Life at Gracepoint

It’s another Saturday night bible study. The praise is over, the message is over, dinner is over, and the small group time is over. We’re all just sort of milling around North Loop in that aimless but enjoyable time during which teachers and parents round up their wandering youth students to go home. I’m chatting with a bunch of fellow Element members. One of them says, “hey, can I sleep over tonight?”

Thus begins another night of fellowship with my fellow youth students. For the past two or three years, such nights have been fairly frequent occurrences, with anywhere from one to five of my youth brothers coming over to hang out and sleep over. Essential of course in every night is first and foremost a time of food. Ramen and Spam are two of the essentials, along with generous amounts of Evergoods and fried rice, plus any leftovers that happen to be just lying around.

Then it’s time to go to bed. Of course, having just eaten a meal, we don’t fall asleep right away. Contrary to the generally accepted stereotype of teenage boys as simple punching machines who wrestle each other into exhaustion whose only other two common activities are sleeping and eating, we generally just end up talking. Late into the night, we talk about school, life in general, various questions they have about Christianity, and (most often) absolutely nothing at all.

Now, being just one of two senior guys in our youth, all of these guys who come over are at least two years younger than me. So in a lot of ways, I’m simultaneously a buddy and an older brother; as the oldest, there’s a lot of responsibility put on me. I have to make sure they don’t blow up the house, or leave a mess, or kill each other. A lot of time I double as a tutor, helping them with homework and stuff. Other times our house is a sanctuary—if for some reason they don’t want to go home that night, their easiest alternative is my house.

So what started out as just fun and hanging out has slowly evolved into something more. It’s been yet another time in my life where the distinction between “my life” and “church” has become blurred to the point of disappearing, and afterwards I found myself better off.

A lot of times I miss being the youngest in youth: just having a bunch of older people to rely on, look up to, and feel in a sense protected by as a more junior member of the same group. Now I’m the oldest, and with that comes a new sense of responsibility. I’ve been forced to grow quickly. Having the youth over, having my life open to them, has forced me in a lot of ways to re-examine my life. Am I comfortable with the younger guys, to whom I’m supposed to be a spiritual older brother and role model as well as friend, seeing the way I live at home? I can’t just play the perfect Christian at church. They’re seeing the way I live at home too: my habits, my interaction with my family, particularly my siblings, and even how I spend my free time. My life has become less and less my own.

Having such knowledge in the back of my mind has really shifted my mindset. No longer is it about what I want. The question becomes, “am I being a good representative for God?” No matter what I might wish, I am older, and also the son of the pastor. With that comes a certain stigma. The way I act will reflect very directly on our church. I feel that this realization has helped me to grow. Although many times I still wish I was just a carefree freshman, in many ways I’m thankful that I’ve received the responsibilities and the opportunities to grow placed on me as an older youth student.

A while back, there were two youth guys in particular who started sleeping over somewhat regularly at my house. At that time, it was still just about having fun together: eating, talking, wrestling, playing foosball, and all that good stuff. The two guys seemed to enjoy it a lot, but to me, there was no greater significance than the fact we were having fun together I didn’t see the whole thing as really related to church: it was just hanging out with friends.
It wasn’t till quite a while later that I heard that these two boys had highly disliked coming to youth before. Every week, one of their moms said, it was an ordeal getting them to go. The turning point, as it turned out, was when they started joining other youth guys in the weekend overnight fellowship times at our house. After that, she said, she found that they came to youth willingly, seeing it not as a torturous ordeal but actually something to look forward to.

I heard this whole story second hand, as told by my mom. It was then that I began to see the whole thing not as just time for fun, but as a form of ministry in and of itself. It was another time when I had been compartmentalizing my life, and I realized that this, too, was a God-given opportunity to bring youth closer into the fold of our church.

So I’m thankful for those times, thankful especially since both of those boys have made decisions since then, thankful that God has blessed me. I used to dislike being the pastor’s kid, seeing it as putting me in a position to be surrounded by five hundred police officers watching my every move. Now, I see it as a grand opportunity: parents of the youth trust that there’s no wickedness going on at the pastor’s house, and thus 8 Avondale Landing has become a youth haven in which many a night of memorable fellowship have taken place. I’m thankful that God has blessed us in that way. He’s brought us closer as well, bonding us in ways that only a night spent chatting about life can. And of course, I’m just plain thankful that we have a body of Christ here in which such times of just good fun and fellowship can take place.

My parents were divorced when I was two. My mother was raising us: me, my brother who is two years my senior and my sister, then a new born, alone in Sacramento. She met my step dad when I was six. They were married soon after. We moved to his house in Sonora, California and became a family.

My sister and I took gymnastics lessons over the summer and within two years we became competitive gymnasts. As a young gymnast, I received the most attention and praise when I was outstanding, when I won. When I shined, the audience loved me, the judges loved me, my coach loved me, and my supporters loved me. But when I didn’t, I seemed to have failed everyone. Once I fell off the beam at a championship meet. Afterwards I cried for the rest of the night. I believed my value as a human being was based on my performance.

My life revolved around performing. I had to be the center of attention; even at the expense of others’ feelings. Once in high school I made a joke in class that made everyone laugh except for the one girl it made cry. I became louder and funnier and more obnoxious always seeking validation through the attention of others. My feelings, my sense of belongingness and worth came from my perception of how people perceived me. Whether I made them laugh or made them irritated would determine my state of mind. In my mind everything boiled down to my performance and judgments.

As I got older I could not distinguish between performing and just being myself and I got tired of it. The truth was too glaring, that I wasn’t being who I really am even though I didn’t know who that was. I knew that I was lost. I kept saying things like, “this isn’t me.” To close friends I said, “You don’t even know me.” I began to pray, “God help me. Who am I?”

When I was 24 years old, a “regular” at my work came in on his way into town and he told me that he thought that God was leading him to come in the store. He asked me if I wanted to ask Jesus Christ into my heart and I said, “Yeah!” Although I didn’t grow up in a Christian home, my mother did and so did my grandmothers so Jesus wasn’t an unknown to me. I wanted him. So the gentleman and I made a prayer together and he told me, with tears in his eyes that angels in heaven were rejoicing. That year my mother gave me a bible for Christmas.

I couldn’t get into the bible. I read parts of it but I didn’t get it. I was bored and couldn’t read a lot of the text and wasn’t really paying attention to it. Without a church community to support and teach me I thought I had to interpret the bible and find my own personal meaning in it.

I thought that God was something I could conjure or invent for myself, something far out and spiritual, and something that ordinary people didn’t get. I thought God was far away. So I went looking. I bought a plane ticket to Nepal. Maybe I could find God in a temple high in the Himalaya. I became a vegetarian and tried to meditate on the beaches of Thailand. Often I just fell asleep or daydreamed. In Costa Rica I read the Tao, I Ching, the Gita, Psalms and Proverbs. I’d sit in old churches and cry, my heart aching to be filled with God. I flew to the jungles of Ecuador seeking God’s Spirit in the Amazon. Shamans chanted over me, spit alcohol and rubbed eggs on me as I stood holding a spear and silently prayed to Mary mother of God. I smoked, drank, philosophized, fasted, hiked, danced, sang, shaved my head, chanted, pierced my nose, drummed, burned incense, wrote poetry and ran with tears running down my cheeks crying God, where are you? I feel like I am turning my back on you! Which I was...

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This FTS retreat was quite memorable as it was the first time that the most of the Impact children came with us to FTS retreat. It was amazing to think that a little over a year ago they stepped foot into Alcatraz for SpringFest, and have been with a whole year, and have now finally come to FTS retreat now. God has indeed been faithful. The Impact kids had a blast and I had a good time bonding with a couple of them, finally matching their names to their faces. Throughout the retreat, they were generally well-behaved and were unusually attentive during the messages that Teacher Andrew gave, and that was an answer to prayer. Another notable answer to prayer was the bonding that happened between the Impact kids and other Joyland kids. There were several stories of how "our" Joyland kids made an effort to reach out to the Impact kids, actively incorporating them in memorizing verses together, talking with them during the hiking, and saving spots for them during pictures. God also watched over the retreat in terms of physical protection, as there were a few mishaps during the retreat, but no one was hurt and they didn't negatively affect the atmosphere of the retreat.

This retreat also was special for me, as many of these kids in my class powerfully experienced God and responded in very sincere ways. From the beginning, it seemed like God's presence was there with us, speaking to the kids. After the first message, Teacher Andrew asked us to get into small groups and gave the kids a chance to ask any questions about God or life that they had. My group was the fifth and sixth grade boys, and I was a little unsure about this. But it turned out to be an unusually serious time, and even though the group was a bit large, the kids were very attentive as well. The kids asked many questions, some of which were, "Did God know the future?" or "Why is life so complicated?" I can't say that I gave really good questions, but it was a chance to see what was on the kids' minds. But there were particularly two questions asked by one student that I wanted to note here because they were specifically answered in the next day's message. The first question was "How do you know that God is real?" Without knowing that the student had asked this question, Teacher Andrew said in the message the next day that the beauty in God's creation was one way God wants to let us know that he was real and that he loves us. The second question the student asked was "If God knew we were going to sin, why did he make us?" Amazingly, during the following message, Teacher Andrew told us stories of how even though Daniel his son was like a "trouble magnet", he loved Daniel much more than all of the troubles. When my group met together in discussion after the message, there was a moment of solemn silence among the boys as we realized that God had answered these two questions very specifically within a 24 hour period. God was indeed getting our attention, letting us know that he was right there with us, listening to our words and wanting us to listen for him. And at the end it was obvious that God was really working through the stories and illustrations that Teacher Andrew shared to touch each of the boys who was sitting there.

I had a recent scare regarding an unknown mass in my lower abdomen that was discovered during a routine health exam. On the day of my ultrasound, I found myself unexpectedly worried and wrote the following in my journal entry:

Today’s my ultrasound to see what the “pelvic mass” is that’s pressing down on my uterus area. It has grown within the last week, I feel, and since Saturday night, I’ve experienced symptoms of indigestion, heartburn, swelling and bloating that would not go down, along with some aches and slight pain. These were the symptoms that had been missing when I had searched for words like “uterine cancer”, “ovarian cancer”, “fibroids” and the like. I’m relieved that the ultrasound date is finally here. It has been 3 weeks since my examination at UCSF Medical Center, and it has been a wait, longer than I had expected. Somehow seeing the professionals take it seriously and seeing the words “significant pelvic mass” written on the referral form in black ink makes it concrete and real. It’s no longer a matter of wondering and hoping that it was a figment of my imagination.

Although I should have been more aggressively concerned...I know. I am in the realm of what they consider at risk – 41 years old with a history of breast cancer from my mother and my aunt.

Different facts that I’ve heard passing by now stop and linger, of people whose span of diagnosis to death was around 3 to 6 months. Frances’ mom, Gary’s boss’ wife, distant co-workers, distant relatives of our church members, etc., of many cases where from diagnosis to death was unexpected and swift.

Last night, I woke up in the middle of the night because of the pressing bladder (it feels somewhat like mid-term pregnancy), and I lay there, looking into the darkness and felt sudden panic. All I know is my consciousness; the world I know comes from my perspective, and what happens when I am no more? Will I be in heaven with God eternally? What does that look like, really? Heaven seemed easier to accept, more palatable in daylight and in better health, but it threw a shadow of doubt in darkness and in poor health. I remember having these panic attacks as a child, 8 years old, in Korea, after attending my great-grandfather’s funeral and seeing a picture of him in a casket. That particular sense of doom and darkness did not go away until about 6th grade when I learned about Jesus and heaven for the first time at Sunday School. Now, I’m 41 and have taught Sunday Schools, youth, college, young adult and even elder Korean department women. And I’m reduced to the sensation of an 8-year old, feeling the weight of that darkness.

This morning, I wondered what the Devotional Text was and what God would say to me. After all, the DTs in Psalm have been mainly about David’s pain and rage against his enemies, crying out for vengeance, and then yesterday’s was about his own repentance. They were good but how would they address me in this specific area, I wondered? Then I saw verses 4 and 5 of Psalm 39.

"Show me, O LORD, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man's life is but a breath."

Wow. All I could say was, God, You are alive and You know and You speak loud and clear! Suddenly, David talks about his life’s end, the number of his days, the fleeting nature of his life. He asked God to show him his life’s end and the number of his days. I now recall the passage from Sunday’s message and Isaiah 40:28-29 - "Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak."

Yes, He does, and He knows. He is showing me how fleeting my life is, how important yet how unimportant my life is in the grand scheme of things. My days and my years are “a mere handbreadth” and “as nothing” before Him, because He is so grand, life is so grand, much grander and bigger than my one life.

“Each man’s life is but a breath.” Isn’t this true? I read of death accounts daily, don’t I? Whether it’s the rising count in Iraq, or violence in the Mission district, or accidents in Oregon, or murder-suicide by a celebrity, or natural passing of a revered evangelist’s wife, they occur daily. And, if that was all there was to life, then it is a hopeless world indeed, and nihilism is the only natural conclusion. I hear about it daily, but it hits home the most when it is about me. I guess that is the result of ultimate self-centeredness from the fall.

God is showing me the reality of “my life’s end and the number of my days” and “how fleeting is my life.” I realized how, even in the midst of tragedies that we pray for, like Kevin’s brother’s tragic accident, I still did not see the reality of the frailty of life, and how God has made “my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years as nothing before [Him]. Each man’s life is but a breath.”

God’s words of comfort were not that I’ll be fine, but that life is fleeting and my days are numbered. Why should that comfort anyone? Doesn’t that actually frighten you? Doesn’t that send you into a panic attack? There are many comforting verses – some of my favorites are Romans 8 and Hebrews 4 - yet this one did indeed comfort by affirming the truth that I’ve learned over the years. It is that, our deepest need is not to be told that we’ll be all right or we’ll be healed or saved. That’s actually the secondary level – still important, but not the core. The core is that God is with me, He knows and sees, and my life is but a particle in His grand scheme of things. There is an incomparable peace in knowing that I’m part of a planned whole, that I am not alone and abandoned. That is the greater and deeper need that we all have as humans, because we are created in His image and He is so.

How do we not get consumed with life? When we face that life is fleeting and our end is uncertain and soon, and we are part of His grand, unfathomable plan. Verses from Psalm 39 ...

6 "Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro: He bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it. 7 But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you… 12 "Hear my prayer, O LORD, listen to my cry for help; be not deaf to my weeping. For I dwell with you as an alien, a stranger, as all my fathers were. 13 Look away from me, that I may rejoice again before I depart and am no more."

In light of all that, David asked for God to save him. And, so shall I. Now, I will ask God to save me, to make the mass benign and treatable.

I was at peace and assured that I was in His hands. The ultrasound revealed multiple fibroids which were harmless but will be removed. It was a scare, but I thank God for personally addressing me with His Word.

Generally being a Type-A person with a long list of things I need to get done and rushing from here to there in a frenzy, I can start to see our monthly convalescent home visit as another item on my to-do list. But once I enter the doors of Mission Convalescent Home, it's like I'm transported into another world, where things are very clear and the people in front of me are the most precious, important things in the world. When I'm there, I have one job: to be faithful to the person in front of me with some simple attention and care. It doesn't take special skills to say “hello”, make eye contact, hold a hand, and just to be with.

At least half of the residents are unable to hold a continuous conversation, but even then, just sitting together, singing/clapping to songs means something. And it is such joy when you discover that someone unable to speak, whom you are merely nice to and talk to for months without getting a response, finds a channel to respond. Last week, I put a rattle in Virginia's hand and she shook it to the music with creative rhythm that demonstrates she is alert and much more musically talented than most of us.

No matter how long the list of things to get done, I never want to leave the home. It's always hard to tear myself away from the precious people there. And no matter how tired I was before, I always leave the home refreshed and more alert, even burdened by how some of the residents are doing. I am so thankful for the privilege to be part of their lives and be a reminder of God's love to them. But I think I am the one most blessed by these visits, when I finally lose myself and get a taste of the freedom of not thinking about me--the way God meant for me to live.