Running on gratitude

Submitted by Tiffany…

Growing up, I was always in the position of being protected from my father’s anger, weaknesses and neglect by my mother and sister. When I saw how much pain my mother and sister suffered, I felt useless and wanted to do something to alleviate my mother and sister’s hurt. Therefore I vowed that I would not subject myself to the weaknesses and anger that my father was so prone to. Instead, I decided to live a passive and uninvolved life so as to not bring more worry to the family.

I was very fickle with relationships because I thought them troublesome. I was really bent on leading an independent life, and since I saw relationships with others as a time and resource sink I was a loner throughout school. I eventually became consumed in my studies, since I took up the self-assumed duty to live for my mother, to excel in school and eventually get a well paying job. Due to the importance I placed in studying, I allowed little time to do anything else, such as making time to form friendships. However, this self-imposed loneliness did not bother me because I felt comfortable with the lack of involvement and responsibility I had in my life. It felt easy just having to worry about myself and living a life untethered to people, but I did not recognize how unfulfilling this was until I recognized the irony of my passivity. I ended up hurting people I did not intend to because of my wanting to be neutral in everything.

What I had in mind coming into college after high school was to just zoom through college so I could get to building a comfortable and successful life. However, I did not expect to come across God when I took a detour from the path that I had set for myself. When I started my freshmen year in the dorms, religion was the farthest thing from my mind, but during welcome week, there were two seniors on my floor who invited me out to NSWN. I remember I was reluctant to go at first since, and when I asked Chris and David what this event was for they just told me it was just an event for a club that they were a part of, and they just left it at that. Common sense would tell me not to go especially since I was given such a suspicious answer, but I ended up going anyways because the invitation of free food was too enticing. It did not hit me that NSWN was a Christian thing until the praise band came out and started singing. At first it was awkward and I was tempted to leave except that I was stuck in the middle of the row so I ended staying until the end. I am glad I did because when Pastor Ed Kang came and gave his message, there was something about what he said about questioning life and how there’s no harm in asking questions and looking into Christianity. The message really stuck with me, and it was timely since the summer before college my cousin who was as non-religious as I was, announced that he just made the decision to become a Christian. This made me think about what in the world about Christianity would make him make such a 180 degree turn. So, I was motivated to learn more about Christianity and see what about it would compel my cousin to make such a decision.

I started out as an agnostic thinking the idea of a God existing was just ridiculous, which is why I found it so puzzling that there were so many people at this church who were so passionately living their lives for God. Somehow it just bothered me that there were all these people at the church living their life for a God that supposedly did not exist. To seek the answer why, I started going out to bible studies, and Sunday services and I eventually took course 101. However, as I began taking course 101, reading the Bible and learning about the word of God through my leaders, many of my previously held misconceptions of Christianity were quickly dismantled. Despite this, I still questioned God’s existence until I read Ephesians 2:14, which states, “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.”  To see what was stated in Ephesians 2:14 so evident in Gracepoint’s community gave me the evidence to believe in God. I remember attending the first year anniversary for the church and being awestruck by how so many different people with their own history and troubles were able to come together to live out God’s collective narrative for them. It was the first time for me to see so many people come together willingly as one body and doing so not for self-gain or anything of the like, and I thought that this in itself was a miracle.

Even though I was able to come to an intellectual understanding of the Gospel, I did not feel anything in particular to why God loved us so much to send His one and only son to die. The problem was that my mind understood, but my heart did not understand God’s love or even who He was. At the time I did not understand because I did not think of myself as a sinner or a bad person at all. I did not actively go out and cause harm and I was not the type to go to parties and drink. I respected people’s space and I just stuck to doing my own thing. Jesus did not need to die for me, because I did not really do anything, but the point is that I wasn’t doing anything with my life. I was living in such a bubble where I only paid attention to how best to live comfortably and how best to live in ignorance of others.

It wasn’t until I attended the Good Friday service during my sophomore year when I finally saw myself as a sinner. I remember how there was a video, which spelled out all the various sins across the screen, only to come together in the end and form the image of Jesus on the cross.  The fact that each sin was printed across the screen so clearly just hit me with the realization that I was not exempt from being a sinner since I was guilty of some of the sins that ran across the screen, but a big one for me was to see cowardice as one of the words on the screen. Beforehand it was so easy to not think of myself as a sinner because I kept the thought of it abstract and never allowed myself to think too much into it. However, as the service went on there was no way for me to put off thinking about my sins, because I was hit with the memory of how I acted in selfishness and cowardice. I remembered how a while back, I went to pay a visit to my grandfather. There were a lot of family members there that I had not seen in a long time. It was clear that the only reason why so many of us were there was to pay our last visit since my grandfather had Parkinson’s disease and was pretty far along. When it came my turn to go up to my grandfather I was not prepared for him to start breaking down and crying. He was unable to say anything and so all he could do was just sit there and cry. I did not do what a person would normally do by going up to him and trying my best to comfort him. Instead, I ignored what I saw, turned my back on him and did not say anything about the matter. My grandfather was crying in his seat most likely because he was afraid of his impending death and could not express his fear any other way. Out of my selfish passivity and cowardice, I just left him there.

To dig up such a shameful memory and to know that I have ignored the hurts of other family and friends in addition to my grandfather made me realize how ugly my heart really was. The fact that it was so clear and true that I was one of the many sinners that Jesus died for was inescapable. Confronted with the truth that Jesus was the savior who could save me from the guilt of my sins, I was left the option to finally accept Him as my Lord and Savior, or to continue denying His place in my life. However, at the time I still could not accept the Lord part of the relationship with God and so pulled away from making a decision to accept Christ. I was just so used to the way I had been living, where I was comfortably in control of everything, I had no people to really worry about, and I was also just afraid of the challenges and changes that accepting Christ would bring and what that would mean for my life.

A huge turning point came for me in the beginning of junior year when the Sunday messages were currently going through the Conversation series. The messages went over the Samaritan woman’s story and her thirst for life and Jesus’ offer of living water.  I got to the point where I saw how I thirsted for life and the prospect of how my life would look in the end if I continued to live the way that I have been living scared me. I was scared to answer the question of what would I have to show for my life down the road because I knew the answer would be nothing. I no longer wanted to live, such a passive life where I knew there would be more instances where I would turn my back on people. So, when I asked myself what could I do to change and get my life moving, the only answer I could give myself was “I just don’t know.” I knew that since all my life I had been living the same exact way, my life would go nowhere with me in control. I finally found myself willing to place my life in God’s hand, to have Him lead my life and to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior during the fall of my junior year.

It has been about a year since I made my decision and I can honestly say that a lot has happened in that span of time. I have been learning to grow closer to Him and learning to die to my old self through having the chance to serve Him on the Berkeley campus and during mission trips to Taiwan. I find it so odd how I could have thought that I could live without people in my life, because being able to share and rub lives with so many people has shown me how colorful life can be. It is ironic too, that I am living with eight other girls right now. I am still learning to move away from being so self-sufficient and instead to be able to be vulnerable enough to lean on others and most importantly to know that I can lean on Christ Jesus. When I think about how much joy He has brought into my life, how for the first time I do not feel stuck, but I actually feel like I am living, I am reminded of how unworthy I am of His great grace and mercy. These days I find that I am not running on blind ambition, I am running on the gratitude that I have for God who could still even look my way and find use for such a selfish coward like me. The overwhelming sense of gratitude in my heart drives me to continue in being bold for Him, and to allow Him to humble me and mold me so that I can become a useful servant.