Punishment
Lot’s wife became a pillar of salt because she looked back — against divine instruction.
The Israelites spent forty years in the wilderness because they doubted and complained.
King Saul lost his kingship because he was impatient, anxious, and people-pleasing.
—
After my cancer remission, I became deeply entrenched in religion. Certain that my prayer had been answered — the prayer I made over and over in the hospital, that I would live a generous, forgiving life once freed from my illness — I spent an hour every morning reading the Bible and transcribing one chapter onto my white notepad. At church, I often wept in prayers.
I also began traveling extensively, started practicing yoga, and went to bed before midnight. The tiny figurines I used to place on my desk, I discarded. I also threw out some of the "sad novels" I had read and reread since my late teens: Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, Shin Kyungsook’s The Girl Who Wrote Sadness, Amelie Nothomb’s The Enemy's Cosmetique, and the list goes on.
For three good years, I lived like that, feeling safe and well in my new ways of living. My goal at the time was to finish my BA degree in English and enter graduate school in America. I wanted to study creative writing and write books in two languages — Korean, my mother tongue, and English, my second home. I had no idea how to do it, or even where to begin my application, but I held a firm belief that if you willed something, a way would appear.
The news of my mother’s illness came around that time. It was mid-spring, I remember. A little after the semester had started. I was busy packing and planning for a summer trip to Norfolk, Virginia, where I was scheduled to take lectures on poetry at a local university and do my own creative writing. I was one of the few students who had received the fellowship, and I wasn’t going to let it slip away without great learning and discovery.
I cannot recall who delivered the news, or how. But I do remember the utter disappointment and overwhelming guilt that filled my heart, my lungs, my throat, and my head. I was incredulous: how could God let this happen? I argued.
For a week or two, I did not go to school. Every morning I left the house and took a bus that went to my university, but I passed the university station and continued further. My walks were long and meaningless; like the homeless camped near Seoul Station, I wandered the city until I could walk no more due to exhaustion and hunger. At home, I locked the door of my room and cried. Hot tears streamed down my cheeks; I couldn’t believe what had happened.
The thought of my mother, who had to accompany my arduous journey called chemotherapy, having to go through the same procedure — the wake-up calls at 4 am for a daily X-ray scan, the chunks of hair that fell out from my brush in the shape of a squirrel, relentless vomiting, the ice-cold air inside the surgery room that froze my hands and feet, the dreadful faces of uninvited visitors saying “I’m sorry,” over ten bitter pills I had to take six times a day — made me almost wish for death. But in fact, I did not want to die. I wanted to evaporate. Vanish, like smoke.
On Sundays, I went to an art cinema in Myeongdong and mindlessly watched art films for hours. I couldn’t go to church anymore; I was furious at God. In my mind, I used to say: Dear God, do me a favor — please leave my family alone. I don’t want you to do anything with us anymore.
As a Christian, I believed everything happened because God allowed things to happen. And the fact that “He” allowed my mother’s illness after mine was sickening. I felt betrayed. What the heck, I thought to myself. Wasn’t all that hard work supposed to protect me from such misfortunes? After years of earnest Bible reading and praying and cultivation of so-called healthy habits, this is what I get?
Punishment. I thought I was getting a punishment. Again.
—
In 2020, my calculation failed again: during the last semester of my Master’s program in Hawaii, the pandemic broke out. For safety reasons, I had to return home, packing everything in two days.
Back in Seoul, things were okay for a while. Although everything turned online, I still maintained my status as a student. Due to the time difference, my afternoon classes became early morning classes, and my thesis defense was conducted through Zoom, but it was doable.
But once I graduated — again, online — my body began to express a signal. And one day, while looking out the window on a rainy summer day, I felt it — the tightness in my chest. It’s back, I realized. The cancer, it was back. The symptoms were exactly the same as the ones I had right before my initial diagnosis in 2013.
On my last visit to the doctor, he had clearly said: “If ever in your lifetime the same cancer recurs, it will be truly fatal because it means that cancer has endured all the chemo you just had.” I guess he mentioned it as a reference, but since then, I’ve operated my life under that statement like a death warning. I will not live forever, I kept telling myself whenever I was faced with challenges. That was why I kept traveling and ventured into graduate school — because I didn’t have much time. For some reason, I thought I would last until thirty, at best.
The earliest appointment I could book with my doctor was in three months. And during those three months, without telling anyone, I organized my life: I either apologized to or internally forgave people I should have, and made time for people I cared about, cherishing each day of my life.
On the day I went to see the doctor, he greeted me with a surprised look. “What are you doing here?” he asked. I told him I felt the same symptoms and thought my cancer had recurred. He nodded. Then, a moment later, he saw my CT scan and said: “You’re clean. Have you been under a lot of stress lately?”
That night, as I lay in bed, I thought: This life is unexpected. And maybe, my hardships don’t necessarily equal punishment from heaven.
My good deeds, I have come to understand, cannot control the destructive force of life. This realization didn't free me from living thoughtfully, but it did release me from the heavy burden of striving for a perfect goodness that only bred frustration with others and a false sense of righteousness.
So yes, I know mishaps will rush in no matter what. And my Han will still sing her blues. But I don’t give up. Instead, I am learning to live with her — with her anger, bitterness, dislike, and sadness.
At the same time, I embrace the mystery of it all — all those unanswerable questions such as why did I get cancer, why my mother too, why that timing, why that city, why that person, why, why, why. Even when tears fall, a quiet hope remains in me; in rain or snow, I continue this life with strange resilience. To me, that is a victory to celebrate. A grace of God I had wanted for so long.
