my exodus from apa

The three days of our APA Conference were beautiful. While the roles I played on the planning team felt relatively minor, watching all the elements fall into place as we moved, executed, planned on the spot was incredible. I sat there on Saturday night in the dimmed room and thought, "This is more than I had even hoped this conference to be." I remind myself that God can succeed our expectations multiple times over, and I'm also in awe of Matt's leadership and vision that was bigger than mine.

I took the past two days off, and it kinda still feels like APA was just yesterday. A majority of my thoughts continue to center around it, partially as I think and dream for next year (that deserves a separate post), partially because it was just a damn good weekend and maybe the most solid thing we've offered our APA students.

Now that my body has enough rest (read: slept in without an alarm two days in a row) and my room a little more sanity (read: I finally cleaned), I'm ready to pick up campus work again. Unfortunately, after five days of being off campus I'm a little disoriented: following up the first week of new student outreach with a second week full of conference details leaves you a little confused by the third week. How do I pick up where I left off if the momentum for the semester hadn't even started? Am I re-starting now, except that we're already three weeks in? 

And just as I was getting ready to settle into bed, a solid, present sadness hit me. Two days ago, I loved, hugged, and said goodbye to my APA family. And tomorrow, I wake up and walk back into the world of explaining and calculating and code-switching and speaking up. Where my values don't always line up with my teammates, where I've chosen to translate and speak and fight and care over and over again...where I walk as the only Asian-American staff on a staff team in a fellowship that is predominantly white. 

I remember this sadness last fall, as I left the comfort of my friends and peers at Area Time and walked into my daily life where I am not quite as understood. I didn't think this would reoccur. But as I think about the myriad of things I loved about the weekend, it comes hand in hand with what I say goodbye to as I step back onto my campus. The innate and elegant servanthood of our community, always watching out for other people, whether it means bringing out extra chairs or offering a refill of the bottle. The fact that many of us were tired but not once did I hear a complaint or regret. Our honor and respect for elders and our investment in the younger generation.  How we watch out and make space, even if it's just physically for people in chairs or tables in the crowded dining hall. Our standards of excellence. And so many, so many hands always ready to help, always ready to serve. 

I could apologize and be understood. I could speak in facts and directness if I wanted to, but I could also tell stories and examples and not worry if the listener got the main point. I didn't have the question floating in the back of my head, "Does he get what I'm trying to say here?" So many words from up front made perfect sense--our speaker Jonathan spoke to a life of in-between and never settling...that, my friends, that is my life right now. Nate's spoken word pierced in so many levels, so many ways, and I've listened to and read the the pieces over and over again and there is comfort in someone speaking straight. straight to my experience. Bianca and Mary step in and make a seminar for the APA Women, and while an itty bitty part of me feels as if I have failed in not having one prepared (I tried, but a few things fell through), another part surges with pride because these girls, these women are my sisters. And our prophetic voice will speak loud and clear, and I am so proud to call them my peers and my sisters. 

And I carry this pride, I carry this love...and I walk back to campus and I feel alone. As the staff team asks, "How was APA?" how will I choose to respond? The weekend was powerful and many left embracing their ethnicities and cultures, and here I am feeling tired of standing alone. Fighting to love who I am and still partially hating that it sets me apart, that on this team I am still different. This team which loves students yet awkwardly I've ended up in the most trusted relationships with the students of color. And as I stare at a rigid agenda and fill out another evaluation, I also realize there are some missing values here. Ones of relationship and harmony that make me sense guilt and shame in certain situations, certain situations where I feel forced and awkward to move on but hey, something about efficiency or intention or whatever mis-matched value and I guess it's time to go to the next bullet point. 

I leave my APA family where we have just begun airing out our brokenness, our hurt, our idols. This weekend we called our students to choose to live in between dichotomies but right now, I'm not ready to straddle that line again.