Taboo Topics: Singleness – meet Sueihn Lee

[Sueihn was our housemate at the Simple Way – she has been an absolute pleasure to live with and it has been incredible to watch her connect with people and especially children on the block as well as with churches and organisations in the area – i tag teamed with her on Mondays to share lemonade with the people in the food lines as well as talk to and pray with them – i am so thankful for her bravitude in sharing part of her story here with us]

I’ve been boy crazy since the age of five, when I used to daydream about riding flying unicorns together with one of my kindergarten classmates. It only progressed from there – Leonardo DiCaprio back when he was on Growing Pains, countless other celebrities, and boys at school. Once adolescence hit and my teenybopperdom reached its pinnacle, so did my severe low self-esteem and depression, which began as melancholic sprouts in childhood. I thought the only solution would be to find a boyfriend and get married. Maybe then I’d feel beautiful and good about who I am.

As God healed me of the lies attacking the core of my identity, I also began to realize that marriage is not a cure-all. It has its blessings but also its own set of serious challenges, just as singleness has both its unique gifts and difficulties. I love the freedom that I have in making choices, especially spontaneous ones, without having to take into account how it would affect a life partner. I’ve never been in a serious relationship (had a boyfriend in 10th grade whom I dumped after a month and a half), so this freedom has given me the opportunity to have some unforgettable adventures and shenanigans in my 20s and now early 30s.

Though I enjoy the perks of singleness everyday, I also wrestle with the struggles, which were exacerbated by the loss of my dad from lung cancer in 2007. I know I’m incredibly blessed to have dear friends from all the stages of my life dating back to kindergarten, despite being horrible at staying in touch. The most tangible sign of God’s grace in my life is demonstrated through my friends’ love for me. Yet, no one loves you like parents or a spouse. You will always be the center of their universe. Since my dad died, I can’t help but to feel significantly less loved. And when my mother passes on, how much more bereft will I feel if I’m still single?

My dad was also my main source of verbal and physical affection. My mom is great at loving me through sacrifice and service, but I miss having tenderness shown to me in more direct ways. I recently saw a picture of Obama watching TV with his daughters, snuggling cozily on a couch with an arm around each of them, and it was a slap in the face since I no longer have a healthy outlet to experience that kind of physical connection. My friends are very demonstrative, but ever since my dad died it feels like embraces are too few and too fleeting. The only exception is when someone leaves a hand on my shoulder while praying for me – I don’t think others realize that this comforts me as much and sometimes more than the prayers themselves. Honestly, when couples show some PDA, I often have to look away to avoid feeling a shroud of cold emptiness wrapping around me. I don’t think that people should have to censor themselves in front of me (especially not the married couple I live in community with – that would be so unfair!), but I have to fight hard to continually abide in the embodiment of Love who lives in me.

I know that God’s attention is always on me, and that He sends signs of His affection in various ways, using interesting disguises – like the 4-year-old stranger who demanded to hug me on the street today, or the random female pastor that held me for hours while I poured out my grief at a conference last year. But I wonder if that emptiness will ever be completely filled in this lifetime because of the fallenness of this world (2 Corinthians 5:4). These days, I’ve actually been more comforted by communing with Jesus in any suffering of His, so that I might also share in His glory. I think about my trip to Jerusalem, when we visited the high priest Caiaphas’ house and descended to the tiny, dank dungeon where Jesus likely spent the night in chains before He was executed. As I listened to my professor read the most depressing chapter of Psalms (88 – it ends

with “darkness is my closest friend”), I realized that Jesus truly took on my pain, brokenness, and emptiness upon Himself. Any time I feel any twinge of loneliness, I think about Jesus’ own experience of abandonment and know that I’m not alone – my pain is a drop compared to the ocean that Jesus endured, and He went through it all to be with me forever.

Married folks, if I had to give you just one suggestion on how to bless your single friends, I would encourage you to celebrate their lives well. Weddings are very extravagant celebrations of the couple’s entire lives – complete with photo slide shows, speeches and gifts. There are also bridal showers, bachelorettes and engagement parties, along with baby showers later on. Sometimes I wonder if the only milestone in my life that will warrant this much commemoration (and money) will be my funeral. So, I decided that I would be more intentional about celebrating my own landmark moments. When I turned 30 and graduated from seminary last year, I threw myself my first party since the cake-fight incident of 1995 (my 14th birthday party). I also threw a going away party before I moved to Philadelphia. It was actually really hard for me to allow myself to be celebrated – I felt a nagging sense of unworthiness and shame. Then I saw that God is exposing and breaking down the barriers that are blocking deeper intimacy with Him, preventing me from receiving more of His love and loving Him more fully. At the end of this painful process, whether He uses marriage or not to help accomplish it, God will give me the greatest gift in existence – union with Himself.

[to read my friend Kate Hurley’s story of Singleness click here]

[For an inspirational post titled ‘I don’t wait anymore’ click here]

Conversations 1: part poverty definition

my friend and bossman, Darin, shared some stuff on Saturday’s Simple Way Conversations day on the theme of stewarding your treasures [your money and things] well in the world we live in…

one really interesting thing he said which made me think was when he asked about the definition of poverty and said that often poverty has been defined as THE LACK OF STUFF? that’s true, right? i’m sure most of us would agree…

but then he turned it on it’s head – he looked at each of us in the room and said to us, what happened if after this meeting [bit of a parry-phrase happening here, don’t quota me by this] you got a couple of phone calls, telling you you had lost your job and there had been a fire at home which had burnt down the whole place including all your stuff and the bank called telling you that someone had gotten into your account and cleared out all your money and there is nothing you can do about it… and so within fifteen minutes of this meeting you had lost all your stuff..?

how long would it be before you had your next meal?

how long would it be before you found a place for you and your family to sleep for the night, or the next few weeks or months of nights?

how long before you found yourself a new job, whether back as a powerful executive in a company or serving coffee at the local Starbucks?

and the answer to each of those questions, and possibly some others, was not long at all…

so possibly the definition of POVERTY is not so much the LACK OF STUFF as it is the LACK OF FRIENDSHIP OR TOGETHERNESS

because that is how you would get your next meal, a place to stay, and your next job – through the people and network resources and connectivity you have…

certainly something to think about, especially when we try to solve POVERTY by simply GIVING PEOPLE STUFF… could it be there is another way?

to read some more about some difference between guilt and conviction, click here…

Conversations 1: part outgiving God

yesterday at the Simple Way we had our very first session of Conversations at the Simple Way which three of us had largely been working on pulling together for a while – 15 people signed up to hang out with us as we did a couple of different sessions including one on intentional community, a practical serving the community aspect, a story over lunch from someone in the neighborhood who is involved in doing some really life-giving stuff within Kensington, where we live, and a sharing and question time around a specific theme – this one being ‘how to serve God with your Time, Treasures and Talents’ – it really was a great day and a few lines of thort or concept struck me as different people were sharing and i wanted to be able to pass those on:

Coz is a friend of ours from Australia [i know!] and he shared a little about being a good steward of your Treasures [so money and things] and one thing he said which really stood out was that “You can’t outgive God!”

now, maybe to some of you that will seem like an obvious thing. But i think to many of us, and even perhaps a lot of us that ‘know’ it as ‘an obvious thing’ we often don’t really believe it. i mean, not really. Rather our picture of God [whether stated or not, and usually not] is that of this long-bearded fellow sitting on a cloud with his lightning bolt waiting for the second we step out of line so that He can absolutely nail us and make sure that we behave better [which is possibly why we as the church have ended up so often focusing on what we are against and trying to avoid than what we are for?

but it is so true that we cannot outgive God – God is so completely generous and Loving and kind and compassionate and opportunity-giving and the list just goes on… we just maybe need to realign our minds [and our actions] to the fact…

it reminded me of this passage in Luke 11:

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Coz spoke about it in terms of putting the focus on our giving. Trusting God and at times risking what might seem ridiculous in terms of being generous to others with the idea in mind that we cannot outgive God and so God will constantly supply our needs and how much more so if we have held loosely on to the things He has entrusted us with before. Those who are faithful with little will be entrusted with much.

How are you doing on the scale of generosity? [money yes, but also time and things and energy] And would it help you to be a little more generous if you truly believed that you had an uber generous God watching over you?

to read about “no technology time” head over here…

Wild Goose Hunting – Day 1 [aka Of Tetris and Ice [ing]]

so the past 4 days the simple way crew headed off to the Wild Goose which is a festival of music and speaking and art and a lot more which happened last year for the very first time [and which was one of the first experiences the beautiful Val and myself had after joining the Simple Way] and so i thort i’d write some reflections on it day to day but nothing too intense because i wanted to be living the festival more than just blogging about it – so these are very simple or very profound insights or experiences of my time at the Goose. Thorts I felt were Irresistibly Fish’like i will stick here and thorts that were more of a weighing up a thing against a thing i will post on my ‘The Simple Weigh’ blog.

Day 1: Wednesday

Dana [our friend from Boston who had come thru to help us drive to the Wild Goose] walked across just after 6am so we could start the unenviable task of trying to fit a crapload of stuff [don’t get me started!] into a not crapload of space. and [with some baptist-music-and-drama-team-pickup-packup flashbacks to give me a movie-slow-mo-montage type encouragement] we totally dominated. absolute masterclass of a pack and i celebrate years of Tetris & occasional dabblings of Jenga at having inspired the feat.

the second standout memory of the trip was a tub of dark chocolate icing [or ‘frosting’ as they call it. these americaners are crazy (thought Asterix)] and a chopstick. cos when you’re needing a distractionary and energy-inducing treat to keep you awake and alert while driving a ten hour trip, that will do the trick [aka ‘git her done’] right there.

to continue to day 2 hit this spot, and by ‘hit’ i mean ‘click’ but your mouse, not your fingers cos that would be silly…

i kissed hating [the church] goodbye…

that is the title of my yet-to-be-published book. i have a title. and i have a book. and i think i am ready to start exploring ideas of how to go forward with getting it published. i have spent the last few days proof-reading someone else’s book and it made me realise [along with a friend of mine who started reading my book and gave me some positive feedback, thankx Liam!] that i pushed through with getting the book finished before coming over to the simple way for a reason…

i don’t suspect i will find a publisher to publish the book [have had one look at it and while he said he liked the content it is not the kind of book they will pick up – but the style for me is part of the heart of the book – chatty, conversational, informal and hopefully still passionate, challenging, contemplative] and so that really leaves self-publishing or e-publishing which both take some time, effort and money i imagine.

don’t have much of any of those but for now it’s just a case of feeling ready to do something and starting to pray about it and hoping that some type of direction for it comes along…

the day i took on city hall…

and by ‘took on’ i mean ‘visited and got to speak’ – have written a two parter blog about today’s public response to mayor nutter’s ban on public feeding on my other blog and here are the links…

http://thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/i-had-a-dream-part-i

http://thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/i-had-a-dream-part-ii-blooper-reel

and now ‘got stalked by’ http://thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/i-had-a-dream-part-iii-aka-stalker-in-the-gym/

and quoted… http://thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com/2012/04/14/i-had-a-dream-part-iv-aka-pressing-on/

Aquaponics and other things that go blllloooop in the night…

so for those of you who missed my post on my ‘the simple weigh’ blog, here is a link to that and the story of the first week of aquaponics building that has been taking place at the simple way communtiy in kensington, philadelphia where we stay… aquaponics is like hydroponics but with fish [sustainable food growth]

click here to see…