Highlights of 2016

1. I started to see a psychotherapist.
2. I ran a 15k and started running distances (13.1 miles!) that I had never run before.
3. Park Community Small Group
4. I drank my first macchiato (yum).
5. I fell deeper in love with Christ and the Body of Christ.
6. I spent time with Esther and Deina in New York City, Esther and Joseph in Irvine, and drove up to Madison to see Abby.
7. I subscribed to the New Yorker and started to follow Omid Safi, one of my favorite columnists (he posts regularly on  'On Being'.
8. My sister turned to me and looked at me and told me she was going to start praying for me regularly.
9. My mom and I road-tripped from Salt Lake City to Chicago with my new car.
10. God blessed me with a used car that I bought for dirt cheap.
11. I experienced God's love through people.

DREAMS (to be completed within the next 10 years):
1. Publish a compendium of my poetry.
2. Do an Italian farm-stay.
3. Create a stained-glass piece with my future spouse and put it in my kitchen.

LONGTERM DREAMS (to be completed sometime before I die):
-Radically serve an underserved population abroad as a Family Nurse Practitioner.

The Buffer Zone

This moment in time
Is worthy of your time
A time when pain is too real
And cannot be swatted away

A time when pain blurs into
Infinitesimal seconds, minutes, hours
Bleeds out of time and into space
And cannot be contained by gauze and tape

There is a space you will find
That is no insignificant form of grace
Hope that exists and emanates through the
Prayers that rise, the hands that grasp
The Body that will joyfully suffer alongside you

It is in this buffer zone that perhaps we
Realize hope incarnate