Oh Look, It’s my Birthday!

Hey there, Birthday Girl, Wow, it’s been thirty six years I’ve known you. We went through quite a few rough patches there in Middle School with the zits and the braces and the little pudge- pudge on your changing body. Then in High School, when self consciousness threatened to crush us, we pretended to be…

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Finding the Face of God

Over a meal, my daughter wondered what God looked like. She figures we’ll find out when we get to heaven. *PSA for Sunday School Teachers: do not threaten the gospel on children. As in, ask Jesus into your heart otherwise HELL.* If all we speak of the good news is a salvation to heaven, children,…

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First Time Donating Blood

My hands and feet got cold and clammy. My knees became a bit weak and I felt faint and on the verge of passing out. This was BEFORE I gave blood for the first time today. I was one of those kids who was deathly afraid of needles. My mother wrote notes citing religious reasons…

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Extraordinarily Ordinary

Who is breaking the internet today? Which viral post is infecting your newsfeed right now? Clickety clickety click. Website copy is designed as click-bait; our attention is being vied for every which way. It is getting increasingly difficult to focus on what is primary. Drama sells. Scandal sells. What is ordinary does not. As a blogger,…

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The Un-Spiritual Retreat

How’s everyone doing, y’all doing alright? One week until Christmas, anyone becoming undone? No? Good, I’m glad. I, am on vacation, and am slightly delirious about it. I hit a low point last week, in which I physically emitted a deep groan in response to life. Nothing major, just reached the brink of sanity and…

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Selfless Good Deed?

“Where charity stands watching and faith hold wide the door the dark night wakes – the glory breaks, Christmas comes once more.” – Phillips Brooks Non profits ramp up their marketing efforts during the holiday season in order to benefit from the time of the year associated with giving. Something about the lights and the…

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Expat Thanksgiving

This is my 12th Thanksgiving to celebrate with my American family. It is bizarre trying to create a family tradition I did not grow up with. I am Chinese and I don’t really like turkey, unless it looks like this:   This is what I DID grow up eating – traditional Taiwanese cuisine – turkey…

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Rough Drafts

*Last month, I linked up with the beautiful Sheloves Magazine on the theme of #create and they were gracious to include a snippet of my post, Beauty in the Margins, in their October Zine (I especially loved the pretty pink I found my entry printed upon). Incidentally, their November theme is #margins so I am excited to…

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When the Ground Shakes

The Chinese describe it as “地牛翻身“,alluding to a mythical ox living underground turning its massive body. Really we know it is the friction movement of tectonic plates. Depending on the type of movement and your location, one experiences the earthquake differently. Sometimes it feels like a gentle roll, as if the ground beneath us is…

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