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.