Entry # 6: Praise God for Best Friends and Accountability Partners!

On thanksgiving day this year, I had so many things to be thankful for: God's grace, love, and provision the past year; the way He has romanced me by revealing more and more of Himself to me, resulting in my increasing love for Him; my family; my friends. I could list a lot, but in this post I want to write about one specific thing I was very thankful for this year: the friendship and accountability of my best friend (of 15 years and counting!)Roxanne.

I guess the story starts about 2 weeks before thanksgiving, when, during one of our phone conversations Roxanne and I decided to make a commitment to hold each other accountable for some things that were hindering us from growing closer to God. During that conversation, we planned to meet on thanksgiving Eve (when she came home from school in SD) to discuss our plans further.

When thanksgiving Eve came, Roxanne and I spent over 5 hours catching up: from around 7 to past 2 in the morning! What made that night so special was the fact that we were able to share openly about struggles in our walk that we hadn't shared with each other before. We were surprised to find that the very things we were so afraid to share with each other and the very problems that we thought we were facing alone turned out to be problems and struggles that we were BOTH going through! For the first time in 15 years as being friends, we were completely transparent, and it was the most beautiful thing ever.

A wise man once said that a good friendship is a place of spiritual refuge. In other words, it's a place where one can find comfort, be honest about everything, receive exhortation when necessary, and find encouragement to move towards higher intimacy with God and that's what I've found in my friendship with Roxanne. I praise God for you Roxanne, and I look forward to the way God will use our accountability plan to help us grow closer to each other and to Him.

A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
Proverbs 18:24

Entry # 5 : Lessons from my haircut: What I learned about vanity, and true love.

"Love is a commitment towards imperfect people, seeking their highest good." -Pastor Peter Tanchi

The Friday before thanksgiving, I was not preparing for thanksgiving week by having a thankful heart and counting my blessings. Instead, I allowed the bitterness and anger of that day to not only linger, but I nourished it with negative thoughts. Let me explain.

I have been trying to grow my hair out for the past six months. After a long period of having short hair, I decided to try long hair. Haha. I'm realizing as I write this just how petty this was, but bear with me. I have had many bad haircuts. For example, the person who cut my hair before this haircut cut the hair long in the back and short in the front. It looked a little off. After six months of growing it out, I decided to even it out again, and my mom recommended her hairstylist, "Kathy." I was hesitant, because Kathy is Vietnamese, and doesn't speak English fluently, and I wasn't sure how easy communicating the kind of haircut I wanted would be. My mom assured me she could speak English, so we went. Long story short, Kathy cut it, but instead of following my request to make my hair one length all the way around, she gave me the same haircut that was short in the front, and long in the back, only shorter. Not only did I receive the same haircut that looked semi-awkward, but I felt as if I had been forced to backtrack in my efforts to grow my hair out. I was annoyed. Actually, I wasn't just annoyed. I. was. ANGRY! RARRRR! I spent the next few days wallowing in self-pity, giving my mom a bratty attitude, and even building up hatred towards Kathy. I mean, at one point, I even purposely pulled two sweaters off of their hangers at Target. Pretty ridiculous. I mean, really? Who does that?

That Sunday, Pastor Peter Tanchi spoke on the topic of love and how it is a commitment towards imperfect people, seeking their highest good. I was so convicted. My love for everyone I come into contact with (and that group definitely includes Kathy) should reflect the love that God has shown me. Because He loves me, I am able to reflect His love to others. God displayed His love to me that day by speaking to me in a very personal way through His Word, despite the fact that I had had the most rotten attitude the past few days. That day, God revealed that I really needed to do four things: repent from the sins that I had committed the past few days: my bad attitude towards my mom, my vanity, hypocrisy and my anger, forgive Kathy for not cutting my hair correctly, and be thankful for His unfailing, perfect love for me and share that love with others.

Praise God for the fact that He never gives up on us.

Entry # 4 Conviction: God hasn't given up on you.

My accountability partner is not answering her phone. (You know who you are. Haha.)
What a perfect opportunity to write!
So. Today's topic. Conviction.

I like conviction.
No, I don't mean that I love the feeling I get after falling short of God's glory. Nor do I mean that I seek out feeling convicted by purposely sinning. That would be ridiculous. What I mean is, that in the lowest parts of our spiritual walks, after we have failed our holy God, conviction isn't something to be resisted or feared, but rather embraced and appreciated. So, maybe you could say that I appreciate conviction, not like it.

Let me explain.
On one particular occasion while being convicted of my sin, I was beating myself up for failing God yet again. But in the midst of that, God was able to show me that the purpose of the Holy Spirit's conviction wasn't to make me feel like a hopeless failure. It was to encourage me. The fact that God was convicting me was evidence of His love for me and the fact that He hadn't given up on me. The prodding I felt in my Spirit was God's way of saying, "You're going the wrong way. Come back to Me. Follow Me." And the fact that he knows every sin before I even commit it, and still decides to love me, convict me, and save me shows just how crazy His love is for me. And I am so thankful.

Entry # 1: Lessons from a bear

Get it?



A little over two months ago, at senior retreat, our speaker left us something to ponder. "Everything is spiritual." And for some reason, while I was in Washington from July 15th through August 1st, I thought about those three words a lot. I'm not even quite sure what our speaker wanted us to get out of that particular message, but I do think that by focusing on his main point, I was more aware, more attentive to how God was working around me. And he certainly was working while I was in Washington.


It was probably about halfway through my trip when I found The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel in my aunt's living room. I had already read part of The Case for Christ, but this sequel seemed more interesting and relevant to some things that I'd had on my mind for a while.


I've always had a hard time understanding why God allows certain things to happen, and an even harder time trusting God in the midst of those occurences. However, by reading through Strobel's conversation with Peter Kreeft, things became a little more clear, and my weak faith became a little stronger.


Peter Kreeft used the example of a bear and hunter to explain our inability to understand how our finite human minds cannot understand God's infinite mind.

"Imagine a bear in a trap, and a hunter, who out of sympathy, tries to liberate him. He tries to win the bear's confidence, but he can't do it, so he has to shoot the bear full of drugs. The bear, however, thinks this is an attack and that the hunter is trying to kill him. He doesn't realize that this is being done out of compassion.

Then, in order to get the bear out of the trap, the hunter has to push him further into the trap to release the tension on the spring. If the bear were semiconscious at that point, he would be even more convinced that the hunter was his enemy who was out to cause him suffering and pain. But the bear would be wrong. He reaches this incorrect conclusion because he is not a human being. Now, how can anyone be certain that's not an analogy between us and God? I believe God does the same to us sometimes, and we can't comprehend why He does it anymore than the bear can understand the motivations of the hunter. As the bear could have trusted the hunter, so we can trust God."

So, the difference between us human beings and a bear is far less than the difference between us and God. Conversely, the difference between us and God is greater than the difference between us and a bear.

I can't and maybe never will be able to understand everything about God's character and the way He works, and why he allows us human beings to go through certain things, but this is a start of something that drives me to dig deeper (pardon the cliche) and to strengthen my, as of now, pretty weak faith.

And even when I can't understand, I can trust.