Now that's enough

   ...give me neither poverty nor riches,
    but give me only my daily bread.
 Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
    and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
    and so dishonor the name of my God.
~My father's prayer from the sayings of Agur recorded in Proverbs chapter 30

Growing up my dad would periodically tell us that his prayer was to have just enough and not too much. To be honest, as a teenager this seemed like shooting for mediocrity. Ah, how nice to no longer be a teen.

As I grow older and observe the world around me and observe the role of money in the world, I think I'm going to have to agree with my dad. Actual poverty is a grinding, difficult state (different from voluntary simplicity). And actual wealth guarantees nothing. I have directly observed that the rich don't always stay rich. The rich are not necessarily happier, and the children of the wealthy are not protected from being screw ups.

So what's the middle road? Well, I don't think it's an income level. Instead it's a heart thing. In Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount, he instructs people to not store up treasure for themselves on earth but in heaven because "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Growing up, my brothers and I thought we were on the lower end of the money totem pole with our thrift store clothes, no Nintendo, and the careful way my mom bought groceries. But as an adult looking back, I see that my parents made a conscious choice to invest in things greater than "treasures on earth". Even when their income was small, my parents sacrificially supported their own parents, their local church, missionaries abroad, and us their kids. We didn't have new clothes, but we did have a meaningful Christian education for the first 8 years.

Contentment in our material life is a heart issue that's independent of what we own. The question we have to ask is who are we living for? Are we looking out for ourselves or are we "seek[ing] first the kingdom of God"?

I have a number of wealthy uncles, but one stands out. He's literally the millionaire next door with his Honda Accord, threadbare undershirts, and furniture not quite old enough to be retro. His latest venture? Going to seminary and becoming a pastor for a church an hour from his home because there's a Chinese community that needs one. While pastoring might be his swan song, he's lived a lifetime consistently serving others even in the busy years of growing his company.

Living with these examples, N and I are conscious that we have choices too. Where are we storing our treasures? Are we seeking God's kingdom first? So far we've come up with a few lines of defense in a world of unsatiable wants. First, we give unemotionally. We pray and then we lop off a percentage of every paycheck for our church and missionaries around the world. This amount increases with every pay raise. Second, we shun advertising/window shopping. I don't let the stuff in my inbox and N keeps it out of our mailbox. Third, we don't prematurely retire things that are still working. We've got cars, appliances, and computers that are getting long in the tooth, but we keep them running and are saving for when they do die.

So, dear reader, what's it like for you? How do you get to just enough and not too much?

The gift of belonging

You will never really enjoy other people, you will never have stable emotions, you will never lead a life of godly contentment, you will never conquer jealousy and love others as you should until you thank God for making you the way He did.
~Hufstetler in Calm My Anxious Heart by Dillow

The Hufstetler quote paints a very stark picture. It boils down to this: You can't live with others until you can live with yourself.

This quote comes from the 3rd chapter of Calm My Anxious Heart  which focuses on Psalm 139. A psalm prompts us to embrace the intentions of our Creator. In Genesis 1, the creation story, God looks at what he has made and he says, "That's good." In response this writer cries out in agreement, "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." He highlights the loving attention God lavishes on you and I from our bodies, to our thoughts, to our feelings, even to our habits. Despite having memorized this whole chapter in 7th grade, I later still struggled to thank God for making me the way He did. In fact, I wondered if he had been asleep the day I was born.

I was born to Chinese parents in the American South. I stood out; in school, in the stores, on our street. Nevertheless, all my closest friends in childhood were also Chinese. My friends' moms and dads were my "aunties" and "uncles". I merrily lived in this happy bubble of Chinese-American life until my teen years.

In the midst of my teen angst about seemingly everything, I remember thinking, "I wish I were Chinese born in China or American (White) born in America." The constant feeling of not fitting in because I didn't understand homecoming and Friday nights out and the Breakfast Club and sleepovers crescendo-ed into an inability to accept that I was not some cosmic mistake. God must have been asleep that day and gotten confused. A Wong Yuen-Ling should be born in China. And an Andrea White should be born in America. But Andrea Wong? What is that other than a mistake?

At 18 or 19, I finally noticed Ephesians 2:19, and it reorganized my inner sense of geography. I'd remembered the beginning of the chapter where Paul lays out the state of humanity: In sin, we were dead. But God, in his loving mercy rescues us in our utter helplessness through Jesus. This rescue is so complete that not only does life overcome death, but that old division between Jews and not-Jews is obliterated. Now here comes verse 19: "Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household..."

Paul was speaking to his friends in the city of Ephesus about their identity, but I needed to hear this about my own identity. All I could see what my own strangeness and alienation, the many ways I didn't fit in. I needed to know that whatever I felt about my status as a person in my community, as a person who belonged or not, in Christ I had new citizenship, new household membership. In Christ, I belonged.

Calm My Anxious Heart makes the point that if we knew how purposefully and lovingly God created us, we could give up some of the hang ups (or dare I say it, self-hate) we have about ourselves. That strikes me as right, but in my own life, the reality of belonging to God's kingdom through Jesus regardless of my own true and perceived traits has been the key to following the second half of the second greatest commandment: "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Subversive Grace

Today is the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy--you know, in case you live under a rock and didn't know.

I was living in Kazakhstan at the time, having arrived in country two weeks earlier to begin a year teaching English. My team was getting ready to give placement exams that week. I was in my flat and around 10PM a neighbor came down to tell us that some plane had flown into some building. I imagined a confused Cessna. We didn't have cable hooked up at the time and being new in country, US news wasn't really on the forefront of my mind.

Then an American expat called. We had met him the first day in town and it turned out he was the US embassy liaison. The embassy was 20 hrs away by train. Apparently, it wasn't a Cessna and it was a big deal. It was an attack and we were told to lay low. The embassy later emailed us instructions to change up our route to work and to continue to lay low. Except that there were only 50 odd Americans in town and we lived on the outskirts with only one road into work. So yea, not really going to be able to change up our route. I mean, this side of the street or that side of the street isn't really a big change. And how low can you lay when you're clearly foreign. Actually, I was the least foreign looking of my team--heh.

I was politically neutral then, raised Republican, but skeptical of their intentions toward minorities. After Kazakhstan, I moved to Los Angeles and started grad school. This pretty much ensured a leftward movement in my politics, but eventually the strident polemics of my colleagues pushed me rightward again.

But today, 10 years later, as I reflect on how I've been making sense of the world beyond my immediate circle of life, it is clear that politics as it is being played out in the soundbites in the media has nothing to offer. Jesus subverts it all. Jesus is not a Republican, and Jesus is not a Democrat. I think God-fearing people really need to let that sink into the marrow of their bones. Bush was never the end of the world, nor is Obama. Really.

This is what Jesus said about himself: "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (The gospel of Mark, chpt 10)" That's not a liberal agenda; it's not a conservative agenda. That's the Jesus agenda, rescuing people from darkness and ugliness and offering peace and beauty in the kingdom of God.

10 years later, I find that on facebook the apolitical friendships I had in college have been tainted with a hard crust of partisanship--Republicans are reprehensible. Democrats are evil. Whee, Obama won!! Yay! Osama is dead.

The Jesus call is to "act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with [our] God." These words were written collectively to the nation of Israel, but to carry it out would require the heart of individuals to change. As we interact with people and institutions, as we carry about our business, this is the grid we should be pushing everything through. Am I acting justly? Do I have an opportunity to extend mercy? Does my conduct reflect the reality that the Almighty God is near?

"On earth as it is in heaven" is a line from the Lord's Prayer. When our lives are characterized by justice and mercy and humbly living with God, we become part of extending the reign of the kingdom of God on earth. In the wild chaos of our current "Great Recession", Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. He's the only way and his way doesn't look like the ways we understand or are comfortable with.

Stewarding what we have: Children

I have occasionally written about stewarding what we have and have always considered financial resources. But recently our daughter had another asthma attack that got so bad so quickly, I really feared for her life. It was a complete wide-eyed-mom moment at the medical check-in counter with a "Dear Jesus help them help my baby." She's fine now, but the incident brought me face to face with the mortality of our children.

As I've documented on this blog, I was slow to warm up to being a mom, but two years in, I'm all in. I am in the guts of mother-child relationships. Bowels might be more appropriate since this week we're back to potty training. This stage of parenting is so physical. There's a lot of hands on wrangling which inhibits abstraction. The diaper is wet or it's not. The spit up stinks or it doesn't. The plate of food is going in the stomach or on the floor or in the hair. Tickles result in full throttle laughter. Items are banged, slammed, and torn. I think this close physicality made me forget how thin the line between life and death is.

Being awakened to that reminds me that whether I spend a few more days and weeks with my kids or decades, their whole existence from before time into eternity is wrapped in the hands of God. In our overlapping time, however long that may be, I've been entrusted to take care of them as beloved children of God. On the one hand, this means that we've a much higher calling than to make sure they stay alive and learn not to be embarrassments to the family. And on the other hand, this means that God is particularly interested in each of them and active in their care and nurture so we don't have to bear the burden in our own strength and wisdom.

So the first step in parenting toward the cross is to remember that God is the ultimate creator and designer of these little lives. It's not about us creating our own little kingdom and our own family name. It's about realizing that like money, our children have been entrusted to our care for a short while.

Why doing less grates

If you'll remember, I was initially dismissive of my husband's call to do less. But I think I realized why I felt the idea stank when I first heard it.

First of all, I have typically been rewarded for doing more. It brings me glory and recognition. As I mentioned previously, in high school, I "did more" and I won big time. I was an academic rock star, and I was lonely and miserable and I had heard that Jesus offered living water but there was none for me. At college, I said, "Screw doing more. Where's the living water?" God, in his grace, brought a group of people around me that loved me despite being a basket case, apart from the lauds and laurels the university had for me.

However, in terms of kingdom living, I've been taught since I was a child that there is kingdom work to do:

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
~Jesus' words to his disciples, the good news according to Matthew, chpt 9

I've always understood this to mean, "Hey, stop lazing around and DO stuff! Can't you see there's more work than we could ever possibly finish? Hop to it!" But this week, a passage that the Sunday sermon focused on talked about what God does and where real glory belongs:

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
~Paul's letter to believers in Ephesus, chpt 3

But that's kind of the point, there is more work than I could ever do, but God is able to do immeasurably more than I could even ask or imagine and it brings him glory to do it.

The idea of doing less grates for me because it takes the focus off of what I can accomplish and requires me to trust that God is going to pull through. Doing less requires me to ask God, "Well, what do you want me to do?" and to listen and obey even if I don't know how that's going to get me/the kingdom/my family/my career all the way from point A to point B. To me, doing less feels like doing half way. More is better. If I'm not exhausted and miserable, I must not be doing enough. But again, that's the point, I can never "do enough"; God is the primary doer and he does more than enough. Doing less acknowledges this.

Handling bounty

While technically, 50% of homes in the US are bigger than our house, having spent my adult life before TX living in dorms and apartments around the world, I can safely say our 5 bedroom house is big. However, knowing, for example, how much room my mother had growing up with 6 siblings, or how much room my co-worker in Russia had, or even how much room our friends in Los Angeles have, there's a certain discomfort about having this treasure trove of space. We certainly don't need this much space for day to day living. So why have all this space?

This week has shown how physical space can also be part of marginal living. With foot surgery, my mother-in-law's stay has extended from 3 wks to 3 months. Many things about our house make it an ideal place for her to recover. She has her own room only a few steps from a full bathroom. Our entrances have only 1 step so when she's ready to get out and about more, it'll be easier for her to do so. We're in TX where the winter can be cool, but she's not going to be house bound the whole time with darkness, snow and ice all over. Our physical space is a blessing to her.

Then, this past Sunday night, a friend went into labor a week or so early. With a no family nearby, they needed someone to watch their toddler son. With still more room, we were able to have him over for a couple nights while mommy and daddy were down the road at the hospital. And with a fenced in backyard, there was a safe place for him to get some boy energy out.

After years of urban living, middle-class suburban life became for me an image of veneered hollowness, a dangerous place for anyone wanting a lived spiritual life. I think the chief dangers are comfort and prosperity. These entice us to rely on ourselves and to live dissipated, godless lives. However, I'm finding that being here while living with the anticipation that God shows up and shows up everywhere and anywhere means that I am encountering opportunities for grace. I get to participate in those opportunities as I specifically learn to let God guide not only my use of time, but also my resources like our home. And while sometimes God uses us to show up for others--like my mother-in-law or our friends's little boy, sometimes God uses others to show up for us--like some other friends who sent us a gluten-free pizza for dinner. A real treat after a couple long days.

We do live in overwhelming comfort and prosperity, for which I am thankful. But instead of feeling shame, like I have in the past, I feel blessed and responsible. In this Advent Season as we look forward to Christmas and from Christmas we look forward to Jesus' second coming, these words of Jesus below take on a new poignancy:

“Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the other servants, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.

“The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.

~The good news according to Luke, chpt 12

Marginal living

My mother-in-law is in town and we spent Mon-Thurs carting around town going to doctors' appointments with Lil L in tow. She said she felt bad that she was taking up so much of my time with these appointments. But in truth, for me, the reason why I set aside my career is so that I would have that kind of time. Obviously, when we made the choice, we didn't specifically anticipate that she would be ill and need this kind of medical care and chose to come stay with us while receiving such care.

In our pre-baby days, N and I worked 50+ hr wks while actively serving in the church and for us, we found it was hard to simply be married. We had to work for mere relational maintenance much less relational thriving. I don't know what people see when they see us, but we are not high capacity people. We don't have endless reserves to this, that, and the other. We say no to things for the sake of our own health.

So we did not have tortured discussions about what to do about the crazy life. Given that he earned enough to support us both, it seemed obvious that we should choose a different life when the opportunity presented itself. In 2009, N got two job offers: one for a lucrative start-up in the traditional video game industry and another in an offshoot branch of the game industry that offered better hours. We took the better hours which turned out to be more interesting work and the other company has since downsized. Also in 2009, I finished my degree. Instead of starting a national job search of a tenure-track professorship, I stayed at home with Lil L and did some side gigs.

What we were wanting were margins, unfilled space in life. In our culture of busyness, I think it's easy for Christ followers to believe that a crammed schedule is a spiritual life -- and extra spiritual if a lot of the cramming is from obviously spiritual activity. Instead, we believe that letting go of the crammed schedule, having margins, allows us to experience unique moments of grace. We have time for people in all those unplanned ways; sidewalk conversations with neighbors, extra minutes staring at produce in the grocery store with Lil L, sitting in doctor's offices with my mother-in-law.

This is not to give some bucolic impression of a suburban pastoral (if that's possible). I don't know my mother-in-law well, and we have not been instant buddies. The past week has been a time of intense reflection for me; I have been faced with anger, frustration, and total exhaustion. At the same time, I have learned from my mother-in-law, learned about her, and learned about God's heart for both her and me.

This is also not to say that having one spouse not work for pay is the only way to have margins. As I said, we are not high capacity people; N works in a well-paying field; and I work in a field that tends to be all or nothing. There's not a lot of part-time opportunities.

What I am encouraging is a little more open space in our schedules, a little more marginal living, and a few more unexpected encounters.

For more thoughts on living with margins I recommend (these are not affiliate links):
Margins: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives by Richard Swenson
--A book directly on this subject

Busier than Ever: Why American Families Can't Slow Down by Darrah, Freeman, and English-Leuck
--An anthropological look at dual-income families in Silicon Valley

The object of affection

My 18 month old daughter has entered a new phase that involves hugs and specifically wanting my care and affection. This is incredibly tender and sweet for me because Lil L has never been a child who would sleep in my arms and has been remarkably independent from the get go. It's also kind of shocking in its intensity.

Yesterday, we were in a new part of town in a new place while Grandma had a doctor's appointment. Lil L spent a good 10 minutes wanting to be near me while she sussed the place out. When she's upset about anything, a reprimand, a loud noise, being tired, she wants to be near me. She'll tenderly lay her head in my lap, and when I show up after an absence, I get an amazing smile and often out-stretched arms and a toddler run. At the moment, I am the clear object of her affections.

I, as an adult, have never been a kid person. So until I had a child, my understanding of children was limited to my hazy memories and TV. As I experience motherhood, I feel I've been given a new opportunity to engage little people, and this is helping me re-engage with Jesus. You know, the Jesus that said:

Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.
~The Gospel according to Luke, chapter 18

"The kingdom of God belongs to such as these." Lil L falls over a lot as she skitters around our tile living room. She can't help with the dishes or the laundry. She's our little agent of chaos. But she is unwavering in believing that mama is where it's at.

In the kingdom life, it is easy to want to think that we get kingdom merit badges for doing awesome stuff. But Jesus might be saying that the kingdom is for awkward incompetents who have a seemingly insane belief that Jesus and Jesus alone is where it's at.

The gospel of peace

What would have happened if Abby Sunderland completed her voyage and successfully become the youngest person to circumnavigate the world? I often wonder what happens to people who achieve record success in their teens. What is there to live for?

But here I am, recently thirty-oned. In the past 400 odd days, I had my first kid, completed my doctorate, my husband found a new job that fits him really well, we moved to a town we both like, bought a house, and are making friends. In checking off so many life goals, I am also faced with the same question, "What else is there to live for?" As far as life goals go, I don't think there are really many more tangible milestones. I might go into academia, but I don't feel like I have to do that. We'll probably have more kids and hopefully they'll grow up living exuberant God-lives and outlive us by many years. But their milestones don't have to be our milestones. So what do we do with the rest of our lives? What is God-life in middle class, suburbia for two introverts?Well, perhaps we can have this ambition--to live a quiet life.

¹¹Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, ¹²so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.

~Paul's first letter to believers in Thessalonica, chpt 4

I first encountered this verse as a college freshman and it was the opposite of everything I was hearing. I went to Duke on scholarship, and it always weighed on me that I was expected to make a splash in this world and bring fame and glory to the school. I was learning a lot from the Navigators, a Christian fellowship, and one of their themes was leaving a legacy of reproducing believers. Again, making a splash, just this one would be a kingdom splash. So in the midst of that, wasn't "lead[ing] a quiet life" the antithesis of all the ways I was supposed to make a splash? How could this be an instruction by the Apostle Paul?

As time has rolled by, the verse had made more and more sense. The fact of the matter is that across race, gender, and class, people live with and in a lot of turmoil. Some of the turmoil is really obvious--Haiti, the Gulf Coast, Sudan, Isreal/Gaza, Greece, Iceland, Krygyzstan, and the list goes on. But you know why one of the yards on my block is so beautiful? Because that's how one wife worked out her fear and stress during her husband's cancer treatment. One of the wealthiest people I personally know is buying another beautiful house in an expensive neighborhood because she's getting divorced and has arthritis and the first house she bought has steps she can't manage. Two houses, millions of dollars, and a boatload of loneliness and pain. The quiet life is good news in places of turmoil.

First, the quiet life is hope-full. It's the opposite of desperate and chaotic. Paul says this will "win the respect of outsiders." Second, the quiet life is resource-full. The quiet life isn't "dependent on anybody," instead, it has the time, emotional and physical energy, and material resources to be available to people around. This is graceful living in the guts of life. This gospel of peace is good news in a world of turmoil. So what else is their to live for--the quiet life as kingdom living.