Yen Fasano, 36, knew her identity as a wife, mother, Catholic and Vietnamese-American, but something was missing.

Then, four years ago, the Lord revealed to the mother of three her spiritual identity as his beloved, and he offered healing for childhood wounds so she could receive God the Father’s love.

“I’ve learned that God is love and he’s personal and merciful, and he graces me and blesses me even though I don’t deserve it simply because I am his,” Fasano said at a March 30 women’s retreat at Immaculate Conception in Columbia Heights titled, “Heart of the Beloved.”

“It’s not who I am and what I do but whose I am that makes all the difference.”

Drawing from her experience of losing her relationship with her father as a girl, Fasano, who attends St. Anne-St. Joseph Hien in Minneapolis, shared about finding our true identity in God, who sees the beauty of our hearts, and loves and heals us.

When healed by the Lord, broken hearts, like objects repaired through the Japanese art form Kintsugi, are more beautiful than before, she said.

Fasano grew up in Eagan attending the Vietnamese parish St. Anne-St. Joseph Hien in Minneapolis, where she and her family are parishioners.

She has a master’s degree in educational leadership, and at the parish she provides faith formation for post-confirmation-aged youths, leads retreats, mentors young adults and formerly served as the parish’s director of evangelization.

Fasano serves on the boards of the Aim Higher Foundation, which provides scholarships at archdiocesan Catholic schools, and the Catholic Services Appeal Foundation. She also helps administer scholarships for racial minorities as part of the Minnesota-based Page Education Foundation. She is also a member if the archdiocesan synod executive committee.

She has given talks and led retreats around the archdiocese, including parish and young adult leadership retreats, and gatherings of the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women and other organizations.

During her two retreat talks at Immaculate Conception and an interview afterward, Fasano described the wound she suffered in the fifth grade when her parents divorced.

As she grew up, Fasano strived to succeed in school and in her career so she could earn her dad’s love. She practiced her Catholic faith but found herself unable to absorb God’s blessings.

“I didn’t know why that joy didn’t take residency in my heart,” she said during the interview.
Fasano struggled with feelings of unworthiness and inadequacy. “Looking back on my life in those places of suffering, graces were always there. I just didn’t see it.”

Since her conversion experience four years ago, she has learned that as God’s beloved daughter, her heart is beautiful, unique and vulnerable, though imperfect and often wounded.

In humanity’s brokenness, Christ walks alongside all men and women, leading them to his Father, she said. He wants his children to share their tears, tragedies and doubts.

“If I hadn’t gone through the suffering that I did, I may never have realized the Father’s love or who I truly am, because I would have identified myself as something far inferior to being God’s beloved daughter,” she said.

God’s healing of human hearts can be compared to Kintsugi, developed as an art form possibly in the 15th century, in which broken items are repaired and the cracks embellished, often with gold, Fasano said. In Japanese culture, the repaired pieces are considered more beautiful than they were before breaking.

Cracks, like wounds, symbolize the events in the object’s life, rather than its destruction, Fasano said. “Sometimes those experiences plant in us seeds of shame, and for me it was just unworthiness, abandonment, betrayal and failure.”

Instead of gold, healing grace and mercy fills our broken hearts, she said. “When I learn to follow the leadings of the Holy Spirit in that broken heartedness, I slowly see the transformation. We offered our shattered hearts to God and we welcome him to reveal those hidden places of darkness in order that he may also change us.”

Every time they break a little they become more alive, and it reveals their sensibility, tenacity, challenges, and strengths, Fasano said, adding that it also shows humans’ capacity to love. Hiding scars hurts more because they’re part of who people are.

Fasano’s faith has helped her overcome her wounds, said her aunt, Chau Nguyen, who attends St. John Neumann in Eagan and St. Anne-St. Joseph Hien. Carrying her own cross has helped Fasano understand others in their suffering, she said.

“I think God is really working on her,” Nguyen said. “She wouldn’t be the person she is today. God is working and the only thing you can do is trust him.”

Through grace, Fasano said she has strived not only to forgive her father but to do it out of love for God.

Each time she turns toward truth and generosity in vulnerability, Fasano said, she steps away from fears, lies and doubts.

“You can choose to trust that when [God] calls you beloved he wants you to be loved,” she said. “You don’t have to prove it. You only have to truly allow yourself in all your sinful glory to be loved for who you are.”