[00:00:00] Chealsia: Everyone needs to belong. You know what it feels like the joy of being surrounded by your closest friends, feeling like your truest self. You’re totally at ease. But what about when you feel like you don’t belong? Like, if you’re in a new city or job, you start to feel anxious, lonely, unsure of yourself as you work to find your people and your place in it all.

[00:00:31] Welcome to Created For: A space where our everyday lives intersect with God’s redemptive story. I’m your host, Chealsia Smedley. I chatted with author Tasha Jun about how you can experience a belonging that stays no matter what your surroundings may be.

A belonging that is rooted in the unique details of who God created you to be, that welcomes others in and travels with you wherever you go.

Today on the podcast, we are talking to Tasha Jun. Tasha is the author of this beautiful book called Tell Me the Dream Again: Reflections on Family, Ethnicity, and the Sacred Work of Belonging. In this poetic memoir, she tells a story of coming home to her own ethnic identity as a biracial Korean American and invites us to experience God’s love in our own cultural and familial stories.

And even shares how telling those stories can lead us to a greater experience of hope and shalom. Tasha, thank you for being here with us today.

[00:01:36] Tasha Jun: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:38] Chealsia: Yeah. I’m very excited that we’re able to talk on this podcast like you’ve been someone that we’ve wanted to have for a while. And yeah, the things that you’re doing in your work just so resonate with, with the things that we’re doing here, too, at Created For. 

[00:01:52] Tasha Jun: Oh, cool. I’m so excited to be here.

[00:01:54] Chealsia: I wanna start at the title of your book. There’s this phrase, “the sacred work of belonging.” So can you tell us a little bit more about what that means to you?

[00:02:04] Tasha Jun: You know, I think as far back as I can remember, belonging and, this longing for it has kind of been laced through everything that I’ve done. 

And I talk about this a lot in the book, but you know, I was born to a white Caucasian dad, who grew up in California, and a Korean immigrant mom, um, who grew up in Korea. and then we lived in the US, and then we lived overseas. And so, as a young child, I was often like explaining who I was, you know, wherever we went.

[00:02:37] Um, and that started really, really early. We moved to Japan when I was six. And so, not only was I explaining in, in my class of international students, like what I was, we were all about that and that was a positive environment, but like on the street, telling people that I was, you know, American and no one believing that I was American and then explaining that I was Korean and then, you know, getting weird face about that and then bringing in the whole biracial piece, before I even had language for that, trying to explain all of that, which led me to feel like, gosh, I don’t, I don’t actually belong in like these places that I’m claiming to be of.

[00:03:12] You know, no one believes me. Everybody else wants more information to understand. Um, and so that kind of just. It made me or just kind of set my face and my mind, and my heart towards I need to find the place where I do belong. You know? So, without really realizing it, I was always looking like everywhere.

[00:03:32] We moved from there on out, everywhere we went, every conversation, every other biracial person or person I met, you know, it was like I was searching for this common tie. Like, do I belong with you, or do I belong in this, this city or this school, or whatever? Um, so. It’s just it’s been a part of how I’ve operated for so long, 

[00:03:54] You know, everything that I’ve been searching for. Um, and so I think as an adult, as I’ve explored that past, the reasons why I did things, um, explored, know, my story, my family’s story, and then sought to kind of bring those things together as much as I possibly could.

[00:04:14] Um, and then pass those on, you know, to even to my kids or even like in other relationships to share about those parts of me. I’ve realized that it’s some, it’s work sometimes, it can be exhausting. It’s also fulfilling, but I think it’s sacred work, and it’s really important, and it’s something that not only connects us with others, like in our past, and then relationally, you know, in our present.

[00:04:36] 

[00:04:37] Chealsia: You talking about that experience being six, like wow, that is so pivotal. And I can even relate to that experience of like people seeing me and then seeing my dad who is brown, and it’s like, why aren’t you brown? Like, is that your dad?

[00:04:50] Tasha Jun: Yeah. What’s going on here? 

[00:04:52] Chealsia: Yeah.

[00:04:53] Tasha Jun:Yeah.

[00:04:54] Chealsia: Yeah. Even like relating to that, I’m curious what God has taught you about belonging in  even that search. 

[00:05:01] Tasha Jun: I mean, for a long time, you know, I think that longing felt like this blight because after a while, it’s like, it would always lead me to feel like there’s nowhere. You know, and why do I care so much? What’s wrong with me? It felt like very much like there was something wrong with me.

[00:05:15] Or I, that’s how I experienced it, and I think sometimes we can like write our longings off because it feels like it’s leading us to this like, desolate place, or we’ve been taught that we shouldn’t chase our longings, you know, that they can be dangerous and, and maybe there’s some truth to that.

[00:05:30] But I think for me, what in the long haul, like what I’ve experienced is that those longings finally led me to Jesus, you know, and really led me towards the question of, like, am I loved? You know, am I fully loved as a person? And can I be connected to other people in a whole way, you know?  I feel like it was on a long, windy road, but eventually, I think that’s what it led me to. ‘Cause Jesus was the, the one place that could kind of answer that, that deeper [00:06:00] belonging. Um, and where I could find belonging ultimately. And so that’s kind of where the narrative shifted for me.

[00:06:06] But it took a while. and it, it even took like thinking that I knew God, I mean, or just I was on a journey and there was a  lot deeper that God wanted to go with me. 

[00:06:16] Chealsia: So, yeah, because I do think that sometimes we as Christians can kind of get this, okay, you belong to God, take that and, and stop. But then in our experiences, it’s like, wait, no, but I need, I need more than that. And I feel like your book kind of does that. There’s this quote that I’m going to share from your book that says, you said: ‘When we explore the facets and details of our design, the pages of our stories, and the palette of people and places we’ve come from, we find the purpose and loving intention of our creator, God.” Can you flush it out for us a little bit?

[00:06:54] Tasha Jun: Yeah. I think I had gotten to a point where in my journey with God and my journey with others, you know, fellowship with other believers where, I kind of took what you said, you know, like, yes, of course, we belong to God. Yes, our identity is in Christ. But I hadn’t gone much deeper, you know,into the details of who I was.

[00:07:11] And so I was bumping up against certain things that were happening in the world and how they related to my own story, wanting to share that, you know, with other women in my life at the time and, and realizing like I could pretend like we knew each other really well. Or I could go deeper and risk saying things that were very uncomfortable and receiving things, you know, from them that were uncomfortable.

[00:07:35] It was at that point. And there were a lot along the way where I was like, I, I don’t wanna settle for this baseline. Like where we’re all like, yes, we all belong to God, but we feel terrible.

[00:07:44] We feel terrible and unknown. And, um, we’re just kind of riding this like shallow level of relating to one another, and so I think it took me opening up, which, you know, some people did not respond well to that, others did.

[00:08:01] But this desire to want to search those details for myself and to show up with those, um, in relationship and wherever I went for myself and for others, you know, and it just, it became a point where God was saying too, I think, you know, I want you to know that I love you down into those details.

[00:08:19] Like that I am real, that I’m a part of that and have intentionally placed those things in your life, from your taste buds to your hair texture, you know? Um, yeah, so I, I, I don’t think I could fully believe that God loved me as a whole person until I started to visit those different details, and take God with me and then offer it, you know, in a relationship as well.

[00:08:41] Chealsia: Yeah, ’cause I was gonna ask, what do you think happens when we are disconnected from our family stories and our ethnic stories? What are we missing out on?

[00:08:51] Tasha Jun: I mean, I think love? It sounds so cheesy, but,

[00:08:56] I think experiencing our belovedness, you know, in a way that fuels us forward and in a way that enables us to see that in others and, you know, move towards our neighbors, other people in our families and love them, you know, as whole people.

[00:09:12] So I think depth and just living as beloved people.

[00:09:17] I think the more that I have been honest with myself about my story and my questions and, um, you know, just the hard parts of my story that I don’t like to even say out loud, I might be able to write ’em in my journal, but it’s, but the more I’m honest with my myself about those things, the easier it is for me to see the humanity in others when they’re sharing their story, even if it’s different than mine, you know?

[00:09:41] Um, I think the more removed I am from my story, the harder it is for me. So I mean, that’s, again, just why I think it’s so important for us to be aware. and it’s an ongoing process, but to be aware and open to our own story and revisit it, you know, because think that does really impact our ability [00:10:00] to welcome others in, you know, if we can’t welcome ourselves, we’re not gonna really be able to welcome anyone else, you know?

Musical Break  

[00:10:21] Chealsia: In your book, one of the things that I loved was how you talk about food as a way of love and of God’s love toward you. Can you tell a story about how you’ve seen God at work in the, in the food? 

[00:10:32] Tasha Jun: I see it all the time. I probably, I think you drive my husband crazy because he’s like, okay, can we just eat, just have it be a meal? Like, there’s so much more going on here. but I think part of that is, that’s how I experienced love from my mom, was through food and, and care and, you know, I mean, even as a baby, like just I was really small and supposedly not gonna make it.

[00:10:53] And so, she fed me, and she fed me so much like a Korean mom does, but that people would stop on the streets like, because I was [00:11:00] so well fed and just comment on, you know, which, that’s a whole another thing, but. But I think it just, I always look back to it, and she would always tell me that, that story as like kind of this, this is how much I love you, you know?

[00:11:11] So even at a young age feeling like she’s telling me she loves me because of how much she fed me. And that’s how that’s how I grew up like experiencing love from her. But for a while, I kind of rejected that. Like, that was kind of like the, the sense of the Korean food in our fridge, like on my breath, like things like that became embarrassing and like shameful to me, something that I felt like I had to hide, you know, to move in the world and be considered normal.

[00:11:36] Um, and so much of that surrounds, is surrounded with food experiences and hearing people make fun of food and thinking, oh, that’s like, that’s how it is in our house. You know, my mom’s like over at the fireplace, roasting squid, you know, that’s like what I grew up with and that the smells that would be in our house because of it in the winter, you know, it can’t go out because it’s like cold and freezing.

[00:11:57] So, um, so anyway, so, so much of my own journey is wrapped up in that. So there’s this experience I had too when, after having my first son and I write about it in the, in the book. But my mom made me seaweed soup, miyeok guk. And it’s something that traditionally is given, you know, on birthdays, for Koreans.

[00:12:15] And, and also, it’s something that, um, mothers give their daughters when they first give birth, ’cause it’s healing. It’s supposed to represent, you know, life, and there are so many deep things about it, but I didn’t know any of that. I knew that my mom would try to give it to me, and I always refused it, and then when she gave it to me after my son was born, you know, I tried a little bit, but just.

[00:12:34] I don’t think she noticed this, but internally, I was like rejecting it, still living that way in some ways, like still holding onto some of that shame. Um, and then when she left, they were visiting us, I, I dumped it all down the sink

[00:12:46] ’cause I thought, well, none of us we’re not gonna eat it. Then I went to Barnes and Noble and like found, like a year later, found this cookbook, and it was a Korean cookbook. It was really beautiful, and I was flipping through it, and there was this picture of miyeok guk, you know, seaweed soup. And there was this like paragraph on the other side explaining the significance, which my mom had tried to tell me, but not in like, you know, not in a little essay.

[00:13:11] So I’m reading this essay, so able to take in the written word in that way in English, you know, but had kind of dismissed my mom all these years. Um, and I start like bawling when I read. Just standing in the aisle with my son in a stroller, just weeping. ’cause it’s like this, oh my gosh. Like how long am I gonna reject this part of me that God’s made, and how long am I gonna reject my mom and reject myself, you know? It was a huge moment for me. And then later, when we went to go adopt our daughter, there was this whole moment, and it felt very much like the Holy Spirit, like was very much there with me. But like they handed me this tray of Korean food, we’re on Korean air, and there was miyeok guk on the tray.

[00:13:52] And I really distinctly remember feeling like this is my time to drink this whole thing. And it’s like almost like this other baptism of like, embracing my spirit, my, my ethnic identity, as a beloved daughter of God, you know, biracial Korean beloved daughter of God. And so, again, crying. So I cry when I eat seaweed soup, you know, as I did that and just feeling like God was reaching for me through that soup bowl and kind of then looking back and seeing like, he’s just always been doing that.

Like, my mom. I love you. Let me feed you, let me feed you. You know, so, 

[00:14:24] Chealsia: That’s so beautiful. Ugh. Thanks for sharing that story.

[00:14:27] Tasha Jun: Yeah. 

[00:14:28] Chealsia: Yeah. In your book and the ways that you talk about like our family names and stories, um, you talk about it like leading us to this place of shalom, feels like this, like transformative spiritual practice

[00:14:44] How do we begin to do this work of telling and listening to our stories with an ear toward God’s shalom?

[00:14:51] Tasha Jun: I mean, I think. One, like going back to what we were first talking about, paying attention to our minds and letting them out. Like for me, a long time, that meant journaling. Um, and in prayer, journaling, just sometimes just blah, you know, just getting it all out. But, um, and in prayer with God, like, this is how I really feel.

[00:15:11] This is what I’m really afraid of, you know, and, and being honest about our doubts, the things that we’re really struggling with, the things that, that don’t seem like we can reconcile, you know? Um, as we look at scripture, as we look at like Christian community around us and what’s happening in the world, so I think we start there ’cause I do believe that our longings lead us to Jesus, um, if we are going to him with them, you know?

[00:15:33] And then, I think from there, moving into safe community, you know, with those same things like processing together with others, um, who, who can hold the, the weight of those things with you. Not everyone can. and that’s okay. But I think doing that with others that. That, you know, can hold the weight of that and sit with you before things are all patched up, you know, and walk with you through that.

I think that’s huge too.

Simple things.

[00:15:59] Chealsia: Yeah. I know that sometimes these stories can be lost. And so what do we do when it’s like, okay, I don’t really know, like past this generation of, family.

[00:16:11] Tasha Jun: Yeah. Um, I would just think of, like, so one thing that I’ve done in the past was I went through old pictures, and I, we didn’t have a lot, and I found one old picture of my mom and, I just sat with it, and it was almost like a prayerful, meditative experience where I was just sitting with it, just thinking through, like look at like how young she is, like what do I know of her story so far?

[00:16:32] And then I asked her some questions. So you know, if you have access to photos and some people don’t, you know, I mean, I think just sitting with something and looking at it, Asking yourself, like, or telling yourself like, I’m connected to this photo. How do I feel connected? How do I not feel connected? What surprises me when I think about that?

[00:16:50] You know, um, and then what questions do I have? And, you know, if you don’t have a photo, just any piece of your history, um, kind of sitting with that, like, what makes [00:17:00] me angry about this piece of history? Sometimes, you know, sometimes those are the feeling that we have. For me it was like the unanswered questions that makes me feel angry.

[00:17:09] It feels like an injustice to me. And then asking if you have access to someone, like just sitting with them and asking them some questions, you know, about, being sensitive to, to their own experiences and whether that’s triggering for them, you know, to, revisit. but yeah, I’ve had, throughout the years, just little conversations with my mom about some of the pictures that I’ve seen, little pieces of the stories that she’s told me, and so wanting to revisit that. Um, and that doesn’t always look like digging into really deep stories, but even just, you know, like watching her cut fruit and asking what, what kind of fruit did you eat when you’re little?

[00:17:44] And that, of course, dives into a ton of things about her story and like the fact that they’re, they didn’t have access to fruit for a long time, you know, because of growing up in war. so I think asking questions, being willing to sit with something for a minute and ask yourself like, how am I connected to this?

[00:17:59] Do I see this in my own life today? Just it sounds so simple, but I think that the process of giving that time and realizing it’s not wasted time is, is, is really important.

[00:18:10] Chealsia: It sounds, with the picture, it reminded me of like the spiritual practice of Visio Divina.  Are you familiar with that? Yeah.

[00:18:18] Tasha Jun: so I, I know Lectio, is this different?

[00:18:21] Chealsia: Yeah,so Visio Divina or like spiritual seeing is basically when you look at a photograph or a picture and in the same way that you would when you’re doing Lectio Divina or like spiritual reading, you’re using your imagination, you’re slowing down. You’re inviting God into the process, asking him where you are in this, what he wants to say to you, through that picture, just kind of inviting the Holy Spirit to, to use that to speak to you.

[00:18:56] Tasha Jun: That’s so cool. I’ve been doing that my whole life. I [00:19:00] didn’t know that was like actual thing.

[00:19:03] Chealsia: So, yeah. Yeah. So like, that’s what you’re describing right now.

[00:19:06] Tasha Jun: That’s so cool.

[00:19:07] Chealsia: Cool. So kind of to wrap up, is there any like practice that can help sustain us as we try to do this work?  

[00:19:19] Tasha Jun: Yeah. I think the importance of having A community or other people to do this with. I can’t like stress that enough. I feel like, and I did do a lot of this on my own, but it, that was, it was really hard. And I feel like that is when you wanna give up when you feel alone in it.

[00:19:34] So I think finding other people, even if it’s just one person, someone to regularly talk about this process and this journey with. Share with, for me it’s had I’ve, I’ve needed, other people of color in my life to do that with, just because I’ve needed someone that is either walking through that too and, and we can be in different places of that or have different stories, but understands, just some of those pieces of having rejected or assimilation, like just really, um, really big things that, you know, you don’t wanna have to explain all the time.

[00:20:07] So I think, for me, a big part has been finding those people, praying and asking God to find those people, and then walking through that with them. And you don’t have to have like a, I don’t know, it doesn’t have to be a program, you know, it can be this is the person, and you talk up front. Can we share in this together?

[00:20:22] And so I’ve had, you know, a few people along the way and then sometimes groups, but that have just been steady with me in that, and that has like, yeah, I think that’s been the most important thing.

[00:20:33] Chealsia: Can you share like what you guys have, have done when you have gotten together to talk about this? 

[00:20:39] Tasha Jun: Sometimes we’ve vented, but um, like, this happened this week. Does this, you know, how do you feel when this happens? So some of it was just talking through our own experiences, um, but then also sharing our stories and really celebrating some little things that maybe wouldn’t show up, you know, in a big way.

[00:20:58] But like a friend of mine, one way she started bracing her Mexican heritage was to start like she redid her house, you know, and, and that’s a huge thing, but like there was something happening there that I don’t think everyone would’ve realized. But because we had shared stories together, celebrating that, like, I see that color.

[00:21:15] I see how you picked like those things. Or letting her share with me like, oh, I did this because it celebrates this part of what my grandpa like told me. You know? And so I think, listening to each other, having space where we’re like, let’s, let’s talk about these things. Can we talk about our stories?

[00:21:32] Um, can we look at pictures together? Just again, I guess that Visio Divina, but doing it together, really like making space for that. And then also celebrating like every little piece of embrace.

[00:21:42] I just think that has been, Um, that’s been such a joy, also been so affirming, like when we do that for one another, I feel like so affirmed.

[00:21:51] Even just personally thinking, yeah, this is like, this is good. This is us, you know, living out our reflection of God. and it’s beautiful

[00:21:59] Chealsia: Belonging is so much more than a sense that we fit in with the people around us or the places we find ourselves in. God has woven belonging into the details of our lives, from our skin tones and taste buds to the families and stories he’s given us. So dig in invite God into those deep, achy longings.

[00:22:24] Sit with a family photograph and ask him to show you how you’re connected to the greater story that he’s writing. And don’t forget to grab a friend or two so that you can belong to each other as you grieve what’s been lost and celebrate every embrace.

[00:22:42] Thanks for listening to the Created For podcast. For more ways to continue journeying with us, hit subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Check out the show notes for any links we mentioned, and go to cru.org/createdfor for a guided reflection based on this episode.