Ep. 6: The Green Destiny #firstdate

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Even after I turned away from God, He redeemed a painful situation and corrected my course.

Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. (Proverbs 16:8)

Martial arts were a source of pride. I was proud of what I could accomplish through hard work, tenacity, and perseverance. I was finding my identity in what I could do– and what I could do was launch into airborne kicks, break stuff with my fists, and knock other people to the ground. Martial arts gave me a rush, and it made me feel invincible.

I feared no one. I feared nothing.

I lost my fear of God as well. I had given up on the God of the Jews and Christians, instead delving into Daoism and Confucianism, the spiritual practices of my ancestors, non-dependent on an invisible deity. Part of me wanted to compliment my martial arts training.

A deeper part of me was searching for a sense of identity.

One night in September of 2000, my taekwondo instructor asked me to demonstrate a jumping, spinning kick in front of the class. I executed the move four or five times in a row– this, at the end of an intense, hour-long workout.

He asked me to do another one. I was getting winded, but I mustered up enough energy to do one more.

My instructor paused, then asked me to push my limits and do just one more.

I took a deep breath, focusing on the target for a moment. My legs coiled slightly, and with an explosive burst of whatever energy I had left, I launched into the air and began to whirl into the spinning kick.

Maybe I was so tired that I didn’t jump high enough, because as I was in mid-spin, my left foot landed a little too early and anchored itself onto the rubbery mat. Meanwhile, the rest of my body hadn’t completed the spin and was still turning…

I heard a ripping crunch, like a handful of marbles being dropped onto a tile floor. It was my knee, blown out by the torque of my failed jumping kick.

All of my fighting skills– which probably weren’t even all that great, except in my own mind– became useless in an instant. The killer instinct? Rendered impotent, just like that. Everything I had based my identity on was taken from me when I crumpled to the mat in a heap of agony. I couldn’t even stand up on my own, much less fight off imaginary muggers with awesome kicking combos.

I didn’t need surgery, but my injuries would require months of rehabilitation, and it would take seven weeks to get all the referrals and approvals needed before my first session of physical therapy. In the meantime, I was stuck in bed at my parents’ house.

Immobilized.

Helpless.

Humbled.

If I was hungry, I’d have to ask someone to bring me something to eat. Once, I was thirsty, but no one was around to help, and as I lay there, staring at the ceiling, unable to do anything to quench my thirst, I thought of how foolish I had been to take such pride in things that could do nothing for me now. My martial arts skills, my good grades– none of it made an ounce of difference in the predicament I was in.

By idolizing my own abilities, I had worshiped myself as my own god.

I lay there, humbled before the true God– the Creator, the Father– and repented for having turned away from Him. Yet, instead of sensing anger or condemnation, I felt Him calling me back, like the father who ran to embrace the prodigal son who came back home after trying to live life his own way and leading himself into ruin (Lk. 15:11-32).

For the next few months, I’d go to physical therapy in the morning and spend much of the rest of my day at the computer, surfing the internet. One afternoon, AOL told me that I had mail, so I clicked on my inbox and saw an incoming email from Soo– she had finally written me back, nearly four months after our last email correspondence. I thought she had returned to Korea by now, but she hadn’t: she had written to tell me that she got her practical training visa and could stay in the US for another few months. She was excited about the opportunity.

I was excited that she was talking to me again.

I thought about the circumstances– if I hadn’t blown out my knee and required months of rehabilitation, I might have returned to my job in Indonesia by then, and I would have missed Soo’s email completely, because I would have canceled my dialup AOL account and lost my then-non-transferrable email address.

A new window had opened up and I wasn’t about to blow my second chance. I decided to go for it.

I hit reply and asked Soo if she had seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon yet.

She replied that she hadn’t, and told me that Chow-Yun Fat had been her favorite actor when she was younger. She asked if I wanted to see the movie with her.

Wow, I thought. That was easy.

We set a time and a date to meet for lunch and a movie. Since she lived in Glendale, we planned to watch the movie in Burbank– a 79-mile drive from my house, each way. I had been in physical therapy for months by this point, so I was mobile again, but still had a temporary disabled placard on my car and needed to walk with a cane. How would this look to Soo, I wondered? I wasn’t even thirty years old yet, but went around clutching a cane like the Monopoly Man or Mister Peanut.

I also had to tell my parents I was going to make this long drive while recovering from a knee injury to meet a girl I liked. (I had previously mentioned how my mother had been the gatekeeper to my dating life and never approved anyone before. She was my Gandalf, warning female Balrogs that they shall not pass.)

I prayed and said, “God, if this really is You leading me to pursue a relationship with Soo, I’ll need You to confirm it through my mom, because if she doesn’t approve and I pursue this anyway, there could be a ton of friction between us, and I don’t need that right now.” Later that day, as my mother popped into my room to see how I was doing, I mentioned that I had met a nice girl at design school and was going to see a movie with her.

My mother listened and paused for a moment. I knew she was a woman of prayer– she had taught me to pray when I was four years old– so perhaps she was praying about this. After a beat, she said, “If she’s nice, you should pursue her.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

That Saturday morning, I hopped into my car, cane tucked next to my seat, and made the long drive to pick up Soo in Glendale. We first went to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, then toured the student gallery at Art Center in Pasadena before heading for the Burbank AMC theater to catch the film. Throughout the course of the day, we talked a lot and got to know each other better.

We were having a wonderful time– well, at least I was– so when the movie trailers started playing and Soo expressed an interested in one upcoming release, I casually mentioned that maybe we could go see that film when it came out the following week.

She said no. I felt rejected. Then she explained that she had other plans for the following week, but would be free the week after.

🙂

Two weeks later, we went to see that movie together. It was our second date– at least, that’s what it was to me. Soo made it clear that it was not a date; we were just “hanging out” and seeing another movie together.

We started hanging out every week, grabbing a bite to eat and catching the latest movies. The more time we spent together, the more I grew smitten with her, and the more I pressed in to define the relationship, the more Soo would reply that she was planning to return to Korea, where she would hopefully marry a nice Korean man.

Was I disqualified for not being Korean, something that I had no control over?

I was getting tired of the issue of race. I was tired of always being “other.” While growing up, I was often told by other Americans that I was not “really American” and should “go back where you belong,” and when I went to Indonesia to find my roots, I thought I’d find acceptance, but lo and behold, I encountered even more alienation: to the native Indonesians, I was not “really Indonesian” due to my Chinese ancestry, and to the ethnic Chinese, I was not “really Chinese” because my family did not retain Chinese culture and language. If anything, people there saw me as an American! I tried to stop seeking identity in ethnicity and simply embrace being human, but here it was again, the issue of race rearing its head and taunting me to my face, keeping me from the woman I was falling in love with.

I thought maybe Soo was bluffing, so I’d try joking about us having a home and maybe some kids together someday. She kept resisting, giving me the same old song about going back to Korea. It didn’t make much sense to me, as we were not only going out every week, but talking on the phone every day, for hours at a time. It certainly seemed like our feelings were mutual.

After nearly three months of us “just hanging out,” it became increasingly difficult for me to keep seeing her if she was indeed serious about there being no future for us. I was falling in love with her, and every phone call, every weekly hangout, was like rubbing salt on a wound.

Was God testing me again?

I prayed, “God, I don’t know what you’re doing to me. First, I give up on trying to meet someone and am fine with that, then you give me two mysterious dreams that seem to point to Soo, whom I’ve been falling for in a big way but doesn’t seem interested in a serious relationship. It’s painful, God, but if You’re testing me again, You win.”

I surrendered a second time, giving up my hopes for a family, a future with Soo.

We went to one last movie. It was Chocolat. I can’t recall what it was about– I’m guessing chocolate was involved– because I only remember sitting there next to Soo, my guts being wrung into knots as I thought about the possibility of never seeing her again. Her practical training visa would soon expire, and she would probably return to Seoul afterwards.

When our evening ended, we did not arrange to see one of the upcoming week’s new releases, as we usually did. I dropped her off at her home, said my goodbye, and made the long, lonely drive home.

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