Cities, Airports, & Books of 2018

As an information-driven recap of the year: here are the cities I’ve slept in, the airports I’ve arrived in or departed from, and the books I read in 2018.

This post was inspired by my colleague and friend Amy, who has been doing this annual recap since 2011. Her recap includes shows she saw and races she completed, and I adapted mine accordingly.

Cities I slept in

Ann Arbor, Michigan
Da Nang, Vietnam
Hoi An, Vietnam
Hue, Vietnam
Karawaci, Indonesia
Melbourne, Australia
Osaka, Japan
Portland, Oregon
Seattle, Washington
Seoul, Korea
Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt
Singapore
West Palm Beach, Florida

Airports I traveled through

CAI
CGK
DAD
DTW
EWR
HKG
ICN
JFK
KIX
PBI
SEA
SIN
SSH

Books I read

Born A Crime
Boundaries
Boys In The Boat
David And Goliath
Difficult Conversations
Everybody Lies
For Men Only
For Women Only
From The Corner Of The Oval
Gift Of Loving Yourself
Grit
Hidden Christmas
Hit Refresh
Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus
Missoula
Originals
Pachinko
Prayer
Shoe Dog
Steve Jobs
Ten Great Dates Before You Say "I Do"
The Best We Could Do
The Bible
The Defining Decade
The Short And Tragic Life Of Robert Peace
The Road To Character
When Breath Becomes Air

Comments

And just when you least expect it..

Today I went down to the food court with another intern and as I opened my box of sushi, I hesitated. Feeling as if there were too many eyes on me (I only ate with one other person -_-), I questioned whether I should pray before my meal, in fear of social rejection. After I prayed, she asked me if I was a Christian, and I awkwardly responded that I was. Then she said, "Finally! What a relief to know that there are other Christians!" WHAT THE.. I couldn't believe it. Here I was, sitting with a co-worker that I had simply exchanged cordial greetings with, now talking about God haha. Even though I was scared and honestly did NOT want to pray, God used a habitual thing like that to open up opportunities for me to invite her to small group and share my faith. Crazy how He works when you least expect it.

Delirious

delirious (adj): marked by uncontrollable excitement or emotion; ecstatic; filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy (1 peter 1:8); me I don't think I had a personal relationship with God until 2 weeks ago. There have been a lot of formative moments and experiences in the past 6 years of me considering the existence of a higher-being, 3 yrs of being a Christian, 1 year of living by faith, 6 months of serving on church leadership, 1 month of dire circumstances, each of which have been challenged and supported by specific instances in my life.* But it's only been 2 weeks of finding pure joy, satisfaction, and freedom in Christ (alone). Though it's been 6 years since I first stepped into a church building and 3 years since I accepted Christ, I was always afraid to admit that I didn't know what grace, freedom, repentance, or Jesus meant--in terms other than the ones I had heard or read--it was always a theory and never a reality in my own life. After years of doing chur...

Surrendering my career

"Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." The concept of surrendering my career never made much sense to me because I've always known what I wanted to do, and was perfectly en route to achieving it. I thought I was better than everyone else for knowing what I wanted to do. In all frankness, I just thought I was awesome and gave myself credit for every accomplishment in my life. When God directly confronted me last year with how much I had been living for myself, I made all excuses to rationalize and justify myself. Somehow God changed my heart to be willing to let go of my perfect plan and insured that I would never find the type of security and identity that I found through a job title or company reputation. He took me through a whole year of rejections and dejected moments so that I would learn what it means to be satisfied with merely having a relationship with the God of the universe , not just praising Him or want...

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