Photo by Blondinrikard Fröberg

I was at an open house for my daughter’s kindergarten class many years ago, excited to finally meet her teacher. My daughter, Love, had been talking about Mrs. Gardner incessantly for the first month of school, and I wanted to make a good impression on her.

Finally, I ran into her at the open house, and introduced myself: “Hi, I’m Love’s mom. So nice to finally meet you! I just wanted to let you know that Love is…” I paused. What DO I want to tell her about Love? And before I knew it, I blurted out, “Normal!”

What? Normal?! Of all the things I could have highlighted about my daughter—that she’s fiercely independent, incredibly sweet, amazingly bight, and even annoyingly tenacious—I couldn’t believe my description of my daughter to her kindergarten teacher. It really wasn’t very “normal” to describe your daughter as normal to her kindergarten teacher!

To say the least, I was embarrassed. Love’s teacher showed a brief moment of surprise at my “normal” comment and quickly went on to describe how wonderful my daughter was. Afterwards, I wondered where that came from. I thought about how I was brought up in my Korean immigrant home and church youth group to not brag about anything. Rather, shame and guilt were my constant companions, reminding me that I needed to do better if I wanted to make anything of myself.

If I got a B on an exam, I just wasn’t good enough; if I got an A, I was just meeting the standard. If I skipped my “Quiet Time” for a day, I felt an incredible pang of guilt; if I had my Quiet Time every day, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. “I am so proud of you” was not a phrase I heard often growing up. Rather, I heard a whole lot of, “Why can’t you be more like so-and-so?” At church, sin and cross were emphasized so much more than joy and resurrection.

Having grown up in a culture steeped in shame, guilt, and austerity, I struggled to find things to celebrate about myself when I became an adult and about my children when I became a mom. It took me a long time to take pride in the person I was becoming even though that person wasn’t anywhere near good or perfect according to the standards with which I grew up. Of course, that meant changing my standards and the questions I asked about myself.

Instead of asking, “Am I doing this right?” I would ask, “Am I doing this with integrity?” Instead of asking, “Is this a sin?” I would ask, “Where can I find God’s grace in my life?” My questions and values in life along with my faith in God had to undergo a pretty significant shift from performance-based model to presence-based model of living and interacting with others. I had to learn that discovering, developing and celebrating the person God has created me to be is so much more important than trying to outperform everyone around me.

At my daughter’s open house, I realized, however, that my old way of thinking was still very much alive and well. If she wasn’t excelling in her class (that is, her kindergarten class!), she was just “normal”; if she wasn’t showing any signs of genius, I had no reason to be proud of her. That open house and my “normal” comment was definitely a wake-up call for me. Nowadays, I try to celebrate my children as much as I can and let them know how proud I am of the compassionate, kind, and authentic young adults they are growing up to be.

Angela Ryo currently serves as the Associate Pastor for Christian Formation at Kirk in the Hills in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She enjoys taking long walks, reading, listening to NPR, and drinking good coffee with friends and strangers alike.