What Needs to be Written?

On the way to the subway I walk by the Apple Store
and I ponder what the poet said last night…
“the things you are too afraid to write,
are the things that need to be written.”
But how can they be written when my hand quivers
every time I try to put  my fears to paper.
My thoughts are interrupted
by brown fur in the corner of my eye.
I am walking by a window display of teddy bears at FAO Schwartz.
I am transported to my childhood room
with a couple friends of old.
My teddy bears were soft and cozy against my face.
Their fur tickled my ears
as I used them to muffle the sounds
of my parents’ verbal bouts
as they reached the second story of the house.
They helped me as I forced myself to sleep
to dream that the fighting would
Stop. Stop right here
I’ve divulged too much.
I’ve let you in…
in the subway car people always try to sit one seat apart.
Keeping strangers at arm’s length
and that’s what I do with my poetry.
I protect the paper
I regulate the amount of ink used from my heart’s inkwell
to charge the pen.
Until the flow of people on the train remind me that
My thoughts of her come and go
What I did wrong, what I could have done.
She was my first love
and I screwed up.
I bridled my tongue like I bridle my pen,
I’m afraid that she will be the the first
in a wake of the same mistakes.
Secretly afraid I will be alone
reliving the same regrets.
Like the man holding the doors
I hold back my emotions.
The brakeman’s voice comes in over the intercomm
“You are holding up the train.”
The train to vulnerability, to honesty,
to truth.
To writing what really needs to be written.
But I won’t get there on this train
and it’s going to be a long commute,
I will just have to wait for the next connection of pen to paper.
By Jayson Choe

Why is it so hard to be (emotionally) honest? I don’t know about you, but for myself it’s difficult to be authentic with people. Both in my writing and my personal relationships I find that I emotionally censor myself. I, and probably many people out there, never want to honestly answer the question “how are you?” Or sometimes I never want to tell people what’s really going on. Even people that I am close to.

And I think it’s time for this emotional censorship to stop. I began writing poetry because I was an angst filled teenage that needed an outlet. But how is poetry supposed to be an outlet if I am not willing to be forthright on paper? And that’s where the above poem came from.

I desire to be more sincere since I have moved to New York City. Many people have told me and I learned for myself that in a city of millions, you can still be lonely. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be adrift alone amongst a sea of people. That’s why I want to be more vulnerable in my writing and also with people around me. And maybe, just maybe, you could use the some of the same.

a part of my story unfolding…

Growing up the things that were provided in varying degrees were finances, food, shelter, schooling and spirituality.
However, the validation through emotions – never…
Never sought me out, asking “how was your day? How are you doing?” which led me to internalize the question “am I worth being heard? Do I as a person matter?” Instead of questioning the reason behind the lack of it from my environment…I assessed that in order to gain the worth/validation I desired, I would need to pursue it.

I was born with lazy eye, “beauty marks”, “dumbo” ears and an under-bite. And whatever my parents could change, they tried to. Not out of “ill-will” but with great intentions of hoping that I overcome my “born deficiencies”. As one parent states, “I have researched otoplasty extensively because I know this procedure is inevitable if my daughter is to not be ridiculed by her peers.” (http://www.plasticsurgery4u.com/pt_qna_folder/pt_qa_ear_pinback.html)

Many of my parents decisions were done in light of helping me have a “better life”. However I internalized the message that: ‘YOU’ (prior to having any control) don’t measure up. What isn’t your fault, now is, and yours to fix. So fix yourself to “earn” or “get” what you are born to desire…validity/approval.

Performance dominated my life because I needed to create something that would minimize the aspects of myself that aren’t “good”. I would put on this presentable self. For the lazy eye, I compensated by adjusting the way I sat and also whom I would speak to at the dinner table…ignoring those that sat on my left side because it would not appear as if I would be looking at them, even though I was. For my ears, I would never tie up my hair. For my under-bite, I’m careful not to show my full smile in pictures. So in order to compensate I increased socially…I taught myself to assess situations and learned how to be at least approved by the approved crowd. All so that I could validate that I’m “OK” and worth something. I yearned the approval that I wasn’t a mistake. I hadn’t clung to the promises/truths in Psalm 139:

13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

I turned “approval/validation” into my god.

In every aspect of life I would do anything to gain approval/validation.
I did well in school so that my parents would “like” me (because sometimes I needed to know that I was “liked” as well as “loved”)
I refrained from things I performed poorly in (i.e. volleyball) so that I wouldn’t draw the negative attention of others.
I went too far physically in my relationships (placing the perspective of my boyfriend above what I valued)
I led things at church (being a “good Christian” when I knew someone was looking and then living my life “under the ‘validating’ eye of whoever was around”)
I led a Christian fellowship at school (mostly because they encouraged me to and asked me to lead)
I even went on a missions trip…
And that was when God had had enough.

Just like the bleeding women incident in Mark 5:25-34

25And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 29Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
30At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”
31″You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”
32But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

She had spent all her time and energy trying to fix something that had “happened” to her. And with her limited knowledge of how Jesus “worked” – she stepped out and touched His cloak to be healed. And she was.

And many times in my life I will reach out to touch the “cloak to be healed”…over and over again, I reached out to these random sources to be validated. And kept missing the ultimate source of healing.

I love that in a crowd, Jesus stopped and asked “who touched me?” If he hadn’t the woman may have walked away the rest of her life thinking that she had saved herself. Jesus knew he needed to make that connection between the cloak and the healer.

On my mission trip, that is exactly what Christ did. He stopped me in my tracks and lit up Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
While I was a sinner…someone that hated what God stood for, despised Him, rebelled against Him, actively chose to hate him – Christ died so I could have a chance at the abundant life. I could stop striving to validate my existence. I was deeply loved and valued.

What’s been odd about the affect of being a Christian is that God hasn’t taken away my desire for approval or validation. In fact He’s increased it…to a magnitude that I can’t control…because then I know I must seek Him in those moments to fill my void…because only He can satisfy.  In my awareness of the capacity being increased…I can now correctly view the “fillers/touches of the cloak” in the proper perspective…as temporary-numbing-devices and not as my rescuers.

World Wide Day of Prayer

Today Campus Crusade for Christ staff from around the world gathered to pray during our annual World Wide Day of Prayer (WWDOP). This is my 5th WWDOP (at least!). It’s really cool to think that as the sun is rising and setting all across Asia, Africa, Europe and across America, staff are focusing their hearts to pray and partner with God in making a significant difference in our ministries and world. I have to admit that I always approach WWDOP with a hesitant and reluctant attitude, knowing that it really is tough to persevere through a whole day of prayer! But I *always* come through the day blessed and glad that I get to do this for my job

Jeremy Story, founder and president of Campus Renewal Ministries, lead an encouraging devotional about prayer. He shared a finding from George Otis (who directed the documentary “Transformations”) that certain parts of the world were not seeing any major spiritual movements, particularly in the West. He attributed this to the observation that people in the West had a drastically different concept of time. In the West, our concept of time requires us to “move on” rather than stay with an activity until we see an event through. Instead of persevering in prayer and waiting on God, we move on to the next thing on our agenda. Jeremy Story shared about a prayer center he visited somewhere overseas where he had to fill in a sign-in sheet with his name and a time period of how long he planned to stay there. He was about to jot down 30 minutes next to his name, thinking that he would stroll through the gardens and check out the place as he prayed. But he noticed that others who signed-in put down times like, “1 week,” “3 months,” “a year.”

I feel torn about this, because while it IS true that we often keep a tight timetable on prayer, it doesn’t seem practical or even healthy to have “all-night prayer retreats” (interestingly enough, I have heard this done often in Asia). Then again, God doesn’t seem to prioritize practicality.

In any case, I definitely feel convicted that I need to pray more! As Dr. J. Edwin Orr said: “When God is about to do something He sets His people to pray.” Who wants to join me in seeing God DO SOMETHING in a world today?