life and illuminations.

this is me as a college sophomore with chelsea, the super smart + very vibrant girl i tutored through community impact @ columbia last year. :) i miss her! 

when i was a second grader, i remember looking at my sunday school teacher with the most puzzled look on my face when she told me, “evelyn, even though i’m your teacher, i learn a lot from you too.” i responded with flared nostrils + wide eyes and said, “HUH?”

and last year, i finally understood what my sunday school teacher was trying to tell me back then.

i spent my saturday mornings as a sophomore with chelsea, in lerner c555, and i’m so glad she had fun with the more visual + creative ways of learning i had us do together. we would play hangman together to help her develop her spelling skills, group banana chips (that i got from hewitt dining hall) and crayons (from my 64-crayon crayola box) in different ways to review multiplication.

we also did the traditional bookwork sometimes, too, like tackling word problems in her math book. through helping chelsea with those, an interaction i had with her reminded me that, no matter how smart or capable you may be, there’s no embarrassment in saying you’re stuck or that you need help. of course, we all know this, but for some reason, we often tend to associate being smart, strong, and capable with not needing help, which isn’t true. 

chelsea moved through her math workbook pretty fluidly until we got to the long division section on one saturday. after reading through the first lesson in that section together, i encouraged her to do the first problem. she grabbed her pencil, and silently looked at the problem for several minutes.

“chelsea, are you stuck?” i said.

she let out a very high-pitched and soft “ummm…..” while looking at me, and then she looked away.  

“if you need help, just tell me, okay?”

(after a moment of silence) “i need help.” (chelsea looks at me and puts on a sour face.)

“that’s great that you told me! here, let’s read the first long division lesson again…”

of course, our hour-and-a-half sessions weren’t all work and no play. chelsea was quite a chatterbox: after she and i finished a chunk of her work, i’d always ask her about  her life: her friends at school, her favorite food, her favorite shows to watch. she always had plenty to say to the point that i had to remind her that we had better finish her work before her mom came back to pick her up.  

her whole family came to pick her up one saturday afternoon in april, and i felt so refreshed when i found out that her family members were all christian, and i got to encourage chelsea and her mom in a new way from that point on. 

i wish i hadn’t stopped tutoring chelsea so early, but i was so blessed by her during the time that we did work together every saturday. seeing chelsea write, “today I’m with my tutor, Evelyn. She’s really really sweet and helps me a lot” and receiving her mother’s e-mail of disappointment when I told her I couldn’t tutor Chelsea anymore (“Wow, Evelyn. I’m so disappointed, but that’s okay.”) revealed just how strong of a bond i had with chelsea just by tutoring her. i’m so blessed that we were part of each other’s lives, because even though i was the one tutoring her, she helped me learn some valuable lessons, too. 

umma,

you’re one of the strongest, most hard-working women i know, and i really admire that about you. i know that behind your sharp voice + tough-as-nails personality is a selfless heart— you’re always willing to wait those extra ten minutes when my BART train arrives late to our station after I hang out in the city/in San Francisco, you cook up a storm whenever I come back home from new york, you always make sure that i’m well-fed and studying hard while I’m at school, and i’m blessed that you show your love in these ways. i must admit that i can miss this, that i have my moments of misunderstanding you, and i can gloss over how you express love through these everyday, yet very significant things. 

i know that seeing me leave home to go to boarding school when i was 15— at such an early age— wasn’t easy for you. i want you to know that i’m thankful that you were willing to send me here to the east coast to get the best education possible.  

very recently, i recognized that you’re definitely my mom, but you’re also a daughter, too, a daughter of God (which is an interesting thought). and i know that it’s hard to see this, but our Father has been & will continue to take care of you, as His daughter, and of us, our family, in every way imaginable. 

i want you to know that my biggest wish for you, as it is for myself, is to experience the healing and the freedom that God brings from worry and shame that both of us carry. there is freedom in realizing and embracing our brokenness. there is freedom in realizing that we are all flawed human beings, that we can’t love each other perfectly, and that grace abounds in those moments of conflict. 

i want to walk in that freedom and grace with you. 

i am praying for you, i love you, and you are so valuable. 

love, evelyn. 

how have I seen God revealing himself to me recently? through people’s stories about how God is speaking to them.

displays like these are so powerful for me. since write spoken word poetry, I know the weight that words carry. and to have such a rich variety of responses about how God shows himself to us, of course through his Word, yet also through community, through nature, through the stuff of real-life… is pretty incredible.

after eating dinner together in the dining hall earlier this evening, my close friend asked me what I thought my spiritual gifts were, and I told her, “encouragement”. I feel honored when people tell me about the joyful but also the hard things that they go through, because I can celebrate with them when good things happen, and when struggles happen, I love people by listening to them and praying for them. 

that’s when I realized that my encouraging people is a spiritual gift, because God shows Himself to people through my listening well to their thoughts and stories, because in that way, I show people that those things matter. in that way, I love people by paying attention to them, by acknowledging their existence, their value. and through prayer, practice, and a huge dose of God’s grace, i gain the wisdom to know when to listen and when to speak.

because sometimes the best way to show people love is just by listening.  

an asian dish from my childhood: a fried egg over white rice + soy sauce + sesame oil + kimchee + spam. delicious :) 

beautiful walkway leading into soldier field, chicago, illinois, 1.2.2013

urbana 2012.

i just came back earlier today from spending an incredible five days in st. louis, missouri, for Urbana 2012, the missions conference that InterVarsity hosts every 3 years, and then from a 3-day stay in chicago with several friends.

it felt so powerful to worship God with around 20,000 other people from all over the country and from over 100 different countries. singing praises in different languages felt fresh. the passion burst through the walls of the convention center. i could tell that there was something more to the times of worship than just what my physical eyes could see. 

God reminded me that He isn’t separate from my real life. He’s God in the world of final exams and spoken word poetry and relationships and I want to think about Him as I think about all these different parts of my life. Because I trust that His heart and His plans for me are the best. 

I am blessed.

i’ve been a bit nostalgic lately for the less digital world we had once before, so it’s no surprise that i was delighted to discover that we can print our instagram photos! 

printed photos > digital photos, any day.

i’m a paper kind of girl, which means that i would prefer reading actual books than reading stuff on the kindle or nook / getting postcards or handwritten letters in the mail than get an e-mail / typing my class notes the classic way, on binder paper, than on my computer. 

(oh, and if you click the above photo, it’ll take you to www.new-startups.com, where i found out about this awesome thing.)

shopping. people. knowledge. significance. 

I took this picture in the afternoon on saturday, december 15th, while looking through an enormous glass window while standing in the Burlington Coat Factory store at Union Square. It was a gorgeous and busy saturday, with the sun shining on the park, people strolling around the holiday market and voices humming on the streets and sidewalks, as usual. I learned a simple yet deep lesson through enjoying this view: we are known. we are perfectly understood.

I got this “i’m on top of the world” feeling through observing union square like this. all the people I observed walking on the streets and roaming through the holiday markets looked like ants— they were the width of my pinky nail! as i looked at all the people on the street, my first thought was, “am i just one part of this huge mass of people?” and of course the answer to that question was, no.    

In that moment, I recognized how small I am and how out-of-this-world crazy God is, and I mean that in the best way possible. There are billions of us in the world, and yet God doesn’t see just masses of nameless, faceless individuals. He knows each and every one of us by name. he knows our individual personalities. our ambitions. our hearts. And why wouldn’t He know us? He’s the one who made us. A creator knows his or her creation intimately. 

what else blows my mind when i really take the time to think about it is that God knows the ugliest sides of us and He still loves us the same.  

this means that when I chat with God through prayer, I don’t have to always say certain things or sound so eloquent all the time. in my shaky moments, i curse in my prayers. with the things that i’m too ashamed to talk about, i talk about honestly with God and i just lay everything bare in front of Him, even the ugly things in my heart and my mind. and yet God doesn’t criticize when I do that. He rebukes and corrects us out of a complete heart of love. 

i can’t understand, through my own limited, human logic, how God knows absolutely everything about everyone, when there are so many of us. and yet, he does. and all i could do was stand in awe at how that sort of knowledge, which is beyond human comprehension, is possible. yet it is possible with Him, because God is God.

it’s so important for us to grasp the fact that God understands us perfectly and comes to us, just as we are, with open arms.

It’s a human longing to be understood, to be appreciated. Friendships and relationships are tangible expressions of that longing. We have friends- people who we “click” with. people who appreciate and understand our stories and our strengths. people who see the not-so-positive things about us, our brokenness, and still love us anyway. 

“You have searched me, LORD, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways” [psalm 139:1-4].

It’s pretty cool that you can have a “God moment” even when you’re shopping. :)