Accusation

3D Judges Gavel

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I have a lot of crazy stories from my NYC teaching days.  I rarely take them out and share them because I could “one up” my colleagues a lot if I did, but sometimes I tell them to my boss and we enjoy them for the war stories they are.

Plain everyday living in New York is hard.  New Yorkers get a bad rap for their apparent rudeness, but what most call rude is really just abrupt.  There is a need to save time in the city, because no matter the method of commute, most New Yorkers spend at least 2 hours round-tripping back and forth to work, on a good day..  One winter when my car was snowed under, I spent 5 hours a day traveling.  It was a nightmare.  With this reality, too much “nicety”, too much friendliness actually becomes rude to native New Yorkers or those who have assimilated. I remember being home in Sitka one summer.  My mom and I walked down Main Street, which is a 5 minute walk if you stretch it out.  Everyone was acting really weird.  They didn’t know me, and yet they were SMILING at me.  I remember being so frustrated.  “Didn’t they realize how rude that was?  Didn’t they know how long it took for me to stop and smile back at them?”

In addition to long commutes, the city had a way of making so many things we take for granted in Washington State hard.  Including teaching.  One year, I had a little girl who was struggling.  I did the usual things to support her, but failed to sense how intense her mom would take my every word, writing each syllable down verbatim, and bringing relatives to conferences as witnesses.  When Mom asked me to talk with her child’s after-school academic tutoring, I happily called them, until they began a full court marketing press maneuver, at which point, I ended communication with them.  Despite school policy which forbade it, Mom would sneak her daughter in a side door late, and then proceed to stand outside my door and watch me teach for up to an hour.

After 2 or 3 amiable conversations concerning her child, never having complained to me, the mom wrote a 5-page complaint against me and sent it to our principal, the district office, and the chancellor’s office.  5 pages!  The letter alleged among other things, that “Miss Truitt set out to deliberately destroy my daughter’s self-esteem.”  I was very grateful to be fortunate enough to have a student teacher that year who could vouch for my actions.  The complaint was never taken seriously.  And the letter was so crazy and unlike my character, that it didn’t shake me up too much.  I kept the letter for years, as a souvenir of NYC teaching, as a badge of honor, and as a reminder that teaching would never be quite so hard again.

A 5-page letter filled with lies wasn’t hard to shake off.  (It might be now, but back then, I lived in a studio the size of a nice bathroom, and considered dental floss a luxury.   I had bigger problems.). But what if the letter had contained truth?  What if it recorded every thoughtless word I spoke to a child?  What if it recorded the times that year I had lost my temper?  Or the times I had argued with a colleague (EVERYONE argues in NY.  It’s like required or something.). What then?  Would it have been so easy to dismiss?

No, it would have devastated me.  I would have felt the full weight of my guilt.  I think it’s every teacher’s worst nightmare that a parent might show up and yell at them for real transgressions.  Luckily, most adults realize we all live in glass houses. 

It’s easy for me to sit in judgment of this misguided mom for her criticalness and rock throwing, but honestly, don’t we do the same thing to one another?  We think that our brother or sister has a blind spot and if we just tell them, the big light bulb will come on over their head, they will magically change because they were just waiting for our wisdom, and they will forever after live lives of quiet gratitude to us for showing them the way.  We don’t see the years they’ve sought the Lord with tears for freedom for the exact thing we think we are revealing to them.  We don’t know how far they've already come, or much progress they’ve already made.  Or maybe,  we have no idea what a struggle it is for them just to have enough money for the month to eat every day. 

We confront in friendships, because we feel entitled to be heard.  We have heard the adage, “You teach people how to treat you, “and have taken it to heart and want to educate our friends about our hurts, our triggers, our exact Meyer-Briggs personality, and how they should respond to us.  They must be fluent in our love language (Never mind that love languages are a man-made construct) and need honest feedback when they've erred.

We believe we should be entitled to give input on every decision of our local church.  Why is the stage painted black?  No one consulted me.  How will that effect depressed people?  What?  No volleyball this year at the picnic?  But the best players moved away, our house church might finally be able to win.  Why was church cancelled because of a few snowflakes?  Andreson was clear . . .  There was church?  Someone could have been killed by all the crazies on the road who don’t know how to drive in snow.  And on and on.

If you’re at all like me, you’re now thinking of some of the most critical people you know.  If you’re like me, you didn’t look in the mirror. 

But lately? I’ve hurt people close to me by my judgments and criticism, way more than I would like to face.  I’ve handed people invisible scripts, and expected them to follow along.  When they can’t keep up, I let them know my disappointment in their performance.  Over and over.  There’s little worse than facing someone you love realizing the pain you've planted in them is so deep, it can be forgiven but not extracted.  That only God can undo the harm you’ve done.  And that it will take time.

I’m learning that God doesn’t watch Oprah.  He doesn’t read all the friendship quotes on Pinterest which offer really dumb and bitter advice for AFTER you’ve already blown the friendship.  He says, “Treat others how you want to be treated.” Not “teach people how to treat you.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been getting it backwards for a long time.  

Sehnsucht

This picture that I took from my first summer in NYC has always haunted me, and captured the gritty longing I have for a place which so many clamor to leave, or that so many long to make their fortune in.

I expected to love New York City.  I had been dreaming of it since age 13, when I had first began watching the show "Love Sydney" which had an opening shot of Tony Randall and a little girl (Kaleena Kiff) playing in Central Park.  I knew that the reality would be exactly as I imagined it.

And it was.  New York is one of those few places that the camera captures accurately.  When you watch crime shows and feel the steaming hot pavement and can almost smell the urine-soaked streets?  It is exactly like that.  When you feel that pull of the glamour and glitz of Broadway, and the excitement that those in movies have to go to "the city" it is exactly like that.  When you see the unquenchable crowds crossing any downtown street and feel claustrophobic just imagining their press, you feel exactly what a person crossing the street there feels.  And to me it was glorious.  All of it.

At age 17, I took it all in, with all the wonder of a child in Disneyland.  From the beaches of Coney Island (we handed out Bibles to newly arrived Russian Jews who had never held one before), to the shops on Steinway Street (where a Lebanese man kept fondling my upper arm, trying to get me to come with him in the back---even AFTER I told my entire team, and the guys insisted on going back so they could catch him in the act but DIDN'T) to our trip to Metro Assembly in Brooklyn to see the "Sunday School" of all Sunday schools, I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF EVERY MINUTE. 

I expected to love it.  What I didn't expect was the overwhelming all-encompassing feeling that haunted me from the moment I arrived.  There was an undeniable, unmistakable sense that I was in the place designed for me.  That all of my life I had been seeking the place I now stood.  That until the moment my feet set foot in Gotham, nothing had truly been right.  As the summer neared it's eventual end, the feeling got stronger and the thought of leaving seemed impossible.  In this place, I was alive, in this place I was at peace, in this place, I was who I was created to be.  I was heartsick at the thought of ever being anyplace else.

The Germans have a word.  Sehnsucht.  It's almost untranslateable and Wikipedia has a whole article devoted to trying.  It's that piercing longing, that force deep inside of my stomach that I got anytime I thought of the city.  It's the familiarity I had with New York before I ever saw it, and that sense you sometimes feel when you meet someone that you know was preordained to be in your life---that "Where have you been?" recognition that washes over you when they finally show up.  It's a deja vu to something new, it's an unanswered call that resonates from your entire being, the desire to be found. 

Jesus is like that.  When we feel lost, and discombobulated.  When we are deeply lonely, and deeply longing for that person who fits us perfectly, or that we think does.  When we feel outside of ourselves, like we don't quite fit our present circumstances, when we have a thirst that we cannot quite quench.  When we try to satisfy it with food, or TV or Facebook, or church, or coffee dates. 

He is there, calling us softly.  The great initiator who waits for us to realize what we really long for, is Him.  HE is our HOME.  He is the  old pair of blue jeans that come out of the washer and feel just right.  He is the scent that we remember but can't quite find.  He is the person, and THE ONLY person who fits us just right.  He is the drink which when we finally remember to drink---we take in in large gulps like medicine.  He is the answer, the only answer to Sehnsucht.

We all have our Stories

Kentucky Crew

Tonight I was talking with a dear saint from the church I attend. She was telling me the story of how her and her hubby got involved for a period of time in "tent-meeting" ministry. Her daughter was praying for her son who was moving to Seattle. The Lord gave the daughter specific coordinates of the address he was to move to. When they went to find the coordinates---it was the address of a church. They walked into the church and told the pastor that God sent them there, and eventually ended up in this tent meeting ministry.

I started to tell her, "I wish I had that kind of story." But I do . . .

When I was quite young I started dreaming of taking a missions trip as a youth. You had to be 13, so I was younger than that. About that time a TV show became popular. It was called "Love Sydney" and it starred Tony Randall. The opening and closing scene were of he and this little girl running thru Central Park.

God used this show to plant in me a desire to visit NY. When I was 17, I went on my short term mission trip. TO NYC. It was with one of the few charismatic teen mission groups around, Teen World Outreach. I fell hard in love with the city and vowed to return.

If I had my way I would have been back forever the next year. But as I waited for the timing of God, it was tough and I started doubting whether He had anything for me in the city.

The summer of my Junior year of Bible college, I felt led again to go on a missions trip. I researched all kinds of organizations and had settled on one and hoped to go to Italy. The morning I sent it off, I told the Lord, "If you want me to do something else, please let me know."

That afternoon I got a call from a pastor in Kentucky. He was leading a team to Mexico and I had filled out a card for his organization indicating that I spoke some Spanish. We got to talking and I felt led to go and spend the summer at his church in a discipleship program. At the end of the summer, my fellow students and I were slated to accompany him to Mexico. They did it every year.

Throughout the summer I joked with the director that we should forget Mexico and go to NY instead. Nobody took me seriously. Then one day we walked into our meeting place and there was another group there watching Dave Wilkersons "The Cross and the Swichblade." The Lord ignited something in the heart of the director and he asked us all to pray about going to NY instead.

I FELT very led this way. So did the director. NO ONE ELSE did, esp. not the pastor. We called up David Wilkerson's church and said, "We'd like to come to your church and help out." They said, "No, we can't use you. Don't come." The director continued, "When we come to your church, where should we stay?" They said, "Don't come."

We went anyway! It was the most horrible 10 days I think I've ever had. It was 105 almost every day. We went to NYC on a Mexico budget. Which meant our director felt led to have us fast for 3 days in 105 degree weather where we were ministering 10-hour days.

But it was glorious anyway. We helped a pastor plant a church in the South Bronx. We spent 10 days witnessing in the Patterson projects and I think in 10 days only one person refused to talk to us. The people were warm and welcoming and we had long divine appointments. God was faithful.

The point of my story is this:

God supernaturally changed the course of this church's history for ME. I needed to know that I was called to New York. Like Gideon, I needed a sign. God provided one.

I later moved to New York and gave my life for 10 years to the people and children of Gotham. My FIRST teaching job was in the South Bronx 2 blocks away from the place we ministered for 10 days. My SECOND teaching job was in the middle of the Patterson projects.

God supernaturally led me to the place of my destiny. He will supernaturally lead you too, if you cry out to him for your life.

We all have our stories. What's yours?

Jumping off my First Cliff

The South Bronx "hub" .

Everything I owned was packed into my Ford Escort hatchback.  Many signs and confirmations over the years had brought me to that August of '95.  My friend Jill, in a spirit of adventure, offered to drive across the country with me.  She insisted on buying a car jack, but I knew that we wouldn't get a flat.  Sometimes my faith is small in the little things of life, but I knew that I was way too stressed by the circumstances ahead of me for God to let a flat tire happen.

The trip itself was fun, if rushed.  We drove across the top of the US, and stayed with friends I had accumulated over my 28 years--a friend from PBC, a friend from my Teen World Outreach days, a friend from my summer in Kentucky.  We drove into NYC on a hot August day and spent our first night at the YMCA near Times Square.  

I was quickly reminded of the harshness of the city.  When I went downstairs to buy a sandwich from the cafe in the same building the teenager at the register insisted that I had to pay extra for tomatoes on my BLT.  "The menu says it right here," she said.  She was right.  The sandwich section the BLT was located in did state that there was a surcharge for tomatoes.  But it was a BLT!  I argued and won, the first of many times assertiveness was required for respect in Gotham.

Here I was in my new city, with no job and only $500 to my name.  I had known on some level, since age 13 that I was destined for this place, but even so it was tough to sit in on "mandatory" new teacher training not knowing where or if I'd have a job.  One speaker had everyone in the place who did NOT have a job raise their hand.  2/3 of the 1,000-or-so-member audience raised their hand.  It was daunting.

But then a union rep got up and announced a raffle for some off-Broadway tickets of "Scrooge."  Something inside me jumped, and I knew that I knew that I knew that I would win.  The play was in November, and if I won I knew it would be God's way of telling me that He would provide the job that would keep me there that long.  My name was called among the 1,000 or so I sat beside, and His assurance swept over me.

The actual finding of a job was simpler than I thought.  I was told by the Central Board to call the districts I was interested in working for and set up appointments to go see them.  I had eyes only for the South Bronx.  District 7 gave me a list of schools and principals.  "Call down the list until you find a principal in.  Let us know when you find someone YOU think you can work with."  The second principal on the list answered, and asked me to come into an interview that day.  After an hour conversation, the job was mine.

It's the small things in life which challenge my faith.  Moving to New York City jobless, friendless, poor was easy.  It was so big, such a leap of faith that God had to catch me--there was no other option.  I think we all need to jump off cliffs once in awhile.  To build our faith, and to keep life fresh.  Just be sure God told you to jump before you leap.  And if God told you to jump, don't let fear (or lack of a job) hold you back.