Experiencing God’s Love

Reflecting on Psalm 63 where David says that God’s love means more than life itself. Pretty powerful statement there…

I know His love can only be experienced. What a waste to protect ourselves from this love and miss out on the only opportunity we have to experience this love, this side of eternity.

God’s love, yes, will destroy us. But is that so bad? After all, in this fallen world, in this fallen flesh, what are we hanging onto that could possibly be better than His unconditional love???

I will trust

Sitting in the park, talking about the future. Before us the children play, chase each other, occupy themselves with new marvelous things to learn… The sun begins to set, parents call for their little ones. Minutes later one little tyke is left alone playing around the round spinning thingy… “Is he yours?” asks a parent… “No, he is not.” I respond. Then where are his parents we ask each other? Looking around there is no one left in the park besides us and this lonely tyke. Are people really this crazy? What are we going to do? The sun keeps falling, the cool night breeze sets in and finally from behind a tree a young and foolish mother appears, coming to collect her child. Obviously she had been drinking or even worse, using some drugs…

If the sound of a heart breaking could be heard, I am sure my heart breaking that night could have been reported on the nightly news… Without any concern, she picked up her child and walked away into the distance…

Why God? I will take him, and care for him. But I stop myself and sit back down to calm down and look at the empty and dark playground… I close my eyes and feel His grace.

I know You are with me.

The Creative Process

for those who know and for those who don’t

click here:

The Scenic Route

A Desert in the Forest

A few days ago I was taking a ride with some friends up to the top of a mountain and we decided to take the scenic route. The weather was not the best for mountaineering that day, but nonetheless we all held onto the hope that our journey would pop us out and above the inclement weather, on top of the clouds. Windy mountain roads curved to a fro, my friends explaining to me the history of the areas we were driving through. It was surreal and I had a hard time connecting even though I wanted to.

We passed through thick furry trees, you know, the kind winter loves…

Fog rolled around each branch on the trees and laid low around the ground while our car cut a path through the mist. The tree line came to a sudden halt and the in front of our car grew a large green meadow, rolling up and down and on the other side of it, where the horizon draws its infamous line, the end of the world…

How can there be a desert in the forest? In other words, what am I doing here?

Looking and listening to my friends while the clouds sank beneath the road, the beautiful blue sky appeared and I heard inside of me, “Mish, look where you are; you are sitting in a traveling oasis, and ascending. Drink this in. I have given you what you need in this time.”

Who knows what life will be like 10 years from now, the thought makes me shutter a bit… But one thing I know, I am learning…

Why we don’t know about the God who loves us…

Just a little ding, that’s all…

Confession: I bumped a parked car while parking today…

My first thought was, “oh no!, I really don’t have time to wait around for a police officer who would probably make me run around the city 5 times to solve the problem. The rules for foreign drivers are obnoxious here.”

My second thought was, “well, maybe nobody saw…”

Then I noticed that no one was around, so with a relieving exhale I continued parked next to my victim. Thankfully, no damage was done it seemed after a close (yet, nonchalant) inspection. Moral of this story, I am still a selfish human being whose instinctual reactions say a lot about how I am still a “work in progress.”

It seems like my glory days of thinking I am the master of driving through narrow crowded streets has come to a pit stop and needs some maintenance! Oops!

Yes it’s funny, this (below) could be me or you! Ya Nevah Know.

When words fail to rise

I never thought the process of language learning would stretch me so much, most of all, when I am within a conversing group of people who suddenly turn to me, pause, and say the following…

… so what do you think?

… do you have any thoughts, feelings, comments to add to this?

… isn’t that true?

… does she understand what I am saying?

… tell me about these deep things please

me the introvert wants to rebel against what I am about to say, which is only a 10th of what I really want to say. But, ah… oh well, just spit it out. I am not going anywhere for a long time, there is time left… right?

Lost but not forgotten

I write this lament for God’s sake, to glorify Him, and confess my sin of walking away from my calling as an artist… In recent days, My wonderful Creator has stirred inside of me the very thing that has been dying, my gift of dance and the use of it through these artistic eyes. I have become dull, afraid, monotonous, and most of all… impoverished with an adopted utilitarian view of my life and purpose… So I lament, repent, and write this to glorify Him, who has not abandoned me but has encouraged me, rebuked me and rekindled within me, the very clear gifting of dance and His desire for me to use it again, in a truthful and sincere way…

I began reading this book yesterday, Art for God’s Sake, by Philip Graham Ryken. Here are the gems I have plucked from it:

Chapter One, Art and the Church

• There are many reasons why churches have a negative view of the arts. Art trades in images, and images easily lend themselves to idolatry. Artists know this from their own experience. In their work they encounter the glory at the foundation of things, and they feel its power over the heart.
• Generally speaking, they (churches) were not opposed to the use of art, only its abuse.
• Art is as fallen as any other aspect of human existence.
• Over the last centuries or more many artists, writers, and musicians have become increasingly cynical about the possibility of knowing truth. In many cases, they have abandoned the quest to discover and express transcedent meaning. Art has also suffered the tragic loss of sacred beauty, as many modern artists have been attracted instead to absurdity, irrationality, and even cruelty.
• a good deal of contemporary art is the art of alienation, which, if it is true at all, is true only about the disorder of a world damaged by our depravity. God can use transgressive art to awaken the conscience and arouse a desire for a better world. But as a general rule, such artwork does not reveal the redemptive possibilities of a world that, although fallen, has been visited by God and is destined for His glory.
• The question becomes therefore, whether as Christians we will aspire to high aesthetic standards.
• (Kitsch) this kind of art dishonors God because it is not in keeping with the truth and beauty of his character.
• Art has tremendous power to shape culture and touch the human heart. Its artifacts embody the ideas and desires of the coming generation. This means that what is happening in the arts today is prophetic of what will happen in our culture tomorrow. It also means that when Christians abandon the artistic community, we lose significant opportunity to communicate Christ to our culture.
• When we settle for trivial expressions of truth in worship and art, we ourselves are diminished, as we suffer a loss of transcendence. We need to recover a full biblical understanding of the arts – not for art’s sake, but for God’s sake.

Chapter Two – The Artist’s Calling

• If the opening chapters of Genesis portray God as a creative artist, then it only stands to reason that the people he made in his image will also be artists. Art is an imaginative activity, and in the act of creating, we reflect the mind of our maker.
• When God calls us to do something, we are to trust that he will also give us whatever we need to fulfill that calling.
• Artists are called and gifted – personally, by name – to write, paint, sing, play, and dance to the glory of God.
• God generally calls us to serve him in ways that resonate with the holy desires of our hearts. But passion alone is not sufficient… and artist must be strongly gifted.
• This call should be pursued, no matter what sacrifices are required.
• But one thing artists should never do is abandon their calling.
• The life of the artist – is a life of daily dependence on the grace of God, with constant prayer for his blessing.

Chapter Three – All Kinds of Arts

• (in the creation of the tabernacle, Exodus 31) We should notice that Bezalel and Oholiab produced three major kinds of visual art: symbolic, representational, and nonrepresentational (or Abstract) art.
• Symbolic art uses a physical form to stand for a spiritual reality (ex: ark of the covenant)
• Representational art imitates life by portraying a recognizable object from the physical universe (ex: pomegranates on priestly robes)
• Nonrepresentational art or abstract art is pure form (ex: colorful curtains in the Holy Place, or the shape of the physical spaces that made up the tabernacle complex)
• so-called secular art is an exploration of the world that God has made, and therefore has its place in deepening our understanding of God’s person and work.
• What Christians tend to dismiss is abstract art… yet, abstraction has God’s blessing as much as any other art form.
• As Christians we are not limited to crosses and flannelgraphs, or to praise choruses and evangelistic skits. These simple forms have their place in the life of the church, but God wants all of the arts to flourish in all the fullness of their artistic potential.

Chapter Four – The Good, the True, and the Beautiful

• God’s aesthetic standards include goodness, truth and beauty. And these standards are not relative; they are absolute. A Christian view of art this stands in opposition to the postmodern assumption that there are no absolutes.
• Art is an incarnation of the truth.
• Art communicates truth in various ways… its tells a story… in the form of propositions… it can convey emotional and experiential truth.
• Modern and postmodern art often claim to tell the truth about pain and absurdity of human existence, but that is only part of the story.
• The Christian approach to the human condition is more complete, and for that reason more hopeful. Such celebration is not a form of naive idealism, but of healthy realism.
• Christian artists also lament the ugly intrusion of evil into a world that is warped by sin, mourning the lost beauties of a fallen paradise. When truly Christian art portrays the sufferings of fallen humanity, it always does so with tragic sensibility, as in the paintings of Rembrandt. There is a sense not only of what we are, but also of what we were: creatures made to be like God.
• Even better, there is a sense of what we can become. Christian art is redemptive.
• Christian artists know there is a way out.
• But where they (things) have been spoilt or warped by sin, then the Christian must show by his life, his words, his action, his creativity what God really intended them to be – Hans Roomaaker
• Today it seems as though the art world is struggling to overcome an aesthetic of ugliness.
• A good deal of Christian art tends to have the opposite problem (only showing beauty). It tries to show beauty without admitting the truth about sin, and to that extent it is false – dishonest about the tragic implications of our depravity.
• Think of all the bright, sentimental landscapes that portray an ideal world unaffected by the Fall, or the light, cheery melodies that characterize Christian life as one of undiminished happiness. Such a world may be nice to imagine, but it is not he world God sent His Son to save.
• Our art must be in keeping with the character of our God
• Nor does it mean that Christian artists never portray anything ugly. We have truth to tell about the ugliness of a fallen world. Indeed, Christianity offers the best explanation for that ugliness in tis doctrine of depravity: the world has been spoiled by sin.

Chapter Five – Art for the Glory of God

• Christian theology of the arts is that art of for God’s sake
• When bible scholars try to find a spiritual meaning for every detail (of the tabernacle features) they are missing the point. Some of the artistry in the tabernacle was art for art’s sake, in the full and proper sense of that expression.
• When we experience art, therefore, we must always ask the question: Whom does this glorify?
• Anyone who doubts the tendency of artistry to become idolatry needs only to read on into Exodus 32, where, while Moses was up on the mountain to receive God’s commission for the tabernacle, Aaron was busy fashioning a golden calf for the Israelites to worship as their God.
• How can artists avoid this mistake? By acknowledging their artistic ability as a gift from God. The composer Igor Stravinsky wisely said, “I take no pride in my artistic talents; they are God-given and I see absolutely no reason to become puffed up over something that one has received.”
• This does not mean that all our art has to be evangelistic in the sense that it explicitly invites people to believe in Christ. To give an example from another calling, the way in which a Christian who makes cars glorifies God is not by painting “John 3:16″ on the hood. Rather, he glorifies God by making a good car. Similarly, the artist glorifies God by making good art, whether or not it contains an explicit gospel message.
• Another way to say this is that art can be Christian without serving merely as a vehicle for evangelism, or for other forms of preaching. Such a utilitarian perspective impoverishes the arts.
• Creation always reveals something about its Creator.

Chapter Six – Beautiful Savior

• What we believe about art is based on what we believe about God.
• If God has such a passion for the arts, then we should expect him to reveal his artistry in the plan of salvation. But here we come up against a shocking reality, namely, that the center of God’s masterpiece of salvation was an event of appalling ugliness and degradation. This masterpiece was the cross where Christ was crucified for sin, and there was nothing beautiful about it, and least not in physical terms. The crucifixion was an ugly, ugly obscenity – a twisting, bleeding body of pain. (read Isaiah 53)
• What God sent him (Jesus) to do was grotesque. How can we explain this? Why would the God of all glory and beauty do something so ugly, and then make us look to it for our salvation? The cross screams against all the sensibilities of his divine aesthetic.
• This is not how the story ends, however. God did not simply leave his son in death and decay. No, he’s much to good an artist for that. His design was to transform ugliness into beauty… raising Jesus from the dead and giving him a glorious resurrection body more beautiful than anything we can imagine. That body still bears the marks of the crucifixion… but those ugly wounds have been transformed into glory.
• Whenever we are tempted to be discouraged by the ugliness of our sin, we need to remember that we are still a work in progress.
• By his (God’s) grace, one day the best of artists will take everything that has been disfigured by our depravity and transform us into people of beauty who will be a joy forever.
• Francis Schaeffer describes a mural in the art museum at Neuchatel painted by the Swiss artist Paul Robert: In the background of this mural he pictured Neuchatel, the lake on which it is situated and even  the art museum which contains the mural. In the foreground near the bottom is a great dragon wounded to the death. Underneath the dragon is the vile and the ugly – the pornographic and the rebellious. Near the top Jesus is seen coming in the sky with his endless hosts. On the left side is a beautiful stairway, and on the stairway are young and beautiful men and women carrying the symbols of the various forms of art – architecture, music, and so forth. And as they are carrying them up and away from the dragon to the present to Christ, Christ is coming down to accept them.
• What Robert’s mural represents is the triumph of beauty and the redemption of the arts.
• As Christians we should lead the way in reclaiming the arts and restoring them to their true purpose.

There is before me, a long road… filled with sharpening my skills again, as well as battling the fear that keeps me captive. However, I am hopeful that this place of dullness I am in is just a place on my personal journey of redemption, in which I hope to emerge from, carrying my form with me up that staircase to Jesus…

Spring cometh…

After a long long long winter today I retired my down filled coat and pulled out the box of Spring clothes. I believe Spring is here, even though the other night is was cold and rainy and the next day snow was visible on the mountain tops that surround this city trying to burst forth into signs of Spring. One sign are the cherry blossoms. They are everywhere! Knowing more about this culture as I saw them, some pink, some white, I began singing a song in my head and then  I realized that it is a folk song that somehow crept into my memory. And that is awesome. Cultural adaptation is showing signs in me that I too am emerging from a looooooooooooong winter!

Snow is falling on the blossoms & fruit:

My HSG experience (Hysterosalpingogram)

I thought I would give an honest report of my experience having a HSG test recently. First and foremost, for those of you who are preparing to have this test done, please take some form of pain-killer before you have it. I didn’t and that was my mistake. Also, maybe this post will be a little TMI for some people, FYI…

I will not use this blog post as a rant as most do when it comes to telling their own story about the HSG test. I did a lot of reading before my test and the range of women’s experiences went from “a dreadful horrific experience” to “just another routine test.” So I really did not know what to expect.

Our bodies all respond differently to this test as I quickly learned…

12:30pm: I show up and immediately am asked to go pee because the bladder must be empty so that they can get a good view through the X-ray.

12:31pm: My awesome husband shows up, ready to stand by me the whole time or at least be in the room with us. We sit in the waiting room talking about other things than the test.

12:42pm: The 2 nurses call for me and I enter the examination room, greet my doctor and then strip down from the waist like usual.

12:45pm: The HSG procedure begins… I lay on the table top, feet in stirrups, a nurse on either side of me and the doctor sitting near my bottom in his swivel chair ready to begin. My husband was asked to sit near the desk about 10 feet from me. I look over at him and he smiles and nods his head, assuring me that he is with me. I even see his lips moving slightly and I know that he is praying underneath his breath.

Nurse #1 tells me not to worry and that from their experience this should be like a regular check up. I laugh and say, “yeah I hope so,” but I suspect that it won’t be and begin to prepare myself by breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. I relax my entire body and try not to tense up. I notice that my hands want to fist up, but I open them up and place them, palms down, on my chest.

The doctor begins to insert various objects into me and at first everything felt ok, like a normal routine pap. Then the catheter slid into my cervix and ouch, now I began to feel a slight discomfort, like a pinch or small menstrual cramp.

They asked me if it hurts and I respond that yes it does but it is nothing too horrible, then the doctor tells me that he is ready to inject the dye and prepares me to feel some more pain.

immediately I began to feel pressure in my uterine area and my body responded through more heavy cramping. The doctor tells me that the dye is freely flowing into the right fallopian tube but the left is blocked. He tells me that it is going to hurt a little bit more, but that he needs to inject more dye to force the left tube open. I take a deep breath and say ok.

He began to inject more dye and immediately the cramp increased and I turned my head to find my husband. He was sitting there looking at me, he smiled and blinked his eyes slowly to reassure me that all is going to be ok. The pain increased even more and I could feel tears starting to well up in my eyes. I looked up at the ceiling and continued to breathe keeping my hands and legs in a relaxed position. My palms were sweating. The pain continued to get worse and worse.

Very quickly the doctor said, “yes! we have a success! the left tube is now open!” When I heard that I thought, “good, now get this equipment out of me!” He proceeded to remove everything and the nurses came to me with damp towels to wipe my forehead and tell me how everything is ok, and the testis now over.

1:00pm As I lay there happy that the test is over I began to feel nauseous and the pain of the cramps became even worse than during the test. I start to breathe deeply again and turned on my side into a fetal position. By now, my husband is right by my side and he took my hand and rubbed my back. I could sense that my blood pressure had dropped and that my pulse was slower, mostly from the shock of the pain. I tried to sit up but couldn’t, the pain was too strong so I laid there for another 10 minutes or so… The whole time the nurses are checking on me and the doctor never left the room. He was busy looking at the results and would come every few minutes to check my pulse. It did slow, but not too low. It bottomed out around 60-65 and stayed there.

I told everyone in the room that the pain was not getting any better and that I felt really sick to my stomach. The nurse came over to me with a puke pan and encouraged me to just vomit. I never thought encouragement could be used to help someone vomit but as soon as she said that, I did. Thankfully, since I fasted before the test there was not much to expunge.

1:15pm I started to quiver and was cold from the sweat so the nurses came back over with cloths to wipe my head and arms. My husband held onto my hand and spoke soft words of encouragement to me. Nurse #2 came over and gave me a shot of something, a pain-killer I believe, per the doctors orders because he was surprised at how my body was reacting to the pain. Bless him! (My husband said the needle was 4 inches long! But I could not feel a thing since I was already in so much pain). Afterwards, they laid a thicker blanket on me and when my body warmed up, I rolled from the fetal position onto my back, knees up and feet planted just below my hips. I began to gently rub massage my belly in a circular motion starting from my navel and down and around my uterus and back up to my navel, all while breathing and relaxing (or trying my best to relax).

1:30pm I finally had the energy to sit up but felt very light headed from fasting. The nurses themselves dressed me and I shuffled over to another bed and lied down while my husband conversed with the doctor about what happened. I laid there listening and asking some questions, and feeling relieved that the worst part was finally over.

1:45pm The doctor takes my pulse and blood pressure for a 5th time and it has finally risen back to a normal level and I am free to go.

2:00pm Maybe it was emotions but I felt a sudden burst of energy and decided to walk back home instead of take a cab. We thank the doctor and nurses and walk out with a sense of satisfaction that all that pain was not for nothing. He was able to open up my fallopian tube which is pretty cool to know. We talked about what happened and for the most part, we were both elated and were giggly all the way home.

2:30pm We arrive home (I walked a little slower than usual to be careful) and the weather was so beautiful that taking in the rays of sunshine during the walk was definitely good for me.

The next day: I woke up feeling a little bloated but nothing too terrible. I walked a little slower just be careful but was not inhibited from going to work. I even walked to work and did some normal running around errands after work.

Today: All is back to normal. I read over the results of the test and am excited to know that the fallopian tube opened up, and that is one more step closer to having a child someday!

So that is my summary of my experience having completed a HSG test. I hope this gives you a clear understanding of what happened to me. Again, every woman’s body will react differently to the test, mine just happened to me really bad, but staying positive about it, I am happy to have completed it. My only regret is not taking some form of pain medication before the test. So if you are planning to have this test done, prepare yourself and remember that it is all for a good cause