By Diana Kim

Apart from living away from home during undergrad, I’ve always lived at home. For various reasons — wanting to save money, being a dutiful daughter, no real need for my own space while working on my master’s and doctorate — I stayed under my parents’ roof for 30 years. (During covid, given the circumstances, I moved into my grandma’s place to provide daily assistance.) This all changed a little over a year ago, when I made the decision to exclusively focus on academics. In order to be faithful to the academic call God has placed in my heart, I needed to create space — both physically and time-wise: I decided to step down from ministry (and quit other part time jobs) and move out so that all my energy could be focused on this calling. As much as I would try to compartmentalize ministry and academia, ministry would always bleed into my study time, making it difficult to truly commit to my academic work. This was also true with any family needs, as I would drop everything to help whenever someone needed assistance (hence, why I moved into my grandma’s place). In order for me to be faithful to my academic call, I realized that space and distance were a necessity.

I wasn’t sure how my family would take this. I had prepared myself financially and was willing to dip into my savings over the next few years to ensure I finished my PhD. But I was more concerned with how my family would react to me moving out on my own than I was about my finances. Would they think that I am abandoning them? Was I being selfish for prioritizing my academic work over my family, especially since no one else in our family has ever done something like this before? To my surprise, everyone in my family supported my decision to exclusively pursue my PhD. If these were the steps I needed to take in order to complete my studies, they would fully support me in this endeavor. 

It has been a little over a year since I made these various transitions, all to my advantage. Various family members and friends have commented that I have a sense of ease that I did not have a year ago. This inner peace, I believe, comes from my ability to exercise genuine agency and autonomy: independence. For so long, I was living for other people, including those in my ministry and my family. But now, I am living for myself and am thinking for and of myself. And with this independence, I have been able to make so much progress in my academic work and am approaching the final stage of my program. I realize that this independence is not selfish, as my family and church community have been in support of me and understand my need to be on my own. Rather, this is necessary for this season of my life. I’ve also made progress with myself and understand myself to be more than a pastor and a family member. While these parts of my identity are important to me, it was in creating space and stepping (a little) away from these parts of me that I am able to see and understand my independent self. 

Diana Kim is a PhD student at Fuller Theological Seminary and is majoring in Christian Ethics. Her current research area of interest is Asian American feminist ethics. She is committed to teaching and equipping the next generation to be passionate for Jesus and to live out His passion and care for the world.