Prologue: Genesis through Exodus

I was born in America.

I was born in America.

This was always something I had been proud of.

My parents? Born in Vietnam.

My sister—eleven and a half years older than me? Born in Vietnam.

My brother, three and a half years older? Born in Vietnam.

But me?

I am American-made. Not some cheap, crappy Chinese knock-off.

I am the real deal.

And I was proud of it. Why was I proud of it?

I probably couldn’t have articulated it back then, but the truth is that being born in America made me feel closer to belonging.

It made me feel less “other”—as if coming out of my Vietnamese mother’s birth canal in Fountain Valley, California, somehow made me more valid than if I had been born in Saigon.

Screw the knock-offs. I’m’ Merican.

My father’s name was Trần Minh. My mother’s Trương Phúc. She never changed her name, never adopted the surname of Trần. She has always had her own last name in many ways that simply suited her.

I don’t know much of my family’s history. What I do know is that my mother was born into a wealthy family. Her parents were some social elite. The story goes that her family was so rich that when my mother was young, her servants (servants!) would peel her grapes and freeze them because that’s how she liked them.

My dad, on the other hand, had grown up on a farm. He was a lowly farmer boy who dreamed of becoming a biology teacher. He told me countless stories of studying by candlelight while waiting in line—in the dark of night—to bring home buckets of water for the family. He told me of poverty, labor, and struggle.

Before the fall of the Republic of Vietnam, my parents came from opposite socio-economic backgrounds. In many ways, they operated on opposite ends as parents in my life.

But let’s continue at the beginning.

Many years later, in a casual tone that shocked both my brother and me, my dad would tell me that he never loved my mother. We were standing outside our house in Santa Ana, California. It was the first and only home my parents ever owned. It symbolized the upward mobility that one could obtain in America. 

I can’t remember whether he was gardening or weeding. In a rare moment of actually spending time with my father, my brother and I stood in our front yard as he worked. He didn’t look at us as he spoke in Vietnamese and told us how he married our mother for money.

She had been rich. He had wanted to move up in the world. It was a matter of convenience and opportunity for him.

I must have been twelve at the time. I knew my parents’ marriage wasn’t idyllic or overly romantic, but the casual way in which he told us this shocked my pre-adolescent mind.

I wanted to marry for love.

That’s part and parcel of the American dream, wasn’t it? Follow your heart.

My father continued to do whatever he was doing and said in a serious voice, “And you should marry for money, as well. Love means nothing.”

At that moment, my mind connected to another much younger incident when my father casually informed me that I was a mistake. They hadn’t intended on having me. They had arrived in America, and in a moment of celebration, I had been conceived.

Whatever notions one has of love and romance, I didn’t have them when it came to my family.

My dad was a gold digger. And I was a mistake.

As I write this, I recall the men’s breakfast I had with church this morning. The theme?

That love is the greatest thing of all. Because God is love. Because God loved us even when we were sinners by becoming man. Because love fulfills the law and the prophets.

Faith, hope, and love abide. But the greatest of these? Love.

“Love means nothing.” My father had wanted to teach me.

Their marriage was not a marriage of love, and the family I was born into—where I had my genesis—was not one of love.

And, looking back at the pain of my childhood, it makes complete sense. My family was not a family in which love existed.

One day, when I was maybe three or four, I remember looking at some pictures of my “homecoming” from the hospital.

Speaking of my birth carried some predictable patterns. My parents would inform me that I ate poop in my mother’s womb and therefore had to stay longer at the hospital. They would laugh and talk about how fat I was and how they should have known. I ate poop.

That’s the type of glutton I was.

If they weren’t talking about my crap-eating, they would joke that I was actually a stray they had picked up from a dumpster in Chinatown. My brother thought it was hilarious. “Dumpster child.”

That’s why you were so ugly, my parents would laugh. And that’s why I didn’t have double eyelids. Everyone else in my family did.

I obviously was some trash dumped, ugly baby…

…without double eyelid folds.

I can’t tell you how skin folds on my eyes became such a defining marker of my lack of belonging. But it did.

But one day, I was looking at some pictures, and one was of an apartment I didn’t recognize. In the picture, I’m in a stroller, and my three-year-old brother is present, as well. 

“Oh yeah, I remember that day.” My brother said from behind me. “You stole my car seat. I knew I was going to hate you from that day on.”

My earliest memories weren’t all bad… but they were bad in all the ways that count. My brother bullied, beat, and mocked me. He would dig his fingernails into my arms until they bled. He would tell me to put my hand into a stapler only to slam it down and puncture my finger. He would find my favorite thing—be it a toy or a picture of the Power Rangers—and destroy it simply for fun.

And all with impunity.

Because what did my parents care that my big brother was torturing me? They were too busy trying to work two, sometimes three jobs, to pay the bills.

But my brother wasn’t the only person in the family that made my life a living hell.

More on that in the next chapter.

***

I was born in Fountain Valley Hospital on May 16th, 1991. My earliest memories start around three years old. I didn’t know much English except the random words thrown in here and there, like the second-person singular “you” in the middle of a Vietnamese sentence.

Honestly, I was confused. Did “you” mean the same in both Vietnamese and English?

No. I was using an English word while speaking Vietnamese. But who explained duo language acquisition to a kid? Not my parents.

I struggled in school for many years because I started with little English despite being American-born.

My parents had come in a little boat after surviving a war. My dad was on his way to be a biology teacher before he joined the army, was almost killed, imprisoned in a North Vietnamese reeducation camp, and finally released to taxi people around on a xích lô. My mom went from being royalty to working two, sometimes three jobs, serving people at grocery stores.

They had watched friends who, on little boats like theirs, had been overtaken by pirates—friends who had been raped and murdered.

But they had escaped. Came to the States. Found jobs.

They didn’t have time to help me navigate America. I was born in it. That was my blessing and my burden to bear. Not theirs.

America, the land of the free, home of the brave, place of utter chaos and confusion for an American-born Vietnamese kid who couldn’t separate one language from another when he started school.

America, land of the free, home of the brave, a place where—as violence raged in my house—I didn’t know if what I was experiencing was just like any other kid, or something truly horrific.

I honestly didn’t even know to ask the question.

It was just my life.

I was born into a confusing, chaotic, and dangerous world.

My genesis sucked. And love was meaningless in it.

When God created the world, he created man and woman in his image. It is a profound truth.

Man and woman are not just crowning achievements but reflections of God. We, in some strange way, are representatives of God on earth.

After creating human beings in his image, he calls them very good.

The Bible tells us that the world was good and human beings were very good.

But I grew up in a world where I found it dangerous and was told from a young age I was very bad—ugly, fat, stupid, and unlovable.

I grew up in a family that said: Love is meaningless, even in marriage.

Yet the profound reality of it is this:

Husbands are called to love their wives because Christ loves the church. Marriage, as God intended, reflects Christ’s love for His people.

And, yet still more profound, in the marriage and union of Christ and His bride, we come before the father as his children whom he loves. We are made “a new creation,” “born again,” and “adopted.”

We are loved in Christ Jesus. I would not know this for many years and only begin to feel its true power.

My parents fled Vietnam and came to America so that they could have a better life for themselves and also for us—their children.

America is both my home and a place where I felt perpetually “othered.” In my own home, at school, with friends—everywhere.

I am glad to have been born in America. Absolutely. Without a doubt.

I love America.

But I hate her flaws.

And that’s okay. Because this place is not my home. Not in the eternal sense.

My home is with Jesus in heaven. And that gives me a different perspective.

I have felt “othered” my whole life because of the color of my skin and the shape of my eyes.

But I am also “othered” in a glorious way. I am “othered” because Jesus has chosen me from the foundation of the world and said, “You are mine. I am preparing a home for you. And I will come back and bring you with me.”

I was born in America.

But I was born again by the Spirit.

I am better than American-made. I am Spirit-remade.

I may find my origin both in Vietnam and here in this country. But I find my home in a different kingdom.

This story takes us through my life and, hopefully, helps us marvel at God's power.