There are few meals that stir up as many images of God’s bounty for me as hotpot. Especially how the Poons do it.

(You know how we roll.)

The table overflows with meat, veggies, noodles, dumplings along with many things my white friends have never heard of and that I wouldn’t begin to know how to successfully describe in English. But they are all absolutely delicious. One table is usually not enough room to contain all the food; we need a separate side-table just for more food!

“Deal with it.”

That’s actually one of my favorite lines and running joke from a canceled sitcom called “Better Off Ted”. Two characters on the show start making bold choices in their personal and professional lives and their response to the controversial decisions is to simply utter the phrase, “deal with it”.

Comedy aside, I have found it be a rather profound statement in my current life. As you know, I’ve been losing my hair (literally) in recent months and random bald spots are appearing over my scalp. (See below) On good days, I am confident and unaffected by my odd looking appearance, but like most people, I also have bad days and am extremely self conscious about it.

I’m learning that dealing with Alopecia Areata is quite tricky because of the nature of the disease. It is a complete unknown factor. Medical reports are unsure of a cause or what triggers it. There is also no known cure. This hair falling episode can last for months to years. My hair may grow back in 12 months, or it may be permanently gone. More hair could fall out and I may go totally bald. The uncertainty has made this very difficult to cope with. If I knew my hair would regrow again, I would have fewer bad days dealing with it. If I knew my hair would all fall out, I could at least start processing that reality. But nothing is certain with this, and I’m just left in the dark, not knowing what’s to come and deeply unsettled.

So how then, am I supposed to “deal with it” when “it” is completely unknown? My first step was to refuse to hide it. I contemplated growing my hair out to cover up the bald spots, but decided against it. I like my hair short. Always have. Hiding our problems may make us look better to the world, but it doesn’t address the issue. I’m not advocating that sunlight exposure on my scalp will generate hair regrowth, but I don’t want to live in hiding. I don’t want to always be thinking about my hair, if it’s hiding the bald spots and if anyone notices. That is too exhausting of  a life to live. So here you are world, I have bald spots on my head! Deal with it!

My second step was to come to grips that no matter how much I try, I am not in control of my life. Once I was diagnosed, I’ve been trying multiple treatment options to both slow the hair loss process and the regrowth. None of them are a guarantee and none of them have worked so far. I attempted them knowing that, but was hopeful that just one of them might help. I don’t think that’s necessarily unusual to try treatment options, but deep down I knew that I was trying everything because I desperately wanted control back in my life again. But each day is met with more strands of hair falling out, with no sign of any regrowth and the reminder once again that I am not in control.

What’s comical about the situation is that I’ve never been in control of my own life to begin with. God orchestrated when I was born, where I would live, how I would look and every other facet of my life. Intellectually, I’ve always acknowledged that. Yes, I know that God is in control of everything but that hasn’t seemed to have made the necessary emotional connection to my heart until now. Intellectually I can acknowledge that having God in control of my life is the best thing for me and everyone. But emotionally, it’s very unsettling to fully realize that my life is entirely in the hands of someone else… but I am dealing with it.

With the 2011 calendar year drawing to a close, a quick glance over the past 12 months reveals just one word for me:

Hard.

For me personally, it has been one of the harder years that I can remember on nearly every front; spiritual, emotional and physical. While the family itself enjoyed quite a few highlights from the year, I cannot ignore the fact that my own personal story hasn’t been without some difficulties.

One of the lessons that I’ve learned from this year, and from my years of marriage to TJ is to put the appropriate weight on certain situations. I refuse to cite Romans as a quick-fix pick-me-up in times like these. I believe that would be placing the improper weight to how my year has been and absolutely trivializing what God is accomplishing through my story. Through a series of events that have happened over this past year, and from my wife’s perspective, we can see that God has been targeting three specific areas in my life that I drew my identity from: my ability to provide, my appearance and my name.

The first of these difficult moments happened in February. Somehow a liquid sac in my wrist got swollen and so inflamed that I couldn’t use my left hand to carry anything because of the pain. There was no trauma to the wrist to cause it. I just woke up one morning and suddenly realized that I couldn’t pick up my daughter. That killed me on the inside as I loved getting her from her crib in the mornings. I loved being the first person that she saw in the morning as she would great me with the most heart warming smile I have ever seen. Because I couldn’t use my left hand to even stabilize her, I didn’t want to risk dropping her and had TJ get her in the mornings.

I felt like a failure as a husband and a father as my ability to do things for my family decreased. I couldn’t get the car seat in and out of the car anymore. I couldn’t carry as many groceries or lift heavy objects around the home. I needed help when changing Eden’s diaper and with her bath.

I realize that from an outsider’s perspective, I shouldn’t be categorized as a failure. I wanted to be involved and I did as much as I possibly could, so who could find fault in me over something I had no control over? But this episode revealed something about my heart and my perception of being a good family man: I must do stuff. My identity as a good husband and father was tied to my ability to do things for my wife and daughter. Unless I provided in some way for my family, I was a failure.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Despite the wrist injury, I never fully understood what God was trying to teach me so He orchestrated one more event to get my attention. This time He removed something that I was proud of – our finances. At the most fundamental core, I believe a man should be a bread winner and provide a roof over his family’s head and food on the table. And to get my full attention, God orchestrated a serious chunk of time in the Fall where we did not draw an income.

I was gutted. Embarrassed. Ashamed. I was a failure. God – you have my attention.

Around the same time where we weren’t getting paid, there was a noticeable change in my appearance. Even though I’m a guy, I do care about my appearance and make an effort this this area. I at least make sure that my shoes and belt match and that they coordinate well with my shirt and jacket. I also have very unruly hair that’s been blessed with four cowlicks. Two in particular are very close together, giving me the Alfalfa look. So I make sure that I keep my hair at a reasonable length at all times to keep it from drawing too much attention.

Imagine the shock I experienced as I was diagnosed with Alopecia Areata and my hair was falling out. It has been four months since TJ discovered a bald spot on my head, and the hair loss isn’t slowing down. In fact, this morning I found another spot on my head that’s beginning to thin too.

The hardest part about my splotchy hair loss is that I have no control over it whatsoever. I cannot hide behind my well coordinated clothes. I cannot cut my hair in a certain way to hide my bald spots. It is all exposed for the world to see. My scalp and shame is for everyone to see and there is no hiding it.

I am embarrassed. Ashamed. God – you have my attention… again.

As I wrestled with what God was doing to me and my different areas of life, it became evident that God was tearing down the name I had built up for myself. At different points this year, I was not a provider. Currently my appearance is less than ideal. The things that I thought were synonymous with my name were no longer true.

What is true of my name is rooted in its origin. My name, Jason, means “healer”. I remember looking it up a few years ago and being really excited about my name and how I would live out my name’s meaning. Somehow in the years that follow, I had gotten away from that and started tacking on other identities to my name that were not meant for me.

I believe through all of this, God is guiding me back to the origin of my name. I am a healer. But I have no idea how that is supposed to play out. In fact, it seems rather ironic that I’m a healer when my body is hit with random diseases that nobody can understand. But I do know that name name has more to do with the spiritual realm than the physical.

I know I’ve been afflicted with an assortment of ailments without a cure. That is the story that God is writing for me. Yet somewhere in that story, I am to play the role of a healer to those around me, especially my family.

I am Jason. It has been a hard year. I am a healer. God – you have my attention.

But there were some definite highlights in the Poon family:

Seeing two of our best couple friends realize their hopes of becoming parents as they finalized adoptions. It remains a great honor in our lives that we get to walk through life with such amazing people, and their joy was our own as we saw their dreams come true. Here’s the story of one.

I got to hear one of my heroes, Dan Allender, speak in person for the second time. I may have been a little nuts about it; in the first thirty seconds, I shushed the people behind me because they were talking as he began. What can I say? His writing was instrumental in completely turning my life around seven years ago… so of course I couldn’t miss even one second of what he was saying. Obviously.

We got the bufferback. This is silly, and not really very important, but it did feel nice to put some pound-distance between myself and Jason again.

We both feel so blessed that recently our home and work life has just totally been awesome. We both feel like we have a partner in each other and we’re each doing work with Epic that is joyful, fulfilling and life-giving. Definitely a season to cherish.

And there’s so much more – falling more deeply in love with each other, watching our daughter truly become more and more delightful by the day, praying for and then seeing God’s provision, experiencing restored friendships, embracing the body of Christ around us as our family – there has definitely been a year’s worth of joy in the last twelve months.

Happy 2012, dear friends, and here’s to another year of receiving God’s goodness to us all!

As I’ve gotten a little wiser, I realize that it’s not the attention that I fear, but rather the humiliation and the exposure for my inadequacies.  I generally like being in the spotlight, but only if I’m being cast in a positive light. I realize that much of my adult life is based around my attempts to avoid public humiliation. I don’t think this makes me terribly unique. I can’t imagine anyone who likes to stand out for the wrong reasons, but it is something that cripples me more than one would think.

All that makes what’s been going on in my life harder to cope with. If you have seen me since mid September, you probably have noticed that there’s something different about my hair. As in, I’m lacking some of it. I have been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called “Alopecia Areata”, something that affects less than 2% of the population. In a nutshell, the disease makes my immune system think my hair is invading the body so it attacks and kills it.  Therefore, I have random bald spots on my scalp. Thankfully the disease is entirely cosmetic and I am otherwise very healthy and suffer nothing else other than an odd looking head.

I wasn’t too worried about it at first, as it was only the size of a nickel and limited to one spot on my head. But over time that one spot has grown to the size of an egg, and more bald spots are appearing too. As more of my hair is falling out, so too as my anxiety and consciousness over it. Most people are polite enough to not saying anything or mention it to me, but I know they notice it. Others are less tactful and just blurt out “Uh… what’s going on with your hair?”

While my outward appearance was being altered to my disliking, inwardly my head was also experiencing deep anguish too. I also suffer from something called “cluster headaches”, which affects only 0.1% of the population. It is horrifyingly nicknamed as “suicide headaches” as it is a neurological disease that causes an incredible amount of pain in my head. These headaches last anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours and completely debilitate me for the entire duration. Thankfully these headaches only stay with me for about two weeks at a time, but even then I am fighting through it every day, several times a day and even in the night when I am sleeping. I am currently nearing the end of my two week attack period.

Throughout all this, I have often wondered:

Why? God, Why? Why have you afflicted me with such rare diseases? Why is my hair falling out? Why are you putting me through intense agony? Why is this part of my story?

On bad days, my cries are often whiny and annoying. They only reflect me feeling sorry for myself. On good days, the last question is more reflective and purposeful. Why is this part of my story?

I have spent most of my adult life avoiding being noticed or unique. But there is nothing normal or routine with what I’m going through. My conditions are rare, special and to much of my displeasure, they make me stand out. I don’t have an answer to why this is happening to me, and I doubt I ever really well. But what I do know is that they are part of the story that God has for me. I have no idea why God has chosen to have my hair fall out. I have no idea why God has chosen for me to suffer through my headaches. God has, for whatever reason, chosen to give me two rare diseases and that is my story.

Who am I?

I am Jason. I am Chinese. I am male. I am a Longhorn. I am a father. I am happy. I am a steak lover. I am afraid of heights. I am a follower of Jesus. I am a missionary.

Up until a few months ago, I would’ve confidently answered that question any of those ways that I just listed. Right now? I am unsure.

The uncertainty of my identity and who and what defines me has made me lose my voice. I have not forgotten about this space, nor have I lost interest in writing and communicating. But as my sense of identity began to fade, so did my point of view. Without that, I couldn’t put anything down. Even now, it’s hard to write this without feeling as if I’m just wasting web space.

This level of uncertainty isn’t something that I’m comfortable with. I thrive on my level of confidence and assuredness of who I am, what I can bring to the table. When I am without those qualities, I feel unarmed and exposed. The best that I can describe this is “an unanchoring” of myself. But my hope right now is to start expressing, processing and writing and in time, I might rediscover who I am again.

Honestly, I’ve always thought first birthday parties were pretty stupid. It seems silly to spend a lot of time and effort since she won’t even remember it.

But we made a big effort anyway. For one thing, I have creative friends and I’m a sucker for cute party themes. But, even more importantly, I realized that the party really wasn’t for Eden anyway.

It was for Jason, me and the community that we have around us which has played a huge role in her first year of life. They have become our family.

It was with these dear people in our lives that we both remembered her day of birth and also held a time where we officially and publicly dedicated ourselves to raising her in the Lord. Then we prayed over her life.

What a special time.

What made it even more meaningful was the sentiment that both Jason and I had going into this day. We have a hopeful anticipation of what the Lord is going to continue to do in our lives, and that starts with the close of this year.

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of talking to someone I respect greatly in ministry. As I asked him questions about his life serving the Lord, he mentioned a four-year period in his life that was very low. I think he even used the word, “dark”.

A four-year dark period.

Four years is my entire marriage. It’s most of my time on staff with Cru. It’s a huge chunk of my adult life.

But for this man who has served the Lord for 30+ years, four years feels much different. I’m sure that time was significant to his life- of course it was. But it in no way defined him.

Because of the events of the last four years, I think there have been times when I have been tempted to think that this is my life. It ceased to be a season and just became… my life.

Having that conversation gave me so much hope. I’m sure that my dear friend never thought he was being encouraging by mentioning a four year dark period in my life.

But I latched onto his words, and I was encouraged.

I pictured being four years away from now – in a completely different place in my life – and being able to look back over the past few years as the dark time.

It has become my prayer.

It would be foolish to say that pain and tragedy will never have a place in my life again. It will – that’s just life.

But we are hopeful, and tonight my dearest friends and family joined with us in praying that this might mark the end of the dark period.

There will certainly be more to process and more that God will want to reveal to us through what we have experienced, but we are praying in faith that we may, in a significant way, close the door on this part of our lives and move forward in joyful expectation of the next chapter that God is bringing.

Cru originally had its mission to reach every student, which soon changed to let every person have the chance to respond to the Gospel. What began as a college ministry 60 years ago, is now a ministry that covers multiple groups of people from high schoolers to executives in the work force, from families to military personnel. In short, organizationally we have moved far beyond the scope of the college campus way before this name change was even in discussion.

I am grateful that we have leaders willing to drop elements from our name because of the negative connotations that our previous name implied. Because the last thing we want to do is it alienate people from engaging in a conversation with us solely based on our name alone. It is a privilege that TJ and I get to work under such Godly men and women who lead us out of a posture of humility and graciousness.

Many of us understood the reason and the need to drop “Crusade” because of how negatively it has been received in the last couple of decades. But after some market research, we found that the term “Campus” was equally as alienating for non-Christians and our target audience. Interestingly enough, people in the U.S. who are willing to engage in a conversation about Jesus were less interested when they heard the name “Campus Crusade for Christ”. There was push back from the term “Campus” because a corporate executive has nothing to do with the “campus”. If people are already distancing themselves from us based on our name alone, then surely we must rethink and make the necessary changes.

The dropping of “Christ” has absolutely no bearing on our mission or our stance of sharing the Gospel. We have not softened or become ashamed of our Savior. Google doesn’t include the term “search engine” in their company name… or “email”, or “maps” or “docs” yet that does not dictate how they operate. We will continue to proclaim the name of Jesus regardless of what we’re called.

But isn’t “Cru” just a shortening of the word “Crusade”? To us on staff and those who have supported our ministry, yes, that’s what it looks like. But to the rest of America, no. In fact, the name “Cru” had been field tested since the mid-90′s and the results show that “Cru” doesn’t carry the connotations or the connection to “Crusade”.

Cru is not an abbreviation or a just a shortening of Crusade. It’s just a name and a name that I’m excited to start using. I’m often asked what I do for a living and while I am never ashamed tell them what I do and the name of the organization that I work for, I can tell by the looks on their faces that I’ve immediately alienated myself from further conversation. The moment I utter the words “Campus Crusade for Christ”, the response is typically “Oh…” followed by a drop in their face and a disinterest in engaging with me anymore. However, when I’ve said “Epic Movement”, there was an immediate peak in interest. “I’ve never heard of them before… what does Epic Movement do?” And now I am free to explain our mission, vision and my role in the proclaiming God’s Kingdom. I look forward to being able to say “Cru” and having them ask me about it just like “Epic Movement”.

Even our founders, Bill and Vonnette Bright had talked about changing the name back in the 70′s. Here’s a video from Vonette discussing the name change.

Here’s where you can find our official press release on the name change and some answers to the most frequently asked questions.

I was nervous when the new name was announced. After some apprehension and confusion over our new name, I’ve grown to embrace it and I am really excited about it. Because in the end, it’s not about the name of Cru that matters, but the name of Jesus our Savior.