faith – Writing for Sophia

How Middlemarch Shaped My Perspective as a Mother

Published on June 16, 2026June 16, 2026 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.

Mom rage

Published on December 6, 2025 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 September 16, 2025 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.