Food

I used to get compliments from aunties about how lucky I was to be able to gorge on repulsive amounts of food and still remain pretty much a stick. Now, after two decades of life, this lightning-speed metabolism is sputtering out, but the huge appetite is still lingering in this belly.

It has never been this clear to me how much of a problem my eating was until this year when both my roommate Bethaney and my boyfriend Eden noticed how I am incapable of keeping leftovers or keeping a snack for over 2 days. If my brain entertains the thought of eating something, I can't think about anything else until it is in my stomach. I just constantly want to eat and cannot stop. I gave up snacking and eating alone for Lent but have already broken it about 7 times, and am writing this after just eating two full-blown muffins even though I am more than full already.

It's probably pretty silly of me to write about this, but writing makes things more tangible, and man, I cannot tackle this problem until I acknowledge that it is real. People laugh at me when I feel disappointed in myself after snacking on an apple, but they don't understand that I literally cannot keep from eating that apple, or 10 apples. Sure, part of the disappointment in myself stems from my body feeling gross, but it isn't just me caring about how I look anymore. It comes from knowing that right now I cannot desire God more than food, that I am literally enslaved to my belly and my flesh, and that this physical slavery is turning into a spiritual one.

If anyone happens upon this entry, please pray for me - I know it's weird, but it is something that I have been wrestling with for months now and I keep getting KO'ed. I will not break this by sheer willpower, but only the transformative power of Christ. Mm. So easy to type, but so hard to live out.

1 Corinthians 6:12:
“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be enslaved by anything.

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I'm not all too sure why I keep wanting to go back to Blogger even though Wordpress has a much cooler and fancier interface. I think that I haven't been writing on Wordpress at all because I'm intimidated by how "good" my post has to be to look somewhat appropriate on that site. Also, I'm trying to see if Google Buzz really can transport my posts into other people's Buzz...es? It's almost ridiculous how much of this Twitter/Buzz/Facebook-status-on-steroids is taking over the world, but I suppose it's nice to share things with people. So I'm back for now, for who knows how long. It's always been easier for me to write consistently on something like this or like Xanga, without thinking that I need to sound profound. I'M SICK OF PRETENDING! (Wow, Sixpence's "Breathe Your Name" just came on iTunes shuffle and I forgot how sweet it is. I might add that joint to this post if Blogger can handle that...Nope, it can't. NO PROBLEM. Back to where we were.)

There's really nothing particularly important for me to be updating about. This semester has been a surprisingly light load and it is almost driving me crazy. Last semester, I spent many a day holed up in the library and drooling on the keyboards, but man, it was such a stretching experience and I felt like I learned so much. And I loved that. This semester, I am taking two of the easier Science requirements, Intro to Music Theory, and Intro to Global Health. It feels like a joke schedule, and instead of being more on top of things I feel myself becoming lazy.

One thing I am very thankful for is that I have been able to breathe and spend time doing things that I had no chance of enjoying last semester - I have rekindled my love for books and am getting lost into my reading like I did in the fourth grade. Maybe I will have to get bifocals again! I am loving that I get to enjoy people here more. I have seen Kala for every day this week and it has been wonderful, and feel like I know my roommate Bethaney so much more than last semester. I keep feeling like this semester is supposed to open the way for something bigger than academics, but I am not sure of what it is just yet. I'm starting to help out with TeamKid, the children's ministry at Veritas, and it has been an adventure. I think it is now confirmed that I am not intrinsically gifted with kids, at least not with 4 to 6-year-olds. Or perhaps I am just so dependent on Camp Heaven-like discipline which is something I can't quite do in a Sunday School setting. I need prayer for tomorrow!

There's been a lot of pondering going on in this brain of mine lately about the future. It may be because decisions about nursing school are coming out the day after tomorrow, and I cannot even begin to fathom what will be my course of action if I don't get into Emory's nursing school. I think my grades are there and my application would be strong enough to get accepted, but I get this terrifying feeling that God would really be able to work in my life if all my plans got shattered. I also have this distant longing to do missions but if it comes down to it, I think I have this idealized view of glorified missions and don't really understand the cost of what it would be. I remember it being 3 in the morning and just feeling so dirty that I had to take a shower. And then when I was in the shower, I was thinking about how much I love hot showers. Would I be able to go days without a shower? Or take one in dirty water? Would I really be ready to learn a completely new language and leave my family and home?

Discipleship is costly, and if I'm really honest about it - that terrifies me.

The Cost of Discipleship

²⁵Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, ²⁶ "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. ²⁷Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

I know in my mind how sweet the presence of God is, but there is so much disconnect between my head and my heart. Apathy and sleepiness have been owning me a lot, but I feel God trying to find his way back onto the throne of my life.

iamcaro

from now on:

http://iamcaro.wordpress.com

Imagine Me.

I'm learning to breathe
I'm learning to crawl
I'm finding that You and You alone can break my fall

It's a weird feeling to be so filled with joy and guilt at the same time. To want to run and to stop at the same time.

I don't know if you've ever had those moments when God has made it so blatantly clear to you what He wants you to realize. I'm not sure if I'm having one of those moments, but heck, I haven't written in a while and I find that I forget things so easily if I don't write them down.

I had my fall break this past weekend, and I don't think it could have come at a better time. My parents and I had decided a while back that it wasn't worth the 100-some dollars to fly back home two times in two months, but man, it would have been so nice to come home. It startles me a little sometimes when I accidentally call my Emory dorm room "home," and I just stop and think for a second if it really is home yet. I don't think it is.
With everyone gone for break, campus was basically like a ghost town. But somehow, the whole end of my hall ended up staying on campus, and I must say that spending fall break with them was really incredible.
Yes, we did nothing at all. Yes, we watched The Notebook twice and bawled both times. Yes, we got fat on our junk food and cereal from Publix since the freaking DUC wasn't open all break. Yes, we acted ridiculous and had dance parties to bad music and made complete fools of ourselves. Yes, we didn't do half of the homework that we promised to ourselves that we would. But oh, what a feeling it is to do absolutely nothing but bond with the girls on my floor and feel absolutely no guilt for "wasting time." To wake up so confused after a 4 hour nap to see darkness outside and to just guffaw with my roommate Liz because we slept until 7pm. To have lunch and dinner dates with the cutest little Jewish girl Kala who might as well be Asian with us (shes' going to have better Chinese than me someday) and laugh as we try to rationalize the millions of calories that we're eating.

I have never felt so at peace, so rested, so filled since the day I got here. Thank God for rest.

Just at the time I feel that I'm at peace with the world that's mine
I feel at ease, I feel at home, and I know I'm not alone
But in my rest, there comes a test, that shakes me 'til again I know
That what I am is not enough, and again I've got to grow

I got a very unexpected phone call a few days ago from an adult that I've never spoken to on the phone before. He had called mostly to check up on me and to see how I was doing, but asked me some piercing questions and perhaps unknowingly helped me to remember some very important things about myself. I spoke about Camp Heaven for the first time in a long time, and it broke my heart how easily I've forgotten about something that had been and still is so important to me.

I hate that about myself. I am so affected by my surroundings, and it's so easy for me to adapt to a new environment and almost completely forget about the old one. It's been hard coming from one of the most broken neighborhoods in inner-city D.C. to a brand-new dorm at Emory, surrounded by people that will probably never hear a gunshot their entire lives. It's been hard coming from dino-nuggets and processed Costco food for dinner to a $58 lunch at a Thai restaurant where you have a freaking DRESS CODE and waiters who will fold your napkin and place it in your lap for you.

And I've forgotten. I'm so ashamed to say that I've forgotten.

I ran to Lullwater Park today and just sat by the water and tried to remember this past summer, to remember Little Lights. It broke my heart when I tried to remember all of my girls names that I couldn't for the life of me remember two of the girl's names. It broke my heart that it's only every now and then that I remember to pray for them by name and to remember that some of them will fall into sexual sin earlier than they ever should, that many just hunger for attention and find it in the wrong places. I was so angry with myself that I never did send out letters to them letting them know that I hadn't forgotten about them and that I didn't want to be one of those people that just come into their live and leave as suddenly as they had come.

Jeremy had asked me a few weeks ago if I ever got to process Little Lights and think through what those 7 weeks in D.C. had been. The truth was that I hadn't, that I had gotten sucked into the college life almost instantly, that I hadn't even given it much thought. One thing that he said that really stuck with me was how much of what we do in college in for ourselves. At Little Lights, everything we did was to pour ourselves out for others. The planning I did was for my girls, I had to get rest so that I wouldn't be a zombie for my kids, we tried our best to love on these children even when it wasn't reciprocated. I've never met people who were so eager to serve, to grab all the dirty dishes and start washing them, to have dinner ready at 7 for the other counselors that were exhausted from their camp day, who would lug a mattress up the stairs so that I wouldn't have to keep bringing up the sofa cushions every night.
But everything I'm doing here at Emory is for myself. I'm studying hard so I can get a degree and a good job and money. I go to the gym everyday so that I can feel better about myself. I take forever to respond to things and to keep in touch with people from home because I am lazy and too busy/tired from doing all these things for myself that I think that I can respond another day. And if I haven't already struggled with my own selfishness, you can bet that it's only worse here.

Lord, help me- that I will learn what it means to live unselfishly, to love people simply because Jesus loves them and not because I want something from them. That I will learn to remember who I am and where I come from. That I will not fall into the trap of being lukewarm, that I will have the longing to long after You.

O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, that so I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, `Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.' Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. 

In Jesus' name, Amen.

--The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer

College is difficult.

I haven't touched this in quite a while, but every now and then I need to vent and cry online. Not really, but maybe this will help. Please bear with me as I have a personal pity party. It's gonna be a blast especially with that awesome alliteration going on right there. And right there, too. I'll shut up.

I suppose the reason that I'm writing today is to share a personal epiphany - for I am discovering quickly and painfully that I am really kind of dumb. In high school, I was no genius but I got by with pretty decent grades and could easily cram and do well and impress Gloriann with my decent grammar and sentence structure. I actually used to be a pretty smart child up until middle school because reading was my favorite pasttime and my mom would actually threaten to punish me if I didn't stop reading. The one thing I'll make sure to do to my kids is to make sure they're nerdy little bookworms. Anyways. As I grew older, I stopped reading, I stopped knowing what was going on and those that knew me well enough knew that I probably didn't really learn the material until the night before. And after the test, the knowledge just whooshed out of my brain. Yet I could somehow trick people into thinking I was smart because I averaged out a 4.0 every year in high school, whoop dee doo. 

Well, now I'm screwed. I had my first real college test last week - a Chem 141 exam with Professor Morkin (who is an amazing professor but the hardest out of the 3 chem teachers) - and I had studied all week for it. And I actually felt really good when I left that test, and kind of assumed that I'd get a B, maybe a C at worst. Then she sends us the answer key a day after and I'm like WHAT THE FREAK I FAILED THAT JUNK. It was the first page that completely killed me - somehow I screwed up ionization energies and got like freaking 6 out of the 23 points on that page because of this chart that had like 3 pts for each little blank and I just botched it up like mad. All the other pages were fine, but yeah I basically failed because of that page. And the part that drives me crazy is that I could have easily gotten an A on that if I were more careful or just less stupid in the head. I don't think I've ever felt so dejected or insecure about my studies, and even though I know this is a hard class, I know I can do better. Haha well at least I basically know that I'm not meant to be pre-med. I probably won't get an A unless I get an A on everything from here on out, which I highly doubt I can do. OH COLLEGE, WHY DO I SUCK AT THEE. Have mercy on me. 

Man, I wish I could just be a good student. One that takes good notes instead of copying down every little thing, one that knows what's going on in class and can help other people too instead of being a burden to them. There are so many people here that I look at and I'm just like wow, these people know what they're doing, they have such good habits and know how to learn. And I just wonder why I'm nothing close to that. 

The only things here that I have had any success in doing is singing and editing other people's English papers. Sigh yai yai. 

I can only hope that I can someday be one of those people here at Emory, that I will be stretched and challenged so much here that I can't help but grow. The transition here has been difficult, I have yet to learn how to manage my time and study what matters. 

I miss ya'll back at home. I know that I've absolutely sucked at keeping in touch, things have been hectic and they're only going to get more hectic. 

Sometime next week I'll update you guys about the workstudy job that my roommate Liz and I are doing called Jumpstart. The inner-city preschool kids that we're working with are absolutely adorable and remind me of Little Lights kids so much.

Time to destroy this to-do list, and learn how to learn. 

Please pray for me. 

Inadequacy is quite humbling. 

Remember.

I really wish I were better at keeping in touch with people. I don't know what it is - I look at my pictures from home and do this stupid mixture of tearing up and smiling when I think about how I haven't seen you guys in a little more than half a month. There are days when I am so incredibly homesick and wonder what I am doing in Atlanta, and then there are days when I am completely fine. I get amazing messages and emails from people who try to keep in touch with me, yet whenever i open it up to reply to it, I can't bring myself to. I don't know if it's pure laziness, or that I don't think that I can do it justice in the amount of time that I have, but either way it doesn't happen. But wow, people matter. And relationships matter. And it's time for me to stop putting that on hold and thinking that they will take care of themselves. I know it's unrealistic for me to think that I can keep in touch with every person back at home, but I'm going to try to be better at least! 

SO. Update for ya'll. 

1. I now say "ya'll" a lot. Please shoot me.
   
2. I have taught Liz my roommate to add "FOO" at the end of everything that she says. And to fart accidentally when she laughs really hard.
   
3. I got into AHANA A Cappella, which has been incredible and I absolutely love singing with them. I feel like such a noob compared to them. I'll try to get a video sometime but you can totally find their performances on Youtube!
   
4. I am still a club and party virgin. Don't worry, Mommy.
   
5. My floormate are adorable and the bomb diggity bomb. We have dance parties and pig out and don't study at all.
   
6. I have spoken more Cantonese in the past week than I have all summer. WEIRD
   
7. I have finally used an ATM machine for the first time.
   
8. My freshman seminar on Loyalty is killing me because it's all about discussion and I can't even get a word in whenever we talk and I suck at politics. But wow, I've never had to do so much reading on politics before and it's actually really interesting. I'M LEARNING YAY
   
9. Microeconomics is going to be an adventure. I have to learn to stay awake and understand fobby Korean accents AFKSDJFlksdjf
   
10. My chemistry teacher is amazing but I'm probably going to die in that class, no lie. 
    
11. I have exercised so much more than I ever had before, except I used to not exercise at all so it's really not that much exercise at all. 
    
12. I also ate an entire box of cereal (Oh's, the BEST CEREAL EVER) in less than 2 days. ASDFSA?JLDFKsajdlkfj
    
13. I have not slept before 3 since I have been here.
    
14. And yet I still wake up at 8:30 half of the time. GAH
    
15. I get really sad when I open up my mailbox and nothing is inside. Please send me surprises. :D
    

PO BOX 121972

605 Asbury Circle

Atlanta, GA 30322

Time to finish the other 2 pages of my paper due tomorrow yippeeeeeeeeeeee

I miss you guys. But God has been good to me here at Emory. I'll share my struggles in a later post, but for now please pray that I can still find God here even when I am surrounded by a lifestyle where it seems like I don't really need Him. 

Love ya'll, miss ya'll, see ya'll soon. :) 

See you later.

I don't think I'll ever be able to describe the feeling you get when you watch your family drive away from you for the first time in your life. I wanted to run after them, but I knew that would look pretty loserish to the orientation leaders that were standing outside with me. I wanted to cry because you can't have a monumental moment without crying, but all I could feel was my heart sinking as they drove farther and farther away. I've found that I never can cry at the right times. All I feel is emptiness, and the tears come later when no one can see them, making me look like a heartless icewoman. Which is true, sometimes. But wow, going up the elevator to my room alone was one of the hardest things to do.

It's so weird, to realize that I am alone in this dorm room for the next 3 days, that not until Saturday will it finally hit me that I am in college, that I am not allowed to be a child any longer. For me, it's bothersome to make new friends. If you knew me in high school, I was so incredibly quiet until senior year. I'm so scared of being alone, and even more scared of being rejected. God, help me.

But here I am, at a college that I am getting more and more excited about the longer that I'm here, sitting in a BALLIN' dorm room that has one of the most beautiful views of campus, awaiting the arrival of an incredible roommate, and about to face a year that will completely change my life.

Yes, pictures are coming, and yes a video will be coming.
But not until I get over the shock, and not until my heart stops feeling like it weighs a thousand lbs.

Goodbye to you,
Goodbye to everything that I knew

I wanted to write a letter to everybody before I left, but only managed to write to a few. I hated that my goodbyes seemed so unfulfilled and so unreal, but this is so far from being a goodbye. And if you're reading this, you can be pretty sure that I'm missing you a lot right now. Unless you're really annoying or somebody that randomly friended me on Facebook that I don't even know but accepted anyways. Just kidding, you're included.

Ugh, a good cry right now would be so liberating. But when have my tear ducts ever cooperated?

CBC, grow in ways that you never thought you could. Worship leaders, step it up and don't ever be afraid to look like a fool for Christ. Junior high girls, I can't wait to see you when I get back and see how much you've grown and gorgeous-ified. Mother, make me proud. CASES, shandylyn, carshandylyn, JACESS, spazmonkeys, I love you and I always will. My fellow seniors, it's time to be babies again and soak up everything that we can. Rising seniors, it's up to you, now. Adam and Ashley, take care of our teens group. Shannon, take care of this worship team.

See you later. :)