Tasha Jun was six years old when she learned that she and her teenage sister, Cathy, did not have the same father. Awoken in the middle of the night by the voices of her mother and sister, she heard Cathy say, “I’m going to move back to the States to live with my dad.”

Soon after, Cathy left Tokyo, and Jun was left to wonder what it happened. She tried to make sense of the change by looking for clues in the room her sister had left behind. She would walk or bike in their neighborhood, wandering and wondering.

“Those four years of living overseas as a kid, and especially the time after my sister left, provided training in silent observation, teaching me to become someone who notices things,” writes Jun in a recent CT article adapted from her forthcoming book. “I think Moses was also someone who noticed things.”

Jun explains that Moses’ family, too, knew the unique loneliness and loss of a fractured family and “dual-cultured struggles.” She relates to the way he couldn’t fully choose a cultural identity, as “every space contained loss and grief.” And she encourages us all to remember that “God uses our family names and stories, even the shameful parts, to guide us to shalom.”