i'm a little sad right now cos the computer just ate my blog post up without warning. Arghh oh well. I decided to write it again, that’s how dedicated i am to all of you. Mostly oli cos she says it’s gonna be her morning reading tomorrow, oh the pressure. If you’re curious that my punctuation is suddenly good (not good good, just like the first letter of every sentence is capitalised), it’s because i’m typing this in MSword cos i don’t want to lose it again due to dodgy internet/dodgy xanga.

OKAY. So. Exams are finally over and it is a good feeling. I don’t feel overly worried about any of them, thank God for bringing me through yet another exam period. This one really dragged on though. Haha. I’ve been spending the past couple days at kristi’s new house, getting furniture from ikea, assembling the furniture (on andrew’s part), eating, watching movies, sleeping, steamboat-ing (SO much food!), cleaning (on kristi’s part—my mother would be proud), and... getting locked out. That was a bit of an adventure. I can still remember the frozen moment when everyone realised that we’d shut the door after leaving to get bubble tea and kristi was rummaging around in her bag with this panicked expression on her face (i.e. she’d left the keys in the house). It was like this moment of ‘OH CRAP’ and then the ideas:

‘let’s go in the neighbour’s house and tried to climb across the balcony. (the screen door was open).’ Tried that, the neighbour wasn’t in.

‘let’s go downstairs and try to climb UP to the balcony.’ Went down... it turns out to even get to the balcony, we’d have to climb a wall and then climb up pretty high to get to the balcony... so no.

‘let’s go get a ladder.’ ‘why would anyone living in an apartment have a ladder??’ i disagreed with that statement—i think ladders are very useful things to have around—but in any case we’d need 2 ladders to get over the wall and then to climb to the balcony, and a pretty tall one at that, so that idea was abandoned.

‘call the landlord.’ No number for the landlord.

‘call the real estate agent!’ this one was quite clever on my part seeing as it was 10pm. But anyway apparently the real estate agent didn’t have spare key.

So anyway, the most obvious solution after that was to sit around and watch Andrew try to pick the lock with our bobby pins based on his extensive research on google ‘one day when was bored’. Lol. It was actually quite impressive when he started going on about feeling the pins in the lock and trying to turn them each way. After about 45 minutes of this, while we kinda sat around in shock until at a loss i started praying that God would somehow open the door, kristi called a locksmith.

The locksmith came, opened the door in like 2 seconds (did i mention also that being a locksmith is a rather lucrative career for those of you who don’t mind being woken up at all hours to pick the locks of those who’ve been locked out of their house). Haha. But the thing i learned through this, despite the fact that God didn’t directly answer my prayer and miraculously open the door, was to follow kristi’s example of 2 thess 5:16 ‘be joyful always’. In a situation where i think a lot of people would’ve freaked out/cried/been angry, she kept calm, figured out what she had to do, laughed about it, suggested we pray, played inane ‘would you rather’ games with us, and waited for the locksmith—this is despite the fact that she had work at 5am the next morning. Pretty hard stuff. So yeah. Note to self, stop whining when ‘bad’ things happen to you.

Went to subi for the 5pm service today with oli, kristi and Andrew. Learned something interesting—i always thought that jonah didn’t go to Nineveh because he was scared of the opposition. It turns out, if you read the whole book of jonah, it’s because of his pride and his unwillingness to lose his ‘spiritual superiority’ over the people of Nineveh. He knew 100% that God would save these people if he went to preach the gospel to them and God turned their hearts. It was exactly that he was afraid of—that these people, israel’s ‘enemies’, would then be on equal footing with him. And that struck a chord with me because i’m a chronic overachiever. So much of who i am and my identity lies in my achievements and what i do that makes me ‘better’ than everyone else. Pride motivates me in so many ways—whether it’s doing things so that i feel superior, or not doing things so that i don’t feel inferior. And that’s wrong for 2 important reasons: my identity lies with and in Christ and not in anything i can ever do or be, and i have absolutely no reason to feel superior to anyone else on the planet because i am a sinner and i am loved by God exactly the same way that He loves everyone else—i have been saved only through His grace. And i am no worse or better than anyone else that i see walking along the street. It made me re-evaluate some of the things that are important to me and things that i may put above serving others or worshipping God with all my heart, and most importantly it made me think about how much of what i do—whether in terms of my everyday life, or even in my walk with God—is motivated by how i can get ahead, be better or stronger than others. So, food for thought.

Tomorrow: nat’s 20^th and bev’s 21^st. I should probably go to bed.

^‘May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.’
- Galatians 6:14

getting used to the fact that some things can never go back to the way they used to be.

----

i was saddened by the news today that someone we know from church has been diagnosed with melanoma of the eye. it's crazy how suddenly these things happen to people and i guess it just goes to show that we live in a fallen world. and why these things happen to certain people we'll never know, but all we can hope/pray is that God will bring them (& their families) through it, regardless of the outcome, stronger and Him. i know it's soooo easy for me to say this being a 3rd party observer and i honestly don't know what i'd do if it was me or a family member or something. but i do know that in these times where you have nothing but God, those are the times where you really see Him.

as the push towards exams comes, everyone is making a decided effort to cram as much as possible into their heads. we've got our big practical next thursday and i think people (myself included) are starting to panic about exactly how much we have to put in over the next 2 weeks to get ourselves up to the standard we want to be at. i was talking to a friend the other night about being in 1st year and some of the things we did and we realised that we really don't remember much about 1st year at all-- not only the academic side of it, but just like social stuff, like how we came to be friends in 1st year... and it seems like such a long time ago but really it was like 2 years ago. it's funny how with every year you think the amount of knowledge you've acquired is huge and you pretty much know it all (haha, the folly of 1st year) but the next year just proves you completely wrong and it's just this huge learning curve. it is amazing how fast this semester has gone. today marks the end of the 2nd last week of uni in our last year of full-time lectures/tutes/labs. next year is a whole new challenge.

There is a difference in what we long for,
what we settle for, and who we are meant for.

-The Notebook

how hard is it to reply? seriously.

i find myself a bit overwhelmed at this point of the semester with 2 midsems on the 30th september and our huge research proposal due the week after that. judging from everyone's frenetic study pace, 2 weeks is not going to be enough. along with oli coming back this week, bringing with her a flurry of activity, and church commitments-- planning for youth band, and various bits and pieces... it's going to be a tough time. but, as always, i know God will give me the perseverance, grace and energy during this time if i give my best for His glory.

i'm slightly discouraged by a couple things. sometimes i wish people could see the magnitude of what they're doing, of what they've committed to, and get serious. other times i wish people would value me instead of taking me for granted. but then i should take the log out of my own eye before removing the speck from another's eye. and everything i do, i do for the glory of the Lord and not for man's praise.

anyway. in other news OLI is back. it's so exciting. and i think it's been good for me, as i think i've said before, because it's caused me to see that we are 2 separate people and i don't 'need' her, so to speak. i missed her, but i had my own life. and i guess it's just reinforced the point for me that God has given us people to love, but our identity is in God alone and not in any other person or in how much fun we are.

ok i think i'll stop there. i'm tired and gotta look through a lecture before bed.

Anyone can make you smile.
Anyone can make you cry.
but it takes someone special to
make you smile when you already have tears in your eyes.