Nicole was baptized at Blacknall Memorial Presbyterian Church in Durham on July 12, 2026. In this essay, she shares moments of her life that formed her and led to her decision. She currently lives in Washington State.
My mom was working at a small grocery store selling soy sauce in China when my dad first saw her. After walking around a park for their first date, they grabbed dinner.
"Have you eaten yet?" my dad asked my mom.
"Yes," she said, too shy to tell him that she actually didn’t. He ate a plate of dumplings by himself that night while she watched.
"I didn’t know better at the time," my dad tells me now, recounting a story my mom has not forgotten. I thank God there was grace.
Nicole with Pastor Goodie Bell during her baptism at Blacknall.
Having fallen in love shortly after, they got married and had my older brother. When my father secured a chance at education and a better opportunity a couple of years later, my parents struggled to navigate the immigration process. It took about five years for my mom to secure a visa, and then my brother traveled to the United States by himself at 8 years old to reunite with my parents a year later.
When my dad arrived in Houston for graduate studies at the University of Houston, he didn’t have a car to help him meet basic needs.
While at school one day, he saw a poster advertising a program to help international students find transportation and buy groceries. I remember him telling me how he thought it was a nice program the government provided, because he saw the word “ministry” and assumed it was a government counterpart — like the “Ministry of Finance” he was used to seeing back in China. To his surprise, it was a church ministry. Through the relationships he built with the worship leaders who served there — shared rides to church, help getting groceries, meals in people’s homes — he found God. And when my mother and brother eventually immigrated to Texas, they did, too.
As a child, I remember staying up late into the early hours of dawn to see a glimpse of the morning sun and feel my mom’s warm embrace when she arrived home from work. With her tiger-like spirit and steadfast but weary feet, she worked to provide for my family. Age and exhaustion formed crinkles around her eyes, and wisdom crept into her graying hair from striving to reach the fruits of the American dream through multiple waitressing and cleaning jobs.
When her father passed, my mom did not tell me right away. She grieved silently. When she remembers him, she tells me she wishes she’d had more time and money to see him. She recounts to me a life she had in China, growing up in poverty, and as I grow older, I start to realize more and more the habits she still holds even in her new life here in America — never knowing when to stop working.
We had only $30 in the bank after I was born. She tells me how painful it was to have just given birth to me and be separated, because after two weeks, she picked up multiple waitressing shifts. Every time a baby cried in the restaurant, she would lactate. Every time milk spilled from her breasts, she would go to the bathroom to clean herself up and cry.
因为我想你. “Because I missed you,” she’d tell me.
I begin with the story of my immediate family, the people I know best, because my story precedes me. It also precedes them. My earliest memory of hearing about God was when I was 5 or 6 years old, sitting at the foot of my brother’s bed with the doors shut from the turmoil of the outside world. He told me the names of each book of the Bible and about Jesus.
“Mom and dad love you very much even if it is hard to see and understand it sometimes.” He told me about a love that never fails, even if we feel like we do.
As a swimmer for 13 years, I questioned whether I’d made the right decision giving up a competitive career to attend Baylor University, which didn’t have a competitive swimming program. Between the 20-plus hours of swimming a week, the eight-hour days by the pool six or seven days a week each summer, and the countless mornings my dad drove me to 5 a.m. practices and weekend meets, it was difficult to leave that identity.
But during my freshman year at Baylor, I joined Asian Ministry InterVarsity (AMIV), which catalyzed my faith and helped me better understand a bigger, truer identity. Campus ministry helped me grow closer to my ethnic background, heritage, and the gifts that God had given me. AMIV also helped me see that the things that made me unique were gifts God gave me to better understand the people of His kingdom.
One Tuesday morning during my sophomore year, I was running around the football stadium with a friend. I became tired of chasing people, physically and mentally. First, I was tired of chasing others to outrun them, and second, I was tired of chasing other people’s aspirations, attempting to craft my own dreams from their goals. That morning, I didn’t stop running until I felt content with my own progress. After returning to my apartment, I prayed to God desperately, asking for contentment with the unknown and help surrendering my future to Him. With the same prayers leading me, I decided to take a leap of faith.
After dropping a pre-medicine program, I added a second major in economics to my psychology major and Spanish minor, and began taking classes outside my degree plan. Attending a predominantly white, Baptist, private university in Texas, I felt the absence of Asian American history — until I found a course taught by Dr. Cat Tran, a Vietnamese American professor, titled "Race, Religion, and Reconciliation." It was the most challenging class of my college career, exposing me to the devastating truth of race and racism in America through his book “Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism.” Dr. Tran's wisdom shaped the rest of my college journey, pushing me toward systemic change and helping me claim my own story outside of stereotypes and heuristics. Studying under him again in my last year at Duke felt like a gift.
Falling on a ski slope was not on my bucket list three months before graduating college. But completely tearing my ACL and MCL with a partial meniscus tear wound up being a great way to transition into a new stage of life.
While I hid my tears in the back of the car the day I fell, I picked up the book I brought with me from my AMIV discipleship — “After College” by Erica Young Reitz. I opened up to where I last left off before leaving for my trip and read about fortitude and suffering well:
“Fortitude is ‘the strength of mind that enables a person to … bear pain or adversity with courage.’ If we want to suffer well, we need grit/ We need to be tough in mind and spirit. As Christians. Practicing fortitude often means that we acknowledge our weakness and helplessness before God, and we allow him to be our strength. The ability to endure ultimately comes from him (2 Corinthians 12:9).”
At the time, the idea of “suffering well” sat at the core of how I ended up navigating my recovery. “Suffering well” in that season of life reinforced in me that toughness comes from the spirit and mind. I drew parallels to Genesis 32, when Jacob wrestled with God and left with a limp and a blessing — a reminder of humility and dependence on God in that season of my life. I felt my ski accident was God’s way of telling me to be still, showing me the power of a season of “stillness.” Literally, through my injury, and figuratively, through a new journey of growth and trust in God. The incident and God’s guidance through Reitz’s book served as another reminder of God’s incredible grace and provision in my life. The periodic popping of that same knee today is a tangible reminder.
After graduation, I returned to Houston for two leg surgeries. Shortly after, I began working as an organizing and policy associate at a non-profit called Woori Juntos, meaning “us together, rising” in Korean and Spanish. This organization channeled my passion to serve overlooked immigrant and migrant communities, allowing me to uplift the needs of my neighbors. We also had a hand in shaping local and state language access policies, including encouraging our community members to share public testimonies at the Texas Legislature. Our efforts were highlighted in the Texas Tribune’s “Asking to Be Heard” series in 2023.
The community members I served and my family are my “why” — they helped reaffirm my calling. I carried my family, friends, and the people directly impacted with me through school, and I carry them with me still, everywhere I go. On the wall in front of my desk are photos of the people who constantly remind me of my “why,” but this also includes my faith. Combined with a passion for policy, I felt called to pursue a dual degree at Duke Divinity School and the Sanford School of Public Policy.
Before leaving for graduate school, my mom stopped me at the doorway of her room and told me, “Little baby, mommy is sorry she cannot give you much. All I know how to do is provide you money and food.”
It broke my heart because she had given her body in unconditional love for our family. I think about this often. I had always known that it was not that my mother did not make the time, but that she literally could not afford it. To this day, although my family is imperfect, I feel incredibly blessed that their love for me is the closest to Christ’s unconditional love I will know on this earth. And that love has continued to be shaped and built upon by incredible people in my life — from my mentors, to roommates, to my dear friends and loved ones who have held my tears just as much as my laughter.
I long assumed I was baptized as a baby. I remembered seeing photographs of my parents and their baptism, and I guessed there must have been a photograph somewhere of my own. This past year, I asked my dad to tell me about my baptism, and he seemed confused. “Well, when you were born, we celebrated! The church celebrated you!” And as I heard more about their life in the Chinese Baptist church they attended at the time, I realized that what I had assumed was my baptism was probably a dedication.
During Nicole's baptism in July, a child at Blacknall drew this picture capturing the moment. It was shared with Nicole that morning.
There is a lot of uncertainty in what my work and other parts of my life will look like now that I’ve left North Carolina. I have questions about my career, and big questions about how to deepen my faith. But amid all that uncertainty, Pastor Goodie helped me realize that the most tangible next step I could take in following Christ is to be baptized. So long as I follow Him and keep Christ centered in my life and career, all will be well in a life shaped by love, sacrifice, service, justice, and care for others.
That’s part of why I chose Blacknall for my baptism. It’s the last church I called home in North Carolina, but more than that, it’s a place where I experienced faith and hope in and through this community. Goodie guided me, along with so many incredible people in my women’s small group, at the women’s retreat, and everyone who shared space and presence in the pews at 8:30 and 11 a.m. on Sunday mornings.
Durham was a place where many of the people I love have become part of my story. It’s where I finished graduate school and seminary – a path most people didn’t understand, but a decision I made because it only needed to make sense to me. Faith had become part of my “why,” and public policy was my “how.” Blacknall is where God led me into a transformative chapter in my life. I wanted to be baptized in a place I knew, surrounded by people who have been a significant part of my life and know me deeply. Countless people at Blacknall, in different ways, were part of the story of how I have come to know Christ. My story of faith is not just a story of what I have believed, but a story of the people who transformed and formed me, the people who showed me what love looks like.
Baptism is also not a one-way ticket to an “easier life.” In fact, when Jesus was baptized, he entered the wilderness and faced trials, temptations, and suffering. I didn’t think baptism meant that things would become easier. If anything, I think it means choosing to live more fully in the tension between the world as it is and the world as it is supposed to be. We know that Christ has won the war. We are already saved. But that is not an excuse to sit back and relax. It is a constant, day-to-day choice to follow Christ: to choose true love and sacrifice over self-interest, service over power, and justice and accountability when harm has been done. And to keep pursuing the flourishing of God’s creation even when the world does not yet look the way we know it should.
I have known grief, uncertainty, disappointment, and the ways that people and institutions can cause harm. But I also know love because of my family, friends, and the people who walked with me through church, seminary, and some of the most formative years of my life. I know the love of people who have challenged me, supported me, forgiven me, and reminded me what it means to follow Christ. Through all of them, I have seen glimpses of God’s love. I know love because of people who do not idolize religion but follow Christ.
My baptism is not ultimately about me. It’s centered on Christ through a public proclamation of my faith and of the Gospel, a declaration of Christ’s death and resurrection. It’s entering into new life with Christ and anticipating Christ’s coming again, and an announcement that I am choosing to enter more fully into the body and community of people who follow Christ. It is a story of Christ that I will continue to share each time I choose to live as someone baptized by the Spirit and into the community of believers.
I choose to follow Christ, and it is not a one-way ticket to an easier life. While we are already saved, and Christ has already won, we are still called to make the active choice each day to follow Him. It’s a choice to pursue the flourishing of all creation, and that flourishing requires love, which also requires sacrifice.
After spending so much of my life in and around water, where I once revolved my identity around being a swimmer and an athlete, I acknowledged what I have been thirsty for all along: Living Water. And now, I have come home to it, still as a swimmer, but now swimming even deeper into the Spirit.