Settling Down Without Settling

On Exile, Wholeness, and Learning to Belong Anywhere

In a previous letter, I shared how I used to feel shame about my Asian-ness—and how I’ve been learning to embrace my different-ness as a good thing. I owe that progress to San Francisco. More specifically, to the Asian people of the San Francisco Bay Area.

I still remember driving across the Bay Bridge nearly ten years ago on the last few miles of my move from San Diego. The bright spotlights. The SF skyline in the background. The bridge’s mod design perfectly symbolizing the cool vibe of the Bay Area. I remember being so excited about starting a new chapter—little did I know how formative my time here would be!

I didn’t expect to find a profound sense of belonging I didn’t know had been missing all my life. Or to discover things about myself that would fundamentally transform my understanding of who I am.

Over these ten years, I’ve learned how much of my discomfort with my identity came from looking and being different from the people around me. All the quirks that made me feel like I didn’t belong elsewhere—the immigrant work ethic I inherited from my parents, my default deference to others, even wearing slippers around the house and keeping a food waste container—don’t seem strange when everyone around me does the same. I don’t have to work to fit in here. I’ve found safety in numbers.

Finally Belonging

I remember the precise moment I realized I belonged.

It happened while volunteering at the food pantry for Cameron House, a nonprofit in Chinatown that serves the Chinese community. Every Thursday morning, a dozen of us would form an assembly line, packing bags of groceries for under-resourced families. We often worked with little conversation, but diligently and quickly.

On one particular morning, I stepped back from the line to take a quick break—and realized I felt completely at ease there. Our group didn’t seem to have much in common on the surface, other than our Chinese American heritage: a retired physical therapist, a young staffer and his mother, an accountant. But we all seemed to belong there. And to each other.

I felt at home. And it felt so good.

But now, as my husband and I prepare to move to Denver next month, I’ve been sitting with a quiet fear. Denver’s Asian population is around 4%, compared to 36% here. I think about what it will be like to shop in stores, go to the gym, eat out, even attend church—and be the only Asian American in the room. I will go back to standing out. I’ll be more aware of my different-ness again. I admit I’m a little nervous.

What will I do without people like me around me? I certainly don’t want to backslide into insecurity. I hope my newfound confidence isn’t so fragile it cracks once my context changes. So, I’ve been searching for something more solid to stand on.

A Framework That Helps Me

I think the answer lies in a teaching I received from David Kim, who took over the Center for Faith & Work in New York from Tim Keller. He introduced me to a principle I’ve been turning over ever since: exilic discipleship.

It’s rooted in the experience of exile in Scripture—the Hebrews in Egypt, the Jewish people under Roman occupation. Exile happens when you are removed from your home and placed somewhere unfamiliar, somewhere whose customs contrast with everything you’ve known.

Christians are living in exile today. We are citizens of a heavenly Kingdom, away from our true home, living temporarily in an earthly one. Exilic discipleship calls us to proactively engage and serve the culture around us—while reserving our deepest allegiance to Christ.

What I’ve come to see is that Asian Americans—like all who have descended from recent immigrants—live in a form of exile too.

I want to be careful here: using the word “exile” carries risk, and I don’t want to reinforce the perpetual foreigner trope that suggests the U.S. isn’t our home regardless of how many generations our families have been here. It is our home. We belong here. I’m also writing only from my own perspective as a second-generation Chinese American—I don’t presume to speak for the enormous diversity of Asian American experiences.

But what I have felt and observed is this: so many of the customs and values of our ethnic heritage contrast with the mainstream. And that contrast creates real tension.

Some of us resolve that tension by assimilating—adopting the dominant culture’s norms, trying to blend in. I know this posture well. As I’ve shared before, my parents prioritized assimilation—and as a result, I tried so hard to fit in that I ended up sacrificing what made me unique and losing a part of myself.

Others go the opposite direction and withdraw—staying within the safety of their own community, rarely venturing out. I understand the appeal. It offers belonging and protects against conformity. But it also means giving up whatever influence we might have on the broader culture.

A Third Way

Neither assimilation nor withdrawal feels like a faithful way forward. So, I’ve been searching for a third way, and I’ve found it in a word I keep coming back to: wholeness.

Wholeness means showing up as my full, true self—not code-switching between a more “American” version of me in one room and a more “Asian” version in another, but being consistently, honestly me.

It means grounding my identity not in racial or cultural categories but in what God says is true: I am His child, beloved, fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14). My different-ness isn’t a liability—it’s a contribution to the one body we all make up together (1 Corinthians 12).

And perhaps most importantly, wholeness means I stop trying to eliminate the tension I feel. Instead of hiding from it or fighting it, I’m learning to embrace it—asking God to help me navigate it with wisdom, humility, and courage.

If you feel caught between assimilation and withdrawal, if you’re looking for something more stable than your context to anchor your identity, maybe this third way is for you too.

What God Says to Exiles

The instructions God gave to Jewish exiles in Babylon—found in Jeremiah 29:5-7—have helped me understand what this looks like in practice. These are people who’ve been forcibly removed from their homeland, oppressed by foreign rulers, desperate for rescue. And God’s answer is: build houses. Plant gardens. Settle down.

I can only imagine how hard that word was to receive—it might have felt like God was saying He didn’t see their pain, didn’t know how exhausting it is to live as an “other.” But the passage doesn’t end there. In verses 10-14, God promises He will rescue them, listen to them, be found by them. He has plans to prosper them, to give them hope and a future.

So, I take this to mean: invest in relationships, put down roots, commit to the place where we’ve been planted—while staying anchored in Christ and oriented toward the hope of redemption. We don’t need to abandon our culture of origin. But we don’t need to cling to it out of fear either. If we make our home in Christ, we don’t have to worry about losing ourselves.

The passage also tells the exiles to “increase in number”—and I don’t think this refers only to having children. It’s about influence. The Israelites were called to be a blessing to the very culture that had displaced them, to seek its peace and prosperity.

I think of Daniel from the pages of Scripture (Daniel 1-3) here. His situation—navigating a world whose values directly opposed his own, working for a leader who threatened his integrity—sounds painfully familiar. And yet he didn’t shrink from the opportunity for influence.

In one remarkable instance, when ordered to eat food he believed would defile him, he didn’t protest loudly, nor did he disengage quietly. He proposed a creative alternative: test us for ten days on a different diet, and see what happens. That single act of wise, courageous engagement won him favor and improved the welfare of everyone around him. Daniel couldn’t have done that if he’d kept to himself or believed he was powerless. Neither should we.

Living with this outward orientation also means I stop centering my own comfort so much—my acceptance, my differences, my fear—and start focusing on helping others feel welcome. I’ve found that when I create a sense of belonging for someone else, I find it for myself too.

What I'm Taking to Denver

I won’t pretend this has been easy, or that I’ve done it well. I’m still very much in process. I still get weary figuring out where I fit in and how.

Suffering and struggle, it turns out, are part and parcel of this life—for exilic Christians, for Asian Americans, and especially for those of us who are both. We will face misunderstanding, bias, and discrimination. That’s not a sign that something has gone wrong. It’s part of the calling.

This is what I want to carry with me into Denver.

And I’m trusting that God is with me—and that He is the Place where I will always feel like it’s OK to be me.

In Him,