This summer afforded me a great privilege of living with AA students and staff. I was so grateful for that. It brought to mind for me how challenging spiritual transformation is within our AA community. I was very aware of how difficult it really is to assist others in their spiritual growth esp. in light of our AA realities. Given all of our AA cultural challenges, growing in Christ really looks so different than other settings. As a result of my summer with our staff and students, I became even more grateful for our staff on the field on campuses who labor day in and day out for God to use them to influence young men and women for Christ. I was very humble in this process.

One of the things that I became convinced of was that we in Christian service must figure out how we can make plain and simple the reality of living in a community of grace. I saw the power of a graceful community and its power to change us. But I also saw how this kind of environment does not come easily and must be a product of much prayer and intentionality.

I was blessed to see this kind of power and community. In light of our AA communities penchant to stay in darkness or shame, it was such a healing balm for us to experience sharing about the hidden pains and hurts and sins of our past. It was powerful to see the healing power of confession, forgiveness and grace given to each other in community.

However, I also saw that there are so many distractions and temptations that keep us pursuing true biblical transformational community……

I love staycations. It is great that I did not have to travel to relax and vacation.
I literally did not do much but eat, read, slept, and shop a bit.
I loved it and I felt free to do this as I realised that it was a great picture of how
the world does not revolve around me. That indeed God is still reigning supreme for all of his people while I rest. It is very humbling and very reassuring for my soul to know that God is still at work while I rest.

I am so grateful to the fact that God rested on the seventh day. And that he desired all of us to rest from some of our labor every 7 years. (I must have a sabbatical for one year somehow!)

I have lots to do after my staycation. But God is in control…..
I must rest and trust in Him.

Grateful for such a loving God…

My summer was a great summer. The words that I would use to describe it would be humbling.
I entered the summer really tired and a bit discouraged with all the circumstances in my life.
I had begun my summer project hitting rock bottom as I experienced in a real way the effects of 3 months or so of just struggling and surviving. Since March of this year, lots had transpired. My mom was sick and was hospitalized; she was there for a week and I had to take care of her since she spoke no English. All of that happened while still dealing with our ministry crises that our HR team needed to deal with. I went to Texas to help the staff there while taking a short breather from Mom stuff. It was also a time to deal with Kevin, my nephew’s services being discontinued. During that time I had to do lots of work to appeal this decision. Then, my own financial situation became gloomier and gloomier while my brother, my biggest supporter and the co-owner of my home lost his job. (He is still looking for job.) The fun and hard working event of the spring was also our HR team hiring 14 new people to join us. (We called this spring: Turbo Epic as we worked like turbo charged.)

All that to say, this was the condition of my heart as I met to create our missional team for the summer. Unfortunately or fortunately, I hit rock bottom that day. And as I described in the last blog post, my past hurt also stirred in me as I sat there dealing with the reality of being an Asian American women in our AA community. This past hurt conjured up in my heart the aloneness of my past hurt. But as I deal with that hurt more and more, I realised that I was actually also hurt from having had to deal with so much drama this past spring. It was as if my aloneness was really more from my feeling kind of alone this past spring. In the midst of my many challenging circumstances, I think my heart just gave up and my heart became sad. I think I began to be sad because I felt God was not with me; and I was utterly alone in all of my dealings in my life. I was struggling to feel his presence in my life or was wondering where God was in my life.

What was humbling was that I had to lead a team of students and staff while I was feeling so vulnerable and sad.
God was very gracious to me in that our coaches helped me to sort through my fear of being alone in dealing with the women in leadership question. But they were so apt in saying that there was more to my energy and hurt. They were absolutely correct. My hurt came from my own past few months of my journey with God and my feeling alone with God.
In God’s graciousness, he had allowed my coaches to help me sort through this. And the night right before we were to drive to the Bay Area to truly begin our missional service there, God allowed me to have a great meeting with my friend who prayed and helped sort through my heart with me.

What we discovered that night was that I was finally feeling the last few months with God and I was also feeling alot of past hurts from the women in leadership issue. My friend and I agreed that I needed to let my self feel this and to be humble and make sure i ask for help. We agreed that I needed to let others into my heart that was so sad at that point. Then, we prayed.

I think that meeting changed my whole summer. Because I saw the condition of my heart, I felt a compunction to share with my teammates how fragile I felt. I felt the high need to have them pray for me and for them to help me as I serve. Our team was very gracious and loving in carrying this with me. The picture I have for this summer is of myself being like the widow who could only give Jesus 2 pennies as an offering. But Jesus commends her for giving all that she had. I felt that way about this summer. I did not feel fully myself; I felt weak. But I was fully myself in that I did not put on airs about me. However, I definitely felt like I gave all that I had and my all was like 2 pennies and He somehow blessed the offering.

Humbling…and good.

Recently at a short term missions projects briefing, we held a discussion about leadership. My director asked each group to work on a drawing of a picture of a leader. (Unbeknownst to all, some were asked to draw a picture to depict an Asian American leader; others were asked to do the same but for an American leader.)
Obviously, we realized that the pictures were a bit different from the group that did the AA vs. Western or American leader. Our director gave some great perspectives on how we need to wary of trying to fit one type of leader into a formula…hence, don’t seek to fit a square peg into a round hole.

But the moment that transfixed me into the past of my hurts as a woman leader was right after the 4 groups of us shared these pictures of leaders. Of the 4 groups made up of Asian American men and women, none of the groups showcased a woman leader. All of us somehow subconsciously assumed that leaders be they AA or Americanized were all male. This moment had a very profound and hurtful effect on me. There I sat as we continued to talk about the differences between AA and American or Western leadership while I sank deeper into my seat. Did anyone else noticed this? Any women leader noticed? Or male leaders? (Why didn’t the women speak up? Or the men?)

In that moment, I began to pray that someone else in the audience would notice this gender reality. I felt very alone. In what seemed an eternity, my heart was longing for someone to notice this and declared this a problem in our community…..that women are not thought to be leaders. I waited and waited and no one spoke up. I was in a moral dilemma of some sort. As my director continued with his presentation about leadership, I became more and more ill at ease. That moment transported back to my past of being a woman leader who always had to speak up for other women. I saw in that moment that had I not spoken up that this would be another subtle way of saying that indeed women are not leaders. I could not let this be our statement to so many young women who sat there wanting someone to speak up against this horrific oversight or reality of our community.

So, I raised my hand.

My director was fantastic and agreed that it was a traversity that we all assumed that only men were leaders. He did a great job of affirming that women are leaders by their own rights.
He encouraged all of us to empower women in leadership positions. He did a great job in affirming our women.

My moment of sad aloneness turned into a great moment for our women at the conference.

But it came at a cost to me. It came at the expense of realizing that women are still not naturally lauded as leaders. It came at the cost of me having to once again advocate for women. It took me a while to see that my heart had longed for a man in the audience to remark on the fact that there was a huge miss in our pictures of men leaders and no women leaders. I had to forgo my own desires for others to advocate for me, to realize that I must advocate for our Asian American women. It brought back the past where I would long for others to advocate for me and yet none came to help in those moments. I recalled the total aloneness at those critical times.

What was a moment that transcended me into my past turned into some good for other women.
What was a moment that transported me into my past hurts, became a source of encouragement for others. What could have been a moment of utter despair was transferred into a moment of gratitude as I recalled how there have been great men in my life who totally have advocated for me to lead as a woman leader. What overflowed was a realization that I can advocate because Someone else has advocated for me…not just Jesus Christ himself, but male leaders who have platformed me and empowered me. God always redeems those moments of pain and somehow turns them into a praise to Him.

I am so glad that that moment transcended into my past hurts……because God was there in many ways to handle my hurt and my heart skillfully.

There is still a long journey for women and for me as a woman leader…but it is journey marked with God and other men and women of faith who will advocate for women and men to be all that God desires for them to be.

I am blessed to have worked with men and women who loved and believed in me beyond myself.
God has deeply used them to instill in me a will to lead because of them. I am so grateful to these faithful men and women!

Since the Detroit Pistons lost recently in the playoffs, I have been following the leadership genius of Detroit’s GM-Joe Dumars’ moves as he navigates through the crisis with his flailing team.
From afar and knowing the little that I know about Dumars, he is a respectful and very well liked individual. And he is lauded as a leader of a diverse group of folks. Joe is also known for making many great moves to get to a championship level of a team. At the same time, many will also remember that he missed the likes of Dwayne Wade and Carmelo Anthony for an unknown Darko Milicic who is still an unknown. He is not perfect but has a great track record.

While observing Dumars’ responses to his floundering team, I thought it was great how he maneuvers through distributing the blame where it maybe due, including on himself. He is one who won’t budge on excellence and hard work. But he is all bent set on his goal…a championship team. He does this by being a calculated risk taker while always treating individuals with class. He is a prototype of HR management/leadership to me.

My latest favorite Dumar’s quote for his team’s creed is this:
‘It’s not about being right, it’s about getting it right.’
I had to rethink this for a few seconds and found it profoundly true in life and leadership.
As a leader, if I were about being right, then, I would do alot to cover up my mistakes. If I were about the first, I would also not admit I was ever wrong thus, at times preventing me from making the right adjustments or corrections. If I were about being right only, then I may also hinder myself from loving people and doing what it takes to confess and repent as needed in relationships.

I love Dumar’s team creed, it reveals so much the heart of an authentic person. That the most important thing in life is not about being right….but about getting it right to do what is best for each situation and for loving relationships in God’s sight. And what is more paramount is not about being right, but about what can happen when one is actually wrong. That indeed, God is a God who sees our sins and short comings and yet, he always redirects us to getting it right with Him via the hope of the Gospel.

I literally have recollections from my leadership experience where I remember being tempted to just appear to be right and just go on as if life is as it should be. And at various times, I’d hear the voice of God nudging me to say: ‘So, Margaret, you would rather be right and look like you did the right thing, then actually obey what I tell you to do NOW! And you would actually let your pride get in the way of what is My will? All so that you can continue to appear to be right? Think about it, my child, what is really in your heart?’

Other temptations happen in leadership decisions where I have made the wrong moves thus impacting those I serve in a negative way. Again, God is very gentle in how he has guided me to apologize to these same people even though in my pride I may not have liked not being right. Had I been about being right, or not being wrong in those scenarios, I would have missed out on repairing relationships and loving others. I would have missed out on the freedom of those moments of being about getting it right with God and not about controlling my image. Had I be about being right, I would have missed those redemptive moments where my image is laid bare and I am without an excuse for being wrong. But the wonder of it all, in these same long moments I usually find the grace of God via the people that knows about my shortcomings. This kind of vulnerability has allowed me to receive love from God in a very tangible intimate way. It also has taught me how to love as God does, with no claims to rights or being right.

So, who said you cannot learn about life via sports? Not I.
Thanks to Dumars, I am reminded about what is essential in life and leadership! Go Pistons!

“Isn’t it funny that our reputation is like the wind?” This was a question that we discussed as I chatted with a fellow campus minister/friend. He was sharing with me about how a person can build up a life time of faithful service and credibility, but to no avail. What he meant was that sometimes, our reputation or others’ perception of us is what it is, and it does not whatsoever depend on us. The frustrating thing is that others’ perception of us or their opinions of us sometimes is not really about our character or action. Sometimes, their perception is more about their own lens with which they look at us.

Yes, to be a faithful, humble servant of God, we must always examine our own lives and why we maybe perceived negatively. However, there are times when it does not matter what we say or how we live or even about the fruit of our own righteous living. The sad thing is that alot of times, these perceptions are what they are because of the people perceiving us. Thus, their ideas about us are really not something we can truly earn or lose. It is what it is!

I have been thinking about this since Feb. 08. That month, I was not able to attend a conference related to my ministry. But my friends who attended the conference told me what happened there. It was nice that during that time, my name was spoken well of in front of all of the conferees. It was nice! In fact, it was such a nice feeling!

As I was processing that nice feeling, I was reminded by God that it is what it is! Sure felt good to have that feeling of being spoken well of. But it is really not about me. I sense that it is actually ironic that last year , had I attended the same conference, I might have heard some very negative things said about me.
(You see, I was kind of fired from my old position around that time.)

I recalled the feeling that I was so exasperated by my situation because I was not able to represent myself to some of these same people. I was greatly hurt because I was not able to express my view or even defend the false perceptions about me. It was as if it did not matter what I said or what I did, and that these perceptions would persist. I felt very helpless!

The same scenario and yet, this time, it is the opposite. This time, it really was not about me,
it just happened that the perception of me now was a more positive perception of me; but I really didn’t do that much for those kind words. (Sure, I was encouraging and all…but really it was just their perception….) In actuality, I am the same person that was fired.

Like my other friends who have experienced this, after living a while, we get to experience that our reputation is sometimes like the wind. It just come and goes. And really, we cannot base our identity and our worth on the words or opinions of men or women. That really the only thing that is the most important in our lives is what Jesus says about us. That He thinks we are really precious and we are truly his beloved children. What really matters is His opinion about us.

The wind will come and go. And all we can do is to abide in Him as it moves around.
All we can do is to examine our hearts about others perceptions of us and humbly change anything that Our Savior tells us to. We must then leave our reputation at the alter of God.
And to embrace that our reputation is just like the wind.
But God is our security and is our stay.

It is 2:00am in the morning and I cannot believe that I am up. But it is one of those rare nights when sleep escapes me. I almost feel like I will burst. I cannot believe the ways that God answers our hearts’ cries and prayers for ministry. I am like a little kid in the ice cream shop getting giddy about how she can get any flavor of ice cream that her heart desires. And what’s more, she gets to have more than one cone.

“My cup runneth over…”
It is as if God literally hears my thoughts and then, just makes it happen….very serendipitously.
How often in the last few months have I felt this way! How often I have sensed God literally hearing my words. Wow, that is a very powerful image for me as an Asian American…that God literally hears me and listens to me. That is a profondly baffling reality to know of and experience when I consider my own father’s detachment while growing up. Moreover, when I think of how life was always more about my mother and her needs and not what I had to say.

How wonderful and how marvelous to know of this as God’s relationship with me!

As glorious as that is, still the real pearl is not that He hears me. The real prize or pearl is that he cares. It is that he hears, and he does stuff just for me to know that he cares. It is what my friends call tangible ‘kisses’ from God
No one else will understand all the undercurrents of his way of answering my prayers or changing history….that is his secret with me. How marvelous that I and we have this type of relationship with God.

In the secret, in the quiet place , You are there….with me.
“What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him? ” Deut. 4:7

I can never like smoking. I would not want to.
It smells horrific and it is bad for you.
But it sure would help in being in the fraternity of male leadership.
As a woman leader, I have those thoughts of wanting to smoke with the guys
so that I can feel more accepted in their circles.
How often I feel excluded in the informal ways that decisions are made.
And I am not in that inner circle!

Is it my own insecurity? Or is it that it is a crummy way to feel about yourself
in the gender mix. Do men ever feel this way?
I just want to be me and be free to lead and serve
without feeling apologetic for myself or feeling like an
outsider or being marginalized.

Reading ” The Lost Women of the Bible” by Carolyn Curtis James
teaches me that it ought not be so. That God has designed men and women
to be involved in the Blessed Alliance. And that anything short of that will hinder
kingdom work.

Experiences like these leave me to wonder away from my vision…
I long to be just at a place where I can lead and use my own giftings.
I don’t want to have to fight to be a part of the ‘in’ crowd.
I really should continue to look into starting up a company or ministry.
That seems like the easy solution? Or is it?

Recently while appreciating the beauty of sunset at the Ritz Calrton,
I stumbled across this poem: (I love vacations!)
****************************************************
WHERE YOU ARE…

the life down here is not so bad
it indeed is pretty go0d
the assurance of love and connections
albeit limited is sweet
my heart is content
But my heart longs
to be over there —where You are

where Your glory and love lie
where You are able to shine
in the midst of the darkness
where You reign supreme
where there is no lack

my heart longs for
what I know not of—
only what I dare to dream of
my heart longs for
things and sights unseen
of grandiosity unforetold
my heart longs for home
for home with You
where You are —
with all of Your glory.

Bring me to where You are—
rid my limited obscured ways—
rid of my impatient selfish soul—
Let Your glory pull me in
Let your love overwhelm my inner being
Let You—let me go to
where You are—

I’ll let go if You’d
pull me into Your glory and love
I’d choose Life eternal if
You’d pull my soul besides Yours
I’d choose Love glorious if
You’d burn away the
moss of my pride—

Your glory shines
in the midst of the darkness—
Your glory draws and pulls me
towards Heaven to where You are

***Three months ago, I was driving around in my car and all of a sudden, I began to sing a song in my heart. It is from the song: “I can see clearly now the Rain is gone, all of the obstacles have disappeared, here is the rainbow I’ve been praying for; it’s gonna be a bright bright sunshiny day….Look over here,there is nothing but blue skies….I can see clearly now the rain is gone”
Then it hit me, how I my soul was doing. I felt so liberated as I realised how I have felt the Lord taking my soul from the darkness of the harshness of this past year and sensing a new day in my soul and heart.
It was a great feeling. Then, I began to ponder on how neat it was that God is so into putting a new song in our hearts. Even though, I am not very musical whatsoever, there is something that God puts within my soul that longs to sing about how God has worked in my life.
It was a moment in which I was reminded of the power of music in my heart.
I think being a non musical person may have hinder some of the richness of God in my heart.
I really had to wrestle with how I can change that for my life.

***Here is something I came across recently on my vacation. (It was glorious! To be with God and alone and not think about work, or Kevin or ministry…) But I am so aware of how God provides for us spiritual home places for our soul. What I mean is that for each of us, God sometimes use certain place or environment to help us feel his presence, love and voice in a unique way. For me, it is watching the sun and sunsets. I can recall so often hearing God love and speak to me in the midst of staring at the sun and during sunsets. It is neat that for some of us, it is the mountains…..or the creek….and even a certain time of the day when our soul feels so connected to Him. I am so grateful that God knows me and makes appointments with me at those places in special ways. He is so intricate in how he speaks to all of us.

***I really have to continue to work on anger in my life. God is so good to teach me about my voice…and how anger plays. I feel so young in this area….