Korean American Christian Blog

At last year's KAC white elephant Christmas party, I stole a gift. It was a calendar, and on each day, is a prayer.  One of my "resolutions" this year was to read through each one starting from January 1-December 31.  So far, I've only seen one or two. FAIL.

But don't lose hope!

In each of my blogs, I will share with you the prayer of the day and somehow connect it to my day/life.

First let me introduce myself. My name is Grace and I have just recently joined the KAC family. When I'm not busy with KAC, I am a tutor. 

Anyways, you will learn more about me through my future blog. Let us proceed onto the daily prayer.

Joshua 1:9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

I ordered a book on amazon by Victoria Osteen for my aunt for Christmas, but unfortunately (or was it fortunate according to God's will?) it didn't arrive until a week after all the festivites. And because I had already given her another Christmas present, I ended up keeping the book for myself.

As I read through it though, I was dissappointed that there really wasn't anything of much substance. But right before I was about to put the book down, I started reading something that held my attention long enough to stir something in me. Victoria Osteen was explaining how she was holding a hot cup of tea in her hand...ready to enjoy it after a long day at church. But all of a sudden, her little nephew spotted her and charged toward her. She braced herself for the impact, and the moment he collided into her legs and embraced her, Victoria was forced to put down, and let go of her hot cup of tea in order to fully return her love as well as fully recieve the child's love. She went on to explain that in our lives, we have things that we hold on to. Sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing, and sometimes it's neither good or bad. But ALWAYS, God has something greater He wants to give us or fill us with. And it's only a matter of letting go of what we have now that we will be able to fully give or fully recieve something GREATER.

Currently, I am working very comfortably at my doctor's colonoscopy office. It pays well enough where I can support myself living away from home as well as go out to eat/treat people out without having to worry too much about finances. I get to meet new people everyday as well as build relationships with people I've met before. I get to stimulate my brain as I learn new things each day about health insurance or diagnoses for different types of colon diseases or problems. I get to have time to do things like this..write blogs, or read books by Victoria Osteen.

But since about two weeks ago, God has been placing on my heart an urgency to move forward from this job. To stop being stagnant. To start flowing again like a stream. And my first step is to LET GO of this job I have right now. But it's not easy! It's not easy when you're comfortable with where you are. It's not easy when you're TERRIFIED of the idea of not finding another job in due time. It's not easy when I feel like God isn't with me in the decision I'm making in my life.

Hangook Part II : Becoming Rooted

I have a better sense of who I am today. And I think I was able to first really realize who I was the moment I stripped away all the physical roles I played and the material possessions I had accumulated over my lifetime.

This all became ever so clear mainly while I was in Korea. Because in Korea, no one knew who I was, no one knew the school I graduated from, no one knew the training I went through to become a leader for the Pepperdine Ministry...nor did they know I was even a leader for that matter. No one knew anything about me, and it was weird because no one had anything to define me by except for what they perceived through how I looked and how I acted. Korean. and. Good-natured (or at least I tried to be).

Before going to Korea, I felt like I had all these roles to play..all these titles to live up to..all this compromising I had to do (mostly to meet expectations..my own as well as others'). And each day, I wondered why I felt so incomplete. frenzied. lost. For instance, as a person living in America, I wondered why I couldn't be more white at times or as a college graduate, I wondered why I couldn't be living out my career dream as I had so carefully planned to do.

While I was in Korea, when everything I was defined by was stripped away, I felt even more lost and incredibly vulnerable. After much pondering, I realized that I felt this way because I had nothing that I was securely rooted in. Ka-Ching!

So after some more thinking, I came up with two things that could never be taken away from me: my relationship with God and the fact that I was Korean. Everything else I was or was striving to become could change in a snap of two fingers. Weird, right? But it was so true! And it made me so sad to think how all this time, I was a nice wrapped present, complete with a pink satin bow, with nothing inside me.

So in my last few days there, I did a lot of talking with God and with my grandmother and I got in touch with my roots as a Christian and as a Korean. And slowly, but surely, I filled my nicely wrapped present with treasures that made that box extremely valuable.

Upon returning to America, I felt like a different person. I had become rooted in the two things that would never change and for the first time in my life, I felt complete.

I've never wanted to leave a place more than I did Seoul, Korea. I've never been hit so hard and knocked down by a culture that was supposed to be/or would have been my own had I been raised there. Thank goodness I wasn't.

Big eyes, small faces, long legs, fashionable clothes.

I didn't get why all that mattered so much and I refused to allow myself to feel any effect being the small-eyed, big-faced, short legged outsider from America. So I flaunted what I could to make sure people saw and knew that I was a U.S. Citizen making merely a visit to Korea.

But the more I tried to make known that I was different, the more I realized how desperately I was trying to fit in. Without realizing it, I was eating less and walking more in feeble attempts to shed a few pounds. I was wearing, picking and choosing outfits that only the fashionable girls would wear in Korea. And of course, I was applying pounds and pounds of make-up to accentuate my eyes and lengthen my lashes and highlight my t-zone.

All I remember was that I was having a miserable time trying to be accepted by my own freak'n people and I wanted ever so much to come back home to America (California) where we are allowed to walk around in flip flops and work out clothes and be short and kinda chunky and have small eyes and not be judged. Then one glorious morning while I was praying, God made these words come out of my mouth.

"Dear God, help me to remember that I'm not here to be an ambassador of America. I'm here to be an ambassador of You." And just like that, my insecurities were booted off to the side as I realized..."WHO CARES ABOUT ALL THIS PHYSICAL APPEARNACE STUFF? NONE OF THIS MATTERS BECAUSE GOD SURE DOESN'T CARE!"

And that morning, I simply whipped my hair up into a messy bun, put on my Pepperdine sweater as well as my white biker girl jacket over it (it was quite cold in Korea), and pulled on my brown ugg-imitation mountain boots and walked out the door feeling more beautiful than ever before..because I wasn't like the other girls there anymore. I was ME...an individual made into perfection in God's eyes :)

And from that day forward, Korea had never been more fun in my whole entire life.

When I was a young little girl, I had three fears. (yep, just three..k fine. three legit fears in addition to my 1019748190831 minor fears..ie: little yippy yappy dogs, not showering and growing bugs out of your body, getting zapped by lazer if you ran a red light..you know, the usual)

SO my three biggest fears were as follows:
1) I was deathly afraid of dolls/ clowns/ people dressed in costumes. So my mom never bought me dolls. And whenever my family and I went to Disneyland, I refused to take pictures with Winnie the Pooh or even Micky Mouse. And I remember screaming my head off at a McDonalds when a man dressed as Ronald McDonald came in and tried to pick me up and hold me.

2) I was petrified of the dark. I remember always fearing that spirits would come into my room and shut the door and lock it so that I wouldn't be able to get out. I felt like if my leg dangled over one side of the bed, something from underneath would grab me and drag me under. So every time I woke up in the middle of the night, I ran as fast as I could to my parents' bedroom, dove in right between them, snuggled up close to my parents and I felt safe.

3) My biggest, unhealthiest fear as a little girl was the fear of abandonment. I hated being left alone. So when time for pre-school came, I cried and screamed bloody murder each morning as my mom pried my fingers off her skirt and walked swiftly to her car and drove off without looking back. The feeling and thought of "I'm alone now..." drove me insane as a child. I hated it. In kindergarden through second grade, I skipped out on ballet class and playground time after school to sit at the bench in the parking lot. I felt like I needed to be where my parents could find me when they came to pick me up. Stupid, unhealthy fears...kept me from making friends in elementary school or becoming a great ballerina. (ha! yeah right about that last one)

The first two fears are like whatever now. I love pretty-faced dolls and I think clowns are silly. I loveee big cuddly costumed people at Disneyland. The dark helps me sleep. And I love the trickle of the streetlight and moonlight that sprinkles my room at night right when I turn out the lights. I can't sleep with my door open. I feel too exposed..and I like my privacy.

But that one unhealthy fear of abandoment/being alone has played a bigger role in my life than I would have liked. I never dealt with it, so subconciously, it's still in my life.

I envy you introverted people. You guys thrive on being alone. And isn't being alone a time when you all recharge and get all energized and stuff? That's so cool to me. Me on the other hand...if I'm alone for too long, I lose my mind. I feel alone and disconnected from the world... I cry out in desperation for love...through technology (aka text messaging and facebook). Sad.

So like...Am I the only one who does these things? Probably. But am I the only one who hates the feeling of being alone? Probably not. There's gotta be some other people out there who hate the feeling of being alone too, right?....Even among you introverted people...right?

Here's something I've been realizing more and more of as I'm getting older.

We were never meant to be alone. We were meant to be surrounded by people we love and people who love us. But going a step beyond that, we were meant to share/carry each others' joys and burdens, work together toward a certain goal, be angry and argue with one another, be willing to sacrifice or even die for one another (was the last one too extreme? my bad). And when we don't, we really are alone. We can be immersed in (litterally smack in the middle of) a group of people, but when there is no emotional connection, we might as well be standing amongst a group of those wooden telephone line poles.

And this is where the importance of community comes in. More or less, most of the things I just described above is what a community is supposed to be. And when we don't have that, we ARE alone. Scary, huh?

But here's the cool thing. God never intended that for us...being alone. So all we have to do is look around us right now. And whatever group that's in your life, maybe that's your community...and maybe God wants us to utilize, impact, grow with, learn from, love on and be loved by that community.

As human beings, we were meant to love and be loved. The people back then during Jesus' time were really onto something when they created the CHURCH...a community of fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. To me, without community, we are not receiving the full benefits of being a Christian. Community is such an awesome gift to us, but it's something we need to invest in and work with...like they always say...Nothing worth fighting for ever comes easily.

I had a few epiphanies/thoughts.

Many people alway try too hard to be too many things.

Meaning...We have a specific job/role that we should be focusing on in one particular moment of our lives, but our overly-ambitious little selves strive to be something MORE..no..somthing OUTSIDE of who we are supposed to be. Maybe that's why people are always exhausted.

Sometimes, we're just supposed to be ourselves.

Meaning...who cares whether or not people love us or hate us for being exactly WHERE (yes..WHERE...and not WHO.) God wants us to be in life? And when we try to change for the better, our motivation shouldn't EVER EVER EVERrr be other people. Because then... any change, no matter how AMAZINNNGg it may be...won't last. (that's from personal experience)

Loosen your freak'n grip!!!

Meaning...nothing ever really truly belongs to us. Weird, huh? But it's true. And the moment we try to get a trighter grip on whatever it is we are afraid of losing, it might get crushed and disappear (kinda like foam in our hands). Sometimes we just have to let it be...and yeah, we can be afraid that the foam is going to blow away with the wind or melt with the rain, but gripping it tighter isn't going to do anything but make it dissappear faster. All we should be doing is covering it and protecting it from the storm...with our other hand i guess...and hopefully it should be okay.

Annnndddd. God is still really cool. But that's not really an epiphany. It's just something I wanted to reiterate.

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Did you know there is such a thing as selfish faith? Maybe you didn't know and that's okay because it could have been a term I just made up. But not without good reason, mind you.

I could [proudly] say that I have a special sort of relationship with God than most people do. I could also proudly say, "Yeah, God tested me and my faith as He made me go through a confusing/difficult circumstance and brought me to a whole new level." And it was only last night that I proudly proclaimed my pride in my faith and my pride in my relationship with God. But it was only 15 minutes after I proclaimed it, that I realized how limited my faith actually was.

Here's how it all began. I was having a talk with an incredibly amazing person (aka Jordan) last night, and we argued about some pretty serious matters aboout whether we thought denominations were important to keep in mind, or if it was just a man-made system that didn't really matter in the end. And as we talked about that, we somehow got into the topic of FAITH.

As we were talking, Jordan kept saying how faith comes with three components: history, tradition and experience. And I kept arguing that faith shouldn't be something that we have to explain because we just have to take it for what it is. The argument kept heating up and I started becoming angry that someone was trying to prove me and my views wrong, especially by trying to put something like FAITH into a BOX (or at least that's what I felt like he was doing). But as we kept talking, Jordan said one thing that made everything stop for a brief second, right before everything clicked.

"Well, that's cool to me that faith for you is your own experience that you hold onto and...."

all I heard was:
YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE.

Translation:
MY own experience.
my OWN experience.
my own EXPERIENCE.
So Selfish.

MY WHOLE FREAK'N LIFE...that's all that mattered to me. MY OWN EXPERIENCE with God and with faith. Did I care when people asked me about what faith was? Did I care when people asked me about who God was? Apparantly not, because if anyone ever asked me such things, the only answer I could give them would be something contrived from my own heart/mind. And sure, some people might have wanted to hear that type of answer, but then what about the people who had questions beyonnndd just the experiences? What about the people who wanted to know the background story or the logics of it? I couldn't tell that group of people anything other than, "Weeellll, sorry, but your questions don't really matter in the end. You just gotta have faith. okay bye!"

And I suddenly realized how selfish I'd been this whole time as I grew in my faith and grew in my walk with God. It was SO SAD to me last night after I realized how blind I had been to the questions..the extremely important questions many people were burdened with because some selfish Christian didn't know how else to answer their questions. Sadly, yet honestly, I didn't understand WHY we as Christians should be more knowledged about what we believed and why we believed it. Because to me, all that mattered really was...Love God with all your heart and Love your neighbors as yourself. And I realized last night that sometimes, it's FAR more complex and intricate than that...even though we may not want it to be.

SO where do I go from here? Study. I have my relationship built and my faith increased from over the past however many years. But starting from this day forward, it's time that I increase my knowledge of my faith and my God rather just my experience of it.

A fear that's been lurking since i've become a senior in high school is the "backsliding" of faith the moment I graduate. Sure i have peers and pastors keeping me accountable, but a few recent happenings got me worrying again. Even the statistics are depressing, as roughly half the high school ministry will cease to care/ attend a church once they "graduate" from their ministries. 

Though i have been christian as long as I can remember, believing in something intangible has always been a stumbling block. But these struggles are so...real. Witnessing my friends becoming aloof and distant from God does pain me since I too am vulnerable to the same struggles. 

In my eyes, struggle and failure blurs all else in which I delight. But to His eyes, according to His plan, I fall short in every circumstance and His grace and mercy is what keeps me from being consumed by sin.  This doesn't justify my complaints and whinings, nor does it encourage admitting of flaws. But He does grant me solace and comfort, all that I need.

--For the first time this summer after I moved into the Sherman Oaks Apt., I felt shaken in my faith, and in my call (to life? to ministry?). As I "went against the current" so to speak, I just continued to feel more and more resistance from all around me. And you can bet it made me ask "Wait...was I really called to L.A. just for Pepperdine Ministry?"

--For the first time this summer after I moved into the Sherman Oaks Apt., I felt confused about who I was as Joann Lee...after everything I've worked for, believed in, associated with, lived for, felt no longer bolted down around me. Simply put, I felt like I was in a whirlwind, trying to grasp hold of SOMETHING SECURE. I didn't get a hold of anything.

--For the first time this summer after I moved into the Sherman Oaks Apt., I had a talk with Jordan that reminded me of my deep insecurities. Just because he had helped me retain my insecurities over the past few months that we were dating, it didn't mean I had actually thrown them out for good. It made me so frustrated to realize how deeply embedded my silly insecurities were within me.

--SO for the first time this summer after I moved into the Sherman Oaks Apt., I spent a whole evening, which bled into this morning, to myself...taking care of some errands, cooking by myself, catching up on my reading (I started about five books over the summer which I didn't get a chance to finish), trying to do a little bit of yoga (I was sad to realize I wasn't as flexible as I was), going running/walking outside in the crips morning air, and spending time/talking with God.

--AND it was exactly what I needed.

After all this, I realized something. All God wanted me to do was lay aside my insecurities and doubts about my career, my calling, myself as a person, and to just enjoy Him and being in His presence. To be honest, all this was so much easier to do only a few months ago when I didn't have other obligations. And today, I felt (and God knew that) I was spreading myself really thin...trying to give equal amounts of me to 10827018 different things. So God, being the awesome God that He is, decided "I'm not going to let Joann keep spreading herself so thin that she loses her focus of Me. I'm going to shake her world up a little bit and remind her that the only security she'll find is in Me."

And that's exactly what He did, and that's exactly what I needed to get back on track with my God.

Isn't God amazing?