Meet Pang
Meet Pang
Pang Moua is committed to empowering others.
Pang is the Diversity and Inclusion Associate at Bethel University, where she supports emerging urban leaders in becoming agents of change in their communities. She is also an educator, a graduate of Bethel Seminary’s Marriage and Family Therapy program, and co-director of Children’s Ministry at River Life Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. I am also so grateful to say that Pang is a friend of mine.
The funny thing about truth is that you know it when you hear it. Some of life’s deepest realities, about God, about you, are so glaringly true, but your soul often doesn’t remember them until someone reminds you. That sunny October afternoon I met with Pang, my soul resonated with one truth after another. Pang speaks truth. About beauty. About stereotypes. About embracing the fullness of who God has created you to be.
Are you ready to expand your ideas around beauty? Keep reading. Pang can help you out.
the interview
Melissa: How do you define beauty?
Pang: I think beauty is this complete delight in who you are and who God has formed and designed you to be. I think that is beauty, that I take complete joy in who I am. And at the same time, I believe God can hold my frustrations or disappointments or my true feelings, where I’m just like “gosh, this is really crappy God and I wish I wasn’t in this situation.”
Yeah, I think it’s just this complete joy and embrace of who I am. I remember growing up and asking myself, and asking God, “Why’d you make me Hmong? Why do I have to have a Hmong name that can mean so many different things and I don’t like either of them?” In English, “Pang” is a sharp pain and in Hmong it’s “flower,” and I’m like, “Well, I’m neither.” And growing up, seeing some challenges with how I look: the color of my hair, I’m petite, I’m Asian, I’m Hmong. There were parts to me where I would ask, “God, you couldn’t have designed me any other way? Taller, maybe not as dark hair, maybe not Asian?”
I’ve learned through the years, I wouldn’t be who I am without these specific features. That message occurred many times in my life. I would ask “Why God?” And the message I heard constantly was, “because you wouldn’t be you without these qualities.” And I was like “you’re right.” I think so much of who I am shapes my worldview, my perspective, what I’m passionate about, what makes me joyful and excited, what makes me furious and frustrated and disappointed.
Melissa: Where do you see beauty in the world?
Pang: Some of my favorite moments are when people discover this uniqueness in who God has created them to be. It’s like a bajillion light bulbs are lit. I think that’s most beautiful. For example, when I see some of my African American women friends who embrace their natural curls and their braids and their twists, their complexion. Or when I see my Asian or Hmong or Vietnamese female friends who start to combat stereotypes of who they are: silent, gentle, abiding, or exotic messages of who they are. When they challenge that, that’s really beautiful to me. Or when I see myself challenging messages that I receive that are untrue.
I think beauty is when people start to lean into their true self unapologetically and courageously.
I just started diving into the Enneagram and two big numbers showed up for me: Two, which is “the Helper” and Eight, which is “the Challenger.” Two was the higher one. I read “how to read the Enneagram” and it said if you are a woman, you want to factor in gender roles and expectations and factor in your culture. They were saying a lot of women fall into a Two category. I thought to myself: “I’m the oldest daughter in a Hmong culture, that’s patriarchal, and also Evangelical, and I would also add fundamental.” So, I thought, “maybe not a Two.” I have been socialized to be a Two and I think Two is still very much a part of me.
Then I read about the Eight in Road Back to You and I thought, “oh, I’m totally an Eight.” And what does it mean for me to be an Eight, to hold anger, to challenge, to have fears of being without control?
That’s what’s been surfacing for me, literally giving myself a chance to be myself. And being myself isn’t what others may expect me to be and that’s really fun for me too, to challenge some stereotypes. I think when I was younger, I just didn’t know how to do that. I knew something didn’t quite fit. I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t have the language. I also didn’t have enough people in my life to affirm some of those authentic pieces of who I was. But I think, as I’ve grown, I’ve found key people to affirm who I am.
Melissa: Can you tell me about brokenness you’re experiencing in life currently or that you have experienced?
Pang: Growing up, there was this complete contentment in being who I was and being content and not anxious about who this future partner would be in my life. There was this trust I had in God’s invisible hand in my life and I think the community around me were anxious, like “Is Pang ever going to get married?” In my cultural context, you could start dating at thirteen if you wanted to and most of my peers got married by eighteen. I just said, “God, I completely trust you with my life and who this future partner would be.”
And, sure enough, God completely blessed me with someone who just understands me in every way and, if he doesn’t, he’s open to learning. So, that was a special relationship I had with God, in trusting Him with this future partner of mine. And I thought for sure, “Maybe I’ll get married at 25 and then I’ll for sure have kids by 30. That would be the ideal dream. That’s a great timeline.” I got married at 22 and worked for several years as a teacher in an elementary school and each year after 25, kids didn’t come. I wasn’t anxious about not having kids either.
I think what’s been some of the most challenging pieces for me in my life, where I experience brokenness, is when people cast their own anxieties onto me about the fact that I don’t have children. That’s been really challenging to hear their messages, whether it is direct or indirect. That has been really challenging for me, because then I, all of a sudden, question who I am as a woman, as a daughter of God, as a person. There are these mixed messages of “Oh, you don’t have kids. Don’t you want God’s blessings?” Or “you don’t have kids, you have to confess these sins; whatever these sins are.” “You don’t have enough faith, that’s why God hasn’t given you children.”
In the last ten years that Kong and I have been married, there has again been this complete contentment in who I am, where God is leading me in my life, and knowing that He has always been present, He has always provided, and He will continue to do so. And for the past five or six years, so many people from family and church communities, have prayed over me, prayed for me, handed me herbal, medicinal supplements to try to conceive. It’s always been external.
Then, last year I went to a prayer gathering here at River Life. Our spiritual director talked about asking God for anything and she gave us some time to pray silently. She said, “I just want you to start with silence and see what it is that God wants you to ask.” I was like, “That’s new. I typically know what I want to ask. I never considered asking God what He would like me to ask.”
I remember going into a corner in the Sanctuary, in silence, and I remember God saying, “Pang, I would like you to ask me for children.” And tears came flooding down. I vividly remember that moment being the first time that I, myself, asked God for children. That was a significant moment in my life. To ask God, not because my mom, or my mother-in-law, or family members, or elders in the church; it wasn’t because anyone else was asking. It was because God wanted me to ask Him.
At that point, I realized that God takes complete delight in who I am, with or without biological children. That was that moment that [I remembered] that message, that my younger self knew and heard clearer than my adult self. I think my fourteen-year-old self completely trusted God and, in the course of adulting, I got distracted by other people’s insecurities, anxieties, or desires. That’s when I said, “Okay, God, you take complete delight in who I am, whether I have children or not and it is not the standard of anybody else that shapes or defines who I am.”
I think the greatest beauty is literally God embracing me and saying, “Pang, I am completely satisfied with who you are.” I think that was how He rescued me from these major insecurities and being confused by all these different messages.
In light of that, during my training in Marriage and Family Therapy, there was this speaker who talked about tribal, communal communities and this factor of alloparents in your life. It’s essentially other women and men that come around and care for children to help parents out. That gave me great language and I have told myself, “I will be the best alloparent ever for my nieces and my nephews, for my siblings, for River Life Church.” So, that’s what I do. Whenever I can and, as comfortably as I know how for the other person receiving, I offer my help in any way possible, to be not only an aunt to my biological nieces and nephews, but an aunt to anybody else who would like an aunt in that moment.
Melissa: What lies about beauty have you experienced?
Pang: I think the two strongest lies I heard about beauty growing up was, “There’s only one image or one idea of beauty. Beauty looks this way.” I think that was the first lie that I heard. I think that because I believed in that one way of what beauty looks like, I was constantly trying to shed who I was to fulfill this one way. And as I grow and age and connect with people, I am learning there is a multitude, like infinity ways, of what beauty can look like. I think the greatest lie is that there is only one. I think I’ve seen that especially with people that I meet. There are nuanced details to a person’s life that makes beauty so unique. Again, I don’t know exactly what it is, but I know it when I see it and I see it all around me. Therefore, there can’t be one way of seeing beauty.
I think the second lie that I heard and that I believed growing up was that beauty was tall, lean, you either had blonde hair or brunette, you had blue eyes, you had beautiful, white, pale porcelain skin. I was born and raised in Wausau, Wisconsin, so I grew up in this Western culture and I grew up with this lie that beauty is whiteness. And if you’re not white, then that’s not desirable.
I knew I couldn’t do anything about my height, my hair, it will naturally grow dark brown/black, but there were other ways I would adopt white beauty. It was in making sure I had proper English, that I could articulate myself, that I was educated, that I didn’t wear anything with colors that were too funky. What was beautiful was muted, natural colors, which was essentially Western and white culture. So, that was the second major lie.
I think what combated that was this turning point in my college years and post college, when I realized, “gosh, I’m not white and the more that I pursue whiteness, I lose who I actually am and who God has designed me to be, which is me, here.”
Melissa: Have you had any experiences that have transformed your ideas about beauty?
Pang: Specifically, when Hmong women or women of color embrace their authentic self is pretty significant to me. When I experience those moments, it challenges these lies I’ve heard, lies of one way of beauty and white/Western is beauty and whatever white/Western looks like is beauty. I think when I see Hmong women embrace who they are, that’s empowering to me and motivating to me. Or when I see women of color embrace who they are, that also challenges these lies that I’ve heard. It has taken me all my life to this day and my guess is it will continue to take me a lifetime to lean into who God has designed me to be.
Photo credit: Rebecca Wynia