First Post

I guess I haven't posted in a month even though I said I'll try to at least once a week. That failed as school work piled up and procrastination took over me. I would always think, "I can do this later. This is not that important," and a week always ends up passing quickly. Similarly, I've been becoming lazier and lazier about doing homework and going to class. I can feel myself waking up later and later or feeling like I don't want to get out of bed. This is what usually happens every semester around this time, but I was determined to change. Even though I feel like being lazy, I am constantly pushing myself (with the help of others) to not be lazy and get out of this loop. The truth is I don't like to be lazy either. So I am starting this again, so that I can constantly push myself to procrastinate less and be on top of things.

Starting couple weeks ago, I realized that I wasn't very reflective. Well, I knew this from before, and part of the reason why I started this blog was because of that reason. But, starting last week, I felt the need to push myself to be more reflective. As I was in DT groups and sharing about how God spoke to me, there was something not full about my sharing compared to other people who shared after me. In a way, I was a little jealous and envious towards the people who were able to share really well, but most of all, I was frustrated at myself for not being able to reflect. I began to feel more distant from God, and there was this conflict between what I wanted to do and what I was able to do. What I wanted to do was to reflect and dig deeper, but what I was able to do was just reach a dead end while reflecting.

I'm glad that I confronted my leader about this issue. All these times, I knew that I wasn't really reflecting too much, but I think my pride stopped me from approaching him and pretend that I was good. It was hard asking him for help. After service on one sunday, I was going to talk to him, but I became a coward and stopped myself. That would usually be the end of it when I wanted to talk to my leader, but this time it was different. I went back to him and asked for help. He sat me down and asked me a lot of questions about why I couldn't reflect or what I was doing. Most of the answers that I gave were "I don't know." I truly didn't know too much about myself.

He told me that he struggled with the same issue when he was a sophomore, and the thing that helped him reflect was to keep digging deeper and not being satisfied with the answer that I was giving. He walked me through some reflection questions that I can keep asking to myself to go deeper. What I had to do was settle on one topic and keep examining my thoughts and dig deeper by asking different questions. "What motives did I have when I did this?" "What are some specific ways that I am this?" "Why did I want to do this?" Then, he went through an example passage with me and asked me the same exact questions, and I was told to answer. By doing this, I could tell that I was reflecting better.

Honestly, this past few weeks have been hard in two ways. It was hard just reflecting and thinking of those questions constantly and not being satisfied with shallow answers. But it was hard when I DID reflect and revealed some parts of my thoughts. It really hurt my pride because I thought I was a good person, but by reflecting and examining different motives, I am truly evil inside. "For all have sinned and fall short of glory of God" -Romans 3:23. I am indeed a sinner.

Looking back, it wasn't that I didn't know about myself. It was that I didn't WANT to know about myself. I was always afraid of digging deeper and finding out the motives behind the things i did because I knew that I was evil inside. Now, I am not afraid to look inside because it has to be revealed in some way. Through that, though, God works in us to mature us and make us complete. I am happy that I am reflecting more. I still have long ways to go, but now I am not afraid.