Owning Up to Helplessness

This post will seem paradoxical and coded with hidden meaning because it is as complicated as my situation:

In the past four days, I have fallen asleep to my nightmare world that was my last post.
I wish I would awaken and realize that it was just a dream, a bad dream.

Unfortunately, this is not the case.

This is one of the best spring breaks I've had in my life. I've gotten to be with the friends I love and do some really memorable things. But, inside, the consequences of last week still resonate within my head. As much as I am satisfied, as it seems, for the moment, I know that deep inside, I am only hiding the scar that I refuse to reveal.

After break, I realize I need to own up to my mentors. How will they react?
Will they judge? Will they disconnect their relationship with me?

Unfortunately, I can't go through life holding this burden inside of me, as ugly as it is. Something so ugly-- that I considered ending my life last week because of it.

I felt guilty, but that didn't stop the root problem or the recurring symptoms.
I worried about the medical consequences, but yet, the reality dulled quickly.
I thought about death, but I wasn't sure if I would meet it soon.
I thought about the people I had been sharing Christ with- the people I was pursuing right now, but I wasn't sure if I could continue without feeling like a poser.
I felt a disconnection from my faith, but I couldn't bring myself to address it.
I'm currently happy, but have no joy.

In the end, my dad also found out about the underlying issue, as I had previously hinted to it, though unintentionally. He offered to talk with me, but, I feel like it is my dad that is partly the cause of this.

I'm done with lying and deceit and creating a facade that only buries me deeper into the hole I have dug for myself.

The emotional side of my life is recovering, but yet my life as a whole, especially spiritually, is more of a mess than ever. I feel Christ-less, I feel empty, and I feel apathetic.


I need help. I have to own up, but why is it so hard?
Unfortunately, I trust no one, and even the ones I trust, I doubt will know how to help me.

Help?
Except none of you understand, except one person. And that one person can't help.

Help...

Failure On a Dozen Levels

I am ashamed.
I am hopeless.
I am a failure.
I am depressed.
I have felt loss.
I feel disgusting.
I cannot believe myself.
I feel like a hypocrite and fake.
I'm not sure I can call myself a Chistian.
I don't want to remember what happened yesterday.
I wish I could rewind and totally redo yesterday all over again.
I wish that my retarded human self wouldn't be so demanding and uncontrollable.


As I thought about how worthless my life was, I sat on my bed, ready to cry myself to sleep. Then I remembered the book that my parents had given me last week and strongly encouraged me to read. It is titled "Seeing Yourself Through God's Eyes." I only read the foreword, which said, "Without a doubt, you have great worth in His eyes."

But even after THIS?

I feel like I can now relate to people who wonder that with even the worst thing that has ever happened to them, that God would still love them and see them as worth something.

At this moment, I don't feel that way. There is a lot of personal reconciliation I have to do before I can even accept that this happened.


Even if you're one of my close friends, don't be offended if I don't feel like talking to you about what this post is about just yet. It may take a couple of months. There is a deep scar that has developed inside me. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to share with anyone. Just pray that I will find healing in the right way. And trust me, it's going to take a lot.


I haven't gone to bible study, Intervarsity, or met with my mentors for weeks and weeks. Nor have I done my devotions or read my bible in a long, long time. I feel church is not applicable to me, and feel like I only go because my friends go... Everything goes in one ear and out the other.
Plus, Sunday School is too long and not even that interesting or applicable. I hear lectures enough during the week anyway.
I have not practiced enough piano worth a crap, and I'm ridiculously behind in reading for all my classes- 7 freaking weeks behind in one of them!


I hate my life. I feel detached with God. And I feel guilty.

I am screwed. I am doubting. I am an idiot. I have made bad choices.

Midterms next week. Already behind, and now, I can't focus...

lost, lost, lost...

Where is the light at the end of the tunnel? Far, far away from here, I'll tell you that much.

FML. or rather, F my stupid decisions and stupid self.


Spring Break please come faster, or I'll die!

Uneasiness for the Future...

So call me paranoid, but I'm worried about my apartment next year. After what seems like a dozen rooming adjustments, the ball has finally settled. I am rooming with a random guy I don't know, and I know one of my apartmentmates half-decently. The other one drinks some (hopefully not a deja vu of last semester) and is very "close" (yes, in that sense) to his girlfriend. The environment is not exactly quiet, and generally, I was a little weirded out that my apartmentmate found me a random roommate so quickly and without really telling me.

But it's all college life right?

Wouldn't it be different if you knew how this would turn out in the end? That's exactly what discussion in my humanities class was about the past week or two. How do we know that we have free-will? Are we robots that think we have free-will but actually don't? A conclusion I came to was that we should act the way we do based on the fact that we don't know the future.

I'm a natural worrier. That is good in the sense that I am always prepared, but that is bad because it makes me stress out when I realize what I can't prepare for. After my friend called me and told me the roommate situation was officially set in stone, I thought to myself "oh crap!" But then, a very eerie feeling came over me. Not in a bad way, but in a soothing way, almost. A thought came to mind that God has a purpose for everything He does.

In Matthew 10:29: "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father."

Time and again, though I usually choose to fight it or ignore it, the purpose is still there. In this situation, I see everything that could go wrong, but God sees everything that could go right. In a way, it is as tough as addressing questions such as "why would God allow the Haitian and Chilean earthquakes?"

But, as mere human minds, we cannot comprehend the vastness of this. I was talking to my roommate about this last week. He was an intellectualist that had a lot of trouble accepting that God was real.

God really prompted me to respond to him in this way: "Just as we know there is a finite value to finding the integral to infinite limits in calculus, we know God is absolute- all powerful and in control of our perceptions of the events and world around us. We know there is an absolute truth because the subjective has no standard in which it is based, and yet still leads to opposing sides. Would you agree that there is either 'cold' or 'hot', and not something else like 'peanut butter?' Something is either moving faster or slower on the molecular level, not something totally irrelevant. Regardless of whether you think it is actually cold or hot, the fact is, there are two absolutes: faster or slower molecular motion. And those have an absolute too, as seen by the concept of absolute zero."

God is in absolute control. I realize I pretty much said that in my last post, but this post was a better organization of my thoughts. Plus, I just talked until 5 AM with my apartmentmate that I know well, and he made me realize just how big of a deal this was.
And over the next few months as those doubts and worries flood my head, I am going to need to beat that concept in. If I don't, the same thing that has happened to me all year will happen again- I will forget about God and try to do things by myself. As I've seen many times-- something that is all too dangerous to toy with.


-KKZ

Stepping Out of a Comfort Zone

Looking back two months ago,
I thought I had next year's living arrangements set. I had a bad first semester experience in the dorms, and really wanted to move to an apartment- with people I knew and slightly more tame then the previous bunch. Even better if they were Christians as well.

I ended up asking 3 non-music major friends that wanted the same thing. It seemed like we would get along really well. And I was excited!


A few weeks ago, it all fell apart.
Now, trying to scramble for the deadline for the cheapest rate (the deadline is next week), decisions have to be rushed forward. Going from "I have no idea what's going on", to "finalizing roommates" in the matter of a week! I'm not quite to the finalizing part yet, but I am fairly sure that I will be living with a bunch of music majors- most of which are non-Christian.
I know, opposite of what I had hoped for right?

Then I thought about this past week's InterVarsity message.
They were talking about how easy it is for us Christians to realize the need to act for Christ, but never doing it. Our staff leader, Jeremiah, made an analogy to chores around the house. He had spent all day working on the message for that night and writing support letters, and never really got off the couch. But, elsewhere in the house, there was laundry to be done and dishes to be washed. He said that he realized in his head that these things had be done, but still at the end of the day, they were not done, even when his wife came home.

Later that night, I talked with a close friend in the suite next door and we were talking about how so many of us Christians live a passive faith- myself definitely included. If salvation and Christ are that important, are we really going to sit around and make it of secondary importance? I mean, really, is it not much more important than trying to make an "A" on the next test?

Two weeks ago, a fellow Christian friend and I had to opportunity to have a spiritual conversation with one of our music major colleagues. The conversation went surprisingly well, but afterwards, our colleague became really apologetic because she thought she was wasting our time asking us her spiritual questions. My friend's response to this, though sarcastic, hit me with a dose of reality: "Really? I wouldn't spend time talking about matters of eternal significance with a friend I cared about?"
*****

Back to the living situation for next year.
I think God's plan wasn't for me to live "comfortably" in a little Christian bubble (not that there's anything wrong with living in that environment). But, I think this is a little shove from God telling me to get up and do something for him for once. No, I don't really know my roommate that well, but there is obviously a purpose that he was the "candidate" that surface in the middle of all this decision-making mayhem.

Once again, God works in the weirdest ways. I'm nervous, but also excited about how this is going to play out...


until next time,

-KKZ

Music as a Language//Support from the Unexpected

(A Double Post)

In my last post, I talked about the deterioration of our language- How, our use of words have really shifted the meanings and intent of the original words.

In the same way, I see the trend of music following a paradigm shift that has both good and bad qualities.

You might agree with the statement that "in our world of increasing 'instant-gratification,' the quality of many things has dropped significantly." (and if you don't, then you won't agree with what I'm going to say next.)
For examples, just think of fast-food, instant diets, or tv dinners (all of which are either not good for you or just flat out don't work).

Juxtapose that idea over the music industry and world music trends. Yes, there is a lot of catchy and appealing stuff out there, but how much of it actually lasts? Lady Gaga may be on the top 10 list (Billboard), but in 20 or 30 years, just how many people will still be listening to her music? Or Taylor Swift?

Obviously, there is a type of music that a lot of people like to just chill out or relax to- I get that. But just the fact the music of today is so fleeting and seemingly shallow, really concerns me."Simple" and "catchy" is NOT the same as "rashly thought out" and "mindless," which is unfortunately the product of trying to get rich through music quickly without actually making real music. We don't fully understand the drive of the mass-producing media and its amplifying effect on the music. A song like this might have a few good parts, but when the media takes it and blows it up, it looks like something way greater than it actually is. Sometimes it's not even about the music- it's just the fact that some popular celebrity wrote it. I venture to guess that if Taylor Swift wrote a piece of junk song, everybody would listen to it anyway. Of couse, that has been the way music has been marketed over the past one or two hundred years- the only way to make a living is to get it popular, but what I'm talking about is the recent precedence of "image/perception" over the music itself. An artist's image and his/her song should go hand-in-hand, if first, the song is well-written. Anything is else is just a well-known face slapped onto a CD cover.

Or maybe it's the people that are changing too? That we're ok with anything nowadays, and that music is reflecting that perception??

I was going to try this experiment on a friend, who really didn't like a certain type of music: Play him something from that composer, but tell him it was a different famous composer that he liked. I haven't done it yet, but I am 99% sure that he would have liked it just for the fact that he thought it was NOT written by the composer he didn't like.

I feel that because of the direction the music industry is taking everything in, soon music will become as obsolete as the words we use- Not necessarily losing it's meaning, per se, but very much decapitated in full value and effect.

(*disclaimer: I'm not being a snob about music, nor am I trying to bash on artists- I listen to some of this music too, aside from the fact that my main problem with most modern music is the lyrics; but I'm just pointing out what I see in the trend since classical turned to pop/rock to hip-hop to now and everything in between.)

In the end, all I have to say is this: Music is like words in that it conveys a heavy meaning, both implied and not implied. Play different types of music for a baby and see how the baby reacts. Obviously, music DOES SOMETHING to your body, to your soul. That's why God gave it to us. That's why the angels SING praises. If there's anything I've learned about music throughout high school and college, it's that.

If you yourself are a musician, I encourage you to keep making music with integrity, no matter what genre you're in. God gave it to us, so make music with meaning. Even though that is what many musicians did try to market their music through public appeal back then in the 1800s and 1900s, for some reason, the music they made was still quality and thought out, unlike much of today's music.

///////////////////

On a totally unrelated topic, I just really want to give thanks for two of my brothers and sisters in InterVarsity. It shocked me that one of them sensed, without me telling her, that I had a lot of struggles going on- confronting me with it.

Thank you so much for praying for me and being the people I can lean on during this time. I realize it's not going to get much easier, but it is amazing to know I have a brother and sister that will turn me towards Him.

It's things like these that make Christian fellowship integral, whether you're in high school, college, or working. It's not a worldly answer that they can provide, but literally an out-of-this-world answer.

To be the hands and feet of Christ: you may touch someone's life without knowing it.


-KKZ

America in the Eyes of an International Student

I recently moved down the hall to escape the prison of reckless and often drunk roommates. My new roommate is a Vietnamese international student. We'll call him "Sam". Now, I've met international students, but none that I've actually lived with or had to really get to know well. Sam is the first. And especially not one that was absolutely foreign to America. In fact, there is not a day when I don't get asked "why do Americans do ____?"

Having lived in America all my life except one year as a baby, Sam made me realize just how desensitized and assimilated I have become in American society.

He asked me "why do you say 'what the heck' or 'oh my god'?"
"Aren't they bad words?"

Even without really knowing the meaning behind the slang, my roommate clearly noticed that something associated with those phrases conveyed something negative. How many times have I said that in the past day? 10 times? a hundred?

All too often, myself included, we all say things without thinking twice. And when confronted about it, we respond by saying "oh, it's no big deal, I don't mean it."

Then what has become of the way humans use language to communicate? If half the stuff we say, we don't mean, then has the purpose of language been disparaged?

This doesn't just extend to language, but our culture, actions and attitudes as human beings. Liberalism is innovative on many levels, yes, but it also leads humans down a very slippery slope with many chances to fall. My roommate not only exemplified an outside example of American language, but also many other aspects of a culture that has gone terribly wrong?

How do you respond to something like "Why do Americans write 'motherf*ck*r' on the desks in my english class? Why are Americans so rude?"

I have yet to read a book I bought at Urbana: "Why the Rest Hates the West." Just the title itself is pretty self-explanatory. It's even more misleading, as so many people from other countries think that America is a "Christian Nation."

Just something to ponder next time you consider what it means to be "American." What can we do about this, on a personal level? Even though you may not affect the rest of the nation, how do people around you view you as a Christian? There is no doubt that you will someday run into a "Sam." How will you be a light to him in the dark world?

Hopefully this post got you thinking about taking on a different perspective- one that is very often overlooked.


-KKZ

Can't take it anymore...

Sometimes, you just have to learn to say "no."

I have never been one to say "no" a lot. So this is just going to be plain hard.

I'm having a lot of trouble trusting God. It's so easy to say, but so hard to do when things get tough.

And I'm also having trouble trusting that I won't be stupid and do stupid things. Like overbooking my schedule so badly that I have to schedule time specifically to "breathe air."

Read part of Job today. I know I'm in an oasis compared to him, but one can't help but relate to him in the slightest. I feel that way tonight. And probably will this whole week.

My post makes no sense. It's been a long day. And I can't even type in the right tenses.
Whatever.

Goodnight.

-KKZ

P.S. I'm sorry that my posts have been neither insightful nor substantial. In fact, looking at the last one, some stranger might think I'm emo. But nevertheless, this is going to be a really hard month...

... more later, when I'm somewhat sane.



**********************
post update: sometimes God speaks quickly and sometimes he speaks slowly. Literally right after I posted this, an answer came.