Tag: faith

Mom rage

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

You know that certain fart, which oozes out silent but thick, with a noxious stink that lingers and permeates long after expulsion? That’s mom rage for me: I’m just sitting in this poison gas, and all it takes is one little ignition for it to explode into WWIII-level, fire-breathing rage.

Mom rage comes in waves for me. There are days when I am just trapped in full mom rage mode, and I can’t seem to quell that simmering urge to scream. It’s like a sinister fog that settles in my heart, coating everything with the black soot of negativity. Every little thing triggers me– the clutter on the kitchen countertop that magically appears after I’ve just cleaned; the toy cars and spat-out apple pieces scattered all across the hallway for me to step on; the high-pitched whines of dissatisfied, nit-pickity children; the breeze-in-breeze-out husband who enjoys his coffee piping hot in his office (IYKYK)…just about everything grates at my nerves and sets me on edge.

There are few things as humbling and self-exposing as parenthood. When I lived alone, which I did for 12 years, I might fall into one of these moods, but then I could just stay home, and nobody had to suffer the brunt of my foul temper. And honestly, I rarely got ragey because nobody was constantly beside me bothering me, and if someone did bother me, that person didn’t sleep next to me at night.

And then I married. And then I had children. And thereafter I realized the length and breadth and height and depth of my emotional immaturity. I am sensible enough to know what is right, but not so sensible enough to do what is right (like apologizing for my husband for snapping at him, even if, truth be told, he sometimes deserve it). I am mature enough to recognize when I’m sinking into moodiness, but not mature enough to pull myself out of it immediately. In short, I am horrible at emotional regulation.

Good news is, my mom rage is pretty predictable. I have some reliable trigger points: I get triggered when things get out of my control– which is often, when you have strong-willed little human beings. For example, when Tov completely ignores me while I’m trying to do a 5-minute lesson that was supposed to be fun and play-based. When he defies me and continues playing with his trucks after I’ve repeated twelve times for him to go clean up his blocks first. When he disobeys me and steamrolls his sister, and she’s crying, and he’s cackling, and I cannot immediately help her because I’m chopping raw chicken and there’s poultry slime all over my fingers.

I also get triggered when I’m dealing with too many sensories at a time– when my bladder is bursting and I’m hungry, and my hands are smeared with somebody’s poop, and Tov is screaming because I put carrots in his udon noodles, while Woori is spitting out mushed-up apple on the floor that stick to my feet. Meanwhile, the kitchen is cluttered, the music is on too loud, and…I flip OUT.

It isn’t just the external stimulations that trigger mom rage. The internal stimulations are silent but just as noisy. Those internal overstimulation are from frustration, discontentment, and anxiety that come from comparing myself to others. Some comparisons are from hear-say: A friend once raved about this family with four kids who are so well-behaved, they do all their chores every morning without complaints. Apparently even the two-year-old knows how to clean the toilet. In my mind, he probably also wears a button-up shirt with collars and keeps the shirt whitey-white all day. Somehow, this two-year-old collared toilet-cleaner with neatly-combed hair has become my gold standard, and I cannot help wondering what parenting skills I so lack that it takes 243 reminders for my 3.5-year-old to make his own bed.

Some comparisons come from social media, those homeschool moms who cheerfully tell me that all I need is gentle persistence and sweet reminders to my children to “obey with a joyful heart” and they shall one day obey with gladness and cheer. And should they err, just shoot them a look— and they shall quickly correct their ways. WHAT ON EARTH. Who are these angel children? Somehow these homeschool moms are all super fertile with 10 or 11 (no exaggeration) kids, so they must know what they’re doing, right? How do they stay sane? What am I doing wrong?

These are the thoughts running through my mind during those moments when I spiral into mom rage. I compare my kids to others and find my parenting skills lacking. I compare my husband to others and find him dissatisfactory. And I compare myself to the super fertile podcast influencers with super well-behaved, developmentally advanced children and find myself inadequate.

And so, as I’m drowning in this ocean of negativity, as I’m overstimulated and overcritical, as much as I chant to myself, “Don’t yell, don’t yell, don’t yell”– another voice pipes, “So what if you yell? You’ll feel better. Besides, you need to strike fear into your children, otherwise they’ll be undisciplined. They’ll be spoiled and unregulated and tyrannical. You need to show them who’s BOSS by screaming at the top of your lungs.” And then Tov does something triggering, and I just…ROAR.

That voice is a lie. Never once have I felt better afterwards. Instead, I feel like shit. In fact, I feel like I want to scream even more. I feel even more out of control of my own emotions. The kids don’t behave any better because I lost my temper. So I berate myself. Condemn myself. Hide somewhere deep in the dungeons of shame. Resolve to do better. And then I do it again.

I once expressed this struggle with some friends, and one woman’s answer was: “Honestly, what you need is Jesus.” Another woman said, “It’s all a spiritual problem. It’s Satan.”

I understood what these women meant. I mean, I’m a pastor’s kid. I grew up in church. I’ve been preached to all my life. I taught Bible studies. I know the Gospel forwards and backwards, upside down and right side up. They are not wrong. Of course I need Jesus. Of course we live in a spiritual battle. And yet, I also kind of resented their response. I resented it because it was just too simple. It felt glib and patronizing, like the Christian version of the secular sermon “Just Love Yourself.”

It also made me feel even more frustrated and discouraged, because how many times have I muttered a prayer, only to lose my temper minutes later? I’ve tried reading my Bible, but some days the words just swarm like flies in front of my eyes– just more buzz, more noise, noise, noise. In those moments of mom rage, I feel so helpless and out of control, while the voices in my head is loud and mocking: “You don’t deserve to be a mother.” “Your husband regrets marrying you.” “And you teach your children to be gentle and kind? What a freaking joke.” “Hypocrite.” “Your kids will curse you to their therapist one day.”

Of course, part of mom rage is physiological. I’m perpetually tired. I can never get enough sleep. My hormones are off-kilter. I am constantly trying to meet needs that are never satisfied. I rarely get a moment to sit down by myself for more than five minutes. I am surrounded by noises of all decibels. Two sets of little hands are always grabbing at me, pulling at me, needing, needing, wanting, demanding.

I once tried to film a 3-minute video for our podcast, and gave up after a dozen tries because I couldn’t even get 3 minutes to myself without interruption. There is no moment of silence. I cannot hear myself think, only voices of self-criticism. I cannot feel myself feel, except reactive rage.

Then one day, as I was driving, I heard this familiar passage on a daily devotional podcast: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Even as I read this verse again, I feel this pang, this trembling longing. At times I believe, and at times, I think, “Lord, help my unbelief.” This is a promise Jesus made to all followers– not that we will be completely unyoked, that we are free to run to our own base desires, or that we will have no burdens at all, but that he gently welcomes all those who are weary and burdened, and offers rest and a fresh heart– his heart.

I’ve been thinking about what it means to “thrive” in this season of life. It’s a buzz word on social media. Everyone’s looking for ways to “thrive.” Well, I can’t optimize my life like the health influencers who wake up at 5 am for their green juice-workout-meditation morning routine. Sleep deprivation, sickness, fresh worries, new transitions, overstimulation– all these are constants of this season of my life. So what does it look like to “thrive” in this particular season?

Case in point. This week, Tov got really sick. He caught some kind of virus, and other than a runny nose, he seemed fine until all of a sudden, he was having trouble breathing, making weird noises and straining at his chest and stomach. I took him to the ER, fully expecting us to be back home within a few hours, but we ended up staying at the hospital for two nights.

I remember Tov getting wheeled to a room at the ER. I’ve gotten quite familiar with this ER by now, but it was Tov’s first time there, and he didn’t understand what was happening. There was a constant loud beeping noise somewhere, amid lots of scufflings of nurses and doctors, and he began crying and screaming. “I’m scared! I’m scared!” he cried, and no matter how much I hugged him and wiped his tears and tried to explain to him that the beeping was just a machine, the unfamiliar noises, the foreign environment, the discomfort of labored breathing, all of that terrified the poor little boy.

By then, I had been reciting Psalm 23 regularly to Tov, and we had been praying Psalm 23 at night before bed almost every day, so we had both memorized the entire psalm. So I took his hands and said, “Hey Tov, remember Psalm 23? Let’s pray. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…”

He recited the words with me out loud. I emphasized the words “for you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me,” and I could feel his heartbeat slowing down a little. He stopped screaming.

I’m not sure how much he understands Psalm 23. But I know he instinctively knows there’s something sacred and powerful about these words; that these are not just words but a prayer, a communication to Someone, because Tov, as young as he is at 3.5 years old, has a spirit that yearns and responds to the Spirit who created him.

I needed this prayer just as much as he did. And at that moment, I was so grateful for this opportunity to breathe life into the Word of God for him– and for me. I was grateful for the prompting of the Holy Spirit to begin this practice of reciting Psalm 23 with Tov, long before this incident, so that when we needed it, all the words of truth and power were already stored in our mind, ready to burst into life. I saw it then– how meticulous God is in His providence, and how my one little act of obedience to the Spirit’s prompting gifted me one of the most precious and practical lessons I could ever give to my child.

That got me thinking. For as long as I have been a Christian, for as long as I’ve read and studied the Bible, I still had not memorized Psalm 23 in its entirety until recently. I know a lot of Scripture, but I would not be able to recite and reference passages by heart without flipping through my Bible.

Recently, I was reading Ephesians 3– a chapter full of familiar verses– when I saw that years ago, I had marked a passage and written, “Do I truly believe?” The verses I marked were Eph 3:14-21:

“…that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith– that you, being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever, amen.”

Even 10 years ago, years before I got married and became a mother, I had asked myself, “Do I truly believe?” I must have felt the same pang then as I do now– that longing, that desperation for rest and power, to “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,” to “be filled with the fullness of God” because I felt so depleted, so empty. It isn’t parenthood that’s making me feel drained; parenthood is merely exposing the holes that have always been in me, leaking strength, peace, and joy.

I’ve been thinking about that passage ever since. These are exactly the words I need during this season of my life, when the wave of mom rage tosses me to and fro, and I’m drowning in negative thoughts, and I just need to hold on to an anchor that’s easily accessible, that’s always there, ready for me to grasp and catch my breath.

Problem is, as familiar as I am with those verses in Ephesians, it’s hard for me to recall exactly what the words are, and what they mean, because I have not committed them to memory. Instead, I find my brain going, “Right, I remember it’s something about comprehending the height and depth of Christ’s love…right…Christ loves me…OK…” and I lose the full potency and precision of God’s Word, and then it becomes vague Christianese platitudes, like “Jesus got you.” And then I feel like I’m just trying to wave a magic wand over my problems, to will or chant my issues away with positive thoughts, instead of letting God infuse me inside-out.

So here’s my challenge to myself: It’s time to start the discipline of scripture memorization. And I’m going to have my children join me. Just like I memorized Psalm 23 with my children, I’m going to simply recite some key scriptures out loud, again and again, until the words are chiseled into our brains. It’ll be relaxed, with no pressure of deadlines to memorize by a certain date, but it will be part of our daily routine, like brushing our teeth and making our beds. We will start with Ephesians 3:16-19.

This is why having children is a blessing. They can feel like a curse sometimes, when I’m overwhelmed and exhausted and overstimulated, but that’s exactly what the enemy wants– to turn our blessings into curses.

I refuse to give in to that lie. Raising children is a great responsibility, but it’s also one of the most profound, practical ways God teaches us (and sometimes forces us), as Ephesians 3 says, to comprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

Rethinking my political journey

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

I’ve been wanting to process and write about this topic for a long time, but I had pushed it off because 1) the only time I have to blog is usually after 9 pm when the kids are in bed and 2) my brain is musty from full-time childcare, and it’s even mustier at night when all I want to do is snack and read fiction.

But now with the shocking murder of Charlie Kirk, and the conversations that have swarmed out like ants from a smoking ant hill, I feel like this is the time to seriously, carefully rethink my political journey, especially as a parent raising young children in this divisive and politically violent age. I’ve been feeling twinges of conviction from time to time, but I have yet to sit down and parse through them on my knees before God. So here’s that time.

I remember my first encounter with Charlie Kirk.

It was some time in 2017 or 2018, I don’t remember exactly. I was attending a bipartisan political convention, partly for work as a journalist, and partly out of personal curiosity. At the time I had been only just developing my own political conscience, and marking “TBD” on many key issues on which the Bible isn’t clear. One of the panels I sat in on was a debate between Charlie Kirk and a young progressive whose name I cannot remember. The conference room was packed, and from the noises in the crowd, I guessed that the audience– most of them young white men– were majority Charlie Kirk fans.

That debate seared an impression on me because it left a bitter distaste in my mouth. The debate itself was civil, but it was the spirit of the audience that bothered me. I felt like I was watching a pro-wrestling match, with two ridiculously-costumed performers on stage pretend-punching each other for the sake of entertaining pubescent males. The audience jeered, hooted, laughed, and clapped as though watching a slapstick show. At one point Charlie jumped to his feet to point his finger and yell at the founder of The Young Turks, a leftwing news and commentary group, and the audience went nuts.

I remember glancing around at the expressions on these young people’s faces, and the looks of tittering delight, scorn, and thrill made my stomach squish with uneasiness. I thought of that one famous line from Gladiator, when Maximus roars at the bloodthirsty Roman crowd, “Are you not entertained?!”

This is not it, I remember thinking. This is base. This kind of political theater appeals to the basest, animal-like instincts of human nature.

But also… I, too, was entertained. You cannot help but be entertained when two articulate guys verbally spar each other on stage. You cannot help but feel a collective thrill when people around you are howling and stomping in response to a snarky “gotcha!” moment.

And I think that’s what disturbed me the most. How easily I, then an apolitical, open-minded journalist, could also get swept into the current of political fervor. None of us are immune. I am not immune.

Now it’s 2025. I am no longer apolitical. I am not politically active, but I am most certainly politically jaded. The danger with forming a political consciousness is that I’ve solidified where I land on certain issues, and the stronger I feel about it, the stronger I feel about opinions of people with whom I disagree. What used to be curiosity turned into polite disagreement and then stiffened into vehement disagreement. I could not listen to people talk about an issue I felt passionately about without viscerally feeling a rush of negative emotions, which like gush of red dye colored my image of that person.

I didn’t used to be like this. What happened?

One thing I’m really thankful to my parents is that they never raised me in a political environment. My parents didn’t have Fox News and Rush Limbaugh constantly blaring in the house like some did, and I didn’t even know what political party my parents identified with until the 2016 election. They focused on raising me in God’s Word; emphasized that we are exiles belonging to a heavenly kingdom, not an earthly one; and taught me values and virtues without sticking them onto a political ideology. Growing up in public schools in Singapore and Northern Virginia, I was exposed to diverse cultures and viewpoints, and actually enjoyed getting to know people who were different, but also had the confidence to speak my own views, which helped me identify and correct mistakes in my delivery and tone.

And then the 2016 election happened. That was a landmark election in so many ways, and for me, it was the moment when I observed with shock how many Christians so enthusiastically support Donald Trump. And then when the shock finally faded, disgust replaced it. How did the values that we preach fit in with that man?

That was also when I started listening to The Ben Shapiro Show for an article I was working on. His was the first political podcast I’d ever listened to, and what started as reporting research turned into a daily habit. He released content daily, so there was barely a day in which I didn’t have Ben Shapiro’s glib tongue waggling his free-flowing thoughts and opinions in my ear. I was first drawn to him because he originally came out as a Never Trumper, and he was an Orthodox Jew who shared my belief in a God and respect for the Bible, and I found his views interesting. He was also entertaining…but I was foolishly oblivious to why he was so entertaining, because I listened to him while distracted with other things such as grocery-shopping and washing dishes, and because I had naively trusted him simply because he seemed to hold fast to his convictions as a conservative who refused to kowtow to the Trump mania.

I don’t know when it started…but the more I listened to him, the more I absorbed his tone and attitude. A lot of his content was mocking the left. I learned terms such as “liberal tears” from him, and without even being conscious of it, began to see people in categories of left and right. There was little nuance in Ben Shapiro’s portrayal of the left– he handpicked the more radical and extreme views of the left, and trumpeted them often with contempt and derisive humor. He’s a very intelligent, eloquent man, but I wonder how good it is for him to sit in front of a mic daily for an hour with nothing but headlines on a sheet of paper as a launchpad to spew off his instinctive reactions. I know that’s how he works because I visited him in his studio for an interview, and even then, I remember feeling concerned: Where is the time and space to sit with a thought and work through them with humility, empathy, and wisdom? How many of us can speak with nuance when we look at a headline designed by clickbait-hungry editors to enrage and alarm? We would get into trouble if we all ejaculated our first thoughts without a second and third draft, yet political commentators gain fame and funds for doing that for a living.

At some point, I deleted Ben Shapiro from the Apple Podcast app after realizing that my on-the-ground reporting on immigration didn’t line up with his offhand remarks on the show, but by then, the damage had been done. My curiosity had hardened into emotional triggers and mental rebuttals. I couldn’t listen to people’s opinions without an immediate checklist of “why you’re wrongs” unfurling in my mind.

Meanwhile, vicious political disagreements also entered my workplace, particularly during 2020. I also made the absolutely stupid decision to lurk on Twitter whenever I had a spare moment. My disappointment in Christians deepened. I hated how politics became so intertwined with the Christian witness, how much muck politically active Christians raked into the gospel until their testimony was fruitless and powerless. The Bible is offensive enough, but often, Christian clothes and painted it with so much political ideology and cultural niche that it became a clown, a slogan, a monster. What offended people wasn’t what the Bible said but how Christians used it to justify their ideology.

But here’s where I need to owe up to personal responsibility. My anger and distaste about this phenomenon of Christian nationalism is, I think, right, but I also allowed a lot of self-righteousness and cynicism to rule over it. Plus, I had already ingrained the habit of categorizing human beings into political labels after at least two years of listening to political podcasts and even more years of being addicted to Twitter. What that meant was I was getting constantly triggered, but did not know how to release those negative emotions. So my spirit kept getting chafed, and chafed, and chafed, until its flesh was raw and pulpy, sensitive and twitchy to the lightest touch. It got to the point where I refused to talk current news with my own husband, because my immediate responses were aggressive and argumentative, even though he and I are aligned on a lot of values. I need a detox, I told David. I don’t want to talk about politics anymore. I need to heal.

I thought by avoiding politics, my spirit would heal. But that is not the case. I can’t just leave a gaping wound open to the winds and dust of the environment, because the environment will never ever be kind to untreated sores. I need something more proactive, something more surgical. I knew this subconsciously, but what with all the mental load of parenthood, and my aforementioned musty brain, and my own blend of cynicism and apathy, I pushed it to the side as something I’ll deal with when I feel like it. So my posture with politics have mainly been outward avoidance while internally seething.

Well. I don’t think I can push it off any longer.

When I first heard that Charlie Kirk was shot, God have mercy on me, my immediate thought was, “Oh God, I can’t stand that guy. He’s a horrible person.”

The first image I had of him was his tweets, clips of his most controversial videos, and that debate I attended years ago. I didn’t see his face, his humanity, but his viewpoints and rhetoric about race, women, and immigration. I forgot that he’s a beloved father to a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old– that he’s a beloved husband, son, brother, friend. He’s Charlie, he’s Dada, he’s honey, not a commercialized “The Charlie Kirk Show.”

And then the news came out that he died. It was then that the Lord grabbed ahold of my heart and said, “Stop. Look here. Look at his face, his eyes, his soul. I knitted this guy in his mother’s womb. I stamped him with my image. Do you see me in him?”

Oh, the shame! That bleak, stark, blinding, wretched exposure of my heart! I did not just lose my sense of empathy and humanity to politics; I have lost God’s heart. That’s what is most grievous of all. What did it matter, that I formed all these political convictions out of supposed values of justice, compassion, and righteousness, if I lost God’s heart in seeing what politics addresses in the first place– the working outs of humanity?

So far, social media has reacted to the Charlie Kirk assassination exactly as I anticipated it would. I’ve seen some encouraging responses calling for a national introspection and return to mutual respect and civil discourse, but I’ve also seen responses that disturb and dismay me– from apathy and even cheers from some on the left, to vengeful rage and politicization from some on the right. I see Christians encouraging more political activism, and lionizing Charlie Kirk as a martyr (my former publication even called him “the American Stephen”).

I could call them out– and I suppose in a way I have– but really, it’ll just make me even more cynical, triggered, and upset, because I’ll face my own impotence against a whole society. What weapon can I swing against a formless, invincible social phenomenon?

So I start with what I do have agency over– myself, and my household.

The triggers I have now were formed over years of thoughts that became so habitualized that I think these things without realizing it. That’s what they really are– habits of the mind that I allowed and empowered for way too long. To break this habit, I need to form new habits. Whenever I feel triggered, I can pray, and ask God to protect and guard my heart and mind, instead of letting those triggers infest my soul. I can practice the virtues of silence and charitable thoughts. I can return to my journalistic roots– that open curiosity that attracted me to journalism in the first place, the discipline of objectivity and truth-seeking, the practice of discernment and wisdom.

Forming new habits is hard. It’ll be uncomfortable, but leaning on what felt comfortable has gotten me to this spot. Discomfort is good. Discomfort is refining. Plus, I have no choice. I have to do this, for the sake of my own soul, for the sake of my children, the next generation of thinkers and doers.

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.