How many in our generation do you think enjoy their youth to the fullest, when having to live in endless competition? Poet Seung-Ja Choi describes youth as suffering, loneliness, and longing in the poem ‘Eternal Triangle of Youth’. Looking back at my life, it seems that I too was trapped in that triangle in my not-so-beautiful early 20s.
After completing my unusually long and difficult entrance exam, my heart was tired to a point I wanted to push God out. Then, I tried to fill that empty space with reason and knowledge and not with faith. At university, I started to concentrate on my studies which enabled me to achieve big and small academic achievements. However, I still could not fulfil my emptied heart and I grew thirstier by the day. This is how I began my exchange student life in London in agony and pain.
London was far from what I had imagined as a city. When I first arrived, it felt as if I had stepped onto a ‘Grey Street’ (a murky and dull street) and without my supporting family with me, I immersed into deeper loneliness and emptiness. It was at that point of darkness when I came to God’s Vision Church and one day, I felt the urge to attend the Wednesday service as well. During the prayer time towards the end of the service, I suddenly couldn’t think of anything to pray for or what to tell God. It was a complete disconnection. Realising how far I had been away from God in that moment, I had no choice but to call out to Him and repeat ‘Please open my lips again’. To my amazement, changes began to take place in my life after that day. I began to yearn for worship, and I found myself wanting to find God every day. I remember this day as the moment when the wall of my heart that I had built started to collapse.
Since then, God has continuously come knocking on the door of my heart. Through cell gatherings, worship and various events, the Lord came to me, and I was finally forced to give into his persistent love. On the first night of the Autumn Worship Night, I prayed in tears saying ‘I will give everything to you Lord, please accept me’. It was a moment when I was finally freed from the three ‘hardship, loneliness, and longing’ bondage that was tightly surrounding me and for the first time in my life, I felt complete freedom.
Although I have now thankfully ended my youthful faith and established my religious identity, I still find myself unable to shed my old self in certain moments. However, what has changed in me is that I now know that this weakness is also a part of me and that the ultimate integrity can only be achieved within God. God has given me a new vision not only to cultivate my faith alone but to return to Korea where there are still people suffering and spread his love. I will continue praying every day. I hope that my heart will become a channel to let life flow through this land so that everyone in this world will be able to enjoy the most true freedom and peace within the Lord.
