I love my dad.

My dad recently wrote a book. It was an auto-biography of sorts, chronicling his life experience thus far. It reminded me how important my father is to me and the role he has played in raising me. It made me quite emotional, and reminded me that I am able to be on this amazing journey because of his hard work and the example he has set for me. In the worst of times, he taught me true forgiveness and love. In the best of times, he taught me about elbow grease and reaching for the important things in life. I am overwhelmed with gratefulness for having him in my life, and felt the need to write this...

When I was 5 years old I told my father I "felt like nothing but my name". I told him I felt like nothing else existed but my name and I didn't know what to do. He let me sit beside his desk for hours, until the feeling passed and I was ready to do something else with my day. I still get this feeling from time to time, he still sits with me until it passes.

When I was 7 years old I told my father I was going to have a business where I helped people.
I had a dream that led me to believe my calling was to travel the world and help the impoverished. I didn't know the words missionary or volunteer, I only knew that my father's "business" was the thing he spent all of his time and effort on (after family). Rather than correcting me or or telling me the correct words and methods, my dad told me a business for helping people was a great idea.

When I was 9 years old I told my father I was going to start an organization for kids who were homeless, I would call it Home 4 Kids. My dad helped me draw up plans and came to me later that week letting me know he had registered the domain home-4-kids.com for me. I still own that domain.

When I was 15 years old I told my father I wanted to join my city government through something called Youth Commission. When I was awarded a position in the commission, my dad spent hundreds of dollars to fly home early from a work convention in order to be there for my entrance ceremony.

When I was 16 years old I told my father I wanted to take college courses while I was in high school. He helped me register and left a note on my bathroom mirror my first day of class wishing me luck.


When I was 19 years old I told my father I didn't have the will to live anymore, and that I was concerned he would find me dead at my own hands one day. Within that week depression health supplements and myriad books arrived in the mail to help me through these issues. There were many nights where my father let me just sit next to him in his office until the morning so that I would not have the strength to go through with suicide that night.

When I was 20 years old I told my father I needed to move across the world to help the people of Cambodia. He changed his whole life around to ensure that my responsibilities helping run a household and business were taken care of, he gave me the freedom to move away and get a new beginning.

There was so much pain and joy in the years between each of these instances. There were opportunities that my father let go of to support us kids. He gave up everything to ensure our safety, to the point that we were partially homeless for a while and he still made sure we were provided for. He has shown support for me in each season of my life in ways that I needed at those times.

I have never doubted that my father loves me. When I wasn't strong enough to reach for my dreams, he was strong enough to lift me towards them. If I ever achieve something great in my life, it will be because of my dad's example. My biggest goal is that one day, when he is old and gray, he will look back on his life and see the legacy he has left in his child.

Transition

I have a love/hate relationship with transitions, moving on to new seasons. On the one hand, I'm energized by the idea of beginning something new. I feel so driven when I have a new task, a new thing to hope for.

I love seeing teams when they come to Cambodia from other parts of the world. I realize that each and every one of them is at a time of transition in their lives, they are being exposed to something new and becoming more day by day. There is a beauty in that. There is an amazing transformation that happens throughout our lives as we go through the different stages. I think the hope is that when all is said and done we would be more ourselves than when we started.

Yet at the same time, I hate letting go. I recently said goodbye to my friends and family once again. I had to let go of the ease of living in the States and the warmth of being in a home that is full and loud. And if I'm being honest, that was really hard.

I love the new, but I hate letting go of the old. Unfortunately, I can only hold that tension for so long. I need to learn that letting the past be the past is part of experiencing the new. If I constantly live in what was or what could have been, I will miss out on the world changes happening around me in the here and now.

I'm going into a new season right now. I am now the Project Manager for an amazing organization called The Rock Foundation. This will be a very new experience for me, with a lot of room for failure or success, depending on how well I do. I can already feel myself being stretched for this, but I choose to believe it's for good.

So here's to the new seasons, and finally letting go of the old.

Heart Is Full

I've said it so much in this past month, my heart is so very full.

7 months ago I left everything I knew to come to Cambodia. I left an amazing network of family and friends and came to a place where I knew nearly no one.

Now, I can say that there is a world of people here that I love with all of my heart and soul. I consider a lot of them to be like family to me. They have been there when I was having a bad day, and when I had great ones. I have cried, laughed, and more than anything had amazing fun with these people.

On top of that, my wonderful family contributed so that I could come back to the States for Christmas. This has been more of a blessing than anyone can ever know, as homesickness was kicking me in the butt recently.

Today it occurred to me that no matter where I go, there are people I will miss. While I'm excited to spend Christmas in the States, I will miss my Khmer friends and family so much. When I come back to Cambodia in February, I will miss my family and friends States-side. When I go to other countries in the years to come, I will miss them all.

And you know what? I wouldn't give that up for the world. Missing people is part of the joy of loving them, and I have come to love so many people. My heart is full- full of sadness and full of love, full of longing and hope. And a full heart is a wonderful heart.

Trump is President

I cried when I found out that Trump won the presidential election. I quickly searched the internet in hopes that it was all an awful joke, and then I cried.

I know it sounds mellow dramatic to some of you, but I truly am afraid of him as our president. It's not that he is going to build a wall or destroy the economy, the president only has so much legal power with the way our government is built. What scares me is that he encourages multitudes through fear and hatred. He has the ear of every American, of the world really, and he whispers in our ears all of the reasons we should separate from the other, all of the irrational fears that our lizard brains respond to so quickly.

In my travels I have seen the destruction caused by hateful people in power. Genocides in history, many of which are very recent, have always been triggered by someone being in power who expressed fear and hatred of a certain people group. Whether its the Jews, the blacks, the women, or the educated... when we live out of this place of hate, people are killed and nations tumble. Maybe it won't be so bad for us, I pray that instead this is a wake up call for why we need more love in our world. But it's still a scary thought. I live in a country that went through a genocide only 40 years ago, and the story already sounds all too familiar.

This has really affected me the past couple days. I haven't been able to sleep, I've been on the edge of an anxiety attack. But I realized something recently...

There is a woman here who I look up to and admire so much. She is beautiful from the inside out. She loves the other, she gave up her comfortable life to move to a country where she could spread love more effectively. She handles conflict with grace and humor, she meets difficulties with poise and love. She's amazing, and I aspire to be like her someday. I recently came to say hello to her and she expressed how upset she was by some of the social media surrounding Trump's win. She was in favor of Trump, she expressed that this doesn't make her racist or hateful or corrupt. She talked about how she is living in an extremely corrupt and dangerous country by choice, that doesn't make her and her family corrupt or evil.

And you know what I realized? I realized that good people voted for Trump. 

Not all of them, many Trump supporters have voted for him out of hatred. But I think some did it out of pure intentions, whether it be their upbringing, circle of friends, level of education, whatever it is... There are good-hearted, loving people who voted for Trump.

So instead of focusing on my anger and fear, I'm going to focus on my love for people, Trump supporters or otherwise. Because if I live my life out of anger, I'm no better than Trump is. I can still grieve what is happening to my home country, but I will not be controlled by it.

One of my favorite bands has a song lyric, "If it's us or them, it's us for them". Trump and some of his supporters live in an us or them world. They live in the mentality that if we don't destroy the minorities, they will destroy us. It's a deadly and scary way to live. It's tempting for me to hate the other, to hate republicans, conservative Christians, and womanizers. But I will fight every day to do the opposite, I will seek to see these people for who they are at their core, for the goodness inside of them rather than their prejudice. This doesn't mean to live naively and it doesn't mean I have to be happy with corruption and hate, but I will not fight fire with fire.

Imagine growing up with incredibly rich, powerful, and hardworking parents. Suppose you were only praised for your success and ability to find power. Your parents send you away as soon as you are a teenager, they send you to a military school in the hopes that you will become disciplined and successful. You fight your whole life for wealth, for power and the approval you never fully received. One day, you become the most powerful man in the country, in the world maybe. Then you wake up  and realize you still aren't enough for the fatherly affection you have fought for your entire life. The father that isn't even alive to see your "success". 

I'm not saying we should all love Trump and fall at his feet. But I have come to believe that the most disgusting, hateful people are just children. The pimps, the dictators and abusers of the world- they are all just frightened children fighting to be loved. 

Good people voted for Trump. Good people voted for Hillary. Good people will be hurt because of what happened here. Let's choose to love all of these people. Let's see this as a reason to wake up and decide to care for the other.

If it's us or them, it's us for them. 

Knocking Over Jenga Towers

I have been struggling a lot lately with feeling like a square peg in a round hole.

I absolutely love the people I work with and the community I'm a part of here in Cambodia. The beauty of missionaries is that they have seen the Love and come away believing that the best way to act that out is love the world. It's truly beautiful, and being in this community has taught me to have a lot more grace for Christians where I used to have hostility and anger.

But the difficult part of this is that most of these people hold a very conservative, straight-forward view of much of the world. And while I honor where they are at (I spent most my life in the same place), I know that I am in a very different place right now. Add on top of that some of the self discovery I have been doing and the realization that deep down I feel like a fake, like if people realize who I really am they will run for the hills. This led me to a place of wanting to advertise my beliefs so that I could watch and see who would leave. It's a strange cycle, I want to prove people hate me by doing things that make them hate me. Terrible, I know. I told you guys I'm working on a lot of inner-healing right now.

The flip side of this is that I am deeply terrified of harming someone else's faith. The people around me have a beautiful faith that leads them to make the world a better place, who am I to interfere with that? Even if I currently believe some of their ideas are harmful, there is much more good coming from them than bad.

So I consulted three of the wisest people I know- my amazing father, my pastor (thanks Aaron!), and Mother Teresa. Through a lot of contemplative prayer and their encouragement, here's what I have come to realize.

• I'm great at loving people where they are at if they are a hungry child or a hurting prostitute. But I suck at loving people where they are at when they are in a religious system I grew up in. I think this is less about them and more about me. I am still angry at myself for the beliefs I used to hold, so I transfer that to the people who still hold those same beliefs. This isn't loving, this is hurtful. I need to learn to love my neighbor and myself if I'm going to overcome this. 
• Love is shown, not spoken. In St Francis' words, "Always preach the Gospel. When necessary, use words". Mother Teresa lived this by never attempting to convert people, but instead by being Jesus to them. This Love of the Divine, this Gospel, is so big that when we reduce it to arguments of Heaven or Hell and Straight or Gay, we destroy it. The only way to truly preach this idea is to live it out in our daily interactions. 
• Life is a journey, not a test. My faith used to be like a massive Jenga tower. I couldn't let go of one theological idea, because if I did the whole thing would come tumbling down. In the long run, that is exactly what happened. I was so obsessed with right answers and following the "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth" that I nearly gave up on the amazing journey that life and spirituality is. And you know what? If someone would have told me this when I was in that place, if someone would have knocked over my Jenga tower, I would have quite literally died (at my own hands). It took Love slowly creeping in for me to be ready to just let the Jenga game go. If I come to people attempting to knock down their Jenga towers, I hurt them and lose sight of the Meaning behind it all. 

So over time I'm sure more of my beliefs will come to light. I am by no means keeping a secret or hiding who I am and what I believe. But I am deciding that what I believe does not have to be the first thing I tell someone. Rather than focusing on where I differ from other people in ideals and beliefs, I want to focus on the Love and Life that unites us. Everything else can flow from that. 

You're Freaking Beautiful

In Cambodia, I get called beautiful on a daily basis. It's the stranger in the market, the grandma in the village, the TukTuk driver stopped next to me in traffic, it's everywhere. Now by Western standards, my looks are pretty average, and I'm totally cool with that. But here, they think I am a rare, exotic creature. It really got me thinking about how we define beauty based on the culture we are raised in.

I told my friends here that in America some people will sit in the sun or put lotions on their skin to make their skin darker. One girl laughed uncontrollably at that absurd idea, another asked me, "Why do Americans want to look like poor people?". Ouch. In this culture, being dark means you are from a lineage of farmers or other professions that work out in the sun. To have light skin is to distinguish yourself as someone of high status, someone rich and influential. If you see a Khmer person on TV or in an advertisement, they will without  a doubt have skin 5 shades lighter than any of the other Khmer folks walking around the city.

So SouthEast Asians will bleach their skin with all sorts of chemicals to try to appear beautiful, and Westerners will give themselves cancer from excessive tanning to try to appear beautiful. How absurd is this? Whatever your skin tone is, it is the most beautiful skin tone in the world to someone else.

It's not just skin though, it's everything. Khmer people always want to touch my curly hair, they think it's amazing and wish they could have it for themselves. Meanwhile, I spent so many hours in high school straightening my hair wishing it had that sleek, smooth look that is so common here. They wish they had curvier bodies like mine, while I look at their petite, graceful bodies and think they are gorgeous.

This isn't just for women, there are double standards for men as well. American girls will ooze over a man with a strong, defined jaw. Whereas Koreans will eye the fellow with a thinner, V-shaped jawline.

We are all desperately wishing for the thing we don't have. Spending countless hours trying to look like something other than what we are. And for what? In an effort of trying to be beautiful in one culture we destroy the beauty that is uniquely our own.

So guess what? You are beautiful. 

I don't care if you're tall or short, fat or thin, brown or black of freaking green! You're beautiful to someone, and you're beautiful to me.

The Power of Education

What if I told you there was something that could do all of the following?

• Increase your lifespan. 
• Increase the income for yourself and those around you. 
• Decrease your risk of contracting myriad diseases.
• Grant you access to more countries in the world. 
• Promote gender equality. 

And so much more... The list goes on and on. The positive effects of higher education for an individual are amazing, even more so for an educated society/country. 

Yet with all of the advantages education provides, so much of the world is denied that opportunity. It's a tough problem to fix too. When we see a malnourished child we are triggered and emotionally invested, then in turn we can quickly and easily feed this child. If we see a child that doesn't go to school, we think little of it; Despite the fact that the child is much more likely to die of starvation or a preventable disease as they age because they have missed out on the knowledge they could have had. I'm not saying we shouldn't feed malnourished children, that is an important and urgent need. But we should take it a step further and look at the entire life of this person, recognizing that as they grow  one of the best gifts we can give them is an education. 

Today we had our Back To School party for our School Support kids. The ministry I work with pays the price for these children to go to school, along with the cost for uniforms, backpacks, notebooks, shoes, pencils, pens, etc... Seeing the kids faces when they received these items was such an honor, it felt like Christmas morning. If these kids can stick through it, their quality of life will be dramatically increased because of what this organization is doing. Not only that, but the leaders also encouraged the parents about keeping their children in school when times are tough. This is so important in the developing world, where children are frequently sent to work to pay the family bills. 

Today reminded me once again of all the amazing things happening in the world. It reminded me that hope is not lost, that the world really is becoming a better place. Today over 40 children's lives were changed, and they will continue to be a positive change in their community. This is exciting, folks. It's only getting better.