Scribbles.

once said to me, ‘There cannot be a God of love, because if there was and he looked upon the world, his heart would break.’ But the gospel points to the cross and says, ‘It did break.’ Someone once said to me, ‘It’s God who made the world, it’s he who should bear the load.’ The gospel points to the cross and says, ‘He did bear the load.’ God weeps with those who weep. He feels our pain and enters into our sorrows with his compassionate love.”

-David Watson, Christian leader, while dying of cancer

Growing up, I used to wonder why pride was such a bad thing. Reading all those old Greek plays in English class was something that actually intrigued me, but I was always confused by the idea of hubris. I never understood why playwrights would make the downfall of a great character something as dumb as excessive pride. When I started exploring my faith for the first time, I also didn’t understand why pride was seen as the worst cardinal sin. It was even depicted that way in the anime, FullMetal Alchemist (no shame). I mean, come on, wouldn’t greed be the worst one? Where everyone always seeks more for themselves? Where everyone always tries to get more than they actually need? Isn’t that the cause behind poverty and so many other issues in this world?

And yeah, I got the explanation that pride is a motivating factor behind greed as well as the other cardinal sins and that’s why it’s seen as the root of all evil. But back then, I just didn’t get it. I saw pride as something good. To have pride in one’s work. To do it well because you take pride in what you do. To have pride in your family and your culture meant to have no shame. To proudly display it to let people know that this is who I am. To have pride in the sports teams that you root for and to be proud that you cheer for them through the good and the bad. It didn’t seem all that wrong to me.

What I didn’t realize then was that I had fallen into the same hypnotizing lull as the rest of the world. Sure, having pride in who I was and what I did seems perfectly fine, but the point is it became all about me. Me, myself, and I. It made me self-centered and self-righteous. I just always had to be better than someone else in some way and because of that, I deserved better than them. It consumed me to the point of where I didn’t even realize how it affected those around me. At least, not until very recently.

Thankfully, God finally forced me to my knees despite my stubbornness in the first measure of humility in my life. It just happened late this past spring semester and I think it’s a moment that I will never forget for the rest of my life because of the wondrous journey it has started. Just that small glimpse of humility has opened my eyes to so much of the ash that is left of past relationships in my life brought on by my pride. It’s opened my eyes to how pride has influenced my every decision and thought until now. It’s as if I’ve been able to just step outside of myself and look at my life as a different person. And it’s been incredible. But not in that great of a way. I look at myself with such an incredulous feeling and wonder how I could have been that way for so long and never seen it.

Even just today, a Facebook profile of an old family friend popped up on my news feed. We’ll call him M. I haven’t talked to the guy in forever, but we actually grew up together. It used to be him, me, and another one of my old friends. We would always be hanging out and doing stupid stuff together because our families were friends and loved to chat over tea and crackers and Chinese television. But if I’m completely honest with myself, it was really just me and my other old friend verses M. He was kind of easy to pick on, and we used to do it a lot. It was always in “good fun,” but it was also most definitely mean. He always took it well and laughed it off because he was that strong of a guy, and I admire him for that now, but I realized that in high school, M also became kind of a mean person himself. He would lash out at other people or do things that made people feel awkward and not really know how to treat him. And back then, it all just became fuel for the way I treated him. “Yeah, man, why are you always doing that…you’re so stupid.” “Get out of here, nobody likes that!” All those stupid comments that I made because I thought I was better than him and that I deserved to be able to talk to him and treat him however I wanted. But today, when I browsed his profile a bit and looked through his pictures, I found so many people genuinely laughing and smiling with him. On his wall and on his photos, there weren’t all too many comments, but always the same few people telling him that they miss him and asking him when they could hang out again. Yeah, I’m a bit of a stalker, so what. But the point is, I looked at those people in his pictures and the people posting on his wall, and I just wondered, “Why couldn’t I have loved him like that?” I mean, I grew up with the guy! Why couldn’t I have set my pride aside and just loved him like a brother? I felt a lot of regret, but that quickly turned into joy at his newfound friends. His new friends at school will probably be better friends to him than I ever was, and I’m genuinely glad for him. Even more so, he’s at a Christian school, so I’m actually hoping that maybe those guys and girls are a Christ-following community that can help to lead Him to the Lord. That would be freaking awesome.

On top of all this, I’ve realized that I never ever would have been able to see things this way if God hadn’t brought that first measure of humility into my life. Looking back at it now, it truly was just like a drop of the sweetest nectar. Now I can’t stop looking forward to more of that sweet stuff. Ever so slowly, I can feel my pride being dissolved and replaced with love that can only come from God. One of the people that I’m closest to actually commented on it when I told them about how I’ve started to prepare for small group this upcoming year. I hadn’t even noticed the difference in my thinking until they had pointed it out, and that very truly is a testament to God’s faithfulness. Only God could have taken something so hardened and so cold within me and shattered it so completely so that a seed like this could begin to sprout out of it. I look back to all the friendships that I’ve left behind and all the people that I’ve wronged in the past, and I feel such great regret. I can only pray that they would know that I am sorry for all those moments that I tried to make myself greater than them in our peers’ eyes. It’s kind of a guilty feeling, but the Lord just comes back with even more grace and forgives me even when I feel like I can’t forgive myself. Just can’t get enough of that nectar.

‘the gates of hell will not prevail.’ And I was thinking, ‘Gates…hell has gates. You dont advance with gates…you protect a fortress with gates.’ The kingdom of God on earth doesn’t have gates because we’re advancing. It’s not the enemy that’s advancing on us. We’re advancing on the enemy! And my main point when I talk about the mission being dangerous, it’s mainly dangerous for the devil. He’ll do some stuff..throw a few licks our way, but it’s dangerous for him because we go in His name. We’re ambassadors of the King! And when we speak, we speak with the all the authority of the King behind us, and the gates of hell will not stop us.” -David Sitton, Reckless Abandon: Jesus is Worth It

It seems every so often that we complain about how we’re so busy, but when we actually have free time, nobody knows what they want to do. So, the age-old solution is to watch a movie. Then, inevitably, somebody will suggest a chick flick. Some people will squeal with excitement and others will groan miserably. I can be part of both parties, depending on my mood. No shame. Chick flicks can be entertaining, even if very unrealistic. I mean, seriously, how are people going to meet one weekend, go through all the stages of a relationship within a week, fight each other, and then get married? Totally unreal. But something happened for me this past week at work that makes me feel like it could totally be the basis of the plot of a chick flick, which basically means that I feel super corny right now. But in the course of just seven days, I think I sort of fell in love with someone I’ve never met.

For the purposes of this post, let’s call this person Dee. Last Friday, I was helping process some applications for a program for cancer patients at work. It was starting to get tedious, just one application after another and then following up with the applicants in between. Then I stumbled upon a completely new application. So with a new application, I have to get the person’s demographics and enter it into the database and then enter the application information into a separate part. Then, I have to call the applicant to inform them that we received whatever they sent and that we still need certain parts if they hadn’t sent a full application. It’s so crazy because I feel like I get to know a lot about the person just through their applications: where they live, how old they are, where they go to school, what kind of cancer they’re going through. Then when I get to speak with them, I find out more about their character. So anyways, I stumble upon a new application, which happens to be Dee’s. I process it and enter it into the database. She’s still missing several parts of the forms. So I call her, and the voice that answers on the other end was this sweet, bright voice that completely warms my heart. If I were just a passerby listening to her speak, I would never have guessed that the conversation we were having was about an application for a program because of her recent cancer diagnosis. But so anyways, it seemed that someone had mentioned the program to her but she hadn’t been able to find the full application, so I emailed her a PDF of all the forms that she needed to have turned in. She sounded so genuinely grateful for our help in getting her application processed so quickly. Then came the weekend.

When I got back in the office on Monday, I saw that she had sent most of the other parts of her forms. She was just missing one part. So I had to follow up with her again, letting her know that we had received the other parts she turned in. Again, it was that sweet, kind voice. Again, if I were a passerby and even if I knew that there was one person diagnosed with cancer and one person helping the other through it, I would have thought that she was the one lending support. I was starting to very genuinely hope that she would get her application processed quickly and that her treatment would go well. A couple days passed by, and then I received an assignment. I had to call Dee again because she was still missing that last form for her application to be accepted. This time though, my heart definitely broke a little bit when I called her. I’ll admit, I was kind of looking forward to hearing her kind, warm voice. But when she answered the phone, she sounded tired and weak and barely hanging on. I realized that she must have started her treatment already. Despite that, she was still repeating over and over how much she appreciated what we were doing for her in giving support. She said that she would also email the form to us over her phone right after we hung up. And she did. I honestly felt like in some weird way, she was serving us even better than we were able to serve her, despite all the pain and frustration that she’s going through at the moment. We were able to get her application processed that same day and I truly felt such joy for her. I actually find myself honestly hoping that her treatment goes really well and I wonder each day how she’s doing. I’ve started praying in the office during short breaks for the clients that I interact with each day, and there’s always time in my prayers for Dee as well. And when I think about it, it’s ridiculous because I’ve never even met this person in my life. I’ve never seen her and I don’t actually know anything about her, but as it is with the rest of the clients that I speak to each day at work, there’s just something unique in the bonds that we make when they share something so intimate as their struggles with us and allow us to serve and support them.

Ugh, okay I’m done being corny. This was definitely total chick flick material. Time to enjoy the weekend!

The first couple weeks at work, I’ve been mostly shadowing and learning the processes of everything at work. It even goes into all the little things that one would assume is already understood, such as how to leave a voicemail, with whom information can be shared with and who can’t, how to handle frustrated clients, how to enter things into the computer database, etc. It’s been a load of information to take in and I think I can start to truly appreciate what LIVESTRONG does for those affected by cancer. Every little thing is actually part of a really tedious process.

And like I said, it’s been a load to learn on the fly, which also means that I was super nervous last Friday when my mentors finally assigned me to following up with some clients on my own. I guess it wasn’t entirely on my own though, because my mentors were listening in on my calls to see how I did and so they could give me feedback. I was so glad that my first call went to voicemail, so that I only had to leave a message for the person to call back. Nerves were calmed down a lot during that call. Next call was kind of awesome. Talked to the client about a program he had applied for, but then the client said that his doctor told him he might not actually have to go through chemotherapy, and therefore, might not need the program. Awesome. Totally unexpected. I felt like I was saving the world already.

Then the next call got real. Client was missing some tax forms for his application, so I was calling to follow up on that. Client was pissed. Super frustrated and irritated because he’s been trying to get an alternate form for his application to be processed. In my head, I was like, I don’t even know what this alternate form is, and the client is mad, and I’m about to disappear under my chair. Luckily, my mentor was listening in, so she typed out a bunch of notes on the computer for me to say to the client even as he was raging. Turns out, he had been going to the wrong place, so I was able to direct him to the correct location to get his form. Client was very calm at the end of the phone call. Big sigh of relief.

This week, I’ve begun to feel more comfortable with taking calls and following up with the same clients. It’s cool because I really am starting to develop at least some sort of a relationship with some people that I’ve never even met or seen before in my life. It’s an intriguing thought. But then today I was also given a new job: maintaining a website that’s kind of like a Facebook for people affected by cancer. One of my tasks is to wish everybody a happy birthday who has a birthday on that day. But as I browsed through some of the profile pages, I saw some strange things. People would be super active for months at a time, and then it would suddenly stop. And it would have stopped in like 2009. The last comments would be from other people on the site, leaving things such as, “Stay strong” or “Keep looking up.” And that was it. You can probably guess why everything just stopped so abruptly. And in that moment, I realized exactly what I’m doing when I take a phone call or respond to an email or offer somebody some resources. My job really does deal with life and death. Today, it got real.

On a bit of a brighter note, other things are also getting real. AACM for one thing, is gaining a momentum to the point where I think it soon won’t be able to be stopped, and that is exciting. People are sharing the gospel and proclaiming their faith with a boldness that was lacking even in recent years. Even in the time that I’ve been here, I feel like I’ve seen the fellowship grow from a hub, to talking about obedience, to now acting on obedience. It’s getting real. It’s evident in my own life as well. I used to just talk about missions and ministry and how much I longed for a chance to be part of a Christian family. Well, God’s making the call. I’m actually starting to make the conversations, and God is moving. Everything is getting really really real.