I’m having too much fun… finally striving for what is ahead.

Every little step I make is one step away from where I started. Sure, it’s turning out to be not such a straight line away from where I was… but at least, “vectorial”-ly speaking, I’m moving somewhere.

God, thank you… Continue to open my eyes and fuel me to crawl, walk, run, fly…

With as little bitterness as possible. Please?

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

When I read through from verse 4, I start keeping score about how much my love for others fall short of what is really love. Let me just point out a few minor baby tiny little infractions.

NOT envy? Please. I see how other relationships are growing stronger, while some of mine are dwindling, and it eats me up inside. I wonder things like why can’t I be there for so-and-so and why I can’t have this friendship with what’s-his-name. Completely bogus. Again, pride in wanting more and more and more and more.

NOT boast? NOT proud? NOT self-seeking? Um, let’s just move on. There’s nothing more to say here other than I know I’m trying to… God’s fixing it every day.

NOT easily angered? I’m angered as I write this right now, thinking about how I anger myself and others. “Bitterness” requires even more attention, it seems.

No record of wrongs… I keep records so much, in fact, that I keep records of how I keep records (for example: did I blog it? did I write it down in my notebook? did I write it on a scrap piece of paper? what was I feeling when I wrote it down? WHY THE FREAK AM I DOING THIS?) It’s my pride, again, at play here, trying to be in control of the WORLD.

Always protects… always trusts… always hopes… always perseveres. I remember memorizing verse 4 and 5, but it’s so easy to let verse 6 and 7 (especially 7) fall by the wayside. I’m not sure why. But really, there’s so much in this verse.

Protects. Trust. Hopes. Perseveres. Lessons are flying towards me at the speed of light. To love someone… requires to be able to protect, to be able to trust, to be able to hope, to be able to persevere… I’m not even a fraction of the way to understanding and applying these concepts.

Wow… why is the Word so Good? It’s almost too simple, and yet… so infinitely difficult…

Of course, as I’ve grown, judging others has died down. I’ve been seeing people more and more for who they are, embracing the negatives and positives equally: Part of loving people is to accept, but at the same time, strengthen and sharpen one another. (Proverbs 27:17)

But I can’t shake this nagging self-judgement… the standards are high for myself to continue to do and not do certain things. I consider highly the opinions and feelings of those that I choose to love and those that choose to love me.

An older brother of mine rebuked me… and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Stop focusing on the “Dah!”s. Focus on “Blessing”s and just accept the “Dah”s. It’s not going to be gone until either I die or Christ returns… it’s just my sinful nature. Even with a billion excuses…

This viewpoint on my sin has been changing me. Retreat really helped me to see that as I see things more and more through the eyes of God, I start to think less and less of the ways I fall, the ways I sin. Rather than focusing on getting rid of the problem, I need to choose actively to seek out the solution.

It seems like it’s an easy way out: It almost seems like I’m avoiding the problem, at times. But really, the solution is clear: I’m not going to be rid of these sins. Judging others. Lying. Coveting. Lusting. Pride. Judging others. Judging others.

But it comes back to this… I’ve been set free by God. I’ve been redeemed through Christ.

Application from this lesson? I’m going to go to MP daily. No more of this “but I don’t want to because other people will think of me this way or that way”. Forget that. To grow… to be blessed… this is what I want. Yes, prayer is doable all over the place.

The problem with the way I’ve done morning prayer is that I went downstairs, avoiding all the people. No longer. I’m going to pick a spot. And not move for an hour. I want to hear the words, the grunts, the sighs, the tongues, the cries… of my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, and be amazed. See, that’s why I should go. Not because of just what I’ll be doing… but being a part of the community.

If you’re going to judge me, trust me on this: I’ve judged myself to oblivion. You can’t do any further damage than what I’ve done to myself.

This is it. Yet another day. Yet another month. Yet another year. It’s time to fight. Fight myself.

So this is the way that I say that I need You This is the way This is the way

That I’m learning to breathe I’m learning to crawl I’m finding that You and You alone can break my fall I’m living again, awake and alive I’m dying to breathe in these abundant skies

Hello, good morning, how ya been? Yesterday left my head kicked in I never thought I could fall like that Never knew that I could hurt this bad

I’m learning to breathe I’m learning to crawl I’m finding that You and You alone can break my fall I’m living again, awake and alive I’m dying to breathe in these abundant skies

So this is the way that I say that I need You This is the way That I say I love You This is the way That I say I’m Yours This is the way This is the way

I tried bolding passages that applied. But then I realized… wow, the entirety of this song speaks volumes. All the way from the “good morning” to “I never thought I could fall like that/Never knew that I could hurt so bad” to “You alone can break my fall” to… okay, what am I doing.

The most important part: “I’m living again, awake and alive/I’m dying to breathe in these abundant skies”.

Somehow… God instilled within me a sense of greater peace than I’ve ever felt. All the bitterness, the sorrow, the anger… it just disappeared. I feel alive.

I saw how wrong I was. I saw how selfish my desires were in all of my relationships. Now the only problem is… I can’t tell those people.

Love through silence. This has got to be the hardest kind of love I’ve experienced. That and to love through all things.

Thank you, LORD.

Tomorrow starts yet another day, another month, another year… whatever frame of time you want to call it. A fresh beginning is coming. My regrets are nothing new, but through it… I get to say that I need You.

This song is going to be on repeat for a LONG time.

I’m now proud to say I’ve made up my mind about JoshKim.org and the direction I want to take with it.

It will now be a blog focused on the life of a Christan computer nerd, with interests ranging from technological issues to personal finance to business concepts to user interface design to Asian cultures, with a sprinkling of really bad humor and horrible sarcasm from time to time.

That’s it! That should be plastered on the index.php of this site.

See… this is why it was so hard to redesign this site… If you don’t know what the book is actually going to be about, how in the world do you design the cover? What the freak can you do with shapes, colors, and lines?

Slowly, I’ve been making changes to the site. I’ve made RSS feeds available through feedburner, I’ve made sure that technorati tags are working… I might start integrating some other Web 2.0 services (meebo me? mybloglog? what what what?)…

Also… what good is a blog without content. I’ve been trying to change my writing style into a more “you”-oriented style. I think, during the days of JKmain.com, I thought I was “selling out” if I wasn’t writing purely for myself, and just letting the readers in on the fun. Silly JK… it’s been years since that happened…

I’ve realized that I want… no… need to make my mark in the community. What community, you ask? Well… the blogosphere is quite large. Not only is there are large number of different groups of people, there are quite the overlap in these groups. It’s amazing to even think about it.

I’m not going to just go ahead and throw away my personal entries all together… I’m just going to start structuring them a little bit more into ways that people can… I don’t know, read and find out things about me.

So that’s my conviction. Now… to find the time to make the cosmetic changes…