Reflections March 10, 2024

Things I have been learning about Yahweh:

There is some significant relationship between love and sin, and saying that they’re in some sense opposites doesn’t cut it. The orthodox faith believes that Jesus is perfect love – and it is perfect love that can enter into the power of sin without being affected by it. I feel like I will be munching on this with regards to my own faith formation for a bit.
I remember when my fiancé and I were having difficulty finding a place to move in together after we get married. He was about to head home, and I just stared at this opening in the gray-tinted clouds at night. I mostly stared in hopelessness, but also with some breaths of desperation to the heavens, because I was feeling really discouraged about our apartment search. I didn’t exactly pray in that moment, but my heart and soul was definitely in a place of pleading. My fiancé have different preferences of what would make a place a home for each of us, and there was some of that happening during our apartment search, but also just finding places that we knew were not good fits for certain reason. I started thinking that maybe we should move out further from the original zip codes we were considering, and started to consider other places further out. That was Saturday night.

The next day, Sunday, we looked at a few more places. One of them really stood out to us and it was in the area we would have preferred to be. We asked for and filled out the application quite promptly, anxiously waiting if it would be accepted because we really liked the place. Thankfully, the day after we took a look at the place, our application was accepted and the lease has also been signed. I’m sure there will eventually be more imperfections we find with the apartment, but I thank God for answering our prayers, spoken and unspoken, about this new place that we are both excited to begin our new life together. I still tie all of it to that Saturday night where I stared off into the night, a mystery who provides whom I can’t explain, which has always felt like the right way to describe God.

Things I have been learning about people:

I feel like this is something I’ve shared as a reflection before, but people being acknowledged isn’t enough to help them into restoration and wholeness. Acknowledgement needs to happen and celebration of them needs to happen.

Things I have been learning about myself:

Lately, a verse that keeps coming into my mind lately is “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, but few things are needed—indeed only one”. With wedding planning, trip planning, and finally signing a lease that both my fiancé and I like, I have a lot to be preoccupied about in my head (as a side note, I love the gentle, compassionate way that TheChosen series portrays this moment between Jesus and Martha, which is how I’ve been receiving this verse in my heart lately… and I say that because some people belonging to the greater western church have seen this moment as more scolding). I’ve been wondering what this ‘indeed only one’ is looking like for me in the midst of all of the things to keep track of. A huge grace that I have right now, at least in the beginning of March this year, is that schoolwork and work-work is not too heavy right now, giving me some mental, physical, and emotional margin which I really would not like to take advantage of.
As the wedding is coming up, I’ve been realizing that my notion of a friend has not been the same as it was for most of my life. Granted, much of that is appropriate. I am in my 30’s now, and the people I consider good friends are scattered throughout the country. However, I am noticing because of the almost dysfunctional dynamics I had with friends growing up, it is difficult for me to consider a new person I meet a friend, and I’ve become not very comfortable with the wording of a ‘best friend’. I know there’s nothing wrong with me in feeling this way, but it is something that I’ve been noticing. Wedding things are bringing up a lot of things in my heart in general, as much as I am excited for it .