Troubles...

It's interesting that they usually all come together... at work... at home, of course if it's a problem that I can help solve, I will try my best to solve it. However, if sometimes it's out of my control, then of course I'd just hold on tight and wait for it to blow over.

Yesterday Tigran came to have lunch with me and Daniel. We haven't gotten together for a while... and yeah, we talked about various troubles. About how he wants to be a partner of the firm, but at the same time he admits that his heart isn't in it. He grinned and said... 'am I selling my soul?' He also talked about a lot of messed up lives of his law firm friends. I think he's beginning to miss his old boring engineering nerdy friends! ;)

Of course there's also trouble at home... and we even skipped praying meeting to deal with our problems! It's the right thing to do of course, if we cannot make peace with others, how can we possibly be at peace with God? So we stayed home to talk and to try to come up with specific ways to avoid similar problems in the future! Solutions we've come up with are:

1) When wife's face is upset, I have to speak up and ask, 'What is the problem?' Looking at her wish for her to talk is not going to work. I have to initiate the conversation first. I've also conveyed that it's useless to expect me to automatically know the problem... whatever is bothering her, I have to initiate to ask and then she has to just tell me. I will try my best to help, but surely I won't be able to be that helpful 100% of the time, but anyway, at least we'll be able to reduce some problems for now instead of allow the fire of anger continue to burn out of control!!! ;)

2) We've also decided that there shall be no more than 2 family dinners every month. I totally understand that wife's family doesn't have these types of regular family dinners except perhaps the annual vacations, but my family has these regular gatherings, but no annual vacations... it's two different families and we do have to learn to accept and respect each other's families' traditions.

3) I think the biggest problem of all is financial problems. I feel obligated to support my parents, but providing them with such security of course is at the expense of giving my own wife insecurities. This is similar to the 'family gathering' type of deal... of course I'm willing to cut down, for sure that will eventually happen when my parents are old enough to collect social security. I will certainly try my best to give my wife more sense of security, but I'm not sure if I'm willing to make my parents feel insecure about their day to day living. I honestly don't believe I'm spoiling my parents, I know when to tell them enough is enough!!! All I know is that we are not really that poor. Besides the money in the bank, I do have 401k savings, there's also value in the house... we're not exactly 'poor' or THAT insecure. But of course I need to help smooth things out better. This for sure will take some more time... hopefully we'll figure this out before the end of the year... so that everybody can be happy.

4) We've also decided that we will do something new and interesting all by ourselves at least once a month... and this is something I will take the initiative of making it happen.

Anyway, basically those are the corrective actions we came up with last nite. Surely they won't eliminate all problems, but hopefully they can help us thru some problems... wife is very goal oriented... and I've explained to the love of my life that the only goal for marriage is to love each other until one of us is dead. I honestly don't believe goals for marriage is to just eat with in-laws twice a month, or to have enough money so that we can freely spend or save however we want..., a successful marriage also isn't about how big of a house we have or how expensive the cars we drive... even if we don't ever have children doesn't mean we have a failed marriage... a successful marriage is basically just loving each other. Yes, love is very abstract. What is love? How can we measure that? How do we know if we're achieving our goals?

I don't know. ;)

All I know is that Jesus is on this love boat with us. Regardless of whether if I steered this boat wrong and ended up in a storm... or if we just can't possibly avoid the storm... as long if God is with us... even if our boat sank... I'm still not going to worry about the problems. If I can deal with the problem, sure, I'm willing to deal, but if I can't do anything to help..., then I'm just not going to worry about it. Only thing I have to worry about is if Jesus is not on this boat with us.

Today's scripture reading is about the blind man and the widow.

Blind man has faith that Jesus can save and heal him. Of course his blindness isn't going away until Jesus gives the word! But are we like that blind man? To have sufficient faith to continue to bug God about problems? To continue to have faith even when God's forcing you to wait thru your troubles? To never give up even when problems just aren't going away at the moment? Do you have the faith in God? Do you have hope for a brighter future... that for sure God will answer our prayers?

Regarding the poor widow who gave it all..., yeah, it's always easier to give it all when we have little I suppose. But the moral of the story is that we ought to find security in God not to find security based on our bank accounts or whatever earthly means..., this is how we can sleep thru the storms. ;)

Anyway, if we have a right attitudes. If we are full of love, troubles in the world can really make life more 'interesting'. It is also thru troubles that we can experience God more... of course I'm not suggesting that we go create trouble, I'm just saying we shouldn't allow troubles to get us down... to lose faith, to lose hope, or to lose our love for one another.

(Mark 10:46-52)
(Mark 12:41-44)