Agape is a type of love. It is a higher type of love. One that is unconditional and selfless in nature. I love to love, and one of my favorite forms of love is worship—loving through music. My middle name is Cadence. The word describes rhythms and patterns in sounds, like music or voices. It builds the beat, the foundation upon which the melodies and harmonies are laid. It is the note that the music will eventually find its way back to. For the heart, its cadence is its life force. All other parts of the body depend on it. I think of the heartbeat as the sound of life, and for me, the sound of love is the music of worship. The constant ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump is a reminder of the cacophony of life within us. There’s no life without the heart, and there’s no living without love. For me, living out a life of love is my act of worship. Faith is beautiful for its ability to turn pain into something good. My love for God has carried me through many rough times, and taught me to remain gentle and kind despite the evil in the world. I understand these things now, but it has taken my whole life to learn them. Ba-dump. When I was little, I didn’t know where I fit in. I wasn’t fully Asian: I only spoke English, and my mother didn’t look like my Asian friends’ moms. Ba-dump. But I also wasn’t accepted as Caucasian. I didn’t look like the other White girls I knew. Nor could I completely relate to them. Ba-dump. I was torn in half, compelled to choose between two halves of my entire identity. I questioned God. Why did I have to choose in the first place? How could He create me like this and put me in a world that sees only black and white? But the Lord spoke to my heart. I was not made to choose, but to bridge connections between people in order to show them that we are not so different after all. Life has taught me that there is an abundance of hurt in the world—a deafening silence where the sound of love should be. But because of that, it is my spiritual obligation to make the world better. That looks like loving, just as I have been loved: unconditionally. It is making the choice to go against the grain and to celebrate what good we have, and what good we will bring into existence: sounds of joy and love and laughter. I want my whole life to be one great act of worship. A true display of what agape means. Because I know what it takes to survive, I know how to live. Medicine is my calling. It will allow me to give the gift of life to others. I hope to share my faith and love with everyone I encounter. Those around me will learn by example. They will make their own music. They will keep marching on to their own heart-beat. Love will be our lifeline.