Anger

“Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.” – Proverbs 14:29

In the last few weeks, I’ve been coming to terms with the fact that I still struggle with anger. About four or five years ago, I confronted and worked through having angry outbursts, explosive episodes that happened after we first got married and then after we had our first child—those have pretty much disappeared, but I’m coming to realize I still don’t know how to handle anger right. My anger flares up in response to chronic misbehavior, and manifests as berating, yelling, going to my room and slamming the door. It’s not as extreme or consuming as before, but the damage is still done: I’ve lost my ability to accurately perceive the situation or my kids; I’ve reacted in emotion instead of instructed through discipline; I’m said or implied things I regret; I’ve created fear or an unsafe feeling at home; ultimately, I’ve harmed a relationship.

I listened again to a Keller sermon on anger, to a few words from Piper, did a serious word study. Here are the thoughts that captured my attention this time:

1. I have to be aware of my anger. Anger has this strange, hidden quality—have you noticed that, when it’s got a grip on you, it’s one of the hardest emotions to admit to having? It’s the emotion you feel most defensive of when someone points it out in you? Keller claims it’s the emotion that is most like an addictive substance: there is a strong element of denial, then in order to maintain that denial you have to get even angrier, feed the anger with even more destructive thoughts. I will never be able to control or use my anger in the right way if I am not aware that I have it, so this is the first thing.

2. Anger is destructive by nature; thus I have to make sure it is not disordered in cause (angry about sin, not my ego), proportion (not to a disproportionate degree lest it start to distort my very perception and ability to see if it’s disproportionate—hard one), duration (not allowed to fester into bitterness), or goal (against sin, not the sinner; never to tear down, hurt, seek revenge against the person; never not in love—also hard).

3. The ideal is not the absence of anger, or uncontrolled anger, but slow anger: what is slow anger? What does it look like; what is it really? How do we have it, or is it even possible to have? This is the part Keller didn’t go into as much, so to figure this out I looked up all the instances I could find of Jesus being angry, did a word study for “anger” in the New Testament, and looked up all the direct commands regarding anger for believers (which overlapped with the word study, thankfully).

Instances of Jesus being angry: the first remarkable thing is that I couldn’t really find many—definitively, only two. In only one of those is the word anger actually used (Mark 3:5), when he heals a man with a withered hand; the other instance he is widely accepted as acting in anger (John 2:15), when he cleanses the temple, though the adjective used there is actually “zeal.” What stands out? He reacted to sin, in one case eradicating evil, in the other case with grief and a demonstration of truth. It wasn’t selfish or personal; in fact, what stands out are the many times he could have gotten angry, when betrayed or tired or hurt, but didn’t. In John, he rebuked but it doesn’t say he yelled it; in Mark, he didn’t say anything at all, not to blame or even teach.

There are basically two Greek words for anger in the New Testament. Orge (noun) or orgizo (verb), literally “to be provoked,” refers to a “settled or abiding opposition.” Thymos, literally “to kill, breathe hard, consume by fire,” refers to impulsive outbursts, anger that boils up and soon subsides again. It is worth mentioning the Greek prefix para, which means “close beside, alongside” and stresses a nearness and intimate participation of the verb to which it is affixed.

God has both types of anger. Jesus was orge in Mark. Orge describes the anger of masters and kings in three of Jesus’ parables (Mt 18:34, Mt 22:7, Lk 14:21). Of the 18 times thymos is used, 10 of them are in Revelation, referring to the anger of Satan, Babylon, or (more frequently) God. The two words are used together only twice, in Revelation, describing God: “the fierceness (thymos) of His wrath (orge)” (Rev 16:19).

It’s different for us, though. As you can probably guess, the other 8 times thymos is used is in direct command not to have it (ex. Eph 4:31, Col 3:8), or to describe an instance in which it was bad (Acts 19:28; Luke 4:28). In both those instances, thymos riled up the crowds to drive out good, hurt others, and remove reason, a far contrast to the two instances of Jesus’ anger. Thymos is never okay; it describes God at the end times, not us now.

For us, orge is more complicated. In only one place are we commanded, expected to have it: “Be angry (orgizo) and yet do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger (parorgismus)” (Eph 4:26). We should be provoked into an orge-anger, yet most of the verse is devoted to warning us against letting it stay too near us (parorgismus). I particularly loved the verse that Paul seems to be quoting, Psalm 4:4, which is in Hebrew: “Be angry (ragaz- lit. to tremble, be violently disturbed) and do not sin (chata). Meditate (amar- lit. to say in one’s heart, to command) in your heart (lebab- lit. mind, will, understanding, soul) upon your bed (mishkab) and be still (damam- lit. to be silent, to wait, to not speak).” Six words, that tell us what it means to have and recognize anger, to control and reflect upon it, and to slow it down.

In two places, we are warned against orge: “Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger (orge), for the anger (orge) of man does not achieve the righteousness of God” (Ja 1:19-20). Matthew 5:22 warns us that everyone who is angry (orge) with a brother is liable to judgment. Again, orge is not a sin, but we should be slow to it, and wary of it.

So, what is slow anger? What is the anger we are supposed to have? What I come to is that it’s actually a very different thing than what most of us experience day-to-day as anger. It is never an emotional flare-up. It is used like a scalpel, a dangerous and destructive instrument to oppose sin and eradicate evil. It is used only rarely, accompanied sometimes by verbal rebuke but more often by silence. It is always focused on sin, not selfish frustration.

Frankly, it is more silent, more controlled, more settled, more grieved, ultimately more loving than anything I have experienced. The anger we commonly know is loud, uncontrolled and distorting, momentary, full of malice or selfishness. This slow-anger, this orge-anger: it is a good thing, and I think sometimes I capture a bit of it. But it easily turns into thymos-anger, or para-orge-anger, so practically speaking for me right now, I think slow-anger means to let that initial provocation point me to the sin, then just to stop. To not act or speak immediately. To take measured action, to rebuke or instruct, but with the patience of Galatians 5:22, a word that is in Greek makrothymia, lit. macro-thymos: a forbearant temper, long-suffering. Sometimes, orge-anger, but more often makrothymos-patience. Good place to start.

Thanksgivings

“The day of our ships arrival at the place assigned ... in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God."  - charter, London Company, 1619

"A day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favours of Almighty God." – George Washington proclaiming the first Thanksgiving holiday, 1789

Thanksgiving is a holiday for me that lives more in the historic past than in the recent past or present. It was the first break in the academic year, when we all came home to be together. We would set the dining table that we usually never used; there would be turkey and my sister and I would get the bones, skin and drippings. There would be sweet potatoes with marshmallows or cinnamon sticks, ham and pineapple for my other sister, green beans. There would be soft, pillowy Hachiya persimmons that my parents saved up for us. The next day there would be turkey congee. Along with Christmas, it encapsulated everything I liked best about traditions: rituals that created warmth and memory, centered around family. Years later, Thanksgiving was when Dave met my parents for the first time and when we started dating (memorable also for the year I had the chicken pox).

Somewhere along the line, that sort of nuclear warmth faded. We usually worked through Thanksgivings in residency. My sisters got married and stopped coming home to celebrate. I was in a post-partum haze for three Thanksgivings. The last few years in Virginia, we attended a potluck lunch with church friends which had that sort of festive quality that only lots of food and people crammed into a small rowhouse can have, and Dave enjoyed a bunch of traditional foods he usually didn’t get to eat. Then we’d go to my parents in the evening, when we would be too stuffed to eat much. Neither felt the same as those Thanksgivings past.

Here, it feels like I’m carving out (haha) the holiday anew. I never really can go back to those nuclear Thanksgivings, but now is when I make it our own—and I suppose every family does that at some point. Dave’s family doesn’t really celebrate holidays; they are joining into whatever we create. So I’m slogging through some amount of nostalgia and loneliness to ask myself: what do I want this holiday to mean for our family?

Well, food and atmosphere is important to me—I don’t know if my kids will feel the same, but I like the traditional dishes, the smell of turkey wafting through the house, everyone together as the table is set. And of course that means work (somehow holidays are more magical when someone else is doing all the work for you), so as I’m doing the whole meal, I’m aiming for what I think we’ll all enjoy without tiring myself out too much to enjoy it. We’re doing a turkey, our annual cranberry-sausage-apple stuffing for Dave. I’m trying a fancy mac-and-cheese recipe for Ellie as it may be the only thing she eats and we aren’t at a potluck where someone else is making it. I’m forgoing my usual pumpkin cheesecake in favor of an easier-to-make apple crisp. I’m making more vegetable dishes as I think Dave’s family will appreciate that and it’s healthier anyway.

I think the other element that’s special about this holiday is how we are all given a chance to stop everything else in life, and be intentionally thankful. So we did one activity where I put up a big piece of paper on the wall and we all wrote what we were thankful for. Ellie wrote a long litany of items ranging from pillows to people and asked if she could also write a separate letter decorated with a turkey to put on the wall too. Eric wrote, “I’m thankful for me (my name is Eric)” (okay, and some other stuff, like the cat and his brother). When asked, Elijah said he was thankful for his stuffed animals. When pressed further, his special rock. When asked, Esme said, “I don’t know” and was mostly upset she couldn’t scribble on the paper herself. Dave wrote, his snuffles bear. I wrote, our kids, this house, the weather.

I guess traditions, and holidays, are what we make of them in the end, and here at the beginning of our own holidays, this start is as good as any.

Hoping Without Expectation

“Only the Lord is perfect. Look to God as the source of all you want to see happen in your marriage, and don’t worry about how it will happen. It’s your responsibility to pray. It is God’s job to answer. Leave it in His hands.” – Stormie OMartian, Power of a Praying Wife

“… suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” – Romans 5:3-5

Let’s say there are ways you wish your husband could change. There are two potential responses: one, you keep the hope alive. You think about it and try to help, but if change doesn’t happen, it’s easy to fall into malcontent or nagging. Or two, you give up any expectation he can change. You don’t put pressure on him or think on it much, but it’s easy to fall into apathy, or deadlier yet, disengagement or disgust.

How does one take a third, middle path—maintain a desire and vision for change, actively support and think for his best, yet let go of any timetable or ultimatum for how and when it happens, or whether it happens at all? How does one hope without expectation?

This is a question I think about for myself and my friends, because almost every marriage seems to have areas like this. Maybe it’s how he could speak more affirming words, lose weight, work less, be more involved in parenting, fight differently, relate sexually in a more fulfilling way, communicate more: these aren’t minor things, but deeply-rooted issues that often lead to either apathetic disengagement or nagging criticism, both of which shut off change, leading to a bad cycle. And it’s hard. When you’ve asked, and tried to help, but no change happens—when this occurs over years and years—then it’s hard to keep hoping.

I think the key to hoping without expectation for me lies in loving Dave first, then hoping for him second. In other words, my hope for him is a form of my love for him, and it is hope for him, not hope in him. My hope is in God, and this is not some kind of crutch: this is in fact the only way I am able to test and sustain my hopes for Dave, the only way I can hope at all in the right way, in a way that leads to life and not death, in a way that frees me from concrete outcomes or timetables.

One thing this means is that I examine my hopes for him. Why do I want him to change—is it for his best, for our best, or for selfish or superficial reasons? Dave is God’s son eternally and only my husband temporarily—is this a hope that God would want for him? Would it lead to God’s glory or fit him better for eternity? If this is a hope that relates to a need that I have in our marriage, which is certainly okay—am I willing to lay myself down in this area and love him unconditionally first?

Another thing this means is that I ought to pray for him, more than I analyze or act or anything else. Ultimately my expectation is not in Dave but in God, that he is able to work this change in Dave, or not, in his sovereignty and provision for me and for us, and that his timing is perfect. It’s like that saying: weak faith in a strong object is better than strong faith in a weak object. Better that I pray even if I barely believe God can do it, than heap up all my beliefs and expectations in Dave himself. Am I willing to do what it takes—to pray consistently for Dave, and ask God to strengthen my faith to keep doing so?

I have always liked that verse in Romans, because the end of that progression seems like such a non-sequitur. This hope Paul describes does not follow blissful breakthrough or an obvious trajectory of progress. This hope follows a suffering that lasts so long or goes so deep that one must learn endurance to a degree that it changes one’s very character. Why would this kind of suffering produce hope? Perhaps because it drives us to a deeper faith and knowledge of God, a God does not miserly mete out, but pours, his love into our hearts, into the seat of our emotions and minds and beings. This kind of God will withhold no good thing, will provide all that we need at the right time. This kind of God allows us to hope extravagantly and without shame, even in the midst of difficult circumstances.

Deep Friendships

I’ve been thinking lately about what it takes to make a deep friend. I don’t mean the kind of person you wave at in the school yard, or schedule the occasional coffee date with, or even have the rare long conversation over dinner with. I mean someone who checks in regularly to see how you are doing, who walks through your deepest struggles with you, who you can call if you really need to. Someone who will make their calendar open for you and for whom you would do the same. A keep-for-life friend.

Why are those so hard to find? I think for most people, those friends are born in the high school and college years, when it’s so easy to linger and live daily life together, to process formative experiences together—certainly that’s true for Dave. I really didn’t prioritize relationships at that stage in life, though, so most of my discovering deep community has come post-college. And that stage, the friends-after-thirty stage, is challenging. Relationships are transient with moves for school, training, early career development. Getting married and having kids is a threat on several levels: you have less time and energy for friendships at various stages of marriage and parenthood; the dynamic between your friend and your spouse has to be okay; and it can be harder to maintain friendships across different stages of life.

You enter a stage where deep friendships are more important than ever, yet are harder to find than ever. Sometimes it feels like friend-dating, gauging how much energy and time to invest into a potentially deeper friendship. Maybe first a coffee date, then a dinner date, then go over to each others’ houses? Is meeting with this person worth paying for childcare? Does this person communicate best by phone, text, email, or in person? How much is okay to share, how soon? Sometimes you’ll invest significant time and resources only to find the commitment level is not mutual, or the friendship is too full of gossip and negativity. Or the hurdles come earlier, because the person doesn’t have an opening in their schedule for two months.

For what it’s worth, I think these keep-for-life kind of friendships are rare. We live in an age where people have hundreds of Facebook “friends” and Twitter followers, where you make nice conversation during playdates and soccer practices, but how many truly deep friends do any of us have? I would say most people have a wide circle of acquaintances, maybe 5-10 mid-level friendships, but you’d be lucky to have one or two deep friendships.

What does it take to form these deep friendships? One NPR piece says: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting conducive to letting your guard down. My sister’s pastor says: tenacity, authenticity, and vulnerability.

When I was younger, I would have said common interests and values, like C. S. Lewis writes in The Four Loves: “Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; friends hardly ever about their friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest.” And I think that spark has to be there—an ability to communicate well, similar hobbies or values or experiences.

But the older I get, the more I feel like what it really takes is something much harder to come by: mutual, unwavering, unconditional commitment. I have moved into a land where it is not difficult to find other people like me. But it is just as hard (and may be harder) to find someone who is willing to commit.

And what is most mysterious and maddening about it all of course is that these types of friendships are impossible to orchestrate. They are often unpredictable and always take time. I think about the very few friends I have like this, and they each arose and evolved in an unexpected way. They each took different trajectories, took months or years to solidify. Those friendships are like gold to me now, and having experienced them, it’s hard to settle for less, hard not to compare what I don’t have yet here to what I had before, but that’s just the nature of moving—grieving or adjusting to the loss of old friendships while feeling out the new.

So for now, I am keeping my eyes open, orienting my life so I am open to what may develop, intentionally initiating when I feel prompted to. But in the waiting I am also trying to press in closer to God, choosing to believe he provides all I need, realizing to wait in the not-yet is still a form of worship. How much would I like to speed along the process! But then, how many of us long for a type of intimacy or relationship that we do not yet have? How many of us still choose to walk forward day-by-day in faith and contentment?

Buckets of Community

In Virginia, the people we knew and hung out with were all from church: those were the people in our small group, who came over for playdates, who we met with for meals out, who we played disc golf or fantasy sports with. The one exception were my parents; we hung out at their house when dropping the kids off, went out to the park or beach, met with them after the kids were in bed for conversation. But those were our two buckets: church, and parents. We never hung out with people from work, BSF, or school.

Here, people seem to have many buckets of community, and we are no exception. I counted eight: school, Sunday-morning church, small group, one friend, one family, neighborhood families, guy friends, and BSF. In each of these buckets, we have spent significant time investing in relationships, and sense a need, desire or opportunity to go deeper. Take school—community is huge. I get three emails a week about events going on; there are constantly one or two playdates each kid is asking me to arrange; we have met regularly with one or two families. Take church—the people in our small group go to a different branch than where we go for Sunday mornings, but we are committed to both and have met individually and communally with families in both groups. We meet regularly with a family or two in the neighborhood. The guys get together every week for game night and basketball.

The amazing thing is, people seem open to hanging out. Folks here are typically known to be busy and detached, but we sense people are lonely, that few have true, deep friends, that many are interested in building relationships if asked or if we make ourselves available.

People are open to community: so, there are buckets. But the interesting thing is that very few of them overlap. I kept trying to merge them at first: to find believers at school (no luck), or neighborhood-school attenders at church (no luck), or BSF group members at church (no luck). I have one friend who is a bucket all her own; I know her from the past and we meet regularly to share and pray, but our families share no common involvements.

I think the merging is tough because of the sheer number and diversity of opportunities for involvement here. There isn’t just one big city, with a few big elementary schools; there are tons of small cities in each county, and a different neighborhood school every few blocks. Commuting from one city to another is common. There are activities tailored to meet any conceivable interest, need, or demographic preference. And people do involve themselves in a high number of them. Even if you want to be intentional about not spreading yourself too thin, it seems hard to establish community outside of this framework—you are unlikely to find natural, comprehensive overlaps between buckets, and while people are open to community, it is rare to find a friend who is willing to give up a bucket for the sake of merging lives.

And that’s what I wonder: deepening community can be inconvenient, and I wonder if it may involve forsaking or merging buckets to better walk through life together. That’s what I hope for: to walk through life with another family or couple or two, with shared vision and values, with mutually sacrificial commitment and deep vulnerability and understanding. On one hand, that kind of friendship is a gift, not necessarily something you can orchestrate, more organic than devised. On the other hand, being overcommitted with shallow buckets makes it hard to have the margin and space to discover or grow those friendships (and we haven’t even added any extracurriculars for our kids—ha!).

For now, we are figuring out what it looks like to be intentional about relationships where we live. I’m accepting there is no family exactly like us, no family naturally in all the same buckets. We’re functionally living the eight-bucket community life. But I’m also trying to not be too constrained at heart by that, to let relationships drive activity sometimes rather than activities drive relationships. It’s early; we are yet at the cusp of our time here. We’ll see how it goes.

Global City

A few weeks ago, we were playing at a popular neighborhood park next to the library, and suddenly it hit me how many languages I was hearing. There was, of course, Mandarin, which I seem to hear everywhere. Some Cantonese, a South Asian language—Hindustani? Bengali? I heard French and some type of Eastern European language—Russian or Czech? And of course Spanish.

This place is truly international, probably because of the tech industry and Stanford drawing global talent, and that still feels strange to me. How many places in the country are like this? Someone who looks black is as likely to be African as African-American; someone who looks white could be from Israel or Italy, as two of Eric’s classmates are. Someone who looks Asian—well, the possibilities there are endless. Back in Virginia, people either assumed we were foreigners (“can she speak English?”) or just like them (“what is an Asian grocery store and why would you go there?”). Most people didn’t know the difference between Filipino (which Dave often got pegged as), Korean (which I got pegged as), Chinese, or Taiwanese.

Here, of course, there are not only different types of Asians, but different generations; you are as likely to meet a first-generation as a fourth-generation immigrant, and the values, languages, customs and stereotypes of each are widely different. Sometimes when I’m not driving my best I wonder if someone pegs me for some bad first-generation Asian driver (is that terrible to admit? I really can drive in this country; it’s only that I just moved here and am getting lost again because the GPS-route constantly changes to accommodate time-of-day traffic!). As a second-generation immigrant raised in the American south by parents who were themselves Chinese second-generation immigrants to Taiwan before becoming first-generation immigrants to the U.S., I can feel more affinity with a Caucasian than an Asian, or with a first-generation person from Taipei than from Beijing.

I feel more dissonance between how I look and who I am inside here than I did in Virginia, where people assumed I was mostly culturally white like them—oddly enough, having a more homogenous majority made conformity easier. Especially when I grew up in that homogeneity. My gut reaction is to find the diversity here jarring. It’s a bit disturbing to be around so many Asians, to sift through all the geographical and generational distinctions. I feel unnerved by my own ignorance of various countries, customs and languages. I miss being around more white people. I feel pressured into speaking Mandarin to my kids, not that that’s a bad thing.

But I think it’s good to be stretched in a place of global diversity. It forces me out of cultural ignorance. It makes me care more about what’s going on outside of our country. It allows me a new measure of ethnic freedom. It helps me see what assumed mindsets or values are actually ethnic or cultural mores. It brings those things to my kids. It prepares me for heaven, where the diversity emphasized isn’t political or socioeconomic as much as ethnic. Ultimately, it reveals more of God, because each of us, from wherever we or our parents came from in the world, reflect his image and something different of his glory. 

Control

“Sometimes we need to plunge our minds into the ocean of God’s sovereignty. We need to feel the weight of it, like deep and heavy water pressing in against every pore, the deeper we go. A billion rivers of providence pour into this ocean. And God himself gathers up all his countless deeds — from eternity to eternity — and pours them into the currents of his infallible revelation. He speaks, and explains, and promises, and makes his awesome, sovereign providence the place we feel most reverent, most secure, most free.” – John Piper

Have I written about this cat? She deserves a separate post (with some photos). She is a gorgeous, four month-old ragdoll kitten who follows us around the house like a devoted puppy. She purrs like a maniac if we get within a foot of her, tolerates awkward petting from toddlers, lets us clip her nails, likes being held, and has fur like a rabbit’s.

But I guess I had forgotten that well, kittens are a bit of work. Not-quite but sort-of-like having another kid to take care of and train. I sometimes find myself getting mad at her for occasional poor behavior, and I feel terrible. It’s not good for the kids to observe, and it’s not always fair to the cat. Even though I’m supposed to love the cat unconditionally, secretly I’d like her to be perfect all the time.

That got me to thinking how much this desire to control others, to control outcomes, can be at the heart of my frustrations or anxieties. Desire to have a perfect cat; to control my kids being able to nap at the usual time each day, how they act and are perceived at school, how neat the house is, how many errands I can get done, and more.

Control is a huge thing here. People want to control their kids getting into colleges, their health being perfect, their work being productive. There is a sense that we should be able to optimize our lives—increase lifespans through particular diets, increase “success” by hiring college counselors, increase productivity by outsourcing tasks. I think that sense of optimization is so strong here because there is both a good amount of unspoken pressure—financially, to afford being able to live here; achievement-wise, because often achieving parents expect their kids to do the same—combined with a cultural emphasis on grassroots innovation. In an area this talent- and resource-rich, one ought to be able to figure out how to optimize conditions to achieve the right outcomes. Even our kids having unstructured play time must be something we deliberately schedule after being convinced by evidence-based research.

But in the end we can only control so much, and it seems to me the kind of fear that’s pervasive here is the fear of not being able to control outcomes, seeping out as a sort of pervasive anxiety. Someone has their kid in five activities—should I be putting mine in more? Someone is eating all-organic or no-sugar—am I losing out if I don’t do that? Someone just left a big company to join a start-up—am I getting in on the right opportunities?

Sometimes I need to refocus a bit on God’s sovereignty. Because that is the truth that shatters the illusion of control: to remember that everything belongs to God, that all occurs as he wills and nothing can occur that he does not will. That there is no global issue nor smallest detail of my day that is beyond his purview. And this is no stranger sovereign, but a God that has shown his love for me beyond any other, and has promised that all works for my eternal good. To plunge my mind into that is to be more reverent, more secure, more free. Freedom from anxiety or fear; free to enjoy the unpredictable; free to love people, and cats, for who they are.

I Miss Parking Lots and Plastic Bags

I’m starting to get used to some things here. I compost instead of using the sink disposal. I don’t look up the daily weather report. I put sunscreen on the kids every morning. I remember to bring a cardigan for evenings out. I (mostly) remember to factor in time-of-day-traffic when going places. I have had coffee at Philz and Peet’s. I buy a lot of organic (mostly because I can’t find non-organic). I automatically check the bike lane before backing out of my driveway or making a turn. I remember to ask about allergies and dietary restrictions. It’s not as strange hearing multiple foreign languages spoken most places, and Mandarin everywhere. I even wore tights outside once (closest thing to yoga pants I own).

But sometimes when I go out, I still say to myself, man. I miss parking lots and plastic bags.

Suburbs are supposed to have parking lots. Your biggest problem is supposed to be, “can I snag the spot closest to the cart returns?” or “which of these fifty open spots is closest to the entrance?” not, “which lot three blocks away has an opening?” or “how many times should I circle around hoping a street-side spot opens up?”

There needs to be a word in between a suburb and a city, because that’s what this place is. This place is like if you took a regular suburb full of old houses, set rules preventing it from turning into an actual city with high-rises, then poured in a bazillion people, and more who probably want to move in. The main streets are narrow. There’s always traffic. Our elementary school of 600 students has ten parking spots out front. Costco is constantly crowded. There are shacks that cost more than mansions, sitting next to actual mansions on renovated lots. The parking lots that do exist are small, squeezed full of one-way lanes with spots on a slant. I look along my street and feel like I could be in a normal suburb—then I look across the street at Philz with the line going out the door and people talking about start-ups at the tables outside, and the tiny parking lot in front—and think, not so much.

And I’m an evil person, but I miss plastic bags. Plastic bags seem to be outlawed here. You can get them, but you have to pay extra and everyone glares at you as you walk out. I’m constantly forgetting to bring along reusable bags. So I’m usually juggling items by hand out to the trunk, or stuffing them one at a time into the storage area under the stroller.

Apparently plastic bags are terrible. They kill all kinds of wildlife when animals ingest plastic particles; they are made using non-renewable resources like oil; they are some of the most commonly littered items and can clog up drainage systems; they are hugely difficult to recycle and end up taking forever to decompose in landfills. I should have educated myself and stopped using them anyway; instead I am being forced into it by the government, which seems to happen a lot here.

In general, I’m starting to fit in more here, but I’m aware it’s a huge bubble. As Dave said today when flying out, the rest of the country is a lot more white, obese, and poor. They’re not all skinny Asians with terminal degrees and disposable incomes. I say that without judgment on either side; only with a strange sense that my world no longer reflects the reality that is most of this country. Where people probably use plastic bags and have parking lots.

Recognizing and Preventing Burnout

Somewhere in the past few months any time I had for myself during the day evaporated. Between Eric dropping his nap (yet still remaining grumpy and clingy) and the younger two occasionally striking from naps too, that formerly-reliable midday break has disappeared to leave long eleven-hour marathons in its stead. That, combined with losing my parents’ regular help with the kids, has made it easy to burn out.

The thing about burnout is that it’s so insidious for me. One minute it all seems fine: I’m managing four kids, all the laundry and meals for six and mopping, the school runs and lunch-packing and lessons at home—the next minute I’ve lost my patience, I’m blowing up at small things, I’m feeling suffocated. Why is that?

First, I don’t think I’ve ever really learned how to prevent or recognize burnout. Our culture, and particularly Silicon Valley, emphasizes productivity, being able to “do it all.” As Emma Seppala at Stanford puts it, overextension is simply a way of life. And I’ve always personally been what others would probably term an over-achiever: my modus operandi is pretty much to sink or swim, to work harder and get it done sooner. In high school, that was taking seven AP courses while doing a varsity sport and competitive piano. In college, that was finishing my major my first two years. In medical training, that was picking the hardest surgical rotation and residency. Those things didn’t make me the healthiest person, but eventually the cramming for tests, the terrible call shifts would end—but of course childcare never does. So when I approach motherhood in that same task-oriented, all-out way, without pacing or strategies for self-care, I inevitably burn out.

Secondly, I think burnout by nature is insidious. It’s not the same as being stressed. Stress is too much—too much pressure, too many tasks—but burn out is about not enough—being all used up or dried out. Stress often leads to anxiety or hyperactivity; burnout leads to depression and detachment. We tend to recognize being stressed out, but it’s harder to recognize burnout, particularly because it’s not a threshold we step over as much as a continuum we progress along.

What are the signs of burnout? There are different definitions out there, but I think for me, it boils down to five basic things:

1. Exhaustion: chronic physical and/or emotional fatigue and lack of energy. “I’m tired all the time”

2. Lack of motivation: losing interest and feel disconnected. “I don’t care anymore”

3. Cynicism and dread: loss of enjoyment, seeing the worst and assuming the worst. “Every day is a bad day”

4. Resentment and irritability: displacement frustration on others, angry outbursts, feeling isolated. “It’s his fault; no one understands me”

5. Helplessness: feeling suffocated, like you can’t get out. “I feel trapped”

As a mom, for example, burnout usually means I’m so chronically sleep-deprived that I don’t even realize how much of how I feel is due to being tired. And it’s a bad cycle, because when I start getting burned out, the first way I tend to get more time for myself is to stay up later, but this only leads to more exhaustion and burnout the next day. I start to lose interest in doing whatever is most edifying for my kids; I just count down the hours until they go to bed. I start to dread all the chores and caregiving I have to do each day, rather than enjoying the kids. I start to think resentfully about Dave: I criticize him in my head when he doesn’t see a need at home and handle it exactly the way I would, or I’m secretly happy a kid is tantruming when he’s around because I want him to see how hard my days are. I find myself getting angry at the kids for small things. I experience moments of distinct suffocation, when I feel like I just need to get away.

How do I prevent burnout? Again, there’s probably lots of advice out there, but I think for me it boils down to these five things:

1. Permission and pacing: recognizing how important taking care of myself is, and deciding it is worth investing resources of time and money into it. Realizing prevention is only possible if I incorporate regular breaks into my life.

2. Community: connecting regularly with someone I trust; discussing and strategizing with them.

3. Hobby: recovering the me that isn’t just a mom—it might be the me that writes, or makes music, or reads, or hikes to a view. Doing those things to remember who I am.

4. Physical care: diet, exercise, sleep. Incredibly difficult without intentionality.

5. Spiritual space: not just a one-minute Bible-read, but time to worship, to listen, to dwell and be fully present with God.

Figuring out what all that practically looks like will probably differ from person to person or from season to season. I’ve been gathering some ideas lately, and processing through what mental roadblocks I have to getting help and incorporating regular breaks. But the first step is to recognize where I am on the continuum, because well, I’m in it for the long haul here. The kids’ needs will change from stage to stage, both individually and in combination, but they will always be there.

The Golden Rule

We are studying Romans in BSF this year: two weeks in, and we are reading the second half of chapter one in the bay area, a completely different experience somehow than how I’m sure it would feel if we were still in Virginia. Someone told me about a fifteen year-old boy, who was not a Christian but had enjoyed going through the study of John previously. After he listened to the lecture on Romans chapter one, he didn’t think he could come back. “I think everyone should be who they want to be,” he said.

Somehow, he put into words exactly what I feel is the golden tenant here. Everyone should be who they want to be. It’s right if it’s right for you. You should not only support, but celebrate the choices others make about their lifestyle and gender; if you don’t, you are ignorant at best, prejudiced and evil at worst. It is self-determinism enlarged into a near-religion, and it leaves me with a sense of dissonance. On one hand, I do want to love and understand those who are marginalized because of any choice they make or feeling they have; on the other hand, I think it is something else to say I cannot consider those choices wrong, to say self-deterministic and relativistic values should be raised to the level of absolutism and taught as such to my children.

What would the gospel have to say to this statement?

I think part of the statement is saying, “you can’t say there is an absolute right or wrong”—and the Bible would say, well, there is absolute truth; there is right and wrong, but it is not just born of arbitrary or personal opinion, but of God, who created us and knows what we are meant for far better than we do. Part of the statement is saying “you can’t limit someone’s freedom; you can’t impose right or wrong upon others”—but the more you love someone, the more you care what they choose. It is not freedom in determining our own moral standards that leads to being fully human; it is understanding who we are, and following those constraints, that leads to true freedom.

In the end, I don’t always follow because I understand why it is right or wrong; I do it because I love God. And the more I follow God in ways that are hard, the more I realize that he is about something bigger than just the moral surface. He is unearthing deeper things in me to work on. He is showing me in a fuller way about himself; his designs are ultimately to reveal himself and his nature to me, because to know Him is more important than anything else I am about in life.

It’s difficult figuring out how to navigate these cultural waters, but perhaps unlike other more Christian-friendly places we have lived in, it’s impossible not to engage, to consider with some gravity why I believe what I do, how completely I believe it, and how it should be lived out in my life, which in the end is a good thing.

Another Birthday

Dave turns forty today.

I think the first thing one has to say about Dave is that he’s someone who is deeply principled. That was the first thing that attracted me to him, and it hasn’t changed. He went through a harder time growing up and more wanderings as a young adult, yet those things have made him more thoughtful about life decisions and mature about how to relate with people. He knew himself, and what mattered to him in life, better than any guy who had been interested in me; he was the first guy I felt like I wanted to follow.

One thing important to Dave is integrity: having outward and inward consistency. For a while I just thought that meant he purposely dressed down to avoid overly impressing anyone—now I realize that’s just a California thing—but he cares as much about how he acts at home as how he acts in public, about his outward life reflecting his inward values. To a consummate performer and image-projector, that was challenging and appealing.

Dave is also the most mood-stable and optimistic person I know. I’ve never seen him get really down—I think I’m pretty non-moody for a girl, but he makes me look positively mercurial. I gave him a pretty tough time at the start, never being sure if I still “liked” him, making him meet my parents on his own (I’ll never live that down), but he just persisted through it all, and the same through every subsequent potential destabilizer in our lives: seven moves in ten years; four kids in five years.

The last thing that must be mentioned is that he is an unusually effective communicator—he’s smart enough to catch on to things quickly; he thinks deeply; he expresses himself well verbally; he’s a talented writer. I always had this feeling that we could talk easily and endlessly, about anything—perhaps as a result too of his having the same shared principles, valuing vulnerability because of integrity, and never being too moody to talk—regardless, it gives me a sense that we can talk through, and go through, anything in life together. Being married was like an extension of being best friends, which I think was the best part of it all.

This year is special because we moved to Dave’s place, and living near his family, living in his area of the world, living among his friends, has helped me see why and how he is who he is. He is finally able to bring that whiff of adventure and being outside all the time to our kids; he is finally able to share with us the friends who are like family to him, and laugh in a way I haven’t gotten to see much. And I can’t help but feel like this is how God meant it to be: to take what I may bring, and where we’ve come with our life experiences, and come here, to the place Dave loves, among the people he loves, but with the purpose and values (and kids) we have both grown into together. My prayer for this year is that he would have a sense of rest and enjoyment here, that he would feel more fully delighted in by God in a way that too increases his enjoyment of Him, and that he would be used powerfully, and walk with integrity, through this time.

Birthday

I turn thirty-seven today.

I remember thinking once, if I could stay one age forever, it would be twenty-seven: old enough to know who I am and what I’m doing in life, young enough to be, well, still in my twenties. But my thirties have turned into a better decade than my twenties. I always felt happier married than single, but I know and love Dave more in our tenth year than our first. I’m somewhat less self-absorbed, probably as a consequence of being compelled into daily service. Other than a proliferation of facial nevi and the way nursing four babies has changed my chest, my body doesn’t feel that much older. I definitely couldn’t stay thirty-seven forever—I may have changed eight poopy diapers the other day—but overall I’d say it’s better than twenty-seven.

If anything, this is the year I’ve arrived. Growing up, I always felt like I was looking forward to the next thing to make me happy: passing the next test or step of training, getting married, having kids, owning a house, getting a job. Somewhere during the last six years, I realized I had gotten there: I’d passed the last test I had to take for a while; I was having the kids I wanted to have—but I wasn’t necessarily happier or a better person. That took me on a journey that eventually turned in the last year or two into my falling in love with Jesus in a fresh way.

And now, here I am, having actually arrived—moved for the last time; own our forever-house; more settled in career; finished having kids (and soon to get a pet). I suppose this is typically when a mid-life crisis would hit—I’d feel meaningless without the next thing to strive for, or trapped by my responsibilities—but instead I feel content and glad, in the way that you do when you realize none of this is your due, or even essential for your primary happiness, but extraordinary gifts from a God who loves you.

Maybe it’s more of a mid-life perspective: I’m nearing the point where my life may be half over. It’s clearer than ever that none of this lasts forever: I’m a steward of my children (in ten more years Ellie will move out!), of this house (which will probably be overtaken by the redwoods outside in a century), even of Dave (who will not be married to me in eternity). I think more about what it means to take care of those things for what matters, and to not lose out on being present in the process.

Those are two goals I’d like to set for my thirty-seventh year: one, to establish our lives in this new home and place in a way that reflects what really matters to us. And two, to enjoy it. To enjoy the way Ellie’s whole face lights up and she jumps up and down when she’s excited; the way Eric wraps me in spontaneous hugs and kisses; the way Elijah says “wot?” with big round eyes and sings “a whole new world” at the top of his lungs; the way Esme stumbles out of naps with unreasonable cheerfulness, declaring “I wake up!” (and the way her thighs are still super chubby). The way Dave reaches for my hand in the car. The redwood boughs rustling outside, the cool breezes, friends who bring over board games and yummy noodles, the mountains in the horizon.

I’m guessing this day will pass without much fanfare (and with four school runs). But this was always the best part: looking back, looking forward, thinking about my life, and this year, feeling particularly grateful. 

Longing For Home

What makes a place home? This house is amazing—after a year of extensive remodeling, it has lived up to our hopes and more. I love seeing redwoods through the many windows, the skylights in the cathedral ceilings, the cozy window seat, the concrete countertops and big island, the dark warm wood floors, and I could go on—but it’s not really home-home yet. A friend told me it usually takes eighteen months before a place feels like home.

For most of my life, home was the house I grew up in: the small 80’s ranch with dark wood walls, patterned wallpaper, and worn carpet. I remember intense periods of homesickness during college and medical school: I think what I missed then was a place where I could be myself, be taken care of, know I was unconditionally loved. I missed having someone cook for me, my old memorabilia. After moving back to live nearby for the past six years, I don’t miss that house the same way—I think I see I could never really live there again, and I see that one day, my parents will move on and sell everything and it will be gone.

Our last house, the first one we owned, was never one I fell in love with, but it was home because of the memories we made in it. We had three babies there, and it was the first place I learned how to take care of a house, and what life was like staying at home with the kids.

But now that house is gone too. I suppose there is an unavoidable period of time when one feels displaced with any major move: you’ve left the familiar behind, but the new place is not really home yet. We’ve settled in well here, but something will happen that throws me off: I meet up with a new friend at a coffeehouse but just feel sad missing my old friends, the way they would hug me and the way we could talk. I get lost again going somewhere. I think of something my parents would have loved to see or eat and realize they aren’t here.

I think for me, home is a place where I can be myself, a place where I deeply belong. I like the word “dwell”—it’s not a place where I’ve just made a living, or passed through, but a place where I have abided and lingered in long enough to know the place and people deeply, and to be known myself deeply.

This period, when I’m feeling the loss of a home, makes me read Revelation 21 and 22. One pastor at our church here pointed out that the story doesn’t end with the same garden it started with: it ends with a city, a place where we work and live together. I love that the word picture Jesus gives of heaven reminds me of coming home, to my own room. And when I feel lonely, I love that the story ends with, “He will dwell with them,” and in 22:4 with “they will see his face.” And that will be enough. All of this—my husband, each of my kids, this house with the redwoods—all of it is on loan to me, and as much as I love it, will be gone or changed one day. But I have this promise: this longing to belong is not in vain. One day, I will see his face, and I will live in a place that is home in every way, and that is a kind of comfort now.

Weather

So Bay Area weather is essentially all it’s touted to be. But my favorite thing about the weather here isn’t the perennially cloudless, sunny days, or better yet, the transformative lack of humidity and mosquitos—it’s the evenings. Every evening, the weather magically gets cooler and crisper. It makes me want to breathe deep and wander long. It reminds me of that first thrill of fall on the east coast, when months of oppressively muggy, hot days finally give way to a brisk coolness that makes you want to open windows and slip on long sleeves. Nearly every night here is like that. Dave used to go on and on about how he loved as a child to open his bedroom windows and sleep to a cool breeze, and I have to admit there is something to that.

One of the strangest things here is the lack of rain over the summer. It rained and thunderstormed aplenty in Virginia: we got used to radar-tracking storms to see how long thunder claps would keep the kids up from their naps or sleeping at night; a small tornado uprooted one of our trees a few months before we moved; we checked the weather app every day to figure out how to dress, or whether to bring rain jackets to school. Plenty of times, I’d forget to check in the rush to get the kids out the door, then groan when it starts to pour and I’m not wearing my wellies or raincoat. I haven’t checked my weather app once since moving here. Our chalk drawings stay on the sidewalk for months. We leave toys out on the deck. It’s all rather bizarre.

The first novel I’m reading since the move is The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, a strange amalgam of science fiction, Chinese history, theoretical mathematics and astrophysics, philosophical treatise, and epic quest. My favorite part of it (spoiler alert) is considering what life would be like if a planet existed in a stellar system with three suns. Because of the mathematically unpredictable movement of the three suns, at times the planet can be drawn into the orbit of one of the suns (at which time the planet has regular day-night cycles and mild weather), and at other times it cycles irregularly between them (resulting in completely unpredictable cycles where nights can last for weeks, and deadly temperature extremes). The planet can be far from all three suns (extremely cold conditions where it snows water, then dry ice, then the atmosphere sort of congeals), can be exposed to all three together (every living thing erupts into flames and the surface of the entire planet becomes a lake of lava), can be affected by the gravitational pull of all three suns in one line (all things and the atmosphere itself gets sucked up into a vortex and pulled to the closest sun), or can collide with some or all of the suns (splitting the planet in half and forming various rings that later collapse, destroying all life).

The inhabitants have no control over these events or how long various periods last, and the extreme weather often wipes out a civilization with millions of years passing before another develops. Civilizations devote their energies to trying to predict the motions of the suns, before realizing it is impossible and deciding to leave their world altogether.

I don’t understand the mechanics behind why the weather in the bay area is always so mild and dry—why there are rarely ever clouds during the day, or why the evenings are always perfectly cool—but it’s interesting to mull on how completely it is all out of our control. One day I am going to stop remarking on how nice the weather is here; it will just seem normal, much less the fact that, well, I don’t have to worry about suddenly erupting into flames when my planet gets too close to a few suns. But for now, I’m going to sit in the mystery of it all a little bit, that of all places in the entire universe and galaxy, I have landed upon a place where I can open my windows every night to a cool breeze. 

Preschool Parenting Culture

I stick out a lot here because I have four kids, but I was expecting that. Two is the average here. I get a lot of “are they twins?” about the younger ones as apparently it would be odd for us to intentionally have four children, or comments like v“how do you do it?” (still don’t have a great reply for that one).

But I stick out in another way I hadn’t anticipated: people are always surprised when they hear that I keep the younger two at home. I get asked regularly where they go to preschool, and incredulous looks follow when I say that they don’t.

Apparently it is rare for children to remain at home for their earlier years here, probably due to a few factors—both parents having to work to afford living here, or there being more highly-educated people likely to elect focusing on their careers.

But third, and this is the part I’ve been pondering, I get the sense people here place a higher value on early-child development: they have such a high standard that they feel the only way to do it well is to outsource it to the professional experts. There is a lot of talk about education strategies and things like SEL’s (socio-emotional learning), Carol Dweck growth mindsets, optimizing your child’s brain development and exposures by a certain age. Combine that with a resource-rich environment and parents who either naturally want the best for their kids or are the “Stanford-or-bust” types, and you get competitive preschools teaching based on the latest Stanford experiments, preschools touting specific play-oriented environments, and lessons for little ones ranging from the typical (music, multiple languages, sports, ceramics) to the unusual (Legos to teach political skills, metal-working).

It’s easy to ask, how can I possibly be doing all that by myself at home? Maybe some people are wondering, why would I want to? Why not go do what I trained for twelve years to do, or go get some self-care, and leave that to the experts?

I am in no way judging kids who do go to preschool (we’ll probably find one for the three year-old next year) or lessons, but part of adjusting to being here has been processing this sort of tension. It’s made me realize that I do personally believe in and desire to teach them myself, in large part because the most important things—world view, values, priorities, principles—are taught implicitly, as they are lived out, and I want my kids to see that from me. Maybe I’m just too sanguine and laid-back to worry overmuch about what they are missing, though in that case it’s good to be challenged about what and how I teach them at home.

And that’s the bottom line about living here: there are so many things that are good, but I’m constantly having to decide when there’s too much of a good thing, or whether that good thing in fact aligns with the gospel and our purpose. Without that lens, it’s so easy to get sucked into a certain way of feeling and operating, because the culture here is so strong: its values are like a riptide that can pull you under unawares. We thought a lot of that through before making this move, but it’s interesting to see how it plays out in ways we do or don’t expect.

California

Well, we have moved to California, nearly two months ago, and I think I’m ready to write about it. To the two people who still check this blog.

This was not a shotgun move. It was several years in the making, and made intentionally for mission and community, which I’m realizing is very strange in Silicon Valley. People come here for tech, for Stanford, or for the academic success of their kids. Where we live, houses cost anywhere from two to ten million dollars: it’s this strange oxymoron, seeing dated, small houses that would go for 100K anywhere else in the country, but that cost millions because of the dirt they sit on.

This place is full of contradictions like that. Inclusivity, awareness, and diversity, for example, are huge values, but while people are diverse in terms of ethnicity or lifestyle, there isn’t much diversity socio-politically or economically.

That’s led to a sense of personal dissonance, because while I fit in perfectly on the surface—I’m a highly-educated, slim, casually-dressed Asian female, which every other woman seems to be here—I’m actually really different inwardly. I have way more kids than anyone else here probably thinks is responsible (or affordable), and I primarily parent them myself rather than outsourcing for the sake of career or self-care. Our kids go to a choice school that they pretty much accidentally (providentially) got in to, not because I had orchestrated or worried about it. Similarly, we live in a covetable house, but due to an act of grace, not by merit or striving. Our kids do have some enrichment skills like language or music, but because I try to teach them myself at home, not because they were enrolled in a ton of extracurriculars from a young age. I secretly compost and recycle not for the good of the earth, but because our regular trash can is sized for a midget. I have ties to an Ivy League, but I’m an under-achiever in my career. I value kindness and inclusivity, but I believe in absolute truth.

When we first moved here, there was just so much to thrill the heart, and I was just soaking all that in, rightfully so—our kids are around other kids that look like them! The weather is disgustingly perfect, all the time! There are (almost) no mosquitos! The food—the food! The parks and playgrounds and zoos and museums and things to do with the kids! Perhaps I will never get over seeing an orange tree outside the window, opening the windows to a fresh cool breeze at night, or seeing blue mountains in the distance. I’m still amazed by the 100-book checkout limit at the library, the way our kids have taken to biking everywhere, and how any retail store in the universe appears to be within ten minutes of our house.

But eventually things about the culture started to soak in. Part of me feels lonely, and I’m not even sure what for—I don’t think Virginia was a place we could have stayed forever, or that I really belonged in either—perhaps what I miss are people who unconditionally love and support us; people I felt I could completely be myself around. And I know that only comes with time. Part of me is trying to make myself relevant to the culture here, while figuring out how to be intentional about who I still am. A few days ago, after realizing I was getting a bit swept away by school stuff, we finally got back on some spiritual and marriage routines we had lost with the move, and that was good.

So there are a few unique things about this time period: it’s going to be lonely. It takes a while for a place to feel like home (someone told me eighteen months) and that’s okay. The loneliness hits me at random times, like when I think of something a friend back in Virginia would have liked to know about, or when I get lost again going somewhere. And this is also a formative time: we have a new chance to define ourselves, to set the right foundation, and part of that is intentionally not getting swept away by various pressures, is being willing to wait and discern before making decisions about our commitments.

And a lot of it is drawing closer to God, as to an anchor in changing seas or a resting place in lonely times. This move throws into clearer relief that we all long for home, a place where we belong, where we are unconditionally loved and inexpressibly understood, and yet we could search forever on earth and not really find that place. As St. Augustine wrote, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you”—one could add, “until it finds its home in you.”

Perfectionism and Enneagram Types

One thing reading this book about enneagram types has helped me with the most is understanding not myself so much as other people. In brief, it breaks people down into nine different personality types, which you self-identify, and for each type the book describes the healthy, average, and unhealthy versions of the type; the particular sin that type is prone to; how that type tends to be in childhood, work, and relationships; general characteristics of that type; and what spiritual growth of that type looks like, with a healing message for each. In general, enneagrams help most with understanding people’s motivations: two people may have the same behavior or outlook, but from very different motivations, and it’s helpful for me to see that what drives me may be completely different from what motivates, and thus will help heal or change, someone else.

For example, Ellie and I are both perfectionists, but our different enneagram types has helped me understand how differently it works for her (a type 1, the perfectionist) than for me (a type 3, the performer). On the surface, we’re similar: we both care a lot about excellence, about completing a task well and meeting high standards. In a way, this makes it easy for us to get along: she does great at school, just like I did; we enjoy painting or playing the piano or writing a book report or building a tent just right.

But as soon as something isn’t done perfectly right, we run into problems. My typical approach is to say, suck it up and try again! Focus on the task and get it right! When someone talks to me like that, it makes me more determined than ever to show them I can do it well. But when I talk to Ellie like that, she becomes completely paralyzed; she shuts down and starts crying and is unable to proceed.

What I’ve found is that we are perfectionists for very different reasons, with almost opposite effects. I’m driven by performance: I’m a perfectionist because I want to perform well in front of others; I want to look good, to achieve a lot, and I have an inherently strong sense of self and high self-confidence. External observation energizes me. If I make a mistake, I’m more liable to shrug and move on to something else I can do well, or just figure out a way to get over it; my focus is always on the task, the performance, rather than the relationship. As a result, I don’t really feel I want to understand others or bother with people who get in the way of performing the task well.

Ellie, on the other hand, is a perfectionist because she is driven by a high inner standard. She wants to do something perfectly because she genuinely wants to, not because she cares about performing for others. She is less motivated to do something if others are watching. And because this comes more internally, she has a constant inner critic in her head, a voice telling her that she is not doing it well enough, not measuring up: she is inherently more prone to insecurity than self-confidence. If she makes a mistake, she is more liable to beat herself up in her head about it, to let it affect her sense of self. Her focus is often more on relationships than the task itself: how the mistake is affecting her relationship with others and view of self. As a result, though, she is more naturally empathetic with others, more interested in understanding others.

Completely different! When I make a mistake, what I need to hear is: the perfect performance is not always the most important thing. It’s good to learn and move on in doing the task well, but don’t forget to see how this is affecting others and things that are more important than the outward image. Remember that God sees you for who you truly are, not just the image you project, and loves you.

Naturally, when Ellie makes a mistake or is crying because her brothers messed up her tent, my tendency is to respond with what I need to hear: to tell her, it’s okay if it’s not perfect. But I think the message she needs to hear is: you’ll make mistakes, and that’s okay, and God and I still love you. Because her sense of perfectionism is coming from a more internal place, the point is not to tear down this inner standard she will probably have anyway, but to separate that from a sense of shame or insecurity: to restore relational security and love, to consistently remind her that she is not defined by her mistakes, that mistakes happen and she is always loved regardless.

So when we’re playing piano and she forgets a note, or when we’re painting and she accidentally does a whole section in the wrong color: we both care, and we’re both frustrated. But now the first things I say are: it’s okay that you made a mistake. I still love you. I might expand on that or vary it by saying things like, I forget notes all the time too, or look, now we can mix in a new color that looks even better, or I love that you try so hard, or I love how you are always brave enough to practice very day, etc. And I see her face light up, instead of crumpling up into tears, and she seems energized to keep going, and then I can start talking about the actual task.

As a type 3, it feels sort of laborious and foreign, and sometimes when I’m tired I think why does she have to be so darn sensitive and emotional? or gee whiz, just move on and try again! but I know those things won’t motivate her, and don’t reflect a true understanding of who she is and how God has created her. And I see more and more that she has wonderful traits—empathy, kindness, integrity, true discipline—that come much more naturally to her than to me.

Relational Sin

We all intuitively grasp, I think, the difference between an isolated sin and a relational sin. Let’s say I mess up and hurt myself: sure, I feel bad. But let’s say I mess up and hurt someone I know: I feel worse. Let’s say I mess up and hurt Dave: I feel much worse. The closer that person is to me, the more my sin becomes less and less about itself, and more and more about how it affects the person I love, until the two are linked. The sin becomes as much about the other person as it is about the act itself.

But here’s the thing: every sin we commit is relational, is against a being I value more than any person on earth. If God did not exist, neither would sin; sin is sin only because God is God. The more I value God, the more I see him for who he is, the more I see my sin for what it is. One day, when I stand before God, this will be glaringly obvious: I won’t be giving an account of myself to Dave, or my parents, or myself, or my friends, but only to God.

This changes confession. I don’t just confess the act; I ask myself, how was this an act against God? How has this sin hurt God? The answer is almost always deeper than it appears. I almost always see running underneath the act a lack of faith, or pride, or misguided need for control, or more. And coupled with the confession is a deeper sense of grief, because I have not only disappointed myself, but I have wronged God, by both the sin and by my deeper heart issue. And I grieve because I see what the sin has cost me: not just the time or energy spent in sinning, but the other ways I could have been growing or impacting others if I wasn’t in the sin.

I think Satan would love us to think of sin, especially the habitual and unseen ones, in a diluted, isolated way: no big deal, try harder next time, no permanent effects anyway. When in reality, each sin is a deep lie, a deep act against God, cheating us and changing us, crippling our relationships and ministry. The satisfaction it promises are either non-existent, or much emptier, than the life-abundant we could have. Because when the love of God pierces our hearts and draws us to repentance, and we start to resist the sin and change—that’s when we start to see the sin for how empty it is. And that’s when we start to see God’s love and promised life for what it is.

That’s the most wondrous thing about relational sin: understanding sin leads to a deeper understanding of God’s love. To know you have wounded him means to understand his grace in a completely new way. To act not out of self-inflicted guilt, but love-empowered conviction, is to change with joy and greater ease. God, help me not waste a single act of sin: may each one show me more about you and myself, and bind me more fast to your grace.

Efficiency vs. Productivity

One concept I’ve enjoyed thinking about lately is the idea of efficiency versus productivity, after a friend made the argument, after listening to a freakonomics podcast, that the two are related but not necessarily the same.

It’s been a challenging thing to think about because, as is probably obvious, efficiency is very important to me (apparently it’s a hallmark of being a “3” enneagram type—more about that later if anyone is interested). I live nearly every minute conscious of how to multi-task and prioritize such that tasks get completed using as little time and energy as possible. I was the kind of resident that had new orders in before we even finished rounding, that dictated clinic notes super quickly while the patient was still in the room so I didn’t have to stay late at the end of the day to finish. Inefficient meetings annoy me so much I try to avoid them; sometimes I find myself irritated if someone is sharing inconcisely.

But I do think that efficiency and productivity are two different things. Efficiency is simply a statement of how quickly something gets done: completing a task with as little waste of resources as possible. Productivity, though, includes something more: I would define it as reaching a goal by using resources as effectively as possible. Efficiency only looks at a task: productivity looks at the goal.

Efficiency almost always includes productivity: if you do things faster, you’ll have more time and energy to get more done. But productivity does not always include efficiency, and in fact they may be at odds with each other: some goals require being inefficient. If you want optimal small group dynamics, you have to allow for inefficient times of hanging out or icebreakers. If you want your child to share deeply, you likely have to allow for inefficient periods of doing other things before coming upon the right moment to talk. If you want to bond deeply with a friend, you may need to linger without time limits, or allow for messier or needier relationships.

The point is, when the goal is simply to get a task done, efficiency is good. But when the goal is about more than a task—and I suppose much of life is, actually—then efficiency may be harmful. I don’t particularly resonate with the word “productivity,” but I think the word “meaningful” works—this may not be efficient, but is it meaningful? Is it working towards achieving an important goal or outcome? If it is, then it is more important than being efficient.

Because in the end, while being outstandingly efficient is a sort of talent, it is a mindless one. To move with purpose, to use limited and available resources in the most strategic and meaningful way possible: that is more difficult, but more important.