June 2, 2025

These are chaotic and confusing times. As a spiritual director, I spend many hours a week listening to people process their thoughts and feelings around life and their relationship with God. It seems the fear and anxiety level is rising all around and there is no rest for the weary. 

Can you imagine with me a safe place where you can set down your bags and rest? Where is that place in your mind’s eye? Is there a place where you can go and be with God and experience his protection and care? 

Psalm 18:1-2 

1 I love you, Lord;

    you are my strength.

2 The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my savior;

    my God is my rock, in whom I find protection.

He is my shield, the power that saves me,

    and my place of safety. 

Years ago I was looking for that safe place. I needed a place where I could go and let out all that I had been holding inside, in fact I didn’t know just how much I needed it. I had been in leadership for many years in an organization that I love and where the people I work with have become family. But the tension I had been holding for so long as an Asian American woman within a predominantly white leadership space had worn down my soul. There seemed to be so much to unpack that I didn’t know where to start. It’s hard to rest when you’re still in the storm. 

I was on the edge of burnout and I didn’t know how I had gotten there. From the outside it seemed I was doing a good job holding it together. Those under my leadership knew I would always be there for them, and I juggled all the complexities of family and ministry all while living cross-culturally in a mid-size East Asian city of 12 million. We had navigated emergencies of all kinds, including cancer and my husband’s near death experience. Now I found myself in this place, with everything catching up to me. 

Our stories inform how we show up in different spaces. Our immigration story, ours and that of our parents, our ethnic background, and how we have experienced racialization. Our gender also impacts how we experienced life not only in our families but also in the cultures we have navigated. Our personalities were shaped by how we grew up, the challenges we encountered and the ways we learned resilience. 

As an Asian American I have always juggled identities in different spaces. My upbringing and I’m imagining yours, too, taught you how to shapeshift, or code switch in different cultural spaces. Reading the room became second nature, or a superpower, as my husband likes to call it. 

As a firstborn daughter of immigrant parents, I know how to be about others’ needs. As a pastor’s kid I can read the room and assume the helper role in whatever capacity is needed. I never complained when I was asked to stay later at church to watch kids, arrange the chairs, fix an extra fruit plate or bake a few dozen cookies. I knew my parents carried a huge burden and I decided early on that I never wanted to add to it. I took care of my sisters to the best that I could and everyone else who came to our home. Adept at relationships, I had internalized the biblical mandate to take up our cross and follow Jesus. I memorized Matthew 11: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul and your neighbor (minus the “as yourself” part). I had never heard a sermon around the phrase at the end of that verse, “as yourself”. 

What does that mean? 

To love our neighbor, as we love ourselves? 

With that missing from our theology, we are left as ministry machines, to serve a God who only cares about our worship and how we love others. To understand God’s love for us and then begin to love ourselves is not to be selfish, but to walk in truth. 

As I began to unpack this with my spiritual director, I found words for what was going on in my soul and in the naming of it found the freedom to release it to God. I let myself feel the sadness, the resentment, and even the anger, all emotions of which I was very uncomfortable with naming. I admitted I didn’t have to meet every need in the room, and I could relax in my “reading the room” gift. I needed to receive the truth deeply that God didn’t need me to do things for him. He loved me. Full stop. And he wants me to love myself, too. 

We are first loved. This is how God sees us. We can’t be running around trying to get God to love us or to get him to accept us. He already does.

When you come from a culture where things sometimes feel like they must be an equitable exchange of give to get, it can feel exhausting. We also often resist his love because of feelings of unworthiness or shame. If we could somehow name a few of those barriers that are keeping us from his love. Some of those might include heavily-armored-self-protection, fear of being seen, hiding in busyness, fear of failure, and the need to earn affirmation. All of those ways our dependent on our personal worthiness, which will leave us feel inadequate and never enough.

How many of us like who we are? 

What stirs in you as you read this question? Could you take a moment today and bring those thoughts and emotions to God? Could you bring your weariness and the bags you are holding all into his presence? Could you receive the truth once again that you are first loved? 

What part of your story enabled you to read the room? How might you discover greater freedom as you begin to name the ways you also have learned to read the room. How could you let God be your protector and in these challenging times, could you also let God be your safety? 

Would you pray with me? 

God, I want to receive your love. Would you show me the places in my heart where fear and shame still hide? I long to let your perfect love reach over part of me so that I could learn to love myself as you love me. I receive you as my protector and as my safety. 

Jenn is co-founder of Khora Collective and serves as Chief of Spiritual Formation. Additionally, she is a Spiritual Director, Executive Coach, Co-Director at Summit Clear and served as a church planter and regional leader for Pioneers for 25 years in Asia. Her book, Dim Sum and Faith: How Our Stories Shape Our Souls will be released in 2025. Pre-order here: https://www.amazon.com/Dim-Sum-Faith-Stories-Souls/dp/1514012464