Many years ago, I told a colleague that I wanted to die in a blaze of glory. Maybe, I said, while exposing human rights violations in North Korea, where I’ll be Swiss-cheesed with bullets while trying to save orphans.
“Oh dear,” he said.
I was joking. Well, half joking. The desire for a blaze-of-glory death—or rather, a life lived greatly—was serious. I was in my 20s at the time, still fresh into adulthood after a childhood of listening to sermons exhorting me to live passionately for the mission of God. I wanted to live that life. I wanted to do great things with my one chance on earth.
Today, I am a 37-year-old stay-at-home mother to a 3-year-old boy and an 8-month-old girl, and I’m living in an expansive, shallow suburbia called Los Angeles. It’s been six months since I made the decision to quit my job as a journalist and become a full-time homemaker. This is not the blaze of glory I had envisioned for my life.
One of my typical mornings, for example, began when my toddler woke me up by screaming “Hello!” and “Hallelujah!” into a karaoke mic with the volume pumped up high while the baby squawked for milk, which she’d been doing every hour since 12:30 a.m. I crawled out of bed with eyebags sagging and T-shirt crusty with dried milk. I hurriedly brushed my teeth, resolutely avoiding the mirror. As I prepared my toddler’s lunch for school, the baby wailed because her brother had kicked her in the face, and then just before I wrestled the toddler into the car, he threw himself on the floor, heartbroken because his grass-fed organic beef stick was “broken.” (It had teeth marks on it. His teeth marks.)
That day, my parents visited me in Los Angeles, en route from Virginia to South Korea. They were moving back to their mother country for good, a decision they made two months before, soon after they closed down the Chinese immigrant church they had pastored for 24 years.
Thirty-four years ago, our family moved to Singapore with four suitcases after my father felt called to be a missionary to the Chinese. Now my parents are returning home, once again with all their belongings packed into four suitcases. This too is not the life they had envisioned for themselves.
Now that my parents are returning to Korea, now that I’m a stay-at-home mother who wipes noses and butts all day long, I am taking a hard look at what I count as “success.”
As a young missionary and pastor, my father also dreamed of being great. He dreamed of becoming the next Billy Graham, drawing tens of thousands of people in big tent revivals where the next generation of Bible teachers and church planters would arise and scatter to the ends of the Chinese diaspora.
But when his church shut down in December 2024, the number of members who physically gathered for a Sunday service was less than a dozen (though more tuned in online from other countries). Growing up as a pastor’s kid, I saw people come and go from our church all the time, some quietly disappearing, some wreaking havoc. Our church was never very big, hitting about 80 members at its peak, but it also wasn’t the type of church that was ever going to be a megachurch: The sermons were in Mandarin and two hours long. We didn’t have a robust kids or youth ministry. Our pianist (me) made tons of mistakes.
By every worldly barometer for success, my parents’ church falls short. I once told an American megachurch pastor about my father’s two-hour sermons, and he balked. “So sad,” he said. “He’s been put in the wrong position.” According to this pastor, a mark of God’s blessing on a church is growth. And much like a for-profit business, a church needs to find the right talent for the right job. My father’s church is small, the pastor implied, because he’s not suited for preaching.
His response disturbed me, not just because he was talking about my dad but because I realized how I too have unconsciously adopted an unbiblical idea of success.
When I was a child, I used to argue with other pastors’ kids about whose father is the greatest. One boasted that her dad was kicked out of Thailand for breaking idols. Another boasted about the size of their church. I boasted that my abba has a doctorate in Chinese literature and gave up becoming a professor in Seoul to save souls.
But I must have believed too that God would reward him for that sacrifice. Instead, I saw my parents face hardship and grief throughout their ministry. I saw misunderstandings and accusations and criticisms lobbed at them—though they shielded me from many, lest I think ill of church members. Yet the little I knew, I grieved. The two people I loved most were hurting. I was also troubled: Why does God not bless my parents’ ministry when they serve so earnestly and sacrificially?
Before leaving for Korea, my parents spent about two weeks with me and my family. I wondered how I could comfort and encourage them. Instead, they comforted and encouraged me. Perhaps if I were them, I would have been discouraged, or downcast, or diminished, the way I sometimes am when I take stock of my life’s accomplishments. Instead, I saw joy. I saw thankfulness. I saw awe.
“Do you remember?” Abba would say, pointing to an incident years ago in which God had been faithful to us. “Remember this time? And that time? Remember?”
Descending the Summit of Success
By now, my father has long released that dream of becoming Billy Graham. “I was immature,” he recalled. He had thought he knew what a great ministry looked like, but after 34 years as a missionary and pastor, he found his ultimate calling: to know and experience God more and more each day, thoroughly and intimately and practically, and then to boast about his heavenly father the way a group of pastor’s kids once boasted about their dads.
“I’m just so grateful,” Abba told me, and as he began tearing up, I heard my baby cry awake from her nap, seeking sustenance and comfort.
And then I saw it—how childlike my parents have become in their old age. Their bodies are grayer, saggier, and creakier, but their hearts are just like my children’s—pure, simple, honest, humble. I was reminded of Jesus’ response when his disciples, ever obsessed with glory, asked him who was the greatest. Jesus called forth a child and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3).
To my baby, the most beautiful thing is my face, haggard as it is. The moment she meets my eyes, her face blossoms into the purest delight. When I hold her, her little heart beating against mine, she quiets down, knowing intuitively that she’s safe and secure, and I glimpse the original relationship God intended between him and us.
My toddler has busier things to do than admire my face, but there’s something intimate about the way he demands chocolate milk and sour gummies the moment he wakes up, and then flings himself into tragic sobs when I refuse. It takes a bit more work, but even in those moments, I see how God wants us also to approach him—openly, trustingly, boldly, confidently. My boy knows he can ask me for things. When he’s hurt or upset, he’ll beeline straight for his umma.
Who is great? What is success? I’ve been asking the wrong question, just as the disciples did, because I missed God’s heart.
My parents’ ministry has not ended. They are not retiring to go collect seashells. My father plans to continue writing and preaching in Korea at the request of people there. And before my parents left America, they finished one last work here: They ministered to a drained, discouraged, disoriented stay-at-home mother who needed a reminder that wiping butts and noses might not be the blaze of glory she dreamed of, but should she be more like her own children, she’s one diaper closer to greatness.
Sophia Lee is a former global staff writer at Christianity Today who is now a stay-at-home mother. She lives in Los Angeles.
Correction: This piece originally stated that the author’s father has a master’s degree in Chinese literature. He has a doctorate.
