Hello, My Name is Not Boring

March 7, 2016April 11, 2018 ~ tashajun ~ 2 Comments

I still remember where we were standing. My bare feet were sticking slightly to her linoleum floor as we talked in the doorway of her family’s kitchen. There’s only one part of that conversation that I still hear clearly in my memory now. She told me that
someone described me as “boring Tasha.”

That day, I shrugged the comment off because I didn’t know how else to respond. It was a little comment. My good friend didn’t have mean intentions in telling me what was said, but those words stuck. The description of “boring” knocked on the door of my heart and I let it move in and unpack its bags.

The words that we let fall from our mouths have power. James describes the tongue like the rudder of a ship or a wild animal that must be tamed in James 3: 3-6

“When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.”

Those simple words shared by my friend directed the way I viewed myself from behind the scenes of my life for years after that seemingly insignificant moment.

That was over 20 years ago. I didn’t know that what was spoken wasn’t true at the time. I didn’t know that people who make comments like that and, furthermore, feel they are in a position to talk about someone that way, are usually very insecure hearts who have also believed lies spoken about them.

It’s taken Jesus’ relentless pursuit of my heart, days that turned into years of reading my bible and living in community with others who spoke truth and grace to me, to believe what’s actually true about me (and you). What’s actually true couldn’t be farther from the word “boring.” What’s true is that you and I are masterpieces, created by the God who created the galaxies and the beautiful cluster of stormy, sea-blue irises that I am so eager to see bloom outside of my dining room window again this spring.

What if the words you casually said today stuck with someone for the next 20 years or more, wrapping around them like a set of caged bars, hindering how they move forward in the world from this day on? Or, what if the words you intentionally spoke today stuck with someone and set them free to move into the places God purposed for them to be
with courage, confidence and conviction?

Our words matter. Many of us need to learn to keep our mouths shut even though our opinion-frenzy, social-media-driven world tells us we are allowed to comment and “speak” our thoughts and emojis whenever we want.

Some of us need to learn to speak up and speak the words God meant for us to speak: words of truth sandwiched between grace and love. There is fault in not speaking a
good word when we know we can and should.

“Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow
up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole
body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when
each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up
in love.” Ephesians 4:15-16

Some of us need to put into practice taking words and thoughts captive before we speak them or keep them. On one hand, our tongues can do great destruction; on the other, they have the power to heal.

Proverbs 16:24 says, “Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.”

There are huge, heavy, heart-breakingly terrifying things going on in the world today and the topic of “words” seems too simple and almost invisible in light of them. However, James reminds us that just as an entire forest fire starts with a small spark, a word from our tongues yields the same power. Solomon reminds us that our words can soothe the soul and heal our bones.

The words we choose today have the power to affect the next generation of hearts and news headlines tomorrow. Will you set a forest ablaze or plant a forest with your words?

Please Pass the Gochujang

February 29, 2016January 1, 2018 ~ tashajun ~ 2 Comments

Over the last year I’ve read a few articles about how Gochujang is the “new” hot sauce.

I am not going to lie. Upon discovering the articles, I felt some pride that the sauce that had humbly graced my family’s dining room table night after night was in some sort of positive spotlight. It was being described beautifully, with food words that I can only assume appeal to those who call themselves connoisseurs or trendsetters of all things food and taste. Yes, I silently agreed while reading one of the writer’s words, gochujang is good for you. You’re right,this spicy sauce is earthy and deep. In fact, its earthy texture and taste remind me of how I felt as a little girl playing in Korea with my cousins after our first-ever meeting. We ran out to a nearby field of dirt, and dug for treasure, filling our fingernails with mud and grime. We didn’t speak the same language, but played together easily, bonding over filthy fingers, imagination and sweaty, summer-heated foreheads.

this photo was taken in Korea, after an afternoon of playing with my cousins like I

described above…My mom is the one in red and white strips in the back.

Can you guess which one is me?

As I write I can imagine my mom now, across the table from me, extending one of her perfectly-assembled lettuce wraps the size of her fist, waiting for me to open my mouth so that she can stuff it full. After the initial cool crunch of lettuce, my mouth would find warm, soft rice, then a spicy and sweet, sesame-flavored kalbi piece with a burst of of Gochujang to complete it all. Had I not noticed how amazing this sauce was all throughout my childhood and beyond?

This was the sauce that my mom always got in large, rectangular tubs from the Korean store. Or, if she didn’t buy it, she made her own and filled a large, stout glass jar with it. It didn’t come in small bottles covered in fancy, cool fonts which cost double what my mom would pay for something triple the size.

I bought one of those bottles when I spotted it at a local organic grocery store. It resembled a beer bottle with a much shorter and thicker neck. This particular brand even gave back to the community. There’s no question that this Gochujang is doing good things. I used some with my egg-over-rice-lunch and even instagrammed it in my excitement over how delicious it was. And yet, if I am completely honest, something
about my lunch and documentation of it made me feel like I was cheating on the depth of my upbringing, and dinner after dinner of my past.

Truly, I am (mostly) glad that there are people who will get to discover and experience things like Gochujang because of cool packaging and the voice of a culinary journalist or a trendy chef, even if they would never come any closer to Korean culture than the taste from a well-designed bottle.

But, sometimes, it annoys me. Sometimes I am sick of the intentionality of marketing and the voice of trends and, even more so, the quick following of them. Sometimes I am tired of everyday things in one culture being propped up as cool or trendy for a year or two among the unfamiliar majority in another. Gochujang is special to me for different reasons. My Mom used to (and still does) stand at her kitchen counter, snacking on hot peppers (that most of us, including me, would probably faint if we took one bite of), into a bowl of Gochujang. She would eat them raw, not bothering to close her mouth as she devoured them. It’s not customary in traditional Korean culture to close your mouth when you eat. Food is loud and messy and shared. It’s a boisterous family affair. This snack of fire-inducing peppers dipped into Gochujang comforted her and brought her back to where she was from; and the picture in my mind of her snacking this way now comforts me and brings me back to where I am from as her daughter.

For me, Gochujang tells the story of my Mom, the story of our family’s dinner table throughout many years of highs, lows, heartbreak, misunderstanding, love and laughter. It tells the story of my own childhood home, wherever we lived at the time. It tells
the story of my own growing and changing understanding of the heritage God has
given me.

A year ago, I had a friend ask me to go to a Korean restaurant with her. She hadn’t ever had Korean food and wanted to try it. We ordered Dolsot Bibimbap and sat across the table from each other, talking about how much Gochujang she should add to her hot stone bowl, and how spicy it would be. This friend was willing to try something brand new and listen to me tell her about stories of my upbringing and my history with the foods on the table in front of us. It had nothing to do with being trendy, or being a food expert, and everything to do with a relationship and a priceless willingness on her part, to step outside what was normal and expected and understood. It meant the world to me.

God obviously made food to nourish us. Beyond nourishing, I believe he made it to stretch us, to be a tool of care, and to give our memories scent, taste and color. I believe that the true gift of food lies far beyond taste and personal benefit, and is found in the power it has to connect people.

So, Gochujang, I will love you even if everyone decides you have too much brown sugar to make the health benefits of fermentation worth it. I might buy you in a trendy, over-priced, made for non-Koreans bottle, or I might buy you in the kind of red tub I grew up with. Either way, you will always remind me of my Mother’s love language of food and your scent will take me back to summers in Korea and the everyday dinners of my childhood. Whether you are called the new “it” hot sauce, or not, I will still ask for
you and pass you on to my babies in lettuce wraps as big as my fists.

14 Hours (and more) Away From Our Little Girl

February 21, 2016January 1, 2018 ~ tashajun ~ 2 Comments

Almost a month ago, I picked up my phone and saw that I had missed a phone call from Grand Rapids. I listened to the voicemail and learned that it was our adoption agency and my heart started to beat more quickly. I know our social worker and I must have exchanged some kind of greetings when I called back, but all I can remember her saying
is, “we have a referral for you, and it’s a little girl.”

We have been in this adoption process for 2 years, and in some form of waiting all throughout; and yet, I wasn’t ready for her words. I had been prepping myself to wait for much longer for that call. I also expected that we would be matched with a boy. Both surprises brought tears to my eyes. Emotions are so telling when we give them room to breath.

When the file arrived, I sat there reading every piece of information over and over again, while looking at the 4 pictures I had in front of me — again and again. I moved from shock, to fear, to shock, to compassion, to numbness, and to fear again as I wondered why I felt numb, to a million other emotions, including happiness over her chubby cheeks.

A week later, we said yes to our referral. During that week of decision, I grew very attached to this 9-month-old little girl and her already-complex story. I prayed a lot, asking God to give us wisdom, but also just sat with God and my big bundle of emotions without words. That’s prayer too. A good friend and adoptive mama I admire, told me to pray, yes, but to listen more than speak as we sought the right decision. How I needed that advice!

Matt, was much more calculated, calm and level-headed. I felt like a crazed squirrel running in circles around him and all of his calmness. I will never forget when we made the final decision and he called her our daughter for the first time. When he verbally named her ours, it felt like 2 years worth of waiting, working on mountains of paperwork, and being poked and prodded in every area of our inner and outer lives broke some sort of protective dam I had carefully built; and everything spilled over with the force and power of water gone wild.

It’s been almost a month now. We just sent in all of our acceptance paperwork and we are waiting for a court date from South Korea. I keep telling my close friends that I was very okay with waiting for the last two years; and now, now that we have a little girl, with a name and a face who is a 14-hour plane ride away, I feel like a lunatic. I wake up at crazy times in the night, just thinking about our little girl and about all the details ahead, not to mention the rest of our family here and details here. Between us is a 14-hour plane ride, 14 hours of day and more waiting.

In all of the joy and excitement, I am struggling with waiting. I just wrote a whole post about the good of waiting, and yet here I am now, just 2 months later, feeling my own version of crazy. Despite me, I hear God consistently and graciously reminding me that he has purpose and good in the waiting. The kind of waiting in our adoption process has changed in a big way, but, as in everything, he is still the point.

I recently heard Wendy Pope say this in a video over at first 5 :

“WE CANNOT LET THE OBJECT OF OUR WAIT REPLACE THE PERSON OF OUR FAITH.”

These words were so timely for me. Aren’t we all tempted to do this when we are waiting? It might not be a little girl across the ocean, but perhaps for you it’s a dream, an answer, a relationship, a change, or an invitation that you are waiting for. While it would be easy for whatever we are waiting for to become the goal, especially when it requires so much of us and we are actively working for it and praying for it, it cannot hold the weight of that place in any of our hearts. Jesus is the faithful one and he wants us to find him, to trust him, to see him, to keep stepping out, and to be transformed by him in our waiting.

So, now we wait for the call that says we can go to Korea and meet our little girl. We wait for that and for the day when we can bring her home. Above all else, we wait for Jesus, the one who holds our hearts in his hands, no matter what.

Strangers Welcomed In

August 20, 2015January 1, 2018 ~ tashajun ~ 2 Comments

One of the most beautiful and challenging gifts of travel is that it makes us strangers in need.

After our team arrived in Kigali, two weeks ago today; sweaty, tired and ready to be upright, we spent around an hour trying to figure out where our missing luggage was. Once we understood that our luggage wasn’t in Rwanda like we were, we left the airport to meet up with our ALARM partners. It was my first time to meet Rwandans face to face. I will never forget Benjamin’s genuine expression, his big smile and his first words, “Welcome. We are so glad you have come to Rwanda. This is your home too, so please feel at home here.” Any stress or worry over missing things faded behind the genuine welcome and care of those who welcomed us.

Hospitality. How often do I reduce hospitality to the gift of entertaining? I know entertaining is a skill and I truly admire those who have that skill and use it. But the gift of hospitality in the hands of God has the power to go deep into a heart and transform it. It has little to do with how much we have or how nice of things we have, and everything to do with how and who we notice, how we love and how we bring those who are strangers into a place of being known and welcomed in.

From those first welcome words to thousands of details throughout our 10 days there, our Rwandan friends genuinely did everything they could to not only share their world with us, but to make our team feel like anything but strangers.

When we are strangers in need, we are in a position to receive. And there is so much to receive when we follow the God whose grace is abundant and whose hands have held the entire oceans in their hollow, who has named every star and created every person, in every country and every culture, in his image.

In my own familiar culture, where there is an abundance of the material, an abundance of personal choices from cereal to forms of education, an abundance of resources, an abundance of events, and an an abundance of entertainment and noise, I forget (or choose to ignore) the vital places within me that cannot be filled an inch by those things. I am ashamed to admit that I easily grow numb to the hunger of my soul, the thirst of my spirit, and the needs of my heart. I am so prone to wander and grow slow to realize how great those needs are in the face of all of the things I allow to distract me.

In Rwanda, I will not forget how we were greeted so personally almost everyday, by everyone we interacted with, from the ALARM staff who served us breakfast, to the ALARM leaders, to the women who attended the WLTI conference from every part of Rwanda and every kind of life circumstance. There was so much eye-contact, so much acknowledgment for each person, so much “noticing” of needs despite any language barrier, that it was overwhelming. It’s easy to think that we don’t need those little gestures, but oh, how our hungry souls do. That kind of hospitality allows God to show us his love for us. And oh, how he loves us! Oh, how his loves welcomes us in our strangeness!

Every time we sang with the women at our conference, they would dance and clap and the room would fill with a freedom and joy from the Spirit that I had not known before Rwanda. One of the older women who attended the conference sat near me, and she would ever so graciously and freely dance and sing while looking back at me to see if I was catching onto the arm movements. We exchanged no words, but she noticed me next to her and just with her eyes would move and nod as I tried to move my arms as she did. She did not have to do that. She did not have to notice me, standing a bit behind her. But she did. I could cry right now as I type, for the unspoken measure of grace and and love offered to me in that moment. She noticed and God loved on me in a way I did not know I desperately needed, in her noticing.

We went to serve and to love the faces and people we met. I think that our team did just that and it was a joy to do it for each of us in the varied roles we had. We also went because God knew we each needed to be strangers who were noticed by Him when we felt most strange, and because we needed receive his love in the Kinyarwandan language, and in the Rwandan way.

Meeting Rwanda Face to Face

August 10, 2015January 5, 2018 ~ tashajun ~ 4 Comments

Our arrival in Kigali last Thursday feels like an eternity ago. What an adventure it has been already! Our first night here, we were welcomed, not only by the ALARM staff, but also by an earthquake that woke us in the middle of the night! Thankfully, it was just a few good shakes for us and nothing more.

On Friday morning, I woke to birds singing in ways I had never heard before, and a group of young African students singing in worship. It was beautiful- another reminder that God is just as present here as he is at home in the familiar. What a treasure it is to witness his faithfulness in both places that are very familiar and in places where we are the foreigner and far away from the familiar. As I listen to African birds singing in Africa, I image God excitedly saying, “Listen. Wake up! Do you see and hear the birds I have made here? Do you see and hear a bit more of me in these things I have made?”

Avocado trees and banana trees grow here in abundance, along with some of the most colorful flowers and plants. Seeing the city of Kigali stretch over valleys and upon the hills, is beautiful. There is so much life and color here, along with the strongest sense of a people who do life side-by-side and know that their strength lies in community. We have so much to learn from them.

After breakfast, we left to head north and then towards the western side of Rwanda for a brief visit the Cyimbili Coffe plantation (one part of the ministry of ALARM) and the leaders there. I had no idea what to expect as we headed out for our 6 hour drive north of Kigali, but the things I saw on our drive up took by breath away.

I cannot seem to find an adequate version of the word “beautiful” that describes the land here. It is rolling with hills, full of lush trees of every possible shade of green and blue. There are eucalyptus trees that line the roads and cover the hills. The land is fragrant with their scent. One of the ALARM leaders who has been caring for us as if we are his own family, has been sharing so much with us about the land and people here. He is proud of his land and cares deeply for it’s well-being and it’s future.

As we drove further north we left the paved road for a road made of dirt and rocks. This was the bumpiest 2 hour drive I have ever been on! Our skilled driver rounded corners on the mountains that I am pretty sure we wouldn’t have survived on if I had been driving. We passed village after small village. Drying Cassava, fields of tea plants, goats and sheep roaming, people washing clothes in streams, little children playing soccer and children helping their families in the day’s work are just some of the things we saw on our way and very things that I am still processing in my heart and mind.

Finally, we reached the coffee plantation that sits on the edge of Lake Kivu. Some Grace teams that have come to Rwanda to partner with ALARM in the past have been able to visit different parts of the ministry here, like the vocational training school, the IWE girls secondary school and the microfinance group. There are many different parts to this incredible organization. Cyimbili Coffee is just one more part of ALARM that pursues community transformation by focusing on servant leadership and building peace and reconciliation.

The Cyimbili team is incredible. They are AMAZING servant leaders and they lead by empowering those they lead. They are also a strong community, working hard to build each other up in their specific roles while also building up the strength of their entire team, from the Manager and Agronomist to some of the seasonal workers who are there to do things like remove “suckers” from the coffee trees so that they can grow excellent, healthy beans.

I had no idea that making coffee took as many people as is does, or that it had as many steps as it does. I will never, ever enjoy a cup of coffee in the same way or drink a cup without thinking about the many people involved.

The team at Cymbili takes great pride and ownership in their specific jobs and roles, no matter what they are. They have a deep understanding of how important their individual roles are, along with how important their collective vision is as a team.

In the last three years since the last visit to the plantation, this team has grown, and they have built new storehouses, added new trees, more washing stations, built wells for irrigation, added more rooms to their guest house and bought more machines for their coffee beans. They have worked so very hard and I am confident that their excellence in owning their own jobs and roles, along with their gifted ability to work as a team, must be a huge part of this, along with their own prayers of faith and the prayers of those who are interceeding alongside of them.

Before leaving Cyimbili on Sunday monrning, we gathered in a circle with the staff and held hands to pray. The staff at Cyimbili sang a song of worship in Kinyarwandan and I had tears in my eyes because the gift of their voices and the gift of getting to rub shoulders with such giants of the faith was overwhelming. God is at work and moving mountains amongst this group. They dream of making the best coffee in the world, because they know that making coffee at Cyimbili is about more than coffee – they know God can use their work to transform their community, country and even the world. I am dreaming and praying with them.