Mountains and Valleys

Disclaimer: What I'm about to write goes into a painful moment I had along my first year of staff journey. There are many moments along this journey that have been difficult and I have chosen to write about one of the particular places of hardship for me. Know that as I write this, I write this from a place of gratitude and healing - that while this part of the journey was far from easy, there is much that I see about who Jesus is, who he cares for, and what he cares for. It is in these moments of pain that I get to experience a piece of the pain that others have been feeling long before me and I gain truer sense of the gospel. I see a clearer picture of who Jesus cares about and how deeply he loves his people on the outside and longs to bring them in. As you read this, also know that I tend to write my emotions intensely (being a feeler and an English nerd), but know that I am, for lack of a better term, "fine" and in a process of restoration and healing from some past experiences. If you want to read my reflections about a hopeful perspective in ministry click here. 

About a month ago my best friend, Sol, came to visit me in Northridge (she now lives in Fresno). We met three years ago at the FUI (Fresno Urban Internship) summer project and bonded because we were in a very similar state in our lives. We had both experienced serious rejection and were both in need of major healing. If we had not met that summer, I'm not sure we would be as close as we are now. For while we are very similar we also have striking differences. We both love food and traveling, love Portland and Seattle, love watching Friends, love listening to music, and spending time in silence together. We feel emotions deeply, love being around people, hearing the stories of the people around us, and seeing things for what they are.

But we have many differences. Sol is Mexican, I am European. She was raised in a single mother home while I was raised in a split parent home. She grew up in poverty and I grew up in middle-class. She went to public school, I went to private Christian school. There has always been a gap between us in the way we were raised, and while my privileged gap may not be mountains higher than hers, it is wide enough to clearly see the difference, to see we essentially grew up on the "opposite sided of the tracks."

I say this to set up the scene to which I entered. One of the great things about my friendship with Sol is our ability to speak freely about the difficult topics such as race, ethnicity, poverty, personal brokenness, family, etc. We work hard to try to understand or at least hear out where the other comes from. We work hard to listen to each other's stories and see the pain of a life we don't fully understand. No matter how hard we try, until we experience it for ourselves, we will never fully understand each other's stories. But we still listen. I will never fully understand what it is like to live is a marginalized minority and it is almost impossible to "displace" myself (intentionally place myself into positions of being a minority) in a way that allows me to truly understand what it is like to live out that life rather than just experience it for a short a time.

But as we discussed my staff experiences that weekend, we realized that I had been having my own marginalized experiences. Small and focused - I was getting new insight into a displacement and as weird as it will sound, I would end up being truly grateful for. As I describe my experiences and my emotions, know that I am grateful for the results and greater understanding it would soon bring.

For the past year I have been on InterVarsity staff at Cal State Northridge. I love InterVarsity and the vision they have for college students and seeing transformation on and beyond the campus. But like any organization, para-church, or non-profit, it has its weaknesses (it has to if it is an organization comprised by humans, who all have weaknesses). One of the hardships this year has been being by myself on campus and not having many of the typical structures many campus staff do. I feel marginalized because I am a solo staff at a campus far away from others. My supervisor lives 60 miles away (which is a short distance in comparison with other regions, where supervisors live 2-3 hours away). But it still feels lonely, isolating, and frustrating.

There are a lot of things that are not fair about my situation and there are injustices too. I have spent a great part of the year wrestling with the line between unfair and unjust, determining where I selfishly desire to make situation easier (unfair) and where in my staff situation that is not right (unjust). I have wrestled with being alone, with no staff team all year while I watch other schools receive many staff. I watch others bond with their teams and team leaders. I see the pictures on social media, of teams bonding together, and I will admit it, jealously long for that to be me. As I see what many others have and I do not, I wrestle with the impending green monster of jealousy, rearing its ugly head as I try to plan things on my own. I have battled with the duality of feeling "complimented" because I must be able to lead a team on my own and feeling "exiled" in a place no one wants to go to so to join me in mission. I have spent the year wrestling with my own insecurities, frustrations, and anger. In the midst of that I have had many people tell me in some way to "get over it." Most, truly, do so encouragingly which I am grateful for - reminding me of who I am, who Jesus is, and that I am not forgotten. But some speak harsher, sending ripples and waves of a past pain through my heart. With words such as "move on" or "I don't see what why you this is still bothering you" remind me of times I was told to move on before I was ready and send through my chest a fear that no one wants to understand my story.

In the midst of all of this, I could feel the frustration growing inside me. The isolation felt overwhelming and it just plain hurt to watch others bond as staff teams that I did not have. I felt left out. I felt I was powerless, like there was nothing to be done about my situation for who would listen to an intern? Would I just then receive a lot of wordy explanations of why there was no other staff to join me? Would I be blown off and told I did not know how things worked? If I expressed any of this would I even been seen or heard? I could not always see that people were, in truth, advocating on my behalf because in this moment I was wrapped in the intensity of the unfairness.

As I express these feelings and raw emotions to my friend, Sol (through her own tears) tells me this is as close to a minority experience I may ever have. The feeling of a crippling powerlessness, the building frustration toward people when they do not see how hard things are for you, the painful phrases of "just get over it"; "why are you so frustrated"; just push through" range from mildly annoying to hurtful to soul damaging. To feel like people don't see you clearly because the painful experience you are trying to explain to them is something they've never lived and they just don't get it.

As I expressed my hurt and my fears, Sol validated two things: 1. That no matter how frustrated I felt, the GLA division had my back. They supported me and wanted me to succeed. They cared about me deeply but the truth was - I was just not feeling that at the moment. 2. This is a small glimpse of what minority students feel their whole lives.

My heart then broke all over again for the painful experiences of my minority brothers and sisters throughout our country. My heart grieved for the damage caused to generations of people whose experiences are still so greatly misunderstood. How could I possible conceive the life my best friend has to live, unable to opt out of thinking about poverty and race and money and culture while I get all the chances to just because I'm white? I have so many privileges I too often take for granted just because I was raised in a higher tax bracket, because my skin is lighter, because my heritage comes from Western Europe.

I don't know if this experience is what Jesus had in mind when he sent me to CSUN. I don't know if it was his plan to send me as staff by myself so that I might wrestle through these questions, so that I might have my own experience where I am unable to "opt out" because it surrounds me every day. I do know it is not a coincidence I am feeling all of this. While being on staff, by myself, in a situation unlike many others, I have seen so much of who Jesus is and his love for the people on the outside and the margins. In fact that is who Jesus sought out first, those who were were on the margins of society and he brought them into his kingdom with an open embrace. It is this that makes me love Jesus all the more. If nothing changes about my staff situation, then so be it, but I cannot let this experience pass me by without changing how I see people, without letting it influence how I do ministry and who we include in our ministry. If want to follow Jesus and model the IV ministry after his, then I must seek out those on the outside, the marginalized, those living in the valleys and not just the mountains.