I sat at a coffee shop today for about 8 hours. Reading for class, writing for class, distracting myself with things I need to eventually do like changing my driver's license and parking my car somewhere over Christmas break.

I had my headphones on and my coffee at my side. Although I was still and silent, so much was going on inside me in the span of those eight hours. At occasions I would glance up and notice the coffee shop is full of people, but everyone is sitting alone, having arrived alone to do something alone just like me. No one exchanged a word, except the occasional family that would come in for cookies and chocolate milk and the one couple that did a crossword puzzle together. Do the others feel lonely, too?

I have been checking out a church and one of their small groups which is getting big so they're splitting up. A few days ago, I met with someone from my small group who I assumed he was trying to get to get me to join his small group after the split. He asked me what I wanted from a small group and I said: scripture study, intimacy, and friendship. Even though it had been about 7 weeks, I still did not feel like I had formed friendships yet. He admitted the small group isn't great with that and shared that he had been attending this small group for two years, but has not felt like he has had any deep friendships w/ anyone his whole time there. I don't think he realized what that conveyed to me, but I felt discouraged. Why didn't he do anything about it for the last two years? What will change by joining his small group or leaving small group all together? How will I ever make friends? I had been trying so hard for the past 8 weeks. Saying yes to things, signing up for classes, ways to volunteer, throwing myself into conversations, introducing myself to people, sticking it out even when I just want to go home and curl up in my loft bed.

It's something I've always tried to do: find people on the fringes and make friends with them because they're lonely, or they're lonely too and we can have each other. I can do that again here. I know how to do that, but the weight of even the thought feels so heavy when everything in my life is in transition and unstable. It's like I can't even get any help on the other end.

Four nights a week, I am busy with class or work. Giving another night to small group was significant cost, but I was willing to pay it. Now small group seems pointless.

I could see why people sometimes stop going to church after a big transition. It gets really hard. You either settle for something shallow or you trail blaze and create something new that had not existed before. Both wear you out and most people haven't been taught how to trail blaze let alone trail blaze in a ministry setting.

I eventually got home because the coffee shop was closing. I felt so tired, so alone after being alone with 25 other people today.

I'm an emotional wreck. Ministry has been disappointing. My housing situation is kinda shitty. I have no outlets here to recharge or to unplug. I'm afraid even my close friendships from my past have a limit, that I might wear them out with my sadness and discontentment. It's all so much. They say they will be there for you, but even with the best intentions they don't know what that even means or how to do that.

I can't connect with all my friends from home. Being at a completely new place, you're having the same conversation with 200+ people just in the first month. Constantly meeting new people is draining when you have no old people near you. I'd go nuts if I have to update each one of my friends on my life in CA individually, too.

I skyped with my friend for almost three hours tonight. Maybe for an hour we didn't even converse, but I felt so grateful for that presence. I could cry just thinking about it. My God, how did our parents do it? How did they move across the globe to a place where they didn't know anyone or any of the language or any of the culture? Technology was not even anything compared to what it is now. They're really strong and resilient.

My heart continues to break for immigrants. They give me hope. God does, too, haha.

#melodrama

Distance is a memory pill

Maybe because of the intense transition this has been, uprooting my life to a place with no friends or family, but I recently found myself missing my relationships. I find in my memory of people, I am recalling the good things. The positive ways they have impacted me, the ways they would make me laugh and smile and to have faith. I love my friends. I miss my friends.

For the same reason, I struggle to trust my emotions because this distance and length of time makes the truth blurrier than reality was. Perhaps rose-tinted. At times when I find myself lacking what I once experienced I could fool myself into believing that if I went back to where I was, everything I was missing would come back to me. But I know that isn't true. Is that what nostalgia is? Missing some fond experience of the past, but know it has past? Nostalgia should be a name of a filter, lol.

I won't abandon my friendships from the midwest, haha. But I feel a need to let go some, too. I shouldn't be held back by my past but instead, I want to walk into the present and into the future with my past.

Processing

It hit me tonight as I was planning for my day off tomorrow. I was thinking about maybe writing a card to a friend. Upon considering what I'd write to him, I felt my tear ducts doing their thang. I was about to cry. I realize I like my friends back home. I realize I have no friends (yet) in my new home. I feel scared by my unknown future.

I was reading through one of my older journals and it had the first time I saw the vision of walking beneath the shade of palm trees from 1.7 years ago.

"Derek W. led us into a time about parental blessing. Tears left my eyes and streamed down my face as he said, "What you're doing is good." I wept.

...

Because ministry was all I have left. I have nothing left. Had I been bargaining with God? This is my last thing to tell me of my worth. I have nothing left.

I wept. I wept. I wept.

My finances, my scarcity mentality, my busyness, and resistance to rest and be still-- all stemmed from this lack of a blessing. This space of doubt that I am doing a good thing. This thought crept in ever so discreetly saying, "Who do you think you are? You think you're somebody? Who do you think you are?"

There words are evil. They tear down. They are poison. I want no part in them.

The image of walking on sidewalks under palm trees with God. It's an image of what I want and what God wants. I am in no rush. I have no agenda. I purely am with God. My future, my destination-- they are not on my mind because I am present with the Lord and I trust Him. I am with him, and with him, joy permeates from deep within me. I am full. I am joy.

I want that. I will fight for that."

In the chaos of packing, unpacking, Craigslisting furniture, discipling on a new campus, I totally forgot why I was here. I am here to be with God. I am here to walk with his presence. But I fall back in the same traps and patterns, idolizing busyness and the world's standard of success. Oh, God, help. I feel so overwhelmed.

Palm Trees Everywhere

I've felt as though I were going non-stop this whole year. From finishing the busy semester of planting Asian American ministry while balancing the faith/life of my undergrad students to face my own crumbling mental health each of those difficult nights. 

One of my last interactions in Chicago, a younger student reflected to me that when I first joined their small group, I shared incredibly vulnerably and cried. I was shocked, it was almost like someone had held a mirror in my face to show my erratic behaviors from two years ago. It was my first season of support-raising, during a turbulent transition of all kinds of life things. I lacked community, and the first opportunity I had for intimacy, I latched on and melted everywhere. It was too much. It really was. Now I can reflect and say, "Dang, that was a really unhealthy point of my life." But in some ways, I was doing everything I could to be better. And in some other ways, some of those unhealthy patterns of disclosing myself have continued with me. 

I think one part of my personality is one that relishes pain, and reflects deeply upon it. But at what point is that unhealthy and when is it just being introspective?
----

Anyways.

So here I am. I unpacked my last box today and rearranged my belongings into different nooks and crannies of my new home. I've been confronted with a lot, but I haven't given myself the time or space to really process. On one hand, I have been legitimately busy. On another, I distracted myself from diving deeper into those issues.

This year has been crazy. 

January- Basically a throw down in my life with my job

February- Grieving the realities of my situation. The organization I devoted myself to would not fight for me.*another thing to process

later February- Prayer Time- 'Tori, you chose where we go next'

Along came California

March- submitted my application to Fuller + got accepted

End of April- Pursued convos with IV out in CA, video-interviewed

May- Campus visit

End of May- Accepted Offer to staff at Occidental and switch to part-time seminary status

June-Training, fundraising, tying loose ends in Carbondale

July- support raising in Chicago

August- CA training + moved to CA

about 4 days ago, I found out I'll be staffing international ministry at Occidental's campus. I called my sister today, and told her I haven't been able to cry. I know I want to and I know I need to, but I couldn't get myself there. 

---

I am so scared. Day 1 in LA, after a frantic unloading my car and getting in trouble for parking in my landlord's spot and his whole family and my supervisor seeing my mess.. I drove with my friend to Target to pick up cleaning supplies. I looked around and noticed the sea of palm trees in my horizon. They're freakin everywhere. My friend is on the phone. And I start panicking. 

What have I done?

Every time I wanted to cry, my kind friend patted my back and I held it in. After she left I ran errands for the next two days, started supervision + planning work + Oxy's leaders' retreat until yesterday. 

I have so many anxieties. I have so many concerns. 

God, you're still here right? I choose the place and you set the path, right? What is your plan? I feel so scared. 

Hide me in a hole

Less than 5 days left in Chicago.

I feel my anxiety building. I feel the unspoken demand for my time and attention from friends, from family, from obligations I have as a missionary.. and I am overwhelmed. Haha. I think I want to hide in a hole.

People want time. My time and my testimony are the only things I have been able to give people. But I am so scared. Nobody wants to cause me to feel burdened or anxious, they just genuinely want to spend time with me, for which I am grateful. But maybe if I had like another two weeks, lol.

Anxiety. Anxiety. Crippling anxiety. What am I afraid of? What am I anticipating?

I am afraid of my friends and loved ones. I am afraid of strangers and acquaintents. I am afraid they want something from me, but I have nothing to give them. I am afraid, I will be so tired and worn and exhausted, I can't actually enjoy my time with people. Quality time turns into obligation, it turns into an appointment I put in my calendar, a task to mark off on a google sheet. I can't do this anymore.

Spiritually, I think I'm doing okay. God has done so much with me. I am reminded of his teachings and his love. It's so in my face, I really can't avoid it. But I suppose this is from a lack of sabbath. I have not rested. I have been trusting myself, the work of my own hands, refusing to surrender to God. Who do I think I am?

Trap #2: Rumination

Dwelling and brooding in loss or in failure. Interpreting neutral events in a negative light.

Every year around this time of support-raising, my old friend visits me. But he is no longer my friend. When my insecurities are raised, my flesh ripped raw, he comes, he preys, and he attacks.

<<Sleeping on my parents' couch, begging people for money, pursuing a hopeless dream, involved in a cult called Christianity.>>

I was about to sleep, again on my parents' couch, when my parents came home from gambling. They turned on all the lights and start bickering. My mom speaks 'gently' to me, and turns to my dad and yells at him.

It's like I'm in highschool again. It's like I'm 5-years-old again, plugging my ears so I don't hear the words they say. Running into my room, locking the door, hoping they would forget about me and move along.

I go into the closet room, close the door, and lay on the ground. My mom starts crying and tells me that I am killing her. "Why can't you just be good and sleep on the couch?"

<<she doesn't care about you. she just wants to feel better about herself. you're making her feel bad and she just wants to feel better. she's playing the victim>>

I hate being home. It's not the building. It's not really my parents either. I start to loathe existing. Nothing is enough. After everything, we come back to the same place. I am so tired. God what do you want from me?

In Jesus' name, the truth dwells in me and everything else dissipates.

<<I want to run away. I want to leave this place.>>

In Jesus' name, the storms are calmed and the waves are stilled.

<<God, I am so weary, so tired. I feel utterly worthless, unlovable, and spent. I am all spent. I can't believe that any good can possibly come from me.>>

In Jesus' name, LORD, you hold me tight and you wrap me in your grace. You speak tenderly to me, "You are my daughter. You are meant to resemble me."

Sheep Among Wolves

I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.

Helpless, vulnerable, and in need of protection. We are the sheep sent out among wolves. 

Yesterday, some new friends at a small group bible study were getting to know me and they asked me about my family. I recounted the story of my mom coming to faith. At first there were years of invitation from me and my sister. Later came a strong conviction for prayer and intercession. At one point, our family doctor who is possibly the most popular doctor in the Chicago Chinatown area volunteered at my high school fellowship, teaching sunday schools and speaking at our youth retreats in Lake Geneva, WI. It was pretty cool. Dr. W took his faith seriously, and we could all see it. Later, I went away for college, but I kept in touch with Dr. W because I would attend Sunday School when I was back, but also because he and his wife supported me financially when I went on missions trips to the Dominican Republic and to St. Louis while I was a college student. Because they invested in my spiritual life, I was able to update them on my spiritual life, and how much I was growing in my faith in college. 

Dr. W was my family doctor for as long as I can remember. My mom would go into his clinic, and they would get into conversations about me. Dr. W really bridged the gap I couldn't reach because of language and relationship barrier. He encouraged my mom to encounter God for herself if she really saw something different in my life and my sister's life (because we were Christians). After many invitations, she told him, "I will go to church this sunday if Tori comes home." Of course she didn't tell me, but Dr. W emailed me shortly after. You bet your ass, I drove home that weekend and the following weekend. Even my sister came home from Milwaukee to go to church with my mom. At some point, we knew we were the crutches that she'd need to walk without if this was real. She continued to go to church on and off even without us. Months later, I attended an outreach event at our sister church with my mom. In a room full of elderly people, I remember being so grumpy that I got dragged into coming to this Chinese Opera outreach. It was actually really cool, the famous Opera singers wrote the gospel of Jesus in Chinese Opera style. They shared their testimonies and preached the gospel for a while. At the end, they made a call, and I did not expect it at all, but my mom was the first one to stand up. "I knew it was my time. Nothing was going to stop me." Slowly, it's been almost 4 years since then, and I've seen my mom grow. I've seen my mom let go of her chains. I've seen my mom falter and take steps back. I've seen her really try. This is a miracle. 

Family is the most important. So many 1st/ 2nd generation immigrant children want so desperately for their parents to know Jesus. We're taught to give each other the best. There is nothing better than entering into Jesus' kingdom that we can ever offer to others. 

-------------

Living back at home has been difficult. Very randomly my dad might bring up his fears and discontent with my career + education choices. It's a youthful passion that will get put out by the cold reality of our world. Then I will have nothing but my old age and my regrets. He doesn't want that for me. I see the sadness in his eyes, and I am saddened by his sad eyes.

I told my dad how much I got paid for the first time a few days ago. I think that really shocked him, how little I got paid. They expected so much out of me. They saw so much potential in me. They thought I was going to do great things they never could have done themselves. Sometimes this inability to please my parents cause me to feel like a huge failure. "I am a child who is just messing around unless I can financially provide for my parents." Will I always be a fool in my parents' eyes? Will I always be a source of worry and disappointment? 

Now, I am support-raising again. $30k more with 2 weeks left in Chicago before my big move. So full of emotions. Many friends no longer respond to my messages. I think some people have blocked me even. I become so overjoyed if someone even wants to give $50/month. Then I really feel like a fool. Why am I so happy over this, when I can be working at almost any job and be earning 4k or 5k/month? Why do I live this lifestyle?

It's really hard to follow God sometimes. He calls us to be sent out like sheep among wolves in different ways. The way for me right now, is by needing and depending on others. Is by being vulnerable of rejection, vulnerable to shame and abandonment. This calling comes with great costs: friendships, comfortability, respect, honor, dignity... but at the same time it comes with great blessings: spiritual family, security in Jesus, dignity in my shame, honor in my suffering. Sharing in God's inheritance sometimes includes sharing the weight of the crown of thorns.

Then I am reminded of the story of my mom coming to faith. So much of it had to do with support-raising that I was able to share my life with Dr. W, and Dr. W was able to witness to my mom. I've gotten so much more out of support-raising than funds and money. God is very good to me. He always has been. He knows my needs before I know them. He protects me and he heals my wounds. He satisfies all my needs. 

-sheep among wolves