If this relationship truly was from God, He’d have to help us overcome major hurdles.
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? (Psalm 13:2a NIV)
I didn’t call Soo the next day, as I normally would have done. We had been talking on the phone every day for over three months and I had grown a deep affection for her, but if there could be no future for us, I had to let go of that hope and resign myself to just being her friend. I didn’t call for a few days because I thought I needed a cooling-off period to ease out of my pursuit of her, but I knew it’d be weird to stop calling her completely, so I finally gave her a call on a Thursday afternoon just to say hi.
We asked each other how their week was going. I told her that mine was uneventful aside from me getting a haircut. Soo said she wanted to see what it looked like.
We didn’t have selfie cameras on our phones back then.
Long story short, this phone call led to us defining the relationship. Yes, less than one week after I surrendered in defeat– this was my second time surrendering my hopes of a relationship with Soo to God– she and I officially became a couple. We dated for the rest of that year, and the more I got to know Soo, the more I knew she was the one.
During this time, Soo’s practical training visa was set to expire. When I was a U.S. citizen living abroad, I had to be on guard against passport hunters, or those seeking to marry their way into U.S. residency, but now, I was in love with a woman whom I intended to marry and was about to lose her visa. I sheepishly suggested that perhaps we could get married soon, at least on paper, so that she could stay.
Soo cut me off. She made it clear that she wouldn’t resort to that, and she declared that if it were God’s will for us to be together, He would provide her with a visa some other way.
That kind of talk scared me– trusting God with something I had no control over. I couldn’t understand how someone could sit back and trust God that way, but to my amazement and relief, Soo got her visa extension without my help.
Soo is a third-generation Christian. After a few months of dating, she asked me if I went to church. I replied with the “I’m spiritual but not religious” spiel. She insisted that I start going to church with her– if we didn’t share the same cultural background, we could at least worship God together.
I didn’t like church. The few times that I had gone in the past, I found the services to be stuffy, led by scowling old clergymen and attended by people who might smile and shake your hands inside the sanctuary, but cut you off while trying to leave the parking lot. From my biased, limited perspective, Christians looked like angry hypocrites, and church was just an exclusive club that made these people feel better about themselves.
But since Soo was the one asking me to go, I said, “Okay.”
We started attending a fairly large church in a suburb of Los Angeles, where the people seemed nice, the services weren’t as uptight and stuffy as I had expected, and the preacher would sometimes crack jokes. I didn’t just tolerate church for Soo’s sake; I started to actually look forward to it.
Every week, there would be an altar call, whereby the pastor would invite people to come up front if they wanted a relationship with Jesus. I wanted to respond and go up front, but a voice inside kept telling me, “You don’t need to go up there. Those who do are just showing off, to show others how ‘good’ they are. You don’t need to join them.” Unfortunately, I listened to these words, which I’d later recognize as a lie from the devil, “the father of lies” (Jn. 8:44), who works tirelessly to keep people separated from God.
I proposed to Soo on Valentine’s Day, just a little over one year since our first “date” to see Crouching Tiger. She said yes. I thought we’d made it to the home stretch, but little did I know that the battle had just begun.
She finally told her parents in Seoul about me.
They jumped on a plane and came to Los Angeles within weeks of this news. I thought it was because they were eager to meet me, but in retrospect, I think it may have been more of a mission to rescue Soo from me.
I can’t say that I’d blame them if this were the case. As potential husband/son-in-law material, I had so many strikes against me. Let me count the ways:
- Not Korean.
- Not Christian.
- No job. Double the points off for being an aspiring artist/filmmaker. #alwaysbroke
- Taught martial arts on the side. #thug
- No college degree. #asiandealbreaker
Yet, Soo’s parents graciously gave me a chance. They didn’t immediately drag their eldest daughter back to Seoul with them; instead, they gave us one year to work things out. I had one year to stabilize my career, the implication being that if I couldn’t, Soo and I would have to call off our engagement and she’d return to South Korea.
I did everything I could to jump start my career over the next twelve months. Several months prior to our engagement, I made an animated short film that had screened at several film festivals and gotten some positive reviews, including one from a network executive who expressed an interest in meeting with me. I was hopeful, but that meeting never materialized.
I connected with another producer who offered to take a look at my next screenplay, so I wrote one, but it wasn’t very good and the producer didn’t bite.
I tried my hand at acting and took a role in a music video, playing an evil swordsman, but nothing ever became of the video or my acting career. (Now that I think about it, God may have been sparing me the embarrassment.)
Sensing that the film route was a dead end, I tried to put my graphic design training to use and accepted a job at a multimedia studio. When my first paycheck was due, I was told that the company couldn’t make payroll; meanwhile, the owners were packing for their Hawaii vacation and left me with a list of work to complete while they were away. I left and never came back.
The one-year deadline drew ever nearer, the days steadily burning away like the fuse to a bomb. I was getting desperate.
I didn’t know what else to do.
So I prayed. A lot.
I begged God for help every night, but it felt like my prayers weren’t being heard, much less answered. It was as if I were praying in a vacuum, the words spilling forth from my lips and dropping to the floor, going nowhere.
One night, as I slumped in defeat at the edge of my bed, I prayed and said, “God, I’m not hearing You right now and I can’t even sense Your presence, but I know You’re there. I’ll never pray to anyone else, and I’ll never stop praying to You and You alone.”
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was praying Psalm 13:
How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing the Lord’s praise,
for he has been good to me.
(Psalm 13: 1-6)
The one-year deadline came to pass. I had failed to meet our objectives.
So, after an agonizing conversation, Soo and I broke up.
I prayed in anguish, “God, I don’t know why You keep doing this to me. I’ve fallen deeply in love with Soo, and I am in much more pain now than I was before you ever gave me that dream about meeting her. However, I did promise that I’d stay single if that’s what You intend for me. If this is yet another test…”
I didn’t even want to finish the thought, but I had to.
“I’ll let go of Soo and accept whatever You have in mind.”
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