To Dye or Not to Dye and Questions About Aging Gracefully

I had never noticed them before. I’m sure I would have noticed them if they had been there just a few weeks ago. Without a doubt these were new, unwelcomed and unwanted – several white hairs peeking through my fashionably coiffed look. Maybe they were lost and on their way to someone else?

I had no problem with turning 30. By the time I celebrated my 30th I had been married 7 years, had two children and made a career change. It seemed right.

Turning 40. Well, I’m having a tougher time with that because friends who are telling me not to worry because 40 is the new 30 also had a tough time and are probably in denial as well. I don’t feel like I’m falling apart, but the warning signs are there. The knees actually call an audible when I’m headed up and down the stairs. Late nights require more and more recovery time. And I’m just waiting for the day when the words on the page make me wonder if it’s a lighting issue or if the copy is actually blurry.

But seeing those white hairs in the midst of my brown roots and reddish dyed hair made me stop to think about aging and what it means to age gracefully. So much of what I imagined has been internal – a growing and deep winsome wisdom akin to Erma Bombeck and Madeleine L’Engle mixed in with a touch of Obi Wan.

Our culture’s emphasis on external beauty is extremely unforgiving and unfair, especially but not exclusively to women (those “Just For Men” beard and mustache dye kit commercials are horrible). But I think we can agree that the scales are tipped against women more often than not. An older man on television communicates trustworthiness. An older woman on television is Betty White in a commercial. HD technology makes certain TV shows and movies come to life, but it has also meant that then evening newscasters will never look quite as glamourous. A nip and tuck or a chemical peel to the face in HD – well, you get my point.

But the crazy tension I find myself in is that Asian culture honors its elders. We have a thing about age. Now, I realize that Asia proper is changing and, the way I see it, not all for good. Women in parts of Asia have a thing for cosmetic surgery and skin lightening creams, and the market for men is increasing as well. Eyelid surgery. Nose surgery. Chin implants. Nothing is off limits. But there is still a reverence that is reserved for our elders, and that value came in the hearts and souls of Asian immigrants. When my extended family and I sit down for a meal, my parents or father-in-law will always be seated and served first. On New Year’s Day we bow to them, acknowledging their place and the roads they continue to pave for us. We defer to them.

Aging in the Asian American community brings a special status of honoring and responsibility. Next week I head off to our national Asian American staff conference and what I hear over and over again is that I am one of the senior Asian American staff. Instead of waiting for an invitation to lead we are extending the invitations. Living in the tension of Asian and American I’m finding that with age comes experience and opportunity.

What does it mean to age gracefully? So much of my life was drawn out between absolutes – Christians do this and not that. Success looks like this and not that. Children should be like this and not that. Americans do this, but Koreans do that. I suppose that is why my knee-jerk reaction is to make a list of do’s and don’ts. Aging gracefully means letting my hair grow out in shades of gray and white and redirect my DIY hair dyeing skills to my daughter’s locks. Maybe? Maybe not?

The Little Voice Inside My Head

Right now my head is a bit stuffed up thanks to a cold, but the little voice inside my head usually takes no prisoners. This past weekend, however, it was not expecting such a direct confrontation.

“Why don’t you think you’re an ‘A-level’ speaker?” asked a respected colleague of mine.

The little voice inside my head was very quick on its feet and replied, “I actually don’t do a lot of teaching and preaching so I don’t get as much practice as an A-level speaker would have. I tend to ramble a bit. And, I let life hijack me and my emotions too much to bring my A-game every time.”

I’m fairly comfortable in front of a crowd, can make eye contact, etc. Larry Studt, my high school speech team coach, taught me well. I’m a good public speaker, not great. Good. At the same time, I’ve never considered putting my name in the hat to be the Bible expositor at our summer training weeks, nor have I considered myself to be of that caliber. Self-promotion is not my MO. I was raised to believe that if you are that good, someone surely will notice and advocate on your behalf. There is no need to toot your own horn if you’re that good, right?

Um. Sort of. Sometimes? Maybe? Not always?

I’ve often wondered if there is unique flavor to female self-doubt, or perhaps a unique spin to a woman’s self-confidence. I know so many strong, successful women who are often surprised when asked to consider putting their names in the hat for a promotion, a speaking gig, a leadership role. Add to that any cultural layers that explicitly or implicitly limit a women’s role and there you have a interesting combination – confident self-doubters.

My colleague later asked me what I could only presume was a rhetorical question: “Why aren’t you out there more speaking?”

There are a lot of good reasons. I’ve spent the past 14+ years having and raising three amazing children. Speaking gigs don’t always fit in between childbirth, nursing, weaning, teething, potty training, preschool, kindergarten and suddenly high school registration.

And perhaps there were a few opportunities to put myself out there and to get a little more training and experience when I let the little voice have too much space. Perhaps.

I’ve found ways to quiet and calm the little voice – mentors and trusted colleagues and friends who will give honest feedback, trying new topics and speaking in front of new audiences, and listening to my own voice.

What does the little voice inside your head stop you from doing or trying or experiencing? How, if at all, does gender or ethnicity, play into your experience of self-doubt? How have you silenced that voice of self-doubt or have you found it helpful?

This past weekend was good for my soul on so many levels, and I’m still thinking about the questions my colleague threw at me. And I’m rethinking, reconsidering how I might answer them the next time those questions come my way.

Image is Everything

Do you care about what others think of you?

I do. Sometimes I don’t care at all because I’m at the gym to get my cardio done and mascara and my version of cardio don’t mix well. Sometimes I care too much (like during junior high and high school, and when I’m around a group of people I don’t know well). Maybe it was all that great training I got in high school – poms, speech team, student council and the school newspaper. You learn about image and presenting yourself well. You learn about diction, eye contact and presence. You learn that even if you don’t care what other people think of you those people are forming opinions about you.

This weekend I’m headed off to Ohio to spend the weekend with some amazing InterVarsity students and staff to talk with and learn from one another about God, Jesus, faith, culture, ethnicity and identity. I cannot say this enough. I love my job.

We will be talking about image – what we think of ourselves and perhaps what others think of us. My hope is that we will be honest with ourselves and with one another.

So I’ll be honest. The worst part of public speaking isn’t the public speaking (even if it can feel as vulnerable as standing on stage with nothing on but your underwear). It’s packing for speaking gigs. Yup. Stupid? Yes. No. Maybe. Packing unnerves me because I want to project just the right vibe – accessible, warm, engaging, cool, but not trying-too-hard-to-be-cool cool, fashionable but not in a materialistic way, intelligent, prepared and wise but not old. That is a lot of for an outfit to do, right? And knowing that about myself makes me feel vain and foolish.

Where is the middle or appropriate ground when dealing with the way we look and present ourselves? I feel like it’s particularly dicey for women, and there additional issues for women of color. What do you worry about when it comes to your image and where or how do you draw the line?

The Ultra-thin Pad

I still can’t believe that no one pulled the R & D folks at Apple aside and suggested a different name for the latest in the “i” family  – iPad.

I’ve seen several threads on friends’ FB pages and the Mad TV clip that predates the real iPad. One comment read “my mind didn’t even go in that direction”. I’m not sure what direction that would be, but my mind goes that direction every month. It’s called menstruation. Yes, every month until the good Lord and my hormones say enough is enough. Really? No one in the know at Apple played word association and made the connection? Does this point to the absence or type of influence women have over there in Apple land? What say you?

On the other hand, is it that big of a deal? So what if the ultra-thin iPad makes me and many other men and women think of a maxi pad. Surely they could have come up with a better, cooler name, but perhaps all of the nervous laughter and joking has less to do with associating a cool, sleek, over-priced techno toy with a feminine hygiene product than our culture’s inability to reconcile it’s obsession with sexuality and appropriate comfort with all things sexual, including menstruation and pads of all kinds.

Asian ≠ White

Articles like this make me want to celebrate and cringe. Change can be a very difficult, painful process. The desegregation of the church and a deeper and theologically rooted understanding of ethnicity, race and culture demands current systems, institutions and communities to change. I want to celebrate the steps taken at mega-churches like Willow Creek that acknowledge and recognize the world isn’t as White as their congregations have often been, but I can’t help but feel a teeeeeny bit annoyed.

Why? Well, maybe it’s because the arctic blast in the Midwest makes me annoyed at everything because I forget how fortunate I am to have heat in a house full of food and warm clothing. And, I’m a bit prickly. How does a congregation that is only 20% minority count as being integrated? (The Time magazine article cites 20% as “the quantitative threshold of a truly integrated congregation”.) It feels like some odd application of the one-drop rule. Maybe someone out there can help me understand the significance of the numbers and specifically the 20% threshold.

And then if you read on in the article, there is this:

Call it the desegregation of the megachurches — and consider it a possible pivotal moment in the nation’s faith. Such rapid change in such big institutions “blows my mind,” says Emerson. Some of the country’s largest churches are involved: the very biggest, Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Community Church in Houston (43,500 members), is split evenly among blacks, Hispanics and a category containing whites and Asians. Hybels’ Willow Creek is at 20% minority. Megachurches serve only 7% of American churchgoers, but they are extraordinarily influential: Willow Creek, for instance, networks another 12,000 smaller congregations through its Willow Creek Association. David Campbell, a political scientist at Notre Dame studying the trend, says that “if tens of millions of Americans start sharing faith across racial boundaries, it could be one of the final steps transcending race as our great divider” — and it could help smooth America’s transition into a truly rainbow nation.

Go back. I do hope I’m reading this incorrectly: “and a category containing whites and Asians”? Um. Are we, and I think Asian here means Asian American, lumped together in a category with whites?

I’m not White.

And my parents would argue I’m not Asian either.

Sometimes words and labels matter because assumptions are going to be made. Asians are not white. Asian Americans are not white. If we were, my answer to “Where are you from?” would never be followed by “No, I mean where are you really from? You know. Like where were you born?”

My prickly response here is to get us thinking, and to remind me to think, critically about the statistics, initiatives and innovations. What are we celebrating here? And how can we appropriately celebrate, re-group, look critically and then respond accordingly?

For example, if we stop too long in amazement over the racial make-up of the congregation we forget that the up front leadership at WC, by and large, according to the article remains white (the article does not mention gender). Where and from whom are the white leaders of churches like WC going to learn about the non-white experience? How will congregations that are 80% white experience multiethnic leadership if they never see it, hear it and submit to it at their own church?

Press “publish”. Holding breath…

Why Don’t We Call Him the Adulterer if the Women are the Mistresses?

Sorry. I’ve jumped on the Tiger Woods gossip-mongering bandwagon. I’m tired of it too, but maybe not exactly in the same way as others are.

Floozies. Dogs. Mistresses. That is how some of the women involved in the scandal have been referred to in the media. Woods, who is alleged to have had more than a dozen affairs during his marriage, is still being referred to as the greatest golfer of all time. Why isn’t he being referred to as the adulterer if the women are the mistresses?

A friend of mine recently posted a note on his facebook about  sports talk host Jim Rome interviewing Charles Barkley. I do not listen to sports radio so I haven’t heard this interview, but this snippet my friend posted is what made me stop in horror (I’ve added the boldface):

Rome challenged his assertions, but Sir Charles never backed away from his points. After he hung up, Rome made the following statements. “I know that Charles is tight with Woods. I get that. But Charles is known on TNT for being a straight talker. I guess I wasn’t that surprised he backed up his good friend. He did say that what he did was wrong. But then he quickly denounced those women as being sinister and the press as being relentless and unfair. But like I said, if you sleep with dogs, expect to get some fleas. Those women kept his emails and text messages all this time because they’re cocktail waitresses and he’s Tiger Woods. Tiger chose that kind of person to hook up with so why is anyone surprised that they’re bankrolling that connection now? Again, if you choose to sleep with dogs, you’re going to get fleas. I disagree with Chuck that the focus should be on how these women are treating Tiger or how the press is treating Tiger. The focus should be on how Tiger treated his wife and children.”

No. The focus should be on how even in this day and age it’s OK to refer to women in such disparaging ways. Dogs? Sinister? Are you kidding me? Yes, the women involved in this slow-motion car wreck have made some very unwise choices, but identifying them based solely on physical features, past sins and sexist stereotypes is used to discredit them. Because really are you going to believe a sinister cocktail waitress over the world’s greatest golfer?

I’ve heard and read some Christians jump on the forgive-Tiger-and-give-him-a-second-chance wagon. Everyone needs second chances and then some. Many Christian commentators have focused on the gossip-mongering angle of the story or about infidelity and its consequences – valid. But let’s make sure as Christians we don’t shy away from addressing the sexist comments and taking on a culture that worships sports figures and then demonizes the women who buy into the idol-worship. Let’s make sure we welcome the floozies, dogs and mistresses, too. Jesus did. He had to. It was part of his story generation after generation from Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and the unnamed woman who had been Uriah’s wife.

We’re a week away from Christmas. Our Savior born to the floozie known as Mary. Forgive us for our double-standards and blindspots.

WWJW or What Would Jesus Wear (if Jesus Was a Tween/Teen Girl)?

A friend’s post about fashion and leggings got me thinking about how my daughter and I are navigating the scary yet vaguely familiar world of teenage fashion.

Life was a lot easier when I could go to just about any store and buy a few things for Bethany, stick them in the closet, and pull them out for her to wear with little to no objections. But I don’t know if it was as fun. Life now means going to the mall or Goodwill together and trying to out-do each other’s best buys.

But starting around age 9 finding “appropriate” clothing and avoiding exposed midriffs and butt crack became priority #1. I remember walking into a tween girls’ clothing store and horrified at their underwear display – bikini and low-rise underwear for tweens. What does a 9-year-old need low-rise underwear for? Apparently to make sure her underwear doesn’t show too much under those cute low-rise jeans. Duh.

Bethany isn’t 9 anymore. She’ll be 14 the day after Christmas. And when she tries on a pair of jeans I ask her to sit down in them before I’ll pay for them. When she tries on a shirt I ask her to raise her hands in the air because I care about whether or not the shirt rides up and shows off the spot where she was once tethered to me for sustenance.

But fashion and appropriateness can feel like a moving target. I don’t have big issue with her wearing a bikini, but I may change my mind on that this summer. I think she looks great in those low-cut skinny jeans, but I don’t want boys or men googling her. I want her to see herself as God (and Peter and I) see her – beautiful inside and out. But I also remember what it’s like to be a teenager, and I’m still the kind of woman who likes to look good in what she wears. And I want her to understand that what she wears isn’t as important as her heart, but that it’s OK to appreciate her physical beauty as well as a fabulous fitting pair of jeans. Clothes don’t make the woman, but we all know that at one point or another we’ve judged another woman for what she was or was not wearing.

See? Moving target.

A few nights ago Peter and I were watching ABC’s Nightline when a segment on tween/teen fashion came up. A national program called Pure Fashion was promoting modest fashion for teens. Pure Fashion’s creator and former Miss Georgia, Brenda Sharman says, “The idea with Pure Fashion is very countercultural.” She goes on to explain that the program is for girls with courage, and that is extends beyond fashion to cover proper behavior and actions for Christian girls who wish to remain virtuous until marriage.

But something about that segment bothered me, and I’m still trying to figure out why. Perhaps it’s knowing what it’s like to be judged based on appearances and not wanting my daughter or her friends to be judged that harshly…or for them to judge others based on their fashion choices. Maybe it’s because I want to believe that what I wear isn’t all that important but I hold in tension the reality that what I choose to wear can communicate messages I intend or don’t intend to communicate. There’s a reason we call the power suit the “power” suit.

So, should we even be asking the question, “What would Jesus wear if he were a tween/teen girl?”? What have you seen in fashion trends that make you cringe? (Why are shoulder pads coming back? At least they cover the shoulders, right?) What are the lines you have drawn for your daughter or for yourselves as you shop and get dressed? (No belly button or butt crack exposure. That goes for both of us. And I refuse to let her shop at a particular store that insists on dimming the lights and assaulting potential customers’ sense of smell and hearing, but we’ve bought a few of those label’s items at rummage sales.)

The Cost of Permanent Vanity

I’m vain. 

I tend to be an emotional and emotive person. I cry. Lots. A mentor once told me that 1.) she had never met anyone who cried as much as I did, and 2.) that my free-flowing tears for my own pain and that of others gave people permission to cry as well.

Which is why I got my tattoos – permanent eyeliner.

Yes, it hurt. A lot. But repetitive needle pokes on my eyelids were nothing compared to childbirth with no pain meds and then nearly bleeding to death. It’s all relative.

But I must say that spending a few hundred dollars to permanently “apply” eyeliner made me wrestle a bit with my own vanity, my values, my theology of makeup if you will. There are enough images in the media to argue away most everything I do in the morning to get ready for the day. Did I really want to permanently attach myself to a standard of beauty?

Buying a trendy piece of clothing is one thing. Buying a bottle of nail polish seems like a much lower level of commitment. Even hair color fades, and now the gray hairs are insisting on equal time as the drugstore box red #660. But a tattoo?

There have been plenty of beauty/vanity missteps. Um. 1988-1995 had several bad perms, cuts, close encounters with hairspray and gel, heavy handed makeup and MIA tweezers. (Seriously, why didn’t anyone tell me?!)

I tend to over-agonize about a lot of things. I have this tiny problem. I want to do the right thing the right way, and my moral compass tries to weigh many things simultaneously. Somehow I was able to make the decision and do it.

I don’t remember how long the tattoos took. The guy was meticulous, making sure the lines were even, the color just right. But immediately after the procedure, which sounded a little like being at the dentist’s office, I would have to describe it by paraphrasing a line out of “Good Hair”: I didn’t feel as beautiful as I thought I would. My eyes were puffy and then scabby. I looked as if I had been crying for days and then covered my eyes in antibacterial ointment.

Fortunately for me, after molting for a week my vanity had paid off.

A friend of mine confessed (and I use that word because that’s what it feels like sometimes when we share our deepest, most vain moments) she was curious about dyeing eyelashes. I’ve known other women who have lighter colored hair mention their addiction to mascara. We all have that one beauty product we’ve sold our souls to. Without it we feel washed out, unkempt, unfinished.

I don’t regret the permanent eyeliner, but it’s definitely a decision that makes me stop and think every day about how God sees me. God meets me everyday in the mirror when I skip the eyeliner and go straight for the lipgloss. Where in your vanity does God  me you?

Softening My Skin in a Mud Bath

My apologies to those who landed here because they were searching for information on skin care.

Zondervan’s decision to remove Deadly Viper Character Assassin and Mike & Jud’s decision to shut down their website is heating up the blogosphere once again. I’m concerned about the way some of these posts and tweets could be read – tone is a difficult thing to express well in the anonymous electronic world. And as many of us have learned during the past three weeks, the blogosphere can run pretty fast and furious. Right now there is a lot of mud being slung in all directions.

But one theme that has appeared in a variety of places has been the call to those who were offended (pick me, pick me) to grow, get, have “thicker skin”. The comment and admonition to get thicker skin is akin to saying “don’t be so sensitive” or “you’re choosing to be offended” – all of the interpretations lend itself to telling the offended person that this is their personal issue they personally have to overcome.

I don’t want thick skin, and I pray against that. Lately it’s been a daily prayer.

Literally speaking, skin is our largest organ providing protection, support and circulation (I helped Corban study for his science test). Healthy skin is able to do those things well. Unhealthy or damaged skin put the rest of the body in danger as sensory and circulatory abilities are hampered.

When I think of thick skin I actually think of dead skin that hasn’t been shed properly. The callous on my toe from those beautiful but painful new shoes. The gnarly cuticles that snag my most delicate sweaters. The tough skin on my elbows from resting on them too much when I have writer’s block. I scrub off the callous. I cut my cuticles (I know, you’re not supposed to do that. You’re supposed to push them back and put lotion on them to soften them.) I exfoliate my elbows. And then a moisturize like crazy to soften the skin so that it’s pliable.

I don’t want thick skin because honestly when I think of thick skin I think of elephants and their thick skin. Elephants are beautiful animals, but I don’t want to look like an elephant.

I don’t want thick skin because I do not believe God wants us to create a bigger barrier to feeling and engaging deeply with God and with one another. Our sinful natures make it tough enough. Adding more to the junk of our souls or covering it up with thicker skin isn’t going to help.

I pray for a tender heart and soft skin so that I can hear what God has to say to me, our community, our world in that pain. When someone offends me, brushing it off doesn’t allow for a sacred moment between me, the offender and God. Thick skin means I just “get over it” and move along. But what if God doesn’t want us to move on so quickly all the time? What if our attempts at getting over it just mean “it” never goes away?

There have been some nasty comments in reaction to the Deadly Viper situation – people assigning motive and intent, name-calling, etc. In some places it’s getting mean. If we all get a thicker skin I’m afraid we’ll never understand each other. And besides, Jesus didn’t tell people to get thicker skin. He didn’t tell the bleeding woman to stop being a victim and get over the social outcast thing.  

Issues of race, ethnicity and gender all involve tough conversations about power and privilege. I don’t like being called names. I don’t like being lumped together and being referred to as the “minority tail wagging the majority dog” (yup, that’s an actual comment on a blog). I don’t like being told to stop playing victim because I made some noise and the authors were the sacrifice (yup, that’s real too). But I suspect people who thought nothing of the initial outcry paid much attention because maybe they never had to. Maybe the anger and disbelief over the book being pulled and the authors shutting down the website has more to do with never having anyone tell them to get over themselves? See, it can get ugly and polarizing real fast. Thick skin will just keep us from going deeper. 

I’m not suggesting an over-the-top emotional response to everything in this world, but when the mud-slinging ramps up like it has our natural instinct is to duck…or throw more. But the mud has to land somewhere right? Maybe instead of ducking I need to sit in the mud a bit, get a little dirty and then let the mud soften my skin.

The Unseen Privileges

In the eight years I worked specifically with Christian Asian American college students, I knew that my gender would get in the way. I was not a pastor – youth, English ministry, college, women’s ministry or otherwise. I was not a seminary student. I wasn’t a pastor’s wife. I was a married women with a child whose husband was not in vocational ministry. I was weird. Colleagues would later call me a trailblazer, but to be honest most days I simply reveled in the complexity of my amazing life while simultaneously crying in frustration over feeling like the only thing being burned was me.

And how do you talk about the unseen privileges my male colleagues, and more specifically my Asian American male colleagues, benefitted from without sounding demanding, whiny or bitter? Believe me, I keep trying even though I’ve been called all of those things. Even yesterday as I was supervising a younger male leader he talked about a local pastor’s gathering he was invited to attend. In all the years I worked at the same campus I was never invited to those meetings.

What that leader is learning is that he has unseen privileges that give him credibility and access. He knows it. He sees it in some of the male students he is mentoring – young men who have told him they don’t connect with me as a speaker – and he and I trust each other enough to say it out loud. It’s not about content or quality of delivery. It’s because I’m a woman, and in the Asian American context we still have some internal conversations that need to be had about cultural patriarchy and how some cultural values are so deeply rooted that it will take time, prayer, faith and pain to work through them. 

Over the years I’ve had to learn what it means to lead out of influence, to have a voice in the conversation even when I am not at the table. I’m still learning, which is why this controversy over Deadly Viper Character Assassin is affecting me so deeply. I have been physically at the table in conversations with the authors and publishing executives, but I am struggling in what feels like an unfair choice but perhaps prudent choice. I’m just not sure.

I’m having a tough time shaking the gender piece of this curriculum that hijacks and then stereotypes Asian culture while creating a false dichotomy between the feminine and masculine and describes strength, integrity and leadership in hyper-masculine terms. If my culture is nothing more than a decorative background and kung fu fighting illustration then I am reduced to a stereotype. And if my gender and things that are girly are equated with weakness then I am silenced. Twice.

I’m not making this stuff up. Really. Thanks to logicandimagination I did a little hunting and found an online preview of the book. (On a side note, I’m hoping to get out this afternoon and visit the local Christian bookstore to look through a copy of the book. I can’t bring myself money to pay for a copy, but the credibility of my critique of the theme – based on the website, dvd previews, blog and online book preview – is being questioned because I haven’t read the actual book.) 

“And then there’s little old us looking like school girls with plaid skirts on, because we are unskilled and undisciplined in the area of character. We’re weaklings with rail skinny arms and toothpick legs.” DV, page 11, 

“So we are asking you to make a choice and a decision right now. We are asking you to go balls out with us and become warriors, fighters, and black belts in the art of integrity. For some, this might be painful. For others, this will simply validate your leadership choices and good decisions. This is the grand master challenge to conquer yourself. We want to party with Master Po! We are warriors in the making.” p. 21

School girls with plaid skirts? Really? And how the *bleep* am I supposed “to go balls out”? Yeah, that’s going to be painful if not impossible. I don’t have balls, thank you very much. What is that even supposed to mean? I asked my husband because he has balls, and he couldn’t believe his eyes. We both agreed. If any of our kids used that phrase they would know immediately that Mom and Dad were not validating their leadership choices and that using the phrase was not a good decision.

My husband acknowledges that he can choose. If he chooses to engage in the gender piece of the conversation and controversy he will be viewed as an advocate. He can choose to acknowledge that the denigration of women and Asian Americans is unjust, but the impact of the former is a few degrees removed for him – even as he can sympathize as a son of a woman, husband of a woman, father of a young woman. His unseen privilege is that he does not lose credibility even if he chooses.

How will my credibility be affected if I chose to ignore blatant sexism in order to speak into issues of race and ethnicity? How will my credibility be affected if I chose to ignore blatant racism in order to speak into issues of sexism?

I haven’t given up hope that there are ways to embrace the complexity and dive into it more deeply. I’m convinced that the more complex conversations will take longer and be more painful, but they have the potential to lead us to a deeper, integrated and holistic understanding of what it means to be created in God’s image. I’m just not sure if I’m too angry or not angry enough to see where a conversation like this could lead.

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