My Broken Road

There is a very cheesy line that goes:  When God closes one door, He opens another…

...or something to that effect.  While I tend to roll my eyes at such platitudes [I mean, how appropriate is it to say this to someone who's just lost an almost-fiance?], there is a grain of truth there.

I prefer to recall a line from a Country song by Rascal Flatts: God blessed the broken road that led me straight to you.

I write this post tonight, having just officially accepted Yale Divinity School's offer of admission.

(I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M GOING TO YALE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Being a process-oriented person, I want to remember some of the past "failures" that have led to this recent "success".  [I realize that the dichotomy of success vs. failure is problematic and that the definition of these terms can vary from individual to individual.  Still, to simplify things, I'll use these terms in a general sense…]


In the Spring of 2012, due to a family emergency, I left my beloved community in the San Francisco Bay Area and moved back home to Los Angeles.  It was a terrible time, and for the next year, I woke up every morning missing and aching for the Bay.  There were other things going on in my personal life that made that season of life pretty challenging, things that forced me to dig my roots deep to find my true Source of strength and eventually resulted in me discarding things [feels kind of crude to call ideology and theology"things", but oh well!] that I realized were not as important--or true--as I'd made them out to be.

In many respects, I felt like a failure.  I had failed to attain to standards that I'd set for myself and that, to some degree, others may have set for me.  Meanwhile, some of my friends were entering into pretty exciting and amazing adventures and progressing through stages of life at a good pace.  I felt like a tree that had ceased to bear fruit.  My roots were pushing downward into the dark soil, seeing no sun and feeling no warmth.  My branches hung bravely but barrenly, while other trees in the forest were blooming up a storm.  I pretended to be allergic and sneezed violently.

One of my close friends mailed me this shirt shortly after my move to LA

Last Spring, I received a rejection from a Ph.D program in East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford University.  Having obtained a Master's degree a few years back, I thought it would be interesting to go for a doctorate and study the language of trauma in modern Chinese history (from the Sino-Japanese War to the Cultural Revolution…and everything in between!)  Stanford's department chair kindly told me why I did not get in but commended me on my Master's thesis, which was on the role of music in the Cultural Revolution.  So in May, I took a trip to the Bay Area and met with this kind Department Chair to see how I could improve my chances of getting in the next round.  He was super nice (shared his lunch with me!) but also very honest: chances were slim, but he wanted me to try again.

In the Summer, I did a lot of reflecting.  I explored a different trajectory for life, pondering constantly--but telling very few people about--my thoughts of going to Divinity school.  I prayed, I journaled, and I sketched (art is an amazing way to process subconscious emotions and thoughts!)  But mostly, I raided my brother's bookshelf (he had books on theology and religion) and read and read and read.  In October, I took the GRE, and in November, I started my applications.

And the rest is history.

#MelodramaSillyLlama