Rereading my last blog, I felt like it was a very squished and quick summary of my holidays. I also feel like it was pretty random in a way, more like a plot moving from one paragraph to the next, somewhat lacking in detail. Thank You if you read all of that and coping with my speedy narration of my last few days of 2010.
This entry, I want to focus on how God told me to "GROW UP SARAH PHO. SERIOUSLY."
I briefly mentioned my internal struggle with going to the English Adults (EA) or English Teens (ET) side. I hate decisions, lets put it that way. If I see a menu with more than like one item, it still takes me a while to decide. I realize I want the best of both worlds, but I end up always choosing what came into my head first. Sometimes I just want everything, but I got to change my mentality from thinking "this might me by one and last chance getting this" to "I will be back." I'm just weird that way.
In this case though, I guess I may have been brainwashing myself into denial. I wanted to be situated in my comfort zone, something I experienced before and knew would be "fun." Attending what I thought I would get something out of, based on past results/experiences, at a annual conference, turned out to be a eye-opener. God really tugged the strings of my heart to go next door (literally). But I was stubborn and just wanted to stay put. Even though the first full day's EA symposium was about Ethical Consumption and was a topic I really wanted to soak up, since I'm a textile student, I turned it down to attend the Teens Program. All throughout the program I was actually lacking interest, it just felt like I've been through all of this, and if I continued to sit through the session, living in the shoes of a teen I be stuck in my faith. I felt uncomfortable and even though I could have freely walked out that door and explored the topic that stirred curiosity within, I didn't.
I usually don't use the term "regret" because if you regret, you wouldn't have learned from what you did and didn't do. Maybe I don't even need to use "regret" in this context, but I did feel like I missed out on a really good symposium. I found out it was a documentary about Forever 21 and how it took the employees a lot of effort and rioting to get the owners for F21 to pay them fair wages and give them their ethical rights as a worker (how ironically, since Jaeson Mah said the couple that started F21 donates 90% of their profits to the poor-I guess being compassionate for the poor doesn't equate to ethical treatment of employees, despite sounding like an oxymoron). It definitely shocked me because I love to shop at this store, and at the same time I missed out on a session I could have learn from and apply to my education in school. Well, at least the documentary is accessible on the web (It's called "Made in L.A." if your interested).
So what made me take a leap of faith and head to the EA side? I don't know. I guess you just know when God wants you to get yourself off your butt and do something He wants you to do (like Jonah perhaps?). I guess it was just obvious to me, my friends who were even younger than me by a year and went to the EA side or just the feelings of "I shouldn't be here," I kept suppressing because being in in ET has been so life changing in the past-why not now? It was just so odd to have this voice of God push me to go next door when he has spoken to me so much through ET. He's been so good to me through this door, and now he's shutting it down and shoving me elsewhere. I didn't like that and I know I'm making God sound like a bully.
Having said all of that, I realize I wasn't allowing myself to grow up spiritually and intellectually/physically/socially. Once I step foot into the EA room, I was more at ease. Although I didn't meet as much new friends (since most people were young adults, they had part time or evening passes due to work) and we didn't play games, didn't take as much pictures, and everyone was serious because no one had been "forced" to come to conference and actually came for spiritual reasons and not fun, I left Neverland. It felt more belonging to be with people in post secondary and knowing that people PAID to come here with their own money, for the right reason, allowing and wanting God to change them.
I feel 2010 was a year of growth for me: through my faith, education, mentality. It was totally a growing up year. I know I'm not done growing, it's just like how this quote goes:
"The more you know, the more you know you don't know"
So if I'm not pulling a Peter Pan anymore... who am I?
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