The Call (Pt.2)
On March 28th, after completing the article, I went to a small town with Lika as planned. We had roast duck, took a long walk, and sat on the beach, watching a gorgeous sunset. I shared with her my realization about the sorrow I had felt a year ago—what it truly was. She was deeply moved. That evening, as I organized this article for blog, I suddenly realized that I had no recollection of why I started listening to this song. I carefully pondered every lyric and understood—this was what God wanted to say to me. And it was what He longed to tell me ten years ago when I said goodbye to Him.
On the morning of Sunday, February 16, I decided to walk slowly to church for worship. But half an hour before the gathering was set to begin, I realized I still had more than forty minutes left to walk. So, I quickened my pace, silently praying as I walked, asking the Lord to let me arrive on time.
But not even ten minutes later, my knee finally hurt so much that I couldn’t walk anymore. I had no choice but to give up on attending the church. Unexpectedly, there was a bench nearby.
Ever since I established a regular church routine over the past six months, I had mostly regarded Sunday worship as a duty and responsibility as a Christian—a good rule set by God that I needed to follow. But that day, as I prayed not to be late, I ended up unable to walk at all.
So, I sat down to rest, basking in the sunlight. To my surprise, I felt an immense sense of peace.
After resting for a long while, I got up and tried walking again. Then something miraculous happened—I could suddenly feel my body. I could sense a continuous, connected line of force running from my toes, through the arch and heel of my foot, up my leg, and into my hip.
In that instant, I understood: because I had trained in boxing for a long time using an orthodox stance, my left leg had always been responsible for support while my right leg provided explosive power. After a long period without training, the force chain from my left foot to my hip had weakened more easily than my right, making my legs feel asymmetrical now.
As I walked slowly home, carefully feeling the force in each step, the experience of reconnecting my mind, body, and spirit filled me with joy. Sunlight streamed down all the way, and at that moment, I was struck by an overwhelming sense that the Holy Spirit, who had been gently guiding and prompting me for days, was about to speak to me directly.
He told me that He had not answered my prayer to help me attend the gathering because He wanted me to take care of myself first. He didn’t actually care about my act of worship—what He cherished was me.
He didn’t want a servant to drive and command. He wanted to be as close to me as possible.
And at last, I realized something profoundly important—something that could change my entire reality:
God doesn’t just love me.
He likes me.
All my life, abuse had been used to enslave me under the name of love. After my rebirth, I finally learned to distinguish between love and abuse. But I still didn’t know how to receive love.
For the past year, I had still been receiving His love in the same way I had received abuse—like a slave submitting to the will of her master.
But now, I finally understood: before God, I am not only loved, but appreciated, treasured—a being that brings Him joy.
This was incredible to me.
My mother had always used the name of love to deny and abuse me, but she never once expressed that she liked me as a person. And those who had claimed to “like me” had never truly known who I was, or merely wanted to take advantage of me.
But now, the One who knows me better than I know myself was telling me that He genuinely likes me.
So this is why the Bible says, “become like little children”—because the child I once was had already been created in His perfect design.
He didn’t create a child who was “not good enough” and in need of refinement before becoming lovable.
And He didn’t create that child to be a servant.
He created that child to be close to her—because she was already wonderful, so much so that He wanted to be near her.
The words “God really likes me” and “God wants to be close to me” echoed in my mind for days. Every time I thought about them, I felt so overjoyed I wanted to leap.
This was even more incredible than being chosen. But it made my faith in Him utterly unshakable.
After that, my feelings toward my childhood memories completely changed.
When I recalled how, at six years old, my grandmother beat me while demanding that I fight back, teaching me that if I got bullied at school, I should respond with violence—I no longer focused on the unjust confusion of being beaten for no reason. Instead, I focused on the courage it took for me to refuse to hit back, insisting on solving problems through reason.
When I remembered how, in fifth grade, I helped a fallen classmate up, only to be slandered with rumors, forced by my peers to shout in the streets that I was pregnant with that boy’s bastard—I no longer focused on the humiliation I had felt. Instead, I focused on the kindness that had made me reach out without hesitation in the first place.
When I remembered how, before my high school entrance exams, my stepmother beat me—pulling my hair, slapping my face, and kicking me—while no adult intervened, and how afterward, I was falsely accused and thrown out of the house by my father, I also remembered that, despite it all, I still prayed on New Year’s Eve, sincerely blessing each one of them.
I could feel the astonishing strength of that little girl—so unfathomable, she was like a little saint.
And the most miraculous thing of all is that, for the first time, I could truly feel it—
I was her.
A few days later, I attended my first small group gathering of the year. For the first time, I didn’t feel any anxiety or detachment. I could finally sense my own presence in social situations, which meant I finally had a sense of boundaries.
I finally stopped staying up late or struggling with insomnia. After ten years of dissociation, I could finally sleep on time again. I started paying attention to taking care of my body. I no longer woke up curled up like a shrimp. I no longer found myself unable to get up in the morning—I wanted to jump out of bed and greet the sky, just like I did as a child. I no longer felt anxious or fearful about all sorts of things, nor was I troubled by my original family. I calmly looked forward to the journey ahead and finally settled down to build my personal website. I never forgot to say grace before meals. Going to church on Sundays was no longer just fulfilling a routine task but something I looked forward to with joy, eager to praise Him.
These transformations were so wonderful that I became desperate to recall more of her—the thoughts she had, the world she saw through her aesthetic lens, the sacred music, hymns, and requiems she used to listen to, the philosophy and literature she once read, the unrestrained creativity she possessed, and the poems she wrote to her God.
As I relived all of this, I gradually realized that God had given me enough grace, so the burdens I bore in my youth were never enough to cause deep trauma. What truly wounded me was that I stopped trusting Him. It was my arrogance and short-sightedness at twenty.
I did not understand that all my goodness and all my thoughts came from God, not from myself.
In the most foolish years of my twenties, I walked unknowingly toward my own destruction, mustering energy out of defiance to charge at the world, getting what I wished for only to fall into deeper traps, breaking apart again and again, losing memories, and then repeating the same mistakes. Everything about me, apart from God, was rotting. Even when I called myself a Christian again at twenty-eight, it was merely to wear a crown of righteousness, to have a logically coherent explanation for the world, to find a solution to my unbearable life.
It wasn’t until I had almost no strength left that I finally remembered—I had a Father in heaven.
He was not my childhood fantasy.
As a child, I knew that I believed in God, and I knew that Jesus was God. But back then, I only felt sheltered by God—I had never felt “saved.” So, I was never particularly drawn to Jesus. But now, as I revisited those hymns, those requiems, I could clearly feel how every emotion pointed toward the Savior. For the first time, I could truly understand the masterpieces that had accompanied me growing up.
And I finally understood why, a year ago, when I tried to empathize with Jesus, I was overwhelmed by immense sorrow.
That sorrow wasn’t just my grief for His suffering; it contained His sorrow when I left Him ten years ago and His sorrow as He watched me struggle in this world over the past decade.
I finally understood why, when I knelt down to seek His help a year ago, He responded instantly with miracles, generously strengthening my faith over the next two months with supernatural signs and timely help, setting my 30th birthday on Easter for my rebirth. I finally realized just how overjoyed He was when I returned.
I told Lika that I now understood why she said God loved Job so much.
“My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
One night in mid-March, as I lay in bed, I felt as if I had stepped into another realm. A powerful certainty gripped me: I would see the glory of God with my own eyes and dwell with Him in eternal closeness. Whatever stood in the way of that intimacy, I would let go.
My mother’s house, my father’s house, my mother country—none of them had a place in eternity. But my place was in that eternity, and I would run into it. I would go back to studying the biblical traditions and the philosophical and literary works I had read in my youth—along with much more. I would root myself in the intellectual history of Christianity, pondering day and night, writing tirelessly.
Not because I had expectations for my life in this world, but because the most captivating thing of all is God Himself.
But one day, I will stand in Your glory and despise my earthly self—its mediocrity, numbness, cowardice, and hypocrisy. I will despise every word I have ever written. By then, the wisdom of thinkers will cease to matter, the prophecies of seers will fade, and the saints of history will no longer shine like the stars. Only Your glory, Your rest, and Your freedom will remain, given to me, who has a place in Christ.
That is my end, and it is my beginning. As long as I remain in this world, every time I look back, I will know that You, who love me so deeply, have already set an example and have always watched over my soul.