I can still vividly remember what everyone in my family was doing a few minutes prior to January 1, 2012 - my brother was over at his computer skyping one of his friends talking about graphics cards, my mother was calling my grandmother to wish her a happy new year, and my father was dozing off while watching TV, waiting to see the ball in Times Square drop when the clock struck midnight. As for me, I was sitting on the family room couch with Maitland Jones' organic chemistry textbook opened across my lap, reading up on the Diels-Alder reaction.
I wasn't one of those children that stated at an early age that I want to be a doctor when I grow up. It's really funny, in my honest opinion, that adults always ask young children, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" They can't seriously expect a child to know what he or she wants to do for the rest of their life, right? That's blasphemous! You often hear a variety of answers too - astronaut, singer, fashion designer, doctor, lawyer, football player, teacher, etc. But why is it that children repeat these answers specifically? I think it's because parents reinforce the idea that these occupations are what defines "success" in our modern society. Children don't really know what they want to do for the rest of their life, they merely say answers that are acceptable to parents. The way I came to realize that what I truly wanted to do was practice medicine also just happened to be the greatest challenge God presented to me in my life.
As a young Korean immigrant, I was not born into a Christian family. Both my parents considered themselves to be agnostic. Maybe there was some higher power, maybe not. So how did I end up finding God in my childhood? My parents quickly realized that my brother and I needed some form of a community in the States because my family did not know anybody in New Jersey. They figured joining a Korean church would be the easiest way to introduce my brother and me to kids around our age. Making friends did not come easily because I still could not speak English very well despite attending ESL classes at school. Other kids didn't bother to talk to me. And for my first year in America I felt truly alone. Now I know what you're thinking, what does a five year-old kid know about loneliness, right? But let me tell you that kid did know loneliness, very well in fact. Loneliness was a kinder friend to him than other kids.
One summer day, my pastor at church came over to talk to me. He was quite young himself, 27 if I remember correctly. And he asked me, "Do you know about Jesus Christ?" I had been attending church for over a year and still did not know the gospel so I answered, "No." After the sermon, he asked me to grab lunch with him and he shared the gospel with me of how a man named Jesus Christ, the son of God, was sent to Earth to die for our sins and was resurrected to return to Heaven. I guess as a child I found the story fascinating, believing every minute detail, believing that this man, Jesus Christ, was my savior. And so for the next seven years I went to church, strengthening my faith in God.
But one phone call in my final year of middle school sparked my fall away from God. My grandfather in South Korea had been diagnosed with lung cancer for over a year. I remember, every night before I went to bed, praying to God to look over my grandfather. Just two summers prior, my grandfather and I had gotten closer - almost every morning he would take me to go hiking to see the sunrise. I always complained and asked him to let me sleep those extra five minutes that we all know don't really make us feel any better. "Every day is a new day and you want to start it off right, don't you?" I guess that's why to this day I still like to wake up early.
The look on my father's face as he answered the phone said it all...my grandfather had passed away.
Being only thirteen at the time, I didn't handle the news very well. As each day passed, all I could ask God was one thing: "Why?" Why did you not protect my grandfather? Why did you not answer my prayers? These were the questions that I still do not have answers to. No matter how hard I tried to make sense of the situation, I just grew more bitter and angrier. And as Christians we hold the believe that if we accept Jesus Christ as our savior we will join him in Heaven after we die. But what about my grandfather who I knew never accepted Jesus as his savior? Where was he? I grew up believing that God could perform wondrous miracles. I needed it more than ever at that moment.
I made a promise to myself. I would give God a second chance because I'm a firm believer in second chances. If he disappointed me again, I would give up on him completely. For some reason, my mother became diagnosed with breast cancer roughly a year after my grandfather's death. The news shattered all hope I had in God instantaneously. That was it. I'm done with God forever, I told myself.
All throughout high school, I lived with the constant fear of not knowing whether or not my mother would be alive the next day. My family at the time did not have the money to pay for chemotherapy in the States so my mother flew back to South Korea to receive chemotherapy there. I was so angry that my family didn't have the finances to pay for chemotherapy here. And it certainly didn't help that everyone at church repeated things like: "God has a plan for everything" or "God is testing you." What kind of sick, perverted test was this? I felt like nobody could understand what I was going through. And it didn't help that my relationship with my brother completely broke down. He began to resent me for trying to act like my mother around him.
"Hey, go finish your homework and play your games later."
"Stop fucking act like your mom because you're not!"
"What did you just say?"
"I said stop acting like your mom because you're not. Got it?!"
My father wasn't around much because he was busy with work. At the time I didn't really think about how it affected him but looking back on the whole situation, he always tried so hard to look strong for our sake. I can only imagine how hard it was for him, to think that the only woman he has ever loved in his life was riding on the fence between life and death.
By some miracle my mother is still with us today. But I didn't give credit to God. I was convinced that it was due to the hard work of the doctors who cared for my mother that she is still with us today. And for the rest of high school I stopped going to church and rejected God from my life entirely. The way I saw it, God didn't deserve to be in my life.
Like most high school graduates, the next big chapter of my life was college. Stuck choosing between Columbia's Fu Found School of Engineering and NYU's College of Arts and Sciences, I ultimately chose to attend NYU. Why would I give up going to an Ivy League school? 1) I really didn't want to do engineering. I only applied because my parents told me to. 2) I wanted to become a doctor. Why do I want to be a doctor? You might think it's because I want the recognition of being a doctor or perhaps for the money or whatever. But I truly want to become a doctor because I personally know what it's like to be in a family where disease is a real thing, not just some words in a textbook or actors on a movie screen. And with that mindset, I promised that I would become a doctor whatever it took because I wanted to be the doctor that could change people's and families' lives.
My freshman year at NYU was one for the ages. Thanks to one of my high school friends who was in NYU's 7-year dental program, I quickly made many friends. I also managed to make friends with some of my floormates who actually still remain some of my closest friends at NYU. But all in all, my freshman year consisted of doing a lot of stupid things like most college freshman - drinking, staying up all night for no reason, etc. And the bitterness that I built up in high school followed me to college. I found myself lashing out at my friends as I stressed over my academics. I considered my grades to be the most important thing in the world and I was willing to make any sacrifices to keep my GPA as close as possible to the elusive 4.0
Freshman year flew by and although I didn't do as well academically as I had hoped, I was feeling good about myself in general - I just found a research position in a behavioral neuroscience lab for the summer and my science GPA was still a 4.0.
Sophomore year came and it was supposed to be the hardest academically - I had both the infamous organic chemistry and molecular and cellular biology. I told myself that I just needed to get A's in these courses and I should be a shoe-in for medical school. I almost did, just one A- and three A's. Pretty good all in all. But sophomore year was more than just grades.
I was introduced to another Korean who attended a Christian fellowship at NYU - Intervarsity Asian-American Christian Fellowship - through a mutual friend. He invited me to come to one of their large groups so I figured why not. Actually I only went because I thought it was rude to say no so I ended up going. I didn't get much out of the speaker. For me it was just one of those talks about God and how Christians should strive to live our lives with God's love and grace in mind blah-blah-blah. But for some reason, I found the fellowship members to be really comfortable to talk to about, well, anything actually. For the first time in my life, I felt like I wasn't judged by a Christian for not being "Christian." It was really strange. I was so sure that these people would stop talking to me once I told them I wasn't Christian but they talked to me even more, asking me why I didn't believe in God. And for the longest time I used my scientific knowledge to present counterarguments to anything they had to say to me. I guess it was just a way for me to try and find the answer I wanted deep down. It was crazy how involved in the fellowship I was getting - I even attended a weekly small group and I never missed one of them the whole year. My small group leader asked me at the end of the year, "Why did you come out to every small group?" I didn't really have an answer. Looking back, I was seeking out God but just didn't know at the time.
Sophomore year came to a close and I was back working at the same research lab over the summer. But the summer brought me much unexpected drama. And it all begins with a girl from the fellowship. We were in the same grade but I didn't really get to know her during the school year. She was working in the city over the summer as well so naturally we began to hang out - a lot. We were texting every single day, skyping at night, and met up on weekends. My friend who worked with me at the research lab asked me if there was anything between her and me. I told him no but I didn't even know. She asked me why I gave up on Christianity and in God. I told her everything. She was the first person at NYU to ask me and the first person I told why. I found it surprising how much I found myself opening up to this girl who I only got to know for roughly one month.
Later I finally mustered up the courage and asked her, "What do you consider us to be?" She didn't know either. A week later we admitted we had feelings for each other but her next sentence cut me like a dagger: "I can't date you because you're not Christian." I always knew there were Christians who wouldn't date non-Christians; I never figured I'd be on the losing end of one of those situations though. I felt completely shut down but I knew she had the right to say no for whatever reason so I dropped the whole thing altogether. She however didn't. Although she rejected me already, she kept on complaining about why she felt like she was the only one putting any effort into the relationship (excuse me but what relationship?) and she constantly compared me to her ex-boyfriend. I let it go most of the time because I knew she was just being emotional but little by little I felt my self-esteem as a man being crushed piece by piece. I found myself pathetic that I could let one girl who already rejected me feel so small and worthless. And by the end of the summer we stopped talking to each other. How could someone who I felt so comfortable talking to become a total stranger?
I didn't know what to do. I talked to other fellowship members about the situation and they didn't know either. But all of them gave me one common advice - pray. I scoffed at them secretly. Prayer had never done anything for me but I figured I'd give it a try because nothing I was doing was making me feel better. So before I went to bed I prayed, just like how I prayed for my grandfather seven years ago. At first it was strange and uncomfortable. It's sort of like the feeling you get when you just feel so out of place in a room with strangers you have no idea what to do. My words seemed to vanish into thin air the first night. But I kept on praying every night for a month. I don't even know why.
And then slowly but surely I felt all the bitterness and resentment I had toward this girl disappear. I don't know how it happened at first. Then I asked myself what I wanted to do and I knew. I realized God put her in my life for a reason - it was to bring me back to Him. As corny as it may sound, she is the one who brought me back to God. How can I shun somebody so precious like that out of my life? I knew I wanted her to be a part of my life, whether that be just as a friend or maybe something more further down the road. We've had problems again recently defining our relationship, letting our emotions get the better of us, but we still remain friends somehow. I thought for sure after she rejected me twice after leading me on I would never want to talk to her again but with God's grace I found the grace and mercy in myself to forgive her and forgive myself as well. I was so mad at myself for letting myself fall for her twice but we are all sinners who give into temptations. I must constantly remind myself that if it's not happening now then God has a reason for that too. Maybe it never will or maybe one day we can be more than friends - either way I'm leaving it in God's hands now.
As crazy as it was, I shared this testimony at large group in front of the fellowship. I never imagined myself sharing a story like this with anyone. But I think through everything that 2012 has put me through I've learned to trust in others and most importantly in God again, that it is okay to open up and share ourselves because no matter how much others disappoint us God will never disappoint us.
So now I close the pages on 2012 eagerly waiting to see what God has in store for me in 2013. Whatever it may be, I know that in the end it is all God's will and that He knows what is best for me.
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