第 4 章
When Someone Becomes Your Front Light
On a cold November night, I entered The Eagle and Child, the famous pub where the Inklings once gathered. With its storybook windows, low ceilings, and maze-like layout of small rooms, I navigated to the back where my cycling buddy Gabriel was having his going-away party before returning to France. Though we'd only known each other a few weeks-riding bikes home together after Sunday church-Oxford's pressure-cooker environment had made it feel longer.
As I looked around at the strangers gathered for Gabriel's farewell, I felt increasingly out of place. When Jisu introduced himself, I initially misheard his name as "Jesus." Upon learning he also barely knew Gabriel, I felt relieved. His warmth and candor were refreshing after my cold encounters with many British people. Jisu revealed his fascinating background-Austrian by nationality but Korean by blood, having lived in Texas, Israel, Syria, and Mexico, speaking multiple languages. Despite his worldliness, he remained humble.
Our connection felt immediate and natural-that rare feeling of meeting someone new yet somehow already familiar. Our friendship formed easily, partly because of the way he knew and loved God-differently and perhaps more deeply than I did, offering me reprieve in the confusing academic environment of Oxford.
During wine and cheese gatherings with my school friends, conversations often turned to religion. I'd sit silently as they dismissed faith as merely "comforting" for some people. Sometimes the conversation grew hostile, with staunch atheists making jokes about Christianity that I laughed at despite my discomfort.
Oxford's contrast with my southern American upbringing was jarring. Churches stood on every corner, but they were centuries old with empty pews. In this intellectual hub, people seemed not to need religion. This made me question whether faith was merely self-comfort, whether believing in a caretaking God was simply easier than not believing.
Unlike my high school doubts where I felt distant from God, in Oxford I questioned His very existence. The doubt seeped into my bones like a cold numbness. One night cycling home, I suddenly felt what a Godless existence would be like-the emptiness, the space it would leave in my world. For the first time, atheism felt completely possible and not altogether terrible, which was strikingly dark.
Despite my growing doubt, I found comfort in my friendship with Jisu. With him, I could relax and let go of the constant internal dialogue questioning my faith. Though we didn't discuss apologetics or pray together, his presence provided exactly the encouragement I needed. When my bike's front light lost a battery to a thief, Jisu, concerned for my safety, offered to ride in front of me at night, saying "I'll be your front light." In my spiritual darkness, Jisu became my front light-someone who had been there before, showing me the way.
第 5 章
When Atheists Challenge Your Faith
Ben came to Christmas Eve service with me, so I felt obligated to attend the weekly Atheist Society meeting with him. The Oxford Atheist Society was a group of students united by their disbelief in God. Ben wasn't like the guys I knew from home-as a devout atheist, he was reserved, quiet, and watchful. His side job involved reading hundreds of pages weekly to a blind classmate.
Despite our differences, Ben showed immediate kindness toward me. He laughed at my jokes, expressed genuine interest in my background, and invited me for coffee before class. He was the first person at school to whom I confided my faith, and his reaction-a smile and genuine curiosity-showed me he was someone I could be myself around. When I invited several school friends to St. Aldate's Christmas Eve service, Ben was the only one who showed up, interested in hearing the music, particularly "In the Bleak Midwinter," his favorite hymn.
Ben had a complicated relationship with church-he'd been a Christian from age sixteen to eighteen, even playing piano at his local church before walking away from faith. At the Atheist Society meeting, we participated in a pub quiz where we drew an imagined Darwinian species and ironically won the overall competition despite my Christian faith.
I struggled with how to relate to Ben, who didn't fit my categories of faith. Unlike my experience growing up in a megachurch with friends and family, Ben had attended a small stone church where he was likely alone. His thoughtful journey both to and away from faith challenged my assumptions about "faith failures." Ben remained a good friend despite our differences, encouraging my writing and sharing meals and study sessions.
I eventually realized people are more complicated than our categories, and that understanding requires getting outside our own experiences. The world isn't divided into believers and nonbelievers, but filled with people at various stages of complex spiritual journeys.
第 6 章
When Your Parents' Faith Becomes Your Own
Beliefs and convictions are like ice cubes in our hands-if we hold them too tightly, they melt away through our ignorance and refusal to consider alternative perspectives. When I arrived in Oxford, my firmly held beliefs quickly began to dissolve in the heat of a new culture and friends with unfamiliar viewpoints.
At a housewarming party, I cornered a student studying apologetics and desperately questioned him about the foundations of my faith. I was troubled by the question of whether I would still be a Christian if I hadn't been raised in a Christian home. The apologetics student kindly invited me to attend one of his lectures, which I eagerly accepted, hoping it would provide the answers I was seeking.
The lecture was given by John Lennox, a renowned apologist and Oxford math professor. Though I took furious notes, all I remember now is his central point: God's existence can be proven through science. What comforted me most wasn't the specific arguments, but seeing someone brilliant who had asked the same questions I had and found logical answers.
My father was my first source of this kind of confidence. His steady faith and strong, callused hands gave me security as a child. Our childish theologies are formed by pictures of our fathers, and I wondered if it was acceptable to rely so heavily on my father's faith. In Oxford, I heard someone call religious upbringing "child abuse," but I saw my Christian upbringing as loving, not harmful.
The early church began with eyewitnesses sharing what they'd seen, creating a chain of belief passed down through generations. This isn't weakness-it's the design of the church. We gather weekly to remind each other of truth because we need memory refreshers against our tendency to forget. We rely on each other's faith, drinking deeply from the well of stories that haven't changed since they were first told.
Faith isn't meant to be a solitary journey. Sometimes we need to borrow from the faith of others when our own feels insufficient. There's no shame in standing on the shoulders of those who've gone before us-it's how the church has always functioned.
第 7 章
When Small Sacrifices Reveal Big Truths
My caffeine addiction began only two years earlier in college, when making coffee in a real coffeemaker made me feel grown up. What started as appearances-holding a mug, standing in the kitchen with it pressed against my cheek-evolved into a genuine taste for coffee that seemed insatiable. One cup quickly became two, then three per day.
The British seemed wary of coffee, often offering me instant coffee which I considered blasphemous. Perhaps their attitude, along with comments about my frequent Starbucks visits, drove me to give up caffeine for Lent in Oxford. Rather than weaning myself off gradually, I went cold turkey-all in or all out, never finding the middle ground others talk about.
In recent years, I've noticed evangelical churches adopting more High Church practices like Lent and Advent candles. This wasn't my experience growing up in the Church of Christ where we viewed Lent as something "Catholics do, not us."
My education in Episcopal traditions began in sixth grade at a private Episcopal school. Our daily chapel services culminated in the important Ash Wednesday service marking the beginning of Lent. As a choir member, we had to perform perfectly, singing "Kyrie eleison" ("Lord, have mercy") repeatedly in smooth harmony without vibrato-exhausting for preteens.
Abstaining from caffeine in Oxford only worsened my relationship with Lent. Mornings, typically my best hours, became unbearable without coffee. I replaced my morning ritual with hot chocolate, which was sweet but lacked the energizing jolt I craved.
My Lenten sacrifice taught me almost nothing spiritually, just as giving up fried food in ninth grade hadn't. But I did discover one quirk: I like leaving spoons in my tea, constantly stirring to keep everything mixed and at "full sweetness potential." My friend Jisu noticed this habit and enabled it, always serving my drinks with the spoon still in the mug.
Sometimes our small sacrifices reveal more about our quirks than our spirituality. Yet these moments of vulnerability-like my caffeine withdrawal-create spaces for authentic connection with others who meet us in our weakness.
第 8 章
When Hidden Paths Lead to Unexpected Joy
I think distance can make the heart grow fonder, and distance can make the heart forget reality. Such was the case with my tiny bedroom at the top of the stairs in the house on Donnington Bridge. After living in a beige IKEA-furnished home on Badgers Walk, I found myself in what Americans would call a large-ish closet-a tiny room with space only for a twin bed, tiny desk, and chair. The cottage itself was charming-white with wisteria growing over the front door, a wooden kitchen table, and a stand-up piano. But reality hit when I returned from Christmas break with three enormous suitcases to find my room had seemingly shrunk.
While my roommates' DVD collection gave me hope for connection, the kitchen quickly made me feel foreign again. No toaster, dishwasher, coffeemaker, or microwave. The absence of these conveniences, combined with the cold, the accent differences, and a thousand tiny cultural nuances left me feeling completely isolated. Watching snow fall alone from the lumpy couch, I realized how desperately I wanted out of Oxford.
When my college friend Ashley emailed offering a room in Dallas, it seemed like an oasis. Dallas with its heat, malls, microwaves, and familiar American comforts suddenly appeared better than Oxford's "dreaming spires." I crafted My Big Oxford Escape Plan, setting June 7 as my departure date. Yet despite my determined chanting of "I am leaving June 7," something inside me resisted. The plan that made perfect sense logically brought no peace, and for days I actively avoided praying about it, fearing God might have different ideas.
Our journeys become clearer in hindsight. During one prayer walk, I followed a flattened grass path through tall weeds that unexpectedly led me to the Thames riverbank. Later, when I tried to email my friend about moving back to Texas, my finger literally wouldn't click "Send." That night, Dallas appeared dark in my dreams, and I realized my Oxford chapter wasn't finished.
Sometimes we must choose the half-hidden path before us rather than the clear one behind. This creates a rare joy-peace mixture that comes from genuine trust in God's goodness. I stayed in Oxford and conquered life without a microwave, learning to cook on the stovetop and embracing English living. By summer's end, lying under stars with my housemates, I felt completely at home-all the tears and homesickness worth it for that moment of belonging.
第 9 章
When Truth Appears in Unexpected Places
One frigid February morning, despite a terrible hangover from too much wine the night before, I dragged myself to London for a Christianity and art conference with my friend Jisu. Moving painfully slowly in my enormous puffy coat, I stomped along like a clumsy soldier, stopping at a corner store for a miraculous Coca-Cola that revived me.
At the venue, I self-consciously wrote "Student" on my name tag while surrounded by photographers, journalists, and artists. The room was freezing, but the keynote speaker, Dr. Gavin McGrath, captured my attention with his message about truth in art. He explained that the Christian artist's job is to tell the truth, turning to Psalm 137 where the Israelites refused to perform sacred songs for their Babylonian captors. The phrase "If I forget you, O Jerusalem" resonated deeply with me, though I didn't yet understand why.
Around this time, my thesis outline was due, and I'd been drawn to postcolonial literature-particularly Arundhati Roy's "The God of Small Things." This beautiful, sad story about love, India, and the caste system had haunted me since college. The novel follows Velutha, an "untouchable" who falls in forbidden love with Ammu, a divorced woman from a higher caste. Their relationship violates the "Love Laws" that dictate "who should be loved. And how. And how much."
As I read the novel repeatedly for my thesis, I began seeing Velutha as a Christ figure-an innocent man killed by those threatened by his radical vision of equality. Though Roy wasn't Christian, she had written one of the most compelling gospel portrayals I'd ever encountered. This revelation transformed my understanding: if truth exists in art regardless of its creator's faith, then God's presence isn't limited to explicitly Christian works. The gospel story is inescapable, woven through everything.
This insight began healing my faith. I'd been searching for God in church and Bible studies but found Him in "heathen" novels. As Christian Wiman says, "Art is so often better at theology than theology is." The darkness hadn't been absence but an opportunity to feel my way toward something real. That night, I wrote Psalm 137 on a sticky note: "If I forget you, O Jerusalem..." I felt something honest welling up inside me-like light seeping through cracks before a door opens wide.
第 10 章
When Freedom Grows in Wild Gardens
I spent afternoons working in a publisher's garden shed in east Oxford, typing a manuscript about the Danube. The wild English garden surrounding the shed captivated me-overflowing with vegetables, hydrangeas, and countless other flowers. Unlike meticulously manicured American lawns, English gardens embraced a beautiful chaos-bushes poking through fences, overlapping flowers, untrimmed vines spilling onto footpaths. They were "overcrowded and out of control and unpredictable, and in this, they were free. Beautiful and free."
In England, I discovered women with a completely different relationship to appearance than my American standards of "neat, streamlined, controlled" beauty. English women wore whatever they wanted-big scarves, dresses with tights regardless of weather, worn-in shoes, crinkled clothes. They wore less makeup, didn't obsess over rain-frizzed hair, and didn't seem to exercise as religiously as Americans.
I observed them with anthropological curiosity but also with thirst for their freedom. They cooked and enjoyed real food without diet talk, didn't obsess over outfits or dress sizes, and maintained a natural, relaxed attitude even when cycling to parties in the rain. Their example showed me another way of living.
My turning point came during a weeknight church meeting at St. Aldate's when I encountered banoffee pie-that perfect English dessert of condensed milk, banana, and toffee on piecrust with whipped cream and chocolate. Despite my internal restrictions, I ate the entire slice, savoring every grain of sugar, ounce of butter, and crunchy bite of toffee.
When I finished, I realized something profound: I was okay. No panic attack came, no overwhelming guilt, no compulsion to run six miles. The self-control I'd been so proud of had been melting away in England without my realizing it-and that was healing. By year's end, I no longer obsessed over food, restricted calories, or told myself to "EAT NOTHING YOU WILL REGRET LATER." My restaurant mindset shifted from "What would be least damaging?" to "What sounds best right now?"
Living among people who embraced imperfection, who shrugged at rain and ate real food without diet talk, had gradually freed me from my own prison. Sometimes freedom comes not through rigid discipline but through embracing the beautiful chaos of a less controlled life.
第 11 章
When Rivers Carry Our Unanswered Questions
On foggy Sunday mornings, my running shoes give my mind permission to wander. I leave my Nashville home in worn shorts and neon Mizunos, thinking of Jisu-a friend who lives in the haze of what-could-have-been. An almost kiss. Late nights at kebob trucks. Bike rides with headlamps. Our relationship existed in that uncertain space between friendship and something more.
We spent a day together in London during our fuzzy time of undefined relationship. The day began well-early bus rides with croissants, touring the National Gallery, marveling at St. Paul's Cathedral, indulging in McDonald's ice cream. But at the Tate Modern, across the Millennium Bridge, my mood changed. Art museums felt romantic to me, and I wanted to experience it holding hands, not as distant friends separated by a heavy question mark.
Not long after, Jisu came over before church so we could walk there together-the long way, by the river. I knew this conversation would be clumsy. "Friends" had slowly disappeared from the words that could define our relationship. We walked along the familiar muddy path, past cow pastures where trespassing wasn't trespassing in England's polite land-sharing culture. We made small talk about the cold spring weather before settling on a bench near the houseboats to begin the real conversation.
"Friends have mentioned we're spending a lot of time together," Jisu began. We acknowledged the mutual feelings between us, but when he asked how I felt, I couldn't commit. "I just don't know how I feel," I admitted. "Is it okay to not be sure?" The Thames seemed to pause, giving us a moment to kiss or declare deeper feelings, but when nothing happened, it rippled on again.
River conversations have so many options and directions. They twist with tributaries, shallow and deep parts, obstacles and distractions. I've spent too much time dwelling on these moments, wondering what might have happened if I'd said yes instead of expressing uncertainty. But rivers don't flow backward-what's done is done.
Still running years later in Nashville, pain in my hips snaps me back to the present as I turn into Centennial Park with its replica Parthenon. Beyond the somewhat out-of-place pillared building lies a beautiful pond where light reflects off water and seeps through trees in a way that makes me turn my head to keep watching. The consciousness itself is the gift-not just the light, water, and trees, but my connection to them. I feel their life and am aware of their beauty, unwrapped somehow only for me.
第 12 章
When Authenticity Becomes Its Own Pilgrimage
August thawed Oxford, subduing the cold in a way no other month could. Bodies emerged with bare arms and legs swinging about, pale and grateful. Summer in Oxford was encased in magic dust-those weeks were light and memorable as I wrote my thesis on a rickety backyard table and welcomed sunburns. Winter kept us layered indoors, but summer invited us outside, to smile at strangers and receive what the sun offered as it melted away any remnant of cold.
One strikingly warm August day, Erik and I sat by the river. He was one of my nonchurch friends-a brilliant, lively Scandinavian economics student with crazy blue eyes and compulsively disheveled hair. As we shared baguette and cheese, Erik revealed his dread of returning home to complicated family dynamics. I grew uncomfortable with this real talk, this openness. Our friendship had remained surface-level, and I preferred Erik as a caricature rather than a human with real problems. Caring about him meant having real conversations, being my real Jesus-loving self. But I stayed reserved, making circles in the water with my toe, expressing concern without mentioning Jesus or hope. I simply said, "I'm sorry."
I cycled past the Martyrs' Memorial countless times without truly studying it. Standing seventy-three feet tall, it commemorates three Protestant Reformation martyrs-Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley, and Hugh Latimer-who were burned at the stake under Bloody Mary for refusing to renounce their faith. Unlike them, I did not speak boldly in Oxford. I put immense pressure on myself in conversations with friends of different beliefs and consistently felt like a failure.
Right around the corner from the Martyrs' Memorial on Broad Street lies another memorial-an unassuming collection of white and slate-colored bricks forming a cross embedded in the pavement. This cross marks the actual spot where Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were burned at the stake. Unlike the grand St. Giles Street memorial, this tiny, plain, low-to-the-ground marker is often overlooked as people walk right over it.
The distance between the St. Giles Street memorial and the Broad Street memorial is just 0.1 mile, but my spiritual journey between them took an entire year. This crooked, winding path wasn't a bad way but perhaps the only way-filled with detours, nooks, turns, and dead ends where I learned, grew stronger, and developed sturdier beliefs. After my honest conversation with Erik, I realized that being my authentic self was its own form of evangelism. As Paulo Coelho writes in The Pilgrimage, "We are always trying to convert people to a belief in our own explanation of the universe," but perhaps our genuine presence speaks louder than our words.
