How Can I Describe....?

The past seven days have brought me to the brink of what can only be described as a monumental, seismic shift in where I'm heading. Not that I can elucidate exactly what that means, but I feel the change coming like small tremors that signal a continent-cracking earthquake.

I had what has to have been one of the best weeks of my life last week. 지혜 and I spent every night on the phone together. I've never had more open, direct, fun, serious, enjoyable, and rewarding conversations with a woman, and the hours spent conversing and sharing our lives passed like only minutes, and it was on more than one occasion that we realized it was 3, 4, or even 5am and we'd been talking for untold hours.

Friday was my day off. We went to see Brad Pitt's "Benjamin Button" flick and then grabbed some dinner at a Pakistani restaurant. The place was empty except for us and quite cold, so we had to request a heater be brought to us. The food was quite spicy and they played some Bollywood entertainment on the television inside. It made me authentically feel as though I were in Karachi on a cool winter night. After that, she attended a Friday night prayer service at her church while I did my obligatory duty at a monthly school-sponsored event. When we each returned home we talked for another four or five hours on the phone, and finally cut it off half-asleep at 4:30a or so.

Saturday we again met up, this time for a romantic and classy date. We both dressed up a bit and met at the Keimyung University Arts Center to see the musical "Notre Dame de Paris," an adaptation from Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It was my first time to see a live musical, and despite it being exclusively in Korean I enjoyed the show. (Thankfully I had been divinely granted the foresight to read the musical's plot summary the night before, so I could reasonably follow what was happening.) After the curtains closed we went to Outback where we enjoyed a fairly good meal, and then we made our way to the wine bar we'd visited the previous week so we could finish the bottle we'd started. Once there, I found a few games scattered around our candle-lit table: Chinese chess (not checkers), ba-du (a Korean game), and Connect Four. Connect Four, for those that may not know, is a kid's game where you just try to match four colored tokens in a row before your opponent does. So we decided to play this game with the understanding that the winner could ask the loser any three questions they wanted. And, after a few rounds of playful and curious questioning, we got serious about the game and about asking each other the tough questions that people often try to hide. So, we spent the next few hours playing the most competitive Connect Four imaginable. Spectators would've thought it was an Olympic contest or a match between to chess grandmasters had they observed the seriousness with which we applied ourselves. It was a really, really fun night.

Sunday I went to church for the 1pm service and 3p Bible study. The translation at the service was better than before and I could follow the sermon fairly well. At the Bible study one member brought pizzas, and since I somehow hadn't eaten thus far that day, I dug in quite eagerly and sat afterwards most contentedly. We talked about obeying and honoring our parents from Ephesians 1, and it was interesting to see how the different cultures present (Korean, Armenian, and American) all approached that issue. Following the service I went grocery shopping and then went to Jason's house for dinner and to catch up. We shared some fried chicken and talked while watching soccer highlights from Korea's Park Ji Sun (a player for Manchester United). I got a call later that evening from 지혜 asking to meet up, so I took a bus to a different part of town and we had some ice cream and chatted til 2am. All the other customers had long left by the time we took off. I guess I never really thought it was possible to carry on conversation for so many consecutive days, but I'm happy to be wrong.

I guess I should summarize these happenings for anyone who's reading. Instead, I'll post a poem I wrote this weekend in the hopes that you can ascertain something for yourself.

How to best describe the way I feel?

Perhaps like an orange stripped

of its protective peel?

Or am I more like a book with its cover ripped?

 

Maybe I'm like a safe, unlocked and open,

or a rose bush without even a single thorn,

or a knight whose excalibur is broken,

or a newborn baby, no clothing worn.

 

For now I've no defenses, no protection,

nothing at all now left to hide.

I'm open to your full inspection,

even those things that I'd buried deep inside.

 

And all those experiences I at one time had-

what I did and didn't do-

all my decisions, the good and the bad,

I've shared them entirely with you.

 

Now looking back on what's been done,

I see He's been orchestrating and priming

through battles lost and battles won

His perfect and pristine timing,

 

So that now I can see

what I know to be true-

God has guided and led me

directly to you.