of wonderful, wonderful music, and I always want to share them with people, but I never do. So hurray to an outlet for posting good music. This is also for pure personal documentary purposes. Three, books. A lot of my life is dramatically changed because of books, and yet, I never actually get to sit down and write about it and what it's done to ruin my life... so, yes, book reports. Four, adventures abroad (or nation-wide). I'm thinking of applying for programs that'll get me to France and Kenya over the summer (crossing fingers!), and that will bring many pictures and stories, and I want to document the exact point in time of my life that I begin actually seeing the world! Five, creative outlet for poems, short stories, photography, and design. I like pretending to be ultra-hipster and casually amazing at what they call the arts. I know I'm not. But it's nice to pretend, especially when you have something like a blog on your side. So, if you're wondering where the necessary dosage of Jessie's life comes in- that'd probably and hopefully come through the photography, you follow? Don't worry, I know how to sneakily slip in narcissistic things concerning myself and my daily life. Speaking of my daily life, I'd like to unveil the grand entrance of number six- God! Me being me, I've never quite mentioned Him in anything public. But times have changed, and along with discovering myself as I've aged, I've also slowly discovered Him as He's revealed Himself to me, and it's been... beautiful, for lack of better words. So huzzah for entering an era where I'm no longer afraid of displaying my Christianity, but am rather proud of it. Quite proud.

And of course, there will be tidbits of my life and tidbits of advice. It's a blog.

Cheers!

PS- My fingers are shaking and my heart is beating abnormally fast at the sheer excitement of starting up blogging again (on something other than an informal, nonsensical tumblr). This is going to be good for me. Very good.