Chest Piercings Hurt Like the Shizzles

It’s 3:30AM Saturday morning. Exactly one week ago at this time, I was being admitted into the ER for a stab wound to the chest. How quickly a week goes by.

I still remember the pain that rippled through my left side with each breath I took. I remembering at one point wondering if this is how it’ll all end. I remember as I stood up to get into the car, thinking, “I’m sorry, Evan.” Sorry for what, I now wonder? Sorry for not having been a better dad. Sorry for not being there for him when he graduates, when he gets his first job, when he gets married. Sorry for not having time to say goodbye.

I am sitting here trying to remember what it was like to face the possibility of death. It was certainly a lot more in-your-face than a prognosis of cancer, much more immediate.

I am certain that God’s hand saved my life, if not in preventing the knife from going too far, then in the healing that happened before I even got to the hospital. By the time we got to the hospital, the pain had mostly subsided, save during the few deep breaths I had to take for the X-ray. Something must’ve happened, something must’ve changed inside my body for the pain to have gone away. I absolutely believe that a miracle happened. There’s really no other explanation.

But still, the thought that 2011 might’ve been the last year I’d see still stays fresh with me. Pastor David asked me to pray hard about what God’s telling me. I think I’m still a little bit in shock to really process everything. But I really should pray. I do know one thing God’s telling me – it’s not my time. Not yet.

And as I’m sitting reminiscing about my little brush with death, a brother we’d met in Taiwan during the summer is falling ill to his cancer, his body not responding well to the treatments he’s getting.

It’s a lot to think about.

It certainly puts things in perspective.

(And no, the strangeness of the connection to my previous post is not lost on me.)

Kurzweil PC2X

Today I drove out to SGV to check out a keyboard listed on Craigslist (hence the title of this post). But my post isn’t about the keyboard – it’s about the seller. He wasn’t planning on making the keyboard available for testing until Thursday, but when I told him I would be leaving town by then and it’d be too late, he was willing to make an exception, since he noticed from my email signature that I was a pastor.

Once I’d given the keyboard a once-over, he started to tell me that the main reason he’s selling the keyboard is because he’s moving back to Hong Kong to care for his parents in their deteriorating health. As he continued in his story, more details unfolded – and what an incredible story. Turns out sometime last year, he’d been involved in a car accident that led to the other person stabbing him in the chest in an altercation (and was later shot dead by police who responded at the scene). At that point, he really started to question what his purpose in life was, and after much thought and prayer, he decided to quit his job here and move back to Hong Kong to help care for his parents.

In this day and age, when all you hear about are young people who are doing everything they can to make a name for themselves (sometimes literally) and to get ahead in the rat race, it was so refreshing to hear from someone who’s decided to give up pursuing his own dreams, to live a life of service to others. It gives me hope to meet someone who isn’t self-centered, who isn’t constantly thinking about himself and how he feels and what he wants in life.

The Secret Fan

I came across this book, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, a story about two women who were paired together as “same-olds” (laotong), or lifelong friends. But this is not any ordinary friendship. This is the deepest of friendships, a friend you can go to for love and intimacy and bonding, because in the China of the the story’s timeline, women were not expected to find love in their marriages, where their sole duty is to produce children. These friends would communicate with their own women-language, a secret code only they understood. (Snow Flower and Lily, the two protagonists of the book, passed their secret messages to one another on fans, hence the title of the book.) So whoever came up with the idea of “same-olds” recognized the human need for love and created an alternative for women who would be married into loveless marriages.

It broke my heart to read the synopsis of the story, to understand that there was a time in our culture where love was not expected to exist between man and wife. See, I think deep down, each and every one of us has a need to be needed, and the deepest fulfillment of that need can be found in marriage – the keywords being “can be.” And even though I came from a family with divorced parents, I believe that deep inside, my biggest hope of redemption was that I would find love in my own marriage, that I would prove the world wrong when it was my turn. I imagined a union where my wife and I were the most important beings in each other’s lives.

But.. I’ve been told that in order for a marriage to succeed, there was to be a greater goal outside the marriage. It can’t just be about the two people. At one point I agreed with this, but nowadays I wonder if it’s true. What I see now is two people who give their lives to a common cause, at the expense of their relationship with each other… and at the end of the day, when the cause is over, when the common goal has been achieved, they sit down and realize that between the two of them, nothing exists. It’s an emptiness. The only things that they shared were wrapped up in the common goal; now that it’s over, their common ground was also over.

In many companies, bonds between team members grow as they delve into their project; once that project is over, the team is either assigned to the next project, or reshuffled into different teams for different projects, where new relationships grow. Whichever the case, those relationships exist within the context of the projects. If there were no projects, most likely those relationships would slowly falter and fade – unless those team members had taken time OUTSIDE of the project to get to know each other, and to create a bond outside the foundation of the project.

In the same way, I think husband and wife need to have a strong bond before investing themselves into that common goal, where they find all their time spent working, working, working, with their closest companions being their laptops and social networks and cellphones. Husband and wife need to have a secret fan outside of that project through which they can communicate. Otherwise they’ll find themselves totally wrapped up in the project, and when the project ends, they’ll find themselves itching for another project, because they have nothing to talk about outside of the project, or heaven forbid, itching to reshuffle teams to find new team members.

So what’s your secret fan? (And please, don’t tell me it’s your kids – what an unfair burden to place on them!)

Farcebook

I deactivated my Facebook account a week ago. I’m still alive.

I’m finding that I liked Facebook because it was how people kept in touch with me. I liked getting the notifications, the comments, the likes, the posts on my wall. In the week that I’ve been off Facebook, I’ve literally gone from 20+ social interactions per day to about 2 for the week. And I’m talking about the electronic kind of interaction, not real human social interaction. Because, frankly, I’ve forgotten how to do that kind of interaction.

But seriously. In the week past, I haven’t had much human interaction. Especially at home (unless you count meal times). And it’s getting pretty lonely. I think I’m getting depressed from the lack of interaction. I find myself searching aimlessly online for some contact, but alas, I have to be careful where I look because frankly, I don’t think Wife would understand my browsing eHarmony.com.

I’ve always considered myself an introvert, a quiet one. Almost borderline anti-social, really (you’re probably asking, “THEN WHY ARE YOU A PASTOR?!”). But I think I’m finding out that I’m not as introverted as I think. I think I just didn’t like making the effort of making first contact; I liked to wait for people to come talk to me. I like it when YOU initiate.

I don’t know why I’m writing this. I’m not sure I’ve made a point. Maybe I’m just hoping for some human interaction, that maybe the 1.5 persons who read this blog would comment. By the way, it seems most of my readership come through to this blog through Facebook (minus the handful of you who’ve subscribed) so traffic has been down.

We humans really do crave interaction, whether we realize it or not.

Goodbye, Eric

11am, November 8th. It’s been a month since the shooting that took you away. It still pains me to think about you. I still have all those news articles open in my browser. I see their headlines, but I can’t bring myself to re-read them. “San Jose police identify two weekend homicide victims, both former SJSU students.” The article that ripped my heart apart. But I couldn’t bring myself to close those tabs, either.

But life must go on. See, Eric, I don’t really have anyone to talk to about this. About my feelings. I was told to get past it. So today, on the one-month anniversary of your death, I am choosing to get past it. I will not forget you, but I will go on with my life. I think you would’ve been disappointed to hear that I was in a funk. I will choose to honor my memories of you by reaching out to more people. I believe it’s what you would’ve wanted.

And today… I will finally close those tabs. Goodbye, til we meet again.