God is your Father
“My sweet child, shall we go to church?”
When I heard those words, I would run to my mother. She would take my hand in hers, and we would walk to church. I think the long walk with my mother was why I liked going to church. One Sunday, as we arrived back at our village after church, my mother stopped in her tracks. She plucked a wildflower blooming shyly on the roadside and tucked it into my hair, right behind the ear. She kissed my cheek and whispered to me with a delicate, loving voice, “How pretty you look, my one and only daughter of the Lord!”
Mother’s eyes always looked the same. They were clear and deep, almost as if her irises were one with the blue sky. As I returned her gaze, I could glimpse traces of tears but, not knowing her deep heart, I was only excited and delighted by the words, “one and only daughter of the Lord.” Mother often called me “precious daughter of the Lord” with emphasis, as if she were praying. Throughout her life, this was the term that she used when she prayed for me, her only daughter.
In this way, I grew up feeling honored that I was the daughter of God, the daughter of the Lord. My maternal grandmother, Jo Won-mo, also looked into my eyes and told me clearly, “God is your Father.” Because of that, whenever I heard the word “father,” my heart would burst in my chest. For me the word, “father” brought to mind not my own father, but our Heavenly Father. Because of such love in my home, I never worried about my life. Despite our poverty, and despite my father not being with us, I always was content. This was because I knew that God was my Father, that He was my reason for being alive, and that He was always right there by my side, taking care of me. I sensed that God was my real Parent from the moment of my birth.
I realize now that I had a sensitive spiritual intuition. My husband recognized this in me, and complimented me for my insight into things that were taking place. He did so sometimes during his talks to members.
• • •
My grandmother and mother taught me the duties of heavenly love, and not to obsess over what I was going through personally. They set the example for me, obeying God absolutely and wholeheartedly. For Him, they did not mind carrying out exhausting endeavors that seemed to melt their very bone marrow. They offered their devotions of prayer most earnestly and carefully, almost as if they were building a tall stone tower. They also made other extraordinary conditions that I didn’t fully understand. They would bow before Jesus hundreds and even thousands of times in a day. They cooked meals for Jesus and sewed clothes for him, as if he were living in our house with us, and then they did the same for the Lord whom they expected to return to Korea. They shared their faith with everyone they met and their meager food and resources with anyone who needed it. Their generous and happy spirits moved me and shaped my character as I grew up.
Several times a day, I would stand at the edge of our front porch and look up at the clear sky. It was astonishing how often I saw three or four beautiful cranes in flight. I would continue my gaze at the sky even after the cranes were out of sight, my arms wrapped tightly around my chest to contain my heart, which I felt was about to burst out of me and join the cranes in the heavens.
• • •
One day, out of the blue, my mother asked me, “Do you know how you cried when you were born?”
“I was a little baby,” I replied, “so I must have cried, ‘Waah.’”
“No, you didn’t,” she said. “You cried, ‘La-la-la-la-la’ as if you were singing! Your grandmother said, ‘Perhaps this child is going to grow up to become a musician.’” I engraved her words in my heart, for I thought they might symbolize my future. However, my mother was not done telling me about my infancy.
She said that after she ate her first bowl of seaweed soup, the traditional meal for a mother after childbirth, she cradled me in her arms and fell asleep. As she dreamed, she saw Satan, a monstrous demon, appear before her. He shouted so loudly that even the mountains and streams rang with his fearsome voice. “If I let this baby be, the world will be in danger,” he yelled. “I must do away with her right now.” Suddenly he made as if to strike me. My mother held me closely and cast upon him all her energy to declare his defeat.
“Satan, be gone at once!” she said fiercely. “How dare you try to hurt her, when she is the most precious child to Heaven! I cast you out in the name of the Lord! Get out of my presence! You have no right to be here! Heaven has claimed this child and your days of power have come to an end!”
Mother was shouting so loudly that my grandmother rushed into the room and shook her. She collected herself, looked deeply into my face and searched her heart for the reason Satan was trying to strike me. She took this experience as a sign that I was destined to strike the head of the serpent. And this was the answer to her and my grandmother’s prayers. “I must raise this child with complete devotion,” my mother vowed to herself. “I will raise her to become a pure and beautiful girl for the Lord, and protect her from the pollution of the secular world.”
About a month later, she had another dream. This time, a heavenly angel dressed in shimmering white came to her on a sunlit cloud. “Soon-ae,” the angel spoke; “I am sure you must feel incapable to prepare this baby for the service that our Heavenly Father has in mind, but don’t be. This baby is the daughter of the Lord and you are her nanny. Please devote all your energies to raising her with absolute faith, love and obedience.”
Satan, however, did not give up. Until we left North Korea, he would appear in mother’s dreams, looking hideous and voicing threats both dramatic and subtle. Mother fought hard to protect me over a number of years. When I heard about these dreams from my mother, I became very serious: “Why was Satan trying to hurt me? And why did he keep stalking me?” I wondered.
Hak Ja Han with her mother Hong Soon-ae, a devout Christian who prepared for the Lord’s return