Dear Silvia,
FROM SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR & CERTIFICATE IN SPIRITUAL FORMATION GRADUATE, SILVIA KWON
Dear Silvia,
I remember hearing the phrase “spiritual formation” as a whisper, though I did not yet understand it.
Years later, I discovered the PAX Center for Spiritual Formation and read a blog written by a graduate. What drew me was not the description of courses, but her attentiveness to what was unfolding in her lived experience with God. Something in me recognized this, though I could not yet name it.
From early in my life, I found myself in environments where my voice, inner awareness, and presence were often shaped or redirected, and where boundaries were distorted by abuse and trauma. Over time, a guarded, self-protective way of being became how I learned to stay safe and maintain connection.
Within this vulnerable space, God’s whispers became my lifelines.
“Immanuel. It is finished. You are Mine.”
What began as survival slowly became my hidden place of communion with God.
Before PAX, I prayed with Luke 13:10-17, sitting with the woman who had lived eighteen years bent beneath a spirit of infirmity. She was seen by Jesus in the midst of synagogue life. He called her forward with tenderness, “Dear woman,” and healed her before those gathered. As I held her story, it echoed within my own life, and I heard a whisper rise within me,
“Dear Silvia.”
I wept, recognizing that I was seen within long held oppression and met with dignity and belonging in Him.
While praying with the story of Lazarus, I found myself at the edge of the tomb where Jesus calls forth life from what has been sealed. I heard His whisper within me,
“Silvia, come out.”
It was an invitation to step beyond what had held me and into life.
In both encounters, I began to understand that what God was stirring were becoming lived experiences.
During my time at PAX, I began to recognize this invitation as a threshold. An in-between place where survival patterns were loosening and Christ was forming new ways of being with God, myself and others.
I remember in my prayer of lament, a tenderness surfaced. I sensed something quietly taking shape within me, something I was learning to tend to without rushing to name it.
Through PAX’s gentle reflections, I was invited deeper in my lament. This gave language to my inner tension more clearly.
“If I were to embody this inner transformation, would something in me be diminished?
Did I need to keep certain doors closed in order to remain protected?
And when would God’s call feel clear and steady in the presence of others?”
I realized that the tenderness within me was born from the hidden place of communion with God, a place of refuge and intimacy that I had come to trust. But Christ was not calling me away from that place; He was calling me to emerge from it. The invitation to “come out” was an invitation to carry His presence beyond the hidden place, allowing the communion I found with Him to become visible in the way I live, love, and serve.
I was learning, in ordinary life, what it meant to remain faithful within this tension, even as it continued to gently stretch me.
To choose authenticity when silence would be easier.
To stay near His voice when other voices were louder.
To embody what God was forming within me.
One of the ways this became clear was when an old, unsafe relational dynamic resurfaced as someone from my past re-entered my life unexpectedly. My body remembered an earlier way of being.
My breath grew heavy, and a simple breath prayer emerged,
“Remain in Me as I remain in you.”
As my breath steadied within that prayer, I heard His whisper,
“Dear Silvia.”
From there, I responded with clarity to what I knew was true, no longer believing that love required self-abandonment.
I chose to come out of what once held a death grip on my life, and closed what needed to be closed. I knew this was not rejection, but a boundary shaped by “it is finished”.
In the ordinary moment that followed, I heard my children laughing upstairs and saw my loving husband beside me. The sacred and the ordinary were no longer separate. I understood that I had crossed a threshold, learning to remain in Him as I came out. Not because the past was gone, but because survival no longer kept me concealed from the life Christ was inviting me into.
The timing of PAX in my life was especially significant, as they came alongside me in real time during a pivotal season in my life. They have been a gift in my formation, relating to me with attentiveness, honoring my lived experiences of God, and participating in what God was forming in me rather than over me.
I now see that what drew me to the PAX Center for Spiritual Formation was a deeper longing for a way of being with God, with myself, and with others, marked by shared attentiveness to God’s presence.
I remain grateful, knowing there is more than I have ever known.
I remain open as I continue to live from what is true in Him.
Dear Silvia,
come out.
Remain in Me, as I remain in you.
With love,
Silvia Kwon
P.S. Want to connect more with Silvia? You can find her over on her website at https://www.ever-present.co/spiritual-direction
Our next Journey of Grace: Certificate in Spiritual Formation cohort is now accepting applications! Follow the link below and see if, like Silvia, this feels like the right next step for what you’ve been longing for.