Tag Archives: escape

Coming Home

Posted on by under Guest, Home & Place

I had just been through a broken world experience and was now living in a broken world on account of inappropriate affection that led me away from God and into sin. A father of three, a plastic surgeon by profession, a founder of a major Christian movement in the Asia Pacific region and here was I, trying to put together the pieces to do a ‘make-over’—one that would look real from the outside even if it was still broken on the inside.

I am reminded of the words written by another doctor called Luke who gives a detailed account of the happenings the past nine months must have been for the mother of Jesus of Nazareth when he wrote after the visit of the shepherds in a town called Bethlehem, “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart”.

As each day passes and the year draws to an end, I ponder in my heart what were ‘all these things’ that happened this year that I can treasure and the rest discard. To be honest, I will not discard anything because every ‘thing’ that took place in my life was of my own doing. Some people are good at burying past events but I can never seem to do that. In my field of practice, I deal with scars all the time. Scars do not disappear but only fade with time. They will always be there. But as I recall all that has happened to me, good and bad, right and wrong, I realize that they have been ‘coming home’ happenings that have led me to seek out the plague in my own heart and with folded hands turn to God for mercy and forgiveness.

The Scriptures remind us that God is faithful and will, with the temptation, also make a way to escape, that we may be able to bear it.

Able to Bear It? As a father, as a spouse, as a doctor, as a friend to another, the ability to bear all the scars inflicted this year can be difficult. When patients seek advice for scars, I show them scar tapes, scar creams, lasers, scar gels and the list goes on but as I treasure up all these things and ponder them in my own heart, I know one place where the scars seem to just somewhat ‘disappear’ and that is at Calvary, at the foot of the cross of Jesus of Nazareth. What God does not protect us from, He will perfect us through – Robert C. Frost

In a few days my second son, David, will be coming home for Christmas. Will my three children ever know what this year has been for their daddy? Will I know what the year has been for each of them as their father? But this I do know that we have a Righteous Father in heaven who knows what ‘Coming Home’ means when His own Son returned from Calvary in glory.

As I gather my three children together this Christmas, I have only one message for each of them: Coming Home for Christmas can only bring the fullest of glory to God when we see Bethlehem in the light of the ‘Old Rugged Cross’ at Calvary. Only then can we experience the full meaning of what it is to come home from a broken world and into a world of peace, love and joy where theCharles walking out of Mulu Caves, Sarawak, Malaysia Spirit of God reigns eternal.

It is like walking out of a cave enveloped in darkness and into the dawn of the light of life. Truly a ‘Coming Home’ experience that is deeply engraved in the labyrinth of the soul.

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Dr Charles Lee“Coming Home” was written by Charles Lee. Charles, who lives in Sabah, Malaysia, is a husband, a father, a plastic surgeon and founder of a Christian Discipleship movement called APCOD. He spends most of his time in the operating theatre, playing the guitar or cycling. He blogs at Awaken the Dawn.

 

Where I Came From: Lost in a Small Town

Posted on by under Welcome to You Are Here

I can drive, with moderate success, in most major American cities.

The D.C. beltway? No problem. I even go the right direction, most of the time. Los Angeles to Ventura on the 101? Done it with (extra points!) a puking child in the backseat. Chicago? Boston? Philadelphia? Check, check, check, though I always wonder why the Philly drivers are so mean.

However.

There is one city, one very small city, in which I consistently drive the wrong way down one-way streets, miss stop signs, and drive slower than the speed limit, trying to find my way. And that would be:

Butler, Pennsylvania. Population 13.757.butler

My hometown.

I noticed this strange phenomenon a few years ago. One day, after driving the wrong way on a street near my former elementary school, I pulled over, berating myself and thanking God that no one had been coming the other way. How could I be so lost in a place that was so familiar? And that’s when I realized my problem.

I knew how to walk these streets, not drive them.

You see, I was one of those people who wanted one thing from adulthood: to get out of my hometown . It was too small. Too ingrown. Too boring. And so, as soon as I could, I left. In my small gold Nissan I began racking up the miles. College was a three hour drive. North Carolina, where I worked one summer, was nine hours.  I did not drive to Northern England, but I lived there for a year, wearing out my EuroRail pass along with my big green backpack.

After college I surprised myself by returning to Western Pennsylvania, but it was Pittsburgh, not Butler, where I found my first job and my first post-college apartment. Pittsburgh is only an hour drive from Butler, but it seems much further. There are ethnic restaurants other than the americanized chinese buffet, people who aren’t white, and community events that don’t involve gun raffles or high school sports teams.

I’ve been in Pittsburgh for fifteen years now, and it can be easy to roll my eyes at my hometown.

But that wouldn’t be fair.

That day in the car, when I realized that I knew how to walk but not drive in my hometown, I also realized that I have never lived as a grown-up in Butler, Pennsylvania. Could it be that my experience there seems limited because I was, um, ten? Could it be that I still feel ambivalent and awkward because my culminating experience was in high school? These were not my easiest years.

And what is beginning to open up in me is not a desire to return to my hometown (no, I like my Indian food too much), but a sense of grace and openness to a place that was once too familiar. I can take my kids to the Butler Farm Show. I can enjoy local marching bands at the Christmas parade, send my husband to hunting camp, and read the local newspaper without mocking it (much).

Because when it comes down to it, I just don’t have as much to prove as when I was fifteen.

high school photo

And I don’t use nearly as much hairspray either.

Where I Am: Under a Dallas Sky

Posted on by under Welcome to You Are Here

The slight fall of morning light slipping through the cracks of my window wakes me from my restless sleep to the crude demands of the morning. I roll out of bed into the shame of being unprepared: my clothes are not laid out, which means I will wake my roommate as I dig blindly through my very wrinkled dress shirts, my lunch is not made so once again I will go lunch-less, and I have a pile of ungraded math homework still waiting for me when I arrive at school. While I go about my early morning routine, all of these shames cluster in the blackness below my waking mind.

I enter the kitchen of my ancient apartment and hurriedly turn on the lights. My eyes dance from the floor to the refrigerator hoping to avoid catching a glimpse of the inevitable running of the roaches occurring below me as they scurry from the presence of light as if their very lives were deemed too sinister for life in the light. In the refrigerator, I find the needed caffeine rush in the form of canned bubbling chemicals. Desperately trying to escape considering anything above the automatic, I dress, brush my teeth, and hurry to my car in a matter of ten minutes.

“Get me out of this morning and on to bigger things” is all I can muster in a hurried prayer as I begin driving.

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The car ride to where I work in West Dallas as an 8th grade math and science teacher carries me across several layers of Dallas. When I was growing up in North Dallas, I never made this drive, nor did I know anything about the totally different cultures of South and West Dallas, much less the many surrounding suburbs which make up what we simply call the Metroplex. My total lack of knowledge about the city I have called home for over twenty years struck me last year when I was on jury duty with a large group of South Dallas residents. Their conversations about local politics, churches, and socio-economic problems were so foreign and curious to me. Their concerns and perspectives were utterly different than what I was used to hearing in North Dallas, and I had never seen many of the places they referenced.

Beyond simply being geographically fragmented, Dallas has no discernible cohesive culture. The only thing everyone seems to agree on is an affinity for football and a hatred of Jerry Jones. Dallas’ cultural conglomeration is like a kid’s stick glued art project all jaggedly matched together and glittered with silver and blue sparkles. Dallas imports and slaps together all kinds of cultures stolen from other places like Austin’s hipster vibe, LA’s glam and glitz, the Deep South’s style and sense of class, and the cowboy swagger of West Texas with brief cases replacing the revolver in Dallas. None of it seems to be authentic, and if you went looking for Dallas’ soul, you would get lost somewhere between the Northpark Mall, Fair Park, and the Bishop Arts District.

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As I drive, I go under the North Dallas Tollway, by the Salvation Army on old Harry Hines, and finally under I35, the great heartland highway which splits Texas into two discernable halves, before I reach the one unpopulated portion of my drive over the Trinity River and its surrounding flood plains.

When I cross the bridge just northwest of downtown Dallas, I look back to my left to catch the sunrise from the southeast behind the Dallas skyline. This morning the river is shrouded in a snake of smoky fog clinging to the water and walled by big pecan trees. The skyline is tinged in amber by the sun rising directly behind it, and above it all, the Dallas sky, which is bigger, wider, and higher than even the “everything is bigger in Texas” slogan lets on, is shaded orange, purple, and blue. When I arrive at school just on the other side of the bridge, I get out of the car and turn once again to face the amber beauty of this Texas sunrise. I give thanks for the sky, and as my mind stills and relinquishes some of its shame and anxiety in this moment of delight and thanksgiving, I am reminded of a prayer I wrote two years ago when I first started teaching:

Draw me to the present, the work of today

I repent of rejecting the meager means

Help me to embrace these trickles of You

 

Here, under the Dallas sky which I have seen lit up in a thousand different ways over 21 of my 27 years, I live.

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