a conversation

I stopped by at a gas station as I was going home today after finishing preparations for retreat…  i stepped out of my car, and as i proceeded to perform my gas-putting-in rituals, i noticed some random, relatively large white guy putting in gas at the pump next to me.    i was staring down blankly at my cell phone until he started walking towards me.  i felt so awkward for a moment there. my first reaction was a hostile one.  “what’s he doing?”  “this is supposed to be my time alone”  “dang that man’s got a huge beer belly”  “i wonder if he’s gonna ask me for a favor”

his words came at me in the midst of my stupor…  “ain’t that a bitch how mike passed away… his funerals gonna be even bigger than obama’s inauguration..”

so that’s how my conversation with a random stranger started today.  at first i couldn’t help but to keep looking at my gas meter and get frustrated with how slow the gas was pumping, but in the end it turned out to be a pretty good conversation.

we went from talking about michael jackson’s death, to his songs, to the economy, to cops, to his sharing of how he saw a dude hancuffed and surrounded by 4 cop cars today, to how he almost ended up in jail several years back for making a homemade bomb, to how a bomb accidentally exploded in his hand, and to how he now only has 2 fingers in his right hand to live with.

i dont know.  nothing special really happened but it was such an interesting encounter.  interesting enough for me to blog about it at least. heh.

maybe i was just happy because i was looking for things like this in life and something actually popped up.

as i was driving home afterwards i had this sudden realization. again, nothing special, but a reminder that rang in my head throughout my car ride.

sad news brings people together in ways other things cant.

think funerals.  i always have this weird feeling whenever i go to a funeral…  all these people are so different… they come from living differnet lives, each having a different relationship to the person who passed away, but they come together for a common reason

think about broken, sinful, imperfect people coming together for one purpose.  what do you call that? the church of course

i guess this is where i can bring up the retreat that i’ll be going to tomorrow.

poiema is the greek word for god’s workmanship.

poiema is perfection.  God creating us in his own image.  God specifically and deliberately crafting each and every one of us in his own hands, each of us made in our own unique ways.   like the random guy at the gas station.  he’s fearfully and wonderfully made.   like michael jackson.  fearfully and wonderfully made.

poiema is love.  we are God’s work and we are loved by him in ways we cannot dare to comprehend with our human minds.

poiema is hope.  we are broken, we have our imperfections, we have the things we hate about our lives, we have the daily MESS we have to deal with every day, the same sins that we fall into, we have our discouragements… but in all this we know that all of this somehow makes sense…

when we begin to understand poiema, we learn that God spoke life into us and that God is still revealing to us that his love goes further than our brokenness…  our present troubles and our junk and our mess and our desert times start to make sense.

anyways.  im kind of excited for retreat..  i haven’t been doing anything this summer until this past week where i’ve been prepping for retreat like crazy… i feel like things are finally starting to click and god’s about to shake my life a bit.  i can just feel it.   til next time guys.

this entry sucks

hello!

haven’t written here in a while, but i’m back

it’s not like i’ve been real busy with stuff this summer or anything, but for some reason i haven’t had the urge to write about anything…

just warning you this entrys gonna be one of those random ones and it might be pretty boring

kinda sad actually, sometimes it feels like my mind is dying

- sometimes i’m thinking too much and i hate myself for it

but i hate the opposite even more… living mindlessly is one of my biggest fears

- i’ve been so lazy. i need to step things up a little bit.

- i think all of this has some part to do with my bum ankle which has yet to heal fully…

every time i play basketball it hurts like crap…

i always end up going to shoot around, telling myself that i’ll only shoot freethrows, but i end up running around a little bit and that screws up my ankle because it’s so weak right now

so i decided to stop myself at all from basketball for a little.

i haven’t touched a basketball in a week, intentionally. can you believe that?

- i’ve been getting ready for the jg summer retreat which is this friday-sunday… leading praise with larry again.  good stuff…

i’ll just leave it there…

this post is worthless… just warming up tho… more to come later

post marathon post

today is june 1st… 2009… which means… that it’s already been one year since i ran the marathon in San Diego!

if you want to read any of the pre-marathon posts that I did, you can check them out at runjoerun21.wordpress.com

So many people ask me about the marathon, and seriously… my honest and sincere response that I always give is that I still cannot believe I ran those 26.2 miles… I was such a running noob… but most importantly I think the whole training period and the actual running really taught me valuable lessons that I will never forget…

especially during this past school year, I kept thinking about the 6 months of training I went through prior to running the marathon… I ran 3-5 miles every day, and go out for some long runs on saturdays… my life was pretty much centered around running…

–i remember making sacrifices… i cut down on basketball… I barely played games during the training period… for the first time in my life i started watching what I ate… I remember not doing any strenuous walking during the day, just so I have enough energy to go all out during my runs…

basketball… delicious, unhealthy food… random activities… these were all good, but I had a bigger goal in mind, so to me, my decision was clear cut.  If i want to achieve this goal, I needed to fix my eyes on this goal and chuck some things in this life.

that’s why I decided to memorize this verse.  I remember in every one of my runs… no matter how long or short, I would repeat this in my head a couple of times.  “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everthing that hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.“

I could run as hard as I could, but without making sacrifices, I would have never been able to achieve my goal.

– if you guys didn’t know, my youth pastor was the one who decided to run this marathon first.  I’ve always had the thought of running a marathon in the back of my head, but it didn’t come out until pastor esther convinced me to run it.  I quickly dragged my best friend Isaiah into it, which he obliged without hesitation because he is cool like that… pastor esther got her good friend donna to run it as well, and we were set.  In all honesty, I don’t think any of us would have been able to run this thing without each other….

I could run as hard as i could, I could make all the sacrifices I wanted to, but without company, I would have been long gone…

– I remember the first week of training…  I had never ran more than a mile before ever in my life… and they asked me to run 3 miles on my first day.  I did it. somehow.  but soon and very soon my flat feet took its toll and I was in a LOT of pain… I remember even thinking about ditching the whole idea of a marathon… that’s where the shoes came in, and I was able to complete most of my training… but about a month before the marathon, i hurt my foot again… I couldn’t run without feeling any pain my right foot, and I was so shocked and pissed at the untimeliness of it all…

I could run as hard as I could, I could make all the sacrifices, I could get all of my friends to run with me, but without the hand of god, I wouldn’t have made it past the first two steps…

– crossing the finish line was probably the greatest feeling I had ever felt in my entire life… i remember when i turned the final corner, and i saw the checkered line in the distance, and the huge crowd of people in the bleachers cheering for me and my fellow runners… I couldn’t believe it, but some how, some where in me, i found and managed to muster up the energy to sprint to the finish line… oh man…

FINAL STRETCH

– the sight of the finish line… after all those miles of running, was probably the most beautiful thing I had seen in ages… I mean… that finish line… was my ultimate goal for the six months right?  I wonder what it would be like when we finally see Jesus face to face… after all this world… after all this life… to finally reach the end of the race and just fall at his feet…   that joy of crossing the finish line was unbelievable… but imagine how we’ll feel when we feel the warm embrace of god..

in all this i’ve learned that it’s not about my abilities or how much I can do, but how much god can do in my weaknesses…

I’ve learned that life is about forward motion.  that it is about the ability to withstand the hits, the hardships, and to keep moving forward… forward motion. to be able to fix our eyes on the finish line that we have yet to see… but to trust, in our hearts and in faith that it is there…  to know that in the end everything will be worth it…

the end

worthless…

OBX

I miss the beach…

why? you ask?

mainly because… at the beach, it felt right to be worthless….

sleeping at 7am after watching the sun rise, waking up at 2pm to walk to the beach to just relax… that was life.

now here back at home  i find myself waking up regularly at 3pm with no suns/stars to look forward to

i find myself cycling through the same websites online for hours… facebook-gmail-nba.com-youtube-wordpress

anyone feel me?

random thoughts:

- still need to recap this past year somehow

- dunno why, but i just love watching the nuggets play.  i’m still a kobe fan though.  but i’m a bigger fan of good games if you know what i mean.

- if you take chauncey billups out of the denver nuggets, the rest of the team are a bunch of knuckleheads… chauncey really came in and brought everyone together, and really made everyone else better to say the least… thats the kind of player i want to be… heck, that’s the kind of person I want to be in this world

- my goal in life is to inspire…

- check this out- http://new.mylifeisaverage.com

- if you want to take your brotherhood to a new level, take 2 of your awesome friends to the hot tub at around 2 am, turn all the lights off, sit underneath the stars, and just talk life.

- www.jesusbranded.com

- i’m thinking about buying a telescope… anyone know anything about them?

- moving out of oakton to fairfax this saturday. which i realize now is tomorrow.

i think that’s enough for a brief update.  more to come. as always.  take it easy

sunrises, sunsets, stars

Greetings from Outer Banks!!!

beach week has been awesome so far… the weathers been not too hot, not too cold… it’s defintely been way too cold to go swim in the water for long times but it hasn’t stopped us from having tons of fun…

we’re in this place called Corolla, which is part of like this long vertical strip of land in North Carolina… so i have like a 6 minute walk to the beach to the east, and like an 8 minute walk to the bay to the west…   because of this i’ve been trying to catch as many sunsets and sunrises as possible…

the past two days i’ve stayed up all night to go for a sunrise run… then “nap/sleep” til like 2pm, then hit the beach again and just chill… then hang out for a little to catch the sunset at around 8pm… then hit the hot tub at night with all the lights off and see all the stars…  it’s been quite beautiful actually…

- I don’t think i’ll ever forget that first day that i saw the sunrise here… i think it was my first actual time seeing the sun come over the horizon…  it was just way too beautiful to describe in words… after i ran through all the houses and finally reached the beach, i was just overwhelmed by the beauty of it all…

i was just floored, literally… i was left gasping for air… i was still trying to catch my breath from my run, but it was definitely more than that… i was in complete awe and surrender…

as i saw the sun peek its way over the horizon, i think i almost felt a teardrop… i thought to myself, “how on earth could you say NO to that?”  the only response i could have to that was worship… i actually started singing some worship songs out loud… and of course, since it was early in the morning my voice was froggy and i found myself, trying hard to sound good, as if people were around me and i was trying to impress someone…

then i heard a voice strike in my head…. “really joe? really? who are you trying to impress?  don’t you know who i am? it’s just me and you here…”  and i continued to sing… sing… and sing… with a cracky voice and a surrendered heart, i had one of the most awesome times of worship in recent memory…

OBX sunrise

i also remember trying to take pictures with this camera… only to keep looking at the picture that i had just taken on the camera, then comparing it to the magnificent view that i was being overwhelmed by, and having an intense feeling of disappointment… the pictures really don’t compare… it just can’t capture the beauty.. the glory of it all…

- now on to sunsets…  sunsets have always been my favorite… there’s nothing better than a dinner in the summer, and walking outside just to be able to catch the sunset… the gradient of color starting in the sky with blue, fading in to gold and pink in the horizon… nothing can beat that…

i think probably the most memorable sunset that I have experienced was the one after the marathon i ran last june… seriously, believe me when i say, “east coast sunrises and west coast sunsets…”  if you haven’t seen a sunset at la jolla beach in San Diego, please do so before your life is over… anyways, i remember being SO tired after the marathon, being sort of overwhelmed by the thought that i had just ran 26.2 miles…  and i just sat there with my best friend on the beach… and saw the sun go down… it was sort of like a perfect ending to a story…

this picture does absolutely NO justice

i love the idea of a sunset.  it sounds kinda dumb, but I think of sunrises as “God saying hi” and sunsets as “God saying bye”   but theres more to a sunset than just a goodbye…  the sun goes down with a promise of coming back, and it does so in dramatic fashion…

i don’t think its a coincidence that the sun is most beautiful as it gives itself away…

the setting sun… as it does so, i think it kinda tells us to do the same… that we are most beautiful when we give ourselves away…

- and as i’m writing this i’m sitting outside here under the stars, again captivated by the wonder of the moment..

whenever i look at the stars, I feel so small.  there’s just so much out there that I have yet to experience.  so many things that I haven’t seen.  so much of God’s infinite glory that I have yet to grasp in my finite mind…

and i’m just left craving for MORE… more love, more glory, more jesus please…

and stars teach me as they twinkle down on me… that the stars are always there… it’s just a matter of whether or not we’re looking up…

well I guess i’ll just leave it at that.  the sky is dark blueish now, can hardly see the stars anymore, birds are chirping… which means—got a sunrise to catch in 45 minutes.  kind of excited. once again. til next time.

oh. almost forgot.  P.S. — while i was writing this i’ve been listening to the new Hillsong United “A Cross// The Earth” CD… and I got a very good first impression out of it.  go check it out.

so close

owned

never thought that would happen to me…

but after taking an exam earlier this morning I was walking home and got straight blasted by a car driving on the road…   it was weird cuz I was just standing there as the car was driving by, thinking to myself, “man that car is driving pretty fast, i wonder if i’m gonna get any water splashed at me..”   then i get drilled and i had to try oh so hard to refrain from raising both of my middle fingers at the car

seems like i have an affinity for puddles…

puddles and i go way back…

the first time i was in china there was a a huge rain storm… and the streets somewhat flooded…  and on the way back from the restaurant, i saw this puddle and i decided to jump right over it instead of walking around it like many other smart people did….

… and i slipped and the puddle almost ate me alive and i almost drowned

zhengzhou monster

can’t have been that bad, except in china they put out all the trash on the streets so people can gather them later… not to mention that little kids lay doodoos and pee pees on the streets …

so basically i got swallowed up in chit water if you know what i mean

and everybody was there to witness my failure… screaming for my life…

ANYWAYS….

so even after my epic battles with puddles, i still have 1 more thing left to do this year.

i have my last exam of this year in about…. 5 hours… belieeee dat

and here i am blogging away…

i’m sitting here in a library with john kim and chris jun…   i barely got any studying done…   i have this 100 page study guide, but it’s so worthless because it’s a freaking book and it’s like reading the textbook…

like i’ve said before, I’m at the point where I just want to get things over with, and just go to summer

kind of exhausted, drained

mostly mentally and spiritually

and most of all living for deadlines

i’m kind of excited for beach week… we’re going to outerbanks, in some sort of a private beach area… click here

more than hanging out or having fun, i’m more excited to just relax… gonna take it as some sort of a get away… spend some time reflecting on this past year… like i’ve said before, i need to get some things together ASAP…

anyways… almost there… peace

ankle insurance

so a little over a week ago I had my first ever ankle injury…

nice life

but let me take you back in time for a little bit though.

about a month or two ago I bought my Kobe IVs…

del sol

I was thinking to myself whether the $120 I was about to pay for these shoes was gonna be worth it… I hadn’t paid more than 80 bucks for any basketball shoes… I was thinking about settling for some on-sale jordans for like 70 bucks but I just couldn’t resist…

but these shoes totally fit my bill:

- i LOVE low tops… i’ve worn them ever since the gilbert came out with the gilzeros…
-black/yellow/white colorways are my favorite…
-and i’ve always wanted to wear kobe’s shoes…

I’ve always loved low tops… that extra mobility down in my feet makes me feel a lot quicker…

people always asked me whether or not I’m worried about rolling my ankle, but I’ve always had strong ankles… I’ve rolled it a couple times in the past… but I’ve always been able to walk it off… believe in that milk nah meannn

and how could u resist buying these after watching this:

i remember the first time i played in my kobes I was a completely differnet player

I felt like kobe bryant except in a 5′9″ korean body

haha but honestly though… these shoes are so money… more than anything the grip on the sole is ridiculous…

combine the extra mobility + crazy grip, you feel so much quicker… not to mention these shoes are lighter than the Hyperdunks…  If kobe jumped over an aston martin in his hyperdunks, imagine what he could do in the Kobe IVs… win a championship?? ohp…

but anyways… coming back to reality… life after rolling my ankle has been quite sucky…

but I don’t blame the low tops though… cuz you always see guys in hightops and ankle braces roll their ankles and roll around the gym floor in agony and pain… i think rolling ankles is just a matter of luck and the way you play sports…

think about soccer players… they run around in low tops and step on each otehrs feet like all the time but they rarely roll their ankles…

I went to the doctors to get it checked out but they say it’s like a light sprain, whatever that means…

I guess it could have been a lot worse, but I’m trying to take it slow.

defintely not trying to be that guy who tries to come back from injury and have a bad ankle the rest of his life… (think grant hill… sam choi…)

instead i’ve been kinda taking advantage of the situation and have been focusing on lifting, shooting form, and ball handling…

and also like i’ve written before, I believe god always tries to speak to people through random things like this… definitely feel like god’s trying to slow me down again… take some time and think,..

meanwhile i’ve taken two exams and i have two more to go…  honestly, at this point in the year, and how chitty my semester has been academically, I just wanan get things over with and get to summer…

bad attitude, i know, but i dunno what to do anymore… kinda confused about a lot of things.

more thoughts to come later.

music:

can’t take my eyes off you – lauryn hill
long shot- kelly clarkson (this is kinda good)
knock you down – keri hilson
home – switchfoot

everything together

i went to the second wedding of my life today… while the first one was also quite beautiful, this one took on a bigger meaning and hit me harder because I was actually tight with the person getting married…

i think it’s just so beautiful to see god bring two people together to a place of marriage… their lives start off so separated but somehow, in some way their lives become intertwined and end up oh so wonderfully towards love

and not to forget the people as well.  people. more like family.  coming together in celebration of love… and god’s faithfulness…

it was kind of refreshing to see a lot of old friends again… kind of reminds me of last year when i would be so happy everytime people came back to nova for breaks and stuff…

i’m not like an expert on weddings and stuff but what I got out of today is that a wedding is as much as it is a reminder as it is a celebration..

of course we celebrate god’s faithfulness towards his people in the union of these two people

but we are also reminded that what holds this bond between these two people can only be god himself

and then you can take it out a step further and see all these people, all these different stories, brought together in one place, the trees outside, the air, the sun, nature… and be reminded that something. holds. all of this. together…

kind of a crazy thought isn’t it?

that someone is in control

crazy, yes.  but also reassuring, relaxing, peace bringing, oh yes yes

haven’t updated in a while.  which means i haven’t really been reflecting on life. which means i might be in the danger of living thoughtlessly.

and what better time to pick up blogging again than during finals week?

now that i think about it, I got lots of things to write about

more to come, bye

resurrection sunday

every easter i’m pretty amazed by the emotions that i feel…  it’s quite different from other sundays in the fact that we sing… with the knowledge that death does not win… that death doesn’t have the final answer…

i sang in joy… of victory…

today was kind of one of those “reassuring” moments as a friend of mine likes to call it.  it’s quite liberating actually.   i sang in the face of death, telling him you have no power, that you do not have the last say.

i sang in defiance.

defiance that all these things that these rough patches that i may be going through right now does NOT have victory over me.  all my sins and my shortcomings… all my guilt, all my regrets… they have no control over me…

reassured of hope

and of life

REAL life, if you know what I mean

i was at Beaver Creek Park after service and it was just beauuutiful…

the weather was perfect, clear skies, sun shining down, eating delicious sandwiches in the company of amazing people…

it was just so awesome because after being reassured of all those things, God kind of randomly puts me out there (I wasn’t really planning on going) in the presence of his glory and his majesty

and I just couldn’t help but to be thankful you know?

not really sure how to end this post… to be honest it was quite hard to write down all of these mixed emotions i was feeling… but here goes

credits to lucy

til next time

love…?

just random things i’ve been thinking about lately…

to start things off i feel like the word “love” is thrown around way too easily these days… we love our parents, friends, God, and we love cotton candy…?   i dunno…

another thing i’ve been realizing is that love is a risk… of course i’m not talking about loving cotton candy, because I don’t really see any risk in loving cotton candy… unless all of a perfectly fine cotton candy starts tasting like crap and tells you it’s not his fault…   anyways…

I used to think that love takes some risk? but now i feel more like love IS risk and risk can’t really be separated from love or else love really can’t be love.

think about it.. when you love someone, you’re basically handing them your heart, kind of like an invitation… it’s a risk… the risk that the person will not take it.. the risk that he/she may say no… that he/she just. doesn’t. feel. the same. way as you do.   but why the heartache?

so the power of whether this whole thing is gonna work out or not is not in your hands, but in the hands of the other person.  they can do as they like.. accept it or reject it, it’s in their power…  maybe that’s why love makes us so vulnerable.  maybe that’s why it’s hurts so much sometimes… we give ourselves away to find out it was never wanted to begin with. heart break is no joke… i’ve experienced it, you’ve experienced it, it’s really something that everyone can relate to

for me, what hurt the most was how i gave, gave and i gave, and in the end got nothing in return.  but that was the risk wasn’t it?  still, stuff was pretty hard to deal with…

things can get messy in a matter of seconds

A book I read in the past was talking about how God’s love for his people was a risk as well… A God with a heart, choosing to love his people… and it’s our choice whether or not to accept this love.  this is a God who “keeps going, keeps loving, who keeps risking…”   He went on to talk about in our heartbreaks we can kind of identify with the way God feels… and that we can only be healed of our heartbreaks when we see God’s suffering, and the relentless nature of God’s risk-taking love…

I’m not saying that i know all about what it means to love, but i think that if you’re loving right, you will be hurt.  but it’s the way you deal with that hurt that matters.  you need to fight through the hard parts and dig up the mess, the pain, the misunderstandings, the awkwardness and face them….   if healing is ever to begin

i think the worst road to take (which i’ve done many times in the past) is to forget about it all.  to build up a huge wall around your heart, and guard your heart so tightly and shut yourself away from love.  to stop risking.    this sucks.. it makes you into a cold person… it decreases your capacity of love tremendously… and you don’t wanna go that way

God told me one day that I was worth the risk… and that I should risk for other people as well…

… and I guess that’s what I’ll  do.   I’ll probably fail and fail, and maybe even get this whole thing right just to end up getting hurt again, but in all times at least I know who I can look on to… to the one who risked it all.. to the God who continue to risk…

meanwhile… I’m gonna go figure out a way to go tackle some of my junk from the past… bye!