A different kind of New Year's

I had a wonderful time visiting family and friends for a week in Oregon for Christmas. There are certain benefits to working a temporary job that can give you time off! The more I'm drawn into other peoples' lives and learn about their families, the more I am thankful for mine. We're definitely not perfect, but my parents have done a wonderful job raising four children who love to learn and who love people. I'm thankful for the work that they have put into persevering in a committed, healthy and loving marriage, and I'm impressed at the effort that they have put into lovingly raising their bicultural children when they themselves grew up in only one of those cultures. I confess that I'm a little intimidated by the prospect of raising kids as well as my parents' have, but I suppose you do the best you can and pray a lot! Or as one parent once said to me only half-jokingly, save up money for their counseling! At least this particular life quandary is not anywhere in my near future, so I shalln't worry about it for now.

I came back to California on the 30th of December, as I worked a half day on New Year's Eve. Diamante (my roommate) and I had been debating all through Christmas break about what we should do for New Year's Eve. One option was to go to a party with other Servant Partners interns, which would have been a lot of fun and very low stress, since we already enjoy being around our fellow interns and wouldn't have had to plan anything. The other option was to invite some of the neighborhood girls that we've been working with over. This felt a lot more intimidating and uncertain, a leap into the unknown. But as we talked about it and prayed about it, we really felt like we should take the risk. I simply couldn't get the story that Jesus tells in Luke 14 out of my mind, when he says "When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed." I don't think that Jesus was saying, "never celebrate with people you know and love", since he did go to wedding parties and ate in friends' homes. But he was saying something important about what it means to be a follower of God. Anyway, I couldn't stop thinking about those words, and I also couldn't come up with a time when I'd ever really practiced them. Inviting college freshmen to things is about as close as I've gotten, and that's not too close.

So we decided to take the risk and hope for the best! I called the junior high girls, but all of the ones that I could get a hold of were busy that evening with family. Diamante managed to get a hold of two of the high school girls who decided to come. We fed them a late dinner, watched half a movie, played a couple games, snacked, chatted, and set off poppers at midnight. It was a pretty chill evening, since four people isn't exactly a crazy party! I confess that both during the evening and afterwards, I was fairly anxious as to whether or not they were enjoying themselves. But looking back on it now, while it was important to try to love them as best we could, ultimately no matter what the result, the two of us were obedient to follow our convictions and to choose the riskier option. And who knows what the ultimate effect of that night will be, both in the long-term picture of relationship building with the girls and in our own lives learning to follow the Spirit of God?