Listening a lot to Domi and JD Beck these days:

I recently realized that I, all the time, catch myself saying "God give me peace"; whether mumbling it absent mindedly to myself, or praying it consciously whenever I feel unrest. All the time I'm longing for the great peace of God's presence, and I do believe that God can give us a peace which surpasses all understanding, and which comes from having a mind sanctified and conformed to the mind of Christ, totally committed and self-entrusted to God. However, it seemed to me that I'd made that peace a sort of idol, and pursued it instead of the source of it. To correct the situation, I've made a point recently of, every time I catch myself praying or longing for that peace, to instead pray for God to be glorified in my life. I believe that this shift in mindset will be beneficial for me -- not that I expect to achieve peace by means of this prayer, but that I will teach myself to pursue the better thing in all circumstances. God's glory is our ultimate purpose, and whatever is going on, whatever I feel, it seems to me that the pursuit of that end is always right.

Truthfully, I'm not sure how to develop a personal friendship with God. He doesn't "talk back", and it isn't like I can go hang out with Him at the arcade. I doubt He'd be interested in playing fortnite with me even given the opportunity, and I'm quite certain I'd lose every game of chess against him (or any other board game for that matter, Proverbs 16:33). But I do know that work builds relationships. In fact, lots of marriage advice outlets recommend working on something with your spouse -- whether that's the gym, or some chores you can do at the same time together; working together builds affection. So, it seems to me that evangelism will prove to be both spiritually and emotionally rewarding in that sense.

I began the work of transliterating my steno notebook with Isaac's enchiridion in it today. As it stands, it's just a bunch of odds and ends about practical hermeneutics that I jotted down randomly during company meetings, but I've run out of personal rules on the topic to articulate, and so I want to put them down, organize them, and apply some scholarship to fill in the gaps before I proceed to the other topics on the agenda. It's extremely slow going, but I'm motivated to proceed apace.

I have had hallucination episodes more times this year than last year. It's been a long time (months? years?) since I last sat down for an extended period of meditation, and I've recently noticed that I can't go very deep into myself without getting mixed up. I perceive that I've been putting up walls around parts of myself and shutting down certain minor faculties, but I think that I need to open myself up again in order to properly acknowledge my wife's emotions and keep up with her growth in a way that's helpful and encouraging. She's making a lot of personal progress lately, and I'm struggling to adapt. I seem to have developed a reactionary and defensive pattern of thinking which is counterproductive.

Marital love is wonderful, and God really picks out the perfect people to complement one another in marriage. Chowon's weaknesses are as if they were hand-picked to grate against my own weaknesses, (and v.v.), and together we are forced to pursue God for sanctification. It's awesome and frightening and difficult and wonderful and sorrowful and joyous and precious; it's all the great things about life, packed into one relationship! 

I also found my old steno notebook with all the poetry in it, and was horrified. I don't know if I copied all the poems from it into my blog, but I threw it away anyway. I don't think I have the guts to work through that. Anyway, it had a bunch of mistakes in it (backwards "p"s, unnecessary extensions, and misuses of sounds like connecting "ee-n-g" instead of using the single character for "ing"), so transliterating that would be terribly arduous.

I want to spend more time in this blog, too... but every moment I spend doing something for myself is a moment that I could have spent doing something more important. I feel like I'm taking food off my child's plate with every keystroke here. The Theonomy forum has been a major outlet for me recently, but even that freaks me out -- if it weren't for the perceived social obligation I have to that forum (my moderatorship there) I might not have done anything at all for myself during the past several months, (except to play an odd phone game while waiting for my card to register in the apartment complex's community laundry machines, or to lose touch and escape in every odd moment at home). Realizing this, I have decided to make more time for myself on the family schedule. I just.... don't know what that will look like yet. In any case, I've made time to write this blog, so this is the first of my intentional mental-hygiene steps for the immediate future.

"Everyone capitulates"