Tag: bible

How Middlemarch Shaped My Perspective as a Mother

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

I am 38 and only just discovered Middlemarch by George Eliot, and now it’s in my top 5 favorite novels of all time, and I thank God I didn’t wait another 30 years before I opened this book, because not only is it a classic for a reason– timeless, universal, exceptionally written– but it hit me just at the right season of my life as a 38-year-old wife and stay-at-home mother who wrestle with this need to feel “fulfilled” and “accomplished” in my life.

When I picked up Middlemarch, I expected to read a great Victorian classic. I didn’t expect it to tug at my soul and expose its contents and re-narrate the story I had scripted about my own life. Middlemarch spoke poignantly to some of my deepest longings and questions and fears, the way no self-help book or therapy can, by expressing humanity through deep and complex characters going through ordinary life.

This post is not a review, though it does contain elements of it, and will include spoilers. This post is about how Middlemarch helped me see myself in this season more clearly and empathetically, how it defined the image I had for myself through a pretty annoying character, and how it helped me feel more content and fulfilled in my life.

First of, George Eliot writes beautifully. Her prose is just unrivaled, and I was copying down sentence after sentence that were so beautifully and gracefully crafted that I wept at how my own writing paled in comparison. Her characters have flesh, blood, movement, tears, sweat, creaking joints, excrements. They are alive. They are not satirical or angelic like most of Charles Dickens’ characters. They are not melodramatic and overwrought like some of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s characters. They are noble and egoistic; earnest and foolish; generous and selfish– all the dimensions that make up the complex nature of a human being who’s both made in the image of God yet is also fallen and depraved.

And you can really tell that Eliot loves her characters. She’s got such tenderness towards them, the way God does to His image-bearers. She exposes their shortcomings, yet covers them with grace and mercy and compassion. None of her characters are pure villains or angels. They are so richly complex, so vibrantly flawed, yet uniquely sympathetic and whole and…well, dignified in their own right. Many writers do this well, but Eliot is next level. As a narrator, she flows naturally from counselor to pastor to philosopher to a fellow human being in the way she illustrates and analyzes what’s happening. She’s no postmodernist— she’s got a strong moral core, but without being sanctimonious.

Middlemarch is set in a small early 19th-century town called Middlemarch in England, at a time when Britain was globally powerful and prosperous, when society was still rigidly divided into social status and gender, when women were expected to be naturally more virtuous than men yet stay dependent, private, powerless, and fragile, and when the Industrial Revolution was gearing up, causing new and inextricable issues regarding class, labor, human rights, politics, education, democracy.

At its core, the book is about unmet idealism. It follows the ambitions, limitations, and disappointments of two main characters, Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate. (By the way, who’s named Dorothea or Tertius these days?)

We meet Dorothea as a “handsome” and “remarkably clever” 19-year-old orphaned woman who intentionally wears such plain garments in contrast to her beauty that she’s compared to the “Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters.” She’s described as having a mind that’s “theoretic, and yearned by its nature after some lofty conception of the world.” She’s “enamoured of intensity and greatness, and rash in embracing whatever seemed to her to have those aspects; likely to seek martyrdom.” She’s ardently pious with a fierce sense of social justice and compassion, to the point where meeting a sick labourer would cause her to “kneel suddenly down on a brick floor” and pray “fervidly as if she thought herself living in the time of the Apostles.”

In short, she’s tiresome. She’s annoying. She’s the kind of Bible-quoting, moral policing, self-denying, self-righteous social justice warrior who would chastise you for swearing or being apathetic about oppression.

Here’s one early scenario, where her younger sister Celia suggests looking through their dead mother’s jewels. Dorothea is instantly dismissive— Why? Only worldly people wear jewels. Celia argues that they should respect mama’s memory, that necklaces are quite usual these days, not at all extravagant, and “surely there are women in heaven now who wore jewels,” she tries feebly.

Dorothea consents and they admire their mother’s jewels. Dorothea is delighted in Celia’s delight. Then Celia suggests Dorothea keep a beautiful pearl cross, thinking that would suit her religious aesthetic.

“Not for the world, not for the world. A cross is the last thing I would wear as a trinket.” Dorothea shuddered slightly.

“Then you will think it wicked in me to wear it,” said Celia, uneasily.

“No, dear, no,” said Dorothea, stroking her sister’s cheek. “Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another.”

OK. YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN? She is maddening!

Here, in one passage, Eliot brilliantly captures the paradox of Dorothea. She clearly admires the jewels, but she justifies it with religious speak. It’s OK for her sister to wear a cross necklace, but no, absolutely not her, because she’s different, she’s set apart, she’s extraordinary. This is Dorothea’s contradiction: She’s genuinely humble and good…but she’s also freaking full of herself, and she’s completely unaware of it. She believes she’s called to an unconventional vocation, a heavenly mission.

Trouble is, she’s a woman in the early 1800s in England. The best permitted ambition for her is to marry up. So she decides she’s going to marry someone extraordinary– an exceptional husband for a woman who seeks the exceptional things in life. When Sir James Chettam, a wealthy, good-natured, handsome young landowner expresses interest in Dorothea, she shuts that down real quick. Sir James might be the ideal catch for many a women, but not Dorothea, oh no. No, she decides to marry Edward Casaubon.

Let Eliot describe Casaubon to you: “the set of his iron-grey hair and his deep eye-sockets made him resemble the portrait of Locke. He had the spare form and the pale complexion which became a student; as different as possible from the blooming Englishman of the red-whiskered type represented by Sir James Chettam.”

Eliot is being charitable by describing him through the eyes of Dorothea. Celia describes Casaubon more candidly: “How very ugly Mr Casaubon is!”

When Dorothea rebukes her sister, saying Casaubon is as distinguished-looking as Locke, Celia retorts, “Had Locke those two white moles with hairs on them?”

Oh man. I DIE. Do you know what John Locke looks like? This is a portrait of Locke:

Dashing, he is not. His nose is large enough to hang a coat. Add two white moles with hairs, and that’s Casaubon. Also, Casaubon is 45 years old to Dorothea’s 19.

Besides, he is just…that kind of self-important, self-serious, mansplainer who talks “as if he had been called upon to make a public statement.” He is not just old enough to be Dorothea’s father; he is also physically ailing. He’s spent too much time indoors poring over his tomes, working on a scholarly masterpiece that have yet to materialize, and his sallow skin and weak frame reveal it.

And THEN! The proposal he writes Dorothea! I won’t quote it, because it’s incomprehensible with all its stylized, obtuse garble (even by Victorian standards), but basically, he tells her that he’s a Very Important Man, working on a Very Important Work that demands all his energy and attention (basically, he’s trying to compile the world’s mythologies into one scholarly religious text), but he senses another need that he once feared would interrupt that Very Important Work, and that is a female helpmate. But hark! He’s finally found a companion worthy of assisting him in this Very Important Work: Dorothea! How amazing is he– uh, she? Would she marry him?

And Dorothea’s reaction? She “trembled while she read this letter; then she fell on her knees, buried her face, and sobbed.” Not out of outrage and indignation, as any sensible woman should have, but out of overwhelming gratitude that she had been chosen. She herself didn’t choose Casaubon out of love: “Her whole soul was possessed by the fact that a fuller life was opening before her: she was neophyte about to enter on a higher grade of initiation.”

So I guess they deserved each other. They married to fulfill their own needs. And their marriage is disastrous. Not only does Casaubon not show much affection or appreciation for who Dorothea is as a person, he starts resenting and belittling her once he realizes that she realizes that Casaubon is indeed a big fat fraud. And worse, he’s a BORE. He can parrot important, serious-sounding intellectual words, but it’s all regurgitation. He’s well-read, but as bland as soggy bread. He’s disciplined, but utterly unoriginal and uninspired. He always does what is right, but there’s a stinginess even to his charity.

Dorothea had expected Casaubon to elevate her spiritual purpose, to stimulate her hunger for intellectual nourishment. Instead, their marriage spirals into a toxic prison of resentment, frigidness, jealousy, bitterness, suspicion, fear, insecurity. For all her high-minded ways, Dorothea is an earnestly joyful person, but he sucks the joy and zest out of her. Finally, Casaubon dies, and Dorothea is a young widow bereft not just of a husband, but her dreams of a fulfilling some deep purpose in life.

And then there’s Tertius Lydgate. Now Lydgate is a middle-class man. He’s got way more power and resources and opportunities than Dorothea. He’s also whip-smart, young, educated, visionary. He’s progressive and scientific in the medical field, at a time when doctors still drew blood to “restore bodily balance” and placated patients with nonsense brews. He arrives in Middlemarch as an ambitious doctor aiming to reform medicine in a conservative rural town suspicious of anything new and progressive. He wants to save lives…and make a name for himself.

His is an even more tragic story. Lydgate had so much potential and worthy goals. But then he marries a beautiful woman with elegant charm and a sweet singing voice and pretty smiles but no moral compass, sensibility, or perspective other than her own. His story is a painfully gradual, downward slide— first financially, then maritally, then socially and idealistically…until he quietly fades into comfortable mediocrity, which quite literally diminishes him.

Dorothea and Lydgate are similar in many ways: They are both idealistic and intelligent. They both marry disastrously and becomes disillusioned. But their ending is different. By the end of the book, one commands admiration. The other evokes pity.

The difference between Dorothea and Lydgate is that Dorothea had moral resilience. When her life didn’t turn out the way she wanted, she learned and evolved. Dorothea faces her disappointments with a strong, principled determination to continue doing what is right and good. She might not feel respect or love for her husband, but she continues to act in love and faithfulness even when he’s cold and bitter towards her. She exchanges bitterness for compassion. She gives up her lofty ideals, but not her values, and in the process, she gains empathy, wisdom, resilience, strength, discipline. She is still passionate and high-minded, but her passion and orientation become refined, grounded, and authentic. Eventually she marries again, this time giving up status and influence for a life of invisibility and ordinariness, but one that’s also rich in love and relationships. This is someone who redirects her passion to what truly matters.

Lydgate is not like Dorothea. He diminishes. He gets smaller and smaller. He compromises, shrinks, and eventually, succumbs to defeat. He gives up relationships and purpose. He becomes passive. And he stops striving for what is good and true, and simply…lives on because he’s still breathing, and bills need to be paid. This is someone who loses his passion.

There is so much to unpack here.

As much as Dorothea irritated me with her youthful delusions of grandeur and martyrdom, even more irritatingly, I saw myself in her. I have those delusions of grandeur. I always thought it would be quite awesome to die while reporting in a war zone, or to get entangled in danger because I’m exposing corruption in powerful authorities. I had so much passion in me to make the most of life, to make it matter, to do something that matters. I also deeply identified with Lydgate’s ambitions and potential, and his sometimes awkward inability to fit neatly into societal conventions and expectations.

It’s in my nature to be idealistic, but I think it was also nurture. I was raised by a very idealistic, passionate, intense father with firm principles on what is right and wrong. He sought righteousness with all his heart and might all his life, and he raised me to be that way. All of those traits are wonderful and good…until it gets twisted with human ego and a fear of failure. I also remember as a kid attending church conferences by Darakbang, a Korean evangelistic denomination that’s…slightly cultish (but not a cult) and super intense about evangelism and discipleship. Through Darakbang, I heard so many exhortations to be this era’s “Daniel” and “David” and “Moses”– highly educated, highly accomplished, powerful “elites” (they actually used that term “elite”) who will shake society and heaven.

I strived to be a Daniel and Moses. I wanted to be an elite. Someone who does great things. A transformer. A mover and shaker. A legacy.

And what do I do now? I read Middlemarch after the kids go to bed, and that’s the main intellectual exercise I get for the entire day.

I wake up with two little kids clinging onto me like little koalas. I pick up toys and shoes and underwear as I strut around the house, changing diapers, washing poopy hands, wiping apple sauce off counters and floors, wiping snot on my sweatpants (my daily attire), holding a tantrumy toddler in one arm while stir-frying dinner with the other, telling a high-energy preschooler for the twelfth time to sit his butt on the chair instead of rolling underneath the dining table, and teaching a highly unmotivated 4-year-old to sound out the word “CAT.”

I do not feel like a Daniel or a Moses or a David. I feel…like a Martha. Constantly doing, rushing, repeating chores and duties that are invisible only because someone is doing them, day in day out. Someone who’s quietly resentful of the countless things she does all day but has nothing to show for at the end of the day.

By the time I read Middlemarch, I had accepted that this is my life, a life I’ve chosen. I chose to stay at home. I chose to homeschool. I mentally closed the door to a career, likely forever. I stopped seeing myself as a former journalist, and more as a mother.

But it didn’t mean I felt good about it. Not that I felt bad about it— I was truly grateful to have this privilege to spend time intentionally raising my children. But I did feel like my original ambitions, my desire to do great things, had shriveled away for the sake of this life. I felt like a flower with a few petals ripped off. When I saw other former colleagues travel overseas to report on important issues, producing fantastic work, getting promoted to more distinguished journalistic positions, my heart ached with a sense of loss. And I would console myself by saying, “Well, I had my fair run. Now I’m a mother, and that’s important work, too.” It was more placating than true contentment and pride in where I am right now. I didn’t feel…well, great.

The problem is not that I sought greatness. It was that my idea of “greatness” didn’t mature all that much with my age. I still had that image of an “elite” as my vision of greatness. Doing great things was large, visible, measurable, extraordinary. But motherhood is one of the most ordinary vocation.

And then I finished Middlemarch, and contemplated the lives of Dorothea and Lydgate. And I read and re-read the ending. Here, Eliot is honest about Dorothea’s life. She re-marries someone who’s deemed far lower than herself, giving up her inheritance, and everyone proclaimed it a mistake. She was known in town as that

fine girl who married a sickly clergyman, old enough to be her father, and in little more than a year after his death gave up her estate to marry his cousin– young enough to have been his son, and with no property, and not well-born. Those who have no seen anything of Dorothea usually observed that she could not have been ‘a nice woman’, else she would not have married either the one or the other.

She was once seen as beautiful, clever, a bright and morning star. Now she’s considered a failure, a disappointment— that is, if anyone considers her at all. Meanwhile, as a modern-day feminist reader, I applaud Dorothea for following her heart this time, but there’s a sense in me that’s disappointed that she became “just” a wife and mother. But Eliot redeems her by famously ending with:

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who live faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Dorothea didn’t lose herself– at least, not the parts that were essential to how God created her. She still chose the unconventional by marrying her second husband, who later became a social reformer, while nothing much is said about Dorothea marking her impact in the public sphere. It’s implied that she was still influential within her realm, albeit invisibly, and earning zero credit or recognition for it. And Eliot dignifies and redeems that in her.

In the season I’m in right now, I have a conscious choice to make: Dorothea, or Lydgate?

I am still the same person I was before I gave up my career to be a stay-at-home mother. I still have passions, ideals, curiosity, and desires for an intellectually and spiritually fulfilling, rich life— things that drew me to my career as a journalist in the first place. I think those are natural traits that God formed in me. It’s what makes me me, and I believe God honors that.

Reading Middlemarch awakened those things in me, while reminding me that just as Dorothea had to refine and temper those natural instincts in her as she grew from a 19-year-old girl to a mature, time-tested, experienced woman, I too am in the process of fine-tuning my passions and ideals and dreams, from youthful impulsion and selfish ambitions into something more real, more true, more pure…and it’s not just motherhood.

It’s being a whole person. A fuller person. A person who seeks goodness and does good even when no one is watching, when no one recognizes me, when there’s no accolades or promotions. A person who doesn’t long to be seen, but sees others. A person who doesn’t just plan and dream, but acts and lives out my values. That’s what it means to be fulfilled in life– to fill my life with faithfulness, goodness, and contentment. I don’t need to seek purpose; there’s purpose already in the life I’ve been given.

Dorothea was an irritating girl when I first met her. But by the last page of Middlemarch, she earned my respect and admiration. She’s not a typical role model exemplified in society, whether in the 1800s or today. But she is mine.

Teaching my child to love God

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

As Tov is now 3, David and I have been discussing more about how to intentionally instill a living faith in our children, and that got me thinking about how I was raised as a Christian.

I grew up as a pastor and missionary’s kid, so my parents were very intentional about developing our faith. We spent about as many hours playing in church as at home. We had family worship time at home, with my father strumming the guitar as we sang Korean hymns from black-leather, zip-up Korean Bibles that included about 500+ classic translated hymns. I engaged in a lot of cat fights with fellow PKs and broke a couple of glasses that way. We were required to sit in the front row while my father preached for two hours, which meant everyone behind me could see my head nodding away, and I knew I’d get a scolding from my father on the way home.

All that intensive training to be a devoted Christian, and by God’s grace, and through my parents’ fervent prayers for us, I am today a committed, Bible-believing Christian. I thank my parents for that, but mostly, I thank God, knowing how much of a child’s faith is out of the parent’s control.

Still, if I have to confess: I don’t always love to pray. I never did, actually. Growing up, I really did not like reading the Bible; I didn’t like going to church; I didn’t like participating in worship; and I especially hated the children’s worship time, absolutely detested those perky Sunday teachers forcing us to stand up and do silly dances and hand motions when I’d rather be tucked in bed reading and sucking on chocolate mints.

I also remember the week-long church retreats in Korea that my parents registered us in. Koreans can be kind of extra, and the prayers there were definitely…dramatic. Korean Christians do a lot of simultaneous prayers, which means everyone prays out loud together. Today I see a lot of value and beauty in that kind of communal prayer setting, but even as a kid with a sensitive BS meter, sometimes all I saw was a bunch of adults competing to one-up each other on passion and zealousness for God. It was mostly a lot of ahjummas with the ubiquitous Korean perm, lifting their arms up, beating their breasts, wailing, hollering, weeping, screaming “Ju-Yeo! Ju-Yeo!” or “Lord! Lord!” in Korean. And I remember watching some littler kids looking around stupefied, and then starting to cry themselves, and nobody paid heed to them, because that was just the kind of response one was supposed to have in the presence of God.

All these religious rituals of prayer and worship and Bible-reading felt onerous to me. At times it felt performative. Mostly it felt burdensome, like doing worksheets after school or eating broccoli because it’s “good” for me and because my parents said so. I still remember the shame I felt when my father glared at me from the pulpit because I couldn’t keep my eyes open, or the family worship that erupted into tears and bellows as my father boxed our ears because we weren’t paying attention and showing proper devotion to God.

Now as a mother of two still very young children, I feel the impendence of this terrible, tremendous, awesome burden of Deuteronomy 6: 5-9:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

My parents certainly did this for us, quite literally. They truly loved God with all their heart, mind, and strength. My father in particular also had a lot of zealousness, and the severity of an eldest son of an extremely traditional Korean household. He talked about God all the time. He preached to us from the dinner table, during the drive to church, after church, on family vacations, at random times during the day when he was struck with a conviction to teach us something Very Important, and we better sit up and listen with the respect due to him as our father but especially, to God.

We weren’t allowed to watch a lot of movies and shows. (Beauty and the Beast was evil, my mother told us, because it was too close to bestiality. Thankfully they relaxed on this a little as we got older.) We couldn’t listen to secular music, because Satan was a worship leader, and rock and roll is near satanic. We didn’t have much decor at home, because my parents had no time or aesthetic sense to design our house, but we did have a small wooden cross, a giant painting of (white-looking) Jesus and his disciples, and scripture verses in Chinese printed out on A4 paper and taped onto the bathroom wall at eye level from the toilet. When my parents visited our house, my mother commented with dismay at the lack of religious decor in our home, and I internally shuddered, because I now associate religious decor with the hideous, cheesy, ostentatious artifacts of the 90s and early 2000s. (I do appreciate a simple cross though. We have a small wooden cross in our house– gifted by my parents, of course.)

I don’t want to raise my kids exactly like the way my parents raised me and my brother. But they also did a lot of things well. They taught us that God is to be taken seriously. They taught us to take His Word with reverence, to the point where my father would get upset if we placed the Bible on the floor. They drilled into us spiritual disciplines such as going to church, tithing, and reading the Bible, and they themselves lived that out diligently and faithfully in their own lives. I never once doubted the existence of God, because I saw that God is real to my parents. God is not a political symbol, a cultural expression, a proud heritage of our forefathers– He is a real, living being. They placed this faith– love God and love others– first and foremost in their priority of values, and to this day, this value comes before all other common values such as wealth, comfort, popularity, health, ego, success, and vanity– and for that, I’m eternally thankful, because that shaped my own value system to this day.

My parents modeled what it looks like to be a Christian in real time, and as a missionary kid, I also heard a lot of testimonies from people all over the world whose lives were transformed by God, and I heard lots of biographies of missionaries who sacrificed everything to share the gospel. I had so much knowledge. I had so many examples of how to be a real Christian. I was proud of my parents, and I still am.

As I look back, however, I think something was also lacking. I don’t know if it’s lacking because of something deficient in the way my parents raised us, or if it’s because of my own sins and shortcoming. But what was lacking was joy. There were not enough joy and delight in the way my parents taught us faith. I didn’t find God very enjoyable or delightful. In fact, church services were stressful for me because I knew I would fall asleep and then have to face my father’s disappointment, and I absolutely dreaded family worship because I knew it’ll end with, again, my father’s anger and disappointment.

But what could I do about it? I told myself honestly that I simply did not love God enough, didn’t love Him like my father did, but I did not know how to make myself love someone I couldn’t see, hear, or touch, no matter how much my parents tried to discipline this apathy out of me. God felt like a distant cousin’s uncle, yet His presence was heavy and stifling, like a thick blanket over me, making it hard to breathe or move without feeling its fabric hanging over my face.

It didn’t help that my father was also my pastor, and our family was rather patriarchal and hierarchical, in which my father’s word was the ultimate authority, so it was confusing to me whether my father’s words was God’s Word, or a human father’s words. So much of God was channeled through my parents’ words, actions, and expectations that I couldn’t disentangle the two; it was like trying to hear God through a faulty landline buzzing and hissing with other people’s conversations. I suppose this is a very common issue among second-generation Christians, especially those whose parents are in ministry. There were just too many words, too much knowledge, too much theology, stuck in my mind like an apple core in a gullet, unable to be fully digested and absorbed into the heart.

And so. Now the responsibility of raising our children according to Deuteronomy 6:5-9 falls upon David and me. It’s our turn now, and that means we need to start with Deuteronomyu 6:5: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your strength.”

When I really think about it, really sit and dwell on it in the midst of the chaos of early parenthood, I feel stabs of anxiety. I can go to church every Sunday, tithe a good amount, go to small group and discipleship groups, do my devotions, serve others, all that. But love the Lord with everything I have, to the deepest depths of my soul? Oh, dear. How much of my daily life reflects that? And my goal for our children is pretty lofty: I don’t want to them to just be good Christians; I want them to be better Christians than David and I. I want them to love God– truly, desperately, delightedly, joyfully love God, with all their heart and soul and might.

Now, how do I achieve that?

When Tov turned 3, I decided it’s time to be more intentional about setting healthy spiritual habits for our son. Every morning, during breakfast, we now have Bible time. It’s short and relaxed, especially because Tov has a hard time sitting still, and he’s only just begun being able to sit through a picture book.

Here’s how our Bible time looks like: We begin with a short prayer. Currently we are praying for gentle and kind hands, because Tov can be quite rough with his little sister. Then we read a short story out of a children’s Bible. (We started with The Tiny Truths Bible for Little Ones, which is really more on Tov’s level and he loves the cute pictures of angels in there, and now we’re going through The Jesus Storybook Bible, which I love but the artwork is not as engaging for Tov and the narrative is profound but seems a little over Tov’s head.) Then I read a short passage out of my Be Thou My Vision liturgy book, which is definitely way over Tov’s level, but the purpose of it is just to get Tov habituated with the language and posture of liturgy, and it’s really for me, because I’m part of this Bible time, too. Then depending on the story we read in the Bible, I play a song for him so he can get the wiggles out. For example, when we read about Abraham, I played the song “Father Abraham” for Tov, and he turned on the karaoke mic to sing (scream) along and ran to his room to get his guitar so he can have a proper jam session. We end with a brief lesson on an alphabet letter.

All this is maybe 15 minutes, at most. That’s the longest I can hold his attention at a time, and I don’t want to push it in case Bible time becomes more burdensome than enjoyable. Even within that short 15 minutes, it’s controlled chaos: I’m often telling Tov to sit down instead of climbing onto the table, being interrupted by Woori who’s flinging food everywhere, and reminding Tov to eat his breakfast. For now, at least, I was surprised by how easily Tov adopted Bible time into his daily routine, and even asks for it every morning.

Fifteen minutes of Bible time, but then there’s a long stretch of all the other hours when my children are also learning about God through David and me– and that’s the terrifying part. These kids are always watching you, learning from you, including things that you weren’t even aware of, things you don’t want them to learn. Everything is a teaching moment. And I wonder: Is God real and loving and lovable and awesome to them, based on how David and I live our lives? Sometimes I think they’re just too young to even understand the concept of God. But then, I also wonder at what point they will being to understand, and what they’ll absorb and learn until the day I realize that they do understand. It doesn’t matter when they understand. We have to start living our faith out authentically, today.

Two nights ago, we had a teaching moment come by, and it would have passed us if not for the fact that I lost my cool in front of Tov.

Tov had pooped in his little potty in the bathroom, and as he left the room to ask me to wipe him, he pushed the lock inside and then slammed the door shut. So now there his poop sat, steaming in the little pink plastic Baby Bjorn potty, out there in the open air, and I could not get to it. I could smell it from behind the door as I fiddled with the knob.

David was out for a work dinner, so it was up to me to figure out how to open this door. Google told me to straighten a hair pin and poke it into the lock until I hear a click. I did that and I heard no click. I jammed and rammed and jiggled and wiggled the damn hair clip, hearing the metal scratch at metal, while Tov, in a great state of excitement, tried to “help.”

“I’ve got an idea,” he told me, poking his finger in the air, and ran around the house ransacking drawers and cabinets, bringing me a bandaid, a cheese knife, multiple masking tapes, batteries, a wine opener, even a Covid test. He shoved each item into my face, talking up a storm, while I wrestled with the locked door, the fumes of his stool bruising my nostrils. It was just too much sensory overload for me, and I let out a frustrated roar as I violently shook the door knob.

Tov immediately burst into tears. “I don’t like that!” he cried, fat tears running down his red cheeks. He grabbed my face and held it. “Don’t do that! I don’t like that!”

I felt ashamed of my behavior. It wasn’t Tov’s fault. He had shut the door because I had previously told him to do so, as I didn’t want Woori climbing into the toilet and licking his potty.

“Hold you, hold you,” Tov cried, trying to climb onto my lap. I hugged him and apologized. “Omma isn’t angry at you,” I told him. “I’m just frustrated. I don’t know how to fix this. I’m trying, but it’s not working.”

He understood what this means, but he was also puzzled, because every time his toy stopped working or something broke or his Yoto went out of juice, we knew how to “fix” it. What did it mean that his mother couldn’t fix this door?

And then God convicted me: This was a great teachable moment. An opportunity to make faith come alive, in ways that Tov can understand.

“Let’s pray,” I told Tov. “I can’t fix this. But you know who can? God! Can you pray to God?”

Tov bowed his head, put his hands together, and mumbled something with God and Jesus in it and declared, “Amen!”

“Amen,” I echoed. “OK! God is going to fix this!”

OK, God, you heard him, I prayed silently. It’s all up to you now. You’re not going to let a little boy down, will you?

So I continued wiggling with that hair pin in the lock, trying to conjure up that magical “click,” but to no avail. I was losing faith. I mean, did God really care about a stupid locked door? Does Tov even understand what he prayed about, who he prayed to? This lock is probably faulty. Maybe I’ll just wait till David gets home and he’ll either figure it out or we’ll have to break the door. And then I reminded myself that I needed faith, even just for the sake of my child’s faith. Surely God cares about Tov. Surely He’s listened to this prayer, however trivial it is.

“Your omma has less faith than you,” I remarked to Tov. And then I prayed, Come on, God. I may have little faith, but a young boy’s faith is on the line. Please please don’t fail him!

Woori began to whine. It was past her bedtime. I nursed her and put her down. Then David reminded me via text that we may have some tools in the toolbox that’s small enough to fit the lock.

I dragged the toolbox out. I tried with a small screwdriver that fit into the lock, but no matter how much I jabbed, there was no click. I tried another. Nope. Then another. And there it was– that gorgeous sound, click! And the door swung open to a gentle whoosh of poop fumes.

“Oh my God! Tov! Tov!” I exclaimed to my son. He came sprinting over. “What, what omma, what?”

“Look!” I yelled. I almost said I fixed it, and then caught myself– “I– God fixed it! Look!”

Tov opened the door and entered the bathroom with open-mouthed amazement and wonder. We high-fived in glee. Then I went in to clean his poop.

“Who fixed the door?” I asked him later, as we got ready for his bedtime routine.

“God!” he beamed.

Oh, I never felt prouder of our son.

It was a pretty silly, insignificant event. People unlock locked doors all the time. It doesn’t take a genius. But that event transcended into something that fed into the eternal soul of a child who learned that nothing is too small or silly for God’s attention. And that child was me.

That’s it, though. So much of parenting is reminding ourselves that we are daughters and sons of God first, omma and abba second. God commands us to talk to our children about Him when we’re sitting at home or walking on the road or lying down or getting up, because we also–especially so– need to hear it, as guardians of young, impressionable, moldable, wonderfully and fearfully made souls.

When I think back to how I was raised as a Christian, I have a lot of gratitude and compassion for my parents. They were both the first Christians in their family. They were first-time parents and first-time Christian parents. They discipled us the way they knew how, which was very traditional, formal, and rigid. But they did it out of genuine love, love for both God and their children. That love set the foundation from which God added brick and mortar, curtain rods and wallpaper. God honored their love and prayers, and sprinkled so much grace over their mistakes. And over the years, my parents grew, too. They are not the same people they were when they were raising toddlers. They too were son and daughter of God first, parents second, and they are continuing to grow and change to this day.

I felt immense peace that night. It’s not that my sense of duty and responsibility to raise my kids in the Lord has in any way diminished. It’s just that I felt a little wind in my sails. Oh, so this is what it’s like: I invite my children into my growth process as a Christian, as a daughter of God. We don’t have to have it all figured out right now. We just need to have our sails up and ready, so that when that gentle wind of the Holy Spirit blows, we take off in the right direction, with our kids aboard us. And putting our sails up can start as simple as a 15-minute Bible time in the morning, with Tov hopping up and down on his seat, while Woori spread banana paste on her hair.

Saying goodbye to my parents

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

On February 28, 2025, I dropped my parents off at Hell on Earth, aka LAX, early in the morning. I’ve dropped them off at this airport numerous times. But this time, they weren’t flying back home to Virginia. They flew back to their mother home, South Korea.

They had four luggages and one backpack. For people who had lived so economically and simply, they were shocked by how much stuff they had accumulated over the 24 years they had lived in the United States– mountains and mountains of stuff that they threw out and donated and gave away.

I remember the story my father used to repeat to us, the way patriarchs retell family legends, of them packing all their belongings in Korea into two luggages, and landing in Singapore as fresh missionaries with a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old. My father was filled with ambition; my mother filled with apprehension. Now they return home with twice the luggage, five times the wrinkles, 34 times the lived experience of full-time ministry, and infinite times the joy and gratitude.

Woori was wailing as we drove to the airport that day. She hates being in the car seat, and no matter how many tongue-clucking and funny faces my omma made, she made her displeasure known. So by the time I pulled the Mazda SUV up to the curb of Tom Bradley International Terminal, I was a little frazzled, my overstimulated senses as messy and stuffy as my heart.

We pulled the heavy luggages out to the curb. Then we embraced. Once, twice. I had to let go quickly as I wasn’t technically allowed to park there, but my hugs were also hasty because once I enfolded my arms around my omma and abba, breathing in their familiar scents, touching the bodies that cradled me skin-to-skin from the moment I was born, I didn’t want to let go.

They waved. I waved. Then I hopped into the SUV and pulled out, back into the smoky tunnel of LA morning traffic. And as I drove away, Woori cried, and I too cried.

It is an end to an era.

It is silly, I tell myself, to be this sad. It’s not like my parents are dying, or unreachable. They are simply moving an ocean away, and with technology, I need only tap my screen to see their faces and chat with them. It’s not like I got to see them that often even when they were stateside, since we lived in opposite coasts.

But it does feel, in a way, like death. Or at least, an ending. They have closed down their church of 24 years, the church I grew up in, served in. The church that sent me off to college and then welcomed me back when I dropped out after being hospitalized, and then sent me back off again. The church about which I have complex feelings, the way anyone does with family members squeezed under one roof. The ministry my parents gave more than half their life to is changing. I can no longer go back “home” to Virginia, and that feels sad, even though Virginia hasn’t felt like home in years.

It also feels like a death to my hope that my children will be close to their grandparents. Living overseas, I grew up seeing my own grandparents once every three years, at most, and whenever we visited them, I felt awkward. Each visit was like meeting strangers for the first time. We had almost zero history and shared very little memories and experiences. They didn’t have much to say to me, and I didn’t have much to say to them. I really don’t want that for my own children. The thought of them not knowing their grandparents, not receiving their affection and admonishments and doting, pains me.

But more than anything, this closing of an era is a jolting reminder to me that my parents are aging. During the two weeks they spent with us here in LA before they flew to Korea, I saw my parents get more easily tired. Omma has lost more than 15 pounds and is dealing with health issues, while abba needs a few naps a day to push on. Omma has always been more physically fragile, but Abba to me has always been like an oak tree– thick, strong, unwavering, abounding. Even his voice was like oak– a rich, loud baritone. To see his sparse gray hairs, to hear his cracking voice, I felt fear and anxiety, knowing the thing that most human beings face at some point in their lives– the passing of their parents– is drawing near.

Death was a regular topic while my parents were in LA. For the first time, they told me what they wanted when they died. Both told me they want us to pull the plug should they be in a coma. They want us to scatter their ashes in the mountains. We also talked about what to do if one of them dies before the other. It’s terrible talk, but it needed to be said.

Being a 37-year-old wife and mother is to be sandwiched between two duties– one to the family I’m raising, and the other to the family that raised me. One family is fresh and new, still knobly and plump like buds about to bloom. The other is wilting, the peak season long passed. I myself am in full bloom, but I’m noticing a few petals starting to droop, and I know my peak is over, particularly as I feel the growing aches and creaks of aging. It is a very odd, uncomfortable, conflicting season in life, to be worrying about your kids at the same time you worry about your parents.

I knew my parents would have financial issues. Now that they are no longer receiving an income from the church, they had to figure out a new living situation. They didn’t have anything planned for retirement other than social security. They have no property, no assets. When they applied for a new credit card, the company gave them a $1,000 credit line. They couldn’t even afford to continue staying where they’ve been living for 22 years– a townhouse that’s 40 years outdated, with tiny rooms and laminated kitchen cabinets that are literally falling apart.

That’s how my parents had been living all these years. They tithed about a third of their income to the church. They never considered building wealth, at least not the earthly kind. My mother didn’t once own a designer handbag. My father wore the same suit he bought in Korea decades ago, and his ties were gifted by others. They lived simply and trusted that the Lord will provide.

I have less faith, I suppose. I got a little angry when they refused, several years ago, David’s offer to buy their townhome for them so they didn’t have to worry about housing. I got irritated thinking about this again after they told me they shut down the church. “You should have said yes to David’s offer when you had the chance!” I said to omma.

And that’s when they decided to return to South Korea and apply for dual-citizenship. It was the most practical decision– Korea has great benefits for the elderly so they don’t have to worry about health care; they could comfortably live on their social security there, since housing is cheaper, as long as it’s not in major cities such as Seoul. But they underestimated the cost of housing even in smaller towns. Their budget could only afford old, rundown places in rural villages.

Meanwhile, David and I are renovating our new house. What was originally going to be a bit of a fix-up here and there turned into a full gutting. Basically, we are building a new customized house. Our renovation budget has blown out of proportion and I’m embarrassed to share it. While my parents were here, I was deciding on wall paint colors, and omma accompanied me to get some paint samples, which cost me about $160– for freaking paint SAMPLES! The money we are spending on this house is insane. Three exterior doors cost us $15,000!!!

It just didn’t feel right, that we are building our dream house while my parents look for crappy, bug-infested housing in the countryside. I felt a pang to see how excited my mother was for us. She wanted to know what we’re doing for the kitchen, the bathrooms, the exterior paint, and had plenty of opinions. She told me she enjoys watching home renovation videos on YouTube, something I learned for the first time, and it wrung my heart to realize that she admires a tastefully decorated and designed home but never had the chance to live in one, and in fact, never imagined she could.

So one evening, while my parents watched Tov and Woori, and David and I were on a date, I proposed to David that we help my parents buy a house in Korea. Years ago, David had loaned his brother money for a business project, and his brother was finally returning that sum back to us. Perhaps we could direct those funds to my parents’ housing instead?

I was a little nervous suggesting this to David, not because I thought he’d refuse, but because it puts me in a vulnerable position, and I pride myself for being self-sufficient and independent. And though technically this money belongs to both of us, it’s still a lot of money, and it’s money that came from David’s earning, not mine. So it took a lot of swallows for me to ask David.

I wasn’t surprised when he agreed. I knew he would. But I was still touched beyond words when he did. Turns out, a day ago, he had been listening to a devotion about not storing your treasures on earth but on heaven, and that had made him ponder. Then that Sunday, our pastor preached on the Ten Commandments. To honor your parents, the pastor said, includes providing for them financially in their later years.

What’s more, both of us had been praying about money this year. I’m praying about generosity, and David’s praying about wise stewardship of our finances. The Lord has blessed us financially with a new house, and we want to use it for the glory of Him and the good of others.

All of this didn’t feel like a coincidence. It felt like God was blessing us to bless our parents.

David and I agreed to broach the subject on the last night with my parents before they left LA. I told David I was nervous about bringing it up, because historically, abba has been strongly against receiving any help from us. I had no idea how he would react, and I braced myself for a five-point argument on why he should accept our help. I told David he had to be the one to offer it; it couldn’t come from me. And I told him to emphasize how this conviction came from God.

That night, after dinner, David and I exchanged glances. It’s time, I said with my eyes. David turned on a show on TV so Tov won’t bug us, while I took Woori off her high chair and held her on my lap so she’d be quiet.

“So,” David began. “Sophia and I have been praying about being generous with what God gave us. And I’ve been thinking about how we want to invest with what we have…”

“Oh?” Abba said, having no idea where his son-in-law was going with this.

Well, I was really proud of David that night. He mentioned everything I had hoped he would, and when he was done, my father grasped his hand, nodded, and said, “I receive.” And then he choked up, and said again, “Thank you. Thank you Lord. I receive.”

I was so shocked that I couldn’t believe my ears. Omma was just as incredulous, so she asked him, “Wait, so what do you mean. Does this mean you will accept the money?”

Yes, Abba said. He sees how much the Lord has blessed us, and by accepting it, He too is receiving God’s blessings, and because God blesses those who give, he believes he is also blessing us by receiving it.

I felt my heart release with relief and gladness. Before David and I got engaged, I had actually asked him to use whatever he would have spent on my engagement ring, and donate it instead to my parents’ ministry. That didn’t end up happening, but now that I had more than I could have ever imagined– I, who once couldn’t afford laundry detergent and had to make my own!– it made my heart feel so full that I was able to present this one gift for my parents in their older age, in this new season of their life. This was the first significant financial support I’d ever given my parents. It was also the first step in tilting the balance towards me supporting my parents, rather than them supporting me– an end to an era, indeed.

What made my heart just as full, however, was that David was doing this with me. As I pray about generosity this year, my own husband is showing me how to be generous not just with his finances, but with his heart.

It is easy for me to be generous with my own parents; I would give them part of my liver if they needed it. But it’s not as easy for a son-in-law to be as generous, to treat his wife’s parents as his own. He wasn’t just giving my parents a better house; he was giving them his love, and in there is his love for me. And I think in that moment, my father recognized that too– he was moved not just by the unexpected gift of a house, but by the clear display of a husband’s care and love for his daughter. In this, he saw God’s grace, His love and providence and goodness and faithfulness that have never failed him in his almost 35 years of ministry.

After my parents left to pack up for the next day’s travels, and after David and I had put the kids to bed, I gave my husband a hug.

“Thank you,” I said, tearing up.

“For what?” he said, acting all cool.

“For everything,” I said, and I meant it.

David made a “huh” noise, a sound he makes when he’s pleased but also trying not to sound too pleased about it. Then we talked about the show he’s watching.

We’ve never been a couple who talks all sweet and cooey and sentimental. We reserve nice sappy words for birthday cards, where we don’t have to make eye contact and hear those words out loud, so awkward and unnatural to our ears; we don’t kiss goodnight, we knock heads.

But within that brief exchange was a lifetime of card sentiments– I felt seen, valued, cherished, respected. David’s act of generosity had so many layers of blessings in it, like a mille crepe. He blessed my parents. He blessed me. He blessed our children by showing them what it looks like to honor one’s parents. He blessed my brother, who now can worry less about our parents. He blessed my relatives in Korea, who no doubt will hear from my father how the Lord has blessed him through his son-in-law. This is how true generosity works– it just keeps on giving and giving.

Saying goodbye to my parents felt strange. I felt a little like I was the parent, sending my kid to school for the first time. As the last person to hug them goodbye before they left the U.S., I felt like I was sending them out into the next chapter of their lives. I was a little worried, a little anxious, but also excited and proud. I wanted to cling on, but I had to let go. And I heard God usher them away, saying, “Well done, good and faithful servants.”

And off they go.