STEAK NIGHT!

Crying in Sizzler

My wife had left us two boys behind to go galavanting around NYC with our niece, which meant my son and I were left to sneak in as much junk food as we could before she got back. (Not really. Not at this age…)

For our first dinner, my son wanted steaks. Solid suggestion, if I don’t say so myself. The last time we had steaks, I’d gone to a local butcher and picked up 3 sirloins from them.
This time, since it was just me and him, figured that the regular ole HEB sirloin in the meat section would suffice and it’s on sale. My son won’t know the difference, and really neither would I. I figured, if I hadn’t bought it myself, I would’ve never known.
Except that when I bit into the steak, I noticed the difference between the pre-packaged sirloin and the sirloin from the butcher. The quality was noticeably different. And I sat with that for a minute because I didn’t like the fact that I could discern the quality of the meat by just biting into it.

My wife and I will once in a while try to one-up each other on who grew up poorer. Ultimately, she grew up in a household of- 6 while I grew up in a household of 4. Their dollar had to stretch more than ours, so on that account — and that alone — I shall concede that she grew up a poorer immigrant than I.

In 2012, I was appointed to a small church in Santa Barbara called St. Mark UMC.

St. Mark and I (well, the Yoo family) had a long history together. My dad planted a church, later known as Santa Barbara Korean UMC, on the campus of St. Mark in 1994-ish, and I got to participate in the youth group of St. Mark UMC.
Nearly 20 years later, I was now being sent as the pastor of the church where we did Egg Olympics in the fellowship hall; where we rode in a van with no seat belts and begged the youth director to do brake checks.
Youth ministry in the ‘90s was the Wild West. So many safeguarding (Safe Sanctuary) policy violations.
Seriously, I’m very fortunate not to have gotten seriously injured as a youth and fortunate enough not to have had any serious injuries or lawsuits as a youth pastor. (The aughts weren’t as wild as the ‘90s... but we all have horror stories.)

When we lived there from ‘92-’96, I didn’t realize just how difficult things were for my parents. But I don’t think they really got to enjoy Santa Barbara because of all the hardships they had to endure.

We were broke.

I don’t know how my parents survived those years in Santa Barbara, raising two boys on... well, no steady income, really.

The thing about the first generation is that their function was survival.
Survive this new country and new culture and new customs, and try your best to make a living here. They fought for survival so that their sacrifice would be worth it for their kids.
I am thriving because my parents survived the move to a new country.

When I returned to Santa Barbara in my 30s, I spent the first few months reminiscing about the early ‘90s. Stopping by some of the old places that were still there. Discovering that new places had replaced the stores we frequented in the ‘90s.

The Sizzler was still there.
The Sizzler that was always saved for a special occasion.
Good news? Sizzler.
Celebration? Sizzler.
Church guests? Sizzler.

I grew up thinking that Sizzler was a fancy place, what with their steaks and all-you-can-eat salad bar.

Funnily enough, we never went to a Sizzler in Hawaii (where we moved in ‘96). In fact, I thought there wasn’t a Sizzler in Hawaii, but a quick Google search let me know otherwise. So my only memory of Sizzler was this fancy dining place reserved for special occasions.

I was free for lunch, and while it wasn’t a celebratory occasion, I still went to Sizzler for old times’ sake. Because I knew that we were in a better financial situation than my parents ever were in their 30s.
I ordered my sirloin with a baked potato and added on the salad bar. I mean, why wouldn’t I?

Oh. Side note: if you’re a relatively typical adult... fairly healthy, no dietary restrictions, yada yada yada... can I just say that “well done” should only be reserved for what we hear God tell us when we’re standing before God in heaven?
Well done is not meant for steak.
I said what I said.

The whole vibe felt off.
It was exactly as I remembered it... but smaller. Apparently, everything was bigger than it really was when we were kids.
And, well, I couldn’t help but laugh at the silliness of thinking that Sizzler was a fancy establishment. It was a simple step above TGI Fridays (which, back then, I loved. So that’s not shade toward TGI Fridays or Sizzler

I felt so fricking sad eating my lunch by myself. I was trying my hardest not to cry because, I mean, what could possibly be happening in someone’s life that they go to Sizzler (by themselves) and cry while eating their steak and salad bar?
The sadness had to do with just how much my parents had to endure and probably how unhelpful I must’ve been when we first lived there.

I remember taking my parents to better restaurants when they visited, and they were like, “We never knew this part of town existed,” and all that. Which, you know, further cemented just how much my parents struggled during our time there

I always grew up wishing for wealth.
Not just any kind of wealth. I wished for the “Fuck You” kinda wealth where you have disposable income to say “F U” to people who get in your way... which is probably why God never gave me the opportunity to be rich. I mean, I still pray every once in a while, “God, let me prove to you just how generous I can be! Help me win the mega jackpot lottery!”

But wealth is... relative.
If you want to see where you rank globally: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org

Oh. Wait.
My dad, when he planted Santa Barbara KUMC (then called St. Mark KUMC because they met at... St. Mark...), had no salary. My parents firmly believed that a pastor’s salary and livelihood should only come from what the church provided. So my mom never worked. And because they spent most of their time in Korean churches, speaking Korean all the time, they never had a chance to flex their English muscles on a regular basis.

All this to say, we were a family of four with no steady income.
So what does my dad do?
He decided the only thing to do was pray.
Not just pray. But fast and pray.
Not just a regular fast... but a Forty Day Fast.

I think in my lifetime, my dad’s done 4-5 forty-day fasts.
He’s crazy, yea.
But crazy for God, I suppose.

This would’ve been his second time doing a forty-day fast.
The first time was when I was 6 and we had just moved to the States.

My dad stayed at a gidowon (usually a prayer retreat place somewhere up in the mountains). By the time my dad was done with the fast, his calves were skinnier than my arms. And I had, have, skinny arms.
No food. Just water. For 40 days.

But here’s the craziest shit that I can’t logically reconcile.
That very first time my dad went on the 40-day fast?
It was because we had just moved to the States, and there were no jobs for him.

We spent a year in the West Covina area being supported by my grandfather (his father-in-law), and there was just no way in hell that was going to be a normal thing.

So he went on that fast to pray that a job would open up for him.

Another fun fact: when we held our little family worship service for him ending his fasts, he cried. That’s the first time I saw my dad cry. I’ll always remember that. Also, it was really nice because it was just the three of us. My dumb brother hadn’t been born yet.

But I mean, pretty much after he finished his fast, he got a call from someone in Columbia, SC, saying that there’s a church opening and they’d like him to be the pastor.

So we moved to Columbia in, like, ‘87.

Now, again, pretty much after my dad finished this 40-day fast, he got a call from a dentist he had never met. The dentist attended a church pastored by my dad’s friend. My dad once preached at their church for a revival, and the dentist had been in attendance and apparently had been deeply moved by my dad’s sermons.

Anyway, this dentist calls and basically says, “I can’t shake this feeling that I’m supposed to help you. So I’m calling to ask if I can support you for 2 years with $2,000 a month.”

And all of a sudden, we had a steady income.

Part of my vocation sorta really eliminates the idea of ‘coincidence’ and replaces it with providence.
Yes. All of this does seem coincidental and I won’t correct you if that’s what you walk away with.
But I lived through this.
I experienced this.

Hell, one day in South Carolina, our car was fixing to die. And I’m assuming we had no money to buy a new car...
I must’ve been in the 3rd or 4th grade when this happened.
My dad put a car ad from a magazine on the front door, instructing us to ask God for a new car every time we saw that picture.

Then.

One day, this white dude knocks on our door (which was rare because only Koreans came to visit us), and he asked for my dad.
I had to translate to my dad that this man was from the local Ford dealership and that someone had bought a car and had it delivered to our house.
A Ford Tempo. I remember that. A gray Ford Tempo.

Some people have asked how come I haven’t deconstructed all the way... implying why I’m still holding onto mystery. Well, I don’t know how else to explain some of the crazy things I’ve witnessed in my life.
And life gets very boring, very fast if we eliminate mystery.
If that makes me a mystic, so be it.

Anyways, where were we?
Ah. Wealth being relative.
I never felt that we were lacking.
I knew we couldn’t afford many things... but my parents never made us feel like we were lacking.

It always felt like we had enough.
And that’s when wealth becomes more of a liability than an asset in Kin(g)dom Economics: when the desire for more starts eating away at, and eventually consuming, contentedness.

I’m really, really (really) trying to learn to be content and grateful for what I have.
Because what I have is more than plenty.
I have more than my “daily bread.”
But that disease of more is always lurking, not even in the shadows.

I feel tremendously blessed by the life that we’ve made so far.
I don’t like speaking on behalf of my wife, but I think it’s more than safe to say that we are far better off in our 40s than both of our parents ever were in their 40s.
And that’s all thanks to them: their faithfulness, their tenacity, their courage, their strength, and their pride in their children.

My parents wanted nothing more than for me to be in ministry.
And because that’s what I ended up doing, there was no way I could support them the way I’d want to if I had become, say, a lawyer. Or a doctor. Or a professor. Or a salesperson.
The funniest misconception I’ve discovered is that many people on social media think all pastors are paid like Joel Osteen and Steven Furtick and Matt Chandler and Kenneth Copeland.

The truth is, the average size of a church in the US is about 60 people on a Sunday.
That’s the norm. Osteens and mega churches are the exception.

So yea, most of the pastors you know are living off humble salaries.
Ergo, we couldn’t support our sets of parents financially the way we wanted.

I mean, emotionally and whatnot... my parents won the jackpot. They got me as the eldest son. Who wouldn’t want a son like me?
And to keep my parents humbled and grounded for having such a great son, God gave them my brother.

When we were moving into our new house, my wife mentioned that something about this felt off. Maybe we should’ve helped our parents find a permanent home before we did. She had — and has — a point. But my in-laws are living in Korea, and my parents are still renters now in Katy.
I wonder if our parents felt a similar... sting... of wanting to provide something but simply being unable to.

When I signed my book deal, I did receive an advance.
I wrote the biggest check of my life to my parents. (It wasn’t much. I’ve just never had to write a check that big.) It’s not even enough for a down payment on a house... but it’s quite literally the least I could do.

A part of me thought, I should just give them the whole advance.
But I earned that money lol. (Annnnnnnnd this is probably why God hasn’t given me the winning lotto ticket numbers yet.)

Oh. I remember when we were living in Valencia, CA. We were living paycheck to paycheck. I remember there were times I simply didn’t want to look at the account balance because it was too anxiety-inducing (and of course, it caused more stress when we accidentally overdrew our account because I didn’t want to look at our balance).

My brother called me during that season, asking if he could borrow money that was equivalent to, like, a month’s rent on an apartment.
We simply couldn’t.
I didn’t even offer a lesser amount, although looking back, I should’ve offered something.
It ate at me so much back then.

I wrote it off, telling myself my brother’s cult (he was part of a church that I will call a cult until my dying day... and by now, I think he agrees with me) would take care of him.
But still.
It bothered me that the one time my younger (idiot of a) brother asked for help, I couldn’t do anything.

Over a decade later, that was still in the back corner of a drawer in my mind.
So I asked him, “Remember when you asked to borrow money and I couldn’t help you out?” He didn’t remember.
Which irked me because I’d been sitting with this guilt for over a decade, and he couldn’t even do me the favor of remembering the awkward position he placed me in. But, like Pepperidge Farm, I remembered.
So I gave him the amount with interest added on. I gave him more than he asked for in, like, 2011. He could do the math on how much interest I gave him. He’s always been better at math. And music.
While it annoys me that he’s so talented in music (who the hell cares about math?!?), I take solace in knowing that I’m better than him at everything else.

And yes, I still tithe.
I gave you a bit of insight into growing up as a PK with a pastor like my dad.
One of the things he ingrained in us is that everything we receive comes from God first.
So he made us tithe when we were kids.
I remember our treasurer once asking me, “Why do you give to the church? You’re basically giving back what we gave you?”
Well, that kind of ate at me because it meant they’d encountered many pastors who don’t give.

Pastors, if you can’t find a spiritual reason to give, I’ll give you a logistical one:
Put your money where your mouth is.
If you’re unwilling to give to the church, how can you stand there in front of your parishioners and ask them to give?

Also, there have been a few big shocks in transferring into the Episcopal Church.
One of the biggest ones is that TEC doesn’t seem to have an open-book policy when it comes to finances.

In the UMC, our budget was available to any member who asked for it.
All appointed clergy salary packages are available for members to see. (All the church hires are usually grouped into administration or staffing.)
It just sits unwell with me.
My dad also taught me... you can be gray in many areas of ministry because not everything is binary.
However, when it comes to finances, be as transparent as humanly possible. And I have. And I will continue to do so.

Who doesn’t want more money?
Who doesn’t want to be more comfortable than they are?
But that more destroys souls more than it strengthens them.

What I’m trying to remind myself day in and day out is that I don’t need more.
That I have enough.
I have everything I need in front of me to do the work of kin(g)dom building with God.
And I have everything I need not just to survive, but to live.
As long as I count my blessings, as long as I keep gratitude front and center in everything, the idea of more will take hold of my heart.
But not the desire for more things.
The desire to be more loving; joyful; peaceful; patient; kind; good; faithful; gentle.

We had taken our parents out to dinner because we hadn’t seen them in a minute.
During dinner, they were talking about steak bought at Costco and how that’s so different from steaks at Kroger.
I asked them if they’d ever gotten steak straight from a butcher.
They had no idea you could do that. They always walked past the butcher at HEB or wherever, but they were never curious enough to find out why they were there.
So I told them we’d be back the following week, but with steaks from a butcher.
We picked up ribeyes from a butcher in Webster. Dad grilled them.
They were some pretty-looking ribeyes, and my parents thoroughly enjoyed them.
It’s not a house (yet... who knows, maybe I’ll win the lottery), but... I mean, I don’t really know how to finish this sentence.
Like, in no way is it me “paying them back,” but...
If anything, it just made me more grateful.

I really, truly believe that if we had never moved to America, my dad would’ve done really well for himself and our family. But he also sacrificed his career to move to the States. In no way was he a “failure” here in America. But I think he would’ve been able to... be more successful (whatever that may mean in ministry) in Korea.

I am thriving because my parents survived the move.
And I hope that in these remaining seasons, they’re able to enjoy life more than they did when we were kids.

I’ll make sure of it.