Before I got baptized in a big pond in Camp Luisimo. I remember how cloudy it was. The grays in the clouds and the windy winds on that very day. The sun was not out, and that made me ponder that maybe there had been a hidden meaning behind it. There wasn’t a shine of sunshines seeping through the clouds. I felt a little saddened about it. My heart did not feel like it was there with me, although I could still feel the beat of my heart. I knew at that very moment, standing by the shore where millions of sand particles are. I would then accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior and be his disciple as I walked towards the water, hearing the voices of the small congregation singing praises to God. I believed deeply in my heart that God still performed miracles as what was recorded in the Bible (even though I felt there was not anything important happening in my life other than accepting Jesus into my heart).

In the old world that I once lived in, it was much different from how I lived as a christian. There were things that I did not know about in this world of Christianity until I stepped foot into it. I had no idea how many people followed their own faith in Jesus. They all had different belief systems about their faith in him. It was just mind boggling to me at the time, because I would assume that everyone had good intentions——-this thing called progressive positivism; and the assumption that everyone were in the ‘right’ mind, or that everyone still had good in them while enduring the consequences and internal afflictions of others. I realized sooner as a child, that the flaw of goodness, and the flaw of redemption often overcome evil with good. Therefore every stance of goodness required an internal fight of force, and every stance of redeeming ourselves, required one to fight or flight on the terms that there was only one good. 

Everyone was in a battle to search for truth, for hope, and meaning in their lives. If I had learned all the flaws of the Christian religion, or the problems in it as a child I probably wouldn’t have continued on my venture to being christ-like. But here’s the ‘problem’ though. No one is perfect like him. However he existed so that he would draw every sinner like myself to repentance, and deliverance from the life that they were living in.   

I recall one time when I was still in elementary school, during Sunday school class, everyone had to draw what we thought were spirits and what was God. And so I drew what I thought were spirits in my drawings, and what I thought were angels. When I showed it to my Sunday school teacher, I couldn’t read his or her facial expression. It was almost expressionless. Still, I continued drawing my cartoon of spirits that I pictured from a show that I grew up watching called, ‘Shaman King’. By the time I finished my picture, I realized that everyone was not in the room anymore. I was all alone, and even the teacher was not even there. At the time, I thought drawing spirits from Shaman King was cool. However, I also thought about drawing my own kind of imagination of what a spirit was. So, I drew a flying ball, adding it into my drawings. As I reflect back to that time, how innocent was that drawing? But that day sure sparked my curiosity. I remember having been so excited to go to Sunday school classes to hear more stories about the Bible, that I had forgotten about who I would become: that is, forgetting how to decide what to believe, and which way of ‘right’ was for me. But the truth still mattered, and it only took some time to read and study more of the Bible to understand what Angels and God was like. 

From what I can remember in the beginnings of my life, as far as I could. It would be me receiving gifts in my car seat with a blanket covering over it while I was in it. I can’t remember what kind of gifts they were, but they were probably handmade twisted bracelets that were usually for ankles and as a trinket. There was a time when I was 3 years old, I was speaking fluent English and that scared my father. He thought that I was being possessed, and he decided to call a shamanist to do a ritual on me. At the time of it all. If I had continued to speak without fear of my father asking a shamanist to do a ritual on me again. I think I would have done well in elementary school had it not been for that. When children speak more, they are able to process more words fluently, and their minds are able to think more fluidly. I recall suppressing it all. And that eventually made me seem autistic to my parents. Holding my thoughts, or my feelings for example sometimes helped me cope with my problems pertaining to what my father had to do if I started speaking so much. I did not understand where he got the idea that I was being possessed. I spoke mostly English, but I also spoke broken Hmong language as a child growing up. Some things were difficult to understand, but I managed to force myself to speak more Hmong because of how choppy I spoke in that language. 

I’ll write more tomorrow about what happened after next, but as for now I’ll take some time for some mindfulness practice.

Much love- Mindy