Saturday, December 12, 2009

Restoration: WTF Moment in Asian Hottie Fandom

So, last night --through a series of web connections and links- I came upon some startling sad news about my crush -- my hottie from a particular pop boy band. I'm actually feeling strange mentioning his name because my fan relationship with him is so dang problematic. He is beautiful, plain and simple. Although there are many handsome men, few men exist that are so beautiful... and even fewer with the strange flaky mixture of woundedness and exuberance as this guy. And of course this is the type of guy I've always fallen for.

I had a problem with him because when an interviewer asked him if he had any non-Asian celebrities he liked, he said that he "prefers Asians generally." I felt deeply wounded at that. How can a modern singer not like even one non-Asian celebrity. It felt very small-minded and country-bumpkinesque. It's very hard to love a celebrity who may or may not be prejudiced against you. Especially when the celebrity's comment reminds you of a past white boyfriend who dumped you with the great line: "I can't fall in love with you. I just can't. Although I feel myself doing so, I know it's probably because I'm not sane. Because for a white guy to love a black girl in this society only shows there's something wrong with me." I dealt with the pain of this kind of rejection by mentioning it in my YA onion.

But even so, I reminded myself that my hottie was young and that he would get over that smallminded inability to like minority celebs -- maybe. Although hurt I continued to watch his group and I really started liking these boys so much -- as if they were my children. The fact that so many of them had had such sad lives really connected with me as well.

Anyway, last night I found out this hottie's biological mother had to give him up when he was 4. Really sad. He just got to know his bio mother again when he was around 20. Now the're reunited. Well, I had always sensed a certain sadness about him, that. Charisma is made up of so many things and sometimes we see sad things in certain famous people that we can't quite put our hand on... but it's hard to put our hand on. All sorts of sadness with that group. No wonder i like him. It was very unsettling though. Kinda wish I'd never learned about it because it reminds me of so many heartaches.

I found out and within ten minutes I was lying in bed...stunned and weepy. Why?

Well, human life is often made up of we humans blame-storming and trying to figure out where some great grief came from, what some weird emotion actually is, why we're feeling a certain emotion we can't quite describe. We humans are so wounded and so full of pain we never know where to begin to ascribe emotions. So there I was.

The problem could be global -- maybe I was just weighed down with the sorrows that happen to people in this life -- all the poor women who have had to abandon or give up their children after men leave. All the sad children without mothers to love them.

Maybe the grief concerned only him-- maybe I was sad because I wanted to comfort him and knowing him he wouldn't accept it because he was prejudiced against me. (Remember how I think.) Maybe his grief was what made his songs and talent so great.

Maybe it was my own issue. My father had abandoned my sister and me. He's alive still and we're nothing to him. My mother had to leave us with Jamaican relatives when she came to the US to earn the yankee dollar. Weird uncles, aunts, and cruel grandfather. Separation always hurts me. Especially when little kids are separated from people. Even before that, when I was around two or three my grandmother, Egangelist Ellis, stole me from my mother. She didn't want my father to stay with my mother because she said "my mother was too dark" and so she simply stole me. My mother had to search for me for three days. Then there was my half-sister who said my father loved her more than he loved me because I was too dark. (She's half East Indian.)

Whatever the issue or the source of the pain, I was lying in bed miserably on the point of tears...but not quite crying. Hubby came upstairs and I told him all my heart. He said, "Well, why not pray for him? Maybe that's what God wants you to do. Maybe that's why He led you through that circuitous route to find the information."

I said, "This band has a zillion fans. They have the largest fan base in the world. What is my prayer? I'm sure others of their fans are praying for them."

Hubby said, "Maybe, maybe not. And who knows if they know how or what to pray for."

So I prayed for him. I prayed for myself. I prayed for older son. I prayed for younger son. I prayed for God -- who is in all time-- to touch us in the past and to be there and to heal me as a little girl, and younger son when we had to leave him in the hospital incubator, and older son when we had to leave him when I went to the hospital. I bound the spirits of rejection, abandonment, inferiority complex. Then I went to sleep.

I went to bed. I won't say if I slept or not. In the morning, I heard the Lord say to me: Restoration. Isn't this restoration?

It just came like that.

I realized I'd written about restoration in Onion. I had written that when we're restored we become healed but we don't return to what we should've been if the bad things hadn't happened. I had written that even after restoration we carry all the bad we've had to endure. This young hottie now has two mothers. Both mothers and sons have had their kind of pains, angers, hurts, wounded. But now this kid has two sets of parents and two families. He is restored. Yet the past still remains. I think God wants to tell me that that is how restoration works. When my younger son is perfectly healed and begins speaking, he won't immediately turn into a normal kid who had never been mute or sickly. No, he'll be a kid who is healed and talking but he'll also be a kid who has known both the isolation of being different and he will understand the love of two parents who have done so much for him. So many times when Christians talk about restoration, they ignore the fact that the painful past is still interwoven inside our restored happiness. No matter how plentifully God restores. We can't forget what we've gone through. It gives us a heart of compassion for those with sick children and for those who have suffered terribly...and that will be wonderful.

I don't know why God is telling me about the true nature of restoration. I hope it's because our family is ready to be restored and will be soon. But I also got up thinking of Heaven. In that restoration, abandoned children will be restored to their families. Children who weren't totally kind to their parents will be restored to them. We'll be restored in ways we don't understand. And yet, God will wipe away the tears from our eyes. God says the former things will not come to mind. And yet, the effects of the former things will have affected us and our future eternal work. God does all things well.

Isaiah 25:8
He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it.
Isaiah 25:7-9 (in Context) Isaiah 25 (Whole Chapter)
Revelation 7:17
For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.
Revelation 7:16-17 (in Context) Revelation 7 (Whole Chapter)
Revelation 21:4
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
Revelation 21:3-5 (in Context) Revelation 21 (Whole Chapter)

1 comment:

J. M. Butler said...

Perhaps one of the most incredible things about God is the way in which He brings restoration. He's incredibly creative in that regard. I pray that He brings full restoration swiftly and completely.

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