Every day, I open up my phone to social media and see a new hate crime, an old racial slur, and another Asian American assaulted or dead. I feel shock because there's just senseless violence for something that no one can control (their race) and towards someone they don't know. It's on people just trying to make ends meet, people on the train, and elderly men and women walking by.
I feel overwhelmed seeing them hurt.
I think of my own family, my grandmother, being attacked.
I mourn for my community that faces wave after wave of loss.
How do we have hope?
I'm numb to it 99% of the time. I was numb to a lot of it for the #BLM movement too.
I don't know how to process these feelings. It's like when your necklace chain gets tangled in itself, and you sometimes try untangling the knots only to tighten them further. I feel pain in my chest. I feel like I don't know what to do anymore.
So, I do what I always do: I go to God.
I asked God why He was just watching us go through all this pain and suffering again and again. How do I have hope when it feels like there is no hope? When I finally do allow myself to feel, I want to scream to the top of my lungs with rage at 2 AM. I am so gutted with grief. God, where are you? You said you would care for us. You said you were our protector? Who are you?
In my previous post, I talked about reading a book called Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. I'm really glad I did because in Chapter 4, Journey through the Wall, I could feel like someone else understood the disconnect I was feeling. "For most of us the Wall appears through a crisis that turns our world upside down...We question ourselves, God, the church. We discover for the first time our faith does not appear to "work." We have more questions than answers as the very foundation of our faith feels like it is on the line. We don't know where God is, what he is doing, where he is going, how he is getting us there, or when this will be over."
I've told God I hated Him before, at a winter retreat last January, because I was at a different wall. I had been praying for one of my friends to receive Christ. It was probably the majority of my prayers. I would pray for this friend. I cried over them. I asked God to change their heart. I truly loved my friend, and I had poured out everything I had within me.
They were not being changed. God was not "working" in their life.
I felt so betrayed. I didn't know it though.
I could feel this wall in my heart, but I thought it was about my anxiety for grad school applications, maybe my leadership worries, and anything else that seemed to make sense. I would process with my small group at that conference, but nothing was working. I would sing each song with a dead heart. My singing was just noise. I prayed that God would let me feel something. I asked God to help me understand what was even wrong.
On the last night, I realized I was furious with God. I hated Him. I hated how He wasn't working. I couldn't see anything happening. I was at the end of reasoning. I had spent all this time singing praise and worship but I felt nothing. I was completely bored at best and bitter at worst. When God had revealed to me the nature of my Wall, I don't remember my exact thoughts. I remembered that it was the call to seek and save the lost, and I had felt the anger wash over me.
I had done that God!
I did what You asked of me, and You failed me.
You're a liar. You're a fraud.
I believe in a fraud.
I hate You.
In truth, I did hate God. I hated the version of God I had been falsely serving and worshipping because He would do what was 'right' if I obeyed. God would yield to me because what I wanted was good. Right?
God met me in that moment where I was honest. He didn't want me to see Him like that anymore because it wasn't true. Enough was enough. I realized that, and I cried as I grieved over my friends and the world. I tripped on my way to the altar call, and I couldn't contain my sobs. I was loud about my crying. There were no silent tears. It was wailing. Such deep grief that consumed me yet it moved me to know that I had been wrong about God and God was being gracious to me still. I wanted to continue to seek for people God loved, and I would surrender their lives to His hands.
My staff, Jane, had held me as I wept. I don't remember what she said that night, but I just felt heard. I felt like God and Jane were giving me a hug of acknowledgement. We weren't left here to die and suffer alone. Emmanuel is the name of Jesus - God with us.
God had broken me so that we could be real and have a real relationship. God hated that I saw Him through lies and my own perceptions. It took me a lot of pain and grief to get to the point where my view of God had shifted. The EHS book says, "This is God's way of rewiring and "purging our affections and passions" that we may delight in his love and enter into a richer, fuller communion with him. God wants to communicate to us his true sweetness and love. He longs that we might know his true peace and rest. He works to free us from unhealthy attachments and idolatries of the world. He longs for an intimate, passionate love relationship with us."
I had experienced that.
I thought it would be the end of it.
I have hit a new wall.
With the onslaught of hate crimes, I thought to myself what I would do if someone would approach me throwing racial slurs (at best case scenario at this point). I don't know if I'm being completely insane, I shared this with my friend Elizabeth over voice messages, but I wanted to ask them for their name. I wanted to know how their day had gone. I wanted to see them, not the racist, and even if they didn't see me as a person, even if they wanted to hurt me, kill me, I wanted to ask them if they knew Jesus. Jesus who loved them in this exact moment. Jesus who would love them even if they ended my life, I wanted them to know that. Then, I wanted to pray for them - whatever was on their heart or mind.
I cried sharing those messages because that was insane. Why would I engage with a racist? Why would I care for them? Cry for them? Risk my safety and life to speak with them? It didn't make sense to me, and it still felt so wrong to even want to do that, but didn't Jesus do that for us? At our worst, he was willing to go on a cross for the people who hated him. At our worst, Jesus loved us and knew us.
God was pleased to die on our behalf.
I don't know if I would actually do that, but it broke my heart further. I knew Jesus deeper. I loved Jesus more. I'm not a racist who shoots 8 people at a spa or kicks the elderly or assaults strangers. I'm still damned and deserving of a separation from God. There is no amount of "good" I can do or be to undo the evil and brokenness that is a part of me. I can do the comparing game. I can say I'm a good person.
Good enough for who?
Only in Jesus do I have the right to reconciliation with God.
Only because of Jesus was I able to cry and grieve, for the victims but also the assailants too.
I still feel insane for wanting to do this, what if they really do hurt or kill me?
Would it be worth it?
Would God really want me to do that?
I'm scared too.
I'm scared this post could be my last post because I try it out one day or I'm scared that I chicken out and God/everyone who reads this says I'm weak and unbelieving.
I don't know anything anymore about myself, and the more I think I know God, the more I realize how little of God I can even comprehend. I still love You, God. I love You in a pandemic. I love You when the world is on fire. I love You only because You chose to love me first and set this precedent first.
I'm still struggling. I don't know how to grieve. I don't know how I'll react or feel if their hatred comes directly my way. I don't know anything anymore.
I might be waiting for answers God will never share with me.
I just want to be the person God made me to be in every moment.
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