Why?

I've been getting this question a lot lately. Seems that inquiring minds want to know ...

Estelle, why are you going to Berkeley?

Why you?
                Why Cal?
                                Why now?

I'm sure I'll be asking myself these questions in a few weeks when I'm finally there and it fully dawns on me that I'm not on the Farm anymore. Before I attempt to give an answer, I have to start with the truth that I don't totally know why and probably won't until way later. So this is a first draft, to be revised as I live more years and figure out a few other things.

False reasons that you might be tempted to believe:
       I'm going because I've always wanted to live in Berkeley.
       I'm going because I don't like Stanford, Palo Alto, or the people there enough to stay.
       I'm going because I look better in blue and yellow and I am betraying my alma mater.

The real reason I'm going is that God said, "Come, follow me at Berkeley" in March 2013 when I was discerning what my next three years on staff would be. I knew that I wanted to be in InterVarsity for the next phase of my life while God continued to speak into my future. I had assumed that Stanford would be the place I would continue on staff. God opened a process of dialogue with supervisors about potentially relocating to a different campus--specifically Cal--and from the beginning, the possibility had an eerie sense of "rightness" about it. I visited Berkeley and found it to be my ideal Sabbath spot--a place I would go to unwind, connect with God, and enjoy activities and settings that give me joy (museums! libraries! parks!). It scared me more than a little because it felt like it actually fit. That's another way I could tell this was probably God's doing.

As a final push, God presented me with a challenge at the Asian American Ministries Staff Conference in Long Beach, CA. It was the challenge not to keep sitting at the kids' table--an exhortation to develop and use the gifts God has given me, even when those gifts feel like they require courage to accept and to act on (like the gift of prophecy, which is about speaking God's words and shedding light on a murky situation). God was clear that he wanted to start a new chapter in my life using gifts I hadn't fully seen in myself, and he invited me to trust him by stepping out of the comfortable space I'd been in for the past 7 years (aka the "nest") and trying my wings in an unfamiliar setting.

I'm taking with me the lessons God has taught me as well as the relationships that have seen me through these growing years, but I still feel exposed and self-conscious as I anticipate my new context. I'm pretty sure that's exactly where God wants me to be. It was easy enough to love others when I was inviting them into my world--into my school that I'm familiar with, and into my fellowship, where I know what my role is. How much more difficult (and more amazing) will it be to learn to love others when I myself don't quite know how I fit or where I belong?

It's an exciting challenge, and one that I hope you'll be blessed by as you read my blog, LovingCal, over the next three years.