Stuff School Doesn’t Prepare You For

Being in school for most of my 20’s, I sometimes catch myself thinking like a student. Being a former college p also helped reinforce that perspective. Whether it’s that hope of starting well at the beginning of a new semester or the failed expectations at the midpoint or the mad dash to finish the semester, it’s a perspective that’s ingrained into me.

Right now, it definitely feels like I’m at the midpoint of a semester. The grind is on to finish and to complete my responsibilities. Self-doubt is informing me that I can’t finish well and that I’m a total and utter failure. I’m trying to plan out the next steps with the end of the semester approaching.

You would think that being in school for the past 10 years would have prepared me to handle the pressure outside of school, but I still feel like I barely have a hold on things. So I’m just going to jot down a few lessons in life that school doesn’t really prepare you for.

Life is about making the right and sometimes hard decisions.

You would think that the right decisions are the easy decisions to make, but let’s be honest: making the right decisions can be downright hard to do. I’ve been teaching a lot of literature classes and, as a result, reading a lot of books. I make a point in class to have my students reflect on how the right decisions can also be the hardest decisions to make. You don’t have to look far in the book to see that even JC made the hard decision to love sinners, which ultimately led him to suffer and die so that the righteousness of G would be satisfied. It’s one of the reasons why I love Hebrews 12:2 so much.

…looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

One area of my life where this is probably manifested the most is with our family. I know it was the right decision to move out, but every day is a reminder that it is also a hard decision to make. Besides the phone calls from our mothers who desire for us to come back home (Happy Belated Mother’s Day by the way!), it’s hard to see Haddon having to experience the outcome of the hard decision that we made. Every now and then I take him to the playground and it sucks to see him playing by himself because he doesn’t know the language.

Of course, it doesn’t mean we just crawl back to our apartment and never experience the outside world, which leads me to my second lesson:

Life is too full to feel guilty and sorry

I made a joke with a friend here when I asked him what he was going to do after one of our book studies. He said he wanted to go to a coffee shop and contemplate about life. So I asked him in Chinese, “你的生活去哪儿?” We both started laughing because it is such a poor and literal translation of “Where is your life going?”

There are mornings, afternoons, and nights when I sit on my couch and ask myself that same question. And sometimes that feeling of being guilty and sorry comes into my heart and mind. It’s debilitating at times and feeds into that hopeless perspective.

But I’m reminded over and over again that when JC came to give life to his followers, it wasn’t just salvation. He says in John 10:10

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

JC came and gave us a quality of life that is so different and unique from what this world has to offer. And this quality of life isn’t given in squirts, but in buckets. Not once in a while, but daily. So whenever the temptation to feel guilty and sorry for myself creeps in, I go back to John 10:10 and recognize that he has given me a full life to live, so I need to go and fulfill my life’s purpose.

Fighting for Joy in Him

This is something that school hasn’t fully prepared me for. You have reminders here and there, but the experience of having joy in every season of your life cannot be learned in the classroom. It is only through experiencing life that you’re tested and stretched in this fight for joy.

Sometimes I want to characterize this fight for joy as something that I must exert my will to do. The picture I think of is a huge and angry man who is trying to have joy by saying “I must have joy” through his clenched teeth.  Kind of comedic when I think of it, but also accurate in how I sustain joy.

In coming across Psalm 4:7, I was reminded of how that fight for joy in him is not a fight I take upon my shoulders; rather it involves understanding and acknowledging that G is the source who gives the joy. It is G who puts more joy in my heart, not me self-generating and creating joy. So this “fight” for joy isn’t so much gritting my teeth and telling myself to have more joy, rather it is humbly asking God to put more joy into my heart because I can’t generate it on my own. This has led me to spend more time with him and requesting this joy. It’s good on so many levels because it gives me one more reason to cling to him with a sense of urgency.

I think one of the pressures that people like us have is a desire to only present the best. Somehow we think that if we present that everything is good and going well that somehow that might persuade others to come and join us. But I have to confess, coming out here has stretched and tested my tolerance to disappointments, discouragements, and bitterness. But in reading the book and biographies of other people of the faith, it has led me to the conclusion that though tolerance is needed, it doesn’t mean disappointment, discouragements, and bitterness must always be in your life. The joy that comes from above won’t remove or replace those things, but it will certainly give perspective and strength to endure until his purpose is complete.

Life will require making the right and hard decisions. Life will bring disappointments, discouragements, and bitterness. But it definitely does not have to end there. Joy can be found if asked for. And if moving here causes me to learn this important lesson, then it makes this trans-pacific move well worth it.