Heavenly Minded Earthly Good

Anita Wing Lee 00:04
It was just like any other cozy autumn evening. The days were cool and I was used to bundling up in knits every morning and wearing my fuzzy boots to work. There was nothing particularly wrong with my life. As I drove on the 401, to the church office, most days of the week, I'd look around the highway and tell myself, all of these people are doing less spending their days sitting in smog, under fluorescent lights, caffeinated. I didn't want to spend my life like this. But apparently the other 3 million people in Toronto were okay with this. By now, I've been working at the church for almost two years, which for me, was a record. I had shown up to the exact same location for 48 weeks of the year. Maybe I should be proud of myself. I could tell I was growing, learning how to work in a creative team.

Anita Wing Lee 01:00
But a little voice in me wondered, Am I losing myself? Who is Anita? If she's not this free, spirited, brave, bold, adventurous, traveling filmmaker? Well, she's currently a church staff employee, making so little money, and also a Master's of divinity student and she drives to an office, who cares. The program at Tyndale gave me some variety to my week, because I had class every single Wednesday, but I try not to think about who I was too much and just make peace with the life I was living now. But I couldn't always keep the voices away. On this particular autumn evening, I was just kind of bored.

Anita Wing Lee 01:54
Now that I was more settled into my work in Toronto, I had some extra bandwidth, a little extra creative energy that I wanted to do something with. What would happen if I emailed that place in Jamaica? A lady had invited me to her retreat center in Jamaica to make videos about a year ago. She'd message shortly after I started the job at the church. And it was clear to me that I wasn't about to hop on a plane and go live the life that God had stopped. Could I come to Jamaica during my winter break? I wrote in my email. Yes, she replied back. Yes. Let's go.

Anita Wing Lee 02:39
Tyndale University presents Heavenly Minded Earthly Good. Deconstruction is the word commonly used for the process of critically dissecting your Christian beliefs.

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 02:50
For some in the church deconstruction is kind of the new bad word backsliding or apostasy or heresy.

Anita Wing Lee 02:58
Churches tend to assume that deconstruction is an intellectual issue. But it's intertwined with all these other layers of what makes us human.

Dr. Helen Noh 03:06
What makes up a person is things like their cognitive layers, right? Their emotional layers, their behavioral layers and their relational layers.

Anita Wing Lee 03:15
And this podcast follows my personal journey through deconstruction. Along the way, we're going to chat with professors, pastors, psychologists, researchers, historians and artists.

Tara Jean Stevens 03:27
But I was still really struggling with the fact that if I was wrong, I might be going to hell.

Anita Wing Lee 03:35
We'll explore the questions so many of us have about Christianity. The stuff you probably didn't feel comfortable bringing up on Sunday at youth group or small group. I'm your host and guide for this journey, and Anita Wing Lee.

Anita Wing Lee 03:52
I arrived at the retreat center in Jamaica in December 2019. At night, a security guard checked me in and I could hear the sound of crickets and ocean waves from my open window. I was about to spend the next 10 days getting to shoot beautiful footage, eat gourmet vegan food, and go on adventures around the island. The following morning, I walk into the common room waiting for the owner to meet me. An older lady, a guest walks in headed for the cups of lemon water setup for guests. She introduces herself to me as a writer. And she says this with such confidence that I'm secretly glad that I didn't tell her that I'm a writer. I mean, I had started to blog again. But clearly this lady was a real writer. Over the coming days, I found out that she was a well known American author. She'd written over a dozen books, some of them New York Times bestsellers, and some had even been made into movies. We got talking and I told her that I was at the retreat center to make marketing and promotional audios, and over a breakfast of starfruit bananas, mangoes and papaya. A miracle happened.

Anita Wing Lee 05:10
This author told me that she runs writing retreats in Guatemala. And she asked me if I wanted to come and make videos for her in Guatemala in March. Are you kidding me? Yes. This must be God. I had made it to Jamaica and God hadn't closed the door. And now he even brought me someone and lined up a another filmmaking gig for me. So on December 25 2019, Christmas Day, we drew up a makeshift contract on a pad of yellow legal paper. She wrote all the things that she would provide and all the things that I would provide. And we signed our homemade contract. Not only was I getting a trip to Guatemala, which allowed me to add another country to the list of countries I've visited. I'd also get to do something I loved, make videos. I couldn't have asked God for a better Christmas gift. It seemed like he was opening doors for me to live the life that I loved.

Anita Wing Lee 06:20
Three months later, in March 2020, there was news of a virus spreading around the world. And my mom was concerned about my upcoming trip because she'd been following news of it in China and Hong Kong, or whatever. I wasn't about to let anything stop me from getting to Guatemala. I needed this trip. And I was certain that it was from God. I landed in Guatemala City. And just 48 hours later, all the international airports in Guatemala shut down to stop the spread of COVID 19. I didn't care. I had made it here. Together with a dozen or so women who had come for this writing retreat, we headed for Lake Atitlan. This lake is like a scene right out of a fairy tale. It's surrounded by volcanoes, and you have to drive up and down through hills to get to it. It started with little villages all around different shores. And you can take public boats across the lake to get to different towns. The American author had a big multi level house in San Marcos. It was a Central American paradise. She built it over the last 20 years, piece by piece, hiring local workers to build it for her and take care of it. It was full of luscious gardens and decorated with colorful rugs, pillows and blankets with floor to ceiling windows in every room so you couldn't miss the view of the lake and the volcanoes. This was exactly what I loved about travel that I didn't have home in Toronto. I loved seeing spaces filled with culture, art and the flavors of different countries.

Anita Wing Lee 08:15
Over the next few days, tensions were high. Everyone was scrolling their phone constantly to keep up with the news about Coronavirus. Some of the attendees flew right back to America as soon as they could, because they had families and little ones and couldn't afford to be locked down and Guatemala for weeks or months. I was one of four younger women at this writing workshop. We didn't have kids. And as far as I could tell, maybe God was helping me to extend my travels.

Anita Wing Lee 08:51
In between these conversations about this Coronavirus, and meals cooked by local woman with fresh tortillas and guacamole. The author still held her writing workshops, trying to teach us how to dissect a piece of writing and make it more impactful. tell the reader what it looks like. Don't describe an emotion. Use action words. Tell us the scenes write about your obsession. I drank in all of her writing advice. Maybe one day I would get to write a book and be a published author. And all of those dreams of recognition, validation and acknowledgement. Maybe they would come true. Maybe one day I would get to know that my story was worth something in the world.

Anita Wing Lee 09:45
Tensions got higher and higher. Every evening we would sit in a circle and debrief. How is everyone doing? How's your family? What are you feeling? And maybe we'd read some poetry of the author Her herself was quite the traveler. And in her words, Bohemian, she split her time between America, her place and Guatemala and book tours around the world. In our evening huggle on this night, she talked about how this was a special opportunity. How often do you find aid women, bold and brave enough to come to Guatemala, stuck in a colorful, gorgeous villa, during the middle of a global pandemic, she started to throw around the idea of, you know, this could be an amazing story. And Anita, maybe you could create a whole documentary about this. You know, you've got your camera anyway. What if you made a 30 to 40 minute documentary about this unique story. And she could pitch it to the New York Times. The New York Times. She told me, I've got connections to the New York Times. And maybe this story could go on its Youtube channel and be seen by millions of people. This sounded so good, so enticing, I could finally be famous and recognized for my talent. But something felt wrong. If this got picked up by the New York Times, I'd be able to say for the rest of my life that I was featured in The New York Times have the ultimate badge of honor. But at what cost? It was clear to me that putting together a documentary of that quality was a huge undertaking, I could see that it would cost me a lot of time and energy.

Anita Wing Lee 12:04
There was no way I could do this right now, with the amount of work and schoolwork I had to do back in Toronto. And what was this really for? What am I doing this for? In that moment, sitting in that circle with the other women, I saw what I was doing to myself, I seem to always fill the spaces of my life with more work. I called it creativity, passion. But really, it was a willingness to work harder, shine brighter, make it happen faster, and prove myself above and beyond other people. So that I could be known and loved.

Anita Wing Lee 12:55
Three weeks later, I was back in Toronto. I decided to get on a repatriation flight organized by the Canadian government to get Canadians from Guatemala, back to Canada. With the pandemic, the church had gone to remote work. And everyone who knew how to do something with digital content was on high alert, including me. I got slammed when I went to Guatemala I hadn't thought this through. But now I was in the middle of an Old Testament theology course. I had tons of work to do for the church. And I was supposed to edit the promotional video for the author. Even though I wasn't doing the 30 minute documentary for the New York Times, I still had to edit together the promo videos I promised her. It felt like I was spending every waking moment in front of a screen trying to accomplish something for someone. I can't do this.F

Anita Wing Lee 13:53
Frustrated and overwhelmed, I set up a call with the director of my Church in the City program at Tyndale, Jesse Sudirgo. Out of all the things I had to do, this master's of divinity seemed like the most useless thing. And I needed to talk this through with him. I caught up with Jesse recently and asked him about this conversation. What did you think when I came to you asking if I should stay? Do you remember this conversation?

Jesse Sudirgo 14:23
Yeah, I remember you coming with a lot of hesitation. And I felt like oh, I think she's, she's gonna drop out of the program. That's the feeling I had, in particular because I felt like it just didn't connect. It wasn't connecting necessarily with what was pragmatic for you to do at the time. When you call me and we were in that Zoom call, in my head, I had a sense from you that you were in a way so scattered and fragmented in what you were wanting to do. And I felt like you know, your narrative actually coming into the program was coming from in a way all over. You were the definition of that digital nomad who was going around, and kind of the picture of post modernity in my mind, of fragmentation and just kind of going in different places and not having a sense of grounding.

Anita Wing Lee 15:15
The first thing I noticed was that Jesse wasn't trying to convince me to stay in the program, I thought he would be concerned about this, he'd actually just taken over the program from his predecessor, the person who created it. And my cohort was the first group that he was leading through, I thought it would look bad on him if I left. But he didn't seem concerned about it. I felt like Jessie trusted me to make the best decision for myself, to listen to the voices in my head and my heart, listen for God. I knew that if I dropped out of the program, I might disappoint my parents, the church. But I felt like at least someone Jesse was looking out for me. And this meant a lot to me.

Jesse Sudirgo 16:06
Yeah, I don't, I don't think especially at this master's level kind of program, if someone who wants to be there, and if we work with a lot of adult learners, you know, people who are motivated to go into it, and I was not interested at all and having people who are in the program who are not necessarily desiring to be there. And so for me, it's a, it's like a, I got I got no qualms with it, I don't, I don't need to defend the program in a way to be able to get people attracted to it. But this is what it is. And this is, this is why I think it's perhaps good for people to to work through it, especially with it those limited boundaries. And so that's what kind of, you know, in my mind, I was just thinking, you know, she wants it great. If not, then let's try to find another path for her to nail or in any other way. Because I, I feel like the philosophy of ministry with whatever it is, whether I'm a pastor at a church, whether I'm in a seminary or whatnot, is it you have to have open hands. And I don't like treating people as if they are a pawn to some, you know, to some big scheme that we have for them. Because I've experienced that in the past where I felt like I was used in a certain way for a particular agenda and goal. So I think in school, or whether it's in ministry, it's like when you lead, you have to lead with a desiring for the good as the person, and people can feel it, if it's for that, or whether it's for your own agenda.

Anita Wing Lee 17:30
Jesse was also in the process of completing his PhD, which is a lot more work than a master's. And I knew he could relate with me. He was used to working, moving systems, building processes, interacting with people, and not just sitting with some fat books trying to unpack ideas in essays, I asked him, Why are you studying? I knew that he found it just as hard, even harder, and it sometimes felt futile. He told me how he realized he needed a sense of home and an identity.

Jesse Sudirgo 18:04
So I had some kind of connection between what you're going through and what I was sensing in my vocational kind of journey as well in the past, where I felt like I was trying on different things. And I was not necessarily grounded in a sense of place. And a sense of home is as I was like engaging different things in ministry based out of a suspended Jessie that was never kind of placed. Like when someone was talking to me, I was a kind of a chameleon always engaging them wherever they were at, but no one really knew where I was at. And when you were talking, it kind of made me remind myself of myself, and I saw it in even more, more with you because of everywhere that you're going. Well, for me in in my ministry journey, I was someone who didn't save some were very long. You know, I kind of went from one place to another, because I thought like, you know, the idea of post modernity or deconstruction is that every every place I would be in I would deconstruct it, and then I would say, Okay, there's the fault in where I am. And, and, and I've always found the, I always critique myself in every kind of, you know, zone I was in or any kind of emphasis I was in I would deconstruct it, and I would move to the next one because I could always find something wrong with it with any kind of ministry trajectory.

Jesse Sudirgo 19:24
And so what that ended up producing and me and my journey like from youth ministry, to quitting that youth ministry job and just spending time with people who are completely you know, far from the church and being able to relate with them and doing ministry with them to going to Boston and doing a church plant and from Boston church plant going to Toronto doing Urban Ministry with the with the street-involved youth to going to seminary, I felt like I had I was going and moving and developing my own personal narrative. But first of all, I wasn't journeying with a same group of people for a long period of time I would I'll be moving from those. And I felt like, I felt like I had no sense of grounding. I had no sense of cohesion in my own sense of community.

Jesse Sudirgo 20:10
And I was in this class in, in in U of T [Toronto], taking one of these classes called Beyond homelessness. It's and it just kind of struck me in this one text said that, you know, you need to feel a sense of hope, here on Earth. In my mind, I was like, No, I need to, I need to heaven is my home, you know, heavens, my home, everything else is a tent here. You know, I should, I should treat my life as nothing like my, my life is dead, and I am alive in Christ. So my heaven is home. So in the meantime, I can't be too comfortable anywhere I am. And what that ended up meaning is that, like, I didn't feel settled anywhere. And so when I engaged in ministry, I was engaging with people as if I have no place, and people were engaging me as if I was just a chameleon to wherever they were. And that was difficult, you know, and, and my family was growing at that time. And I felt like, you know, I really need to have an identity. Here on this world.

Anita Wing Lee 21:14
Jesse also talked about the importance of boundaries, and how they could be a good thing, especially if you're used to working without boundaries. By the way, in this particular clip, you'll hear a bit of background noise from the room.

Jesse Sudirgo 21:28
And some something in me was sensing that there was a need for boundaries, like I need for you to be in a bounded set for a season. So that you can know how to be creative within a narrow scope rather than in a in a wider scope. Because I felt like there was one point I do remember mentioning, and that like creativity comes out differently when you're when you're, when you're giving given some boundaries, and given something that's more limited. In a way, it's kind of overwhelming. It's kind of it's too far fetched, It's too, too far reaching, if you have no boundaries, and you can go anywhere you want creativity thins out. And in my mind that even though the Mdiv program is quite restrictive, you know, you're in Old Testament probably, you know, when you're when you're learning at that time, and so you're thinking how is Old Testament going to be relating to all these different things, but in a way it forces you to create, it forces you to think within a bounded set, which was different.

Anita Wing Lee 22:27
As Jesse talked about his own need for home. And for boundaries, I saw myself, I often got overwhelmed by my own creative ideas, just like the situation I was in. So it made sense. I didn't know if the way I was living was better or worse. I didn't mind not having a home. I also didn't know how to not be a digital nomad. I didn't know how to have home. I felt most at home anywhere. So why shouldn't I keep making my home everywhere. If I was so used to moving around and shifting identities, maybe there was something healthy, about staying in one place. As I thought through my options, I was also hyper aware of another aspect of myself that needed to grow. I was about to turn 30. And with it meant I had a whole new decade of my life.

Anita Wing Lee 23:33
I started reflecting on the ways that I lived in my 20s, yhinking about what worked, what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to let go of. While there are parts of Anita in her 20s that I wanted to keep. There were also other parts I knew I wanted to let go of and grow out of. When I look back at my travel, I just have one regret. And it's that I didn't travel slower. I was always such in a rush. Five weeks in Portugal and off I went two weeks in Spain, three months in Hawaii, always on to the next thing. Why didn't I slow down?

Anita Wing Lee 24:15
If I knew that God was going to bring it all to an end one day, it wouldn't have hurt to slow down a bit and enjoy myself. So if the point was to learn to slow down, and this chapter in the city, as I started to call my life in Toronto, the season in the city was forcing me to slow down and see what happens to my life when I stay. And I knew that's not a bad thing. While running and being able to make decisions quickly can seem like a gift. It can also just be an old escape pattern. And so this master's of divinity was forcing me to look at a much longer time horizon than I wanted. The Church and the City Program is designed to take four years.

Anita Wing Lee 25:03
So while I had plenty of reasons to leave the program, number one, it wasn't even useful for me to the courses were hard and just seemed like a waste of time. Three Doors were now opening for me to travel, at least that's what it looked like. And I enjoyed being a traveling content creator way more than my office church job. I couldn't deny that there were also a few compelling reasons for me to stay in my program. Staying in this program with its boundaries would force me to stay in Toronto force me to slow down and none of that is a bad thing. It could even be good for me. Yes, I had to stick within the boundaries of writing academic papers. I didn't like doing that. But at least I could do it. And the way dressing you talked about identity, and shifting identities, I got it. That's exactly what I used to do. And in fact, I even projected all of it online. I tried to solve my identity crisis by creating literally creating, and need knowingly that existed online. And I would fuss and obsess about what to call myself, what do I write in my Instagram bio, I was kind of tired of having to create my own identity. Plus, Montenegro had been God's way of telling me, you're messed up in Anita, all of the stuff you're doing to create your identity isn't working, it doesn't satisfy this really broken part in your soul.

Anita Wing Lee 26:41
But there was one reason above all of these that sealed the deal. In that Zoom call, while I was explaining to Jesse, my struggle with this program, and wrestling through whether or not I should stay, I held up my hands to explain the two paths I could take. On one hand, and I held up my left hand towards the screen, there was the route that I had taken so far in life. It came with travel, making my own way, creating content, as freely and often as I wanted. Being an entrepreneur, that way of life represented my old way, before Montenegro, and the life that I had just gotten a taste of, when I was in Jamaica and Guatemala. This was how Anita in her 20s lived. And it was cool. I got praised on social media about it. It fit with a lifestyle and an image that I wanted. It didn't want to be boring, Anita in an office, I wanted to be exceptional. Extraordinary. On the other hand, and I held up my other hand to the screen in front of me to show Jesse, there was this new life, what looked like a boring life to me. There was my office job projects of the church, that we're starting to feel old at this point, the predictability of doing this program. But this life, one that I wouldn't have chosen on my own, appear to be the thing that God had chosen for me. I mean, it was a job at a church. And I was studying in a Christian seminary. So I think God is in it. And I just didn't really get the sense that God was in my old way of life. God wasn't telling me go and live like you did in your 20s, Anita.

Anita Wing Lee 28:41
It felt more like God was saying, why don't you follow me in this new route, to take the path represented in my right hand, and keep working at this church and keep doing this program? It required more. What's the word? Faith. faith. Faith that God had me here for a reason, faith that there was something good on the other side of this. He just had this inexplicable hunch that there was something better on the other side of this.

Anita Wing Lee 29:20
And as I spoke to Jesse, I looked at my own hands in front of me, palms open and turned upwards. Like I was holding both of these paths lightly and giving them up. They represented two paths I could take and that was it. That story of Jesus being in the wilderness and being tempted by the devil, am I being tempted? Who exactly is that other voice that's telling me, You should go back and live your own life? Isn't it sexy? Isn't it cool? Isn't it fun? That old life though was full of indulgences and pleasures?

Anita Wing Lee 30:07
And if there's a voice telling me to go the path of indulgence and pleasure, then who is this other voice? That's telling me to stay in Toronto? I've got two hands. And each hand represents a path. And there's clearly two voices inside me or outside me advocating for two different routes, and who exactly and speaking to me, they can't both be the voice of God. So which one was God? And if one was God, then the other one must be the devil. Or as they say, the enemy? Oh, my.

Anita Wing Lee 30:52
So as I felt this impulse to not do the program, was I fighting God? Or was the devil fighting God for my mind, space and my soul? I stared at my two hands in Jesse's face in the Zoom call on my laptop screen. I knew it. I was being tempted, like the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness, to appease his physical desires, show his power and ability and have influence. This is what I'm really fighting against. This wasn't about travel or stay in Toronto. This was about Will I listen to end worship God, or will I listen to and worship this other voice that tempts me to worship myself.

Anita Wing Lee 31:42
I had been worshipping this idol of success. I had really spent a years trying to build a tower of Babel for myself, and Anita Wing Lee. Everything that was online was like me, trying to paper mashe a version of myself that would be loved and adored. Every blog post every photo, every video, I basically constructed my own golden calf. So all that talk about idols in the Bible. For the first time ever, I got it. I had made an idol of success. I lived in a world that made an idol of success. So that was easy. But that's not an excuse. Idol really is the word. American Idol. Looking at my two hands, I wasn't going to worship at the altar of my idols anymore. And that just left one option that was going to take the route, that God seemed to be pointing me in the path that required more faith, because I didn't know what would happen. I would stay in Toronto, and I would do this masters of divinity thing. And so I asked Jesse, what do I do? What do I do to stop worshiping at the idol of success?

Jesse Sudirgo 33:23
So I think faithfulness, faithfulness in the small things has been largely overlooked. Just think about, you know, Jesus with a woman at the well. And I think about that moment, and how he's zones in, he gazes, he, he remains, not distracted by all the things around, but that he can really be present in the moment is a discipline that we really need to know how to do, and be being present. And being faithful with what is right in front of us, without any sense of like, using it for another purpose, like using it as a means for an ends. But really actually being there, I think is part of the gospel type of antidote to a lot of this, like we're where do we are now training our culture to look like through steps ahead. And to always see like something having a utilitarian value to it, rather than simply the person itself. So I think there's something there about faithfulness, that would be an important thing for us to grab hold of.

Anita Wing Lee 34:30
The adventurer in me, the part that was always looking for something new, I recognized that this life I lived right now was my adventure. It was an adventure of following God. It didn't know what was on the other side of this on the other side of this job or this program. But Jamaica and Guatemala had shown me that God can turn the tables at the flip of a hat when he wants. And so I was here. A part of me wants to say I was stuck here. But no, I'm just here. And I was going to walk all the way to the end of this route. It might not seem as exciting but I had peace about it. And for once in my life I was about to choose peace over excitement

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 35:41
Recording as well here. All right, starting the timer.

Anita Wing Lee 35:45
Yep.

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 35:46
All right, I know this is this is gonna go against Hi, everybody, welcome to unpolished and this is gonna go against the whole milieu. But I just want to jump right in because this episode, especially in the second half, where it where we've been talking to these landing places, and a Nita jumping right in is going to include a few moments of silence here, because it's deserved. Let me gather my thoughts. We're just listeners, we're just coming off of this my first time hearing this episode. So you and I are sharing that right now. But as you're not wrapping things up, as you're going on this journey, and I love this as unpolished, I can fumble through this. I, I just love that this feels like a real process of deconstruction of important and good deconstruction, because you said this line in the first bit of the this episode that just got me and you're like I want to be, you know, bigger, work harder, be shinier. So that'll be loved. I was like, oh, isn't that all of us? Isn't isn't that this not necessarily to be bigger, shiny or whatever. But it's like, just can I be loved. And this is what I love about this deconstruction journey are gone. Because I mean, I'm trying to listen to it with as many different ears as I think. So I'm listening to people who have deconstructed and have left the church when not and perhaps this sounds a little to Christianity, like we're trying to, you know, shortcut and get get everybody back in the church. And all I can say is no, that is not have been this journey at all.

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 37:14
But what I loved about this section, as you're leaving Jamaica, as you're leaving Guatemala, as you're coming to these profound revelations that this isn't about travel, this isn't necessarily about excitement. This is about something really deep. I just kept going back to that first sentence. And I love this idea that you have clearly got gifts and abilities in this realm. You've clearly got the ability to tell stories and make them compelling. And but I love I get the sense that you're important. deconstruction is this ability this this faithfulness, as Jesse said in great interviews, Jesse, Well done, Brother, this faithfulness in, I'm going to walk away from this right now. Because I mean, the suggestion in Guatemala was right, that author was bang on that is an interesting story that should be compelling. That deserves as wide an audience as possible. I mean, so many compelling things came out of, of the two years, so many compelling stories and artwork.

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 38:07
But you chose what on the very like on all the surface on all the levels looked like the more boring choice and yet through the whole thing. And it's got the sense of like, oh, there's a deep, calming happening here, that as you head back into this realm, whatever it looks like, you've had this moment of stepping away. And I think for me, that is everything I've heard that's such a powerful part of deconstruction, because you were deconstructing that part of your identity that was wrapped up in what other people thought of your content. And that is harmful. I don't care what your faith background is, that is, so there's nothing more dangerous than tying your identity to the fickle opinions of other human beings, just an emotional roller coaster that gets you nowhere good.

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 38:52
So I applaud you in this episode, because I feel like this is one of those sort of landing places. I'm gonna throw the word obedience out. And that has a very negative connotation. And I know I'm taking up so much time we've got three minutes and 40 seconds left. I'm so sorry. But this one really hit me. This obedience, this subservience, which for all the right reasons, has some negative connotations. I saw in this a very subtle, a very powerful and a very nuanced understanding of, okay, here I am. And this is the path I'm going to walk. And I was just, there's, there's so many good moments in this one. So sorry, I've taken up. It's now three minutes and 16 seconds. Ooh, left. I'm very biblical.

Anita Wing Lee 39:31
Well, I'm fine with you talking because I did a lot of talking in this episode. And the way it felt to me when I was going through it, and obviously I'm on the other side now, but it felt exactly how I said it. It was just so clear that I didn't really have an option. I had played my other card for so long and it hadn't hadn't really gotten me anywhere, and or had gotten me somewhere but then God took it away. So what was the point of playing that card again? And And so, so I was kind of backed into a corner by God, but I also saw how it was healthy. And I, if anything, I feel grateful to be someone who can see through social media and and, you know, we're still going through it.

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 40:18
I love it. And I mean, I love the idea even have like the words like backed into a corner, I played this card. And, and from our very, very human perspective, which is why Jesus is so important. Again, Jesse's point about Jesus being very intentional in this moment with the woman at the well is what these stories tell us. And what if we have the space and the and the grace of others to openly candidly and honestly, say I feel backed into a corner or I feel God's taken all this away. We live these experiences that maybe what was taken away from us was, you know, we will use the card analogy. Maybe you had a king, you're like, Oh, I've got the king I got and Gods like, I'm not taking the king, and I'm giving you an ace. Forgiveness to asking forgiveness for everybody who thinks that card planes from the devil. But I mean, or the corner was just that. And then there's sort of a turning around be like, oh, there's actually another passageway over here. And I love this because you, you didn't end it with this horrible idea of like, I know, everything's amazing. You're like, I'm bored.

Anita Wing Lee 41:22
Now my life is boring. Now nobody's going to know who I am. I'm writing 12 Page academic papers, every couple of weeks, I'm writing these fat books. Nobody will ever ever care about I mean, topics and students, books. But there was something actually safe about it. There was something that felt really safe. It was like God just put something in front of me. And he said, I know you like to use your brain. So here, do this. And don't worry about all this other stuff that you that you do out of some desire to become something and just do the thing that's in front of you. And so that's what I did. I just let the program fill the spaces of my life. I let myself work. I mean, mind you, it was the pandemic. So it wasn't the most relaxing thing. But, and then I was like, I'll just see what happens.

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 42:16
Fantastic. So in the next few episodes where we're getting to meet a Anita Wing Lee in her 30s. That's very exciting. And we have 20 seconds left. And again, I was so impressed with this episode, because there really was this sense that of faithfulness. And that that choice of peace is such a powerful example of how you the deconstruction was deconstructing harmful things that from any other perspective may have actually looked like success?

Anita Wing Lee 42:46
Yeah, it was totally success. And, but now I look at it and I'm like that's not that's not a successful life. That's an empty life. But time's up. You'll just have to listen to the next one for more.

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 42:57
For Anita Wing Lee in her thirties. Bye.

Anita Wing Lee 43:03
Bye. let's wait did you stop recording?

Anita Wing Lee 43:11
Heavenly minded earthly good is the production of Tyndale University. Visit our website for more information.