“I’m like a homeless,” she said thoughtfully.
I looked across the couch to where Haeun Shim, senior graphic design and painting major, was peacefully perched. Her long, glossy hair flowed gracefully across her shoulder as she spoke.
I had known Shim for about a year. I knew that she was an art student. I knew that she was a passionate follower of Christ, and I guessed that she had a story full of layers that I did not yet know. As we sat together on a couch by the fireplace in the Bowld, I was eager to listen to the grace with which she told me of her conflict of knowing where she belongs.
“Homeless” would not be the first word I would have thought of to describe Shim. In fact, maybe I never would have thought to make that connection, but somehow that day it made sense to me.
Living on several different continents and being active in missions throughout her life, Shim has spent significant time traveling.
“I love airplanes. I almost feel at home there,” said Shim with a laugh.
Shim was born in South Korea but moved to China with her parents and younger brother when she was 4 years old. She stayed in China serving as a missionary with her family until she graduated high school.
“The reason why I could understand why my parents came [to China] is because my parents wanted us to do the ministry together,” she said. “They wanted us fully engaged with them.”
I gained a glimpse of her heart of faith as she spoke. She hadn’t felt like she was dragged along for the ride in China. She embraced her parents’ calling as her own. China was her mission field too.
During her time in China, Shim began to experience tensions between cultures, languages and ultimately the concept of home. At the school she attended for missionary kids in China, Shim was only allowed to speak Chinese and English; however, with her family, she was expected to speak Korean.
Although dealing with this pressure and wrestling with her cultural identity was difficult, Shim was able even at the time to see a greater purpose to her story.
Upon graduating high school, Shim took a gap year and moved back to South Korea. She went without her family. She went to a culture that she had not lived in since she was a young child. She went in faith.
Here, the tensions of identity only increased for Shim.
“It was almost one of the hardest times,” Shim told me. “I’m Korean, but they don’t understand me. I don’t understand them.”
As she said these words, it was as if she was painting a picture for me of the turmoil she experienced during this time.
Her time in South Korea was supposed to be a time of planning. It was supposed to be the time that she would figure out what she wanted to be doing with her life. It ended up being a time of wrestling with her identity—who she was and where she fit in. This time led her to attend community college in Virginia. She had a plan.
“My last semester everything didn’t work out that I had planned,” said Shim. “Everything fell apart.”
There was no bitterness in her tone. She spoke with so much peace that I thought I might have misunderstood her, but I had not.
It was God’s plan that ultimately succeeded. Looking back, Shim knows that it was pride that led her to believe that she could establish the plan for her life. She was looking for a home in a place that God had not called her to know as home.
“I really learned that God is in control of everything,” said Shim.
The expression that flashed across her face as she said those words showed me that she truly believed that. She was just sharing a glimpse of her story, but the more she spoke, the more beauty I saw in her faith.
When the Lord unexpectedly overturned Shim’s plans, He worked things out for her to attend Union University, but that was still not home.
“I really don’t have a home. South Korea isn’t home. China isn’t home. America isn’t home,” Shim told me.
Now a senior at Union, Shim’s passion for art is evident in her life. Her aim is to be a full-time artist and art teacher and to visually communicate with others the good news and truth that she has known.
“My ultimate passion is to spread the gospel,” said Shim, expressing audible excitement. “I really love people.”
As Shim has struggled with her sense of “home,” she has been able to learn in a far more tangible way than some that this world is not her home. She holds to a hope that is far greater than what any home could offer her—the hope of salvation in Christ.
“God has been telling me, ‘Your home is where I am,’” said Shim as a smile flashed across her face. “I know who my true Father is and where my home is.”
