{"id":3262,"date":"2023-12-22T07:56:10","date_gmt":"2023-12-22T12:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3262"},"modified":"2023-12-22T07:56:10","modified_gmt":"2023-12-22T12:56:10","slug":"you-belong-to-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/22\/you-belong-to-me\/","title":{"rendered":"You Belong to Me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,<\/em> <\/a>click here<\/a>

Stephanie Fast never learned the date of her birth.\u00a0 To this day she doesn’t know the identity of her parents.\u00a0 \u00a0

She does know that she was the child of a Korean mother and an Anglo father, one of many biracial children left behind in the aftermath of the Korean War.\u00a0\u00a0

She remembers that she was three or four years old when her mother put her on a train with a bit of food and a few changes of clothing.\u00a0 Her mother told her to get off the train at a certain stop, where her uncle would be waiting for her.\u00a0

Then her mother, looking deeply sorrowful, said goodbye.\u00a0 Stephanie never saw her again.

At the stop where she got off, no one was waiting for her.\u00a0\u00a0

That was the beginning of her time as a homeless orphan.\u00a0 For years she fended for herself, doing whatever she could to stay fed and warm.\u00a0 She aligned herself with groups of other abandoned children – not always safe company.\u00a0\u00a0

People jeered at her. They called her a toogee<\/em>, a term of utter contempt.\u00a0

It essentially means “half-breed,” but it’s stronger than that.\u00a0 There was no love for biracial orphans in post-war Korea.\u00a0 She was, as she later said,\u00a0“garbage, dust, a bastard, an alien devil.”\u00a0\u00a0

Stephanie recalls, “When you’re a little child and hear people call you [a toogee<\/em>] day after day, you believe it about yourself… I wasn’t a person.\u00a0 I was worthless.\u00a0 I was dirty.\u00a0 I had no name.\u00a0 I had no identity.\u00a0 I had no family.\u00a0 I had no future and no hope.\u00a0 Over time, I began to hate myself.”

She assumed her mother had given her a real name, but she couldn’t remember it.\u00a0\u00a0

About the time Stephanie (pictured above) was seven years old, she was stricken with cholera.\u00a0 Local farmers threw her onto a garbage heap, leaving her more sick than alive.\u00a0\u00a0

She knew she was dying.\u00a0 And she was relieved.\u00a0 At various times she had been assaulted, thrown into a well, and forced into a bombed-out building filled with hungry rats.\u00a0 Stephanie was glad her life was finally coming to an end.

That’s where she first looked into the blue eyes of Iris Eriksson.\u00a0 Iris was a World Vision nurse from Sweden. She had come to the garbage heap to rescue abandoned babies – little ones whose parents could not or would not take care of them any longer. Her explicit instructions were to ignore any older children.

Iris felt pity for Stephanie, who was desperately ill and emaciated. But she knew she had to walk away.

As she turned to go, however, something happened – something she had never experienced before.\u00a0 Her legs felt heavy.\u00a0 It was almost as if she couldn’t walk.\u00a0\u00a0

Then she heard a voice. It was an audible voice, even though no one else was around.\u00a0 Most remarkably, the voice did not speak Korean.\u00a0 Iris heard two words in Swedish, her native tongue: “She’s mine.”<\/em>

She obediently scooped up the seven-year-old’s tiny frame and carried her to safety.\u00a0 Stephanie recovered and began a new phase of her life in a World Vision orphanage.\u00a0

“Miss Eriksson – well, how can I put this?” Stephanie reflected years later.\u00a0 “In a way, she was my savior before Jesus.”\u00a0

Two years later, the orphanage received word that an American couple \u2013 missionaries who had no children of their own \u2013 were coming for a visit.\u00a0 Their intent was to adopt one of the babies.\u00a0 Stephanie spent a whole day, as she put it, scrubbing the babies \u2013 getting them ready for inspection.\u00a0 She was excited on their behalf. \u00a0One of them was going to receive the gift of a real family and a real home.\u00a0

To everyone\u2019s surprise, however \u2013 especially Stephanie\u2019s \u2013 the couple kept looking at her<\/em>.\u00a0 She was nine years old and didn\u2019t weigh 30 pounds.\u00a0

There was nothing appealing about her appearance.\u00a0 Yet the man gently placed his hand on her face.\u00a0 She couldn\u2019t remember the last time she had felt a touch prompted by kindness.\u00a0 This couple from the Midwest, who had come to the orphanage with entirely different plans, felt they heard God saying to them, \u201cShe is the one for you.\u201d\u00a0

The next day she left for America with her new parents.\u00a0 It took years, but her heart \u2013 the heart which she had tried to wall off from any expressions of love or hope \u2013 gradually began to heal.\u00a0

When she was 15, Stephanie gave her heart to Jesus.\u00a0 She learned that he also had been born in humble circumstances.\u00a0 When he was a toddler, his family had fled as refugees to another country. \u00a0He would ultimately be misunderstood by his family, betrayed by a friend, and abandoned by his closest companions at the hour of his greatest need.

Stephanie grasped that Jesus was someone who could identify with the life she had lived.\u00a0

Today she works as a global orphan advocate with Restore International, a ministry devoted to bringing hope to abandoned children.\u00a0 She tells her remarkable story in a book that is appropriately titled She is Mine<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0

The deepest meaning<\/em> of Christmas is revealed in the opening words of the Gospel of John.\u00a0 There we read, concerning Jesus: “In him was life, and that life was the light of all humanity.\u00a0 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:4-5).\u00a0

In the darkest places, at the darkest moments, there is always a voice speaking.\u00a0\u00a0

Even if it’s not audible, you can hear it:

You are not your own.\u00a0 You belong to Me.\u00a0<\/em>

That is the Christmas gift all of us need more than any other every year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Stephanie Fast never learned the date of her birth.\u00a0 To this day she doesn’t know the identity of her parents.\u00a0 \u00a0 She does know that she was the child of a Korean mother and an Anglo father, one of many biracial children left behind in the aftermath of the Korean… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3263,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[119,667],"class_list":["post-3262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christmas","tag-orphans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3264,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3262\/revisions\/3264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}