Tonight is my last night at the Mountain St house. I am oddly calm.
I often recall my first memory of LA. After I was in awe of the beautiful city lights (that actually turned out to be just the light sculptures as LAX), and the confusion of so many Koreans in K-town, I arrived at this house in Pasadena with one large suitcase that was supposed to contain my entire life. I unpacked hastily, to furnish these while walls as my own, and delighted in what I called the “french windows, just like the Sound of Music.” I was reluctant to explore the area too much, because of the reality that when I found something, I would have no one to share it with.
I thought it would be like living in some romantic comedy where clueless girl comes to the big city and finds love as well as a quirky sidekick to live life with, and then at they end they sing a song (I may be loosely basing this off of Coyote Ugly). And after three months, I thought, where’s my quirky, loyal friend? Where’s the love of my life? Why aren’t we singing?
I need to be honest that LA has not been easy for me. It has turned my black and white life- the clean lines of the young Christian experience- into shades of gray and left me desolate for a few years. What I saw as purity, I now acknowledge as immaturity. There have been moments where I wanted to pack up my suitcase, cut off all ties and buy a one-way ticket home. I am immeasurably grateful that I didn’t.
This room has been my refuge in so many ways. It’s been the barrier between myself and the outside world, however harsh it appeared. The walls have cheered with me and absorbed my grief. In everything, I’m leaving this same room, and my life is exploding with abundance. Box after box of material things and rich with relationships and emotional growth.
All the trials have been consistently asking me to beg God for Kingdom perspective.
I thought that my life would be complete once I lived with good friends and had a job doing what I love, and it’s surreal that in a few weeks, I will have both. When I came here, I was Jonah, kicking and screaming, and all angry. And God allowed a plant to grow to save him from discomfort, and Jonah was glad. I am so blessed for the last three years, no matter how difficult. I came here thinking success meant my happiness, being even in a time of abundance I am stunned, undeserving and humbled by its presence and of God’s grace.
“Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. ” Jonah 4:6
