PUSH

WOW, it's been more than a year since my last post. 2013 had its highs and lows. As always, I kept myself busy and well, that led to me lack of blogging. Sorry about that. 

This year is my 30th year and I am joyfully anticipating what God will do in and through my life. I feel like with each year I gain one more life experience and that excites me. Don't get me wrong, turning thirty is scary but exciting at the same time. Scary because it's one of the milestones in life but also exciting because I am not in my 20s anymore! 

A lot has happen since my last blog. Condensed highlights of 2013: I moved in with another amazing roommate who challenges and pushes me to grow, I was in Chicago for a work conference, I was in Northern Ireland for a mission trip with my church last July (thank you to all the supporters!), I got a new car (with lots of help/advices from my family and friends!). 

So, this year, my word is "intentional". I felt like last year I was keeping busy and sometimes missed the intentional part. It's still a learning process as I try to be more intentional with my time, relationships, money and all aspect of my life. So far, I think I am not doing too well with being intentional with my time. I over committed this winter/spring but thank goodness there is grace in that I still have time to be more intentional. 

The other day I was driving home and the car in front of me had a bumper sticker with "PUSH". It stands for 'Pray Until Something Happens' and that struck a chord with me. I think it's so easy to give up on prayer and forget that God is so much bigger than us. I haven't been good about praying as much as I want or need to but I think Holy Spirit prays on behalf  and it's a comforting thought. One of my favorite quotes from Pastor Mark Batterson's The Circle Maker:  "There comes a moment when you must quit talking to God about the mountain in your life and start talking to the mountain about your God. You proclaim His power." That's powerful that God already knows about the mountain in my life and I can't let the mountain put fear or control over me. By proclaiming to the mountain about God, it puts God in control and that is so awesome! Right now, I am trying to figure out what God's calling for me and it's hard to wait patiently for His leading. I want to jump into my next adventure but I sense that God is telling me to wait. Wait on Him and trust Him. To be intentional about praying and not giving up. 

May Christ's love dwell in you and know that He loves you more than you know! Thanks for reading and I hope to be better about blogging this year!

I thought I repost my narrative I wrote when I was in high school since it's new year and I hope it's encouraging to you as much it is encouraging to me. 


Beautiful Accident
By Min Kim


I’m not glamorous or gorgeous like the girls on TV or in magazines, but I’m proud of the way I look now, even with burn scars. Most girls think appearance is everything, yet from my own experience, appearance isn’t everything. It is just a myth that people say on TV’s and in magazines. I didn’t always look the way I do with my burn scars. When I was five, before the tragic beautiful accident, I was like the other little girls, cute and perky. I wore an adorable little pigtails tied with pretty radiant ribbons on my raven black hair and wore darling little dresses like the princesses in fairy tales.
When I was five and my brother was four, my parents sent us to a private school to get ahead of the other little kids in education. The first private school was run by Buddhists and my parents didn’t find out until my brother and I prayed a Buddhist prayer. My grandfather was a pastor and both of my parents grew up in a Christian family. I can remember their shocked and startled faces when they heard the prayer. The next day, my parents enrolled us in a respectable private Christian school. Fear and nervousness ran through my mind making me less excited about going to the brand new private school. Just for the occasion, my mom bought my brother and me new clothes and shoes. I remember wearing a new long sleeved shirt, new long blue jeans and new pair of tennis shoes. On the first day of going to the new school, the weather was gloomy and windy. My brother and I had a fit and we even argued with my parents about going to the school. Little children, without doubt, always obey what their parents say and we dragged ourselves to the new school. The church ran the school and many teachers teaching at the school were members of the church. The school building had three floors that contained different classes and different teachers on each floor. Each grade had one teacher and one class. The pre-kindergarten class was on the first floor. On the second floor were the kindergarten class and first grade class. The third floor was reserved for the second and third grade class.


My first day of school was an unusual one. For some odd reason, my kindergarten teacher had the flu that day and a woman in her early twenties took her place. The substitute teacher was like a statue that was for decoration purpose and no one cared about. Everyone in the class knew each other well. I didn’t really care about being alone. I was still too young to understand the meaning of loneliness, and so to pass the time, I entertained myself with the toys in the classroom. My new classroom reminded me of my two-story dollhouse with many windows and doors. For amusement I wanted to go peep out the window, but lunchtime came along and everyone sat glued around the table. I didn’t eat much as usual and I swallowed the food one bite at a time. While eating lunch, a young boy, a little older than us came dashing into the kindergarten class and told us that there was a fire in the building. The substitute panicked immediately after hearing the news. My classmates, including myself, didn’t really comprehend what was going on. Suddenly, the substitute shut all the windows and doors in a hurry. The substitute became a bee, busying herself from one place to another trying to do many things at one time.


So what happened to my brother’s pre-kindergarten class? My brother’s real pre-kindergarten teacher was in a good mood because she had a new outfit. So, she took her pre-kindergarten class out to the playground to play.


The fires slowly crept into my kindergarten class and the substitute went insane. Then she hollered that she was getting help and escaped, knowing she would not come back. After she left, everything around me went pitch-black like a night with no moon or stars. I was afraid, and I felt like a prisoner wanting freedom. When the fire died from the building, the firemen realized that the kindergarten class was not outside. They immediately went to my kindergarten class and rescued us. Before the fire ever reached other classes, all the other grades except the kindergarten class came out of the fire safely. The fire burned down the kindergarten classroom. Of the fourteen children in the class only seven survived the fight with the fire. I’m one of the lucky seven who survived. No one really knows the main cause of the fire; yet, there are many theories on how the building caught on fire. The main theory is that a little kid in pre-kindergarten class went inside to keep warm. When he played with the stove, it blew up. But, some people claim that the young adults who used the building once were mad at the church for making the building into a private school, and so they set the building on fire.


I don’t really care who set the fire and I am not angry with anyone. I thank God for saving me from the fire and letting me live. God turned something people made terrible into something beautiful. Not many people had hope for me when I was in the hospital. I survived and showed the people around me that anything is possible through God. I woke up few days later from a long sleep like Sleeping Beauty. Everything changed in my life after the day I woke up from almost dying. Most little kids don’t go through the treatments I went through, but I did without complaining. Through this life changing accident, I realized I want to be a doctor like the doctors who treated me. I went through lots of teasing and mocking from my peers after I came out of the hospital, about six months later. The teasing and mocking didn’t hurt me emotionally, but made me stronger a person. I don’t see my burn scars as something to grieve about, but they are a reminder of a beautiful tragic accident that changed my life for the better. Beauty is only skin deep in appearance; beautiful is when someone does something beautiful for other people.