Tears

I am staying a little bit late this evening at the office.

I guess I just need some time to be with myself. Gina has flown back home, and finally, when I got a chance to pray with her, we both shed a lot of tears for different reasons.

I'll remember the tears. And may this will be close to the end of the suffering. Have mercy on us, Lord.

Concerning vows

Num. 30:2 When a man vows a vow to Jehovah or swears an oath to bind himself by pledge, he shall not break his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.

Num. 30:7 And her husband hears of it and is silent with respect to her on the day he hears it, then her vows will stand and her pledges by which she has bound herself will stand.

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Lord, although we do not have the right over our vows as You are the One who made the final decisions, I still ask You to bless my heart over the vows.

Through our fellowship, You will eventually find favour of my vows and establish them.
Through the process, may I be infused with You, and You will be moved by my desires to serve You and find favour of my vows. 

The nature of a PhD journey, and my practice to disconnect the identity as a PhD

I just had a chat with my colleagues and realised the nature of a PhD indeed cause a lot of stress for us. The fact is, regardless of how you have been acknowledged in other areas of your work, you will still find the PhD journey difficult. You might still be criticised that you are not working hard enough and so on. This happens almost every day, and all of us are very discouraged.

I had a thought that in order to resolve the stress from the research work yet still work it very well, I have to learn to disconnect from my identity as a researcher. I am going to do an experiment about this, and see how it might soothe the stress from work. When a work does not define you or become your identity, you might less likely feel attacked by the criticisms.