Women who inspire: Grace Lee, UC Berkeley Grad to Mind Education Specialist

Christian Women Living Magazine’s guest this week has an inspiring story about the power of God’s Word. Meet Grace S. Lee: She was a long-time drug addict, suffered from PTSD as a result of sexual abuse, and struggled with depression all her life. Read on to see how one Word of God turned her entire life upside down.

TN: Please introduce yourself and give us a brief history of you and your family.
GL: I was born in Beijing, China. My real parents divorced when I was almost one year old. My grandma on my dad’s side mistakenly thought I was not my dad’s child because my mom had danced with a Japanese man and it ended up in a magazine that my grandparents saw. My mom later remarried my stepdad, and he took us to the US when I was four years old. Actually, I did not know that my stepdad was not my real dad until I was 14 years old when he finally told me, much against my mom’s wishes. Up until then I always thought I came from a “normal” nuclear family. Whenever my friends talked about their parents getting a divorce I thought at least I was “normal.”

TN: Can you give us a summary on your journey with Christ, including how you came to know Christ?
GL: I never believed in Jesus growing up. I had a few bad experiences when I was in high school when two girls cornered me and asked me to take Jesus inside my heart. Coming from such a liberal school like UC Berkeley made me feel that Christians were all stupid and brainwashed. When I met my current church, I thought it would be fun just to ask a bunch of stupid questions and make them mad. When the elder’s face got red with anger, I felt so happy—mission accomplished.

At one point I was a little angry when my pastor had said that I did not believe in God. I refuted that I did. He insisted that I didn’t. He told me that I did not have the same repentance like that of the disciples Paul or Peter who “thought” they believed in God but later realized they didn’t.

Without God holding on to me, I can only go back to the life I knew before: drugs, parties, a wasted life.
I had been led down a dark and seductive path that I didn’t even know I should get out of until I heard this amazing Gospel one day about how Jesus Christ made us righteous and holy at the cross now and forever. Once I believed it, my whole life changed. I did not even know I had been suffering from depression, anxiety, and PTSD this whole time.

When guys in college tried to hold my hand, I thought it was so disgusting. I didn’t even remember I had been sexually molested when I was 5 or 6—an idea came to me when I was alone: perhaps I’m just gay? I went down this path convinced I was gay to the point I even organized Beijing Gay Pride in China, twice. After I accepted that Jesus washed away all my sins at the cross, and that I don’t have sin anymore because of Him, even the way I looked at the clothes that I owned changed—wait, why am I wearing this again? Why do I keep cutting my hair so short that I can’t stand it being just a tad long? I went to In-N-Out Burger with my friend and looked to my right and looked back at her. She asked me why my eyes got so big. I thought back as to why: um, I just saw a cute guy looking at me and I felt happy? Wait, did I just say that? My church introduced me to my husband now. We have 2 daughters, 5 and 3 years old. I never thought I would ever have kids because being a kid was just not that fun. But God, He changed my mind. This old tissue that I keep holding in my hand, it’s not a treasure, it’s trash. He wanted to give me something much better. I had a hard time letting go of the trash because it was all I knew, but I’m thankful that God is has been leading me and showing me how much deeper He really loves me. It helps me to remember when I share.

TN: You’re currently a certified mind education specialist. For those of us who may not know, what is “mind education”, and what inspired you to become a mind education specialist?
GL: I’ve always been interested in psychology, and completed various self-inquiry courses in both the US and in China such as Landmark’s SELP and ILP, but they didn’t really solve any real problems when they came up—I would get confused, like, “which conversation am I supposed to have with myself at this moment again?”

I was also into the “Secret Law of Attraction,” which did not give clear solutions as to what if something negative becomes manifested in your real life? Its rationale was that I had been worrying about negative things in my subconscious and then it manifested: so when anyone said anything negative within earshot, I was afraid it would “get into” my subconscious and I would cover my ears—yes I looked like a crazy person. Again, this was definitely not “it.”

I looked into Buddhism but was discouraged by the fact that in order to become proficient, you have to become a master of Chinese characters to read the ancient text, of which I was not. Piecing together what I learned from Buddhist friends and books like the “Tibetan Book of Living and Dying,” I had agreed that yes there could be a possibility of masters of mediation that might be able to control where they incarnate themselves to in order to circumvent different levels of hell: at a certain house by a certain village next to a certain tree, but of course I would never reach that level.

Mind Education is an education about the mind and heart that the world or school never taught us about with traditional knowledge-based or technology-driven education.

For example, when someone shoots up a school, we know everything there is to know about the incident, but it doesn’t make a big difference in stopping the next school shooting. We may know the time, the date, the person who did it: their life history told by their parents and friends, but it does not make much difference. Because if knowledge-based education does work, then we would know how to stop it, but we don’t. The mother of the Columbine High School shooter said that she “combed” through memories trying to find out why her son did what he did, but basically in the end she said she just didn’t know.

Mind Education deals with knowing the currents of the heart and how to navigate them to avoid disasters that are bound to happen when people’s hearts go in their natural direction–if they don’t keep it in check by things like self-control, deep thinking, and being connected in heart with others.

In contrast of what I had learned up until that point, Mind Education was not just about uncovering your “blind spots” as Landmark Education uncovers, because even if you uncover them it does not mean you can actually apply them efficiently to change one’s life. For example, I knew that I had commitment issue problems, and that I had the tendency to push the people that I like away, because what I really wanted deep-down inside was to end up alone (and safe), yet I didn’t know how to stop myself from playing the games that would inevitably make me be alone.

“The Secret” was imperfect in that when addressing the negative things that show up in life, it just said to keep those things out of the subconscious.

Psychology is another knowledge-based discipline. Just because one may know what is wrong, it does not mean the person actually has the power to change for the better.

Mind Education delves much deeper into the world of the heart that I’ve ever known. Mind Education was developed by Pastor Ock Soo Park as a way to “step into” preaching the Gospel to places where they do not allow the Bible such as in public schools, China or Muslim countries. It takes the “flow” of the Bible and applies it to our everyday life in understandable ways to immediately benefit troubled youth in countries where the government has allowed the curriculum to enter such as Bolivia, Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and more.

Participants are usually mesmerized by its wisdom of the human heart, but little do they know it’s all coming from the Bible.

My story of how I went down the dark path and returned to God is just like that of the prodigal son, the man with infirmity of 38 years, or the man at the tombs in the Bible. Each story illuminates different aspects of the heart. With the story of the man at the tombs in Mind Education terms, because the man was living in isolation, he had started to hurt himself. But when he connected his heart to that of Jesus, all the bad got driven out of him. He was in his right mind, and he wanted to be together with Jesus. Me too, I had decided not to tell my mother I had been molested and that led me to being more isolated and going down a dark path of wanting to drink myself to a slow death whenever possible. But when I opened and connected my heart to someone other than myself, things started to dramatically change for the better.

TN: If you could say one thing to the youth and young adults today, what would it be?
GL: The difficulty and/or problem you face now, is not a problem. Every problem, small or big, was pre-meditated and thoughtfully delivered to you by God at the precise time, who has a greater plan for you to mold you into what He wants you to be so that He can use you preciously to help others like you in the same situation. The big problems that we face that we can’t get out of by ourselves, those are the blessings from God. He blocked out all of our paths so that the only path left is to listen to His Gospel of how Jesus Christ already died and washed away all of our sins. If we are lucky, all of our strength will have run out by then and we’ll just accept the fact that God made us holy and perfect through Jesus Christ. This is the path God prepared so that we can be blessed from here on out.

TN: Tell us about your current projects or what you’re currently working on?
GL: We are developing mind education lectures with interactive activities that get people to think about their hearts and in what direction they are moving. People normally just want to do well in school, work, and life in general, but there is no “toolbox” available when difficult situations appear in their lives—the consequences of flipping out can do a lot of damage to ourselves and those around us, so training is needed to control our hearts.

I’m also working with Ms. Tobey Nguyen on the Virtual Women’s Bible Study we have every Saturday at 3 p.m. CDT. A lot of women have joined internationally and requested smaller group Bible studies in addition, so it takes some coordination to run them.

TN: Tell us about a time that God directly answered a prayer.
GL: I had owed 20,000 dollars in credit card debt back in 2012 when I first received salvation. My old coworker, before he unfriended me, said I shouldn’t trade my current life with a life that I don’t have any proof to be real. As I mulled over this question in my mind, I came across a verse In the bible: “Behold, the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth: much more the wicked and the sinner.” (Proverbs 11:31)

So, this verse is saying opposite to what my old coworker was telling me. I will be recompensed not only when I get to heaven, but here “in the earth” as well. I felt so much relief in my heart as I believed in this verse. Even though my situation was the same—I still owed 20,000 dollars, and I still didn’t have a way to pay rent. In literally not even 5 minutes, my real dad texted me from China (who I didn’t even know growing up and rarely contacts me). He wished me Happy New Year and asked me if I was experiencing any hardship. I said no, because I felt like I didn’t really know him well enough to ask him for money. But my mom said, “Just tell him, you are having hardship, your friend conned you, you owe 20,000 dollars, and you need to pay rent.” So, I told him, and he said, “If I give you 23,000 dollars, would that be enough?” Needless to say, I was surprised that he would even consider giving me that much money out of the blue.

That’s when I knew, if the Word enters exactly as it is without my input or filter, the Word has the power to fulfill itself. But Words of God only enter hearts of low position, and that was why God put me in that situation in the first place, to lower my heart and finally experience the Word of God working exactly. I felt as though the planets of the universe aligned themselves in front of me.

TN: Tell us about a time you had a measurable impact on someone through your personal ministry or through your organized ministry.
GL: As a mind education lecturer for the parents’ workshop, when I had shared with audiences that I had been molested when I was little, and how I came to be fully healed, there have been both men and women that came up to me afterwards that told me the same has happened to them when they were little and that this was the first time they ever shared about it. They would tell me that this has helped them get over a big stone in their heart, because they never shared it. I believe God gave me the problem and helped me overcome them so that I can share that with others.

TN: What would you tell someone who was fearful of the future?
GL: There was a book I read before I was saved, “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.” In it, I remember the author Dale Carnegie saying that even though a lot of doctors don’t believe in God, they tell their patients to believe God because they can stop worrying. Actually, worrying is a kind of disbelief that God ultimately has your back. That’s when I started looking into God, because I had wanted to stop worrying. It was given to me by my mom.

I’d be living my life great when all the sudden she would call me to tell me to always watch over my back when I’m getting into my car because she heard about some woman getting assaulted in a parking lot or something along these lines every few days when I was in college. This was the atmosphere I inherited growing up, and it was hard to just throw it all away.

However, after I received salvation I found that taking on the light yoke of preaching the Gospel is the ultimate medicine for my sickness of constant worry. Jesus said it’s because his yoke is “easy,” and that the “burden is light.” (Matthew 11:30) When the Gospel is small in my heart, other things like daily events weigh my heart like heavy stones. But when I do the work of the Gospel, not only is it fun and light, but because it is so much bigger than life itself, it makes all the other problems fade into the background—they are no longer problems.

I had miscarried three times before I am pregnant with this third child I am currently carrying. However, each time didn’t feel as sad as it was supposed to (although the doctors and nurses looked at me like I should be super devastated), because the Gospel is so wide and light. The great thing about the Gospel is, once I just pour my heart a tiny minuscule amount for it, God’s blessing is like 100 times fold.

TN: Best piece of advice you’ve ever received.
GL: “Don’t try to be good, you are not good anyway. Bible says we are continually evil.”
We “try” to be good because we are not. Why do dishonest people always tell others how honest they are? Because they are not honest. Why do we try to be good? Because we are not good. We want to look good in front of others, but that is not the same. Actually, always being good makes us even more tired because that is not our true selves. We are people who love to be drunken with ourselves, naval gazing to a fault. We love to be established, complimented, etc.

If we stand in front of other people, we can feel good about ourselves because we feel like we are better. However, if we stand in front of God or the Word of God, we’ll see how lacking and pathetic we are. When we realize this, not only does God pour down His mercy and grace like a thunderstorm, but our hearts also become so thankful that regardless of my image, He still loved and saved a person like me.

TN: What inspires you?
GL: People who are not for themselves. People who God has molded to have the precious heart to accept the word of God and just run with it no matter what they themselves feel to be right. Because God has led them to be masters of breaking their own “right” heart, they get so much stuff done, it’s insane. Pastor Ock Soo Park and Pastor Min Chul Lim are two such people that come to mind.

Once Pastor Park told Pastor Lim, “Hey, I’m so frustrated with you. Do you even have any idea how great you are? You are an ambassador of nations.” This is what Pastor Park told him, even though he wasn’t really an ambassador. At first Pastor Lim couldn’t understand: me a great person? How can it be? But even though he didn’t understand, he eventually just accepted it as the truth.

“That’s right, I am not a great person, but the Jesus inside me is great.”

Then, every step of the way from then on, whenever he had a choice to make, he made it according to the promise of God he received of being the “ambassador of nations” from Pastor Park. Today Pastor Lim is the official ambassador of both Columbia and Papa New Guinea. If that’s not amazing, I don’t know what is. Oh, I know what is more inspiring: the person who told him he is amazing in the first place.

Pastor Park told his choir 10 years ago, “Hey, you are the world’s best choir.” He didn’t just say it just to say it to make them feel consolation, he really believed it. Pastor Park believed that if the choir would just sing for the sake of the Gospel, God will make them the best choir automatically. Today that choir became the Gracias Choir, officially the world’s best choir, winning First Prize in Marktoberdorf, Germany at the world’s most prestigious choral competition. Every year, before this pandemic hit, they would do an annual North American tour in which after their performance of the Christmas Cantata, the message of the Gospel would be preached.

I can only pray my heart can get to that level, to receive exactly as it is. Just imagine living each and every day “actually” believing “I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me.” It costs nothing to believe, so what if I end up looking dumb and it didn’t work out? It’s actually safer to speak in faith because after you say so, God is responsible. (Numbers 14:28)

TN: You’re expecting your third child. Congratulations! If you could say one thing to parents about raising children, what would it be?
GL: Everything I learned about raising kids I learned from church, not from my own parents or even other parents. This is because church knows the world of the heart and wisdom that is portrayed in the Bible.

So, if I want my kids to live a happy life, they have to learn how to “break their hearts,” or in other words, do the things they don’t want to do. However, for them to learn how to do this, I have to break my heart first.

For example, I actually want to give my kids the best food, toys, and things possible. But as I give them what they want, their desires skyrocket much faster than my ability or income. By the time they are teenagers and want a car, they are not going to like the car I help them get, they are going to want the nice BMW their friends have. Then I will look like a chump who can’t deliver the goods and they will only have the heart to despise me and our hearts will separate further and further apart.

So, in order to prevent this, it’s not that I have to work harder and make more money to fulfill the ever-rising desires of my kids, I have to say no to them, even when I can fulfill them, at least 7 out of 10 times. It’s not that I want to boil it down to a certain method, because it’s not, it’s about their hearts positioning. If I want them to learn how to break their heart, I have to first break mine, meaning when I have to see them sad not getting what they want, it breaks my heart too. But for their happiness I have to do it. Just like it might hurt after you get a cast taken off from an injured knee or elbow when you first bend it, you still need to do it because you need to use it. Just like that, our hearts need to know how to bend, even though it hurts.

It’s better my kids learn “no” from me when they are little, not when they get too big and can’t handle it when they get to the real world. It might be cute to see a baby throw a tantrum, but not an adult. Look at the recent case in the news of the 40+ year old son who shot and killed his hedge fund father because his dad had cut his allowance by a few hundred dollars. Is it because the son loved money so much? No, it’s because he never learned how to break his heart at an early age. And this is just a small aspect of Mind Education for parents.

TN: Tell us about a time that was difficult, but it turned out that God was using it for His glory.
GL: When I had been sexually molested by an uncle when I was 5 or 6 years old, that set me on a dark path all my life—PTSD, depression, drugs, even being gay when I became an adult because I could not stand guys. But after I got saved, Isaiah 54 really stood out to me:

“In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer.” (verse 8)

and

“Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the waster to destroy.” (verse 16)

Looking back, I can say I am thankful for everything God put me through, even being molested, it was so that I can glorify Him. He is the one who did all the work of molding me into an instrument to do His work. I feel no greater satisfaction than to be used for His original purpose and design of me.

Just like Joseph or the little maid servant, life must have sucked for a while, being a slave or being in jail for no good reason. But in the end, it was the great providence of God that meant to give them a life full of blessings and entering a brand-new world with God.

After being saved, I was no longer blaming or resenting others for the life I was given, I am rather thankful that through it all, God did it because He really loved me and wanted me to know that He is my father and had always been with me. Finally, that hole in my heart was filled that no amount of possessions, career advancements, or adoration from people could ever give me.

TN: What was your dream or goals before knowing Christ, and what is your dream or goals now?
GL: My dream before I met Christ was to own a small mountain of cocaine, or to know someone that owned a small mountain of cocaine that I can always have ready access to. Now it is to preach the Gospel of the remission of sins to the ends of the earth and to free those who were once in darkness, just as I was in darkness and chains.

TN: What is the best thing about being a Christian?
GL: Preaching the Gospel about repentance and remission of sins, or the cancellation of sins, and seeing the person’s eyes and soul light up. After I have tasted this, and see that person change before my very eyes, it cannot be beat by any other feeling, or drug, in the world. This, plus the fact that Christians can have fun even while in difficulty, make us the strongest people in the world.

TN: Is there anything else you would like to say? Take this opportunity to promote your own ministry, project, business or share what God has put on your heart recently.
GL: In May, we had an online Bible seminar with Pastor Ock Soo Park—it was broadcasted worldwide, and 1 billion people joined. After hearing the countless testimonies of how people were changed and freed from sin, disease, despair, worries, fears, addiction, and much more, the Bible seminar was broadcasted worldwide once again on October 26th through 29th. The speaker of this conference is the same speaker that spoke to my heart eight years ago, and the Word of God he relayed to me freed me from all the things I was bound to that I didn’t even know I was bound to, such as PTSD, depression, addiction, to name a few, as I mentioned. Even though the conference will have been over by the time this interview is posted, the recordings of it can be found by searching “GNMUSA” on either YouTube or Facebook. I have high hopes for the many people that will be freed from hearing the Words of this conference, so I wanted to share this.

Also, we have a free online Heart Upgrade program lasting two days for youth and young adults, which we’re doing for churches and groups. Individual sign-ups are good too, and they’d just tag onto a group. The two days can be any days that the church or group decides. It’s a program that teaches youth and young adults how to have a strong heart that can overcome any challenge, through faith in the Word of God.

On Saturdays at 10:30 a.m. PDT, we have a virtual kids’ bible study that is fun and interactive, for kindergarten to fifth grade students.

And of course, we will continue on with the Virtual Women’s Bible Study on Saturdays at 3 p.m. CDT.

If anyone would like more info on any of these virtual events, please feel free to contact me.

TN: How can our readers get in touch with you?
GL: My email is higrace@berkeley.edu, my Facebook is facebook.com/higrace, and my Instagram is @higracesu. Please feel free to get in touch!

It was a pleasure to interview Grace, and I was personally very touched to see how God has worked in her. On behalf of Christian Women Living Magazine, I would like to thank Grace for allowing us to share her empowering story and insight with our readers.