So far I broke my wrist and could not play high school baseball, so I went into track.  I excelled at track and then partially tore my hamstring, forcing me to prematurely end my running career and go to UIUC.  I wanted to be comfortable in a mainstream campus Christian organization like Inter-Varsity, but I ended up attending a Korean church.  My small group sophomore year at first seemed like a real downer, but they turned out to be the best and I grew and received my future calling that year.

So perhaps this is the start of the more serious things for which i do not have answers.  I do not fully know the fruits of these events, but I know a few from this one.

My Junior year started roughly.  I had knee surgery to start the year and that limited me so much.  I remember trying to do stuff even though I basically had one leg – I tried bowling with my small group and even participated in mini-olympics.  I partially fell into depression.  Running had been such a big part of my life… my physical, emotional and spiritual life.  It kept me in shape, reduced stress, and I had ‘redeemed’ it by praying as I ran.  And when I could no longer run, it left a big void.

It forced me to branch out a little bit:  I met up with more people, tried to be more social and I also went to morning prayer much more often.

And I met the girl of my dreams.  Literally.  I dreamed about her before I knew her.  Crazy, is it not?  We saw each other four or five times a week (no… not dated… just saw each other or hung out with other people) and chatted online a bunch.  And we would talk about everything.  Everything.

She introduced me to all those stupid little faces that you can type.  ^^  .\ /.  -_-;  =.=, etc.  When I was talking to her, it felt like… I don’t know… it felt like I had known her my entire life.  She could type faster than me so she would often write down what I was going to before I had the chance… and then she would gloat.

Sometimes she complained about her body, and I would say something along the lines of she’s pretty and she did not need to do anything different.  I remember thinking in my head You don’t need to diet or anything like that… you’re… wow… you’re perfect.  So I would tone that down a little bit (unless I really wanted to embarrass her or sound like I was making fun of her).

Her view of God was so similar to mine.  I remember one time we were talking about reverse predestination (or reprobation) and she said that did not sound like God’s character.  And I agreed – this is one of the points of reformed theology with which I still struggle. Some of her moral opinions were the same – like I abhor unnecessary violence in movies and, in particular, comedic violence.  But the point is that whatever the topic was, we would oftentimes agree and would have fun arguing if we did not.

She asked me what would happen if she was not here next year.  What if she went to a different campus?  I said she would be missed a lot, and she said probably not.  We would talk about the future and would talk about missions, future spouses and fantastical worlds. I could talk to you about her for hours.  My memory is not what it used to be, but I still remember her perfectly.

There was something about her that I just could not grasp.  Normally, I can tell what someone wants when they tell me something or ask a question – I am good at seeing the motives behind words.  When someone does not divulge the entire truth, I can normally analyze and pick through information and get a fairly accurate picture of reality.  This was not the case with her.  She was a complete enigma to me.  Sometimes I would be completely right, sometimes I would be absolutely wrong.

So she was either the personality type I could not figure out or she fluctuated day-to-day on what she wanted.

She told me weird things (She was very random sometimes).  She told me that she dreamed I had died on the Titanic and that she cried when she woke up, thinking it was real.  We had a random argument on abortion that turned quite heated.  I started to really develop feelings for her, but I was confused as to what they were.

I finally took a small step forward; I had never asked a girl out before, but we started to talk about praying for each other.  We would start with a month and come back to each other after that.

But a day later, she came back to me and said that she got a bad feeling.  In the past, I have tried to describe what that feeling was, but she wrote me a letter and I seem to have completely skipped over this part (and I’m sorry):  I don’t feel anxiety. But I feel something else, and it makes me want to rip my chest open. I don’t understand what it is and I’ve been praying to God about it. She wrote to me about how I had made her feel – that she felt ugly or like a monster… partly because I had depended on her, yet she perceived me to be falling farther away from God.  I cried when she wrote her response, not because she would not pray, but because she thought that she was a reason for me falling and because that made her feel horrible.

I tell you, if you read this at all, that this could not be farther from the truth!  You were a shining light to me.  You helped encourage me to take on a bigger role in my small group and you made me feel joy.  You encouraged me about missions!  You are one of the most beautiful souls I have met to date.  You made me want to pray.  You made me want to love God.

Back from my aside… things shifted one way and the other.  For a terrible month, I concealed my unknown feelings and pretended like they weren’t there because I was so sad at what she wrote.  So we both had these intense emotions of fear and doubt and some confused brotherly love all mixed in with dashes of misunderstanding and important words lost in long letters.  It was quite a… recipe for disaster.

And those emotions boiled out of me one day.  It was after the powderpuff game.  I told her that I had enough of this, I was not strong enough and I could not face her again.  I failed.  And my roommate was gone and I was left unaccountable.  So I tried to take my own life twice.  My hasty attempts were derailed because I was both (a) a wimp and (b) stupid.  I could not cut myself and the poison I concocted just made me throw up instantaneously.

But God showed me the Gospel.  Right there and then.  He still has a plan for me and He will not let me go until it is my time.  So I stayed up the entire night and read “No Wonder They Call Him The Savior” by Max Lucado and I read through all of the Gospels.  I was sick, I was tired, I was majorly sunburned, and I was broken.

There’s still another episode with this girl, and there is fruit from this event.  Tomorrow or Monday I’ll talk a little bit about missions.

From where I am right now, I know one thing about her:  I did not love her in every earthly sense of the word, because I have since experienced it, but I definitely could have.

One of the dramas we did on missions was called the Heart Skit.  In that particular skit, an innocent girl gives her heart away to things of this world:  Partying, vanity, and eventually a guy.  Each thing tears her heart, represented by a construction paper cut-out of a heart, piece by piece.  But when she gives God the tattered remains of her heart, He restores her, and she decides to give her full heart back to Him.