Faith and Following--For Females

Last night, I had an interesting discussion about John chapter 2 with a  friend.  Jesus' mom puts things in motion by telling the servants at the wedding in Cana to follow Jesus' instructions--even though He had sort of refused to do anything when she first approached him with the wine situation.

Mary anticipated a need and did something about it--even if it meant jumping ahead of Jesus. 

My friend asked, "How does that work with following Jesus?"

Does following Jesus mean acting only when He does? 

Throughout the Bible, women were the first to receive news of God's work on earth.  I still believe that women are often more prophetically gifted than men--and that this scares and intimidates men.

The women who went to the tomb were the first to know of Jesus' resurrection--and the disciples did not believe them.  (See this interesting link for the full story.)

Rhoda was the servant girl who answered Peter's knock after he had been released from prison by the angel--and the others did not believe her. 

So many times, I have witnessed women being told by men that they were "out of their mind"--just because the men could not wrap their brains around a situation.

Rhoda is so excited she forgets to let Peter in as she runs off to inform the rest!

What do we do with faith and following Jesus when it is manifested in females who jump ahead and even take the lead?

I have been in some church circles where male leadership call this tendency "simply women's intuition," which leads to "insubordination." 

Do men have to understand a situation before acting on it, whereas women are called to follow male leadership regardless of whether or not they agree?

Thoughts to ponder, as how we answer these questions have real-life implications!

Freedom

I long so much for God's people to walk in freedom that comes by faith.  So many Christians are shackled by church culture, incomplete theology, and personal limitations.  In my own journey, I have walked out of spiritual bondage that has often been imposed by my own standards of religiosity rather than a true following of Jesus.

Following Jesus is supposed to bring life and joy!

Lately, I've been struggling with anxieties that rob me of peace.  In thinking back to a variety of experiences I've had in my short life--and the ways I've internalized and processed those experiences--I have found myself feeling doubtful about ever being able to share all of who I am with another person.  The thing about getting married after one's 20s is that there is so much more to explain about your life to the person you're dating--and so much that wasn't shared with them.

I think about young couples who got married fresh out of college.  They were still half-formed, and thus able to continue shaping their lives together.  They were babies, but they faced the world together and had each other for support.  My mom always encouraged me to get married young, and I wanted that for myself too.  (My ideal age was 24.  And then 4 kids, at 18 months apart, whom I would homeschool.  That was my dream!)  It just somehow hasn't worked out that way.

Another inner struggle of late has been a resistance to ending up with someone who is entrenched within a particular sphere of Christianity--Evangelical, denominational, pastoral.  I processed this with my spiritual director the other night, and she summed it up thus:  "Perhaps, after all the work you've put in and the pain you've gone through to achieve great freedom in Jesus, you feel like you'd be going backwards by settling with someone who (you feel or fear) is still "stuck" in a particular framework."

Like Eowyn from Lord of the Rings, "I fear neither death nor pain."  What I fear is

A cage. 
To stay behind bars 
until use and old age accept them 
and all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire.  

Is any person worth giving up my freedom?

I've spent the last few days giving these thoughts to Jesus and asking for His perspective and peace.  In my quiet times, I've been reading Jesus Calling (a birthday gift from my friend Pearl) and the last part of Acts.  There is a lot in there about how the Spirit helps us navigate circumstances and conflicts of culture.  I've certainly needed to hear from Jesus so that my fears can be quelled.

This morning, Luke 12:48 came to me:

But someone who does not know, and then does something wrong, will be punished only lightly. When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required.  

Jesus gave me my particular set of life experiences for a reason, and for his Kin-dom.  Shouldn't I be more preoccupied with how I can allow God's Spirit to show me how to pour out my experiences and talents for the sake of the Church at large, rather than worrying about whether someone else with a different set of circumstances and gifts will hold me back if I share my life with them?

My mom and I read John 21:20-24 together when I was a child.  In her wisdom, she saw this tendency of mine to over-care about the fate of others.  (As I've matured, I've discerned that it's the prophetic bent in me.  But without Spirit-led and love-based tempering, it can make me critical and spiteful rather than gracious and prayerful.)  I am reminded to watch my Peter-like tendencies:

Peter turned around and saw behind them the disciple Jesus loved...Peter asked Jesus, “What about him, Lord?”

Jesus replied, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? As for you, follow me.”

As for you, follow me.  Don't bury your talent in the ground because you're worried about the overall outcome of whether the investment will be worth it.  Do your part with what you've been given.

I have been given more than most in many respects.  Isn't it about time I started sharing?

The Meaning of the White Male

In the wake of Donald Trump's ascendancy to the Presidency, I questioned whether I could really date a white man.

Don't get me wrong.  The election was only the final straw in a process of reflection that has been going on since....2004?

That was the Bush era.  I was staunchly conservative, Republican, and more Christian Fundamentalist than just about any other Asian American female I'd ever met.  I dated a white guy my Freshman year of college, and in the summer of 2004, when we were both in Washington, D.C. for a political conference, he asked if I wanted to begin a courtship.  I was 18, and he was 23.  We had a pretty solid friendship, but I didn't think it was a good idea.  We agreed to remain friends.

Sophomore year, I was interested in 2 Japanese-American guys at USC.  Both were petite but built, athletic, engineer-smart, and Christian.  What bothered me was the fact that their ancestors had oppressed mine.  My grandparents were alive for WWII, and even though I had visited Japan and gone to Japanese school as a child, I could never erase history from my heritage.

Junior year came, and I did end up dating one of those Japanese-Americans.  It helped that his mother was Taiwanese and he spoke Mandarin.  The Japanese parts of him were positive ones: his last name was (more) pronounceable to white Americans (than many Chinese last names), and he was very punctual and diligent.

Senior year came with the looming reality of graduation, and I questioned whether we would work out in "actual life" outside of college.  A biracial friend (his mother was Korean and his father was American with an Irish last name) and I had a deep emotional connection, and I wondered about the potential of that relationship too.  Meanwhile, I was slated to graduate and then go straight into a Master's degree in East Asian Languages and Cultures.  In the classes I was taking, I was gaining a deeper understanding of what it meant to be Chinese.

This understanding became useful when I finally had my first official relationship at 23.  He was originally from Guangzhou, China, and he had a Chinese name.  Having studied modern Chinese history, I had an easier time relating with his parents, who had undergone the Cultural Revolution.  It also made me realize that I wasn't quite as Chinese as I had previously thought--and that having parents from Taiwan did create some differences within a shared culture.

We hit some pretty rocky patches in our on-and-off (3-year-total-saga) courtship.  In the midst of those patches, I learned how to swing and blues dance, and I was confronted with issues of sexuality (both his and mine) that had never arisen in previous relationships.  I also befriended a white man with a German last name and Austrian blood on his mother's side.  I began to see a preference for those with Germanic heritage in white men.

This was further confirmed when I was at Yale, and I realized that Anglo-Saxons (as my mom likes to call them) made me feel alienated at times and that my closest guy friends were either German or some derivation thereof.  I spent a lot of one-on-one time with a white male with French-Canadian heritage, but I never really could have the kind of deep emotional connection that one needs to take things further.

Enter now the first white male with whom there is spiritual and emotional potential.  We don't talk about it much, but his parents have both German and Irish (and maybe a tinge of Scottish?) blood.  How do I negotiate this tension between not wanting to be just one more Asian female who ends up with a white male and the possibility of a real future between two people?

This afternoon, I read a chapter from More Than Serving Tea, a book by Asian American women that deals, among other issues, with the topic of dating and intercultural relationships.  I don't think there are any easy answers, but what I read reminds me of the truth of what I've experienced: the most important thing is that Jesus be at the center of all relationships.  For it is in Christ alone that there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Amen.

Living and Loving without Regret

Hearts are made to love, lose, learn, and repeat the cycle.   Or at least mine seems to be.

I never want to regret not loving someone to the fullest, whether female or male.

That means encouraging them to be the best version of themselves, speaking the truth even when it hurts, and letting them go if priorities or life directions pull us that way.

With guys (speaking as a straight woman), I usually know if I am not meant to marry but am still called to love.  That helps me instinctually know how then to love--and where the emotional boundaries are.

For me, marriage is a beast that takes a lifetime to master and a specific calling to enter into.

It is neither a necessity nor an accomplishment, and it's certainly not an accessory.  But just because I'm not married doesn't mean I don't love fiercely, faithfully, and fearlessly.  (Otherwise, why live?)

And when I do feel called to marriage, it will be the hardest thing I'll ever do--but totally worth it.

Wrestling with God

A few weeks ago, I felt compelled to pray, "Lord, I won't let you go until you bless me."

Interestingly, like Jacob, my hip socket felt injured, and I found myself unable to walk normally for a few days.

But some things in life are worth fighting for, and so fight I did.

There are times when God wants to test our faith.  And so He turns His face from us and sees what we do with it.

Jesus speaks of the woman who bothers the unjust judge until he relents.  And the neighbor who knocks on the door at midnight.

Christians are meant to be passionately persistent and not pathetically patient.  True, we are asked to wait sometimes, but that waiting is expectant rather than passive in nature--so that the Spirit can come and move, like in Acts.

The Spirit did move and my limp went away after a few days.  And God has been reminded that I intend to live life at its fullest and will settle for nothing less.

LaLa Love

I cried my way through the last part of LaLa Land today.  I hated the first.

The film reminded me of why I left LA--and why I feel I can always go back.  The perpetual sunshine makes it always welcoming; the lack of seasons makes it hard to feel like you are accomplishing anything.  Like Mia, I felt that I had to go away in order to prove myself. 

"I will always love you," Mia says to Sebastian, before they part ways to pursue their own dreams.

Now ain't that the truth with some relationships?  I have loved several people in these three decades.  Most of the loves in our lives are seasonal.  All of them are important.  

Like in LaLa Land, life calls us to walk away from some people that we love.  Sometimes those are the very people who help us get to the point we need to be in order to take the next step.  And we couldn't have done it without them.