warring states period

the past couple of weeks have been a trying time for me. i find it ironic how in my last post, i talked about being decisive and trusting God for the result and that has been the main thing i have been struggling with. i recently got admitted to uci, which stirred up a lot of emotions and confusions that i thought i had dealt with, or at least did not ever have to deal with again. pressures from home to go home and the friendships i've developed here in san diego tore me in a back-and-forth game of tug-o-war to the point where i felt quite immobilized, stuck, and unmotivated. i think my biggest internal struggle was dealing with bitterness towards my parents who initially pushed for me to go back to irvine, because from my perspective, it wasn't just a simple issue of finances. it was the issue of whether or not they trusted my ability to succeed in san diego where the schooling is more challenging and competitive. to my surprise, as i was thinking about these things, i realized that my frustration with my parents was not caused because their claims were absolutely wrong, but rather because there was some truth to what they were saying. if i were to honestly map out my mentality throughout the year and list my priorities, i would objectively say that honoring my parents and God through my studies has not been one of the most important things to me. i haven't been giving my best. and so, i told myself last week that the only thing that would fully convince me to go back home was if i could not prove to myself to be able to take full advantage of the education here with integrity and due diligence. basically, if this next month is another month in which i do just enough to get by, i might as well save my parents some money, because i could do the same exact thing back home.
with this somewhat new determination to strive for excellence in mind, i received a phone call from my parents at the beginning of this week. i doubted that they would have anything new to say to me and expected myself to be discouraged at the end of the conversation. but, they surprised me. my mom told me to stay in san diego. and at first, i thought "okay, that's wonderful, but it's probably just mom being soft on me, because she's mom. dad is not on board, right?" dad was on board. i was speechless- imagine all the scenarios i played out in mind in the previous week, thinking about all the points my parents brought up for irvine and against san diego, and the one scenario that i didn't consider happened. my dad told me that he prompted me to initially consider irvine so that i would think more about why i would want to stay in san diego. and it's true- i would not have thought about these things if i glanced over this decision making process and i would probably not be this determined to truly put in my best effort here.