2008, here I come!

You know, it probably says a lot of bad things about me that it took Mom promising to take up knitting to get me to blog, but there you have it: weekly blogs from now on, as per my end of the bargain.

A lot has happened this year, most of it not so fun, but here at the end of December I can look back and see the refining work God has been doing in my life; and believe me, there was plenty of dross to be skimmed off, and plenty more where that came from. I've realized that I needed to get some things straightened out in my own heart and in my daily walk with the Lord, people and habits I needed to get free of, and complacent laziness that needed to be dealt with, before I can be ready for the work God is preparing me for, and before I can become the woman he created me to be. It's been a tough year, but now all's said and done, I couldn't be more grateful for His loving grace to save me from not only Hell in death but anything short of Heaven in life, His perfect plan for me, not the pretty good one I'd wind up settling for if He didn't love me enough to save me from myself.

I've spent AD 2007 discovering who I am and who God is, and rediscovering the great need for prayer and fellowship in order to experience the vibrant and abundant life my Father had intended for me from before the foundation of the world, and will continue on this journey of discovery, self- and otherwise, through AD 2008.

Speaking of which... (Stop rolling your eyes; you knew it was coming...)

Resolutions to Break in 2008

1. Post a new blog at least once a week

2. Go to bed earlier

3. Pray more fervently, more effectively, and more often

4. Get back in fellowship with other believers my age and stop being such a hermit

5. Start running on a regular basis

6. Start saving money

7. Stop buying stuff

8. Add more traditional Japanese foods to my diet

9. Finish my Sailor Sweater

10. Stop waiting until the last possible minute to do my Women's Inductive Bible studies

See, now I've started, I don't want to stop, and I have so many things to blog about: the awesome stuff my awesome family gave me this awesome Christmas, the awesome fleece sweater I sewed for Mystery with my awesome new sewing machine, the awesome results I'm seeing after several sessions with my awesome personal trainer, my awesome plans for redoing my bedroom, my awesome "Specialtea" recipe using awesome teas I found this December and Silk light chocolate and vanilla soymilk...

But alas! all this will have to wait for a later post (and a photo shoot now that I finally have batteries for my digicam). So for now, I bid you adieu.

I'm Still Alive, I Promise!

Oh my, how time has flown by since I last posted here. I'm sure anybody who sees this is wondering

what on earth could be wrong with me to make me so slack in keeping up my obligatory blog, and for once I do have several legitimate reasons... But I must admit: mostly, I just didn't feel like it.
Let's see, what has happened since August sixth?
1)I'm working on a sweater I designed in hopes of a perfect fit and a Vogue Knitting-worthy design; 2)I haven't been called on to volunteer but a few times in August, and not at all since September; 3)my brothers and I were given a fairly steady fulfillment job by my dad's boss to be done at home for very good pay; 4)I dragged my family into joining LA Fitness; 5)I've been adding to my bento collection (I promise pictures as soon as I get batteries for my camera!); 6)I got my first real credit card (pink, with Hello Kitty, no less! ^v^) and was recently approved for a very nice (very free) checking account so I can stop paying my dad to pay my bill from his; and 7)Women's Inductive Bible Study started back up in Romans.
Prepare yourselves, faithful readers: this one's a doozy.

The Sailor Sweater
I came up with the idea almost by accident, actually. I was toying with the idea of knitting a kimono-inspired sweater and quickly realized I would also have to design it, as I was immensely dissatisfied with the existing patterns available. So one day at the beach as I flipped through my Vogue Knitting: The Ultimate Knitting Book for tips (I got it because of the sizable chapter on design), stumbled across the section for collars, and was immediately drawn to the sailor/midi collar, reminiscent of those super-cute Japanese schoolgirl uniforms, and since I was already planning on a v-neck sweater, the idea was just perfect, and my design was completely redrawn.
I ordered fourteen balls of Knit Picks Swish DK (100% superwash merino wool) in Dusk, a bright navy(ish) blue, and one in white for accent, knit a gauge swatch, printed out graph paper in exactly the right proportions (knit stitches are not quite square, they're a bit smooshed from the top), took my measurements, and started drawing.
Here's an early sketch before I decided on a color, and here's my test swatch:












































The whole thing is going to be knit in this unbelievably soft Dusk (which looks much less royal and much more navy blue in person), and the parts colored in the sketch are where the textured seed stitch pattern seen on the edges of the swatch will be placed. I will later embroider in a white trim around those edges and sew on beautiful gold buttons with anchors on them. God took the picture I'd had of them in my head and made sure there were real (and inexpensive!) buttons to be had; isn't He the sweetest Daddy ever?
Here they are, wrapped in the swatch to mimic the finished look of them being sewn into the textured trim:

I've also added vents to the back and to the sleeves, the latter having the smaller decorative buttons holding them together (two reasons: 1) I never unbutton my sleeves anyway, and 2) I forgot to knit in the buttonholes ^_^;). The collar also will sport a small button in either corner for decorative purposes only.
Currently, I have finished the back, both fronts, and the left sleeve of the sweater, and have only the right sleeve and collar left to be knitted, and then the assembly. After the sweater itself is finished and many artsy pictures taken in and around Newport Beach, I will rewrite the pattern and redraw the charts so that they may be easily understood by anybody else, and they will be sent off for submission to VK and Knitty in hopes of publication. Ooh, or maybe in a book or something. I'm finding myself increasingly dissatisfied with the knitwear design I've seen in books and magazines, and discovering that just maybe I might be able to do something about it. God help us all.


The Fulfilment Job
What was once a sporadic rush of envelopes, booklets, cards, boxes and packing tape has turned into a steady stream of activity around our house, between my dad, my brothers, myself, and, lately, my mom. And since the boys bought a TV to replace the one that died in the game room downstairs, we are no longer limited to only the family room or to a single program, movie, or game (as played by someone else, obviously) to distract us from total boredom as we stuff envelopes. The money is pretty nice, because the boys are both saving up for cars and stuff like the very nice HDTV they just bought to go with our (I pitched in too) Xbox 360 for playing Halo, my parents are looking at future home improvement projects, and I am happily spending most of mine almost as soon as I get it (and until I tightened the loose screw in my head, sometimes before ^_^;) on specialty groceries and phthalate-, paraben-, and carcinogen-free personal care products (gotta love Burt's Bees!), bento boxes and accessories, Sanrio stuff (I'm a sucker for cute) for a buck at Target, baking stuff for a buck at Target (okay, maybe I'm just a sucker), dishes, and presents for my family. The latter are by far my favorite expenses, and I have grand plans for my youngest brother Nate's upcoming birthday at the beginning of Christmas shopping season especially. Christmas...? Well, let's just say I'm keeping my options open. (Read: "I have no idea what to get anyone!")

The Gym
I love working out. I really do. I don't know why, but for some reason, when we get to the gym, I like to really push myself. For example, on Saturday it started raining as soon as we got to the beach for our bike ride so we came home and went to the gym to ride theirs instead. I just felt like running at first, so I started on a treadmill and wound up running a mile in 9:11! That is a big deal for me; my last record run was over a minute longer! Since we've started, I've noticed a reduction in some of my measurements, which although they may affect the fit of my sweater once it's done, are immensely encouraging to me after a loooong plateau.
Mom and I go four days a week, and would go more were it not for church services both morning and evening on Sundays and Wednesdays, and for our bike rides on Saturdays, and I absolutely love it! My brothers come with us often, and my dad comes occasionally (because of work and stuff lately, it's been hard for him to make it). We have a lot of fun, and I really enjoy having something we can all do together as a family. Here's a shot Mom took of me on the assisted dip/chin-up machine with her cell phone:

















At the time I was not amused, but now, after seeing the shot, I can better appreciate the long and lean silhouette produced by the stretching effect of the machine. (^_~)


I will post more on some of the other subjects later, especially on my studies in the book of Romans, but right now Mom just got home from grocery shopping so I really need to get in the shower so we can go to the gym soon.

Psalm 12

God is just so good! I came across this beautiful psalm in my reading the night before last, and Mom came across it randomly yesterday twice; it so speaks to my situation and brings comfort while expressing my utter disappointment and frustration with some of the "Christians" I know... To think that the Creator of the universe cared enough to highlight these verses for me at a time when I so need encouragement... it just blows my mind.

Psalm 12
To the Chief Musician. On an eight-stringed harp. A Psalm of David.
1 Help, LORD, for the godly man ceases!
For the faithful disappear from among the sons of men.
2 They speak idly everyone with his neighbor;
With flattering lips and a double heart they speak.

3 May the LORD cut off all flattering lips,
And the tongue that speaks proud things,
4 Who have said,
“With our tongue we will prevail;
Our lips are our own;
Who is lord over us?”

5 “For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy,
Now I will arise,” says the LORD;
“I will set him in the safety for which he yearns.”

6 The words of the LORD are pure words,
Like silver tried in a furnace of earth,
Purified seven times.
7 You shall keep them, O LORD,
You shall preserve them from this generation forever.

8 The wicked prowl on every side,
When vileness is exalted among the sons of men.

Is honesty really the best policy?

"Open rebuke is better
Than love carefully concealed.
Faithful are the wounds of a friend,
But the kisses of an enemy are deceitful."
--Proverbs 27:5-6
Chuck Smith wrote a short commentary on this passage in my Word For Today Bible:

"Faithful Wounds
"A person who is really your friend will tell you what you need to hear, even though it may be painful. The wounds that come from a friend are like the wounds of a surgeon; they are designed to heal.
"If your doctor does a biopsy on you and finds cancer, he knows that it will hurt you to learn you have cancer. I f surgery is required, he knows that will be painful, as well. But what kind of a doctor would allow you to continue to walk around with a disease that will kill you because he wants to spare you the pain of dealing with the sickness? You could sue him for malpractice.
"There are many things in our lives that if they are unheeded will destroy us. They call for radical surgery; and a true friend will point this out to you, even though they know they are risking hurting you in the process. The word of God is like a two-edged sword. It cuts us, but it is always cutting to heal rather than to destroy. 'Open rebuke is better than love carefully concealed. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.' "

Unfortunately, sometimes it will cost the friendship. But if following Christ meant only doing what you want to do, everybody would be a Christian. ("Then He said to them all, 'If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.' " --Luke 9:23)
If only it didn't have to come through me!

"By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." -John 13:35

People ask me quite often why I don't have any friends or seem to mind terribly, and why I'm not in different ministries at church to "meet people" and make friends. I tell them I'm best friends with my mom and that I enjoy just hanging out with my family, and that I really don't mind not having other friends, because I just don't have the time or whatever crap comes to mind.
The truth is, I don't have friends because they won't have me. I have nothing to offer as far as social standing goes, no money to speak of, nothing in my life of great interest, average conversational skills at best... Whatever their reasons, most people at church don't care to have me, so I have shielded myself from their inevitable rejection by withdrawing completely from the social scene. The only time I do anything without my family is when I volunteer in the Office for a scant four or five hours, usually making phone calls in seclusion. When I am free to talk, only the Interns are even close to my age (all of them are over twenty, and I just turned a very boring nineteen); the only conversations I have are with adults. Very rarely do I get to talk with the Guys, and even then, they're just, well... guys.
It's been this way almost as long as I can remember. I connect well with adults, can get along reasonably well with guys, and not all that well with other girls. I've never had a single real friend. The best friends I've ever had were boys. Maybe because they weren't subconsciously competing with me, maybe because their thought processes were simpler, maybe even sometimes just because they thought I was cute; whatever the reason, whenever the tolerant clique of the moment "downsized" it was me who was always "let go".
I spent years in constant fellowship with kids my age utterly ignored by everyone around me, screaming inside for someone, anyone, to reach out and save me from my loneliness, but they were all too busy chasing after the popular people to stop and say hello to a nobody like me. So beautiful, so superficial, so fake, so hypocritical; the more I saw of my peers, the more I was able to convince myself that my lifelong search for friendship wasn't worth it. Things only got worse with the birth of MySpace; I was appalled at what people would post about themselves and others, the sin they would not only inadvertently expose in their own lives, but flaunt so brazenly, and in disbelief at how these kids were allowed to remain in ministry, accoladed and promoted for their "godliness". It just made me sick.
So I tried a home Bible study close by, led by one of our youth leaders, frequently by many of those in prominent places in ministry. I attended for over a year, and never did find acceptance among the phony hypocrites that they by and large turned out to be. I was always there, but they didn't seem to have room in their cliques for me.

Today I heard That One Guy In Particular talking to another intern how he was hanging out at the beach with some of these very people yesterday, and I thought my heart would stop. Does he know who these creatures are? After watching them all these years, I can see that they are exactly the kind of users he has been dealing with his entire life as The PK at our church; why would he open himself up to that again? Is it simply that since we in the Office turned out not to be that way like he had originally assumed, he has let down his guard completely? Or was he really just one of Them all along?

People ask me a lot why I'm not in fellowship, why I don't seem to care whether or not I have any friends, and social life whatsoever. This is exactly why.

"But I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you." -John 5:42

Japancast.net Frappr Map

The Last Christian Generation?

It would be difficult, if not impossible, to verify the alarming statistics floating around about how very soon only 4% of Christian teens will become Bible-believing Christians, but while the claims certainly have an alarmist ring to them, the findings should not be all that surprising to those who are watching for the Lord's return. The Bible speaks of the pervading wickedness of the Last Days, and of the Great Apostasy of the Church shortly before the Rapture and the End; we should have seen this coming, right?
Wrong.
The reason this has crept upon us so suddenly is that in fact, it has not. We as a nation have, quite simply, failed our youth. We have failed to raise them by the absolute teachings of the Bible which we claim to believe so strongly, and so they have been exposed to far too much of the world to come away unscathed, purity and innocence lost as we have thrown them to the dogs. Instead of living up to our responsibility as parents to protect them from the attacks of the enemy and train them up in the ways of the Lord, we have opted to act as "peerents," attempting to be their friends. Assuming that we have no say in where they go, what they do, and who they do it with, the media they are exposed to, and the things they are able to get away with, we think that perhaps by not passing judgment or punishing them, they won't rebel later, and will develop a closer relationship with us because of our trust in them. Sadly, this hands-off approach to parenting is what the Bible calls "hatred" of our children. They desperately need strong leadership and mentorship, and yes, discipline and boundaries, most especially during their turbulent teen years. Without it, they feel lost and abandoned and are left to their own inexperienced and naive devices, as vulnerable to the deceptions of Satan as they could possibly be. As a result, they rebel even more radically, resenting their parents for their apathetic lack of guidance and real love.
We have failed them in our education system, teaching them that they are nothing but accidental animals in an accidental world, and so they act on what they have been led to believe. We dump them into a corrupt and failing public school system that not only fails to teach them academically, but fills their minds with political propaganda telling them that being a Christian is stupid, childish, narrow-minded, hypocritical, and ignorant of the truth, and teaching them instead that our country was founded on principles of "taxation without representation" when it was founded on freedom to practice their Christian faith; that the universe is the result of the explosion of literally nothing and that they evolved from sludge and are no better, only a little stronger, than animals, when the Bible tells us that we were created by the hand of God in the very image of God; that since they were bound to have sex anyway, they may as well know how to use a condom; that it's their right (nay, responsibility to society) that they get abortions to murder their babies without their parents' consent, thus perpetuating moral decline and horrific patterns of sexual abuse, usually by older men...
We have failed them even in the Church, coddling them with a watered-down, cheap grace version of the Scriptures, never challenging them to grow up and mature in their faith and responsibility in accordance with what should by this time be their extensive knowledge of the Word, mirroring the secular world in nearly every way.
If only 4% of our Christian youth remain safe in the Lord, it is our own fault, and only we can turn the tide.
If indeed it is not already too late.

Links:
'Evangelicals Fear the Loss of Their Teenagers', New York Times
'Good Morning Students', Author: Bruce Malone