Healing past hurts

When I stand before thee at the day's end, thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing.”

After the 45 minute drive (through rural communities and farm land, the drive reminds me of the highways from the airport in Huatulco Mexico to the mission base just with tons of snow) from the train station to my family's home town we came upon a very modern looking one story building with a beautiful rolling mountainside as the backdrop. My aunt told me that my grandmother was waiting inside. With bated breath I walked quickly through the snow and up through the sliding glass door entrance to the room where my grandmother, Kim Oak Mae, was waiting to see me. She was born on March 23, 1923, which makes her 87 years old. She bore 6 children, three boys and three girls, and my mother was her youngest child. She has survived a war, Japanese invasion and subsequent subjugation, the death of her husband 26 years ago, the death of her youngest child 15 years ago, and most recently the death of her eldest son just last year.

I was really close to my grandmother because several times through our childhood she came to live with us to help take care of us, In West Germany before the unification, and then in Texas. I honestly cannot believe she is still alive. She has several missing teeth, tremors in her hands, is hard of hearing, and has really poor eyesight. But she is very mentally sharp yet, and upon seeing me was able to recall the times we lived together. She told me I looked so much like my mom and that I was very pretty. We than sat down to a meal and through my cousin Ami (who resides in New Zealand) we began to share about our lives over the past 18 years.

They also told me that before my mother married my dad, Degore Sr, she was in a relationship with another man, Jeung Khum Pyo and that he was my biological beginning. According to my aunts, he was a hard worker and worked along side my uncles in their construction business and he was kind and handsome. They told me that when I was younger I looked alot like him but now that I have grown up I resemble my mother. Through different circumstances my parents broke up but Khum Pyo was still apart of my life. He came to my birthday parties and even asked if my mother, who was about to go to the states because she was marrying my dad, if he could have me. While they were together, my name was actually Jeung Da Woon, which has a korean meaning and chinese meaning. In Korean it means the girl that is friendly and personable, and in Chinese it means the girl with many dreams. But when they broke up she changed my name to Kim Dan Bi. He is now married and has children and lives the next province over. When my aunts called to tell hm our mother had died, he cried and was very sad to hear the news.

After all these years of thinking that I was unwanted by my biological father and that he was a dead-beat father I was moved to tears. The healing of past hurts and rejections were slowing seeping into heart, soul, and mind all catalyzed by this liberating truth that from the beginning God had surrounded me by those who loved and cherished me.The lie that had pervaded my life that if my own biological father did not love me enough to stay or want me than I was unlovable and unworthy. Because of this wrong perspective I thought I was doomed to spend the rest of my life working hard to try to please those around me to earn the love that I erroneously thought was denied me. Yet all along the paternal affirmation I sought had always been there but my deceased mother was unable to confere this truth of my past. So after after all these years of not knowing, God has allowed the light to shine on this area of my life that was shrouded with hurt, rejection, and the unknown. Wow God is truly GOOD!!!!