Why do I cause so much trouble for myself????

:-( Sometimes I wish that I never posted some stuff on my blog. I like to update people on my life, express my feelings, and stuff, but sometimes it just ends up coming back to slap me in the face. I am talking about when I mention things in my life at home.

Let me clear some things up:

My mom is hardworking, beautiful, cooks for us a lot, and sometimes humourous. But when I write on my blog, it is often because I am having some fights with her or something, so people might make a judgment and say this or that. I can understand, because yeah, I don't praise her enough. At the same time, life at home can be very hard, and I am not going to censor any feelings that I have just for the sake of people's reputation. I think that you as the reader should be wise when you read my blog, to remember that this is only one perspective and that no one should judge anyone on the basis of what one said. You need to get to know the person before you make judgments. I learned that the hard way.

I am not saying this because I am angry. I am saying this because I feel like telling you just so that people don't judge my mom based on my issues. My mom has done a lot for me, but we just have different worldviews and life values. We have a different culture, as psychologists would say. She is more leaning on the collectivistic, authoritarian viewpoint, and I am more leaning on the individualistic/with some collectivistic, authoritative viewpoint. She comes from a traditional Chinese background and values protection of female offspring and making sure the family image (including herself) is nice and respectable. I come from a very liberal Canadian Chinese background, and values freedom of expression (I don't care if the whole world knows my problems).

The problem is with freedom of expression is that sometimes when you share about your personal life, other people's lives are intertwined and you sometimes have to censor stuff just for the sake of someone else's dignity. And so I think from now on I will try to be a bit more conservative in my freedom of expression when I talk about my family. Otherwise, it will hit me back in the face again.

One day when I become a pastor I guess I will have to censor my family issues in some way too, except to trusted people. I won't be blasting off blog posts like I am now. I am not saying that a pastor should hide their problems. I will show you all my problems if you want, just don't ask about my family cuz my family will be hurt by that.

Another thing I have to clear up:

My bipolar disorder is not caused by my family. Same with anxiety disorder. I got anxiety disorder from a combination of other crap. HAHA I am being secretive. But ultimately, God used my anxiety disorder as a way to understand others better and help them. The bipolar disorder I am not sure why I have it, but I guess I was just born with it and stress just made it worse. But I am sure that with this new medication I am taking, I will be just fine and I will be normal again... or so I think.

I have been sleeping less than usual, although I do feel rested. I am just worried that I will end up not sleeping one day, and get mania again. But right now I am not sleeping as much because I feel fine and not sleepy, not because of mania. I am sure of that. Anyway, I am fine. I just need to make sure I read before bed, because if I don't I will not be sleepy.

Hope this clears up any misunderstanding. I am gonna delete certain stuff off my blog now (sorry).

My Christmas Prayer (and Nick Jonas' as well, I think)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm99HZVpj_E



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7zRtLptyc4

I'll be home for Christmas (lyrics)

I'm dreamin' tonight of a place I love
Even more then I usually do
And although I know it's a long road back
I promise you

I'll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents under the tree
Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love light beams
I'll be home for Christmas
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After some talks and some prayer time, I have decided not to move out till I get married. And after inviting my family out to a Family Appreciation Dinner last Saturday, things are a lot better. Me and my sis worked out the problems and me and my mom are chatting well together. We ate lobster at "Best Friends Restaurant", it was quite cheap and I love the restaurant name. You get 2 small lobsters for 12.99 if you buy 25 dollars worth of other main dishes before tax.

Anyway, I went Chrristmas shopping yesterday (almost said "Christian shopping" and actually it is quite Christian, the shopping I did) and finished everything in one day. :D I am so proud of myself! Most of the stuff I ordered online (stuff where you donate to charity and they give u a free card in honour of your friend), and also a bunch of stuff from Scarborough Town Centre. I say it is Christian shopping because I am not wasting stuff, not buying useless gifts, only things that are worth it.

The funny thing is that I originally budgeted 75 dollars for Christmas gifts, but now I'm at maybe 200 dollars... :P or at least 150.

But I am very proud of myself! :D I bought Jesus Manga, and now Adrian has a new study Bible! And some other fun stuff for him and other people!

I look at it this way... I still have a lot of money left over from this year, cuz I got 3 scholarships (I expected only one) but yeah! :D

Best website ever to stop child labour!

This website gives you ratings for stores and companies, to let you know which are good (don't use child labour) and which are bad (they use a lot of child labour). I noticed that GAP is generally pretty good, and Walmart and Sketchers are really bad... anyways check it out!

http://www.free2work.org/home

Damn book! LOL

I wanted to mention this earlier but I forgot... but it's really funny!

I was shelving books in the library and suddenly one book dropped out and stabbed me in the stomach. It actually hurt!!!

Guess what the book was about?
.
.
.
.
.
Violence against women! I couldn't believe it!

seeing Grace Alujo

I didn't tell a lot of people but I started sponsoring a child named Grace Alujo, who lives in Uganda. She is five years old, very cute. I was thinking of visiting her one day, when she grows up, to see how she's doing in school and all. After all, you all know that one of my dreams is to visit poor areas in Africa and help in some small way.

But my mom pointed out something I didn't think of, today. Today is the first day I am taking my new medication for bipolar disorder. It is called lithium (yeah, the one on the periodic table). It will dehydrate me so I gotta drink at least 2 litres of water a day. Now if I go to Uganda, it will be right on the Equator, so I will dehydrate double fast. So... I don't know... if I will ever see Grace in this lifetime. Maybe I will see her in heaven. It would be a nice reunion.

In any case, I'm gonna send her a Christmas card once I find a picture of myself and a nice card to send to her. I hope her Christmas in Uganda will be a good one this year. It must be hard to live in a place where kids can get kidnapped anytime by the Lord's Resistance Army (don't be fooled by the name, they are not Christian. They are led by a crazy guy... I'm serious, he is crazy, named Joseph Kony) and tortured, made into child soldiers at young ages.

I took my first pill just about half an hour ago, don't feel any different yet. I'm glad I went to see the dance competition today, it was really fun and made my day... otherwise it would be a boring day.
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If any of you read my post that I deleted, I wanna say that I still really love SCSU. The people are fun, and of course, we are all human and we all make mistakes. But deep down, we all just want to have fun and live a fulfilling life... and we all do things differently. Everybody has their positive sides and bad sides, and all in all, I still think SCSU is great. And there may be some changes to make it improve, but I shouldn't really complain overall, because I got to know a lot of people who are good at making a difference.

I look forward to the upcoming semester... it'll be fun... Winter Carnival!!! YAY!!!
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I don't think I can drive until next year... I'm gonna be drowsy from this medication, so it's not safe. I think I will be fine though, overall... cuz God takes care of me every day. Whatever happens, it's for the best, just like Imran said :D

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Special shout out: Pags worked really hard on prepping the AGM stuff. I just wanna thank him in front of every reader here. :-) Don't worry Pags, we love you and your work has not been in vain. We will have an AGM again soon. And we will have more people!!!

Apologies for the last post

I am very sorry, I wasn't thinking properly when I was writing the last post so I deleted it. Sorry if I offended anyone, it wasn't appropriate.

Sincerely,

Martine

Sweatshop Hall of Shame

For a while now I've been pretty conflicted because I don't know how to break the cycle of poverty. I know, it is a big issue that I cannot break all by myself, but you see, a few blog posts ago I think I was saying that I was depressed over the fact that I buy into so many companies that produce products made by workers in inhumane/unfair wage situations (e.g. many things made in China), or products that destroy the environment (e.g. creams that have palm oil).

But I got an email today from ILRF (International Labour Rights Forum) that really helps. It had a couple articles, and for example, there was one about the Sweatshop Hall of Shame.

The official inductees of the 2010 Sweatshop Hall of Shame are:
Abercrombie and Fitch,
Gymboree,
Hanes,
Ikea,
Kohl’s,
LL Bean,
Pier 1 Imports,
Propper International,
and Walmart.

I am very very happy to expose these companies to you, so that you will know not to buy from them. And boycotting by itself doesn't work but if you join forces with me and ILRF, together, we can all send petitions to tell them to smarten up and stop using children as workers or stop abusing their workers by paying them only like 1 dollar a day. Or giving workers dangerous working conditions. HA! CAUGHT THEM!

♫ DO NOT BUY FROM IKEA, WALMART OR ABERCROMBIE!!!! http://www.laborrights.org/creating-a-sweatfree-world/sweatshops/resources/12211

Instead, we can all try to buy more from companies that ensure fair trade and equitable working conditions. From now on, I will try to buy more stuff from here:
http://www.sweatfree.org/shoppingguide

I LOVE ILRF. They make it so easy for us to help those who cannot help themselves. Look here, there are many many petitions you can sign. It only takes a minute, honestly. And we can make a world of difference for ages to come:

http://www.laborrights.org/what-you-can-do
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The man who founded World Vision once said this: "Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God."

I find it to be so profound because it shows that God weeps when people suffer and He longs for us to get up from our butts and start helping the world like He did. Not that He cannot do it Himself but for some reason He wants to work through US. Selfish us. He wants us to be like Jesus, who spent countless hours healing the sick and giving the outcasts a place to belong.

Like I have mentioned before, sometimes we gotta stop asking God why he doesn't end suffering. We have to start asking ourselves, why don't I let God use me to end suffering?
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That said, I have to say that I also cause suffering. Just today and yesterday I had a really hard time, me and my mom had so much miscommunication, and we just basically have a rift now between us. I keep saying it's her fault and she keeps saying it's my fault. I don't know how I became so stubborn but I just really wanted my independence. But the thing that started our fight had really very little to do with independence, it had to do with the stupid H1N1 virus. But for some reason I couldn't control my anger and I just basically made it into a fight about independence.

I don't know how I can solve this. I haven't prayed about it to be honest. I need to let down my pride and ask how I'm gonna solve it because if I say sorry she will try to something me again, but if I don't say sorry I will be a rebellious daughter. It's like a catch 22, can't really go either way. So basically I need your prayers and advice. You don't know the situation, but maybe you can let me know how to say sorry for starting the fight without making her feel like she was right about everything in the fight. Dang, it's complicated.

I would know how to solve the problem if my mom was Canadian. But because she is not, I need to figure out how to say "it was all a misunderstanding" in Chinese, and explain all the crap I want to explain all in Chinese. It's hard. We both think differently and express things differently.

I plan to move out in September (or not). I have been saying that I will move out forever, but because I, a) did not want to waste money, b) have Adrian living close to me, and c) sometimes I feel things are getting better with my mom, I did not. But I will now. Cuz I'm gonna be 22 soon and if I still have my mom making my lunch, breakfast and dinner, and do my laundry every day, I'm gonna be one stupid person who doesn't know how to live my own life.

You could say, well why don't you do those things while you are living at home then? I have to tell you, I cannot. Because if I lived on my own, I would live a 5 min. walk from school and thus save about 2 hours every day that I could do my cooking and what not. I also tried cooking at home but no one liked my fried beans with banana. (Yeah go ahead and laugh, I invented that dish, I find it pretty funny too). And something else happened that I cannot say right now.

I think I have made my point. I have talked to several people about moving out and the majority say that it will actually improve my relationship with my parents and actually help my parents let me grow up. As long as I explain clearly why I am moving out (not because I hate them) and leave on a good note.

There we have it.
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(certain parts of this post were censored due to problems relating to someone's image)

What would you do if it was your last day on earth?

Hello friends! How are you?

I watched 2012 today with Adrian, Josh, and Qasim. It was so much better than I thought! Not only was the plot really good, but I thought at first that it was going to be scary and depressing, but it actually turned out to be a bit funny and sentimental, as well as action-packed. It makes you think, well, what would you do if it was your last day on Earth?

I am not going to spoil the movie, but some of the people in the movie didn't know the world was ending, so they didn't get a chance to say goodbye or make amends. And to be honest, you and I don't know when the world's gonna end or if one day we get into an accident, so seriously, why wait? Why do we have to wait to say "I love you", give a hug to someone, or say you are sorry?

There is this facebook thing called Honesty Box, and it's where people can leave anonymous comments answering a question about you. Recently this question popped up and I chose it as my Honesty Box question. It was something like, "If I were to die tomorrow what would you say?" I really want to know.

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(NOW IS THE SMALL SPOILER ALERT)

(I WARNED YOU, IF YOU READ ANY FURTHER YOU WILL KNOW HINTS ABOUT THE 2012 MOVIE, not that many, though)

The movie really showed what it meant to be caring. Giving of yourself so that others can be saved. I really admire that. And it showed the absurdity of giving first-class people the right to be saved and the lower-class people being forgotten. It's kind of like in Titanic, it was so unfair. The movie had different scenes from all over the world. It helped me to think about all those people out there, that I will never meet or may meet in heaven. It makes me think of them as part of myself, too.

There was a lot of people praying too. Some prayers didn't get answered. But at least they had the peace of God and hope of God in their hearts. It is devastating to die without hope or peace within you. There were also a lot of "last calls". You know, the kind that were made by people working in the twin towers or on the hijacked plane at 9/11. Very chilling but also very touching because it is at those moments that you truly appreciate what you had in life, and who you love.

I never will know when is my last day. It's not like I have a countdown on top of my head telling me when I will die. But I think what's important is that I make the most out of the time I have. I realize that I often forget about some friends that I haven't seen in a while. But we all need each other. My friend Karl called today, was having some troubles at Univ. of Waterloo. It felt good to pray with him again. We used to pray alot together in the past, it was really good, I always felt better after we prayed. Glad to do the same for him now.

My friend Josh also needs a lot of support. So I'm glad that Adrian and I cheered him up more this month. And also Qasim, it was good to see him today, after like... 6 months? has it really been that long?

Yesterday at church we were talking about spiritual gifts. I was really excited to learn about spiritual gifts because, well, spiritual gifts are God-given abilities given to each person to serve the church/the world. And because I am so workaholic, I kind of lost track of what to focus on. Quality instead of quantity is what I need to remember.

So I found out that I have (from most to least)
-Encouragement
-(tie) Leadership & Mercy
-Administration
-(tie) Faith, Giving, Hospitality, Evangelism, and Shepherding (leading a group of disciples)

And it doesn't matter how many gifts you have, but really how well you use them. I feel that a lot of times, I forget to encourage people. And I forget that I actually can help with Administration, I tend to beat myself up for not having the gift of Administration when I actually do have it.

(In case you are wondering, there is a questionnaire that we did to find out our gifts, and the gifts are talked about in 1 Corinthians 12 in the Bible)

So let me encourage you guys with this:

Live, laugh, and love! Tell the people you love how you feel about them, and don't ever give up on yourself, either. Trust that the things you cannot handle are in the hands of God, and you will feel an immeasurable, unexplainable peace that will surround you. I'm very happy to know all of you, and I hope to hear from you all at this blog (comment)! Thanks for reading!

Been awhile since I've been this happy!

Hey everyone, yesterday and today I was a bit hyper but very smiley and happy. :-) (see?)

It's been a while since I was this happy. I couldn't stop laughing at a few points in time, it felt really good. I know it might be hypomania, but to be honest, I really enjoy it. Other people might find it annoying or childish though. I know once I go on the lithium meds it won't be like this anymore. Someone told me that the meds would make a person's creativity go to zero. I hope it doesn't happen to me. I was thinking of writing some more songs about the Bible.

My marks are weird but satisfactory. They range from 70 to 90. Sometimes I still fall asleep in my Modern Poetry class but I found that eating keeps me awake.

Adrian and I have been talking about getting married... not anytime soon but within the next 5 years. It's really happy to think about that, even though I know we will live poor and have a really messy room. (ahem)

I read up on bipolar disorder a bit more, and it sounds like I will be adopting rather than trying to get pregnant after we get married. My kid (if I ever get pregnant) would have a 1 in 5 chance of getting bipolar disorder, and if I take lithium during pregnancy it may result in heart defects or muscular defects. If I decide to get pregnant and NOT take the lithium during that time, I will be at risk of killing myself due to additional depression possibly caused by being pregnant. So... I think I will adopt and have a multicultural family. :D Just like God's family.

I am really proud of Adrian. He's growing a lot and his heart is so sincere and willing to help. Adrian, I am so proud of you!

I am also doing well in terms of spirituality... well today anyways. I went back to Genesis and started writing notes about every chapter (practically), and I discovered lots of new things. When you have Bible on the go it's hard to feel the presence of God or the things that appear between the lines that speak out to your life.

VCF was fun too. We did charades with Bible characters. And Pictionary with Bible characters.

Got some good feedback from Alpha friends too. I'm really glad I met Ismaa'eel and Jason. Other ppl as well, but these two especially cuz I've gotten some really deep conversations with them. Sometimes, maybe too deep. haha

Anyways I feel so unproductive right now, sitting at the library circ desk doing nothing. So I will try to make myself useful. See ya!

Stressed and feel like I failed!!!

I hate being disorganized. Today I almost lost my phone, forgot to bring my school materials, and forgot that I had to do a blood test so I ate breakfast. If this doesn't make sense, it's okay. You don't need to know.

Over the past three days, I have been very disappointing. God was speaking to me directly every day but I just fell into temptation anyways. Sometimes I doubt that I'll ever get anywhere, I am such a failure. But today Christine reminded me that through all my struggles I just need to learn to rely on God even more. And she says that she struggles with my problems too. She is so nice.

God, why do you still love me? I don't deserve You. Why did you choose me to serve you as a pastor? I don't feel like I am the right fit. I question my calling, because of my mood, because of my anger issues at home, because of my sin. I am so sad, Lord, because faith without deeds is dead, and I know if I keep going like this I am a living hypocrite. And it was because of hypocrisy that the church of Satan was founded. I don't want to go that way. I don't want to listen to Satan's voice. I need Your help. Christine told me to say "In Jesus' name" 3 times when I am tempted, and that it worked for her. God, I didn't even want to pray to you yesterday, I was falling so fast. But I will call Your name tonight. 3 times or 10 times, I don't know, but I just need Your power.

I am so stressed, God. I realize how many friends I have forgotten. Opportunities that You have given me and told me about, and I only followed through half way. I forget half the people I meet. I guess it goes to show that I can only do so much. I need Your power and Your strength. I cannot do this on my own. I need you to speak to my friends. I need you to follow up on them for me, even when I cannot reach them.

Help me to stand strong, God. Help me put on Your armour. Holy God, cleanse my scarlet sins. It helps to know that Christine is with me in this journey and that she also has doubts about our callings as pastors. God, help me to be humble and seek justice and love. Help me to love You back like you have loved me.

I am stressed about school although I shouldn't be. I always do well, and it's all because of You. Even when I think my world is falling, You always come through and provide. But I am forgetful, and I forget the blessings you give. Please forgive me. Thank you for being there. and loving me.

In Jesus' name, in Jesus' name, in Jesus' name...

"Shadowfeet" by Brooke Fraser

Walking,stumbling on these shadowfeet
toward home,a land that i've never seen
I am changing: less and less asleep
made of different stuff than when i began
and i have sensed it all along
fast approaching is the day

[CHORUS]
when the world has fallen out from under me
I'll be found in you, still standing
when the sky rolls up and mountains fall on their knees
when time and space are through
I'll be found in you

There's distraction buzzing in my head
saying in the shadows it's easier to stay
but I've heard rumours of true reality
whispers of a well-lit way

[CHORUS]

You make all things new

[CHORUS 2]
When the world has fallen out from under me
I'll be found in you, still standing
Every fear and accusation under my feet
when time and space are through
I'll be found in you