30-Something : You Will Make a Great Mother

I've been getting this comment for the past many many years.  Since my college days, I've always volunteered to work with children at whatever church I've belonged to.  Some of my first experiences are to babysitting for children who's parents are in adult homegroup. (Root groups, cell groups, small groups, community groups are also similar names for those of this type of church realm.  The church I was a part of in college called them "homegroups".)  While the adults had their Bible study time, I and my helper would round up the kids in another room and play, watch Veggie Tales (lots of Veggie Tales), read books, and etc. etc. etc.  Kid things.  I would also babysit for parents who go out on their date nights.  (Try 4 hyperactive kids, ranging from 2 years old to 10 years old).  Same things, play, Veggie Tales, read books, but then I had to make sure they are fed, they go to bed, and especially they don't kill each other.

In variations, I've done the traditional church volunteering in children's ministry and teach Sunday classes every other week.  And I've held babies.  Plenty of babies.  Changed their diapers.  Changed their clothes (burp-ups, throw-ups, and other things I'm not going to elaborate).  Fed them baby food, fed them their bottles, and lord knows how many times I have played patty cake.

But always, I get the comment, "You will make a great mother."

At first, in my late teens/early 20's, it never bothered me.  I enjoyed the compliment.  It made me feel important, that I was helpful at my church(es).  I love kids!  But as time passes on, many of my friends got married, and started having kids.

"Oh, don't worry, you will find someone soon.  Just keep praying that God will bring someone to you," or some other variations like that.

Life events happened, my mother became ill with cancer and I felt the last part of my 20's was sucked out of me.  For 3 years, I didn't really make an effort to find a young group in Charlotte to hang out with.   When my mom finally passed away, all of a sudden, I didn't know what to do with myself.  I church hopped a lot when I was in Charlotte, trying to find a group to belong too.  No such luck, for a while.

Every so often, someone will still say to me, "You will make a great mother."  You know what?  I mentally want to wring her necks (and yes, usually, the person is female.  Although I had a co-worker, male, who pointed out to me, "Aw Josey, you will make a great mama."  Thanks....)

I often want to ask in return, "But do you think I will make a great wife?  Do you think I can make a commitment of sacrificial love, to be with a man until the days we die?  Do you realize the steps it takes to be a mother?  Dating/Courtship (what have you), getting engage, getting married, being in marriage, then motherhood???"  And then it hit me that I'm asking these questions to myself.  In some ways, it was kind of sobering.  Is there something wrong with me?  Did I get this all backwards?  Wow, where have I wasted my life?

But then what does it matter?  So I often times will calmly smile and say, "Thank you, I hope someday I will become a mother..."

30-Something : Unmarried

"Single"

I really don't like that word.

For me, it speaks of being alone.  All by myself.  

Google-searched adjectives: sole - unmarried - only - lone - individual - solitary.

From this group of words, I like the word "unmarried".  It sounds better.

As a disciple of Christ and my own background rooted in traditional Chinese culture, people are not meant to be alone.  I am not saying, men should be with women, vice versa, as in a married state.  In general, people are meant to have and build relationships with people.  Friends, moms, dads, sisters, brothers, cousins, grandparents, co-workers, neighbors.  Especially in the body of Christ, we are to be a family.  Not a corporation, like in a company or business.

Why am I writing

There are plenty, I say PLENTY, of blogs about 30-something, "unmarried", people.  Why am I starting another one?  The common denominator is that we seek to be understood.  We are of the generation where some of us have gone through college/university and/or have experienced a lot of things beyond our home areas, traveling to other parts of the country and traveling to other countries, seeing the world.  And then especially women (at least in the U.S.), we have more opportunities than ever to gain an education and start our careers.  We're waiting longer to get married, be married.  It's a frontier that most people have never been to before, in previous generations.

So, I hope that these series of blogs will serve its goal to enlighten and help the readers from a Christian perspective.

 

Christ followers like soccer players

Ever wonder why the USA men's soccer team stinks?

Seriously.

We should be good, right? It would only makes logical sense since the United States is one of the leading economical country in the world. We should be able to afford the best coaches, personal and physical trainers, doctors, and other people into this sport.

But that is part of the flaw. Although we are able to employ the best of the best, does this really result in the best soccer players in the country and the world?

I once had a conversation about this with a friend (I don't remember who... someone from another country).  As the conversation went, this person pointed out that kids in some of these countries play out in the streets or local parks.  They play "pick-up" soccer.  There are no rules or boundaries.  They just play.  And most of the time, they play hard and they play rough.

No rules.  No guidelines.  Just a ball and a goal and good old playing rough.  If we play on the national team, we'll learn the rules later (and get in trouble if we break them).  

This revelations happened the other week when I was watching my cousin's son play in his soccer game.  He's now 11 but when he was 4 years old, I remember watching some of his practices.  The coach went over how to kick the ball and show the boundaries of the field and that the ball had to go into the goal.  As they grow and mature, the kids learn more rules.  The field got bigger, the rules got more complicated, with off-sides, and penalties, and how to hit the ball with your head, and how to juggle the ball, and so one and so forth.  But so many rules, does one really learn the game of soccer?

Some times, even showing up to a live game, I somehow feel the game is in slow motion.  There is no action.  No speed.  No passion.  No emotion.  What happened, what is going on?  I realize these kids grew up learning a sport in a very organized fashion.  They never learned to play rough.  They never learned to just go for it.  They learned that from 5:30pm to 6:30pm is soccer practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Saturday was game day.  Unlike the folks from Latin America who play (for fun) everyday and as much as they can.

In Christian life, why can't we just go for it?  As disciples, most of us in church-America, have grown up in environments where you have to tithe, and you have to dress up, and you have to go do confirmation classes, and you have do the acolytes, and you have to go to Youth Group on Sunday evenings.

But look at Jesus.  He never went through rabbi school, yet he became the greatest teacher on earth.  He never own much of anything, maybe his traveling clothes and a pair of sandles.  Yet, he was the King.  He never played by man's rule.  He played by God's rule... He knew his righteousness was not under the laws (of man) but his righteousness is by the grace of God (written all over Romans).

Just as America had made soccer "legalistic", most of church-America has "legalized" church of do's and don'ts.  Why can't we run free under the grace of God and just go for it?

The Name Change

While jogging at the gym the other day, I was watching ESPN and noticed that Samantha Steele changed her name to Samantha Ponder.

To bring you up to speed: Samantha is a sports caster who covers mostly college sports on ESPN.  In the news last fall, she had a whirlwind romance with Christian Ponder, quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings, and they married towards the end of the season in a private ceremony.  I had often wonder (well, not really) if she would change her name since she has already made a name for herself in the world of sports news.

I made a comment on Facebook which goes like this:

Later on during the day, I was talking to a co-worker about a project and he gave me a new title (which every week he gives me some kind of new title; i.e. JCat is a current one, Ninja Cat, etc.)  Then, it just dawned on me that somehow these two connected about name changing.


When Abram became Abraham

In Genesis 17, God made a covenant with Abraham:

⁴ “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. ⁵ No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. ⁶ I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. ⁷ I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you."

In this case, God wanted to make a covenant (promise) to Abraham that he will be father of many nations.  God was going to do great things through Abraham that God prompted a name change.

When Saul became Paul

Often times in the Bible, we see that names of people changes according to an event.  Paul of the New Testament was no exception.  If you don't know Paul, he was once a jealous Jew who persecuted Christians.  He ordered the martyr of Stephen (Acts 7).  But something drastic happened.  God literally hit him with a frying-pan (or a bright light) and asked him, "Why are you persecuting me?" In Acts 9, you see that then-Saul became blind by the Lord and was left blind for 3 days.  A conversion happened in Saul and he came to the Lord.  Several chapters later, you see Saul (who became Paul in this chapter) was hanging out with Barnabas.  God changed his name to the famous Paul who we know who wrote most of the New Testament.

And when not to change your name... (Story of Daniel)

It didn't say explicitly in the Bible but in the first chapter of the book of Daniel, Daniel did not want to defile himself with the wine and food that the king was going to give him and Azariah, Mishael, and Hananiah (aka Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego).  I think along with the food and wine, Daniel did not want to change his name either as this is an identity he had with the Lord.

My point... 

As I approach a stage in my life where I had made a name for myself in the engineering world, I often think, "What if I do get married?  What do I do with my name?"

I think I have a complicated name in the world, for starters.

Josephine is the English name my dad had given me.  He also purposely made it my first name, even though I was born in Hong Kong but he knew I was going to be raised in the U.S.  Most friends who are born in Hong Kong just have a Chinese name.  They later chose an English name for themselves but it is actually not a legal name.  Josephine is legitimately my legal first name.  I have a birth certificate to prove it.

Shuk Yee is the Chinese name my dad had given me.  It is also my middle name.

Chan, of course, is my current last name.

Many of my friends have different rules when getting married.  Some drop their middle name, scoot their maiden name to the middle, and adopt their husband's last name.  Others will drop their maiden name and scoot the husband's name as their new last name.  And now you see THE problem...

If I were to drop my middle name, that wouldn't make sense.  Many Chinese friends call me by my Chinese name.  If I drop my last/maiden name, then when adopting my husband's last name (whatever it might be), it might look strange.  I now have a English first name, a Chinese middle name and , which could be English, Polish, French, Spanish, what have you.  Then people will wonder, "So, what is this middle name?  It looks strange."  People will just be confused.  And a deeper personal struggle is that I will lose my Chinese identity if I were to drop any of the two names.

Names can bring about and define your identity.  God changed the names of Abraham and Paul; he want them to identify themselves as something great and special, that they will do great things for the Lord, and to put away the past of what they used to be.  But then you have Daniel.  Sometimes, you don't want to change your name because you already have that identity with God.

Even God has a lot of names: Jehovah Jireh, Lord, Yaweh, Jesus, Holy Spirit.  
Even Jesus had many titles: Messiah, Prince of Peace, Wonderful Counselor

No matter what your decision is for your name, know that when we become Christians, we put our old self away and become a new being.  God's original plan for us is to have a relationship with us, and that our identity is in Christ.  A spiritual name change occurs.  We are all bride of Christ.  A wife drops her name to change her last name to her husband's name, she become an identity of her husband.  Just like this wife, we as bride of Christ drop our "last name" and adopt a new last name in Christ.

And yet, there are title. In an email with my co-worker, he said, "With all these titles, how do you juggle being such a heavy weight?"

I answered with some humor but ended it like this, "It's only a title, I'm still Josephine."

Then it really hit me that a title may just be a title.  My our identity is in our own names.  We may be mothers, sisters, wives.  Or fathers, brothers, husbands.  We could be CEOs, Presidents, or Managers.  But these titles do not change who we really are.  Just as God has many titles/names, His nature is the same. Just as Jesus had many titles, Jesus is still Jesus.

So, in answering my own question, I'm still Josephine, whatever last name I have.

God's Righteousness

On Facebook, I recently posted an update that says:

There were many lessons on sheep over the course of this past year, so in seeing another sheep lesson... You start to think, "Everything is running together."  Specifically, this lesson for the kids centers around the story of the lost sheep (Luke 15:3-7).  In summary, Jesus taught the audience about a shepherd and his one hundred sheep.  If one goes missing, doesn't that shepherd go find it?  If a shepherd finds a lost sheep, doesn't he rejoice over finding his sheep?  If a sinner repents, if God finds the bad guys (the lost), doesn't heaven rejoice in a New Believer?  Why yes!

So, after that updated, a string of conversation followed, to which a friend suggested I teach the kids in Chinese and I immediately thought of this Chinese character:

義

This is the Chinese character for "righteous" or "righteousness".  In a simple Chinese explanation, it is just being morally good, or right.  Many years ago, when I was in college, I was introduced to a book The Discovery of Genesis: How the Truths of Genesis Were Found Hidden in the Chinese Language.  In the book, the author theorizes that after the Tower of Babel, and after God has spread the people to different countries, confusing their language, each language and culture has some parts or story about God, Creation and of course, Jesus.  For the Chinese language, some of the Chinese character can be broken down to many little characters that tells a story, and there are a handful of characters that if you break it apart, you start to see these root "words" (characters) that make up the bigger picture. A lot of the bigger picture points to the original stories or even prophesies of the Bible.  To be honest, after reading bits and pieces of the book, as well as one or two chapters in its entirety, the author doesn't really explain his theories too well.  But the overall idea is very plausible and I think I can take his ideas and run with the explanation as I will describe the word "righteousness" in the following.

With this particular character, righteousness (義), it is made up of two Chinese characters, 羊 (sheep), and 我 (me), and where the "sheep" is above "me".  And within the character, 我 (me), there are yet two other characters, 手 (hand) and 戈 (blade), side-by-side.  From the book Discovery of Genesis, the author explains that this character might demonstrate our general act of worship in order to become right with God (after the first few pages of Chapter 8 of the book, he goes on a bunny trail...).  I believe that the hand holds the blade, which describes "me", who sacrifice a lamb or sheep for worshipping of God.  You see this act of worship a lot in the Old Testament.  Many of the Jews throughout the OT and even today perform sacrifices of animals as a form of worship.

But it's interesting to note the the character "sheep" is above "me" in the word righteousness.  Although this may mean of early days of people sacrificing sheep to God, it's also a hidden prophesy that in the Gospels, eventually our sins will sacrifice the perfect Lamb of God, who is already righteous.  God is over me, my sins!  No more do we have to sacrifice our animals for worship; God has already done it!  Why?  Because God is righteous and just.  

Interestingly enough, my own name, 陳淑儀 (Chan Shuk Yee), the last character is a form of the character righteousness.  When a "stick person" is added on the left side, it gives that character the ability to be used in a name.  You often see this in the Chinese language, when a character is "humanized" so that it can be used in given names.  

There are many characters in the Chinese language that follows this story-telling.  Maybe to give you a homework, here is the character for "boat":

船

The first character of the right means "vessel", the one that looks like this 八 is eight and the one that looks like this 口 is mouth.  Think Genesis and floods.  :)