Humbly Unapologetic
September 11th… 20 years.
Humbly Unapologetic
Twenty years ago at this moment I watched from the old Mercer bookstore, the one under the bear’s den and old co-op, as we discussed it; it seemed like a movie. IT HAD to be… God wouldn’t let IT happen…to, gasp, America…
I didn’t know everything it meant, but I knew one thing it meant, there were a lot of people in the world feeling, at that moment, in a way which I was somewhat familiar…. Completely hopeless, despairing, fearing, in terror…
I was only 18, but I knew those emotions, and I would know them better in the coming years, tragically…but sovereignly.
So we watched, and I made phone calls to every person I knew who had family or friends OR POTENTIALLY COULD HAVE family or friends in New York City, because back then all of New York might as well have been New York City to me. I knew no difference. And so I checked, because there might be somebody hurt, someone who didn’t want to be alone…someone I identified with and could hold…. did I want to assuage or did I want assuaging? Those are the kinds of questions I would ask myself 20 years later.
20 years. I would turn 19 a month later. Present tense: I’ll be 39 in just a few weeks. I remember what I wore- the straw flower sandals I bought junior year for the Miss Lakeside pageant… the purple Gap halter that went out of style shortly after but that I saved, to this day, (and wore for years anyway), the jean skirt that made it to London and back, the disillusionment…
And I was all the way down in Macon, Georgia.
TO be here… to be a New Yorker, today… unfathomable.
To have family- LIFE…. Here. To be in ministry, with a partner, but the struggles we face….there are no words. We attempt, but there are no words… only groans too deep to utter, from a creation of which we are but a portion, under submission to the power of the depraved humanity …. Yet only in part…. say what? Theological mumblings- MUST be.
Have you watched 9/11: One Day in America? Ill relate the question momentarily to the point of all of this, but men and women tell stories of angels, whether they were actual humans who ran up as others ran down, or whether perhaps they WERE these creatures of light directing them…. People who escaped from floor 89… while so many did not… and then plenty of people who escaped the building were later killed by debris… three men died but saved 171…these are just 2 small testimonies... but, WHERE IS THE SENSE? There is no sense, in sin… and make no mistake, what happened, was sin….evil… and there was much loss.
But God….
I’ve been thinking recently about my strength. People would say those men who ran IN and UP were strong, right?
My sister has been one who constantly told me, in my adult life, just how strong I was. This made no sense to me, especially not in years like 2016 when I stood in her house in tears about my marriage and my life, not knowing the losses ahead still. Heck. I had it together then! There was no miscarriage then, no complete revelation of the reality which has been my ministry for years…just a sinking feeling that God was not done… but that things were about to get REAL!
My sister explained that this next year could be the hardest of my life. She was wrong. 2017 was not that bad….. 2017 was almost refreshing, momentarily, as God reintroduced me to so much of myself and my life that I had squashed in order to fit in in ministry, Jesse’s family, New York City, or the Asian-American context… or things that I’d been asked to forfeit in order to oblige and appease. 2017 was enjoyable… until I realized what had happened to me… years before… and all the years here even. So Buffie was a year late.. 2018 is when the ….. hit the ….fan. (I still like to point out when my older sister is wrong. Once again. Sin)! :)
There are traumas to tell. “Oh that’s too harsh of a word,” some may protest. “Too harsh?” I ask. I wonder how anyone can tell anyone that their trauma is discounted. Such a thing remains mind-boggling to me, and that I believed it, even moreso.
And I feared; I feared my reaction and response to so many difficulties meant just what the hecklers told me, that I was “weak,” not “called,” doomed to “fail.” In fact, it is only on the other side of so many of these occurrences and feelings that I realize they themselves are the very CIRCUMSTANCES that forged my strength. I am not strong because I did not feel alone or uncalled or hopeless and broken down; rather, I am strong because I felt those things, and I endured them….AND WHAT IS MORE, by some chance of GRACE….by SOME SPIRIT outside of myself (ah yes…. perhaps the Holy Spirit), I WAS ENABLED. Was grace sufficient? It didn’t feel sufficient. It felt like a broken oxygen mask. But I was alive. I am alive. Still. I stayed. Just like Jesus… Jesus stayed, on the cross, when he asked why God forsook him… Jesus submitted His will to God.
A lot is mentioned about the word submission in the bible, ESPECIALLY when it comes to wives submitting to their husbands. Doing a word study in the Greek, however, one will find that the word used and often translated submit is used in a variety of contexts in the New Testament, even, in description of JESUS!!! Luke 2- when Jesus submitted to his parents and obeyed them…. Remember that… or how prophets are told that their prophecy should submit to the words of the prophets as a whole!! Demons submit. Creation submits. People, in seeking their own salvation, do NOT submit.
What, then, does this word mean? My friend back during seminary, (circa 2006), crassly and inappropriately joked, sub-mit means to go UNDER my hand- SUB…UNDER…..MIT….HAND….like baseball mitt. Crazy kid. He was being sarcastic and silly but the brokenness in this line of thought perpetuates Christianity and world religions and cultures across the world. Ruthless people require submission of the earth and humans to that which we should never be submitted… and NO I am not talking about the Coronavirus Vaccine. THAT, I believe you SHOULD submit too… because the same Greek word is used AGAIN in Romans 13:1 when we are told to submit to the laws IN authority. Especially laws that love neighbors…
So what does that mean for me? A married mom, living in NYC today, 20 years after September 11, 2001….
Don’t freak out with this next sentence, okay? But, the honest truth is: I am in the midst of one of the most emotionally exhausting and at times debilitating times of my life thus far. Yup. There you go. Dramatic statement for the day. “WHAT’S GOING ON????” you might ask. Well, that’s not the point. I know I’m usually quick to fill in all the gaps, but doing so here, actually, really takes us away from the point I feel like…
Let’s just assume facts in evidence as facts.in.evidence. There are some legit things right now that, when I think about them, leave me feeling pretty miserable…and I’m tempted to follow those negative feelings out to conclusion and entertain them without identifying any type of distorted thoughts in connection with them OR the fact that I, myself, regardless how close or far I feel from God, cannot predict the future or know the mind of God perfectly.
In 2006, I left Hong Kong, for the last time. I had a staph infection and gaping wound in right leg. I stood face to face, with students from the previous year, telling them goodbye, as I headed for the airport alone, to return to the United States, after only a portion of the time I was supposed to spend in Hong Kong. I left my team. I left disillusioned …. or so I thought. Heh . If that girl only knew!
My mother, father, sister, and boyfriend at the time, were hysterical. They said I HAD to come home, it was the rest of my life. I remember packing up to leave and feeling like such a failure. I only packed, actually, because I misunderstood what my supervisor told me when she said she was getting a ticket. I thought she meant to send me home. She meant to come to me. When she showed up, my entire ‘’summer’’ was packed, and she took pity on me. I was scared to death, and I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be IN MINISTRY, but only MY IDEA OF MINISTRY. I wanted to be back home, with my diet coke, able to relax, with the boy I was SURE I was going to marry, and doing ministry EXACTLY how I wanted to do it. AND while I felt pretty and special, for the glory of God…of course.
Truth be told, when I got home, THINGS (circumstances) got worse. All the people I ‘’thought” really needed me and were trying to LOVE me, well, actually, they were just as sick as I was at the time, just in different ways. As a matter of fact, the people who ACTCUALLY loved me so well during this situation were people who, at the time, I didn’t think cared too much about me. I think about my previous team leader, who encouraged me, and told me I wasn’t a failure, even though I felt like I let him down… Hadn’t he trained me so well? I think about my team, and how they wrote to me and carried out the final weeks in Asia so well… weeks that I could have remained and led them, albeit from a bed at Hong Kong University. BUT I didn’t want to serve God that way, with a hole in my leg, hobbling, and feeling sick… I wanted to be A-OKAY and having a blast, or out of there….AND I DIDN’T EVEN REALIZE IT. I wanted to serve God while thin and athletic and married with my own city version of a white Pickett fence. (Please note the southern reference).
I was worshipping idols, COUNTLESS idols, and I didn’t even know it. And in fact, there came a time that my worship of idols led me straight into the trapping arms of abuse and greater disillusionment. And I thought I was humbled then…
At the time, I comforted myself by listening to my mom and other people who were terrified of losing me. They said I wouldn’t have made it if I’d stayed in Hong Kong. The truth is, I would have, just more humbly.. I remember visiting a doctor right before my flight left- A DIFFERENT doctor….not the original one who had cut me open! Ha
This doctor said that he could keep me well for a few more weeks, but that I’d have to get additional help at home probably. I didn’t realize then I had a staph infection… but I am sure that he was correct. You know why? Because when I got home, I LIVED….and it wasn’t just because they drained my wound and fixed my leg. Nope- I lived because it was God’s will… and the sovereign God foreordained that I would be okay. I wish I’d known that more then, in the midst of the craziness, that I live and learn and continue to move and have my being IN HIM and HIM alone.
And since that August, in 2006, a lot of things in my world have seemingly fallen apart or been turned upside down, but I can’t forget the lesson I learned there, and the lesson that stays with me today. Things fall apart. There is a meaninglessness to life that taunts us, but that is all it is…. a taunt, because nothing is meaningless…. and God never changes.
Just because things are hard, messy, or even dangerous, does not mean that they are not 100% the things in which we should remain and endeavor. Our lives are not forged and made for great things that are awaiting us. Our lives are forged and made for the great thing of enduring the mundane, of staying on the cross, even when we feel forsaken, and even when buildings crash around us.
The men who ran back into the World Trade Towers, they were powered by something more than their own wants and their own ideas and dreams of happiness. They ran to death, and they created life for others. In order to live, at least, to live abundantly, do not we all have to be powered by something more than our own ideas and feelings about happiness or God’s will or success at any given moment? (Yes. My answer is YES)!
In order to live and live abundantly, we have to live WITH our feelings and IN them and THROUGH them, just like Jesus did when he wept for Lazarus, and just like Jesus did when he stayed on the cross, and just as our Father in Heaven does as He endures with great pain the vessels designed for destruction in this world.
I read the other day, someone talking about the arrogance of Calvinists. I got the point, after a few minutes of trying to figure out the sarcastic meme, but I couldn’t join in the joke because the joke was about something which I knew no other way to deal with…. My very depravity and my very worthiness… My worthiness that was purchased through the death of perfection…. My depravity which was earned by my own choices when my will was entirely free…. I cannot wait to see the theological lashings I will get from some for this conviction.
So today…September 11, 2021. Today, I am living in NYC, remaining in New York City. I still have that staph infection, by the way. It comes and goes and has since 2006. The amount of antibiotics that have gone into my body, and the number of cuts that have been made on my skin in order to drain infection. More than likely, I will battle this staph infection for the rest of my life because of my own genetic makeup and choices doctors made about how to treat me for infections when I was a child. It’s complicated, but the point is this: Sometimes it is in death, or in dying, that we find our lives, but it probably does not feel like we are finding it at the time, or all the time. (Phillippians 1:21). For me to live IS Christ… the suffering- the submission- the staying put… the mortification of sin that Christ Jesus did twenty four hours a day each moment of his earthly life… But God is building God’s church, and He is using a lot of limping people to get it done.
Our church is currently made up of two technical churches, an elderly Chinese speaking group, and a parachurch ministry as well as some of us who are partnering with a hotel that now houses transient men RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO US. YUP. that’s right. God sent people right to our doorstep who are seeking sobriety and getting their lives back in order. All we had to do was open our door and talk to them. (Well… not quite that simple, but you get the point).
We don’t have a new name yet, but we are here…and enduring for the sake of the kingdom and all parties involved…bc God has brought this to be…GOD…. Not me. Not Jesse…. Maybe a little by are forlorn core team that literally propped us up until we learned to walk by faith and not sight. BUT MOSTLY, just God… and the unexpected kindness and help of countless unappreciated.
Our welcome packets are not elaborate and flashy, in my opinion, and it’s great. You completely miss who we are and only meet God.. We do have a building though… but it’s an old one, that we need to clean out and repair, and not use for storage (ehem. cough). But the best resource we have?? THE PEOPLE.
The people who have STAYED in these two churches even as they faced countless obstacles….THE TWO WOMEN WHO RUN THE PARACHURCH MINISTRY even though they have been through a lot of suffering and rejection in their own life, often undeservedly, and a group of men who, although they have little, KNOW the worth of the things they do have… and others who are being flexible even though such drastic changes are never easy or without emotional entanglements.
BUT GOD…God resists the proud and lifts up the humble. You know what has restored my faith? Men who have literally no home but give me gifts and love my kids and our over the top life without judgement…THAT renewed my faith… and seeing gratitude and humility in these faithful women at Creator’s Voice. And them inviting me to love their children, the fruit of their labors, while I was lagging in a season of barrenness. They renewed and restored my faith that was dying after years of ministry in a church pretending to be ‘’for the community,’’ but actually held back by unhealth and deteriorating infrastructure, and very little of the MAIN resource….PEOPLE committed to this neighborhood and ABLE to minister to it…as well as people who had something to gift it .. I would venture to say, for a great number of us, all this craziness has forged our faith.
Oh, and by the way. Hi…I’m Megin, and for years I unknowingly contributed to a broken church culture, THAT broken church culture, but I did hope for change…and eventually I realized that the change was always ONLY going to begin with me. I confess that there were years, I let my ministry become a cog in the wheel because I thought I had to look strong in the way certain broken people viewed strong. I didn’t though. I could have been weak. I have learned from my mistakes. I will learn from my mistakes. And I will be strong in my ability to be weak as I enter this new season in my life.
Staying is not easy; let’s be honest here, if you know me very well at all or have followed my blogs, it is NOT that I even endured well the past 14 years in NYC. Nope. Spoiler alert. I didn’t endure well. And I made some really big mistakes. THE DIFFERENCE? I committed to seeing it through… letting God remove me on HIS timetable… just like He had done with everyone and everything else. I’m committed to submitting my life to Christ again, and letting Him control it, come what may… sorry for wavering … that keeps happening even as I supposedly grow up. But apparently there is no condemnation for those in Christ, and God promises to complete this work which He started in us….and something about me being a jar of clay in the hands of the potter…
Because as much as I’d like to say good job to people who remained, I can’t even say that- because it’s all by grace. BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD, I would be the man I pass on the steps of PS 42 when I walk in my neighborhood late at night, passed out cold and with crumbs from strangers as his dinner. I make just as many foolish choices all the time, and I have just as many blind spots. And I’m quite sure, if God wills I have another 20 years, I’ll be analyzing and learning from all the blind spots that I have today yet do not know a thing about yet…
But God has risen up some humble and honest people, a whole heck of a lot of them, around me, and around this neighborhood…. And from the two churches and the shelter and the parachurch ministry, GOD IS BUILDING A CHURCH. I apologized to someone the other day as I had to refer to GFC and then City Grace separately, and this person said “oh yeah. It’s all just CHURCH to me because it’s all I’ve ever known. You guys are just church.” Yup. THAT hit me. It’s true.
God planted His church. I don’t care what you call it… or who is the pastor… or what the people look like, or how often they are or are not in their buildings… The CHURCH is the people of God doing the work of God for the Kingdom of God… isn’t that something someone famous and much wiser than me said?? Was it TK or did he just quote someone? I don’t know. But it’s true, and honestly, if you read scripture, it’s almost general revelation.
The most godly thing and churchly thing you could do today might be to sit with someone mentally ill while they are imprison, or deal with an unruly child and feed her….ALL BECAUSE of the love of Jesus IN YOUR HEART… and ALL BECAUSE you want to DEMONSTRATE and BE the Gospel to the person…. just the way God saved you. And we hope that they might also come to know the ONE WHO HAS SATISFIED YOUR OWN SOUL DESPITE THE MYRIADS OF SUFFERING AND CONSEQUENES OF YOUR CHOICES THAT YOU’VE ENDURED. But that’s not even why we serve….that hope. Nope. We serve and submit because we are CALLED TO. there is no other way…
I don’t know if any of this makes sense…. Perhaps it even offends some readers. I’m sure you can take a few sentences I’ve written at some point, use them out of context, and feel like I am trying to make some giant UNGODLY statement or passive-aggressive joust. And that’s not my attempt at all. My attempt is to share what God has TAUGHT MY OWN HEART….HOW GOD has sustained my own heart…
Because if I didn’t see things this way, I surely wouldn’t be here today. I would have taken the first flight out and left my students waiving goodbye. Trust me. History repeats itself. Over and over again. But I am here today… and if you’re reading this, in some form, so are you…. and God’s not finished yet…
…Just a week ago, we had a birthday party for my kids AT that church building and were able to be hospitable to tons of people for basically 12 hours straight…. Old friends and new friends, from our community and traveling in… and even some strangers! And I just didn’t want it to end…I wanted to do it EVERY DAY…even with a husband by my side that can be grouchy… And I had ENERGY…(just needed to veg sleep after)…BUT you know who blessed me the most that day? DO YOU KNOW WHAT LITERALLY WAS THE SHINING LIGHT????
It was the man, the man on his way to detox a few months after starting to come to our hodge-podge church. He showed up at the door Monday morning to say goodbye, and to hand deliver a birthday present to my son who he’d seen the day before while we were decorating for the party. He told us he’d be back after detox with his testimony about how God used this place and worked in his life. I pray it’s true… but even if I never see him again, (which I’m pretty confident I will), THAT MAN IMPACTED my life, changed my life.
He came in, humbly, in his sin; he saw Jesus, and he said “I am not worthy.” He made hard choices, and stayed in hard situations when they were not comfortable….I’m pretty sure he’s not comfortable wherever he is at the moment. And he showed such gratitude, kindness, and love. He helped restore my faith… faith that was widdled away by Christians and Christian churches. Seriously it is like I’m literally racist against white people and antagonistic of Christians. But everyone else, HELLO BEST FRIEND.
Here I am singing in basically an all black choir tonight and I couldn’t feel more at home. The “least of these brothers” discriminated by the world are MY PEOPLE. Yup! And you know who I learn from THE MOST?? SINNERS!! People who KNOW they are sinners-humble sinners -literally school this seminary student, masters degree in Intercultural studies… self proclaimed lover of grammar and all things writing. THEY have it figured out more than me most of the time. The last will be first, and exhibit more faith… faith not in how good things feel, but faith in what they believe God could do and will do so long as they STAYED in the Vine (John 15). ABIDE!!!
So where are you today? Where were you then, 20 years ago? It’s probably not the same place, but it might be oddly similar… somewhat parallel in terms of problems or experiences… and that….THAT can be disillusioning… to see 20 years pass, and the problems STILL to be the same….
Until YOU REALIZE that 20 years ago, you would never have endured this much, or this well… that 20 years ago, you would have had no idea that you even had idols, much less that you were actively serving them while trying to claim to serve God. BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD….you endured 20 years, and I promise you, none of those years were wasted. Be gentle with yourself…my therapist tells me that like 10 times a session. “God has never done anything TO me that He hasn’t done FOR me.” Said a woman who lost two husbands and countless friends, many because they were murdered for loving Jesus and trying to love others. WHAT IS THAT?? THAT, my friends, is the miracle of FAITH. The miracle that kept Jesus on the cross. The miracle that keeps me in New York… the miracle that I met through YEARS OF ENDURING ALL THE FEELINGS THAT I FELT SO INTENSELY AND THOUGHT MADE ME SO WEAK. Oh that weakness… that led me to know that strength never had to come from ME in the first place. My mission was to embrace the weak and watch how God would keep me alive.
And he has… kept me alive… all for His glory… because He puts nothing to waste- the great Creator, and GOD fills up EVERY INCH OF THE PAGE, EACH SPACE…ALL CRACKS WITH HIS LOVE AND PEACE AND JOY EVEN INNNNN THE TRIALS…similar to how I fill up the walls in my apartment….NO EMPTY SPACE. Think on that.
But most of the time, although I know that’s true, I still feel like He fills my page with GIANT BLANK SPACES and LANDS. BUT even IN blank spaces, even the silence, there is no emptiness but merely DEAFENING and overfilling silent instruction loudly speaking the truth of reality in a world that is already but not yet, in a world that is broken, in a world that is only seen upside down, through a mirror dimly. AND A WORLD THAT GOD LITERALLY SUBMITTED AND BECAME MAN IN ORDER TO SAVE- THAT is the upside down world, in which, we live.
I cannot WAIT to be seen fully and to see fully! I CANNOT WAIT! But I will. I will wait, because God has asked me to… AND I won’t leave anywhere until He calls me… and I’ll thank him for every moment of life because Love is never wasted, even if it feels like it is. That’s literally the only line that Coldplay’s “Fix You” gets wrong. Love NEVER goes to waste. NEVER. But lights do guide us home, and lights do ignite our bones, and God most certainly works… and I am most certainly fixed… even when the tears stream down my face, even when I lose something I cannot replace…
God bless all who are weak and humbled, broken and in grief… because that is what God does….BLESSES….but we have to be willing to be brought that low… are you? Can you confess? Join with me; it’s the most freeing place I’ve ever been… freer than Georgia, Hong Kong, New York City… freer than my family of origin, my old church, our new church. I’m learning how to confess and how to live in freedom. It’s insanely simple yet incredibly difficult, until I see HIM… and I just walk toward Him. HE is near. Let’s walk together. Let’s work together, or, better yet, be worked on together. I love you. Amen
