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Jeremiah Pat likes to sit between Carmen Pat and me when we read books. He will listen while I read and then grab the book away from me and give it to Carmen after a few pages 🤣. He loves his reading time and wants to share the moment with both of us. I get sad when we read like this because it reminds me that I didn’t have times like this with my parents. When my parents came to the US in their 20s, they struggled a lot to get their restaurant started and I was sent to China to live with my grandparents after I was born. I cry a lot as a parent. This has been an amazing year but everything hurts so much deeper now. I can’t see hurting families the same way. When I hear stories of lonely kids, I think a lot about Jeremiah. I’ll never get over the pain of my childhood but I found hope because I came to know my heavenly father. I pray a lot now, I hope every lonely kid can know their heavenly father when they read the book that God has given all his children.
I want Jeremiah to know God’s love. That starts with me. I want him to know my love for him as a father. I will read him stories from the Bible about how God loves his children and I want those stories to be believable because of what he experiences everyday. I hope my love for him does not depend on him being good, I want him to feel loved no matter what he does. I know that Jeremiah will upset me and do wrong things but I don’t want him to feel that my love is diminished because of it. My love does not depend on him doing the right things. One day I hope that he will believe that Jesus Christ came to save sinners because he loves us. I hope he will believe that.
I’m going to be leading a team this winter to serve our friends who grew up in the orphanage and now have families of their own 😍🔥🙏. This is something I dreamed about when I first started this work over 10 years ago. I’ve seen the statistics of what happens to abandoned children but God has truly blessed those who we have worked with. Now the challenge is helping them grow as parents when they’ve never known their own mom and dad. Some of the orphans have actually been parents for a couple of years now but I never felt comfortable teaching any workshops until I became a parent myself. I’ve been asking my partners, like Cari Furr and Mark Torvinen , to pray for me. This trip is going to be hard because preparing to teach about families is going to bring up a lot of my own fears about being a good dad. I don’t want to parent shame (if you read parenting blogs, you know what I’m talking about). I don’t want to go in with just a list of how they can be better parents. This winter, I want to have hard conversations about the difficulties of adoption. I want to have hard conversations about what it means to adapt to different disabilities. I might not be the best person to talk about the wide range of parenting hardships but I’m praying that God will use me to bring grace and healing. There’s been a lot of hurt in the Chinese church around the difficulties of families. It’s time for us to experience renewal.
I went to seminary because I’m insecure. Getting my master’s degree added to the student debt load I had from UCSD but going into professional ministry was terrifying. The only qualifications I had for ministry were a few years of leading short term teams to Shanghai and being a Bible study leader. I wanted to work with pastors and missionaries but I didn’t want them to make fun of me. At 21 years old, I already got strange looks whenever I sat in meetings with people who were twice my age. I was desperate to feel like I belonged. Insecurity feels like falling and I was desperately trying to find anything that would make me feel adequate. Getting a piece of paper from Bethel Seminary seemed like it would do the trick. I don’t regret the education that I got and I really appreciated the professors but I wonder what would have been different if I lived my life with faith first. I’ve been in ministry for 15 years now and I still struggle with insecurity. It’s made worse because I can’t hide my feelings through more accomplishments or education. I don’t think I can achieve my way out of this feeling. When I read the Bible, it sticks out to me that Jesus called fishermen to teach religious scholars. That’s the kind of courage and calling that I want. In my next 15 years, I am asking God to shape my career with faith. I can accept that some people are always going to think that I’m not qualified and over my head. My insecurity is still with me but I’m going to imagine myself falling into God’s grace.
“As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;” ‭‭Psalm‬ ‭103:13‬

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