Fate

It's funny how things work out sometime. 

With only one and a half months left in Hong Kong, I had been planning a last AWESOME trip to Korea to end my half year of travels.  This was going to be the creme de la crop.  All my closest friends know I have not-so-secret ambitions of becoming a korean pop-star and this trip was going to help me make it. (Or at least give me some eye candy for a couple of days).

But then Thailand happened. I became wary of traveling and I was/am really disappointed in myself for being so naive and gullible.  I became scared of parting with hard-earned dollars.  I became guilty for playing so much and not being productive enough.

So though my friends tried their darned hardest to convince me to go, using lines like, "we'll never hang out like this back in LA" and "money you can always earn back but memories are priceless" (and it worked, I swear I was swayed for a good long time!), in the end, I decided not to purchase my plane ticket.

I was still debating over this up until about an hour ago when I received a phone call from my mama.  She sounded tired.  We exchanged the usual pleasantries and then she casually dropped in the fact that she was going to have surgery a couple of weeks from now.  

Um..say what?

Ok, so the surgery is not that serious but surgery is surgery. (unless if it is, say, bunion surgery or eyelid surgery then maybe it's not that serious but even then, you'd have my utmost support.) So when I heard that she'll have to stick around Shanghai for at least another couple of weeks, I immediately told her I can fly to Shanghai and visit her for a couple of days.  Normally, my mom would decline saying she'll see me in just a month but this time, she immediately said yes.  So it is definitely the right thing to do.  AND I GET TO SEE MY MOMMY BEFORE JANUARY!

The irony in all this is definitely not lost on me.  For the Korea trip, even though my friends were using all these convincing and appealing points to tell me why I should go and even though I really really do want to go, something in my gut held me back.  I know everything happens for a reason and now, I think I see what that reason was for.  

Oh God, you are so wise.  I thank you for your endless guidance and aide in times of hardship and unhappiness.  You have only shown me once again that everything has a purpose and only time will reveal what that purpose is.  I know I am impatient in so many ways but once again,  you have taught me that immediate gratification will never fill the longing in my soul. I need so much more.  I need You.

A purchase of a "Prayer is the Key" token at my campus bookstore spurred my roommate and I to a two hour discussion at our local coffee shop. It was the type of scenario I had always dreamt I would have in college; sitting in the local coffee shop, discussing life, hearing different ideas being said about the world, expressing my own ideas.  I just never thought that it would be about my spirituality.

For the last year, I have taken steps toward enriching my spiritual side and investigating the workings of believing there's a higher being who created us, is guiding us.  I've gone to my friend's Friday night bible studies and discovered that there exists Christians who dispel previous stereotypes I have had of the group.  I've had many a chats and talks with my Christian and non-Christian friends and family.  

I've been lucky to have been touched by God and have felt a life with him.  Because this world is constantly craving labels for everything, I suppose the label I would have to give myself at this moment of my life is "spiritual" but not Christian.  I'm not because I haven't yet fully given my faith to Jesus Christ yet and until I do so, I do not want to go around pretending to be someone I don't think I completely am yet.  However, I can say that he has brought me fulfillment, a sense of peace and a sense of belonging that I had never felt before.  

I'm not very eloquent at expressing my beliefs.  I've come to discover this when having my talk with my roommate.  She, a staunch atheist, would ask me questions that I'd blubber and stammer to explain.  "It's just a feeling," I'd say.  "What is this feeling?" she'd ask and I'd be stumped again.  Sometimes I got what I was trying to express across and sometimes I think she understood but a lot of the times, I would just get frustrated because we were completely having an "apples and oranges" conversation.  Sometimes she said very unbelievably snobby and naive things that made me all the more realize what ignorance can do to someone.  I tried my best to explain my current situation to her and to talk to her about what changes I've undergone in the last year but I don't think she would even have a tenth of an idea of what I'm talking about until she can experience it for herself.

I was very grateful for our talk because it made me realize all the more ignorant I still am about God.  I still have so much more to learn, so much more changes to go through.  Perhaps next time when I talk to my roommate, I would be able to clearly explain to her my spirituality.

That's also why I haven't posted anything about my journey with God in here until now.  I've never really known what to write and how to say it.  

Now back to that pesky little conversation starter of a prayer key.  I think I'm at the point in my trip where I'm getting really home-sick. I never thought it would happen to me since I've stayed here for a bit before, have had family here and am such a nomad but I got hit with the bug.  I'm trying to bide my time with constant phone calls to home and reading a lot but nothing's been really helping.  I just wanna go home and hang out with my grandparents.  Hence, I pray that everybody at home is doing well and will only get better. I pray that I get over my homesickness since I will be here for four more months no matter what and that I just cherish the time I have here while it lasts.  I pray that I will strengthen my relationship with God and that he will guide me as I truly live alone for the first time in my life. (Aunts and cousins who live ten minutes away do not count!)  I pray that I will stop missing you, you and especially you so much.