Tag: faith

How I get everything done with 2 kids 2 and under

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

Ha. Made you look.

I lied. I don’t get everything done. It takes two days for me to fold laundry. I have a package by the front door that’s been sitting there unopened for six days, and counting. I need to review a 5,000-word article my editor sent me, but I keep forgetting because I have no time during the day and by nighttime, all my brain has room for are murder novels and cookies.

Also my toddler is in school most days of the week, so for a good chunk of the day, it’s really just me and a 3-month-old.

But really. If you saw my IG stories of me baking bread and making pizza from scratch, it might seem like I’m a productive mother of two, an Asian Ballerina Farm, except way less attractive and graceful.

I watch YouTube while I work out. It’s good background noise for me. I work out as much as I can when Woori naps in the bassinet, which can range from 10 to 45 minutes, though most days it’s about 25 minutes. Because as a new mother I used to search for YouTube videos on what baby products to buy, YouTube’s algorithm now targets me with all these mommy influencers, and pretty much all of them seem to have at least several videos with similar titles as this blog post: “My productive morning with 5 kids.” “Making a week’s meals from scratch with 4 kids.” “How I get everything done with three kids 3 and under!” “Getting things done as a busy homeschooling mom of 7 kids!” Somehow they are all super fertile and love homeschooling.

There are influencers whose sole content is to parade their gaggle of children while they can apple butter, plant their own organic herbs, and make loads of money marketing electrolyte supplements on YouTube, all the while homeschooling their kids, breastfeeding their newborns, decorating their house with vintage finds, and sharing a chaste kiss with their husband in the kitchen.

I hate them. I love them. And I watch them and their lives, wondering how they can make sourdough blueberry bagels each week (I’ve tried making those bagels— they take soooo much time!) and homeschool their gazillion kids and create content and put on mascara every day and keep their cool while their toddlers grab at their apron strings whining and demanding (which must happen off-camera, because I’ve never heard a single whine from their children).

I know how social media works. I know that much of these content is performance and entertainment. These types of videos generate clicks and follows and income, because for people like me at least, it’s content that seem inspiring, even if it’s inspirational only as far as sparking the intent to be half as productive. In reality, these content, at least for me, is at best mindless entertainment and at worst a cesspool of jealousy and resentment.

That said, I do bake a lot. I bake because Woori won’t nap for long unless I’m holding her. But I can’t just hold her in a comfy chair; I gotta hold her and jiggle and walk around, further aggravating my degenerative disc disease. So rather than just walk around holding her while staring into space, I wear her in a wrap and bake and aggravate my degenerative disc disease.

I’ve baked sourdough whole wheat bread and Japanese milk bread and peanut butter oatmeal cookies and sourdough cornbread and sourdough Irish soda bread and sourdough pizza and coconut granola and sourdough brownies and sourdough blueberry bagels.

Yes, I bake a freaking lot. Partly because we love to eat those things, and David gets sad if there’s no homebaked cookie for his midday dessert. But mostly because I like feeling productive. I like the satisfaction of holding tangible edibles that I’ve made with my own hands, even if my son won’t eat them because he’s a punk who only eats cancer-laden treats that come out of plastic packages.

I am addicted to feeling productive. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel like I amount to something, like I’m not wasting my life.

But of course, it’s just a feeling. A temporary painkiller pill that prolongs my addiction to feeling productive but ultimately still wondering, in moments of clarity, what I’m really living for, where my time has gone.

I’m a womb Christian and a PK who has had the answer drilled into my brain for decades: I live for the glory of God! I live to know and become more like Christ each day! Because He lives, I can face tomorrow! Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders, let me walk upon the waters, wherever you would call me…so on and so on.

But on the micro level, my heart doesn’t reflect that. In those moments when I start thinking about where my life is and where it’s going, I feel stabs of panic: What am I doing? What have I accomplished?

Not too long ago my former editor called about something, and in that conversation, he asked me, “Where do you see your career going in the next few years?”

And I told him, “Oh, my career is a deep, dark hole right now.” I chuckled as I said this, but the truth of that statement struck anxiety in me. Is this the end of my career?

Before I had Woori, I made a list of things I want to do once I quit working and become a stay-at-home mother. That list is laughable now for its optimism. It included blogging once a week, journaling daily, going to the farmer’s market, going to the museum, doing art, working on a novel.

I haven’t cracked open my journal or sketchbook at all, I’ve still not been to the farmer’s market, nor gone to the museum, nor even started the brainstorming process for a novel. The only thing I did check off the list is baking.

And whenever I think of that list, most of it geared towards productivity and keeping my intellect stimulated and setting pathways to a future career, I feel discouraged.

Jeez, relax, I tell myself. Woori’s only three months old. You’re only three months postpartum! Give yourself a break! But I also know that as Woori gets older and begins crawling, it’s going to be harder for me to do any of those things on my list. Realistically, I won’t be able to get serious about my career until my kids are in school, and even then, that all depends on their extracurricular activities and my own energy. What if my writing gets stale by then? What if I’ve fallen so far off the scene that nobody wants to hire me? What if I sink so deeply into the daily grind of parenting and homemaking that I don’t realize how much time has passed until the kids are out of the house and I’m in retirement age?

Those are the questions that prick at me when I sit and think about my future. Perhaps mothers who are way ahead of me in life stage, who have older kids and have restarted their careers, will think I’m being silly or myopic. But at 37, with two kids 2 and under, and perhaps, hopefully, a third baby one day, the shelf life of my career feels very limited right now.

Maybe that’s why I watch those mommy influencers. Because they literally make parenthood and homemaking their career. They do all the tedious chores that we all do but can call it content. Changing diapers and making one-pot meals are accomplishments, because they literally make money off it. They have numbers they can track to feel accomplished and successful: 10,000 followers, 100,000 followers, 1 million followers. They know they’ve made it when they score partnerships with big brands, receive mountains of free products.

I don’t ever want to be an influencer, but I’m envious of them, envious of the clarity in their work, trackable by the income they bring, measurable by the business they’ve built. Envious…that they can seemingly do it all.

That’s why I was surprised when some people who saw my IG stories of my baked goods and homecooked meals told me they’re amazed at how much I get done. That was never the image I was trying to convey when I post what I thought were just fun random shots on social media. I cut down on posting those things because I didn’t want to create an illusion of myself, or make people feel the way I do watching YouTube mommy influencers.

The reality is, I often feel unproductive and unaccomplished, and have had to significantly cut down on my standards for what I can get done in a day. Just going to Costco is a big deal. Getting the laundry folded and tucked away in closets is worthy of self-applause.

And as much as I daily marvel at what I have— a good husband, beautiful healthy children, a warm house, and the privilege to buy 15-pound sacks of flour— sometimes, I despair at the fact that such small tasks as doing laundry have become my biggest accomplishment of the day. That my standards have dropped so drastically, but even more honestly and embarrassingly, that nobody cares about that except me. I have faded silently like mist into the shadows of full-time motherhood, and nobody is thinking, “Something’s missing. Where are Sophia Lee’s articles! God I need her writing!”

And therein says a lot about the condition of my heart— why on the macro level, I know what truly matters in life; I trust that God is sovereign and all things work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose; I know that I’m called to be faithful and grateful in this season I’m in. And yet in the minutes of my day, I’m disappointed and insecure, and I wonder, “But is that it? What’s next? Surely this is not enough.”

How do I get everything done with two kids 2 and under? I don’t. I’ve seen so many videos with such titles and I still don’t know how they “do it all.”

And I think that’s the point. These videos are created because there’s a demand for it. Because most parents like me are struggling to get even one thing done, and in this modern day, productivity is an idol, a status, a social class, and when we watch these videos of beautiful, well-dressed women maintaining an organic garden, a tastefully decorated home, and an armful of well-behaved children, they become our aspiration. No longer am I proud of getting the laundry done; the bar has been raised, the standard for adequacy set higher.

I remember studying Nehemiah years ago. In chapter 3 of Nehemiah, there’s a long list of names that people typically just skip over. I do, at least. It’s just name after name after name of people who are mentioned once and never again in the Bible.

But still— their names are in the Bible, read (and glazed over) by millions of believers over centuries and centuries. It is a huge freaking deal. And for what? For helping repair a wall. For scavenging rocks and stamping mud bricks and installing bolts and bars by an entrance called the Dung Gate. For doing menial tasks and manual labor, they got their names inscribed for eternity into God’s Word. Why? They were faithful to the task God called them to do, as lowly and humble as it is.

The world has their standards of accomplishment, and God has His. I suppose this is also what Jesus meant when he said, “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” God’s call for me isn’t to be a bestselling author, or a world-traveling journalist, or a supermommy. His standard for me is simply to be faithful to the task He’s laid in front of me today. And for now, it’s being a wife and a mother of two young kids.

I think back to my career as a journalist, and it’s humbling to remember how the amazing jobs I’ve had simply opened up to me, seemingly by chance. I had never heard of World Magazine until I started working for it. It wasn’t the job I had wanted, but it turned out to be the right one for me, and I had some terrific years there. And after I resigned, not having any jobs lined up, the CEO of Christianity Today called me to offer me a dream job, everything I’ve wished and prayed for. I didn’t go looking for those jobs— they came to me.

That’s a great track record of how God provided for me in those 11 years of my brief but fulfilling career. He’s been so faithful to me. So why wouldn’t He continue to be faithful? If He opened those doors for me, He can do so again five or ten years down the road.

And if my career has really ended for good, that’s OK. It means God has other tasks for me in mind, and they might seem lowly and mundane, invisible and unacknowledged to the eyes of others, but God sees.

He saw Shallum son of Hallohesh and his daughters as they repaired the wall by the Tower of the Ovens. He saw Malchijah the goldsmith, and Pedaiah son of Parosh. Which means He also sees Sophia Lee, wife of David, mother of Tov and Woori, as she tries to finish folding laundry while Tov literally climbs over her and Woori wails and wails on her bouncer, and at the end of the day, He celebrates with her that she somehow survived yet another day.

Gentle & Lowly as a Viper

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

I have a necklace that I’ve not taken off since I got it two Christmases ago. It’s a thin gold chain with a circle pendant that says “Gentle & Lowly” and has two heart-shaped tags with David and Tov’s initials on it.

I chose to engrave “Gentle & Lowly” on my pendant in reference to Dane Ortlund’s book Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers, which draws from Jesus’s own description of himself as “gentle and lowly in heart” in Matthew 11 to point out the essence of God’s heart for His people. It was written for, in Ortlund’s own words, “the discouraged, the frustrated, the weary, the disenchanted, the cynical, the empty. Those running on fumes. Those whose Christian lives feel like constantly running up a descending escalator. Those of us who find ourselves thinking: ‘How could I mess up that bad– again?'”

Reading Ortlund’s book made me look at Matthew 11:29, a familiar verse– “take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls”— in fresh eyes. Ortlund points out that of the four gospels, this is the only instance in which Jesus describes his own heart— and if that’s the case, we ought to pay attention: Jesus, the Son of God, King of Kings, describes himself as gentle and lowly in heart. His orientation towards us is that of mercy, love, compassion, self-sacrifice. He hates sin, to the point of dying on the cross because of it, but his heart towards the penitent is open, wide, and forgiving. That has profound implications on our relationship with God, and our relationship with others.

I was moved by the heart of Jesus. His gentleness and lowliness taught me what it means to be “Christlike,” to be “the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.” (2 Corinthians 2:15-17)

If the Jesus who lives inside me through his spirit is gentle and lowly, then I too want to be gentle and lowly. I too want that to be the key descriptor of my heart and posture.

There’s just one problem. I’m about as gentle and lowly as a viper. Anyone who knows me would never think to use “gentle” or “lowly” to describe me. In fact, it’s the people who are closest to me who have been bitten most by my viper moments.

Just a week ago, while my parents were visiting us to meet Woori, I had another viper moment. It was the hottest week of the year, but that’s not what turned me into a viper. I actually cannot always explain why I get so snappish and irritable sometimes. I’d like to blame the sleep deprivation, or postpartum hormones. I’d like to blame my frustration with the lack of improvement in nursing Woori. I’d like to blame the increasing meltdowns from Tov, who have been crying and screaming so often his voice is now as hoarse as a chronic smoker’s. But I cannot. Sometimes, I’m just a bitch for no reason.

David had just clambered up mid-afternoon to get a snack, and he asked me what was in the mixing bowl sitting on the kitchen counter.

“Bread,” I said.

He made a face. “Can we not use the oven today? It’s too hot. I don’t want the AC running all day.”

I ignored him.

“Sophia? Sophia?”

I felt a hot flash of irritation. The dough was already rising, and I was so sick of hearing David complaining about the weather. “Whatever,” I snapped. “Just shut up.” Then I walked away.

My mother, who was present at the time, observed the whole interaction. She went up to David later and told him, “Sometimes, she can really stab a dagger into your heart. She does that to me too.”

I only know because David told me later, while I was nursing Woori. “You really need to watch the way you talk,” he said. It’s like a whiplash, he told me. One moment I’m fine and happy, and the next moment— whoosh! The viper strikes.

I felt like such a fraud. I call myself a Christian, yet there’s very little Christlikeness in me. I am a mother who’s thinking and talking about raising my children in the faith, yet my faith does not primarily shape the way I think, speak, and act.

Gentle and lowly I am not. I am not gentle and lowly with my husband when he annoys me or does things that make me feel misunderstood or unappreciated. I am not gentle and lowly with Tov when he is being particularly whiny and screamy, and my nerves are all frayed from over-stimulation.

All the more ironic that I wear that engraved in my necklace 24/7, and also all the more reason why I should wear it constantly as a reminder. During these moments though, long after I had already struck my head out and sunk my fangs into my prey’s heart, I wear that pendant like a scarlet letter, an ugly red brand of shame and regret.

I feel stuck in this cycle of striking and remorsing. I of all people know best that I need to watch the way I talk, to be slow to speak and slow to anger. The consequences of my speech and action get more and more serious as I age. With my parents, I know they’ll always love and accept me, no matter how poisonous my fangs are. With David, I know there’s a limit before the toxins reach the bloodstreams of our marriage. And as for my children, I am terrified of scarring them for life.

And yet. There are those viper moments, when my fangs rear up before my brain even recognizes what I’m doing. If Jesus’s essence is gentleness and lowliness, my essence seems to be sharpness and haughtiness. It is what spills out of me the instant I’m poked and punctured. It’s hard for me to even ask David for forgiveness then, or pray, when I’d rather tuck my head into a hole and hide, or worse, root around the dirt looking for justifications for my behavior.

There was a time when I wanted to go to seminary to study theology. I read Wayne Grudem’s Systemic Theology for fun. I loved gathering knowledge and understanding, like picking fruits into a basket, and debating things like predestination and complementarianism. I am by nature a nerd and love learning new things, but all that knowledge also puffed me up, deceiving me into mistaking education for sanctification. The fruits of knowledge I gathered in my basket, hoarded but unused, rotted into brown, putrid mush. What’s the use of learning about the fruits of the Spirit— gentleness and self-control in particular— when I don’t manifest them in my own life? So much of my theology has become like my necklace— it’s there, and I’ve gotten so used to it being there, that I no longer put any consciousness into why it’s there, what it’s for. It’s become little more than a pretty decoration, like the wedding ring of an adulterer.

These days, Woori likes to grab at my necklace. She’s still too young to intentionally grasp at objects, but she can wrap her tiny fingers around the chain and tug at it with a firm grip. I’ll have to untangle her fingers, gently removing each finger, careful not to hurt her delicate pink skin. And that’s how I remembered: Oh yeah. The necklace. Gentle & Lowly. With the initials of the two people with whom I’m the least gentle and lowly.

It’s not so much that I’ve forgotten to be gentle and lowly. It’s that I’ve forgotten Jesus, forgotten his heart for me, forgotten to fall in love with his heart over and over again.

Last Sunday, I sat in the church’s nursing room with Woori and listened to a sermon about the historical reliability of the gospels. It was more a lecture than a sermon, the nerdy kind I love, with lots of historical facts and intellectual stimulation. It was an engaging sermon, but I was half-distracted. I listened while struggling to nurse Woori, getting frustrated and discouraged by her lack of improvement, and then fumbling hot and bothered underneath a nursing cover trying to pump as discreetly as I could, silently cursing the men present in the nursing room.

The sermon ended, and worship started. The worship band sang “King of Kings” by Hillsong, a 5-year-old song I’ve heard and sang many times. In fact, I remember grousing internally, Ugh, another Hillsong song. I want old hymns! They’re so much richer and deeper than these contemporary Christian music.

They started singing:

In the darkness we were waiting
Without hope, without light
‘Til from Heaven You came running
There was mercy in Your eyes…

And then the chorus:

Praise the Father, praise the Son
Praise the Spirit, three in one
God of glory, Majesty
Praise forever to the King of Kings

I don’t know why. But I started weeping.

It wasn’t the beautiful melody. It wasn’t just the lyrics. It was just, at that moment, so spiritually parched, I felt the first drop of a light rain, and man, it felt so sweet. So sweet it broke me.

It was the power of worship. Praise the Father. Praise the Son. Praise the Spirit, three in one. Praise forever the King of Kings. A simple praise. A simple reminder of the majesty and glory of God. And I remembered, then, how awesome, how incredibly freeing it is, to simply lift my head up and worship Him, not just for what He’s done, but who He is.

Even when I chose the engraving for the necklace, I was more fixated with what I must become. When I failed, I berated myself, excused myself, hid myself. If I counted all the ways I failed as a wife and a mother and a daughter and a human being, I would get too overwhelmed to do anything about it. I can’t will my heart to change. I need a whole new heart. I need the heart of Jesus.

There is a time to study the Bible like a theologian, to analyze verse by verse with commentaries and highlighters. I don’t have that time right now. Much of my day is spent nursing Woori round the clock, pumping while trying to keep her from fussing and crying, dealing with Tov’s tantrums and antics, cooking and cleaning and oh God, endless loads of laundry stained with pee and poop and breastmilk, a domestic potpourri of sourness, pungency, and sticky sweetness.

But then in the midst of my hurry Woori grabs my necklace, and I think not of what I’m not, but who Jesus is.

This is a time to just think about Jesus, and fall in love with his heart, and worship him, because we become what we worship, and the one I worship is gentle and lowly.

Our Woori, My Woori

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

Before we had Tov, before I even realized I wanted a child, I had a name for my firstborn.

I got the idea for Tov’s name while reading A Church Called Tov by Laura Barringer and Scot McKnight. I learned what the Hebrew word “Tov” meant then, and I fell in love with it, thinking, “If I had a child, I’d name him or her Tov.” And then I rolled my eyes– yeah, right, like I’d ever become a mother.

Just like Tov, I had a name for my secondborn before she was conceived.

At the time, I was working on a reported piece for Christianity Today about the modern-day challenges of finding community, and it quickly became more a personal essay because the piece was born out of my own frustrations and desire for community. In that essay, I was frank about my shortcomings and the mistakes I made that made community more challenging, and one thing became clear to me: I’m incredibly individualistic.

I’ve always been a very independent person; even as a kid I couldn’t wait to grow up, leave my parents’ house, and forge my own path. Since young, I’ve always been drawn to the western culture and celebration of individualism. It just felt right and natural to me, to emphasize self-autonomy, self-reliance, self-identity. I looked down on the Asian concept of collectivism, dismissing it as unenlightened, suffocating, and oppressive.

Over the last few years, as I study the Bible more and understand more about the nature of God, I’ve come to realize how some characteristics and consequences of individualism are actually unbiblical and toxic. God Himself is Three in One, and through perfect unity and community He created humankind, saying, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” God didn’t call us into an individual relationship with Him; we are called into the Body of Christ to worship and fellowship together in community.

When Jesus Christ came to earth in flesh, he dwelt in a collectivist society, and one of the first things he did when his ministry started was to build a community. He then called us to build the Church– again, community. When he taught us to pray, he didn’t teach us to call out “My Father,” but “Our Father.”

The early churches met and broke bread together every day, sharing their possessions and wealth. The immediate work of the Pentecost was to break down the barriers between languages and cultures, and later creating unity between Gentiles and Jews under one Body and one Spirit. So much of the Spirit’s work is about reaching out to others, reconciling people, and loving people well. The fruits of the Spirit all have to do with our relationship with others.

If God Himself is communal, existing in community and encouraging community, then I need to change the way I think about myself in relation to others, and the change the way I view and participate in community.

That’s how I came to really appreciate the Korean word “woori” (우리), and how unique and pervasive it is in the Korean culture. In direct translation, woori means “we” or “our” or “us,” but the word contains a much deeper Korean concept of self and others. It evokes a sense of community, unity, oneness. Korean culture values community over the individual, expressed through the way Koreans frequently use “our” rather than “my.” That’s “our house,” for instance, or “our husband,” or “our school.”

I really took notice of the Korean concept of “woori” after Tov was born, when my parents would ask, “How’s woori Tov?” “Let us see woori Tov!” “Aigo, why is woori Tov so handsome? Must have grandpa’s eyes!”

Despite becoming so westernized in my thinking, I also realized how Korean I still am, when I felt a twinge after I heard my husband refer to Tov as “my son” rather than “our son.” I felt like I got cut off from the picture. On the other hand, even when David wasn’t around, I referred to Tov as “our son.” That just felt innately right to me.

That Korean use of “woori” might feel jarring for people from a more individualistic mindset. My friend, who just gave birth to a beautiful daughter, recently told me that she had to correct her mother when she cooed at her granddaughter, “There’s my J!” “No,” my friend told her mother firmly. “She’s not your J. She’s not your daughter. She’s my daughter. Mine.” I understood where my friend is coming from. She has a history with her mother, and she’s setting boundaries early. It’s what modern-day therapists and psychologists advise, too: Set boundaries with people for self-care and happy relationships. Only you get to decide what is acceptable and not, what’s your limit. Communicate that clearly to others, especially family, the source of your deepest triggers.

Meanwhile, the word “boundary” as used in this context doesn’t even exist in the Korean language. They literally have to use the English word “boundary.” Koreans might say “don’t cross the line,” but I believe that statement is a modern saying that didn’t become mainstream in Korean society until recently.

I actually think there’s something beautiful and right about my parents calling my children “woori.” It reminds me my children are not my own, that they’re part of a rich and long heritage, that they belong to not just a biological nuclear family but a more timeless, expansive family. I love my children dearly, but my and my husband’s love for them is not the only love that will shape, edify, and enrich them.

And that’s why, about a year ago, as I revised my thoughts on individualism, as I prayed for community, as I took notice of the obstacles I put up between me and a vibrant community, I thought, “If I have a second child, I think I’ll name him or her Woori.”

Several months later, I found out I was pregnant. And on August 19, 2024, I held our daughter in my arms and wrote on her birth certificate, “Woori Grace Lee-Herrmann.”

For all my philosophizing of Woori’s name, the practice of living it out is much harder and messier. I may recognize the good in my Korean heritage’s communal culture to the point of naming my daughter Woori, but there are still aspects of it that make me instinctively recoil and hesitate. Just like there are aspects of the individualistic society that are unbiblical and unhealthy, there are parts about the collectivist society that’s also unhealthy and twisted, and I still struggle to judge what is right and biblical, and what is not.

I am, by nature, still a very individualistic person. I live in an individualistic society steeped in individualistic culture. My Instagram feed is full of expert parenting advice on setting boundaries with your parents and in-laws, on how to raise kids with good self-esteem, a strong sense of self-identity, and a bold voice to express one’s rights and needs– all good things, great things. But some of those things are foreign to my very Korean parents, and we butt heads over our two very different cultural contexts.

If you have an Asian parent, you’ve probably gotten your fair load of unsolicited advice. My parents frequently tell me how to parent our children, which I oftentimes receive as passive-aggressive criticism.

“You have to make sure you wash his hands properly,” my mother would say after Tov developed strep throat, as though we let Tov roll around and sleep in dirt. When we FaceTimed during dinner, she would let out little shrieks as Tov dug into his pasta with his hands, sauce dribbling down his forearms. “Wipe his arms! Wash his hands!”

When she saw a photo of our nanny showing Tov a picture on her iPhone, she immediately texted to remind us not to give any screen time to our child.

When she saw how easily distracted Tov is, she hinted at the possibility of ADHD and exhorted me to train him to focus on one task at a time, even though he was still barely a toddler.

She compared Tov’s speech development with my niece’s, sent videos instructing me how to teach a delayed child to speak, and suggested I send him to a speech therapist.

She reminded me over and over again that a baby needs to sleep in complete silence and darkness. She complained about the loud washing machine downstairs, the loud noises outside, the loud work meetings in David’s office, and other auditory disruptions that will certainly stunt my children’s brain development, disregulate their emotional stability and perhaps that’s why Tov’s so delayed in speech and so unfocused?

Each time this happened, grenades popped off inside me. “Aish, Omma, just stop nagging!” I would snap at her, and my father would jump to her defense. “No parent nags less than we do!” he snapped back. “You don’t know how good you have it.” And then he preached about the Bible commanding us to honor our parents. “Let us live according to the Bible,” he said. “Blessed are those who let their parents nag.”

“Pretty sure that’s not in the Bible.”

“Oh, woe is our generation,” my father lamented. “We are the most pitiful generation ever. When we were young, we could not say a word back to our elders. We had to respect and tiptoe around them. Then we have children, and times have changed. Our children now disrespect us, and we have to tiptoe around our children. We served those above us and now we serve those below us, and nobody serves us!”

“So you want me to tiptoe around you, kowtowing and saying ‘yes, yes’ to everything you say?” I retorted back.

My father shook his head, as though shaking his head at the entire spoiled, entitled, and disrespectful generation to which I belong. “Truly, the end times are coming. Culture is changing too fast. So let’s just do as the Bible says. Honor your parents.”

“Honoring your parents doesn’t mean we just have to keep quiet when you’re vexing us,” I said, getting more and more heated. “The Bible also says, do not vex your children.”

Here’s the thing: I really, really like the concept behind “woori.” I really appreciate the values of community, unity, and sacrificing self for the common good. It’s so ideologically charming and pleasing, like the idea of sipping tea in an old English cottage with a thatched roof– until you realize those quaint, pretty roofs can be annoying to maintain, vulnerable to fungal attacks, fire, and bug infestation.

I like my parents calling my children “woori” until the actual practices of it grate against all my individualistic impulses and preferences. I don’t like people telling me what to do, even if it comes in the form of harmless advice and suggestions that I can always choose not to follow. I love it community when my parents help watch Tov so David and I can go on a date, or when they say nice things about them, but I get triggered when my mother worries over Tov or Woori, or mutters the mildest hint of criticism, and I get even more triggered when my father starts preaching at me with Bible verses. I like the “woori” concept only when it benefits me and requires little effort or sacrifice from me: You can love my kids, but from a distance, saying only positive things, and God forbid you care enough to suggest what you think might be best for them. That’s the opposite of what “woori” is.

I don’t intend to obey everything my parents say. I’m an adult, and they raised me to be independent and mature, capable of making my own decisions. But at the very least, I can listen to their unsolicited advice and their preaching without getting snappish, even if they annoy me, and be genuinely thankful that someone else cares so much about my children to worry and nag about the details of their upbringing, things that most people don’t even bother thinking about because our children are not “woori” children.

Woori’s name was a gift from me to her– a prayer, a blessing, and a benediction that she would never lack community, that she will seek and find and form a community wherever she goes, breaking and sharing bread with all kinds of family.

But Woori’s name is also a prayer and a blessing for me, too, as Tov’s name has been for me. Both our children’s names embody an important, essential characteristic of God. In my pursuit to know God more, to meet him the way Moses did– speaking to him face to face, “as a man speaks to his friend” (Exodus 33:11)– I see the image of God in my own children, even as they reflect my image: Woori Tov, and woori Woori.