How to Save a Life

"I feel like there's this bridge. I'm on one side, you're on the other side, and in the middle is Jesus."

A little over three years ago Yujie said this to me. I still remember the conversation that we had from about midnight to 4am. We threw everything out there that had been bothering us for the past year. It wasn't easy and my hands were shaking like no ones business as I would wait to hear what he had to say. That night was the culmination of about a school-year's worth of smart comments and witty shots at each other. It was a year of word gymnastics and fights over morality and justice. It was a year of back-and-forth bantering and bickering over what is worth living for. It was a year where we both made good decisions and terrible decisions. It was a downward spiraling relationship between two, once inseperable, best friends.

Yujie was my best friend. He was the kid who sat in front of my math class, dead asleep with his buttcrack showing for everyone in the back to see. He had an interesting fashion sense of lime green, yellow, and orange windbreakers. He never said much in class, in fact, he slept through all of it and somehow always managed to get an A on his way out. I don't remember exactly how we became best friends but I remember we started talking on AIM; mass high school chat rooms were really the hubs for meeting people. Our school was small, and with a competitive admissions process, every month kids would get kicked out for not keeping up with the "Competitive Academy Standard." By the grace of God I was capable of staying.

Yujie was very different from everybody else. He had his own opinion on things and flaunted it pridefully. He knew what he believed and could articulately and aggressively explain why, alongside 10 reasons why everyone else's way of doing whatever they did was a terrible idea. He didn't believe in God and neither did I really, but he knew exactly why and was more than willing to fight for his beliefs or lack thereof. He was an avid watcher of good anime and had access to anything he wanted through his bootlegging uncle. If you ever went to his house you would notice his towering bookshelf of manga and novels. He read. A lot. He read almost too much for a high school freshman and he was a real political scientist. He lost his father 2 years before high school and I think since then he just made a lot of his own decisions. He didn't like bandwagons. That's probably a bandwagon of its own, but we were so young and unaware of that, that even today it's still almost admirable as to how much of an independent, intellectual thinker he was. I admired his character and, he having so many characteristics that I wanted, I sought to become his friend.

It didn't take very long.

At first, Yujie became a lot like something of a big brother to me in so many ways. He always hooked me up with some good anime and was like a walking library of reviews on good books, movies, and games to play. Especially games. He's Chinese and he knew I had some Chinese heritage as well so he would always teach me different cultural things and buy me souvenirs from his trips to China. It was always fun talking with him because he had interesting ideas in his head at all times. There's no doubt that he knew how different he was and he bubbled over with pride in the way that he spoke and carried himself. However despite his pride, he was never too high-minded to get some sushi at the mall or relax at Starbucks with his friends. And that's all I ever did in high school really. We had a nice group of friends and we kept each other pretty entertained for our four-year career. Time went by for a good two years and we had a solid routine of living: hangouts at each others houses, LAN parties, sleepovers, malling, Six Flags once in a while, girlfriend drama, poker nights, PC bang/Norebang, and lots of eating in between everything. We've all had our fair share of differences and fights. Some issues were larger than others. However there's nothing bad in the past that we don't laugh about now.

Junior year came and something big happened. A majority of people in our group were saved somehow. God really used Asian Young Life and other circumstances to change people's hearts and it was an amazing thing. Almost everyone except Yujie and I were talking about Jesus. We went to some youth group gatherings and I personally didn't get it all completely. Personally, I feel like the youth ministry wasn't being run right at all but back then it just seemed like a social club and ironically it turned Yujie and I off. I wanted and was seeking something different. If I wanted to do silly things and watch movies then I would find my own silly things to do and watch my own movies on my own time. There was this one night where we sat in a circle and shared our life stories and that night was very powerful. It was so...real and different and I felt like it was going somewhere. But none of the ministry leaders followed up with any of us. They seemed primarily concerned with the kids who already had a membership with the church through their parents. That made it seem as if we were like a tumor on the ministry with an overabundance of baggage, so we left.

The summer that I went to my first Asian Young Life camp was great. Camp was in August, so there was still about three months of summer and I spent it well. Yujie and I hung out all the time that summer. I had work and every Friday we would take the bus together to chill at the mall, eat, and check out whatever was new and interesting. It seemed like there really always was something to see. After the mall, I'd sleep over at his house and we'd just talk about life and death and what we think is going to happen in the end. We were both something like Darwinists, but had some spiritual ideas about the afterlife because of all of the anime we consumed. If we weren't talking about theology, we were either telling ridiculous jokes about his odd-job uncle who dates with his web-cam or eating. It was a good summer I remember. It was a good summer.

Yujie totally despised the idea that I was interested in going to Asian Young Life camp and that I thought there was anything interesting about Brian Hall (the area director/our sociology teacher). He was convinced that I would either have a terrible time and hate it or have a terrible time, get raped, and then hate it. I wasn't sure. To be honest, I feel like in my life before Christ, the only independent and good decision I ever made was going to that camp even though everyone thought I shouldn't. To this day I say it was the best week of my life and Christ met me there. I don't believe that we can pinpoint a specific day when God regenerates our heart, but I know that I came back home from that week of camp with something and I wanted God badly. It was the freest feeling I had ever had.

In my head, I always say that when God saved me, he really gave me a "warm welcome" in the kingdom. This was sarcasm for the fact then when I did get home from camp, I pretty much lost my best friend.

Yujie hates God. Yujie hates the church. Yujie hates Brian Hall, Asian Young Life, and any event that they put on. Its absolutely fine that he hated Young Life. I honestly feel like that wasn't his crowd or a good situation for him. He's the guy who wants to sit down at Starbucks and talk, not water ski and run around throwing buckets of powder on people, singing "Brown-Eyed Girl". He doesn't even know that song. He came to America very late so he doesn't do a good job at acting over-charismatic about things. That's probably one thing I still love the most about him.

To put it bluntly, Yujie did not like whatever was different about me and definitely didn't like all of the changes in my life that occurred thereafter. He didn't like the shift in focus of my Xanga entries, or the new people I would hang with, or the only things I'd like to talk about. We still had a friendship. We were still close I think. We still hung out like always. Our whole group did. But I did feel different and I felt an unsettled hunger for a break from this lifelong repetition of chasing temporary satisfaction. It wasn't working. I yearned for change. I didn't know what it had to look like at all, and I was very on-edge and grumpy about it, but I knew I needed God.

I definitely feel like in these new shoes, I kicked some people with them. I feel like in the grief and frustration I had with the life that I had been living so far, I expressed a high level of urgency to change not only with myself, but also with my friends. I got into a lot of verbal fights and I feel like I was very self-righteous and judgmental. I see it now and didn't see it at all then. However, despite my mislead judgment, I loved my friends so much and I was on fire. There's no other expression for it.

So we're here on that night. It's midnight. I was supposed to go to Taiwan that summer, but my parents couldn't afford it at the time, so I wrote a sad Xanga entry about it. My friend from Taiwan commented saying how awesome Taiwan is and how I'll be able to go some day. Yujie, a traditionalist mainland Chinese person, snaps back saying that Taiwanese people are subhuman, ran away from China, and don't deserve to speak Mandarin, ultimately making my comments wall a war. I IMed him to tell him to stop and he said something that really...intrigued me:

"Sometimes people are just too stubborn to understand the truth, even when it's right in front of them."

I remember the statement exactly. That's when I said.

"Yeah. You're telling me? That's ironic."

That's when he said "I like what you did right there," and we had a big discussion. I...have talked with Yujie about God a lot. I have annoyed him so much with talk about God and although it sounds like all I did was yell and argue...I love Yujie so much. We've sat down and talked. He was my closest brother in the whole world. He knew me almost better than I knew myself. Do you think I was trying to push him away? I wanted him to have what I had so badly. I could fill jars with tears that have fell from 2005 to now. We talked that whole night about who God was and how I knew he had been thinking about God and how I knew the nights that he prayed and that I knew he was searching like me. I kept telling him, "Yujie, we are best friends! I spent every single day with you this whole summer! I couldn't have just gone crazy in this one week that I spent away. Just....please...PLEASE trust that I know what I'm saying about God. Please believe me."

I kept trying so hard to convince him that they weren't brainwashing me and that there is more to this life than this. Somehow I got him to say yes to going to Young Life camp the following summer. That was...well..I don't know what it was because he had the same, if not, a crazier week than I did during my year. He heard the gospel message, testimonies, saw videos, asked questions, read a book, had discussions with me and all of our friends in our cabin...he didn't get it. I didn't get it. I...said everything I could say. Nothing more could leave my lips that he hasn't heard before. He heard the hearts of true men and women of God. We hashed it out every night before we went to bed. He read about the anatomy of unbelief in Case for Faith by Lee Strobel. He saw people's heart change. He listened to his friends share the love and word of God with him. Not a spark of light. I didn't know what to do.

Yujie and I don't really talk that often anymore. There isn't any animosity or anything of that nature. He just moved far away to some town that I don't know. On top of that, college started so he went to Rutgers and I went to The College of New Jersey. That was about two years ago. I see him a couple of times when our group hangs out over breaks and holidays. He's the same Yujie. Lazy as ever; another characteristic I love and not even sarcastically. He doesn't do much inventive thinking anymore. He plays a lot of World of Warcraft and lives in the basement of a townhouse with his mom and grandmother. I don't really know what he thinks about anymore, but I bet he's made some new friends on his campus and they're having fun here and there. I miss the old days often, but life is different now and that's just how it is.

I was listening to Tim's iTunes library last week and "How to Save a Life" by The Fray came on. I have to be honest in saying that every time it does, it's hard holding my tears in as I listen to:

"Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend somewhere along in the bitterness. And I could have stayed up with you all night had I known how to save a life."

God gets what he wants. And moreover he says who gets to know him and who doesn't. But I don't know who is going where and all I know is that there is nothing more I can say to Yujie anymore. Not because of emotional distance, but really just because of our current circumstances, locations, and plans. I'm not sure what the future looks like and I'll continue to love him because I can't refrain from laughing at our crazy/awesome history together, but he has been separate even from our group of mutual friends who did go to Rutgers.

I blame my pride, lack of knowledge, and inadequacy for Yujie not truly knowing who God is. It's foolish, I know. Every time I read a new Christian book or learn something new about God, I always think "If only I knew this before." I know. I'm making it about me. I know God's in control, and I'm an imperfect vessel so I mean now I can take that understanding anywhe.....I'm not going to think about it.

All I know is that today was a special day. I got baptized and it was actually special to me. It was a proclamation and the greatest of its kind I feel. Ever since the fights and stuff with Yujie, it's always been hard sharing the gospel for me. I don't know why. I just link it to all of these fearful feelings I had when I was younger. But now I feel different. I mean I guess I shouldn't since I always had the Holy Spirit, but I do anyway. I feel like I belong to God even more than I did before because in some way I got to respond to his call to me through this baptism.

Sometimes I feel like throwing my arms up and saying "Why God? Why not Yujie too? It's more glory for you! More praise for you! I don't understand why it is absolutely necessary that this one guy has to not understand." I don't know what I'm talking about though. His way has been the best for everything else, so I guess that's just how it is for now.

It feels good documenting that mess.