What To Do With the Nice Things People Say

I’m squirmy and awkward, but learning.

To make an apt answer is a joy to a man and a word in season, how good it is! - Proverbs 15:23

At the National Aquarium, the kids pair off, cousins in the mix. I give a final reminder not to leave any exhibit without their assigned buddies, and I prepare myself to be awed. Where will beauty find me here? At the underwater viewing station where whiptail rays and blacktip reef sharks sweep up against the glass? Among the backlit jellies like last time? I am ready for wonder, searching for it even. Still, it manages to blindside me toward the end of our visit.

In a small, unsuspecting corner tank are a group of tiny fish. Each fish is about 3 cm long with a stripe that bisects it from nose to tail. Above this stripe, the fish is a shiny silver; below it, a rich cardinal red. The stripe itself is an iridescent blue—deep sapphire or indigo or slightly greenish depending on the angle you’re viewing it. The blue is shocking, almost piercing in its brilliance.

A Google search later tells me that these are cardinal tetra, a common tank aquarium fish. But these fish. And their blue. It is out of this world.

Later, I keep thinking about how the tetra swims around so nonchalantly, unaware of its otherworldly stripe. What, this old thing? Doesn’t everyone have one of these? I imagine one saying to the grown woman gawking on the other side of its glass home. To which I, the woman, would look dramatically down at my belly and reply, “Nope. I’m pretty sure I don’t have the stripe thing going on.”

…

A friend did something like that dramatic look-down for me recently.

“I hope you feel encouraged,” she said, after I’d received an unexpected and overwhelming outpouring of kind words from people at a gathering we attended.

“I do feel encouraged. I think. Maybe?” I tell her.

“You know, this isn’t a conspiracy, right? It’s not like everyone said, ‘Let’s lie to Faith.’”

I laugh because she’s right. And then, I really do feel encouraged.

…

I have long struggled to know what to do with encouragement or praise—and I don’t mean this as a humble-brag. Once, in my teens, I threw away every note of encouragement I’d saved up from years of camps and youth retreats. They were a paper trail of my pride, I thought, temptations to egotism and self-centeredness. A few weeks ago, I spiraled, having passed on to Jeff some positive feedback I’d received. I felt happy for a bit, then guilty for bringing it up, then anxious, then I broke down in tears.

Last month, I attended a conference where a speaker talked about ministry as the simple call to be a signpost. He held before us the witness of John the Baptist who pointed to Jesus declaring, “I am not the Christ!” A signpost can be fading, ugly, weary, and seemingly small, the speaker said, it just has to be clear and true. And I thought, Yes, that is what I want. Yes, I can be a signpost!, while I tried my best not to heave-sob from my seat.

The hope that some weary and foot-worn sojourner, unsure he’s on the right track, might be helped by this small signpost along a long stretch of empty road—the hope to be a person who points to Jesus in less-travelled byways— is a desire the Spirit has planted deep in me. This is not a natural desire by any stretch; it has required constant weeding and painful tilling and the patient tending of God to the soil of my heart. It has taken decades for contentment and this sense of the glory of God in hidden places to take root and grow.

It is strange for me then, two months out from the launch of Peace over Perfection, to have been stepping into less-hidden spaces, places I never expected to find myself. What does it mean to be a signpost here, I wonder, where I’m not hidden, but seen and affirmed? What happens when you’re swimming in your corner tank and someone unexpectedly says, Wow, look at that stripe!?

I write in Peace over Perfection about how Christian perfectionists often receive a bad word about ourselves more readily than a good one. My sense of the ever-present danger of making much of myself through seeking applause has solidified an ideal self in my mind that is uninfluenced and unswayed by kind words. If I were truly godly, I’ve come to believe, I would be unaffected by nice things people say to me. I would forget myself so completely that praise bounces off me. Then I would never tempted to hoard the glory that belongs to God alone.

Some might say this is part of my Chinese heritage—a knee-jerk deflection as the socially appropriate response to praise. Maybe that’s part of it. But I think the influence of American culture is here too in the idea that what I think of myself is all that really matters in the end. Or, its attendant Christian version— that if I know what God thinks of me, I won’t need others to tell me about myself. Yet as I reflect on the ways that I have been encouraged lately in book launching and other endeavors, I think I am being discipled in a different direction.

In PoP, I talk about how God surprises Christian perfectionists with his encouragement. Throughout the Old Testament, God doesn’t hesitate to affirm what is praiseworthy in the lives of imperfect patriarchs, judges, and kings. In the New Testament, Jesus doesn’t just teach and correct; he publicly calls out the good he sees in disciples of little faith and seriously messed up churches. In my life, he has done this most of the time through other people.

Now I recognize that there are situations where seemingly nice words can be unwise, untruthful, or manipulative. Sometimes, hard words are more loving than easy-to-swallow ones. So maybe the wise thing to do if we’re not sure what to do with affirmation is to hold it up to the light. And instead of automatically tossing it aside, ask God, Lord, is this true? Are you saying something to me here? What do you want me to hear?

Lately, I have heard God’s voice through strangers who, in their kind encouragement, have unknowingly spoken directly to things I have wondered or wavered about. He has also strengthened me through the timely, apt words of friends. I feel squirmy and awkward.¹ But I am learning to receive these words as gifts.

Because just as we have blindspots that keep us from recognizing our weaknesses, some of us have trouble seeing the good God has entrusted to us and the good he is doing in us. Thus, humility here might look less like deflecting encouragement and more like saying, “Perhaps what I am seeing when I look at myself is not the most accurate picture.” Growth then might begin with learning to believe trustworthy people when they tell us things about ourselves that we wish were true, but we’re not sure are. People who say to us, “Hey, here’s how I see God’s beautiful work in you.” And, “These are the ways that I am blessed and helped by you.” Or, “Seriously, you have a really, really shiny stripe.”

I am in a season of learning how to receive such generous words. Yes, what matters above all things is God’s regard for me. Yes, I need to pray hard for him to guard my heart and to keep me from obsessively checking for likes, tags, and book reviews. But I have also needed help to see the Spirit’s work in me. I have needed the family of God to encourage me to do the good work he’s called me to (Hebrews 12:24).

It has been embarrassing almost, the riches of God’s kindness to me in this. Even now, part of me wishes I didn’t need all the encouragement I’ve received. But he has been so compassionate to know my frame and provide through his people. And I am beginning to see how God’s intention may be that another’s praise of us leads to our heartfelt praise to him—

How gracious of God to speak to me through another person’s kind words!

How patient of him to affirm the things he’s doing in me, not just once, but again and again!

What a privilege and joy to be his signpost wherever he has called me!

How good of him to show his beauty in this world through broken and weak people!

How generous of God, who clothes with glory the lilies of the field and the cardinal tetras of the rivers and how much more so in his kingdom, me!

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🪴 Peace Over Perfection: Enjoying a Good God When You Feel You’re Never Good Enough is out! Available at Amazon | The Good Book Company | WTS Books | Christian Book | Barnes and Noble | Target

If you’ve read the book, I’d appreciate if you left a review somewhere to help other people find it!

👩🏻‍💻 It feels good to be writing here again, and I’m hoping for the capacity to do this more frequently. But here are some other places I’ve been lately:

• I Didn’t Want A Baby. I Wanted This Baby. I wrote this piece for Christianity Today about finding permission to grieve miscarriage. It was a blessing to be able to share Pax’s name and also testify to the way we were loved in one of the hardest seasons.

• For parents struggling with Christian perfectionism, I shared 5 Prayers for Fighting Perfectionism in Motherhood (but really it’s for dads too) on Risen Motherhood.

• If you’re into podcasts, it was a joy to be a guest recently on: SOLA’s Podcast and The Upside Down People Podcast.

• Lastly, I read the first part of my chapter in the newly released A Letter to the Asian American Church at SOLA’s AALC (where Rev. Joel Kim gave that message about being a signpost.) You can listen to it at the start of the conference recap video below. My whole piece— “Hidden Beauty: Finding Beauty and Opportunity in the Immigrant Church” is available if you download the sample on this page.

1. Listen to my interview on The Habit Podcast (one of my favorite podcasts!) to see how the very gracious and kind host Jonathan Rogers calls me out and puts me on the spot with this. I’m pretty sure you can hear me squirm. Also, if you’re a writer looking for a writing community that will help give you courage, check out The Habit membership. It is a beautiful and generous creative community.