REMEMBER WHEN . . .

... one of my best friends in high school, J, had a drinking problem and R and I had to intervene and everything was alright, sort of, but then I started dating the guy that J had been in love with since middle school, and then nothing was alright, and then the guy and I broke up, and I thought that life just could NOT get any more complicated?

... the slimy counselor at camp in Korea harassed a campmate of mine, and the police were called and the counselor was fired, and my campmate went into shock and we had to speed her to the hospital and had to sing "Oh, Donna" to her while her eyes were rolling back into her head, just to keep her sort of awake, and then all of us older kids spent hours in Very Important Meetings with the senior counselors and instructors about damage control and proper behavior, and I thought that life just could NOT get any more dramatic?

... we were in Home Economics class in the 7th grade, and had to put ourselves into groups of 5 for the cooking & baking portion of the semester, and I told a sort of nerdy, smelly, awkward girl who was on the fringes of my group of friends, "We already have five people, you're not needed here," and her heart dropped into her shoes as tears filled her eyes, and I immediately felt so bad and remained haunted by my awfulness through the rest of middle school and high school to the point where when her brother died in a car accident during our senior year, I could not even approach her to offer my condolences because I felt too small-hearted to express my sadness to her, and I thought that I just could NOT hate myself anymore?

... Omma's father in Korea died, then 11 months later, Appa's mother in Korea died, and each time, I had to put them on airplanes across the oceans and imagine them flying through 16 hours of sadness, and then the next year, the new pharmacy they bought was destroyed by fire right before they were to move in and re-open for business, and so for three months they were out of work with nothing to do and were so stressed out and trying so hard but almost in vain to rely on God's faithfulness and love, and I thought that I just could NOT be any more heartbroken?

... I was sitting in the dark in my lonely, hateful Boston apartment in the middle of my first year in law school, hating my life, hating my classes, hating my classmates, hating my professors, wondering if I had the gumption to quit something, mulling whether I really wanted to apply to other sorts of graduate programs and whether it was too late to take the G.R.E., imagining the reaming I would get in all of my classes the next day because I understood not a single word of what I had just spent hours reading and studying, and I thought life could just NOT be more hopeless?

Well.

Life just goes to show me that there's always more MORE. Those days -- middle school, high school, college, even law school six years ago -- were the GOOD OLD DAYS, they really were. Man, did I have it easy. Boy, was life simple. Yikes, did I not appreciate it enough for what it really was.

Now. Now is when things get rough. Now is when I know what hopelessness, heartbreak, sadness, drama, complication, self-hatred really are. Now is when I actually have to face these things, wrestle with them and forbid them to take me over. Now is when I have to figure out who I really am, and what my place in this world, in this community, in these relationships, truly is.

This is the real stuff.