wonderment

Just when you thought that one episode of your life had closed forever, not because there was a proper closure, but because time had already helped heal the wounds, something happens, like right out of a Korean drama serial. It’s the closure you’d been looking for all this while, but it happens with such a strange and comical twist you can’t help but laugh at how humourous God is.

18 months ago, I met someone whom I absolutely fell in love with. He was tall, dark, kinda cute, with a buffed body and strong. He had such an adorable lopsided smile that made you want to kiss him, and a heart for wayward youths that he would defer a semester at university just so he could set up a refuge centre for them. Not only that, he was a national athlete for one particular gruelling sport. I didn’t know him as a person then - I knew him from the TV, radio and newspapers, and me thinks I began to fall in love with a projected image rather than a real person.

Anyway, like all girls who dream to meet their Prince Charming, I hoped to meet him but I wasn’t all that crazy about him yet because he was a media hero and plainly out of reach for me.

However, as dramatic stories go, one day, an opportunity came along for me to meet him!

I happened to put my name in a volunteer pool and one day they called me up for a position as a volunteer teacher. At that time I didn’t know it was his centre, I just went.

So you can imagine the utter surprise that I had when I saw him doing the presentation - I had admired him for so long and here I see him in the flesh! Later he called us in for an interview … When it came to my turn, we talked and I found out he went to church! *DING! DING! DING!* You know what I mean, you meet someone you’ve admired for so long, but you don’t know if he/she is a Christian. You promised God, yourself and everyone who would care that you’ll only date Christians, so you expect this person to be Christian since he/she is doing this sort of work, but you don’t want to assume, so you ask hoping and praying that you’ll get an affirmative answer and when you do, your imagination goes into overdrive ….

Hehe .. .the whole tale is very long and it’ll just detract from the real story here so here’s a quick summary: Something happened and the volunteer thing didn’t materialise. I was disappointed of course, I thought I would have something to do with my time and … *ahem* of course, get to know him more. However, I also knew that more job commitments were coming right along, so not having to volunteer might have been better for me. I worked out my feelings with God and things went hunky dory … until ….

UNTIL…..

I got an email from him, inviting me out to “get to know me as a friend”, blah blah blah …

I was checking my mail at work while a friend droned on about nothing in particular and up to this day he doesn’t know it, but I was hyperventilating when I saw that email. It was a dream come true and I couldn’t believe my eyes!

We started hanging out, I began expecting his SMSes (which came at all the right times) but there were occasions where he did or said things that made me wonder about how much he was committed to purity or chivalry. The one thing that irked me the most was how he made such a big fuss about how much I was paid at the station. Like hello, it’s my choice?? Those things nagged at me incessantly but I kept brushing them off - blind love does that to you, I guess.

Things came to a head one April Fool’s day. A day never stood out as painfully humiliating as that day. Won’t say much about what transpired but by the end of it all, I was furious - I do not appreciate someone who initiated so much telling me that he actually has a girlfriend but because his parents don’t like her, so he has to “look for an alternative”.

I slammed down the phone without saying bye and he never called me again.

Sleep came easily that night. I tired myself out so much that the moment I hit the pillow, I fell asleep.

But the subsequent days weren’t easy to pass. Each time I passed by the centre, either on my way to school/work or back, I would turn away, bury my face in a book or crane my neck to look the other way. I had to walk faster past old familiar places where we spent time hanging out, before the old feelings hit. I kept bitching to anyone who would hear, but the more I did that, the deeper the hurt embedded itself in my aching heart.

Then, I began wishing I would bump into him accidentally, after all, we stayed just 5 minutes from each other. I dreamed that he would give me a proper answer so I could just close this rather embarrassing period of my life and walk on.

I prayed and asked but no matter how I looked or mistook other people for him, for 6 whole months, I never saw him.

This April marked 1 year of not seeing him and by then I had pretty much gotten over it. Yes, I still wanted to meet him to find out how he was doing, but now, I could bring myself to walk past those familiar places again.

Yet, I still didn’t meet him.

I moved away in July, now a half hour bus ride from whereever he was. He slowly faded away - just a reminder that I was once very silly before.

Work and ministry began filling up my days and then CCIS 2005 started.

On the second day of CCIS, I was just leaving the command post at Taka Civic Plaza to take the underpass back to Lucky Plaza to bring some of the groups over to set up. My watch read “18:27″, I had to hurry because I promised the leaders I would be there at 18:30.

There were many people at the entrance of the underpass but as I approached, the sea of people suddenly parted, leaving a lone figure standing there talking on his mobile.

My feet wouldn’t take another step. It was him - looking fresher, cleaner, stronger than ever before.

He finished his call, turned and saw me. A smile spread over his face like nothing ever happened at all. I smiled too, the only response I could muster I guess.

I took a deep breath and strode up to him. He remembered me but forgot mostly everything else. Didn’t matter , I’d rather he not remember.

Some small talk later, I mustered enough gumption to ask,

“So you’re here shopping with your girlfriend?”

“Girlfriend? - Oh you mean my wife? Yeah, she’s at Cineleisure with my sis and they’re meeting me here.”

“Your wife? You’re married?”

“Yeah we got married 4 months ago.”

“I see.”

My handphone suddenly rings, jolting me back into some sort of reality. It’s one of those gancheong spider group leaders reminding me that I’m very very late already.

“Look I gotta get back to work, send my regards to your wife and have a merry Christmas.”

“See you.”

And I pick up my heels and run.

Anyone who saw me in the underpass that day must have thought that this crazy lass with her ears plugged in to both a walkie talkie and the cellphone, her hair tied in a messy bun, makeup-less, wearing a bright orange t-shirt - made crazier because she ran across the underpass laughing like a nut.

Surprisingly, my heart still beat at 88/58 (after the running, no). No matter what I said in my brain, I can’t tell you right now what I felt, but it was definitely NOT infatuation. No more infatuation. Even if you paid me a million dollars, this guy is totally so off.

Drama? You betcha, but it’s one of the things that happened this CCIS that made me realise that sometimes things don’t happen the way you want it to, nor does it happen during the time slot you give it. They just happen at the right time, sometimes in the middle of a busy period, just when you thought you already settled everything.

I walked on already, but God granted my request of seeing him well and now I can finally bury the last memory of that time.

What a weird twist! But oh so funny! Suddenly all the impossible stuff in CCIS didn’t seem so bad now that God could actually arrange such a meeting.

You don’t believe? You better believe it.