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lisa_dreams
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Name: Lisa
Location: Shanghai
Interests: photography; music; singing; gourmet cooking for friends; interior decorating; wine; travel; journaling; talking with friends over cups of coffee; Jesus; reading books; reading magazines in a comfy chair on a lazy Sat morning (Bon Appetit, Met Home, Home Companion, Fitness); exploring my favorite places- South Jersey, Philly, Shanghai, any place in Italy.
Expertise: talking; listening; asking weird and wonderful questions about the world we live in... I usually have a theory about what the answer is, but it's totally unproven; bossing my sisters around (although I'm really trying not to do this as much anymore); coffee (best coffee ever had- iced hazelnut latte, Koh Samet, Thailand); food (american, thai, chinese, italian, middle eastern); chocolate (the darker the better); shopping online (you learn how to get good at it when you live and work overseas); Christian music (because I was a music buyer at a Christian bookstore in college- tons of useless information stored in my brain on that one), however my music interests are VERY diverse (rock, jazz, bossa nova, italian pop- my new favorite genre!, classical, opera, folk, classic rock, broadway, country, and probably 5 others I'm overlooking).
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
2/13/2006
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| Wow! I haven't written anything here since November. Is that possible? I logged on and saw that and thought that someone must have deleted my other posts. But alas... time has really gone flying by that quickly. I think I'm writing today because there was a common thread that ran through my day. And maybe because the weather was SO beautiful today and I was riding my bike and glorying in this city. I had time to think, revel and bask in the sunlight and setting sun... time to muse...
I spent an hour of my morning with my friend T visiting with like-minded business majors from Westmont College in CA. It was a neat time to share with them about calling, work, interior decorating and why I'm here in Shanghai doing what I'm doing. I enjoyed the time talking with them- they had insightful questions, youthful zeal and interest, and reminded me that college boys are so cute.  (If I don't get married, I'm sure I'm sadly going to be one of THOSE kind of women...) Anyway... in talking with them I articulated something that I've been taking in and mulling over but unable to speak out in a clear way, until today. I shared with them how so many foreigners are here to take all they can from China- to suck life out of the growing, hulking cash cow that is China... and then they plan on high tailing it out of here rich, retiring early and basking in their China glory for the rest of their lives, telling the stories of what China was like in the early 2000's when they lived here. It's really sickening when I hear expats living here talk like that. Thankfully, the number of people I know who DON'T think like this sways the balance back to restore hopefulness. As kingdom people living in this great city, we need to guard against this mentality ever creeping in. The minute we begin taking from China and her people, and not thinking about how we can give back... that's the minute we should at the very least, repent and consider selling everything and giving it to the poor. And at the very most, we might want to consider leaving China.
Those thoughts reminded me of Keller's amazing sermon, "Creation Care and Justice" from his proverbs series, but more specifically, the amazing exhortation in Proverbs 11:11-12- "When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices; when the wicked perish, there are shouts of joy. Through the blessing of the upright a city is exalted, but by the mouth of the wicked it is destroyed."
Later in the day, I was leaving one of my client's home- she lives in the service apartments at the Portman Ritz Carlton. I was waiting for the elevator, and felt a wave of euphoria when I looked out the window and saw this sight....
God, how I love this city! The sights are amazing and the people even more so! (you can't see it in this tiny pic, but beyond and to the right of Tomorrow's Square (the tall pointy building in the center), you can see the Jin Mao Building and beyond that, the new World Finance Building that is still being built. I love the bustling and activity in the pic, and how there is so MUCH of the city... it is never ending!)
And still later in the day, I was at another client's apartment on the 25th floor. We were looking out the windows over a section of old lane houses dwarfed by her modern high rise complex. She was saying how sad she feels thinking about the people that are losing those sweet, little, communal homes. Some of her husband's employees were telling her about their lives growing up in the lane houses and what is changing now that they are being bought out, the houses demolished to make way for huge high rise apartment complexes, and because they can't afford to live downtown, they have no choice but to to move far away into the suburbs. My client looked at me with genuine regret and confusion and said, "We are the ones that are doing this to them. It breaks my heart." I wish more of my clients were that aware. The conversation reminded me of an amazing film I saw about a month ago, "Shanghai Gloaming", but that's a post I should have written weeks ago.
After my last stop in the day, leaving my own little lane house office, I set out on my bike and it was just night fall. Cool breeze... sweet summer night. It was a beautiful ride home... I heard a song that summarized my day and I played it repeat for the rest of the ride.
This Peace
by Sara Groves
So many words to say, but I'm opting for silence
So many days to live, I think I'm sitting this one out
Cause something I've been chasing finally stop to let me catch it
Something I've been longing for and dreaming about
It's a whisper in my ear
It's a shiver up my spine
It's the gratitude I feel for all that's right
It's a mystery appeal that's been granted me tonight
This peace
It's something so elusive, something close but far away
It's the home that I can't live in yet somewhere in outer space
And sometimes I barely miss it when I walk into the room
The curtains are still swaying and I feel the air move
And it whispers in my ear and it shivers up my spine
It's the gratitude I feel for all that's right
It's a mystery appeal that's been granted me tonight
This peace
No time to grab a camera, no time to write it down
Just time enough to breathe it in
And linger...
It's a whisper in my ear
It's a shiver up my spine
It's the gratitude I feel for all that's right
It's a mystery appeal that's been granted me tonight
This peace,This peace
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| I found this quote online today in an article about women and the shoes that they love. I just thought it was really funny.
"I bought the ugly but practical Chacos to wear on a first date --
kayaking!
The Chacos worked great; the guy didn't. Then I got my heart
broken by a hot
designer who lived in Chicago. I went to Italy for 10
days with my Chacos --
to try and forget. The Chacos went on another
trip to Amsterdam
that I took with a writer. We broke up and I came
home early. So did the homely
but comfortable Chacos. I wore them on
long walks with a handsome CEO I dated
after Mr. Amsterdam. I miss his
dog. Him? Not so much. Maybe I should try a guy like my
Chacos --
practical but ugly -- since it works so well in a shoe."
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| Yesterday was absolutely gorgeous here in Shanghai. Once again I was bouncing around the city from client to client. I SO need to get a car!!!
Here's a stiched panoramic picture of Xujiahui. I was sitting outside at Costa Coffee at the Grand Gateway mall and at the moment felt so at peace and in love with this city! I feel very blessed to be living here at such a marvelous time in China's history .
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| Today I saw a man die... well I tried not to see it happen, but in China, there's not much discretion or privacy, even in death. I was on a train to Hangzhou and in the next car in front of us, about 6 rows away, a woman started crying loudly and was freaking out. Within minutes, we had ascertained that a man, her husband, had had a heart attack. I was traveling with heroes, and they tried to help. About 20 minutes later, we made an emergency stop and the man was carried off the train. It was clear he was gone. So, I didn't see it happen directly and I tried not to really pay attention to the commotion. It was too unsettling.
Most of us live every day trying to ignore the inevitability of death. When death is before us, most of the time it is impersonal- on TV, in a newspaper, someone at work we barely know loses someone. All of us will lose someone we love, but all of us avoid that possibility. We never think about it. So when you do see death happen before you, how do we really know how to process that? I felt completely unprepared for this today. In most situations, I know how to proceed with social grace and confidence and a general ease. But not in something like this- I removed myself, I tried to shut down that part of my brain that would even think about what was happening 20 feet from me.
I know that in many parts of the world, there are people who are confronted with the cruel realities of death everyday. I've lived in China for almost 8 years and even though the streets are treacherous, I've only seen one accident scene that I regretted looking at. I have held dying children, just a few, though never one in his or her last moments. However, there is enough heart break in holding just one and whispering sweet, loving words and prayers in a few moments... and it feels like enough grief for a lifetime. Have I become hardened? Am I afraid to feel the depth of someone else's pain? Where is the empathy I used to have? Maybe I am being a little over dramatic. All I know is that today, I kept my distance and didn't want to be an observer like everyone else of this very sad, tragic moment. A 60 something year old husband and wife got on a train probably to take a few days away in beautiful Hangzhou. And thirty minutes into it, their lives are altered forever. But I kept my distance, and maybe that's what concerns me more than anything else? I didn't cry for them. I've felt pretty stoic all day. I talked to a few friends on the phone during the course of the day, but it wasn't until hours later that I could muster up the strength to tell someone about what I had experienced. Three of the people I traveled with today were very involved in the situation trying to resuscitate the man, and 3 hours later, it didn't occur to me to ask them if they were doing okay hours after giving mouth to mouth to a man who was already gone. I would NOT be doing okay. What to do with all that, I have no idea.
Ironically, lately I've been loving this song by John Mayer, "Stop This Train" and all afternoon, since getting back to Shanghai from my one day whirlwind trip to Hangzhou, I've been listening to this song over and over again. You'd have to hear it to really be moved by how profound it is- the tune is pretty haunting too.
No I'm not color blind
I know the world is black and white
Try to keep an open mind; I just can't sleep on this tonight
Stop this train I want to get off and go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can, but honestly will someone stop this train
Don't know how else to say it, don't want to see my parents go
One generation's length away
From fighting life out on my own
Come on stop this train
I want to get off and go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can, but honestly won't someone stop this train
So scared of getting older
I'm only good at being young
So I play the numbers game to find away to say that life has just begun
Had a talk with my old man
Said "help me understand"
He said "turn 68, you'll renegotiate
Don't stop this train
Don't for a minute change the place you're in
Don't think I couldn't ever understand
I tried my hand, John, honestly we'll never stop this train"
See once in a while when it's good
It'll feel like it should
When they're all still around
And you're still safe and sound
And you don't miss a thing so you cry when you're driving away in the dark.
Singing stop this train I want to get out and go home again
I can't take this speed it's moving in
I know I can, cause now I see I'll never stop this train
So where does the life part of the story come in? Well, the group of 8 of us traveling to Hangzhou were going to see the site for the LWB Hangzhou Surgical Healing Unit (HSHU), a place that with love and care will bring life to many orphans who wouldn't survive without this kind of medical intervention pre and post surgery. And that brings me hope... I pray that next time I hold a sweet, precious baby who is medically fragile, that I'll be told he or she has been given the gift of life because of places like our HSHU and mighty organizations like LWB who are doing all they can to restore life and dignity to these amazing children! Death is inevitable for all of us, but there is great meaning and joy in helping to bring as much life as possible to people, old and young, who are placed in our life's path. And I guess that's what I'll go to sleep thinking about tonight.
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| So, this is going to be a more philosophical, honest post. Bare with me. I never thought that China would teach me about the desperation of love, or maybe what I mean is the desperation to be in love, but China has painted quite a picture for me. You'd think that the US, with its movies and blatantly looser morals, would
aggrandize coupledom, togetherness and the pleasures of having a significant other. And it does. But oddly enough, in China I have the
unique position of being a cultural observer, and I've seen how the desperation is much more heightened here. Even though I've lived here for almost 8 years, I still look
at the culture with the eyes of
an outsider trying to understand these people, a never ending study, I tell you. And that's how my observations of a culture desperate to be in love have mentored me, along with a little Tim Keller, to be more at peace with my current singleness.
Last night,
I was
walking home and saw a twenty something year old guy crouched down sitting on
his haunches (the Chinese way of sitting if there is no chair available). He was on the phone and he was
sobbing. I could only imagine that He was in the midst of a breakup
or at the very least an argument that put the writing on the wall- the end is near.
I could palpably taste that gut wrenching feeling... the kind when you know it's over and you'll do anything to hold on- I felt it two years ago.
I ached for him in his pain. I felt such empathy- I didn't want him to sit on the sidewalk on a busy street going through it in this way. I questioned why there ever were breakups in the first place. I wanted to take him out for coffee, listen to his story and tell him he'd
be okay- that he would be more than okay. I wanted to assure him that he would finally find Himself through the pain & be free from his enslavement to another person.
I wanted to tell him that there is life beyond thinking you can not
survive without that person you're in love with, because you truly can. It's just that you don't want
to. More than anything else, you're just scared of being alone. There's still
a pang of aloneness when I see couples in China.
There are some days it feels like they are everywhere in my path, creating in me a new and deeper discontent. I find myself asking stupid
questions. How did they find each other? Are they happy... really happy? Or are
they just settling? Will I ever know how wonderful it is to be part of an "us" again? On my good days, I am hopeful. On the hard days, I'm cynical and afraid that I'll settle. And then there's just lonliness... sometimes you can't shake it. This week my roommate and 2 best friends were all out of town, and I felt so alone. It's that and a whole lot more that was rumbling in my heart and mind this morning when I listened to Tim Keller's recent sermon called "Moses' Prayer for God". The sermon hit me in such a deep place of longing. I needed to be hit there because I feel like I had been numbing myself to the longing, turning it off. Instead what I was reminded of this morning is that if I want to be loved so that I know that I matter, I'll put way too much on that person... I'll never be satisfied. And I know that's true, I did that once before and it strangled us and I nearly lost myself because I was living desperate to hold on to him. I was reminded that when we truly believe that our deepest desires are met, found and satisfied in the Lord, and we finally believe that we truly matter to the Lord... everything else, every other longing becomes second place. First importance becomes knowing the Father, loving Him and letting ourselves be loved by Him.
And so this afternoon, with this lesson fresh on my mind, I went out into the city and as I saw random couples in the subway, in restaurants, on the street, I saw them through slightly different eyes. I saw how similar we are; how wanting to be loved- utterly, completely accepted for who we are and loved anyway- is universal. It's the deepest longing for most of us. I saw the coupledom all around me- women
desperate to hold on to their men, and physically clinging to them in that way.
I saw men who doted over their girlfriends and it seemed to me that they were so
lost on their own without this person that their very existence was found in loving the person they were with. I saw couples together who seemed that they were were more lonely together than I sometimes feel alone. I saw couples in their last moments together, one person crying, and the other looking awkward and embarrassed.
Though my ache and longing is not lessened, my eyes can view my circumstances in a different way. At least I do have the Lord and can know, when I choose to believe it, that I belong to Him and am loved with an everlasting love. I can absorb His love for me and respond differently to a longing unfulfilled. And I had to say a prayer of thankfulness- yes breaking up is painful, but I'm thankful to be done with the pain and in a place now where the only thing to do is look forward to meeting someone and falling in love. Hope is a better companion than grief. So, I'll choose hope today... and know without a doubt that the Lord who is good, faithful and loving is in my tomorrow... all my tomorrows. And He is more than enough.
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