Instructions: Write a letter to a close friend. Date in ten years from today. Assume that everything has gone according to your dreams and wishes. Give a summary of the prior ten years going back to today. Be specific. Include promotions, achievements, accomplishments, areas of growth, an spiritual changes. Keep in mind your gifts, values, passions, and visions as you write.
When you are finished with this letter, read the letter to another person, preferably the one you wrote to. Discuss:
- your friends reactions
- how you felt about sharing what you have written
- what seemed most important to you, judging from the letter
- what you like best about what you wrote
- what things disappointed you
- what the letter said about your relationship with God
- how the exercise helped clarify your future direction
- what you can do to make your letters come true in reality
- what the letter says about your purpose for living
I propose that everyone should do this exercise! It's so fun! Write your own before you read mine.
My letter below:
Written SP13.
Dear __________,
The past ten years have been such a journey! God has done great things and once again, He has proven himself to be faithful even when I am faithless. I look back and I'm so encouraged, I know that none of this was out of my own strength because Lord knows how weak I am, but God definitely did it again.
Remember those times when I used to talk about how I wished that I could just be in my thirties already so that I don't have to go through the dreadful process of so many major life transitions in my twenties? I wanted life to just hand me what it needed to and start a stable life already. Well, I'm so glad that God brought me through the process because its only in this process that I get to taste Gods faithfulness. I must say it wasn't easy to get there but it was well worth the journey.
Exactly ten years ago, I was experiencing the craziest transitions of my life. Right after getting accepted into AGSC, my whole life changed. I started off with a part time job in the admissions office and its at the job where I met my husband. Since then, I reconnected with amazing people along the way that I never thought to cross paths with again. After four semesters of AGSC and working part time in the admissions office at Nyack College, I went through some financial anxiety because I was engaged to my husband but didn't have the resources to start a future with him. God then blessed me with a full time job as a financial aid counselor at Nyack College working with a great team as well as allowing me to use both my business administrative skills and my counseling and coaching skills to help the students. During that time, I was also in the process of looking for an internship and three weeks after attaining the full time job, God blessed me with a part time internship at the counseling center in Nyack College as well. How crazy is that?
Since that season on, God has just been doing some miraculous things in my life. I've been married ten years now, how time flies. My relationship with my husband has been better than ever before. Now we hold marriage workshops focusing on keeping God at the center of our relationships. Our four kids are still young, but they are cute as always. We bring them everywhere with us as they are a living testimony about how faithful God is in our lives.
In the past ten years, I've grown a lot at Nyack College and though I don't work full time there anymore, I'm still affiliated with Nyack College as an adjunct professor in the AGSC program. I had to give back to what was given to me! I've also had the opportunity to travel different places around the world with my husband to share the gospel and bless people. We go back every so often to visit where we left off to see how much God has worked through the believers there and to encourage our brothers and sisters abroad that our hope and our joy continues to be built on Jesus Christ alone.
My husband started a church when we first got married. Through much prayer and support with a core team of members, our church has been blossoming like no tomorrow. God has been sending people who are seeking after God and has been already moving in their hearts to make a personal commitment to him. Whats even more crazy is that a lot of our core team members were our long time friends who had recently given their life over to Christ. I cried tears of joy when that happened because its been a lifelong prayer of mine. Their drive and passion far exceeds mine and they are impacting the community like no tomorrow. The young people who met Christ in church have grown to be in positions of leadership where they have been loving God and loving people in their daily lives being devoted to fellowship and prayer just like the Acts 2 church. God always provides more than enough for us and I am so grateful that we have been called to be part of His story. I'm grateful to be part of an encouraging community that are living out their transformed lives and changing our culture in a God honoring way in their schools and work places. Week after week, encouraging testimonies are shared.
A couple of years ago, my husband and I had also started a counseling and coaching ministry since that was where my heart was. Though taboo in our culture, many other Asian American churches are seeing the value in doing something like this because hurt people do hurt people and nobody does nothing for no reason. Through Gods help, clients are taking steps to improve their lives and the clients in coaching have been the ones who take an active leadership role in their communities! It's been so inspiring to see their drive and ambition at such a young age.
My family has been doing great. After the youngest graduated from HS, my parents decided to move into a smaller and more comfortable setting because they no longer needed the big house. My parents have been joyfully traveling around the world doing ministry together. The eldest finally graduated and got his MD-PHD, he's now in the neuroscience research field and he's been so blessed that he can't help but to be a blessing to others. The middle ended up starting his own business with a couple of his close friends from college. And the youngest graduated and actually is in the field he was always longing to be in - acoustical engineering. What I find so cool about my family is that we all are so unique in our own way, everyone has different gifts and talents and when we come together, it's like a bomb, it impacts. My family and my others family all live around the same neighborhood now so our relationships have been amazing, it's convenient to see each other often, and we are always there for each other. When we have free time, we walk around the neighborhood and befriend our neighbors. I thank God for such an amazing family.
My close friends, it's funny because we've known each other for years now, and just a couple of years ago, we were reflecting on how crazy it was that we are all married. Now, we are laughing about that because we all have little kids running around. They live around the neighborhood as well so I can't for our kids to all be good friends when they grow up, they are already getting along so well. Back then, I felt like it was almost impossible with our busy schedule to meet each other and catch up and just share life together, but in rent years, either time has been slowing down or there have been more hours in the day, because now we still have the same crazy schedule as we used to, but we are able to do so much in a span of one day! And all the other friends from back then, they've all grown so much in The Lord, God has been just continuously answering all our prayers.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, did I tell you I learned to speak Korean and my husband learned to speak Chinese? Both of us were so adamant about being able to communicate with each other in our native languages that we've been actively practicing and taking initiative to learn. We are getting there!
Honestly ________ , I can go on and on and on about how crazy life has been. It is true that it doesn't get any easier but it does get better! I can't wait to see how the next couple of years unfolds as it will be a new chapter of life again.
Love,
Joan
No comments:
Post a Comment