Good news to talk about at the Thanksgiving table this year

Okay guys, before you jump on me for being too much of an idealist...I know the world sucks right now. The year is chock-full of bad news. Heck, this week is full of bad news. As I sit in my room writing this there are three huge fires burning in California, and one is about an hour away from me. These fires come on the heels of two mass shootings 11 days apart, one of which happened in the same area where one of the aforementioned three fires is burning right now. (Please pray for the town of Thousand Oaks!)

We could talk about the rise in suicides this year, which took the lives of multiple well-known people as well as a 30-year-old pastor. We could talk about other deaths of influential people: Aretha Franklin, John McCain, Mac Miller, Stan Lee, Avicii. Pick your sphere of influence; there's probably someone! (I found out about Stan Lee while doing research for this post and audibly shouted.)

We could go on and on, and that's what most people are going to do; go on and on focusing on and talking about all the negative things that have gone on this year. But as much negative as there is, I am a firm believer that there is a silver lining in every cloud. And I figured that since the earth hasn't come to an end (yet), there must still be some good stuff going on.

So, I searched for some good news. And turns out, I found some. So here are a couple of cool things that happened in 2018:

1. We all hear about police officers who are really, really bad at their job: who shoot unarmed people for no reason. But most people don't hear about police officers like Jennifer Maddox. Hailing from my hometown of Chicago, Maddox started working for the Chicago police force 20 years ago and was assigned to the South Side. After getting called to one housing complex one too many times to deal with kids who were getting in trouble, she took a side job working in that housing complex, and eventually created a space for the 1,200 children who live there. The nonprofit is called Future Ties, and it provides homework help, life skills training, resume workshops, conflict resolution workshops, yoga, tutoring and field trips, among other things. For her efforts, she was nominated by L'Oreal Paris as one of their Women of Worth for the year, and if she wins, she gets another $25,000 for Future Ties. You can vote for her here! (story from MSN)

2. As a newly-minted medical professional, I often hear about pharmaceutical companies that work more for profit than for people. Emergent BioSolutions is apparently not one of those companies (or at least, they're fighting that stereotype with this initiative). They bought out the company responsible for producing Narcan (naloxone), the only drug known that can reverse opioid overdoses, and they have decided to provide opioid overdose reversal kits for every single U.S. public library and YMCA, making about 19,000 public community spaces with free opioid overdose reversal kits. They are also working to provide opioid overdose reversal kits in high schools and universities as well. You can read more about the initiative here (story from Good News Network) and here is a link to the company's statement.

3. One of the longest, most bitter conflicts on the African continent ended this July. In 1993, a year before I was born, Eritrea voted to separate from Ethiopia. Subsequent border conflicts led to a full-scale war that left 80,000 people dead on both sides. On July 8, 2018, the new prime minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, went to Eritrea to meet with their president, Isaias Afwerki. When the two presidents met at the Eritrean border, they hugged. Ahmed announced that the Ethiopian government would accept the terms of a peace deal made in 2000 that had been ignored previously. And with that, twenty-five years of war came to an end. To celebrate, many commoner Ethiopians called random Eritreans on the phone to say how happy they were that the war was ended, and the Eritreans responded with similar happiness. On September 19, the two countries officially opened their border and celebrated their new year together. The whole thing is astounding, and it reminds me of this verse: "He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire." (Psalm 46:9, NIV)

4. July in general seems to not have been too terrible. Besides the aforementioned East African war ending, and the rescue of 12 Thai boys from a cave, the World Cup happened, and it was the best World Cup I have ever seen. The most entertaining thing about it was the fact that for the most part, the teams that people expected to win didn't do so well, and the teams that were expected to rock the bottom punched well above their weight. Russia, the hosts, were the lowest ranking team going into the tournament, but they beat 2010 winners Spain on their way to the quarterfinals. England, the country that invented soccer but had been quite mediocre at it since 1990, went on to become semifinalists for the first time in my life. (They also conquered a penalty shootout for the first time in 28 years, which doesn't sound big, but believe me, it is big.) No other country defined the World Cup of underdogs more than Croatia, a country of four million people that had rarely gone past the group stage before going all the way to the finals and nearly taking it all. In the end, a well-established team did win the World Cup (vive la France!), but for their win, France can thank seventeen (!!!) men who are ethnic minorities, including thirteen (13) black men. I will leave that there. ;)

5. Continuing with the theme of ending wars and sports, North Korea and South Korea are enjoying the best relations they've had since the two of them split back in 1953. During the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the two Koreas actually unified some of their sports teams so that they competed together under one Korean flag. Two months later, in April, Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in (the president of South Korea) met at the border between the two countries for a historic summit. There they came up with the Panmunjeom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unity on the Korean Peninsula, where among other things, the two countries agreed to denuclearization, to formally end the Korean War (which never officially ended, though nothing major happened after 1954), and to move towards unity. The two countries have started removing troops and landmines from the NK-SK border. Obviously they aren't done with negotiations yet, and there are many, many questions to be asked as the two Koreas move towards unity. But for as long as I live, I will never forget the image of Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in walking over the 38th parallel--a symbol of seventy years of war--as if it were a mere pothole, or a jump rope.

6. As I mentioned before, I found out that Stan Lee died yesterday as I was quickly looking up some bad news to begin this post. And while it is sad that he has left us, if I have to be honest, when I leave this world I want to be as baller as Stan Lee was. He was married for 70 years to his wife, he was healthy enough to do what he loved even into his 90s, he had two children...oh, and his comic book company is ON TOP OF THE WORLD RIGHT NOW. 
How do I begin to describe the incredible year that Marvel Comics has had? Let's start from the beginning of the year. In February, they released a little movie called Black Panther. They figured that it would make a decent amount of money, bringing lots of black people along with the usual Marvel nerds. Lo and behold, Black Panther went well above and beyond Marvel's expectations, sparking actual dance parties inside the theater, a bevvy of articles on how groundbreaking it was, a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and $1.3 billion for Marvel Comics. Then the end of April came, and with it, a certain Avengers: Infinity War, a movie that broke so many box office records that Wikipedia had to write a separate article dedicated to its record-breaking, and that gave $2 billion more to Marvel Comics. Then, three weeks after Infinity War, May brought us Deadpool 2, which broke Infinity War's record for the movie that made the highest amount of money on opening weekend, and gave $734 million more to Marvel Comics. And finally, in August came the underachiever, Ant-Man and the Wasp, which only made $622 million for Marvel Comics. Excelsior, indeed. Rest in peace, Stan.

Generally speaking, it has never been a better time to be a geek. Even in the early 2000s, when I was a kid, if you told other kids that you read Marvel comics for fun and played video games, you were perceived as a loser. A decade later, the stories that the geeks grew up reading have now become the most profitable movies on planet Earth, and and even video games are viewed more respectably now with the rise of eSports and childhood nostalgia. How times can change.

7. I mentioned the two shootings that happened within 11 days of each other. Obviously they are unequivocally bad, and they shouldn't have happened. However, tragedies often bring out the worst and the best in people, and this is a demonstration of it bringing out the best. After the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting on October 27, two GoFundMes were started by Muslims, who traditionally have been enemies of Jews; one was started by two Muslim organizations, and the other by one Iranian man named Shay Khatiri. Within days, the two Muslim organizations had raised $250,000; Khatiri's went further, raising over $1 million to help the victims as of November 1. The donors were not only Muslim but also Christian and of other faiths (or none at all). For all the havoc caused by one anti-Semite, it's nice to see that there are many, many more Americans who are willing to support Jewish people (as well as other people) in times of need.

8. Many people didn't make it to the end of this year. I mentioned the many influential people we've lost this year: comic book makers, incredible singers, rappers, fashion designers and TV hosts, as well as normal people who shouldn't have died when they did. But guess who did make it to the end of the year? YOU, dear reader. You made to the end of the year (and the end of this very long post). And I am so grateful that you made it. As Dr. Seuss put it, "Today, you are you, and it's truer than true. There is no one alive that is you-er than you." If you were to die now, there are people that would miss you. No one can replace you, reader. Yes, there are people who are similar to you and have similar experiences, but no one can make the unique mark on the world that you make. You are very important! You are loved more than you'll ever know. It may not always feel that way, but it's true. Thank you for reading my post. I'm super honored to have you here.

I hope this post helped you gain a bit of optimism. It certainly helped me! I didn't feel like it was going to help me, and I didn't feel like there was a point even trying to look for good news. But many, many studies have shown the benefits of gratitude, of the consistent practice of finding things to be grateful about. So, I decided to do my part. Hopefully these topics can spark discussion on a more hopeful note. 

the rougher side of being surrounded by “people who look like me”

I grew up mostly surrounded by white and Asian people. I was one of 3 black people in my middle school and one of maybe 30 in a high school of 2800. There was always this sense that I was “the other”. Whenever I walked into the room, I was the only person of my "category" there, and I couldn’t really do anything about it. 

But the thing is, sometimes I felt that way around black people too. Sometimes I would end up in groups of black people, but I wasn’t like those black people, and everyone knew it. People told me that I “acted white”. The way I spoke, the way I viewed school, the things I was interested in—they didn’t fit the mold of these black people. So I grew up basically never fitting in—too black for the white people, and too white (too much of an “Oreo”) for the black people.

When I went to college, everything changed. There were more black people around me than I had even been around in my life, but that wasn’t the thing. It was the kind of black people I was surrounded by. The black people at Harvard talked like me, dressed like me, valued education as much as me. They were to a large extent, like me. For the first time (at least in a school setting…refer to the “Black Panther” C&C post) I was surrounded by people who looked like me. And it was cool! it was cool hanging out with the other black girls and realizing that I wasn’t the only one of my "specific kind”, if you will.

But sometimes, it wasn’t so cool.

Here’s why.

All of a sudden, I had found my “group” per se. After a whole lifetime of not fitting in, I had finally found the group where I was supposed to “fit in”. These were the guys and girls that I was to look up to…and to set up as a benchmark. If I was not doing as well as them, and if I wasn’t doing the stuff they did or liking the stuff they liked, it made me less of a Black Harvard Girl. And who was I, if not a Black Harvard Girl? 

So instead of my friends they became my idols. If I didn’t think the exact same thing with the exact same perspective on an issue as they did, it made me question my own blackness. If I didn’t do as well in school as they did, it became a stumbling block to me. Why can’t I do as well as her? Am I not just like her?

It took me a couple of years to figure out that the answer to that is NO.

I am not just the sum of the people who look like me. I am ME. And each black girl who looks like me is not just “another black girl” either. Every person is fearfully and wonderfully made. Every person has their own UNIQUE gifts and/or talents. Each person is made to make his or her own mark on the world. Each person has his or her own race to run. I spent a lot of time looking at other black girls wondering why I didn’t run my race just like them, not knowing that my only job was to finish MY OWN race. And as I came into myself, I realized that difference is not an enemy. Other people thinking different, or learning different, is not bad. We can all make it to the other side.

Maybe you’re a black girl reading this, the opinion of another black girl, and you have never had this problem. That’s wonderful! You go be your beautiful black self! You don’t have to relate to me or people like me on everything ever. If you did, you’d be a copy, and that’s not who you’re made to be.

But I reckon I’m not the only person with this experience, which is why this post is public. Let’s help each other. :)

on the death of pastor Andrew Stoecklein and of too many others like him

Four days ago, the pastor of Inland Hills Church of Chino, CA, Andrew Stoecklein, committed suicide. From what I’ve heard, about 400 pastors do this every year. That’s 400 too many.

I don’t think it happens because God doesn’t care/can’t help people with anxiety or depression. That would be an erroneous statement that flies in the face of not only the Bible, but of thousands of testimonies, including mine.

I think it happens, number one, because we have a real enemy that wants to destroy us! He wants us to believe his lies and to be held back by strongholds of fear, sadness, addiction and other bad things, and he goes about looking for opportunities to devour people!

The other reason I think it happens is because of the pedestal pastors can accidentally find themselves on. Pastors have so many expectations on them: they have to preach the word of God at all times, have their behavior in line at all times, be ready to provide a caring voice and hand for their flock at all times...it’s a stressful profession! And I think it is all too easy for pastors to fall into the trap that they must be perfect people and they must be able to carry all the people's burdens by themselves. And because they feel like they can’t express their struggles to anyone (or else they’ll lead the flock astray, oh no!) they struggle in isolation. And isolation is an ACTUAL tool of the devil. It amplifies your internal problems by a lot.

What can we do as normal churchgoing people? I think the main thing we can do is continually pray for our pastors. When I was struggling with anxiety and depression myself (mainly in college), what got me back from the brink was the constant prayer and support of my parents. They were not just feelings that came and went; they were spiritual strongholds sent by the devil to take me out. Spiritual strongholds require spiritual weapons, so prayer is the ideal weapon against these things. If you happen to know that your pastor is in a direct struggle with these things, pray that those strongholds would break in Jesus’ name. If you don’t think they’re struggling, pray that they will be able to continually cast their cares upon God and that the joy of the Lord would be their strength.

Another thing we can do is let our pastors be people once in a while. Many times pastors write of not having a vacation in 10 or more years because they’re always on duty. Even doctors don’t suffer that much! I am a big advocate of pastors getting annual vacations or sabbaticals or what not. We all need time to rest and recharge and to simply listen to what God is saying to us. Other than that, we should allow our pastors to be vulnerable with us when needed. The pastor isn’t just there to serve us; he or she is our supervisor, and we are all workers in the body of Christ. Therefore as church people we should be willing to (collectively) bear our pastors’ burdens as well. Again, prayer is key!

One thing that churches can do that lessens the burden on pastors is to have more than one good preacher or leader. My home church, Christian Life Center, and my current church, Hillsong LA, both have multiple main speakers, and this is very key! At CLC, when my pastors take their annual vacation to the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, the church isn’t left scrambling because we have other trained pastors and leaders who can take over for the week. These leaders can then help the pastor bear his or her burdens and make the work lighter.

All this is to say that as a church we all need to be on guard against depression and anxiety in our pastors and leaders. When you get the chance, do pray for pastor Stoecklein’s family and his church, and also for the other churches that have undoubtedly gone through the same thing this year.

The United States National Suicide Prevention Hotline can help in times of crisis if you call 1(800)-273-8255.

How To Survive First Year of Med School

Second year of med school starts in three days...SIGH.

In trying to mentally prepare myself to start this year, I am amassing tips for incoming first years or gung-ho premeds.

1. You are going to be surrounded by people who are just as driven and as smart as you are. DO NOT FALL into the comparison trap. Other people have their race to run and you have your race to run. Don't judge yourself on the accomplishments of others.

2. Going with the last note, do be ambitious, but please don't be a gunner. Don't ask people what score they got on the test or try and take advantage of people to make yourself look good. People will not like you!

3. Find a study method (or a couple) that works for you and stick to it. If you're like me, this may change from block to block or from week to week, depending on the material and on whether you like to switch it up (like me). This is okay as long as you KEEP STUDYING throughout the block.

4. You can cram in med school...but it's a lot harder than in college. It's a megaton of information, so you have to give yourself a certain amount of time to learn all of it before the test. The best way to do it is to study at least a couple of hours each day after class. Then when you are reviewing before the test, you'll have seen the information before, and it'll be easier to remember.

5. I always felt better studying the information I learned on the day. If I wasn't able to get through all the material for August 7, for example, instead of spending August 8 trying to catch up, I'd just leave the rest of the August 7 material until the weekend and skip over to August 8 material. This way, I was able to keep up with the material pretty well and not fall behind too much. Falling behind is very discouraging, so I try to avoid that as much as I can.

6. You may fall behind. You may violate your perfect study schedule sometimes. You may even unintentionally take a day off because you're tired. That's okay. You're not perfect, and you don't have to be perfect in order to be successful in medical school. If you make a mistake or two or seven, don't dwell on the fact that you messed up. The righteous person falls seven times and gets back up eight times. If you fall, get up and try again.

7. If you budget your time well, you WILL have time on weekends to have fun! People think that med school is the end of all fun...it isn't. You will study a lot, but there will be some free time! (When studying for Step 1 or on rotations where you work on weekends, there will be less free time. But you'll be okay.)

8. For me, talking to patients was a LOT scarier than studying was! A lot of the confidence for that comes with practice. If your school gives you chances to practice, TAKE THEM. You may feel uncomfortable or like you're being annoying, but your grades third and fourth year as well as your future patients will thank you.

9. Don't be afraid to ask for help. No one expects you to know everything yet; you are a medical student, and a first-year one at that. You've barely been inducted into the profession, and everyone expects you to need help at some point. Also, it reflects badly on the med school if the students do badly, so most schools should have plenty of help resources. Take advantage of them. Get a tutor if needed.

10. Try and get on an exercise regimen and to eat healthy. Most people go into med school after their teenage years, and our bodies start reacting to bad treatment as time goes on. At least in my experience, if I go too long without exercising, my thighs start aching and I get super lethargic, which is not something I can afford with med school's fast pace. I've heard of similar experiences with my classmates. You don't have to look like a model; just find a way to be active for thirty minutes or so more than once a week. It's similar with eating; clean eating makes me feel really good and gives me energy.

11. Going along with number 7, find time for at least one hobby that you liked before medical school and keep doing it. For me the thing I did most consistently was learn languages, a hobby I've had since I was ten years old. It engages another part of my brain and makes me happy.

12. Medicine consists of a lot more than learning copious amounts of biology. It also consists of forming positive relationships with patients (yay social skills) and learning how to do research (at least in my medical school) among other things. Don't skimp on these parts of the job just because learning the science is harder! The science is what gives you good grades now, but the other things (especially the doctor-patient relationship thing) will make you a better doctor later.

There is plenty more advice to give, but I don't know it yet, so you get this. Congratulations on medical school, and hope this helps.

No New Friends?

This summer has been an interesting one for me. The nature of my research means that I have a ton more free time than normal, which is amazing. But the downside to having two months off from med school is that all of my school friends are off doing their own thing, and because I had no connections to the LA area before med school, I realized that I actually had very few friends in LA.

Drake coined the phrase “no new friends”, and I feel like that’s how millennial society approaches friendship. Friends—real ones, anyway—come few and far between, and once you leave school, you essentially have no chance of making any more real friends, so keep your real ones close and keep the rest of humanity at arm’s length. This is a decent philosophy—that is, if you stay in the same area and never move to a new place. For those of us who do make moves across the country to places where you don’t know a soul, we have to revise that a bit, don’t we?

The Bible says, “He who wants to have friends must show himself friendly.” Even our best friends start as people we’ve never talked to before, and it takes time—and multiple conversations—for people to become acquaintances, and even more of that to become friends. Many people (including me, as I found out this summer) stop right before the first conversation. It’s always awkward, and there’s the nagging fear that the person won’t like you or won’t want to hang out with you or will ALWAYS be too busy to hang out with you. As annoying as this sounds, the way to overcome that is to push past the fear and start reaching out to people. That doesn’t mean that you don’t feel any fear; you’re just not letting it dictate what you’re going to do. You’re taking control of the situation.

So without further ado, here are some tips for people who need to make new friends:

1.     As said above, you’re going to have to take control over your fear (AKA timidity or anxiety) or you won’t be able to do anything. That is NOT the same as pretending the fear is not there; you have to acknowledge your enemy in order to defeat it. You also have to learn where the enemy is coming from. Sometimes, the anxiety can be a relic of some bad experiences in your past. This was my case. I spent a large chunk of my childhood with literally no friends, and people essentially kept me at a distance. College and medical school gave me friends and I thought I was set, but then summer came and I was stuck in LA alone and the anxiety came back. My mom told me to reach out to people and the first time she told me that, I nearly had an emotional breakdown because I was so scared that people would reject me! I had to make myself a positive affirmation that basically said that I am not in middle school anymore and that people will like me, and I had to put that on my wall and affirm that to myself all the time. Only then was I able to start reaching out.

2.     Figure out what kind of people you want to meet, and then go where those people go. Meeting random people is great and all, but if you want to meet friends, the type of people that you would want to be around, you should go to the places you expect those people to be at. If you want to meet skaters, go to the skate park. If you want to meet dancers, take a dance class. If you want to meet Christians, go to church. For those who aren’t set on one “type” of person, religious (and probably humanist) organizations, park districts, and YMCAs are places that have diverse activities for diverse ages and stages of people, so those are great places to start. The Internet (Yelp and Meetup come to mind) can also help you find special interest groups where you can meet people. 

a.     A great way of meeting people is doing community service. Community service is the type of hard work that brings people together in solidarity, and many friendships can be made with volunteers as well as with the people you serve. (Also, people who are serving their communities are probably more likely to be generally nice and good people, especially if they’re volunteers.) A major thing that I did was to volunteer at my church’s youth camp, Encounter. With about 50-100 other volunteers, I helped run a three-day summercamp for 350 teenagers. Along the way, I made quite a few new friends, and got a couple of dope pictures.

3.     Go to where the people you want to meet are, and go there regularly. The reason why it’s so easy to make friends in school is because in school, you see the same people every day, so there’s room to have conversations and develop friendships. As an adult, you have to make that regularity a thing for yourself. The first couple of times are the most awkward, and that’s where most people quit. The people you meet the first week you go may not be there the next week, and you might feel left alone as a result. Don’t give up! Keep going there and introducing yourself to people. In time, you’ll meet other “regulars”, and there’s where the friendship starts!

4.     Do go to the places where the people you want to meet are, but also don’t forget that there may be new friends right in front of you that you haven’t met yet or given a chance. Sometimes, we can be such perfectionists that if a person doesn’t look like a best friend immediately we write them off. Your roommate who you get along with but never really talk to, the custodian you pass every day, the kid who sits next to you in class but isn’t in your “friend group”—all of these are potential friends. Strike up some conversations with them and see how that goes.  

5.     So you’ve met another person, and you like him or her. You vibe well and have good conversations. Good! Get their phone number or email and (if applicable) friend them on social media. How do you ask for their number? After a couple good conversations (and preferably when you’re about to leave), ask them, “hey, can we exchange numbers/emails/social media?” It’s likely that the person will give you at least one of the three, especially if they like you. Numbers, emails and social media enable you to keep up the friendship even if you don’t regularly see the person. They are key if you want to extend the friendship beyond just your weekly church meeting or yoga class. However…

6.     Don’t just get the person’s contact and then never contact them. Text them and start a conversation! A good way to start a conversation over text (without getting a one word response) is, “Hey, how are you? How’s your week going?” (They will then hopefully describe their week, and you can go from there.) You can also send the person an encouraging quote or a funny meme, or even a picture of cute kittens—anything that will brighten their day. On social media, don’t just scroll through their posts. Leave a nice comment on their Instagram post or Snapchat story, and give them the chance to reply to you. In time, you can also set up a real face-to-face meeting as well.

Here's a picture of some cute kittens. Send this to your new friend; they won't be able to resist!

These are just a few of the many tips that could be given. Experts have written plenty about this topic: there’s even a famous book called How To Win Friends and Influence People. I am not one of those experts, but I have been able to apply these tips this summer and see results. I hope this helps somebody.  

World Cup roundup: Round of 16 and quarterfinals

I prayed that the World Cup would continue to offer us surprises, and God certainly answered me. Of the three World Cups I have followed, this is certainly the best one, and that's not just because England are in the semifinals for the first time since before I was born (!!!!).

Wow, wow, WOW. Where do we start?

Let's start with the round of 16. Within four hours on a Saturday, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, the two greatest players of this generation, were both sent out. Ronaldo and Portugal crashed out to a clinical Uruguay side, while France put four past Lionel Messi and Argentina to send them out in style. This continued a theme from the group games: the teams that relied too much on one star player were going out. The teams that were staying had unified sides with more than one "star".

The next day brought the biggest upset of this World Cup, as Spain fell to Russia on penalties. I came out of church that morning, looked up the results and reeled in shock. Spain and Russia had gone to penalties! Russia had taken Spain, the 2010 champions, to a penalty shootout. Russia then proceeded to cement my shock by winning said shootout. There has been plenty of shock this World Cup, but this topped it all in my opinion. The lowest-ranked team going into the tournament beat the 2010 World Cup champions, who were favorites to win. It was absolute insanity. (Though honestly, I think I can use the words absolute insanity to describe the entire tournament.)

Picture from the Times of Israel.

Less surprising on the same Sunday was Croatia putting Denmark out on penalties. If anything, I was shocked that Denmark even took Croatia that far. Yet again, no team was to be underestimated in this topsy-turvy tournament.

I was very nervous for England going into the round of 16 game. For those who are not familiar with England's recent footballing history, the prevailing theme is disappointment. England had a lot of talent, but after 1990 (the last time they made the semifinals), they could never pull it together. Eventually, the gap between expectation and reality became a source of pressure and fear for England players, to the point where they were at the brink of collapse whenever they played. Whether against a weak team or a strong team, watching England was always a nervy affair and very often a disappointing one. Their performance at Euro 2016 two years ago is the best example of what they'd come to. They barely scraped into the round of 16, where they found none other than Iceland, a country the size of Pittsburgh, PA. When Iceland scored twice in 12 minutes, the team essentially turned into 11 headless chickens, failing to execute any sort of coherent plan and gifting the win to a grateful Iceland team. The fear of failure haunted them throughout that tournament and many others, to the point where the English players literally could not cope with even the slightest danger. These players, who were so talented for their clubs, would mess up for England time after time because the pressure had paralyzed them.

Terrible memories...Iceland after beating England back in 2016. Pic from The Telegraph.

After Euro 2016, no one really wanted to manage the England national team. The unenviable job went to a former youth coach, Gareth Southgate. I'm no football analyst, so I can't tell you everything Southgate did right, but there are a couple obvious things. The first thing is that he made England confront their fears. England in particular were very bad at penalty shootouts, so he made his team focus on penalties in order to break that fear. He was also very realistic about his team instead of pouring too much expectation on them, and he chose players based on merit, not their "possible potential" or "history with the team". His team had some stars (Harry Kane and Dele Alli come to mind), but most of the the team were not so well known before the tournament. It helped that the players had grown up playing for England's junior national teams together and were able to put aside club rivalries in order to be a team.

Going into the World Cup, people liked Southgate and the new-look team, but expectations were very low. I was nervous for the Tunisia and Panama games; England had faltered against nations like these. But instead, they won against Tunisia and absolutely crushed Panama. They lost against Belgium, but Belgium are #3 in the world, so no one was disappointed. Their loss also meant that they finished second in the group, so they went into the half of the draw with the lower ranked teams, which was very good in retrospect. But still, they had Colombia to deal with. 

Colombia are a very good side, with stars such as James Rodriguez and Radamel Falcao, and most pundits would have favored them to win. But they were not at full strength, and as a result, they mostly tried to defend and play somewhat dirty. The game dragged on with the sides getting one goal each, and it eventually went to penalties, England's old enemy. To my shock, England won the penalty shootout! (They'd been in five penalty shootouts in major tournaments and had never won until then.) As my cousin said after that game, "This World Cup is like a kid in primary school who's been told it's opposite day!"

The magic continued into the quarterfinals, where England played Sweden, who were in the quarterfinals for the very first time. I was fortunate to watch this game live, and it was an exciting one. Sweden were great and fought to the end, but England were the better team, creating most of the chances and scoring twice. It ended 2-0, and for the first time in my lifetime, England were in the semifinals! I'm still wearing my England shirt that I took from my brother four or five years ago. For the first time ever, I'm wearing it with pride. No matter what happens now, this World Cup has made me and many others proud to be England fans again, and for that I have to thank Gareth Southgate and his team!

Happy times...Dele Alli celebrates after his goal vs. Sweden (NDTV)

After winning the penalty shootout vs. Colombia (BBC)

I watched that game out in the San Fernando Valley, also known as "the Valley", and I stayed around to watch the last quarterfinal, Russia vs. Croatia. As it turns out, the Valley is full of Russians, and several of them showed up to the watch party where I was, shouting chants nonstop for 120 minutes and a penalty shootout. 

The game certainly fit the crackling atmosphere. Denis Cheryshev scored a beautiful long-range goal for Russia, but Croatia let them know that it wasn't over just eight minutes later via a header from Andrej Kramaric. In extra time, the roles were reversed; Croatia scored first to go ahead, only for Russia to respond with an incredible header from Mario Fernandes via a corner kick from Artem Dzyuba. They were neck and neck until the penalty shootout, and it was exciting and tiring to watch! I knew Russia's game was over the moment that Fernandes shot his penalty wide. Honestly, though, they have absolutely crushed the expectations and silenced all the haters, and they've done so well just by getting to the quarterfinals.

And honestly, I can say that for almost every team. Sweden weren't even in the World Cup for so many years, but this year they went to the quarterfinals WITHOUT their star player, Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Croatia had been in the World Cup for a while, but they were always crashing out in the group stages. This time they've declared themselves one of the teams of the tournament; not even the hosts, buoyed by an entire nation, could stop them. Belgium have only become good in the past six years or so; their golden generation is finally reaching the heights they're supposed to reach. Japan, who in the past often looked like a waste of a World Cup spot, topped their group and broke into the Round of 16 for the first time in a while. Even Denmark, who crashed out in the round of 16, are better than I can ever remember them being. Almost all the traditional powers are at home watching while the underdogs get to run the tournament, and for that reason, this is my favorite World Cup ever. (Hopefully the next World Cup will involve more African teams, though. Just saying...)

I end this (somewhat biased) review with a shoutout to a Russian player whose name no one knew before this tournament, the aforementioned Denis Cheryshev. Cheryshev plays for a lesser-known Spanish club called Villareal, and prior to this tournament, he was not playing regularly for them. His biggest claim to fame was getting Real Madrid eliminated from an important tournament back in 2015. He has spent the last five years being shuttled between clubs, and he wasn't guaranteed to get into this Russia team for the World Cup. Even then, he was expected to be a fringe player. Instead, he's been the breakout player of the tournament, scoring four gorgeous goals, including this screamer in the Russia-Croatia game just a couple hours before this piece was written.

Six days before this game, he made a post on his Instagram that piqued my interest as I was scrolling through the 'gram today. His Instagram (@cheryshev90) is not particularly interesting, but the caption on his last photo, taken during this World Cup, caught my eye. 

The caption reads: "Thank you Lord for everything! Phil 4:13: I can do everything through Jesus Christ #togetherwithmyteam." And it's not just this post; a lot of his posts have the caption "thank you Lord for everything." Is it not like God to lift his people out of the dust like that? As Hannah put it in 1 Samuel 2: 

"He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor. For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and on them he has set the world." (1 Samuel 2:8 ESV)

The Bible also says this:

"One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much..." (Luke 16:10 ESV)

Cheryshev's previous posts show that he had made a habit of glorifying God in every victory, no matter how many people saw him do it. Now that the whole world can see him, he's decided to continue with what he was doing. Just more proof that God is good to those who serve Him!

ON TO THE SEMIS!