Loved and freed...

Today was one of those days when I just felt graciously loved. Some of that loving was seen through forgiveness given, some seen through an acceptance of who I am, and some seen by preaching :)...and it's all so good.

One of the things that makes working in a church difficult for me is because there is such a grey line between "failure" and "success." I remember discussing an upcoming event at the first church I was working at here, and just trembling through the entire meeting because of how...disappointed?...upset?...my boss and his wife was with me. They looked as though all I was for them was more work, and that my failure at being a good event coordinator was a burden for them. Trust me, there's nothing quite so uplifting as recognizing that you're hurting the people you've meant to help (please note the sarcasm!). :( Anyway, back to the present...We were supposed to have an English seminar today (now that it's past midnight, it would be at about 8am this morning!), but after our first pool of registrations came in, people started withdrawing registrations rather than adding them! So we started with a doable number of people registered, but by this afternoon we were down to only 1 person! I haven't lost too much time on the whole thing, because God's graciously stopped me from almost all the prepping that I could have done for it...) Anyway, I was definitely trembling inside going down to Sensei's office today to suggest that we should just cancel the seminar, afraid to see the "you've just wasted everyone's time!" look on his face. However, he simply took the one would-be attendee's number, called her, and in a matter of minutes the whole thing was done. I think he may have been relieved. :)

The thing Sensei and I usually work on together the most is worship. For the evening worship times, he sometimes gives a message...often, he just opens himself up fully to where we (hopefully the Holy Spirit, really! :)) are leading, and is not scared to show a need and hunger for God's presence. I love those times, when we're all gathered around in the "prayer room" worshipping, praying, talking, laughing...and he doesn't limit us to those times, but is always asking me to come with him to sing for someone, or bring my guitar somewhere to lead worship songs. I don't count evening worship, or really worship at all, as part of my job really...more like my hobby...but it is a very vital part of how I serve...and he is the one who allows it, rather than trying to make me fit into the normal mode.

Freedom is just plain a hard concept for me. I never assume you can trust someone--when they say they love you, it's usually just to get something, to take more from you...and people will use the, "It's your job!" excuse for as much as it's possibly worth normally...but here, working with these people, it's different.

Sigh...somedays, we're all ready to kill each other. :) Sensei goes into safe mode; Cindy goes into truth-telling, argumentative mode; Lindsey goes into people-busy mode; and I go into ahh-everyone-around-me-isn't-getting-along mode. :) But often, truly, I'm reminded of just how much I'm blessed by these people dearly, and love them dearly. Just wanted to document it. :)

Leadership vs. Manipulation

So, this is not meant to be a culture-bashing post...really... :) But picture my eyebrow up and my mouth kind of open in a "Huh?!?" as I write this...

Last Wednesday morning in the "Gifts class," we were discussing the "exhorter" personality type, and I came into class knowing that I needed to pre-define the word "manipulation" just to make sure we were all on the same page. We brainstormed different images of manipulation, and then just on the fly (or helpful inspiration from Above), I also put the word "leadership" up on the board and asked them to compare leadership and manipulation. It led to a facinating discussion, because almost everyone in the classroom stopped, thought, stared at each other, and then said, "Aren't they the same thing?"

Japanese culture is known for its indirectness, and I'm only now starting to get the hang of all the whisperings and clandestine meetings that happen in the background of big decisions that are made here. When my students suggested that manipulation and leadership were the same things, I had to agree--in this culture, the two often look the same.

The reason why I'm typing this right now is because I've just come from a class where we were discussing having loud neighbors, and it reminded me of manipulation. I was teaching English phrases useful for dealing with conflict or complaints, and the loud neighbors was just one example we were using to generate discussion...and what discussion! I finally asked them what they would do in Japan if they had loud neighbors. My students said that if their neighbors were loud once, then they wouldn't complain, and if the neighbors were loud often, the whole neighborhood would get together and talk about what to do about it!

Personally, knowing that the whole neighborhood is talking about my loudness is much much meaner (in my mind) than being approached by one neighbor and told to shut up...in my mind, having everyone talking counts as manipulation and malicious gossip. However, my students would probably be equally frightened and disturbed if their neighbors knocked on their door and said outright, "Be quiet!"

Putting politics, relationships, honor, leadership, etc., into a "manipulation is ok" category in my mind helps things make a lot more sense here...however, as I said before, it's still making me raise an eyebrow.

Glimpses of God

After my last computer rant, ending with "it's a good thing our God is one of resurrection"...I have to post an update saying that my computer is officially resurrected, anti-virused, and spy-swept now...yay! :)

Yesterday's resurrection was just one more glimpse in a week of random God-glimpses. Probably from looking at our "glimpse list," it wouldn't seem like we see God all that much...but I want to share it anyway. This will at least give great insight into how we think (or at least, Cindy seems to think this way naturally...for the rest of us, it might be a learned thing!)... :)

Ways God Has Taught Us This Week:
- Snow shoveling: After Cindy went out to shovel the church parking lot this week, God melted all the snow in the parking lot...except for the pile she'd made shoveling. A good reminder of what happens when we try to solve problems on our own, rather than let God handle them His way...
- Grasshopper legs: Did you know that apparently grasshopper legs hop around for a good 24 hours after they are disconnected from the grasshopper's body? Gross, right?! Anyway, it's a good illustration of how Christians may hop around for awhile--or look alive on the outside, but truly be disconnected to the Head (Jesus). A good reminder of how little life we have in and of ourselves...
- A computer's death: A system restore ended up being the answer to my computer problems...but even though I've moved time backwards somehow for my computer, I haven't actually fixed any of the little quirks, the slowness, and the random scary stupid things that it does that makes it seem like there are a thousand viruses in it that simply aren't showing up on my anti-virus runs... As I was running virus scans yesterday, I kept thinking about our sinful human nature, and how it is so much a part of us that just "turning back time" doesn't help. So many times we say, "If only I'd made the right decision!" or "If only I'd done it this way rather than that way...!" Let's face it: we don't need just a "system restore"...we need to be made completely new! Praise God that He's made a Way...

There are more lessons...I just don't remember them all! People here ask me if I feel God, and sometimes I think of these kinds of "lessons" and I chuckle...yes, I feel/hear/see God all the time, just maybe not at all like one might interact with a regular person...

Death of many forms...

I'm typing this while my computer's in safe mode, because yesterday the screen suddenly went blank on me. Hours of pondering, researching, wondering, and random frustrated yelling :) only seemed to make the poor thing worse, and now when I try to start it normally, it gives me the blue screen saying "There's a problem. Window's has been shut down." Which makes me chuckle, because the fact that there is a problem is pretty darn obvious... We say here that our computers are our lifelines, very literally, and now even though Cindy and Lindsey's computers are at hand and useable, every 30 minutes or so the red-flagged message pops into my brain: "My computer's dead! Ahhh!"

One such red-flagged message started me thinking today of when I was in 6th grade, and people would ask me what I wanted to do with my life... I would answer, "Well, see, I'm not really gonna have to worry about it so much, cuz I'm going to go work in Chicago trying to help people in street gangs and get shot by the time I'm 21 years old." Sigh. Part of this way of thinking, I realize, comes from the section under my personality type listed as "needs to figure out a correct way to deal with pain"...even though it's not healthy, I'd much rather jump to the death rather than struggle in the pain. Especially right now, looking at the changes ahead and at everything that will be "dying" over the next few weeks, I'm reflecting on that part of my personality with a little bit of anger towards everything; myself and how I am, life and how it is, etc. How does one figure out a correct way to deal with pain?

If the computer's one of the first things that has to die, so be it. How we'll get through the pain of all the deaths ahead, I don't really know. But bring it on... It's a good thing our God is one of resurrection...

Duty and tears

I don't remember so many extended crying times before I came to Japan. Even after walking away from my parents and boyfriend in the airport, it only took me a few steps inside security to compose myself and start looking forward--first looking for my boarding gate, then looking for my seat aboard the aircraft, then tracking on the inflight map forward, forward, forward...to Japan.

The one time that I simply broke down and sobbed was the night I was watching the movie "The Bodyguard." I was curled up in my university dorm room with my cousin, my boyfriend, and some others, and we were having a "movie night." The movie, if you haven't seen it, tells the story of a pop singer who has been receiving threatening notes, etc., and a former Secret Service agent is hired to protect her. The whole story is full of themes about duty, fear, trust, and relationship...I actually don't remember so much of the story in general, but the final scene is still engraved on my mind--the secret service agent and the singer are parting ways, with the singer's safety secured and the agent's job done. The singer's plane is pulling away, and she's looking stone-faced ahead, but then suddenly she calls out, "Stop the plane!", runs back to the agent, hurls herself into his arms and there is, for a few moments, the traditional movie's "happy ending"... I watched the ending and simply burst into tears. I knew that my plane was going to Japan, and I knew that I wasn't going to say, "Stop the plane!"...no matter who I was leaving.

Last night I "skimmed" through the movie "Roman Holiday" and found myself having flashbacks to the time of watching "The Bodyguard"... Roman Holiday is a quality classic about a princess who escapes for a day, meets an American man in Rome, and experiences all kinds of "living" that she hadn't yet been able to experience. In the end, she has to leave the man and go back to the palace to undertake her duty...but as she turns and says goodbye to the man, even though she'd only known him for one day, she cries, and kisses him. Later she says that she'll remember her one day in Rome her whole life. When she comes back to the palace and is being chided for forgetting her duty to her country and people, she responds by saying something like, "Please don't say that word again! Why else would I have come back, if it weren't for the fact that I know without a doubt my duty..." (ok, that's just what I remember...not a word-for-word quote at all!)

I didn't cry when I watched the ending of "Roman Holiday," but I feel as though the heroine's tears are somehow inside my heart. My life isn't my own...I have a duty, of sorts, and so I can't choose to come back here and go to grad school, and I can't choose to go hide in a cave, and I can't choose just to go back home and hang out with friends...I believe that God is good, and that He'll lead to pleasant places...but when I say goodbye to here, even if it's only been a little over 2 years of my life spent here, it'll be with tears...

Shadows and outlines

Yesterday one of my friends here came to the house and brought with her some old DVDs of Ef playing guitar and singing with me at Open Mic night here. It was like watching old family movies, to some extent; her and I "oooh"ing and "aahh"ing over old memories together. Open Mic night, for those of you who don't know, is a once-a-month evening of mostly strange live music performances by the young people of Niigata city. The event is held at an older Italian restaurant downtown, and many of the people who come are English teachers or students. Last year, I used to go to Open Mic almost every month, driving the hour from Shirone to church here in Niigata city, and then walking to the restaurant where it was held. Often I would come early and meet some other girls for dinner, or meet a group of friends at the restaurant. It was a good place of social connections with a lot of different people, and a comfortable time to invite young people to come hang out to get to know them better... But watching the old DVDs again, I realized again that the hanging out, loud music, and drinking wasn't really how I liked to hang out. Even though I miss Ef a lot, and I miss the girls that I used to hang out with at Open Mic, I remember plenty of months when I would fake a phone call or something just to step outside the restaurant and get some fresh air, plaster on another smile, and step back inside. There was this random dichotomy of loving the people and also realizing that hanging out there was, in essence, putting me in "full ministry mode," as Cindy says here for things that are purely work. :)

I haven't really gone to Open Mic recently, and my job has taken a distinct turn from hanging out socially building relationships on the outside to being at and inside the church. Sometimes I look at how much time I'm at church and think to myself, "This isn't me at all!" Sometimes I find myself hanging out talking with the older people after the services and think, "Should I really be here...?" The ministry and what I do so different from what it was, and yet, as Lindsey so aptly put it a few days ago, "We're learning here that there are more than two opposites on any given subject/choice..."

I guess what I'm trying to process in words here is this feeling of being a fluid, shadowy person...not having any outline or shape of my own. I've been here for two years, and what's been done? Who am I? Have I ever done things that I'm gifted at? What does it mean to be gifted at something? On the good days, I remember that God gets the glory for everything, and He's the One who's accomplished anything good over the last two-plus years...on the bad days, I think that all that's been accomplished since I've come here is that I've messed up an awful lot, spent a lot of people's time and energy, lost who I ever was, and been ridiculously selfish in all of it. Talk about bouncing between positive and negative thinking! It wears a person out just trying to process life.

On a more upbeat, grace-filled note: Last week in the evening worship times we read Psalm 16, which at one point says, "Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places..." I keep thinking about it and try to see how it fits my very fluid personality...it's very reassuring to know that no matter who I am or how I've screwed up, God's the One who's drawn my boundary lines. Does that mean that I don't have to confess my screwups? No. Does that mean that I don't need to learn things like obedience? No. Does that mean that sanctification and discipleship don't need to happen? No. But it does mean that God knew what He was getting into when He made me...even if I don't know where my boundaries or outlines are necessarily, I believe He'll keep revealing them to me as I need them...

New Beginnings

Everyone jokes about New Year's resolutions...the diet where instead of losing pounds you lose days, the cigarettes you'll stop smoking after just this last one, or the chocolate you're going to stop eating until...wait, can someone really survive without chocolate?! :)

I think people have this idea of fresh starts, where they can start something feeling good about themselves and for just a moment, feel like they're ahead in a life where it's all too easy to feel like the score racks up points against a person. It's good to have the score go back to zero and say for just a moment, "I'm gonna reach 1 point and take the lead!" The lead may only be kept for a second, but we at least give it a try. :)

Tuesday is the start of the new school semester here, and we've been trying--ok, I've been obsessing maybe--about having a good start. I'm not a procrastinator, and so I was working on lesson plans approximately a week ago. Yesterday I invited/forced the girls I work with to sit down together for a beginning of the semester meeting, and today I strongly encouraged them to clean the office/arrange desks/etc....all in an attempt to start the semester off right.

This evening, as we gave up on the rest of our office cleaning, we decided to grab dinner individually and then come together to watch Star Wars as kind of a last hurrah before the real work starts, but a trip to the nearest Tsutaya revealed--alas!--Star Wars was nowhere to be found available... And even though I KNOW that it's actually wiser for us to be apart for awhile and we all needed a break, we settled on another choice and came home to watch it...but instead of being a little action and romance tied together, the movie ended up involving really ugly lessons/messages/religion based on fear and curses, and at the end of the night all of us looked at each other with a mixture of regret saying, "Sorry I suggested that...sorry I made you guys go with that...sorry I didn't stop you..."

One of my first thoughts was, "Man...what a way to start the semester." But as I've been thinking over that for the last hour or so, I've realized something...our "score," as human beings, is never 1 to 0, with me in the lead. Life is full of sin, and we are sinful, and sometimes we need to stare truth in the face: alone, we lose. No amount of right actions that hide awful motives or good motives that are behind pathetic actions can put me in a position of a "good start."

I got a phone call tonight from one of my friends in Tokyo, who'd visited a church this Sunday where the whole sermon wasn't about Jesus...it was about being a better, happier Christian. He was with one of my other friends, and both of them reported how disgusted and sad they felt when they heard the preaching to be better people and smile more often and get closer to God so that He could love them. My friend summed it up by saying, "It was very lonely." That's maybe what happens when we try to kick God out of the picture and make our own "good starts"...it gets lonely, and pretty soon simply hopeless. No wonder why so many religions are based off of fear, violence, and ugly ugly ugly things...it doesn't take a lot of learning or life experience to make us realize that on our own in life, we're screwed. So people grab for whatever they can get to harness the spiritual side of life that they can't understand or compete with...

"But we preach Christ crucified..." A God of love, willing to die for people that He loves rather than subject them to death. A God who has to have perfection, so He makes a way for people to die with His Son and also receive His Son's life...Sorry this theme is so common in my blogs...but I have to say again, thank God for grace, and for forgiveness...

I'm not saying that people should throw off all restraints, be bad stewards of what they've been given, and simply sit saying, "Poor me, unable to get ahead in life!"...not at all. And you don't have to read too far into the Bible until you hear things like, "Put to death the sinful man..." and "offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God..." Sigh. Yet sometimes it's good for people...especially me, who knows how to make myself "look good" religiously and otherwise...to have to sit down and say, "Yeah, I blew it...but it's ok."

So this semester's gonna start in the best way that I can think possible...under the protection of the Creator God, in the forgiveness coming from Jesus, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit...it's a good start, I think.

To be or not to be...

So, our readings of "the gifts book" has pegged me as a mercy person. For those of you who know what that means, this post will make sense...for those of you that don't get that comment, I'm not so sure how to explain it. A person with a mercy personality is a person who values/is driven to/is fulfilled by receiving the love of God, living in God's presence, and then transferring that relationship and relational healing to others. We see people's needs, maybe, and respond to them in such a way as to move them towards wholeness...I hope. At least that's the idea. Anyway, one of the difficulties of having this type of personality/gifting is that a person is always looking at needs and trying to fill them, and the lie that says, "You're only valuable if you're doing something for God/another person" easily takes root in the mind of a person with this gifting. Because of this, it's important that we spend time just being, rather than doing...

A healthy example of this is that when I'm stressed, I can spend hours at the piano, not really working on anything or intentionally playing anything. Maybe I'm connecting with God, trying to search out His heart and respond to it musically...but it's not a mental process going on in my brain as much as an emotional/spiritual thing in my heart and spirit. And it is healing, directly going against that lie that I need to do things to be loved.

Anyway, I don't always take the time to sit still and just be...Cindy has always laughed at me because when she is stressed, she'll go and sit absolutely still and watch the sunrise/sunset...whereas I'll usually go running. :) It seems like role-reversal; I spring into action, and she just sits and "is." We talk about that seeming switch often, and I've thought about it for awhile now...what does it mean simply to be?

A lot of blogs, personal stories, newsletters, etc., have highlighted Trash Box Jam, the band that I met in Omiya while I was in orientation, and the relationship that I have with them. One reason for that is because it is so far outside of what I expected to fall in love with...another reason is because they are the one relationship that I have in this country that hasn't changed so much over my time here. I was reflecting in another blog the other day that every Christmas, Easter, birthday, etc., has been with different people over the last 2 1/2 years, but New Year's I've always spent with the band in Omiya station. That just seems downright ironic to me; one of the longest relationships I've had in this country involves a street band.

This New Years we met up about 11pm in Omiya station, then at midnight sang the usual "Happy New Year Song"...Then listened to more music until about 4am, when we walked to a big shrine in the area...then walked back with Sing and my's annual argument over whether all religions are the same or not (it always happens because going to the shrine kind of sets down some very clear boundaries between us)...then we headed back to the station, and started playing football in a parking lot as the sun rose up over the buildings. I was playing football with them, and the ball went right through my hands in a missed touchdown attempt when the thought hit me: this is a place where I can be.

I can't explain this so well...but being a pastor's kid and a mercy person, I've grown up learning about and knowing how to meet people's needs. And the funny thing is that in the church, it is expected that the needs-meeting people will meet the needs of those around them. I'm a church-worker...it is my job, in many people's minds, to meet needs. But the people at the band know very little about my life. They don't know that I'm actually a fairly decent singer but know nothing about John Lennon...they don't know that I can read much more Japanese than the bungled words that I can get out of my mouth...they don't know that I'm a pastor's kid or a good student or someone who's started programs or shut down programs...what they know is that I love them, and that I want to see the good in people, and that I want to help out when I can. And that, for them, is enough.

I don't have to do something for them to love me...I just am my own personality, and it works. So, I misread situations, don't understand their language, disregard their religion, am out of their lives more than I'm in them, and bungle touchdown passes :)...but at the end of the day (or beginning of the day, for New Year's), Aya hugs me and says, "It was fun! We'll be waiting for your next visit." Kumi simply hugs me tight and smiles. Sing says, "I'll be thinking about you...I love you." Not in a romantic, scary sort of way, but very different...and the funny thing is that I don't get angry at him...I believe him.

Of course it's not perfect...not really logical. For as much as I try to explain how safe it feels for me there, I think everyone's eyebrows around me just climb higher and higher in the look of, "Oh, my! This young girl is delusional!" People might say, "If they don't really know what you can or can't do, then they don't really know who you are...they're just loving part of you. That's not a real relationship." But I've experienced enough relationships in my life based on what I do that I, for one, am enjoying dearly the time I'm spending in relationship--even half a relationship--with people who don't care what I do and love me for who they know me to be.

I think God gives us many times throughout the day when we can see glimpses of grace. I hope...I believe...that he'll give me another place where I can simply be, when my time here is done. As it is, I love them very much, and am thankful for the grace they show me, even if they don't know that's what it is...

Community

Last night I got back from almost a full week in Tokyo. We joined the other Vers for the annual Family Christmas retreat at a Bible Chalet/retreat center, joined TBJ for New Year's, and finally headed home so exhausted I wondered if I could make it to my front door from the bus stop... :) After 12 hours of sleep, I'm feeling much genkier.

Going to Tokyo always involves some yelling, for some reason or another, and this time was no different...but it's always good. We are the most random group of people, tied together by work, pain, tears...when I first came to Tokyo, I ended up living with 3 other girls that I hadn't previously known, and going to class with 2 other girls who were strangers. I met, at that time, the other Vers who were scattered across Tokyo who were part of my new family...for about 5 months. Then, life completely changed and I moved out to be with Laura and Efrain as my closest family...some Vers went back to America, and the 3 other girls I'd been living with moved to different places. Basically, in our program, every 6 months somebody changes. Because I'm in Niigata, I've only seen the newest additions to our "family" twice, and I'll only see them twice more before I leave the country...sigh for relational upheaval. Somehow, through all the moving, we end up loving each other and learning from each other way more than we could have possibly guessed in the beginning...

I'm reading a book from my father called, "The Disciple Making Church," and in it there is this quote: "God not only wants to be pursued, he wants to be pursued through our experience of community. Together we need to learn how to become like Jesus, and to discern where Jesus is sending us next."

For me, the girls who came with me are very special. We've been through so much together, even though we're on opposite sides of the island. Over the last two years, there have been plenty of times when they've hit me over the head for something just when I needed the aforementioned punch, and I've done it right back to them. We've protected each other almost ferociously, and a common quote is something like, "The sheep that wanders off alone is the one most likely to be attacked." Our pursuing of God together, in community, has not only shown me much more about my own strengths and weaknesses (trust me--nothing like community to bring out your weaknesses! :)), but also shown me much more about who God is...

The most recent visit to Tokyo, however, had a different lesson to learn. We've watched others leave, we've said goodbye to them...now we need to learn to say goodbye to each other. The temptation is to cling too tightly or to separate too much--I think I spent my first 3 days with everyone simply thinking, "Good, I've been in Niigata a long time now, and I don't really have a place in this Tokyo community anymore. No one here really needs me, and I won't have to enter the community again closely...I can just kind of sneak off rather than have the long tearful goodbye..." Wrong.

In reality, I think, the healthy beginning of goodbyes looked much different. It looked like arguments, tears, people correcting misreadings that others had done and asking forgiveness for incorrect expectations...and in the end, an affirming of who we are as individuals and how God is using us as special people. We've fought for and through community...now there is somehow a fighting for who we have become as individuals through the community and a searching for "where Jesus is sending us next..." And even though there is and will be tears...it's good.