Part 5: Towards Redemption

I have pondered where my faith intersects with my identity. But if I believe that identity and history are closely tied, then I must also ask the question of where my faith intersects with my family history. 

Seeking my parents for their history has been met with hesitation, even reluctance at times. I sense there to be a muffled hurt, a deeply felt cost of being perpetual outsiders in a foreign land. My soul breaks for the ways my dad laments being unfulfilled in America–held back in his engineering career by lack of communication and social presence, neither truly American nor truly Taiwanese, unable to be filially dutiful to his aging mother in Taiwan yet struggling to be understood by his two American sons. I lament sometimes the ways my parents seem to limp through American immigrant life, dragging behind them a perpetual unease with English and reclusiveness from surrounding society. 

And yet I am fiercely proud of my parents.

God has graces for us all. What form do those graces take when it comes to my parents? I remember praying six years ago, at an ethnic identity conference in 2014, to confess my anger and frustrations with my parents in high school, praying for God’s transformative love to heal our relationship. That redemption continues… not just in better communication with my parents, but in better understanding their narratives, their feelings, their fears over the years. In my mom delighting to have any chance to talk to me more. In my seeking to be a better son.

I wonder when my mother reflects on her past experiences with bitterness and regret, whether she sees God stepping in where she is most dependent. I wonder whether my dad feels like a transplanted branch, one that is grafted and now unduly immovable, desperately needing more of Jesus’ love to survive.

Stories are a way to relate. To pass on trauma. To bridge distance. Stories are a way to remember and make offerings back to the past. I remember that I come from the vine, that I am part of this larger branch. Not just of Jesus, but of Jesus alongside my family. “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you, so that you might go and bear fruit–fruit that will last.” I want to bear some of this fruit. I want it to last.