Bringing all I am

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. -Ephesians 4:14-16

At Asian American Staff Conference, we were challenged to bring everything we have to the table. Paul encourages maturity and growth a number of times in his letter to the Ephesians, and Tracy called us out on the many times we hold back on our gifts, leadership, and callings because we see the experience, age, and louder voices of the room. We save our best gifts for the campus and for our students, but when it comes to managing up, pushing the movement forward, or even sitting in the very room with those who have paved the road before us, we hold back.

Story of my life.

She gives this message as I sit in the same room as many Asian-American staff who have paved the path before me, staff who I wish to thank yet am intimidated to approach. My life regarding ethnicity, culture, and all related issues feels like it's in a very, very steep learning curve with no plateau in sight. I am clearly finding some sort of voice in this ethnicity conversation, yet at the same time, it feels like the words I have are just the early learning stages of many...learning stages that so many have surpassed already.

What would it look like to bring the fullness of who I am to add to the body that seeks to reflect the fullness of Christ? I often find myself tweaking, adjusting, choosing only to show parts of who I am. Sometimes this is for the sake of being hospitable to others, like holding back on verbose stories or avoiding nerdy tech topics with those who could care less. That's one thing. But holding back because I am afraid to show just how passionate I am, because I fear sounding like I'm full of myself, or because I am waiting for the day that I am more experienced, polished, eloquent...doing so is holding back who God made me at a table that needs everything of everyone present, or keeping silent in conversations that need more voices.

Humility is not denying our gifts, but being thankful for them.  

I struggle between standing tall in the things I am good at (that sentence alone feels like a gutsy move) and underplaying them, like we so often are raised to do. Not that no one knows what I love and excel at, but I also don't walk all too confidently in them. Torn--between knowing my skill and experience yet how much more I have to learn, between gratitude for affirmation but the guilty feeling that it shouldn't mean so much to me, between how much passion I have for something yet being afraid of what it means if everyone knew how much I cared.

Everything I am. The extroversion; the bright brain and intelligence; the ease with words, be it written or in conversation. The desire to grow in learning about culture and ethnicity and all the messes that come with it. The hope to be a good public speaker with beautiful balances of charisma, eloquence, and content. The ability to find tools and use them well, to problem solve instinctively and develop good systems. The sheer amount of information my brain can absorb. The really good memory. The natural (but could still be developed) process of being an emcee. The desire for challenges, opportunities to learn, risks to take. The reality of how much being the center of attention energizes me, just like how affirmation spurs and encourages me. The very real fact that I can make friends out of most people, and great systems out of ideas.

My natural instinct is to hide a lot of this: how proud I am of a job well done, how excited I am to receive affirmation, how much I think I can offer, how much I want to say yes to an opportunity in front of me. Sometimes its swept under a front of modesty, sometimes I sincerely doubt my ability. But what if I took the call to grow up and leave the kids table of holding back...and took all of this and more everywhere I went? How do I do this in humility and recognition of the growth that is still to come?

To close, a food analogy from manuscript study: Paul already states the unity we have, the one Body and one Spirit in Ephesians 4:3-6. But the body of Christ continues to get built up until we "become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ" (v 13). Andy likens this to a pot of ingredients that are already all one together. But as the soup gets cooked, each piece and the meal as a whole reaches a whole new level of fullness. If we as the body are to reach the fullness of Christ, we each need to bring who we are and where we've grown to the pot.