my life: the story of God's faithfulness

When I look back over 2008, one of the defining phrases that comes to mind is God’s faithfulness. 2008 had some very difficult patches. Working at the Red Cross was draining because it didn’t connect with any of my interests, and depressing because I had been job searching for so long for a permanent position and couldn’t find one. Adjusting to my new job at the homeless access center has been emotionally exhausting and even still seven months into the job, I sometimes hit very rough patches. Added onto that all of the relational difficulties that strained my living situation during the start of winter, and there were times when I felt literally sick with worry every moment I was awake.

But I don’t mean for this to be a depressing litany of woes. Rather, when I look back at the year, what stands out as even brighter than the dark times is God’s persistent faithfulness through it all. When I couldn’t find a permanent job, he was faithfully teaching me that my worth isn’t from my work, but from my identity as his beloved daughter. When I went through periods of feeling very attacked at work, he provided me with friends to pray with me and comfort me and gave them verses from his Word to encourage me. When I hit the lowest point at all with one of my closest friendships in L.A., and it looked like in human terms that the ship was on fire and sinking, he gave me the story about Jesus calming the storm as a promise to cling onto. I am not a big fan of suffering, but I have truly found that when I come to the end of myself, God has never dropped me. It’s only when things have been outside my own control that I have learned more about God’s faithfulness and trustworthiness.

Our intern class is reading the book of Acts right now as well as The Heavenly Man, an autobiography of a leader in China’s house church movement. When I read their stories, I wonder how they could respond to the threat of death, to intense persecution and torture, and to terrifying situations by praising God. What? That makes no sense. But when I think about the many times this year that I have cried out to God in desperation and seen his faithfulness come through, even when it doesn’t necessarily look like I want it to or mean the removal of all suffering, I’m filled with thankfulness to God as well. I’m still wrestling with what it means to trust in God and in his promises of protection if great pain is not kept from us, but I am hopeful that as I continue to read the stories of those who have walked a much more difficult road, it will help me along the journey.

"We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God" Acts 14:22b
“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.” II Corinthians 4:8-10

Ps. I want to share a story about God’s faithfulness that even happened these last couple weeks! It was my turn to lead the Bible study for the junior high girls, and it was two hours before the study and I had no idea what to talk about. I decided that before picking a random passage, perhaps it might be a good idea to actually ask God if there was anything that the girls particularly needed to hear. As I listened quietly, a very difficult week that I’d recently had at work came to mind, and I began to think about how my experience might be helpful to them. I opened up the Bible to the book of Luke and came to a passage about worry. Immediately, even though that wasn’t the major feature of my own hard week, I felt like that’s what we needed to talk about. So when study time came around, I shared what of my experience connected with worry, and then we read the part where Jesus talks about don’t worry, because your heavenly Daddy takes care of even the sparrows and how much more precious are you to him than birds. And we read the verse about not worrying, but talking to God about our troubles when they come. The girls are not usually super expressive about study, but they really engaged with the text, and afterwards one of the girls came up and hugged me twice. She told me “thank you” over and over and said that she had been having a lot of worry about her grades, because she is doing so poorly in school. I encouraged her that when she felt worried, she could talk to God about it anytime anywhere. But how amazing is that—that God knew exactly what was going on for her this week and wanted to speak to her about it?!! My own faith is so encouraged when I see God answer prayers and personally deal with us right where we are at.

Precarious positions for nonprofits

My work made the news! (although not for a great reason)
One of the awful things about a recession/depression is that at the same time as individuals and families are going through hard times and losing their jobs and shelter, state and federal budgets are also being slashed. So that means that for non-profits, not only are donations from individuals down, but the government aid they receives is drastically cut at the very time as more and more people need help. Demand skyrockets while supply is stuck at a stagnant level or even forced to decrease. :( Help your friends, help your neighbors, help your family--don't leave it to the systems to take care of them during these times.

Christmas 2008

Due to all the snow and ice that hit Oregon, instead of my family driving down to California for Christmas, they flew me up to Oregon to join them. It was only by the extraordinary grace of God and people that I made it--grace that let me cut in front of folks to the front of each line at LAX when I was running through the airport about to miss my flight, grace that my flight's take off was delayed, grace that planes were able to land at PDX the day of my flight, grace that we made it safely to my grandparents' place despite snowy, icy roads.
We spent most of the time stranded inside up on our hill, as McMinnville is unused to several feet of snow, but that was ok by me since I was sick the whole time. :( The only downside was not being able to visit college friends who were only in the next town over. It was such a blessing to be with my family for almost a week, even though I wasn't feeling well.
Here are some more pictures. :)

This is me and my sister...

Making snow people...
Isn't this beautiful?
My family :)
Me and my siblings. You can tell who has recently had their growth spurt!

Homelessness in America

Did you know that 1 in 10 Americans is receiving food stamps because they don’t make enough money to eat? I was shocked. People tell me this is the “richest country in the world” and yet one out of every ten people cannot eat without government assistance. That’s crazy. Something is very very wrong.

With the downturn in the economy, I was having a conversation with one of my coworkers about how the line between being housed and homeless is so very thin for most of us. I don't know about you, but I certainly don't have 3-6 months living expenses saved up if I were to be laid off or temporarily disabled. I don't even think I could pay the rent on my apartment currently without a roommate. Thankfully I do have medical insurance through my job, unlike many folks who will go overwhelmingly into debt to try to pay medical bills for health conditions that simply must be addressed. But if something did happen, I know blood family and family in Jesus who would take me in and make sure I was ok. As I hear more and more people's stories, I'm realizing that staying out of homelessness requires not only financial resources but also social resources to help get one through the inevitable bumps that come in life. Folks have a much harder fight without those social resources or if they've been struggling so long that their social connections push them away. I've seen so many folks come in here because a family member finally kicked them out...middle aged man evicted by his brother, very young woman with a tiny baby evicted by her mom, 20 something young man evicted by his dad...the list goes on. I think, if we all took care of our own family, friends, and neighbors, how would that change the numbers of homeless? But then, in a society where money is just about taboo to discuss, it's hard to help if we don't know our family and neighbors' real situations.

One of my coworkers here at the homeless access center used to be homeless himself for a stint sixteen years ago. He writes a very real, honest blog found at www.hardlynormal.com and much of what he writes relates to homelessness. I’d definitely suggest checking it out if you are interested in homelessness, domestic poverty, and/or the role of the church in justice—or if you aren’t interested but want to become interested! He also posts short videos of homeless individuals telling their stories on www.invisiblepeople.tv.

For other blogs on homelessness, check out…
LA’s Homeless Blog
End Homelessness
and this compilation of various resources at Homeless News

Hope

My roommate and I have joked before about how she is a pessimist and I am an optimist. She takes a hard look at what is going wrong in a situation, and I tend to focus on what is going right. One day we were having a conversation with a friend and we mentioned this difference, and he said that he felt like followers of God shouldn’t aim to be pessimists or optimists but rather people of hope, able to acknowledge the darkness and evil in this life but still maintain hope in a God who saves. I came across this quote in an article on urbana.org and it reminded me of that conversation:

"And I came to understand that God challenged me to move beyond pessimism and to confront unrealistic optimism. I came to understand that biblical hope in Jesus makes me an incredible realist. It goes to the world of pain, and sits with people in their pain and their suffering, and tries to understand the illusions that people grasp hold of, and lovingly challenges them."

It's beginning to get to me

Some days I feel like this is the theme song of my life in this season (best listened to loudly and angstily).

spotlight on Thailand

Oh dear, protesters in Thailand have shut down Bangkok's International Airport. This drawn out struggle between the anti-government protesters, the government, and the pro-government protesters is becoming ridiculous. It's hard to know what's really happening just reading BBC News and the Bangkok Post and trying to understand the situation as best as I can, but even though I am all for people power, it seems to me that the anti-government protesters' demands might actually decrease democracy in Thailand and especially further marginalize the voices of the rural poor (check out this article, in which the region I grew up in--Isaan--is mentioned!). But I don't know for sure. Your thoughts?