I think she’s had enough bike riding for a while.

1. How did God reveal His hand and presence in 2009?

A: For me, it was in many small ways throughout the year. It was a fairly tough year spiritually for me, mostly because of my stress from my job at the beginning of the year. I had a lot of pent up anger and frustration that kind of carried over into the entire year. Even now, I find my temper much more easily roused than ever before, and that makes it difficult to be sensitive to the Spirit in daily life. But continuing to stay plugged in at church and with other believers, including my wonderful husband, has helped provide reminders of God’s presence. Just the other night, when I lost my temper, instead of ignoring it and relishing my feelings of anger and frustration as I’ve done so much this year, I felt convicted and asked Jesus to renew my mind again. Not huge revelations or anything, but it’s what I need right now.

M: There have been a lot of job transitioning for me this year.  At the beginning of the year, I started selling gym memberships.  I knew it was going to be a demanding schedule and hard work, but I looked at it more of a stepping stone into a higher role in the gym.  In fact, that’s what the GM told me: if you want to be a department head, then you have to start selling memberships.  Fine, I thought, but I didn’t know what I would have to give up to fit their requirements.  Even though I was told that I wouldn’t have to work Sunday mornings, I found myself scheduled in.  I was at the club six days a week, all evenings.  I was told to essentially lie to customers by saying, “This offer ends at the 15th of the month,” when I knew full and well that it didn’t.  I wasn’t happy, and I began to see the company and people for who they are, not on the pedestal that I put them on.  I’m not saying that I don’t like the company or my former coworkers, in fact the opposite.  The company, in my opinion, has a good mission and vision, and the people who work there work hard and care about what they do.  It’s just that our priorities clashed, and it really wasn’t working out.

So, I had been interviewing in March/April.  I was meeting with some great folks in some great companies. Towards the end of April, I had an interview scheduled with a telemarketing company for a customer service role.  The sticking point was that the only open time slot was during my shift at the gym.  The day before my interview, I went to talk to my boss and we talked about how the job was going for me.  I told him how our priorities were crossed, and he understood.  He asked me, “Do you want to stick with us?” and, on the spot, I told him no (this was big for me, I’m pretty indecisive). That worked for the best, because the next day I found out that it was a working interview (interview, then try out the job,hiring  decision made at the end of the day), and if I went to work at the gym that day instead of the working interview, I wouldn’t have gotten the job.

Unfortunately, the job was in sales at this telemarketing job.  Fortunately, though, I got a call a week later from Simple Truths.  Dan hired me to head up the Social Media campaigns, and that is where I have been ever since.  To sum up, God has been faithful in a recession job market.  He provided me with the right opportunity at the right time, even if it didn’t make sense to me.

2. What was your happiest moment?

A: Maybe TMI, but figuring out sex for the first time. In a non-TMI way, every time Matt and I have deeply connected emotionally.

M: I think my happiest moment of the year was watching Angel walk down the aisle… at Wal-Mart.  Just kidding, at our wedding.  Times like that let me know that I am really blessed.

3. What was your most defeated moment?

A: Lame, but the other night, I couldn’t get my windshield wiper on my car. When Matt and I were cleaning it off before I left for church choir practice and he was going to leave to talk to a tae kwon do school, I accidentally knocked the passenger side blade off. It was snowing that night and so cold, so trying to put it back on wasn’t easy for either of us. I also have a history of frustrating windshield wiper moments. Two years ago, when my blade came off, I accidentally snapped the metal attachment down and cracked my windshield, which later had to be replaced. Last year, I was replacing my wiper blades because the old ones were getting so bad, I almost crashed one day coming home from work in a snowstorm. (I was praying, “Jesus, just help me make it to Target and I’ll buy new wiper blades – I’ll even get the expensive ones.”) So anyway, I was putting the new expensive ones on last winter, and it took forever to get one of them on. I just have a hard time figuring out the mechanics while also freezing my rear off. So the same thing happened again this time. We were both having trouble putting it on. It was dark outside, and our fingers were getting numb from the cold. Finally, I told Matt to go ahead and leave, and I would go inside and watch the youtube tutorial on how to put them on that I watched last year. I watched the video, then went outside and tried again. Nope. Didn’t work. When my fingers were numb again, I came back in and watched another video tutorial. Went out again. Still didn’t work. I was so frustrated (precisely because I know it shouldn’t be hard to put on a windshield wiper blade!) I sat on top of the car, even though there was ice and snow on it and got my pants soaking wet because I was determined to do this simple thing. IT STILL DIDN’T GO ON. I finally came inside sobbing because my entire body was numb, my butt was wet, my fingers hurt, I was going to miss choir practice, Matt wasn’t even home anymore to take over on the installation, and I still hadn’t managed to get the blade on. Stupid reason, but definitely my most emotionally frustrating experience of 2009. The next day, Matt went out and put on the blade in the daylight and got it done in about 30 seconds. I love my husband.

M: I can point to two times, relatively similar.  I’m still processing through them, so forgive me if they’re “duh!” moments for you.  Anyway, both my Mom and Dad have been in the hospital in the last four-week period.  They’re getting older, so it makes sense that they’re running into more health issues than before.  What gets me, though is that the conditions they experience recently have been more lifestyle related than genetics related.  This strikes a chord in me, because I bought them gym memberships, work out with them, and give them nutrition advice ( Am I a doctor? No, but I’ve picked up enough from working at the gym to know the basics).  So, despite my efforts, they are still experiencing health issues that most likely could have been prevented.

I know that I need to respect their boundaries, and my parents will do what they will do.  I can’t force them to work out every day, reduce stress, and eat right.  Deep down, though, it still makes me feel like I’ve failed them.  Like I couldn’t motivate them enough to change their habits and avoid illness. So, that’s where I’m left.  Looking on the bright side, this has been a sobering month, and they’re realizing the need to make some changes.  They are finding their own motivation, and that works out just fine for me.

4. What do you wish you had done more of?

A: Praying.

M: Staying on task.

5. What do you wish you had done less of?

A: Losing my temper.

M: Worrying.

6. What was the greatest book you read?

A: My memory isn’t really good enough to remember which books I’ve read in which year, but I do know one I read this year that was good was The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam

M: Trust Agents by Chris Brogan

7. What was the most meaningful film you watched?

A: Blindness

M: Food, Inc

8. What song reminds you of 2009?

A: “When I Fall in Love”

M: “Jai Ho”

9. Who was the most influential person you met?

A: Pastor Ross, Pastor Rich, and Bob (some of our leaders at Calvary)

M: Randall Ross

10. What did you do in 2009 that you had never done before?

A: Planned a wedding, got married, lived with Matthew, owned nice pots and pans (thanks to Matthew’s cousins and Leslie

M: Sex!

11. What were you most afraid of?

A: Getting pregnant and the implications that might have for our future plans.

M: Having a baby.

12. What were you most grateful for?

A: Matthew.

M: My wife. And Jesus.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

]]> http://mattandangelblog.com/2010/01/summing-up-2009/feed/ 0 http://mattandangelblog.com/2009/12/hows-married-life/ http://mattandangelblog.com/2009/12/hows-married-life/#comments Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:53:45 +0000 Matt http://mattandangelblog.com/?p=52 I get this question a lot.  ”So… how’s married life?” I often find it hard to explain, since I don’t go through my day thinking about how things are different now that I am no longer single.  I usually respond with, “Umm… it’s good.”

Sitting down and thinking about it, there’s a lot that’s different about married life.  To let you know, I have: lived in my parents’ home (20 years, baby!), in a dorm at school, and with four other guys in a house.  Marriage is very different from all three of them, especially the last one.  In fact, it’s kind of funny to think of how different living with four guys is from one woman.  Here’s the breakdown:

Laundry: It was a glorious day the first day after the wedding that I rushed off to my Wushu class. I had thought that my workout shirt would be sweaty and smelly from the last class, but magically it was clean and hung in the closet.  It was as if the laundry fairies had visited our apartment!

Cooking: Before getting married, I lived with Dan Matundan, a graduate of the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Chicago.  The other guys liked cooking too, not to mention myself.  I seriously gained fat and weight when I lived there (more on that later).  We had food all the time.  There were always leftovers, and when there weren’t there was someone cooking.  We had meat pretty much every meal, and always extra.

Cooking for two is a bit different than for five.  We eat well, but I notice that food goes bad in the fridge a lot more often than in the other house.  On the other hand, I am eating less meat, more vegetables, and less overall.

Date Night Every Night: Well, maybe not every night.  Not too much staying up late and talking, either.  But, it is nice not to have to “go home” at the end of the night.  Movie nights, eating in… I’m a fan.

Sex: Well, let’s just say it didn’t happen before and it does now, end of story.

When we went to China, our professor told us to take pictures, journal, and remember what it was to first see things.  He told us this because we would soon take the differences for granted, and forget the differences.  I think the same thing about marriage, remember the nice little things before they settle into regular life.

But, unfortunately, once again, life finds us ridiculously busy.

I work 34 hours a week at Matt’s company, Simple Truths and baby-sit for 8 hours on Friday nights, so my schedule is getting pretty packed.  We have enjoyed a few more get-togethers with some of our neighbors and hope to have more in the future.  We’ve been keeping up with some friends, but there are many more who remain on our list of friends we need to hang out with soon, but haven’t been able to yet.  (Parties are a great way to reconnect with many people at once.  Keep having them, everyone!)

Our weekends have been pretty busy lately with family coming in from Indiana to visit us.  This weekend we are going to the gospel choir concert at Wheaton.  For Thanksgiving, we are going to Michigan and then Toronto to visit Matt’s family.  Then after that, Christmas craziness starts.  Every weekend is already full of parties, get-togethers, concerts, etc.  Lots of stuff going on, but it will all be fun.  Just no time for blogging

But we WILL try to make time for some meaningful posts.  I was just encouraged this morning by our Axiom meeting to begin working on my book for real.  I have a little dream to write a book designed for engaged Christians a.k.a. sex newbs.  I looked everywhere for a book designed for that purpose before we got married and found nothing fully devoted to that subject.  I like writing and opining, so I figured I would make an attempt to put something out there.  If nothing else, you may be seeing a lot of posts related to the book as I work on it over the next several months.

Well, time to hit the sack.  We played volleyball tonight at church.  It was saweet, but we’re both pretty pooped now.  Till next time!

Wushu: When I first told my dad that I wanted to take martial arts when I was eight years old, my reasoning was 1) I liked the Power Rangers, and 2) I am Chinese, so it wouldn’t make sense for me not to take classes (STEREOTYPE WIN).  Needless to say, I have stuck with it better than most things in life, and I feel that I’m the better because of it.  Most recently, I have been taking Chinese Wushu.  Here’s a little video demo of the style:

When I studied abroad in Xiamen, China in 2005 for a semester, I took some private lessons from a master who turned out to be the best all of the south east provinces.  He stretched me so well I thought I was going to tear my hamstring nearly every time, seriously.  About two years ago I joined up with a club that meets at the Wheaton Park District.

I sometimes wonder why I do love martial arts so much, especially wushu, which is not the most practical style to learn.  I mean, if I were to be attacked in a dark alley, I probably wouldn’t spin twice in the air and kick the guy in the head.  This has been discussed many times over with my best man from my wedding, Dhiraj Masih.  To paraphrase my genius (at the very least in this realm of philosophy, that is) friend, there is something very cathartic about the movements.  When you get to the point where you are aware of your body and you feel the punches, kicks, and blocks effortlessly glide out from your body like water, you feel a sort of self-expression that is unique to wushu.  It’s like dancing or running, you feel the flow when you do it well.  So, I’m not opposed to learning more self-defense, but I’ve really taken to the forms.

Well, I’ll write a little more about stuff that I’m passionate about… but right now it’s dinner time.

I (Angel) started working part-time for the customer service department at Matt’s company. It’s been great getting to know the people I work with and having something intelligent to fill my time with after these past two years of work that mainly consisted of trying to convince kids to eat and changing diapers. I also have a newfound appreciation for the people on the other end of those automated “contact us” portions of websites. Though I have to say, our company does a much better job of responding to our inquiries than most of the companies I’ve had to contact. Unashamed plug.

Things have been busy at work for Matt, and he’s also been focusing a lot on wushu (Chinese kung fu) for a competition he competed in last weekend and so he can test for his next rank soon. He got three sweet plaques from doing so well in the competition. And he looked pretty hot too (in my non-martial-arts-oriented opinion).

We have been trying to get our budgeting on track post-wedding and figure out joint finances. Not the most fun way to spend evenings, but a necessity. Especially since I realized that when I hadn’t checked my old checking account in awhile, I had been racking up daily fees for having overdrawn my checkbook from a check I had written but forgot to record in my bank book. Yikes. We’re going to talk to the bank about that and see if there’s any way to get those fees, even some of them, revoked since I had a bunch of money in my savings account that they could have transferred over for me. They did end up transferring the money about a week ago, finally, but not until the account had incurred $200 in fines. Yeah, it would have been nice for them to think of doing that after the first couple of days instead of waiting a month. Or at least to have contacted me to let me know what was happening.

We’ve also been trying to maintain our social lives in the midst of the busyness. We hung out with some friends from Matt’s wushu club this weekend. We watched “The Nightmare Before Christmas” to get ourselves in the fall spirit on Friday night with Matt’s former roommates and co. We had our neighbors over for dinner last week and enjoyed getting to know them and meet some of them for the first time. I love having a husband to meet and greet neighbors with; it’s the best Much less awkward than when you’re a small, vulnerable single female trying to build relationships with strangers who live near you. I read “The Suburban Christian” last year and wished that I could do more connected things with my neighbors, but it just didn’t feel right trying to do that with our single male neighbors. Confusing signals tend to happen a lot in our culture with male/female interactions, and I have to say it’s nice being married and not having to deal with quite as many of them.

Okay, that was about as deep as this post is getting. One final update: we’ve been thinking a lot about what we’re going to try and do next year. A few options are on the table, so please pray for us to have wisdom as we seek God’s will for our next step and when to take it.

Of course, the week before the wedding was a beast.  On several occasions, I found myself up all night groaning with stomach pain and vomiting up my guts.  I wasn’t sick.  I hadn’t eaten anything that didn’t agree with me.  I was purely stressed to the max.  The first night of our honeymoon, I got sick again.  Fair enough.  It had been a stressful day, and I couldn’t quite get used to the idea that everything was finally over.  I kept seeing our photographers in my face and hearing people ask me what they should do now.  After some much appreciated comfort from Matt, I finally fell asleep, hoping that the stress was finished.

It’s been almost two months since the wedding, and I was finally able, today, to sort out the box of leftover reception decorations and figure out what I wanted to sell, keep, or give away.  I did not wait so long to do this because I was busy or lazy.  Looking at that box made me want to throw up (again).  On a few occasions since the honeymoon, I have woken up with a sick stomach.  I also feel stressed whenever I drive past a bridal store.  But I think my bout of post wedding stress disorder is finally coming to a close.  I was able to untangle loads of white lights, pack them up in bags, and place an ad on Craigslist to try and sell 33 strands of lights.  It was frustrating, it was tedious, but I managed to do it without feeling sick to my stomach.

Here’s to never being a bride again and learning to enjoy weddings once more.

Anyone else struggled with post wedding stress disorder?  What signs showed you that you had finally overcome it?  How long did it take to get over it?

Wedding lights

Our first post will be a cursory introduction, mainly directed to those who don’t know one or both of us, but also to give those of you we haven’t had chance to catch up with in awhile an update on our current lives.

We were married this summer on August 1. After a honeymoon at a rental house on Lake Michigan’s shore in southern Michigan, we settled into a new apartment in Naperville, IL. We love the community we’re living in and look forward to making new friends here.

Since the beginning of the summer, I (Matt) have been working as the Social Media Marketing Specialist for Simple Truths, a company that publishes inspirational books and movie clips. I get to do fun stuff like maintain our company’s Facebook fan page, blog, and Twitter account. I’ve also really enjoyed getting to know my co-workers. I really take pride in who I work for and what I’m doing.

I (Angel) am in a bit of a hiatus as I trust God for the next step in my career path. After graduating from Wheaton with a rather useful degree in English literature, I took several part-time baby-sitting positions. Before the wedding, I was baby-sitting about 50 hours a week and finding that the charm of children (or perhaps playing the weird role of “nanny” in children’s lives) was beginning to wear off. After some hopefully providential words of advice, I am beginning to pursue a master’s in counseling psychology. I am currently taking prerequisites at a community college and baby-sitting part-time for a couple of awesome kids who still have charm.

A few other random facts about us: We have an odd, lazy, old dachshund named P.S. We are multi-racial and multi-cultural. (Matt is 6% white, 6% black, and the rest Hakka Chinese. His parents were born and raised in Jamaica, and he was born and raised in Wheaton, IL. Angel is pretty much all white with a touch of Native American and was born and raised in LaPorte, a small town in Northwest Indiana.) We want to live in Hong Kong for various reasons. I’m sure we’ll chat about that at some point on our blog. We love China. We love the Middle East. We love learning about people and cultures and God. We like watching episodes of “The Office,” “Lost,” and “Batman.” (Okay, Angel doesn’t get into “Batman” so much, but she’s happy to read a book while Matthew watches it next to her.) We try to eat organic and natural food as much as possible. We’re learning how to live a “green” life, not because it’s trendy, but because Angel is paranoid about humans causing the end of the world (and dreams about it often).

We look forward to blogging with you!