Steve now and then

Steve’s story…    My mother made the decision to immigrate out to America with me and my older sister, leaving behind my older brother with my father in the beginning of 1979.  She gladly left behind the fast paced life of late night parties with people my father had connections with through my uncle’s fame as a professional wrestler.  Once we moved out to America, my mother took me and my sister to church for the first time.  My mother was the one who taught me to pray and told me that there is a God out there who will listen.  For 3 years I made it a habit to pray every night before I went to sleep hoping that my family could be reunited again.  I longed for this, as I felt envious and insecure towards friends and cousins who seem to enjoy having a complete family.  3 years after we immigrated out to America, my mother got into a major car accident, and because of this my father and brother came out to join us.  I was so excited when I heard the news that my family would be together again.  My prayers were finally getting answered, but I soon regretted having prayed for them.

Living with my dad again I soon discovered that he was a violent alcoholic.  There were many nights as a child I woke up to my mother crying in pain, my dad yelling, and things breaking.  I grew up scared to leave my mother alone at home with my dad, but at the same time I wanted so much to stay out of the house and escape my miserable circumstances by taking refuge out my friends’ houses.  In addition to the violence and hatred between my parents, there was much fear and hatred towards my older brother.  I resented my brother so much for using me as a punching bag to vent out his frustrations of trying to adjust to American life as well as trying to deal with his bitterness towards my mom for having left him alone with my dad in Korea.  Not only did he abuse me physically, but also mentally by constantly saying insulting things like:  “Why are you such a loser?” and “Why do you always have to be second best?”  There were many ways by which I tried to find relief and forget about the pains and resentments I had at home.  I had a compulsive desire to prove myself to the rest of the world that I was more than just a kid with a violent, hate-filled home with parents who had to do janitorial work to keep up with our expenses.  I was ashamed of who I was because of the family I came from.

I tried to establish a new identity through taking on various challenges and roles in High School.  Despite my poor performance in Junior High, I made my way up to be among the top 1% of my graduating class.  I joined the wrestling team and tennis team and managed to get varsity letters in both.  I joined the Band and Orchestra and performed in concerts.  Through my involvement with all these different activities at school I was able to enjoy having a diversified group of friends.  Despite all these things I was able to accomplish and enjoy, I felt increasingly discontent and remained insecure.  I continued to blame my family for the misery I felt inside.
In my sophomore year in High School I found a way to escape from the misery and disappointment I felt towards my family through my relationship with a girl.  I felt very hopeful at the prospects of escaping my miserable past and beginning a new life with her.  But it didn’t take very long for the relationship to get spoiled through my self-centered, self-pitying attitude.  As I tried to impose on her unrealistic expectations of wanting her to revolve around me and satisfy my bottomless pit of need to be loved and respected, I eventually drove her away and we ended up breaking up.  Through this break-up I felt that void, which had been there for as long as I could remember become unbearable.  It was then that I began to take Christianity more seriously.  I began to realize that the greatest culprit to my unhappiness and misery was not my parents, brother or my girlfriend.  Rather it was my own cruelty, selfishness, arrogance…all these qualities I hated so much in my father and brother I realized was in me.  I began to come to the painful awareness of who I really was at the core through the ways my self-centeredness was revealed in my relationship with my girlfriend.  I also began to be more sensitive to what a cruel, obnoxious person I was deep down through incidences like the time my parents and I drove back after a long day at the San Jose Flea Market.  I remember feeling so grumpy and resentful for the fact that my family had to work at a flea market to make up for the income my parents could not make from their full time jobs.  I don’t know what prompted me to say what I said, but I vividly remember saying it… “Why do we have to live like this?  Why couldn’t you have gotten a better education or something to get better jobs?”  I couldn’t believe such words came out of me, but I it happened and my parents were speechless.  I expected them to lash out on me, but they were too hurt by my words.  I’m sure I got a beating for that, but to this day no beating could’ve been more jarring and painful than that moment of silence in which I knew something cracked in the hearts of my parents.  From incidences like this I had to come to terms with the fact that there was something rotten and disfigured within my heart.  I wasn’t just a victim, but also the victimizer…a sinner.

By my junior year in High School I was gripped by the fact that I was a sinner before God and that I was living a meaningless, directionless life.  I finally made a decision to give up my life to Jesus Christ and make Him my Lord and Savior at a Christian Youth Conference in October, 1990.  The first prayer I made as a Christian was for peace in my family, especially between me and my brother.  Immediately after making this decision I felt excited and eager to serve God in the church I attended with my mom.  I began to take leadership over my youth group as the eldest in the group and spent many hours on the weekends trying to organize bible studies and fellowship activities.  I drove all over the east bay picking up and dropping off students.  Although I was being active at church, I wasn’t really maturing as a Christian.  There were many unrefined areas of my life, which I needed a spiritual leader to guide me and help me change in.  The church I was attending had many needs, but there was no real loving shepherd there for me who would love me with the truth.  All the elders there were just happy that I was serving a lot, but never bothered to get into my life personally and disciple me.  Ironically, my brother was the one who actively tried to make me go to a college near home and attend his church with him in Berkeley.  This church turned out to be Gracepoint Fellowship Church.  Though I had wanted to get away from home, I decided in faith to stay and attend my brother’s church in hope that God would help me find peace between me and my family, especially my older brother.

In coming out to Gracepoint Fellowship I began to experience personal, unconditional love of God, as the leaders really got into my life.  There are numerous stories I could share of how God had worked through my leaders to love me and change my life, but I just want to end by sharing one unforgettable event in the spring semester of my sophomore year in college.  It was one of those ‘defining moments’ in my life…an event I know was God orchestrated and led by the Holy Spirit.  It was a rainy Saturday night after a prayer meeting when I was approached by my leader, who wanted to have a heart to heart talk about my disruptive, prideful character.  I was being divisive and subversive in my class.  I was actively questioning the judgment and wisdom of the leadership at our church and had tried to plant seeds of dissent in my peers.  In retrospect what I got worked up by towards my leaders was really stupid.  It had to do with how I wanted our church to be more involved in interacting with other Christian fellowships.  I’m pretty sure that this was primarily motivated out of wanting to interact more with friends I had in those other fellowships, especially the girls I liked.  My reaction to the talk was not very welcoming at first.  I had much to say in defense about myself, but I held my tongue for I felt at that moment something in me was responding to the truth of who I am.  I stayed a little longer in the sanctuary to pray, and then I walked out into the rain.  I started walking quickly through the rain back to my dorm.  All throughout what seemed like a long journey home a voice from my past kept reverberating in my mind.  It was the voice of my older brother whom I had grown up to hate.  Although I had many legitimate reasons to be bitter towards him, yet I was not blameless in instigating and propagating a hostile relationship.  I remember him saying to me once, “You think you have a problem with me!…The problem is you. You can’t yield to anyone.  You have a problem with authority!”  By the time I got back to the dorm God had broken my pride and helped me to repent.  Realizing that I was loved despite being such a rebellious, arrogant brat, I broke down in tears and thanked God for His great love and mercy towards me.  Through this repentance God had filled my heart to forgive and reconcile with my brother.  I went to my dorm room to call up my brother, who at the time lived in Berkeley.  I met him that night at his apartment and confessed that all this time I was waiting for him to come beg for my forgiveness, but I told him that I saw that it was my pride that severed our relationship.  He responded in tears apologizing for the ways he had wronged me over the years and we embraced in mutual repentance for the first time.  I wish I had the time to explain what a miracle this was to me.  I had longed for that moment, especially after I made a decision to become a Christian 2 years prior.  After that moment of reconciliation I had hurried back to the dorms like the Samaritan woman in John Ch 4.  I walked straight into the lounge on my dorm floor and shared with my dorm friends about the miracle I had just experienced that night, ending with an invitation for all of them to get to know this Jesus.

“Amazing Grace”–These are the only words I can find to describe the kind of transformation God had done in my heart by replacing my resentment and self-pity with love and mercy.  My testimony can be summed up in Eph 2:4-7? “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions–it is by grace you have been saved.  And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”