"How's ministry?"

Two years in Carbondale-- I was too different. I was too Asian amongst a white majority. I felt like God created a mistake when he made me. Why am I the thorn to everyone's side? I felt worn down as a person of color who constantly advocated for POC experiences to be seen amongst the fellowship and campus. 

Two years in LA-- I was too similar. I was Asian, just like the Asian American majority. They were tired of stagnancy and Asian American leadership seemed to have failed them in its exclusive nature. 

Two weeks in ISM in LA-- I am too different. I look like the majority. I can even speak like the HK majority. But, I am different and I think and act differently. I even dare to drink ice water on my period. 

Transition is hard even in settings I am supposed to be good at already. You wonder if you'll ever belong somewhere and if you will ever be enough. But, the answer doesn't come from the people who are you ministry. You only can find you are enough and that you belong in God. 

OXY was my silver lining. Where I was unwanted, challenged, and bullied upon my arrival and initial interactions, by the time I left, the students became like my famiy. My little sister, my little cuzzo, my little brother. I loved them, and I know they loved me. Leaving was hard. Yet here I am again at a place where I don't necessarily feel wanted or qualified. I feel challenged and disrespected. 

I miss my OXY kids. I miss my familiar settings. This is part of the transition. You look back and you wonder what if you had stayed. You wonder if you'll ever make it through this transition into this new state. Perhaps you even look at the past with more rose tinted shades. Then you pat yourself on the back and say, "It's time to continue along the journey. We are not stopping here and we are not going back. Let's go now."

I feel many things, but nothing I haven't felt before. This feeling of being unwanted still stings.  

It seems to never really get easier, but perhaps it gets more bearable as I grow to be more rooted with God. 

Day Off

I think today is my day off, but I didn't know what to do with myself.

You get the measure you give. Lord, help me invest in deep and meaningful friendships. Would my life be filled with vibrant colors of people.

dəˈspīzed

Growing up, I thought I needed to prove I was someone among everyone around me. To my family, my friends, and my peers-- I needed so badly for them to know that I was something and that I was special. Sometimes even to the point where I thrived in making others feel small so I could feel bigger.

Since Jesus made his love known to me, God has challenged me to surrender all those things I found my identity in-- my grades, my school, my accolades, degrees, money-- whatever I once thought would bring me esteem. Now I am home, with family, friends, and peers. They pity me. I am shamed. They think I'm crazy and reckless. Perhaps I drank some koolaid. I gave up chasing those things I once ran so desperately after. And I am despised for that.

I have to embrace who I once was to treasure where I am now. I hear my King ask me again, "Am I enough?"

Yes, Lord. Always. Forever. I just want to run after you.

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.