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Lately, I’ve been working on the sci-fi epic series, Dune (it’s a little dark, so I have to pace myself and put happier, more hopeful books in between the Dune books). The books are set on a desert planet called Arrakis, or Dune, and follows a royal family that is exiled there and forced to rule there. There is a ongoing theme of merging with the ecology of the planet and finding that the place of exile is actually a place of strength (they end up taking over the universe… okay so kind of crazy, just read it).

One of the early characters is the planet ecologist, Liet Kynes. His job was to observe and study the ecology of the planet, but had spent so much time with the native population in Arrakis, that many outsiders shook their heads and described him as “gone native”. In truth, he had become so close with the natives, he had in fact gained influence over much of the planet and had set in motion a plan to make the planet a planet of water over several generations.

I relate a little too much to this ecologist. (and now I switch from overtly scifi realms (ironically the book is about humanistic false religion) to my own religious convictions)

God’s call to me to North County has changed me.

Recently I moved into north Oceanside, near the back gate of Camp Pendleton. For the last 3.5 years of my 4.5 years of working up in North County, I had lived in north Carlsbad. That was already a huge shift for me. I was kicking and screaming at God, angry at Him for calling me to North County, a place with almost no friends, of cultural isolation for myself. Carlsbad seemed far enough, and I could drive conveniently down to San Diego to visit friends, and honestly it was just about 6 miles from MiraCosta. Close enough.

And now I realize just how much I’ve changed. Through a whirlwind of circumstances, I have found myself moving even further north. In fact, I live the furthest from the center of San Diego than any of my other co-workers now. 5 years ago, this would be exile. This would be the desert for me.

But 5 years after beginning my work in North County, this is life for me. The “wilderness” isn’t so cruel anymore, in fact, I’ve found much here. Instead… it feels right. I could not see myself working in another place or with other students in this season of life.

Nowadays, I tell people I live in Oceanside, and they look at it with disdain. “What’s over there?”

As I sit in my latest apartment that looks over the hills of Camp Pendleton, my heart is filled with God’s love for this place. I’ll tell you what’s over there in Oceanside- A campus that has so many hungry souls looking for meaning. Students that God wants so badly to be close with. Families that need His redemption. A community God wants to heal.

People look at me in pity- “Oh Daniel, community college ministry must be so hard, it must be hard to do anything there.”

My heart swells with anger at the pity people give me, because they haven’t been there. Hard ground? Hardly, it’s simply unreached. They haven’t spent time sitting on the train watching the students as they file on. They haven’t sat on the grass at MiraCosta and Palomar. They haven’t sat down and talked with people in the cafeteria. People literally come up to our community asking how they can be connected to God. That’s not hard ground to me.

But my anger calms down when I remember- that’s how I started. I looked at where I was assigned with disdain. I hated driving an hour every day to be there. My mentor at the time had to sit me down and tell me to get not just physically there, but get my heart there.  It’s funny how being present can change you.

I was in a bible study with one of our new believers, and we were talking about helping our broken world and what compassion meant. It made me think a lot how easy it is to confuse compassion with pity and guilt-driven obligation.

And I realized that if there was anything I have learned in these last 5 years about justice, it’s that presence converts our pity and obligation into true compassion. Justice is not about charity, pity or flipping power structures upside down… it’s about nearness. It’s making those distant or divided from one another near to one another in whole relationship. That was Jesus’ mission- to make God near, so that we could learn how to be near with Him and near with one another. Nearness changes us from paternalistic change givers that hesitate because the person might go buy drugs to one who sits down with the man with the sign, gets to know his name, finds he is in fact human, and finds that they have found a friend in one another.

Nearness has changed my heart for the community college. Of course from a distance it looks like hard ground. Realistically, what can you really do to change a campus or an individual when you are both physically and emotionally distant? But upon closer observation, the desert is no desert at all, but a place of life.

Nearness takes us off the pedestal of being one way givers to the “disadvantaged” to mutual giving and receiving. In fact, I’ve come to realize I don’t bring much in comparison to what I’ve received. I am a different person, a different minister, a different brother, a different son, a different friend because of these 5 years in a land I had to learn how to love.

And no, it’s not as romantic as it most people make it out to be. It’s not so glorious to just “be near”. It means giving rides. It means getting made fun of because you are completely clueless about all the cultural cues in white, black, latino, philippino, whatever culture. It means a little bit of isolation. It means walking with people even in bad decisions and keep going in their cycles of self destruction. It means watching some pass away. It means letting your heart break, which is hardly romantic. It’s bloody, it’s muddy… but it’s real. And in the mud, you find a lot of new life if you just stick around and watch instead of trying to clean it off your shoes.

And so this “wilderness” and “desert” is no longer a place of exile for me. I’ve seen too many things grow out of nowhere to believe there’s no water here, that God has abandoned this place. Enough to perhaps call this place home.

I won’t be here forever- and it’s ironic. I was dragged here kicking and screaming… I might have to be dragged out kicking and screaming as well.

Yea I’ve come to know the wish list of my father
I’ve come to know the shipwrecks where he wished
I’ve come to wish aloud among the over dressed crowd
Come to witness now the sinking of the ship
Throwing pennies from the sea top next to it
And I’ve come to roam the forest past the village
With a dozen lazy horses in my cart
I’ve come here to get high,
To do more than just get by.
I’ve come to test the timber of my heart
Oh, I’ve come to test the timber of my heart
And I’ve come to be untroubled in my seeking
And I’ve come to see that nothing is for naught
I’ve come to reach out blind
to reach forward and behind
For the more I seek the more I’m sought
Yea, the more I seek the more I’m sought.

And I’ve come to meet the sheriff and his posse
To offer him the broadside of my jaw
I’ve come here to get broke
Then maybe bum a smoke
We’ll go drinking two towns over after all
Oh, we’ll go drinking two towns over after all.

And I’ve come to meet the legendary takers
I’ve only come to ask them for a lot
Oh they say I come with less
than I should rightfully posses
I say the more I buy the more I’m bought
And the more I’m bought the less I cost
And I’ve come to take their servants and their surplus
And I’ve come to take their raincoats and their speed
I’ve come to get my fill
To ransack and spill
I’ve come to take the harvest for the seed
I’ve come to take the harvest for the seed

And I’ve come to know the manger that you sleep in
I’ve come to be the stranger that you keep
I’ve come from down the road
And my footsteps never slowed
Before we met, I knew we’d meet
Before we met, I knew we’d meet

And I’ve come here to ignore your cries and heartaches
I’ve come to closely listen to you sing
I’ve come here to insist
That I leave here with a kiss
I‘ve come to say exactly what I mean
and I mean so many things.

And you’ve come to know me stubborn as a butcher
and you’ve come to know me thankless as a guest
will you recognize my face when gods awful grace
strips me of my jacket and my vest
and reveals all the treasure in my chest

- Joe Pug, Hymn 101

Listen to it here

Sorry to say it, but it’s my least favorite time to go to church.

Perhaps because the memory of that December so many years ago in college is still fresh. I was angry at God and had decided to become an atheist. But I was too scared and ashamed of it to tell my parents or friends. So I went to church. And it was just so disgusting. Why the heck were these people singing these stupid songs, playing stupid games, eating food, having generic sermons about how we love to receive gifts, but we have forgotten “the real gift” of Christmas, seeing kids dress up in sheep costumes, and wearing absolutely horrendous looking sweaters?

I think I was angry because I was looking for proof. I didn’t want to be an atheist. I wanted to believe there was a God. But I was just so bitter, angry and frustrated… perhaps I didn’t want proof of His existence, I just needed to know that He cared. In retrospect, I was probably more likely an agnostic that was posing as an atheist out of my passive aggressive way of expressing anger. I was yelling. And even if I was yelling at thin air, I was hoping the swear words I yelled got to some higher divine being.

Those Christmas celebrations made me angry- not because I felt displaced, but because deep inside I was desperately hoping that they could turn me back to God, and instead they were just a bunch of people trying to act drunk without alcohol. They talked about some real gift of God, but really nobody cared. They just wanted to sing some carols haphazardly. I had to sit through so many of those Christmas pageants, awkward parties… Is that really what Christians thought of God? Was God really a God of awkward parties and bizzarre children’s Christmas plays? This hope that they say was fulfilled on Christmas… just seemed so fake. Perhaps hope really was a socially constructed reality that we were all fooled into believing to keep us sane.

But really, I shouldn’t be so down on Christmas. It was the depth of my frustration, anger, and (dare I say) depression. But it was also where God met me.

I rolled around sleepless in my bed on Christmas eve after one of those aforementioned awkward church Christmas celebrations, wondering if hope and heaven were real… and every time I got close to being okay with hope being real, I remembered how angry I was at God, how bitter I was. When it came down to it, even if He was real, how would I be able to be sure I could trust in Him? How could I be sure that He loved me?

And then something strange happened. I heard a foreign yet familiar whisper. Remember…

and it kept repeating, hauntingly, yet lovingly… remember… remember…

As I sat in bed, it’s hard to explain what happened. In fact, every time I try to recount it, I just have no words for it and verbally stumble around (which is rare for me)… but I can describe it simply as… I remembered. I can’t really describe it, and I’ve been trying for these last 7 years to figure out how to explain it, and the best I could come up with was that… I remembered. I remembered His goodness. I remembered the times I saw Him tangibly act, when I could feel Him. I remembered when I saw Him heal. I witnessed Him when he changed people’s hearts.

For some reason, I remembered the orphans I had worked with that summer in China. And how many were now actually going to college and getting jobs… often an impossibility for handicapped orphans. And how they sang to God saying,

For You are the song that makes my heart sing,
For You are the strength that lifts my hands in praise,
For You are my God, I offer You my life,
Now I am Yours, Your precious living stone

And in that moment, I remembered hope was concrete, it actually transformed. It was more than an abstract idea, but it was a personal, powerful and tangible force. It was a hope I could no longer ignore. My resentment, anger and frustration melted. I surrendered to that foreign yet familiar whisper. I stopped running away. I stopped resisting. I could not keep saying “no” to this unrelenting love.

During that Christmas, as annoyed as I was at God, at His people… I received the real gift. And the real gift of Christmas is that God couldn’t stand the separation between us and Him… that He is not the deistic divine being that stands back in unrelatable aloofness, but actually reaches out to touch us, to be with us, to speak with us, to heal us.  What makes this gift even deeper is that we can throw in all the anger, bitterness, swear words, middle fingers or plain ignorance… and He keeps reaching out to us in love. There is something tireless about the way He pursues, and that He would go to any length to be with us, even if that means being born into a stinky box meant for putting in the feed for cattle, in the bloody ugliness and pain of human birth, if that meant being born into the family of a lower class laborer in a abandoned desolate corner of oppressed empire, if it meant suffering an execution on a cross on account of false accusations… He did it, and would do it again so that we could tangibly experience the God named Emmanuel, which literally means “God With Us”.

So this year, as I sat in the second of at least 5 Christmas parties, chugging down on my second cup of hot cocoa while playing Christmas carol pictionary, I felt the old scars in my heart. But as my fingers ran over those scars, I didn’t just remember the pain associated with those scars… I heard that familiar (and no longer so foreign) whisper again… remember… and I also remembered the healing each of those scars represented, that He actually would pursue, come close and redeem my pain and my anger.

I smiled and snapped out of my introspection as I recognized the bad drawing of my tablemate and yelled out the answer for pictionary. Lame or not, I was going to win this game .

On the way, there have been a couple of albums that have really helped me love worship again and have been on repeat the last several months. I thought it’d be good to share

Darryl Evans- Freedom

Ah this album has recently made a comeback on my playlist. This is what I used to listen to in Jr. High. I forgot how good this album is, and it’s been so good .

Jesus Culture- Come Away

Been really tired of “trendy-vangelical” worship, which basically tries to duplicate old Vineyard and Hillsongs without the Holy Spirit… and turns into a weird U2 concert at church (or weird hipster-folk-bob-dylanesque stuff). For that reason, Jesus Culture, bethel, etc. has become extremely refreshing for me. Good musicianship combined with some ridiculous passion for the Holy Spirit. Love this album, and most everything else that comes from them at the moment.

William Mcdowell- As We Worship Live

While the last several years, it’s been hard for me to sit in evangelical worship, Gospel has kept my worship life alive. Just the musical quality/excellence combined with just really good spontanaeity and Holy Spirit… It is SO GOOD. I’m so glad God has taken me out of my previous cultural experience of worship and introduced me to gospel culture. Anyways, there’s a lot of gospel I’m listening to, but this album is the latest one I’ve been listening to. Highly recommended.

Will Reagan and United Pursuit Band- Live at the Banks house

Just recently started listening to this one, and I haven’t been able to stop listening to it for the last 1.5 weeks. It really reminds me of when I first started to experience God in worship during Jr. High and the simple, raw and sweet times I had as I first started learning how to worship on the piano and guitar and the passion God grew in me during that season. This one, like the others, is highly recommended .

Those are the recent 4. Anybody have any other recommendations?

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not agreeing with Glenn Beck’s xenophobic outcry that any church that preaches social justice is unbiblical. In fact, I think that social justice is one of the most important neglected subjects of the Bible that the church must think about. We should be involved with the poor, the hurting, the oppressed, those on the fringes of our communities. And I think a lot of churches have hopped on…

…to the bandwagon.

It’s cool to donate to a catastrophe. It’s cool to say you’re not cool with slavery. It’s cool to get organic and fair trade products. It’s cool to wear TOMS (I myself have a pair).

Call me a hipster that hates bandwagons (and yes, I am one, minus the mustache and plaid), but there’s a reason why. There’s a danger of jumping onto hot topics and bandwagons in ministry. The danger we run into is the tendency to turn important topics into just… trends. I cringe every time I go to an evangelism seminar and somebody (sometimes myself) says “Let’s focus on justice because it’s what this generation cares about! They’re activists! Let’s use that to win them to Christ!” And so, justice has become a tool, a means to an ends… a trend. And unfortunately, trends tend to go out of fashion. What will we do when justice goes out of fashion?

When it comes down to it, we must care for the issues of social justice not because people care about it, but because this is something God cares for. Justice was not a means to an ends, but was included in the all encompassing vision Jesus had of the Kingdom of God. He proclaimed that the Kingdom of God was a coming shalom, peace and rightness back to created order, which transcends the physical tangible world, but never excluded it. It was a revolution of wholeness that was both earthy and lofty, of right reconciled relationship with God personally, but also physically, emotionally, relationally, systemically.

Then after proclaiming this grand vision, demonstrating power and might through some cool miracles and cool statements- Jesus pulls a fast one. The path He calls us to is not a path of power, glory, showiness, cool campaigns… but a slow, hard, suffering journey, ironically filled with joy. And how we have taken the easy path of charity, where we can look good helping others by doing it at a distance, throwing money at people, voting for the right things! Jesus did not call us to charity, but called us to justice. He calls us to walk alongside the oppressed in reconciliation. He calls us to compassionately share in suffering. He calls us to live incarnation, to go to their house, to eat with, to heal them (and perhaps receive healing from them as well). Jesus calls us out of our ADD compassion and to actually walk the whole journey  with people, where the people cease being the ones we help… but our friends; to keep walking the journey even after walking alongside people stops becoming glorious, when it gets frustrating and hard, when the drug addict relapses, when the homeless guy you helped get out of homelessness goes back on the streets… (Reminds me of what I read Habbakkuk 2:4b  ”…but the righteous will live by their faithfulness”). One of the terms in the old testament that has been doing a number on my soul is the term most used to describe God’s love- hesed. It basically means covenantal love- not love because God feels like it or he whims it out of His existence depending on His mood, but a committed, promised, faithful, enduring and promised love. Justice without hesed- the hard long term commitment to whole relationship- is just a really cheap substitute- a really weird generic and flat safeway select cola that tastes nothing like the real thing.

And please, keep giving donations. Keep caring. Keep signing petitions. Keep buying with a lens for justice. But don’t let that be where the pursuit social justice ends. Do it not because other people care about it. Do it because God cares for people, and that He calls us to incarnationally and sacrificially be a demonstrating witness to His care and deep love.

Justice. It’s not that cool. It’s ugly. It’s hard. It gets you bloody and dirty. Really, it’s not the most attractive thing. Sometimes it disappoints. Often, it breaks your heart. But there’s a strange and incorruptible joy that comes out of it if you stay with it after it breaks your heart, where it’s not about yourself, about telling people you did something good, but that you are doing what is on the Father’s heart.

And it’s funny. Thinking about it, i’m pretty far from the standards that i’ve laid out in this rant. I’m just as bandwagonny as the rest of us. I am completely content being at a distance so I can protect my heart from breaking too much. I’m okay just giving some change instead of actually sitting down and eating with the person I give to, committing to friendship. Perhaps it’s a call for myself as well, to stay faithful to the ministry God has called me to- to stay engaged with the people I meet at MiraCosta, oppressed or not (aren’t we all oppressed in different ways anyways?); to lean into what is hard; to stick with the annoying students; to demonstrate what true faithfulness is to my leaders and to rediscover what true joy is in ministry when all the flash and bang is gone.

1. Was it too heavy handed? It may have been. But these are real thoughts that bounce around in any person’s head in cross cultural interactions (they call it red-lining in InterVarsity missions training, read about it here). What I was trying to capture was my “red-line” posture, in which I approach differences negatively. Now, just because it is common or “real” doesn’t make my rant very right. I should have put in a clear disclaimer that my posture was not a good one (And I do write later how God had to change my posture), and perhaps didn’t need to put all the details of my thoughts there. But this is the type of “red-lining” that I have to guard my heart against each day when I’m in North County- a culture that is not my own, but God has called me to make my own. That’s a huge part of missions- making the decision not to approach differences badly and to see and call out the created beauty within the culture we are called to. When we stop seeing the beauty, we fail the mission of missions.

2. Was I making too many generalities about cultures? Yes and no. Yes in that culture is full of generality- in fact, it’s not about the individual, but the collectivized and generalized actions of many individuals. But culture is slippery. It’s hard to pin down what is Asian culture, white culture, black culture, Latino culture, etc… The descriptions of white culture and Asian culture I had were synthesized from my own personal experiences that constructed specific schema for me to operate out of and assume out of. See, that’s the thing- culture is not only the actions and ideas of the group, but the perceptions of the observing individual. And then let’s not forget the unique and anomalous decisions of individuals which will always aberrate from the constructed assumptions (from within and outside) of that culture. Actually the point of the previous entry was to point out that things are easy to hate and be annoyed at (or on the flip-side have a very ignorant type of paternalistic love for) when we refuse to see the nuanced individual aberrations from culture and just pure surprises when we actually take time to get to know the individuals of a different culture.

3. So are white people evil? There is a long history of oppression by white westerners towards the rest of the world. As individualist as a white person wants to be and say that they are separate from their history, it simply is not true. We are all part of our histories, and our histories are what have put us in our specific present places (geographically, socially, etc.). Subsequently, a lot of the expressions of white culture (even when expressed healthily!) are tainted with that history from a minority’s point of view. So yes, white people are evil… but not anymore evil than any other group of people. NT Wright writes that good and evil is not a line between good and evil people, but a line that runs down the center of every single human heart. Every single person or people group has the same potential towards sin, and we all share a common history in sin with Adam and Eve. The oppressed can so easily become the oppressor. The question isn’t really if white people are evil… because the same stain of evil and sin is deep within every culture.

BUT THE GOOD NEWS: We were created by a good God, who originally saw creation and saw it good. Culture is part of that good creation. I serve a God that not only had good original intentions, but is constantly redeeming the fallen parts of our beings and cultures through the power of the cross and the resurrection. We, by ourselves, are suspended within a sinful system and are infected deep within with sin. He is the only one that can redeem us from being suspended within the endless cycles of oppression and sin.

Because I feel that white people get a lot of flack for how much they suck, I thought it would be good to put out a list of admirable things I have observed about white culture in these last several years. It is the created beauty that seems to shine out a lot in white american culture (again, refer to #2, these are generalizations, this is not all white americans, and many non-white people have these traits as well). In no particular order:

1. Hard work and honesty- They value good hard work. It’s one of their core values. And yes, this value has been manipulated to work against others, but I think at its core, this is a good thing.
2. Individualism- We love to hate individualism. But really, it’s something that that white American culture offers to us, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. I come from a culture of heavy communalism. In its best, we know how to be family and how to have hospitality towards the stranger. We know that we have to stand up for each other and protect each other. We know that we are all connected, and that no individual’s action is done in isolation. But at its worst, it’s easy to just go with the masses and make peace instead of actually standing up for what’s right, or just my own personality. Individualism helps me to make my faith my own, instead of just what everyone else is doing. Individualism helps me know that God has created me uniquely, not for selfish purposes, but to bless others around me. However, I (and everyone else) lose that blessing if I think that I have to be like everyone else. No, God has created us uniquely to be blessings to creation.
3. Confrontation and truth- Similar to individualism, this is also one that people steer away from. I remember always wincing at the comfortability that some of my white friends and their families had with conflict. But coming from a culture in which our (good) peace keeping tendencies can easily turn to hiding the truth, not speaking up and just being plain silent when injustice is occuring… the expression of dissatisfaction is refreshing. White people have taught me how to be a brave prophet and speak truth, even if it will offend people. In its better form, confrontation helps us speak truth so that we can love even deeper and make even stronger peace.
4. Indie music. Coffee. Homebrewing. haha i guess hipster culture in general (I always poke fun at it, but it’s really because I admire it).
5. Engaging the mind. This is something I notice in white worship services. The worship leader gives just as much if not more theology than the pastor that is preaching the sermon! One of my students aptly observed- white people’s services are like a college lecture. It’s not about inspiration but learning. While I am a big fan of honoring God with the emotions (I’m really emotional, in case you didn’t know), what I get from my white friends is an act of worship by offering God their minds.

There’s more. But it’s getting late, and I’m tired. Perhaps you should add. We know how white culture and history has badly affected the world… but what if we did some excavation and looked for what God’s original intention (and is still there) in white American culture? I’ve seen too many white brothers and sisters either ashamed of their culture or unaware that they have one. That shame and/or unawareness only leads to more sin. Shouldn’t we (and especially myself) be calling out the good in our white brothers and sisters, so as to empower and challenge them to also be blessings to the rest of us in the fullness of their cultural identities?

I love fundraising back in the bay, because… I have friends.

…Let me rephrase (because I definitely have friends near me haha). I have friends that I’ve grown up with my whole life, who know me, whom I don’t need to over-explain… and well, let’s face it. They’re asian. What I love most about my Asian cultural background is the sense of family, of instant belonging. I’ve showed up as a stranger at Asian American churches, and felt an instant welcoming. Like clockwork, even if it was the most awkward and unfriendly Asian American church, I’ll get offered some sort of meal at the end.

You see, I love meals, especially Sunday after-church meals, but for more reasons than me loving eating (which I do). I miss the feeling of getting approached and invited to lunch. I miss the laborious process of standing in the circle, debating what to eat and nobody deciding, until somebody just gets tired of it and decides. I miss sitting around 3-4 combined tables at a pho restaurant, exchanging jokes, talking about the sermon. I miss the bonding that happens during these meals. I miss… the community.

And in this process of being cross-cultural and learning how to love white culture, the one thing I haven’t quite adapted to is the individualist culture of white America… the awkwardness of just getting people together to eat after church. During my 2-year church search process in North County, I observed a certain process: people file out quickly and leave, until I find I’m the only one left talking to perhaps one person, who is a 25% chance of being a lunch buddy. I’ve just kind of folded into it all and joined the individualist masses in leaving quickly. Sunday afternoons are for you to chill out alone and watch TV or something. Community’s supposed to happen somewhere… but perhaps with the family or (I say it sarcastically) for singles, yourself.

So upon my return, I had really low expectations remembering my 2 year search for a church that was welcoming. I was a little embittered from the last 4 years of trying to make attempts at friendship in North County in the midst of my own busy ministry schedule, and then coming immediately from the Bay Area, where I had perhaps just one meal that I ate by myself. I was ready to face the impending isolation. Even worse, church that sunday had a father’s day theme. I really dislike being at those services away from my family, it always seems to serve as a reminder that I am far from home and far from familiarity. It reminds me of how hard it is to be cross cultural, no matter how heroic it sounds.

I love my pastor, and what he did was not wrong, just really hard for myself- He had all the dads stand up, and then all their families stand next to them so that the dads could pray for their families, because that’s what real dad’s should do (which is actually a really cool thought). Unfortunately, I was left alone without a family there, and I could almost feel that sense of isolation creep up on me…

But God has a way of melting the most bitter and cynical heart (of which I’m pretty sure I’m near the top of that list).

As I began to go down the dark vortex of sulkage, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the Jenkinsons. They were signaling for me to get into their family huddle. And I got up and joined their huddle… As I was there surrounded in the huddle of my adopted family and heard Mr. Jenkinson whisper his prayers over his family, I heard in between those whispers, the whispers of my Heavenly Father, reminding me that His embrace, fatherhood and friendship are immutable and immovable, ever so constant.

Ironically, after all my complaining of the lack of meals with people after church at all the white churches I’ve visited, there was a church bbq. I sat down with the Olaguibels and said “ah, mi familia!” and they welcomed me to pull a chair and sit with them. As I sat there in our church’s lawn exchanging jokes with the Olaguibels, I thought- really, this is family.  I remember (now that I think about it) that I decided to stay at Las Flores Church because they were the first white church to remember my name. They even sent me a handwritten letter thanking me for coming a second time. The men’s group I had been going to at Las Flores this last semester has been one of the most convicting and faith building groups I’ve been a part of that was not comprised of just peers. And Pastor Dwayne, he remembers you. He notices and emails you when he notices you haven’t been at church one weekend. So I guess white people can do community if they try .

And no, this white church isn’t perfect… but really, when has an Asian church ever been perfect? God is reminding me that He provides, beyond whatever culture, whatever place… true family, home and community are in Him, and He’s a good dad that provides for all our needs. All I need to do is to remember to trust in that, as I forge further ahead in this place of ministry that not many others are in- that He is a God that brings streams in the desert, manna from the sky.

During this time, I realized that there has been a lot to process this year. Much to have joy about. And much to mourn. And at the end of the retreat, I found myself needing more. So I decided to use take some time off this week to seek God. I spent 5 days without facebook, twitter, internet, netflix. It was a decision to spend some time off really reflecting on the past and lean into my next two years on staff.

I needed to laugh and have joy about my victories. I needed to grieve and be aware of my woundedness from losses and failures. I needed to dream again.

There’s a lot of stuff I processed this past week. Too much to write, and some of it too private and should remain in my personal journal (where I complain like a teenage girl ha). I also painted. I’ve been trying to become more comfortable with my artistic side lately, to stop cringing when people call me artistic and just… embrace it (I had a much longer thought on this, but it’s just too long of a tangent).

The painting I did seems to portray the process I was going through this week.

So instead of writing a lot, here it is with pictures.

I transformed my tiny backyard this week into an art studio. Here is my backyard:

I did the painting over 5 days, in 3 parts.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

My paintings are how I process my prayers.

The first part, I was looking for a part of me I felt was missing.

The second part, I was reflecting on the storms and crises I had been through since september… and there have been a lot. I was also realizing how much I had learned about myself through those experiences.

The third part was a reminder of how God spoke to me when He called me on staff, and a very specific image that has a lot of personal meaning for myself. It was a reminder of how things began, and a reminder to hope for the future.

And that’s been this season really… A lot of storms. A lot of loss. But still a lot of fruit… and realizing that it all distracts me from some important things that are basic to the wellbeing of my soul.

This year, I am realizing the depth of my limitations and the simultaneous depth of His grace on me. The biggest thing I’m coming away with is that in order for me to thrive in this next season, I need to stop trying to expand the borders of my ability, but to embrace my limitedness and lean upon the unending and limitless grace that God has for me.

Grace. I can’t run away from it. I can’t ignore it. And I can’t figure out what to do with it, what it actually is for me… and if I’m really allowed to have it. But it’s there, waiting to be known.