.

at the risk of continuing my streak of 'i'm tired'-type posts and sounding too much like i'm whining...I think I really need to reevaluate life, in general, and see what's really up. I don't know if I can really keep up with this lifestyle much longer. Sigh, at least I'll be graduating in 3 weeks and won't have to think about schoolwork anymore....(eep!).

unstifle me!

I think I kinda know why I feel so stifled...

...more to come

weekend getaways!

oh man. I love getting away from the city. Being in lovely PA this past weekend was awesome -- one highlight of the retreat was just basking in the glorious sun while overlooking the pristine river and thinking about life & slowly dozing off in a chair in calm serenity.

This weekend, I'm going down to DC / Maryland to visit my brother, HS friend, and extended family for some FISHING and just good company. Eeks can't wait.

July 4th weekend is gonna be a patriotic trip up to BOSTON to pay dear Mallory a visit! Wheeeee. Good times await us!

:]

1 Peter 1:3-9

³Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴and into an i n h e r i t a n c e that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, ⁵who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. ⁶In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. ⁷These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. ⁸Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy,⁹for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Man, this is such music to my ears and comfort to my heart... just gotta keep preaching it to myself.

chefs are stubborn

One thing I've come to realize, especially this past week, is that cooks are very prideful and very stubborn. I'm no exception. Currently in class, we're in a unit of "individual desserts" (aka plating individual-portion-sized desserts with the works -- aka. desserts served with tuiles, ice creams and sorbets, fruit compotes, sauces, coulis, other random garnishes, etc.) One of our biggest "projects" is to create an original dessert menu of 8-12 desserts, complete with recipes and execute it smoothly, and it's a lottt harder than it may sound. There are many components that must be taken into account with creating a menu -- first, the restaurant, its vision, theme, customer type, price range, feel, etc etc etc. Then, the food itself -- seasonality, covering all your bases of different types/flavors of stuff, feasibility, practicality, etc.

Soooo...our assignment a few days ago was to come up with 10 desserts for our school's restaurant, l'ecole. Then, we wrote our top 2 on the board and had a total of 36 desserts with everyone's contribution. Chef then told us that we had to go around and start vetoing desserts until the top 8 were left. We each took turns picking a dessert we didn't like, saying why we didn't think it was appropriate, having the creator defend their dessert, then the next person in line voting to say whether it stayed or went byebye. And of course we would want to see our dessert stay up there, so defend your butt off for that thing!

Oh. My. Goodness. That was a tense afternoon. Attacks, grudges, judgments, anger...It was just not pretty having to argue with 17 other people about what we thought was right. Actually..if I really think about it, I'm probably one of the other 4 people who REALLY got defensive. The rest had opinions, but I don't know how many of them actually got angry about the things that were being said... (I know I did, and I know my partner did. And since we had different opinions about stuff, it has just been a REALLY tense week between the two of us, having to work together and all.)

It's really bad, actually. I know that my pride is something that I wrestle with, and especially when it comes to things like these where I really 90% believe that I "know" better than my classmates, it just ... is a bit more out of control than normal. Add to it the fact that I'm pretty tired, therefore probably am not thinking 100% straight and am more easily irritable, I'm a little disgusted seeing myself like this. It's a real challenge to recognize this as sin, repent, and change my behavior, when it would just be easier to keep going at it because I just want to win! I must learn to show humility, resist criticizing, and take a blow to my pride. My pride has been tearing away at my soul, and this whole exercise and all of our emotions have been counterproductive to our morale, productivity, and efficiency. I actually have dreaded going to class because of the ugliness that I feel in these situations...

So...what to do? I know. I gotta pray that God will radically transform my heart to be one of grace, patience, humility, and servanthood. If I can't show this kind of behavior in the classroom, how will I ever show it in the working world and elsewhere? And, what would this say about my effectiveness as a witness to those around me? These tough situations are really showing the true nature of my heart, and boy, my heart has got to change.

Before his downfall a man's heart is proud, but humility comes before honor. Proverbs 18:12

yikes.

in the past few days, I've:

- stabbed my finger with an exactoknife

- given myself a HUGE papercut on my finger

- sliced off part of my fingernail peeling mangoes [ it hurts a lot... :( ]

- bruised my leg in several places running into the subway turnstile stand (the stationary-block thing, not the turny thingy. you would wonder how someone walks into that!!!)

aaaaaaaaand today, I dozed off several times while sitting on a bench in the subway station, reading a book, killing time before work. People walking by looked at me funny :(

poops.

my not so hypothetical question

What's worse --

1) feeling super tired while doing homework late at night, knowing you have to wake up early to a full day?

or

2) feeling super tired when waking up early in the morning, knowing you have a full day ahead?

I personally can't decide. There is no lesser or two evils here...

dreams

If I could just spend the bulk of my life being a full-time mom & wife , a part-time caterer, and having people over for good company and good food, I think that would be a pretty sweet life.

Afternoon of Desserts

We, the level 3 Pastry students, would like to invite you to our

Afternoon of Desserts

Friday, June 11, 2010 at either 1PM or 1:45 PM

I have unlimited invitations, so if you want to come and eat a lot of desserts, email: rsvpdesserts@frenchculinary.com by Wednesday, June 9.

This event will take place in the 4th floor dining room of our building (located on the northeast corner of Grand St. and Broadway).

COME!!!

Redemptive Time

I've been trying to get into reading more books lately, thanks to a bunch of recs from my siblings. It's been an awesome introspective journey and eternally-minded-shift so far, and I want to be able to share some cool things with you too.

(taken verbatim from Changes That Heal by Dr. Henry Cloud, pages 39-41)

"The first couple existed in eternity with God in the Garden of Eden. There was no such thing as evil, or at least Adam and Eve did not know what evil was. Things were all good.

The Bible tells us that "God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground -- trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food." But in the middle of the garden were two significant trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of god and evil. God told Adam he was free to eat from any tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

But Adam and Eve did not listen. They ate fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and something terrible happened. For the first time, things were no longer "all good." Humankind "knew" both good and evil. The Hebrew word from know here is the same word that Scripture uses when it says that Adam "knew" Eve in the sexual sense (Gen 4:1 KJV). It refers to the total experience of knowing. This experience of knowing evil -- and therefore pain -- is what God had tried to protect people from. He knew that it would hurt.

Nevertheless, Eve was deceived by Satan. Satan held out the apple of omniscience and wisdom (Gen 3:6), and the first couple received evil and pain.

Imagine, for a moment, the situation. God had created a perfect place with perfect creatures to live in eternity. And, suddenly, evil arrived on the scene. What did God do?

God said, " 'The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.' So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life" (Gen 3:23-24)

God moved immediately to protect humankind from being in a state of eternal isolation, experiencing pain for a very long time. To protect Adam and Eve from eternal pain, he drove them out of eternity, guarded eternity with a cherubim, and sent them to a new place called redemptive time, where we live now. Here God could fix the problem; he could undo the effects of the fall. He could redeem his creation, and then bring humankind back into eternity after it was again holy and blameless.

What an awesome plan! He even gives us a clue in Genesis 3:15 about how he would accomplish this: The woman's offspring would eventually crush the serpent's head, a promise fulfilled in Christ's victory over Satan. No wonder the writer of Hebrews calls it "so great a salvation." God not only kept us from eating from the tree that would have trust us into eternal pain, he drove us into a place where he would have the time to fix us and bring us back into relationship with him!

Philosophers and physicists have for centuries debated the nature of time, but for our purpose, let's define redemptive time as "an incubator that exists for the purpose of redemption." It is a place where God can lovingly fix what is wrong. It is a lace where evil temporarily exists while God does his work.

Think of it another way. God has a sick creation. He needs to do surgery. Thus, he places us in the operating room of redemptive time. Into our veins he pumps the life-giving blood of grace and truth. During surgery, he excises evil and brings the renewed patient back into eternity in a holy state. We don't know how long this surgery will last. We only know that we are expected to participate actively in our own surgery, and we don't get any anesthesia for the procedure. That's why growing up into the image of God often hurts so much.

Redemptive time, an essential ingredient to growth, will not last forever. Paul says that we need much to make the best possible use of time, for we don't have much: "Be very careful, then, how you live -- not as unwise, but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil" (Eph 5:15-16). Scripture tells us that God will at some point put an end to this redemptive time and usher in the return of eternity."

stifled

is it just me, or does anyone else feel like there's something about NYC that's just...stifling?