painted deserts

A couple of weeks ago, I experienced disappointment.

I remember feeling extremely depressed for a few days—I would wake up at five in the morning and find myself unable to go back to sleep, so I would pace around my apartment, open up a book, read a couple paragraphs, and then close the book again before I resorted to movies to dull the thoughts. My mind tends to collect stray thoughts as it continues functioning, and pretty soon I came up with hypothetical situations about how I would eventually end up panhandling on the sidewalk, about how my life would descend into a downward spiral composed of unhappiness. I imagined myself slowly going insane.

I believe that disappointment is an unavoidable part of life… unavoidable, but not essential. We weren’t designed for disappointment, I don’t think—disappointment is a byproduct of a distant relationship from God, the product of human desires overcoming the future prospects of his glory realized within us. I think disappointment is bound to happen, but then again, so is glory.

In his Epistle to the Philippians, Paul writes within the confines of a jail cell, and after his greetings to the faithful church, he begins with an inexplicable joy that is a complete mismatch of the surroundings he finds himself in:

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

What makes Paul’s new home bearable is his community—a constant and vigilant reminder of Christ’s presence here on earth. And I found this to be true, because even as I was drowning in the depth of my own disappointment and unhappiness, I clung to beautiful community, to my wife and friends, who remind me of what it means to be loved. Glimpses of God are realized in the intimate and beautiful moments of life.

So.

I learned.

You are what you believe, not what you achieve. You are God’s precious and beloved son and daughter, regardless of what college you get into or accolades you receive or instruments you play or talents that you possess. Your very existence on this earth is meaningful. Disappointment is temporary, but true joy is inextinguishable. Experience the joy of being worth much in the eyes of the God who created the universe.

It’s been about a week and a half now since I’ve been married to Grace, and the one perpetual question that I’ve gotten has been, “How’s married life?” Since it’s seriously impossible to answer that question in the expected span of time (2 seconds), I figured I would write some observations down of what I’ve learned so far about marriage.

• Marriage is death. Death to yourself, to your own selfish desires and what you envision for your life. You have to make space for your wife, and part of that requires that the unimportant parts of your life die. So that means I have to clean when I don’t want to, concede, get over myself, love my wife more than I love my own ego.
• Marriage is life. I realize how precious marriage is. It is such a privilege to marry your best friend.
• You only have one wedding. I have friends that are still talking about my wedding. Invite the people you love and make sure you have fun. Also, 200 people is about the perfect number of people to have at a wedding, especially if 100 of those people are middle-aged and will leave early so that the younger people can really cut loose and have fun. (Kidding. Not really.)
• Good community = essential. I think the most memorable part of my wedding was having my groomsmen pray for me. Hearing my brother pray for me was amazing. Having friends who weren’t part of the wedding party but willing to step up and take care of details during the big day really saved us a lot of stress and grief. Having older people pour into my life is essential to gaining wisdom.
• Cash is king. Seriously.
• The stuff you think didn’t really matter actually does matter a lot. Praying together during meals. Learning how to cook. Opening windows when you use the bathroom. Sleep.
• Even if you don’t think you want kids, you will want kids. Seriously.
• God is good. When you think about it, God designed marriage as a glimpse of what it means to be loved by him, which means that everything is intended for our own benefit and joy. If you marry according to his intentions, you really do reap the benefits of a great marriage and friendship with your significant other. So spend time reading, praying, learning… and be humble enough to accept help and rebuke from older people so that you learn in the future about how to have a good marriage. Also, God is really fun. Super, super fun.

Because we’ve moved so many times in the past few years, I had to ask my dad to go through the garage and find the boxes that held all of our old pictures. He ended up only finding one, but the few hours I spent going through the pictures awakened a lot of deeper memories that have faded with the accumulation of time. There is something about shuffling through photographs that are decades old—it makes you remember things that you’ve buried.

• I remember when we were growing up, my brother used to tell me that I was an adopted child, and that Flash (our family dog) was his actual brother. I believed this for about two hours until I asked my parents if it was true.
• I also remember one time our relatives from Korea stayed at our house for vacation. I used to hate my cousin, so when they all fell asleep, I sneaked out of my room at midnight with a Nerf gun and shot him until he woke up.
• The preschool I grew up at was a part of Moorpark Community College—that’s where I learned how to count. I remember that was the first time I had ever used a urinal and feeling sympathy for one of my classmates who couldn’t figure out how to undo his own pants for the urinal.
• My parents used to be so hip when they were young. I mean, they’re still hip.
• My brother and I were really happy as youngsters; when we got to high school, we seemed to perpetually be wearing unhappy expressions on our faces whenever we went on vacations or took family pictures.

One of the great things about nostalgia is that you begin to make sense of what it means to come into your own. Part of being an adult is not only getting a job, having a vision for your life, and picking up skills, but it’s also dissecting what you learned from your parents—keeping what’s worthwhile and discarding the bad. I definitely appreciate that my dad was an avid photographer because, even though there’s a ton of weird shots that he took of the mountains and the oceans (I didn’t have a single photograph of myself at high school graduation) he managed to capture the offbeat moments of life. I love that my mom brought a rice cooker on vacation to Canada so that we could save money on meals.

And the most important thing I realized, more than anything, is this: family is where you are accepted for who you are. Sometimes it feels like a job, where we’re expected to live up to a certain set of standards; sometimes we feel irritated by the idiosyncrasies of our families. But what I realize got instilled in me the most was a sense of worth—knowing that, no matter what, my brother and I were the children of our parents and that we were part of a family, no matter how badly we screwed up.

I’m six days away from making my own family. Surreal.

It’s been about a month since I started living at my new apartment, and I have made many interesting observations:

• I like to clean. I walk through the apartment and I clean everything up from off the floor. I bought a vacuum the other day and vacuumed for about half an hour straight through the entire apartment and I’m already planning on vacuuming again tomorrow.
• I like to cook! I bought a cast-iron skillet — which I wholeheartedly recommend everyone to get — that is compatible with both stove and oven. You sear with the pan on the stove, and then roast it in the oven for a certain amount of time.
• All of my furniture is something Grace or I picked out and I love it.
• Ever since I set up the office (last Wednesday), I have a need to do work. I want to read, write and work on creative things ever since I got it. Unfortunately, I never have time to sit in the office. My day will someday come soon…
• I eat a lot of snacks. A LOT.
• I rarely watch TV anymore unless it’s to watch a movie with Grace.

All this goes to show that there are some things about myself that never became revealed when I was living at home with my parents. There is a new life being revealed as I separate from my parents and journey towards a life of my own. I am finding my own identity and new things to take joy in as I slowly build my home away from home.

Jesus speaks about what it means to have a new life:

Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3)

When you live a new life, it comes with a different set of rules for living. You behave differently: cleaner, simpler, smarter, stronger. You live not as a child, but as an adult — making and taking responsibility for yourselves, taking hold of your new identity with authority as one of God’s children. With each day that passes, there is a growing realization that I am more willing to accept forgiveness, lovingly rebuke, praise with thanksgiving, and live with joy. I am growing closer to God’s intention of me when he imagined me in his heart, a man who is imperfect and knows fully the depth of his imperfection in the light of God’s love and grace. For those who call themselves disciples of this risen Christ, I say: live a new life. Die to yourselves and be resurrected into the intention of the Father’s heart.