Loving Students

Several years ago I thought of leaving campus ministry to take a church job.  When I told my kids they literally began weeping and wailing, “No!  Don’t do that!  We like InterVarsity!  We love students!”

I didn’t leave InterVarsity, but I did leave direct grad student ministry to direct our team and work with faculty.  My kids are less enthusiastic about both aspects of my new job.  

 

As Ling said recently, “What’s great about hanging out with a bunch of 40 year olds?”

“You really miss students, don’t you?”

“Well yeah!  We used to have barbeques every week and they’d play with us.  It was even fun after I turned 7 and you said I couldn’t jump on them any more.”

Last night, 2 former students came over for dinner and it reminded me of the gift it was for my kids to grow up with kind Harvard grad students surrounding them.

Danny, who now serves at our church with 2 kids of his own, and Nick who just ran for Parliament in the UK, got to watch me change 4 month old Ling’s exploding poop diaper while I led our first Mark Bible study at the Kennedy School.

I can still picture Paul, now a research scientist in Berkeley, sitting against the wall with 3 month old Kai-Kai in his lap, gently and repeatedly stroking her curly black hair. 

We hosted apple pie baking parties and pool parties and multiple dinners.  Through it all, my kids provided entertainment for students, and students who loved on my kids helped me get my job done.  To my kids, Harvard grad students’ sole reason for existence was to be playmate and friend.  And that identity was actually really good for the students!

Lily got to know the kids last summer when we were all in China together, and she stayed in Beijing to study.   Home on a visit, she wanted to see the kids so she and her fiancé came over for dinner. She asked questions about high school and middle school and appreciated Kai’s deviled eggs. They reminisced together about the summer.  The kids were even somewhat cooperative about cleaning up from dinner because they wanted to look good for Lily. 

I work in student and faculty ministry because I think the university is one of the most strategic places to invest my energies.  The students and faculty we work with will shape our future in every aspect of life—education, technology, business, medicine, academia and more. 

But the best perk has been loving and being loved by students. 

 

I'm Torturing my Kids

My 2 younger kids claim I’m abusing them.  Is it because I’m forcing straight As or piano lessons or some other Tiger Mom stricture?  Is it because I’ve decided to go vegan on them and expunged the house of chocolate and junk food? 

Nope. 

I signed them up for swim team and am forcing them to exercise. 

Yesterday the whining started 2 hours before swimming even began.  It got so bad that both parents lost it before almost forcibly carting these kids off to the Y.  When Scott told me I needed to pick them up, it felt like he sentenced me to my own version of hell. 

But when they bundled into the van, despite a few complaints, they were relatively calm and in a good mood (for them).  They’ll never admit it, but 2 hours of working out made them feel better, inside and out.  And that’s why I’m going to enforce exercise in their lives until they leave our home.

Today is my father-in-law’s 90^th birthday and he looks at least 20 years younger than his age.  My mother-in-law turns 81 in June, and she also looks at least 20 years younger.  They’re vigorous and active.  The secret?  They exercise. 

My kids get this anti-exercise lethargy from my side.  My C+ in sophomore PE was the only C that was acceptable in my family.  Even though I took advantage of free dance classes at Northwestern, did Jane Fonda videos, and even took up running at various points between birthing kids, I exercised when it fit into my schedule and sometimes it didn’t fit for weeks and months at a time.

When I married Scott, he lectured me, “You put eating, sleeping and exercise in your schedule first, then fit everything else in!”

But I didn’t. 

Then I got gestational diabetes with my 3^rd pregnancy and had to prick my finger 4 times a day to test my blood sugar.  I had to go on the diabetic diet and gained 10 pounds less than I had with the 2 previous pregnancies.  After Ren's birth, the endocrinologist said I have a 60% chance of Type 2 diabetes unless I keep my weight down and exercise 4-5 times a week. 

6 months later, Scott signed me up for the gym, knowing I’m so cheap I’d never pay a monthly fee and not go.  And because I really don’t want to get diabetes or waste money, I’ve pretty much exercised 4-5 times/week without fail for the past ten years.

My mental health now needs my workouts.  I actually crave vigorous exercise if I don't get it.  And despite being in the top 1% of allergic people and having a kidney disease, other than my killer allergies (which are hitting right now), I rarely get sick.

There are many lessons I hope our kids will learn from us, but the discipline of regular exercise feels non-negotiable.   So the 2 younger ones are swimming and Ling’s on the track team.

I’m praying that at some point in the next few months Kai and Ren will make the connection between swimming hard and feeling good.  Until then, don’t be surprised if I write about DSS coming to call with the yelling, screaming and even tears each Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. 

With all the chaos, I just might call DSS myself.

The Last of the Typewriters

This morning on NPR I heard that the last company that produces manual typewriters has just discontinued them.  There are 10 English typewriters left of the 200 in stock—buy one now! 

I turn 46 on Saturday.  The passing of the manual typewriter and my impending slide towards 50 makes me nostalgic for times gone by because my first manual typewriter was like a best friend. 

When I took Typing in 10^th grade, I was the third best typist in Mr. Kusonoki’s class, just behind Martha and Jill who sat directly in front of me and competed for the top spot.  But they had taken typing before, and I was brand new, so in my own mind I was actually the best new typist in the class.  By the end of the semester, I typed 70 words a minute.  By the end of my senior year, I clocked myself at over 100 words a minute.  To this day, I exult in the power of my fingers--with my skill, no matter what happens to me, I can always get a job as a secretary.

Punahou demanded that we either take Typing or prove we could type 35 words per minute.  I resented Typing taking a time-slot where Glass-blowing or Journalism or Marine Biology could have resided.   But to my surprise, Typing taught me better life and learning skills than many other classes I’ve taken. 

Typing taught me the power of repetitive training, of learning things the right way--that if your forefingers are in the right place you can change the world, but move them just over one key and all that comes out is gibberish. And perhaps most surprisingly, my proficiency in typing taught me how to pray.

Because Punahou required that all high school papers be typed, Mama bought me a tiny plastic portable manual typewriter, so small and light it fit in my lap. My mini typewriter not only typed out multiple drafts of high school papers, but also became my closest confidant, my therapist and my spiritual director during the ego, spirit and emotion battering years of adolescence. 

I can’t remember when I started writing letters to God, but when I hit 75 words/minute, I began typing to God instead.  I could type almost as fast as I could think, which meant that typing letters to God was almost as satisfying as yelling.

My typewriter was the only physical presence on earth with which I felt permission to brutally express all my negative thoughts and emotions, the demonstration of aggressive emotions a taboo in my Asian world.   While I had screamed, yelled and thrown fits with Mama my entire life, she made it clear that my insatiable need to argue, rage, and cause a ruckus in the family was patently evil and daily proof that America had corrupted her progeny. 

All my fights with God, Mama or life drummed out of my fingers, through my tiny typewriter, and onto sheets of college-ruled, three holed paper.  My family joked they could tell I was really upset when the door was shut to my room (shut doors a taboo in our family) and the clattering of furious typing came through the door. 

30 years later I type my prayers on my week old Macbook Pro which I LOVE in so many ways.  But I have to admit, if you're going to have a temper tantrum with God, it’s just not as satisfying as banging on those old plastic keys.        

True Self/False Self and the Problem of Baking

(yet another blog that sort of picks up on the theme of true self/false self)

My kids have spent vacation week doing a camp called the Possibilities Factory. They’re trying to raise $500 for Japan tsunami relief and send 500 letters to kids in Japan by 5 p.m. TODAY.

Yesterday, I showed up as my kids were volunteering baked goods for the bake sale.  They wanted to bake:

·      chocolate chip cookies

·      sugar cookies

·      lemon squares

·      AND have me bake 3 loaves of banana bread.

And it was already 4 p.m.  

I vetoed the cookies, pointing out that banana bread alone takes an hour to bake.  “I don’t want to spend my night waiting for things to bake when I’m sleepy and want to go to bed.” 

But when we got home, Kai wanted to make cupcakes with the pineapple cake mix that I bought by accident for her birthday party (thought I had grabbed chocolate) and I gave in because when else will we make pineapple cake? 

I stayed cool as I was peppered with questions like:

·      What lemon square recipe should I use?  

·      How do I fit parchment paper in the pans?

·      The food processor won’t process the double recipe of shortbread! (because you’re not supposed to double a recipe in a food processor)

·      What do I do with the lumps of frozen butter that remain? (You’re not supposed to use frozen butter--just smoosh it into the dough)

I even suggested making cream cheese frosting AND found cream cheese in the back of the fridge for the pineapple cupcakes since the picture on the box shows pineapple upside down cake but doesn’t include any pineapple or instructions for how to make pineapple upside down cake.

Then Kai said we ran out of eggs and whole milk.  So I ran to the store and even picked up pineapple so the pineapple cupcakes would look more authentic.

Then I made dinner, squeezing between quarreling kids who argued about:

·      Who got to open the pineapple can (a BIG argument—don’t ask me why)

·      How to cut maraschino cherries

·      Who got to decorate the cupcakes

·      How to decorate the cupcakes

·      The injustices around number of cupcakes any child got to decorate and quality of what each child produced.

It was 8:30 by the time I began banana bread.  My prediction happened—I was exhausted, my kitchen was a wreck, and I was going to have to bake.

And then I found that both brown sugars had never been tied up so they were rock hard and impossible to soften.  At that point, I lost it.  Forget my Lenten criticism fast—I was mad and tired and sick of providing all sorts of staples for folks to bake with when they don’t bother to tie up brown sugar so it’ll be usable when I don’t want to bake, but HAVE TO BAKE!!

imagine the words coming out of my mouth

Kai knew I had reached the end of my rope as she meekly asked what she could do to help and willingly cleaned up as much as she could.

So on this Good Friday I’m asking myself some questions:

·      Where was my true self in this debacle?

·      Who was my true self?  (Maybe the one with feelings and needs more than anger?)

·      What’s the relationship between criticism and control?

·      What false self perfectionist performance orientation led me to use the latest Cook’s Illustrated recipe where you literally need to microwave and dejuice bananas then simmer banana juice until it concentrates to make the most bananaey bread possible? 

·      Who’s going to clean my kitchen?

I’d attach a banana bread recipe, but on this Good Friday, remembering Jesus’s death on a cross so I don’t have to prove myself, I’ll just wish you peace, with or without the baking. 

Big Kathy/Little Kathy Take Two

(This is blog post #5 in a series on True Self/False self--you probably want to read #1 before reading this to know what's going on)

Lily Tomlin as Edith Anne.
I was quite a bit smaller.

Eleven years after my first Big Kathy/Little Kathy vision, God brought me back to that same vision.  I now lived in Boston, was married to Scott, the mother of two kids and in such rough shape Scott had declared “You’re out of control!  You need a retreat of silence!” 

He bundled me off to at the Society of St. John the Evangelist for 3 days.  I was still nursing 11 month old Kai-Kai, so he brought her to me on Saturday morning and evening.  (Yes, my husband is awesome!)  In between nursing dates, I tried to meet with God.

As I journaled about something or other, most probably my normal angst about feeling unsuccessful in all the arenas of my life, the image of the little Kathy in an enormous rocking chair came into my mind again. 

Once again, the vision was blurry.  Once again, I felt how uncomfortable it was to be dense real little Kathy.  And I was immensely discouraged to see how little Kathy still hadn’t filled the chair.  In the intervening years since my first vision, I had often remembered the image of Little Kathy in the big rocking chair, and had assumed that as I grew in wisdom and spiritual maturity, I would grow larger so that I would somehow fit the chair.  Now as the vision returned, not only was I still Little Kathy, I might have been even a bit smaller. 

The years of marriage and motherhood had made me wiser—at 27 and receiving the first vision of Little Kathy/Big Kathy, despite disasters in my life, I still thought pretty highly of myself.  But eleven years later, I had come face to face with my failings and no longer harbored illusions that the crap in my life was someone else’s fault.  It was clearly mine, and mine alone. 

Knowing this made me feel even worse about myself as I looked at Little Kathy sitting there in the rocking chair. 

But once again, I sensed God’s voice.  

With a metaphysical chuckle, He pointed out that I had it all wrong.  I was never going to grow or mature into becoming Big Kathy.   I was always going to be Little Kathy, even Puny Kathy.  I was never supposed to fill the chair, because God and God alone was big enough to sit in the chair.  

But if I wanted, I could sit in His lap.   

A "True" Test

(This is blog post #4 on a series looking at True Self/False self.  Click here to read #1, #2, and #3)

Two weeks ago at my daughter's 13th birthday party, I foolishly left my open computer sitting on the kitchen island while 11 girls helped themselves to pizza, cupcakes, soda and ice cream sundaes.  As one of Kai's friends poured herself a glass of water over my keyboard, in as calm a voice as I could muster so as not to startle her, I said, "Could you please pour that water just a step or two back?" 

She looked up at me, then down at my computer, and backed away slowly.  I snatched the Macbook, smiled, and said, "It's OK, it's just my life. . ."

According to Adele Calhoun, our spiritual director, the false self is composed of anything you can lose.  Your possessions, your job, your relationships, even your roles.  Some of us women wrestled with that concept.  If my kids die, will I no longer be a mother?

Well, today I'm facing perhaps one of the greatest challenges short of losing a child, family member or friend. 

My Mac has died.

It didn't die in a splash of water or with a cupcake smooshed into its keyboard.  It didn't die from falling out of my unzipped computer case (which happened 2.5 years ago).  It just died a quiet death sitting open while the family watched "The King's Speech" (the R rated version--totally worth it--unfortunately for my kids, no language in that movie that they haven't heard in our house!).

I bought a external hard drive about a year ago when a colleague's Mac died and she lost everything.  I've even been relatively good at backing up so I should have everything until a week ago Monday.  But I've heard that certain things don't back up, so I won't know everything I've lost until I visit the Apple store, buy a new computer and restore everything.

Last night, as I prepared for bed with a sick feeling in my gut, I thought about what I know is lost and the implications:

• My journal musings from the spiritual retreat--but at least God heard and remembers my prayers
• The budgets for my team and the pdfs I still haven't sent out--but at least my boss has a copy and pdfs aren't that challenging to make
• The minutes from our Cana marriage ministry leadership time, including the colors I changed in the schedule--but at least there were 3 others there who hopefully took notes and remember what we decided.
• Any appointments I scheduled in this past week--so sorry if I don't show up when you were expecting me!

Everything I wrote for this blog got posted.  I didn't write anything for my book or interview my parents.  I didn't create any new recipes.  I didn't download the pictures from the birthday party yet, so they're still on my camera.  And it's a sign of our family's privilege (and Scott's IT job) that we still have 2 functioning computers in the home--hence my ability to blog.

It's going to be a hassle figuring out what's gone and reconstructing how I want to compute in the future.  I've been trying to wean myself from Entourage--now may be the time.  And I could never get Quicken to balance our various banking accounts correctly (I know, I know, operator error!), so maybe we'll just start from scratch.

Turns out I didn't lose my life after all.

Will the "True" Kathy please stand up?

(Blog #3 in a series on True Self vs. False Self.  Click here to read #1 and #2)

Growing up, I was the black sheep of the family.

 

I didn’t drink, take drugs, or sleep around, but my parents thought I was a juvenile delinquent because I failed to meet their Chinese standards for an oldest daughter. 

For them, an exemplary oldest daughter shows irreproachable and responsible behavior, both at home and at school.  When asked, she joyfully washes the kitchen floor on her hands and knees with damp paper towels.  She doesn’t forget her homework assignment on a regular basis or lose her sneakers or whine about practicing piano. 

A good oldest daughter promotes harmony with her younger siblings.  She selflessly provides for them instead of spending a good portion of her energy trying to figure out how to wangle the largest brownie or biggest cookie.  She certainly never runs around the kitchen holding said cookie in the air while the others chase her.

Most importantly, and where I failed the most, the perfect oldest child never defies her mother.  Like Confucius, Mama believed that the greatest virtue is filial piety—devoting oneself in obedience to one’s parents and elders.

“I never asked to be born oldest,” I’d defend myself.

Despite my holy terror identity at home, in the outside world I was a perfectly behaved, high achieving, polite and respectful Chinese Christian girl.  So Mama regularly called me a hypocrite. 

And she was right.  I didn’t walk my talk.  

In fact, I still don’t, no matter how much I’d like to.

So who’s the real Kathy?  Good Kathy or Bad Kathy?  I always assumed that the true Kathy was the selfish rebellious jerk at home, and the fake Kathy was the high achieving nice person outside the home.  As a result, I experienced a butt-load of good ole’ Chinese shame and self-loathing.

I’m thinking about this because all my kids are re-living my life pattern—negative and challenging at home, impeccably behaved and perfect outside the home.  And I’m giving them the exact same messages I received, that their true selves are awful and their false selves are the perfect visages put out to the world.  But somehow that seems wrong.

Yet my friend Jeff says that Mama got it right.   The Bible seems to say that our true selves are the rotten rebellious self, that every part of the good creation we were created to be is now corrupted.  He knows the Bible and theology a lot better than I do, so I had to think about that.    

So here’s where I’ve come thus far.  I don’t think either “sucky” Kathy or “perfect” Kathy can be the “true” Kathy because both identities are based on behavior, one positive and one negative.   

In my experience, I am most truly myself when I embrace that I’m a frail broken human being but that I am deeply loved, forgiven and that God won’t give up on me so you shouldn't either.  To use Biblical language, I’m a sinner saved by grace.  When I rest in the reality that I’m deeply flawed but also infinitely valuable, I don’t need to prove anything.  I can just be.

Unfortunately, I seem to be able to inhabit “true Kathy” for about 30 minutes after a 3 day spiritual retreat.  When I step into the house to greet my kids, everything crashes again, only it’s usually the kids fighting for the bigger cookie. 

Can I be the “true” Kathy when I’m shrieking at the top of my lungs at kids?  

Dunno.   

I wanted to be a mom, so I have no one to blame but myself.