Last month, I had the chance to travel and visit my paternal grandfather where he lives in Seoul. His name is Hun Hong Jeong (정헌홍), but I like to call him halaboji. I've spent most of my life away from him growing up, and honestly don't know him very well. But one thing I can expect from him, without fail, is a most earnest greeting: wide-stretched arms motioning for a bear hug, coupled with a soaring, "아이고, 우리 신혜여 (Aigoooo, it's my Sinhye)!" This time was no different, when he came to meet me and mom at the subway station in Seoul.
So during this trip, I had the chance to just sit and be with halaboji, and also got a peek into the way he lives, eats, cleans, sleeps. One thing I learned about him right off the bat: he is such a hipster. Check it out.
I also learned more than that. My grandfather, like many of ours, has been through much in his life. He was widowed early on, lost his eldest son to cancer, lived through economically devastating times, and lost his older brother when he was captured to North Korea during the Korean War.
And the weight of that I haven't known my grandparents until this point fell heavy on me during this trip. To know your ancestry is to know where you have been. You gain invaluable insight into the most subtle traces of why your family is the way it is, as far removed as the connections might seem. This is especially convicting to me because for the majority of my young life, I've perceived that the division caused by the 2nd-generation/immigrant experience was too strong, too final, for a meaningful connection to ever be made between my parents/grandparents and me. I had resigned early onto simply co-exist with their alternative perspective of the world.
I was lucky to spend some quality time with my grandfather. He drew me our family tree (apparently, we Jeongs are 32nd generation of descendants of the king of the Koryo dynasty).
But besides finding out that I'm basically a royal princess, I learned the story of how my grandfather learned of God's love for him, and his journey to surrendering his life to Jesus. It's because of the context of hardship of my grandfather's time as a youngster that he found the good news of the Father's love for him. This is a recording of him telling the story (in Korean, unfortunately).
And this here precious clip is a video of my maternal grandmother singing in the car to avoid focusing on her impending motion sickness.
Both my grandfather and grandmother (on mom's side) were the first in their families to know Jesus. In many ways, the events in their lives have dramatically shaped my life and where I am going.
It's an extreme blessing to have had the time and capacity to spend time with my precious grandparents on the other side of the globe while working a full time job. Where they have been looks so so (sooooo) different from where I am going. But it has never been more clear that the strong hand of God has and will lead us through to the end, generation to generation.
We are each but vapor in the wind.
Each of us will come, age, become irrelevant and go. But while we are here, the way we focus on the things that last will make our time here so so rich. While I'm here and while I'm young, my deep hope is to see always with an eternal perspective, and come before Jesus in the end having been joyfully faithful to him and his cause for our world.
