Hello friends,

Greetings from Austin!

This past week, a lot has happened.

I watched Ip Man for the first time!

The patience and gentleness Ip Man showed in the movie really exemplified characteristics of a man who wisely stewarded his talents. Also, the martial arts he executed in all his battles were so cool. It gave me a greater perspective of the historical admiration of martial arts, as well as helped me understand why people love Donny Yen so much, so I too have joined (though a bit late) the Donny Yen Hype train.

Hoping to watch Ip Man 2 this coming week. ✌️

Additionally, I started to post on Insta-stories! (Follow me @lordshallprovide21)

Originally, I didn’t enjoy posting on Instagram because I felt I would become too self-conscious and become obsessed with my own self-image. But recently, I started to interact on there more often and reconnected with a lot of friends there. I also enjoyed people’s stories and their audacity to utilize the platform to creatively share their lives.

Inspired by my friends (as well as intrinsic motivations of being better at sharing stories and parts of my life) I took a leap of faith back into the Gram to share my Quarantine cooking ventures and “feels bad moments”.

And though I still wrestle with my self-image and spend too much time trying to adjust a single piece of text’s angle just to send the right tone and message, I’ve been able to learn a different way of expressing myself and discovering my own voice through it.

It makes me proud to do the Insta-stories, as one of the toughest challenges I find in life is expressing myself in different contexts while staying true to who I am.

As someone who is a people pleaser, I desire to be accepted and am easily swayed by what I see other people do that I think would be best, image-wise. I remember, especially in college, how I found myself infatuated by public entrepreneurial figures I admired and wanted to imitate how they lived.

Discovering that they were productive and effective individuals, I went through a phase of learning ways to maximize my time and minimize inefficiencies so I could be successful and be able to do much for others.

But through that process, I started to forgo who I was, becoming too serious and too busy, trying to be the image of who I thought I needed to be.

Through reflection though, I’ve come to learn that the way to be true to myself is by accepting and being more firmly rooted in the way God has made me to be.

Part of this is acknowledging how I’ve been made through my past:

I am the boy whose anxiety started after receiving his first whiff of stage fright in his 6th grade piano recital, where after 3 failed attempts, walked off the stage to an unfinished song, embarrassed, never to be able to play music from memory in front of an audience ever again.

I am the teenager who gained an unhealthy sleeping schedule in high school, exercising late-night League and Youtube sessions whilst finishing his work at 3 AM, sleeping in class the following day only to wake up every so often to copy down the notes the teacher put up before clocking out until the period ended.

I am the young adult who through college learned what it meant to wrestle with God, discovering that each year God would bring him through trials of failure and pruning in order to reveal heart issues and a need to depend on Him.

The other part of it is by acknowledging the identity I have in Christ.

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

- 1 Peter 2:9

By acknowledging my past and resting in the identity I have in God, I have a firmer foundation to build off of when exploring and expressing myself.

No longer do I try to be the image of who I think I should be or how others say I should live, but I am free to express myself uniquely in the way God has made me.

Anyways I hope y’all are taking care amidst this quarantine time! I feel like now is a wonderful opportunity to try new things, and just as I encouraged myself to start posting on Instagram, I want to encourage y’all to consider trying new things too!

Whether it’s an side hustle Instagram account about Enneagrams, a personal vlog or TikTok account 😅, or exploring other creative ventures, as long as you apply wisdom to the amount of bandwidth you have, I believe it’s a great way to learn more about yourself whilst exemplifying the unique image that God has made you for!

Of course, I’m still figuring that out personally, and I don’t know what that looks for you, but hopefully, through the trial and error process, there can be takeaways that extend beyond the age of the hobby or this quarantine time, and can further equip you for whatever God has in store for you in the future!

That aside, continue pushing forward my friends. Thanks for checking in, and I'll see y'all in the next update! 😊

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Weekly Collections

Faith

• Why I Would Become a Stoic (If Jesus Hadn’t Risen from the Dead) - The Gospel Coalition

  "The Stoics knew well how to adapt themselves to all situations, whether good or bad, but they lacked the further revelation of a loving and involved God who knows what we need, cares about what we need, and supplies what we need."

Productivity

• Are we too busy to enjoy life? - The Ness Labs

  This article was a humbling reminder of taking time to stop and fact check on if I'm busying myself to not do what really matters. Hopefully t is a good reminder for you too

  "We are scared of idleness because stopping would mean having to really consider what we want out of life and what we currently have. Sometimes, the gap feels so wide, we’d rather stay on the hamster wheel.

  Being busy is a defense mechanism. It’s a way to avoid just being. Having responsibilities, deadlines, a long task list…

  Overloading our senses can make us believe we are moving in the right direction, or at least in a direction. But the constant cycle of tasks we tackle without ever thinking often leaves us stagnant.

  Instead of measuring progress by the quantity of work we produce, we should consider the quality of our work. Not just the quality of the output, as usually measured by externally-designed metrics, but the quality of the impact it has on our mental and physical well-being.

  Defining what “time well spent” means to you and making space for these moments is one of the greatest gifts you can make to your future self."

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Verse of the Week

“And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”
- Philippians 1:9-11

Challenging Quote

“Doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the right things.”
- Stephen Covey