My mentor knew that the type of guide, role model, and teacher I needed at that moment wasn’t one who drove me harder or dispensed advice. I needed a mentor who would share his failures more than his successes, his vulnerabilities over his expertise.
Before working at Fuller Seminary, I carried around a couple of dysfunctional beliefs about work and calling.
When I was in seminary and pastoral ministry in my mid-twenties, I was burnt out. The mismatching of my pastoral role doing community outreach and building local partnerships with my lack of job experience and personality as an introvert led to feeling overwhelmed and exhausted.
A couple of years ago, I felt stuck after a job opportunity that seemed tailor made for me fell through.
The daily scrolling on social media assaulted my self-worth and I grew disappointed with where I was in life.
After one of the lowest points in my life, I was confronted with the idea that our trials, our transitions, our grief, our hardships can be instructive and transformative.
In anticipation to the 2020 U.S. Presidential Elections, let us not retreat to our echo chambers or jump straight to arguing. Instead, let’s stay connected to each other, listening to different perspectives, and respecting each other’s beliefs.
I don’t say this nearly enough, but I am proud of my parents. Both were children of resilience, whose parents (my grandparents) had to rebuild their lives after the trauma of the Japanese American incarceration during WWII.
For a long time, I struggled with my conceptions of God, of the person of Jesus, of the Church.
