The Real Story of Jonah

For those of us who grew up in the church, the story of Jonah is typically reserved for the children.  God told Jonah to go to Nineveh to preach.  Jonah was bad and said no and got on a boat instead.  God caused a big storm.  The other people on the boat were scared and threw Jonah into the water.  The storm stopped.  A great fish swallowed Jonah.  Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days.  Jonah prayed.  The fish vomited Jonah onto dry land.  Jonah went to Nineveh.  Nineveh listened and repented.  God forgave the city.

One of my new year's resolutions is to finally complete my new year's resolutions from years past of reading through the Bible.  It has been decided -- 2017 is going to be the year.  I mean, I have a daily set time and everything this go-around.  Doing this thing for real.

So I'm chugging along in my handy chronological reading plan on the Youversion Bible app, and I come across the book of Jonah.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy reading, I think to myself.  (Well, other than the terrifying ocean parts with the giant creature and all.)

The tale culminates in chapter 3, where Jonah learns his lesson and makes the trek over to Nineveh, where he does his rendition of The Ring's "SEVEN DAYS" phone call.  

"Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"

I've seen people make claims like this all the time, most notably yelling on the drag or on dirty 6th during my time in Austin, but this time was different.  "And the people of Nineveh believed God.  They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them."

Eventually even the king heard about this warning from Jonah, and he decided to follow the sackcloth fashion trend and issued a decree that the nobody in the entire city was allowed to eat or drink.  Instead, everyone was to "call out mightily to God" and "turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands."

Why?  "Who knows?  God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish."

And spoiler alert, it worked!  God saw what they did and relented of the impending disaster.

Cue the applause.  What a fun, gift-wrapped story.  Its TV show equivalent would probably be Full House, and this is where Danny Tanner would explain the moral lesson of the episode to an innocent Michelle, Stephanie, and DJ with thoughtful music playing in the background.

But then I reach chapter 4, which isn't really covered in the kid's version of the story I was accustomed to.  At a time when everything should've been splendid, you know, with the city of Nineveh being saved and all, Jonah throws a fit.  He is PISSED.  He didn't care about the city's change of heart.  He didn't care about the sackcloth.  He didn't care about the fast.  He didn't care about the people.  The city should burn anyway!  He was angry at God's compassion.

I would be more disappointed with Jonah if this story wasn't such a compelling display of the human condition.  You can blame it on social media or the millenials or whatever you want, but it's becoming abundantly clear that this world has a selfishness problem.

I think this issue rears its ugly head in many different forms.  I just can't figure out if it's human nature or if it's something we've taught ourselves.

Sometimes it comes across as jealousy.  Why is it that when someone is doing something awesome, one of the first responses people have is "jealous"?  Are we prewired to not be able to just be happy for good things happening to other people without inserting ourselves into the situation?

Other times it comes across as a perverse sense of justice.  Just like Jonah, we tend to think that we are better people than the rest of the messed-up people around us.  As if it made sense for God to show mercy to Jonah, but the 120,000 people in Nineveh were beyond saving.

So what's the solution?  Can we mandate selflessness?  Can we force sympathy?  Maybe the world just needs a giant dose of self-awareness, until finally, someday, we realize that we are all Nineveh.

Why I Didn't March.

I write this out of guilt, self-preservation, frustration, and mostly insecurity. Cool, glad that's out there.

Yesterday, as most of my peers were standing for something under the sun, holding peaceful and beautiful protests in various cities, I was having a casual Saturday enjoying the 50+ degree weather in Chicago. I went to a park with a few friends for the simple purpose of being outside. Just a couple miles South of me, more than 200,000 people gathered in downtown Chicago for the Women's March, taking a stand for various things a day after Trump's inauguration.

On Instagram and Snapchat, I followed posts and stories of close friends at rallies across the country -- friends in Houston, friends in Kansas City, sister in Denver, and neighbors in Chicago. A dear friend responded to a snap of mine asking, "Why aren't you at a rally?!"

Well shit -- why wasn't I at a rally? Didn't I care? Do I support Trump? Am I a bad person? Am I a rapist? Where was my decency? I'm an ass sometimes, but have I stooped that low?

The real answer why I wasn't at a rally: I just wasn't. Same reason why literally millions of others who are anti-Trump and care about women's rights, minorities, etc. weren't at a rally -- they just weren't. They had plans set beforehand. They didn't have plans, but ended up doing something else. They went for a run. They had errands to take care of. They were out of town. They were hungry. They were too far from a rally. It wasn't kid-friendly. They thought it was just for women. They slept in. They were lazy. They don't like crowds.

During the day I felt like I had missed a part of history. And I did. But I miss parts of history every day, some events which are easy for me to take part in. What affected me the most was not that I missed out, but that I felt guilty for having abandoned an apparent civic duty. Barring a valid excuse, like work or emergency, there was an expectation (perhaps self-conjured) that developed as the day went on, that someone of my demographic should be at a rally.

I understand that sentiment. It's like, how can you claim you're a Houston Rockets fan and you don't even watch Game 7 of a playoffs round, and instead you go play mini-golf? But it's not that simple. A single march, albeit an incredibly symbolic one, is not necessarily akin to a game 7. Whereas the success of a basketball team is adequately measured in wins and losses, and the avid support of a team requires at least some participation in critical games, the fight for rights isn't so basic. It's diminishing to think that participation alone at a single event serves as proxy for genuine support. Though yesterday was indeed a success in terms of sheer number, the absence of those who are like-minded and able to attend was not a failure. Progress is incremental, and this battle is multifaceted. There are countless fronts on which this struggle is fought, every day. Yesterday's rallies were not the beginning to something amazing, but instead a continuation of progress that momentarily manifested itself in a very visible, popular way.

It was a beautiful day, one that I chose to experience away from the main event, and one that I will remember for years. However, I will look back upon Trump's presidency and I will not see my absence yesterday as singular indication of my support or disdain. I know where I stand and how I fight -- I trust we all do, no matter how active we are in the spotlight moments.

The Brats Are Coming!

There's a Millennial Crisis. It is real, pervasive, and is mostly annoying. It makes me cringe when I hear it in others, and sometimes also in myself.

The crisis can hit at anytime in the first 10 years of a millennial's working career after college/grad school. It is brought on by steady achievement in the workplace and a favorable world environment (which we are in right now). This Earth is ripe for Millennials. Success stories of like-minded peers making it to the top via unconventional ways (i.e. NOT the corporate ladder) are increasingly close-by: "Oh yea, totally. I know a friend of a friend who made it big."

Everyone is an entrepreneur, and if you don't own a business, you can at least be entrepreneurial in your career. Ever heard that line? It's a wonderful mindset that is empowering, but it also inflates importance. It waters the seed in those who assume they are due more. The fantastical stories of tech startups are now real and close enough to touch (just join a coding school, duh). Just. The next step to modern stardom is just in front of you. Take it, you'd be lazy not to.

Its explicit pursuit of self-preservation is nowadays widely accepted, and even encouraged. There is no longer an assumed loyalty to a vocation. Dedication lasts as long as the attention does. I cringe when I witness it because I think it is generally a detrimental thing. Not only does it create an overly-optimistic and dreamlike view of the path to success, but it forces institutions to react accordingly. Every man for himself, survival of the fittest -- yet everyone believes they are the most fit. And when they don't feel valued, then it's time to pick up and leave rather than seeing the situation for maybe what it is -- the truth: you are not the fittest, and that's okay.

The Millennial Crisis doesn't settle for being a role player. You are a superstar, and if you're not in a superstar position, you will be because that's what you deserve, dammit! Mother said so!

This may be no different from the douchebags that have always existed, or the entitled brat you used to manage at work. People are people, and people can be shitty. The difference here is that the Millennial Crisis is the manifestation of how America evolved since the late 80's -- now, being a brat is masked by genius and admirable ambition. Millennials have made it popular to be shitty. There's no longer just one annoying guy in the room who's an aberration. The room with many annoying guys has been systematically created. The movement has begun to propel itself across generations and into popular culture. We are creating a new social norm of shaming meekness and praising self-worth. Carpe diem is ever alive, and now without much dignity.

Growing Up A Mok: Planes, Trains, and David Blaines

With the baby set to embark on his first airplane ride soon, this is probably as prime a time as any to begin praying that he is nothing like me when it comes to being a passenger on enormous vehicles.

Nowadays, I'm rather harmless.

If I'm a passenger on an airplane, I tend to go for the window seat so I can doze off with my headphones on and without my neighbors being forced to step over me or nudge me or test the capacities of their bladders.

If I'm a passenger on a subway, I can begrudgingly resist the urge to do pullups and an Olympic gymnast rings routine for the sake of those around me.  However, it is essential that I attempt to stand without holding onto anything, and I will at some point stumble into someone else.  Don't ask me to explain it -- I just have to.

If I'm a passenger on a car, don't put me in the front seat because I will inevitably fall asleep.  It doesn't matter if you designate me as the "navigator" -- it's only a matter of time.

But alas, this wasn't always the case.  There was a time when I was a terror to deal with on public transportation.  On one of my first flights to Hong Kong, I was restless.  I don't know what they put in the food, but I could not be contained.  If you really think about it, an airplane aisle is an ideal place for a peaceful protest, and during one of the meals or drinks services, I clamped down and protested whatever it was I was protesting like my life depended on it.

I was lying face flat on the floor in the middle of the aisle with every arm, leg, or tentacle hooked around a chair leg.  I was immovable, like Thor's hammer. The stewardesses walked by and weren't sure what to do, so they asked my mom to move me, but she was also helpless against my sheer force of will.  Not even my mother's tears could loosen my death grip.  I can't remember how the standoff ended, though I'm pretty sure they didn't turn the hose on me or anything like that.  I wish I could recall what exactly it was I was protesting so fiercely against.  Whatever it was, you can't teach heart.

This sprawled-out, surface-area-maximizing technique was a recurring theme on the subway.  Our family took a detour from our stay in Hong Kong to somewhere in China, and I was not pleased about it.  Hey, at least I knew what I was protesting this time.  So I spread eagle on a Chinese subway car and somehow lived to tell the tale.  I got to my feet once the intercom blared out our destination in three different languages and discovered that my clothes were no longer in three different colors.  I was covered in dirt and grime and filth and other nasty things that I don't want to think about right now.  Admittedly, this protest was not very well thought-out.

But the older I get, the more I reminisce fondly on our family road trips.  Our parents ensured we traveled essentially every school break we got, so there were countless hours stuffed in the back of a car hitting mile marker after mile marker.  We were playing Mario Kart on N64 while cruising at 75 mph well before cars were built with TV screens and electric outlets.  I would be landing aerial attacks on my siblings with green shells, red shells, and banana peels, popping all of their balloons in battle mode until fatigue set in and I had to catch some shut-eye.

Long road trips are actually the perfect trap to keep the family all together, for better or for worse.  On the downside, I love sleep, so I would be snoozing as much as possible, but my parents and I would reenact the same argument every time we stopped at a gas station.  The rest of my family, equipped with significantly smaller bladders, would empty out of the automobile en route to those nasty non-Buc-ee's bathrooms, but I would continue snoring.  My mom and dad would start getting upset for some reason, saying that I should go even if I didn't need to go.  I think they resorted to rolling up the windows and turning off the car to smoke me out once, but my slumber knows no bounds.

On the upside, though, if you can ignore the people constantly endeavoring to usher you to the restroom, those car rides produced countless memories.  You're stuck in a car together, so you don't really have a choice but to enjoy each other's company.  There was the N64, sure, but there were also the songs, the games, the laughter, and the high fives whenever we got a trucker to honk his horn.

A top three road trip flashback for me would have to be the magic tricks.  A deck of cards is a staple on every vacation, and there are only so many times you can play War before you find something better to do.  Scratch that, War never gets old; we probably resorted to magic tricks because it was more of a 3-person activity.  Anyway, after we got through our elementary renditions of the "is this your card" tricks, I decided to get my David Blaine on.

I opened with a humble proposal: "Let's try to see if we can guess cards."

I held a card up to my forehead, thought for a couple seconds, then surmised, "Eight?"

My sister and brother were delighted. "Yeah!"

I pinned another card to my noggin, furrowed my brow in concentration, and theorized, "This feels like a... six?"

"Oh my gosh!"

After a few more runs with this, they glanced around, suspicious that my mom was feeding me the answers from the front of the car, but she wasn't paying attention.  Then I got cocky.

"Jack of diamonds."

"Three of hearts."

"Five of spades."

I must have went through half the deck, with these youngsters getting more and more riled up with every card.

Finally, the gig was up.  Not because they figured out that I was reading the cards off of the rearview mirror or the reflection on the window behind them, but because it got too dark outside for me to distinguish the cards.  I ended up just laughing and telling them the truth so they wouldn't think I was possessed and perform an exorcism on me during hibernation.

Moral of the story: if you have kids, buckle them in to their airplane seats with padlocks and throw away the keys. And don't drag them to China; China is the worst. Instead, force them to go on country-wide road trips with you, but if they claim they don't have to pee, then they don't have to pee. 

The "Why" Behind Adoption

When I tell people about my son's adoption story, they are always shocked about how sudden everything happened.  And as I reflect back on the past eight months, I grasp just how wild it must really look to everyone else.

We attended the AIM Adoptions orientation on March 24.  We walked in for our couples interview on April 19.  We went to the group home study on April 21.  I had my interview on May 16.  Ophelia had her interview on May 27.  We hosted our home study on June 17.  Our son was born on July 5.  We got the phone call on July 6.  We met our son on July 7.

From start to finish, the process took 15 weeks.  105 days.  Most expectant couples are pregnant for 9 months.  We were "paper pregnant" for 19 days between being approved at our home study and picking up the phone call that left our jaws on the floor.

Those 19 days were an interesting time.  The wife and I had naively planned a bunch of mini weekend vacations scheduled after our home study thinking that we could take advantage of our last few months of DINK (Double Income No Kids) before becoming DIOK or SIOK.  Of course, things didn't quite go as expected, and the only trip we were able to take was a July 4 weekend in Dallas.

I remember discussing the adoption process with some of my closest family and friends, and there were always two main questions that popped up from their end.

1. How do you feel about becoming a dad... at any moment?

This one was easy -- I felt terrific.  Wonderful.  Amazing.  I don't know if it's just my personality to not worry or stress about much, but I'd like to think that in this case it was a combination of both my personality and my faith.  Honestly, there was just this overwhelming sense of peace about the whole situation.  In a poetic sense, having everything out of my control was the best reminder to me that I was never in control in the first place.  God was and is and will always be my compass, and I knew there was no reason to fret about the adoption because it wasn't a matter of "if" he would provide us with a child, it was a "when."  I have no doubt that He had Levi in mind for us well before the thought of adoption ever entered our consciousness.

2. Why are y'all adopting?

This question was much more loaded.

The Cliffs Notes version?  We felt like God was leading us to adopt this year.

The slightly longer version?  For me, the idea of adoption first started gnawing away at me in Kenya in 2006.  I was there on a church missions trip with my siblings and some other friends, and we met hundreds and hundreds of kids.  We visited several orphanages, and our time spent playing with those children is something that I will never forget.  It was so gut-wrenching to think about all the kids in the world who, for one reason or another, have to grow up without parents.  Someday, I thought to myself, someday I might be able to adopt.

I remember Ophelia and I talked about adoption at least a couple of times while we were dating.  The funny thing is, we talked about adopting more than we ever talked about getting married... which was just once.  (I was incredulous that men don't get engagement rings, and I was secretly trying to figure out her ring size.  Which I got wrong anyway, but that's another story.)  We both had a heart for adoption, and that's when I realized we would adopt at some point in the future... you know, assuming we got married and all.

Fast forward to 2015, four years of dating, one year of engagement, and four years of marriage, we began earnestly praying about the timing of a potential adoption.  Then Fort Bend Community Church launched an adoption sermon series, where we got to not only hear testimonies from people in our church community who adopted but more importantly hear the pastors drive home the parallel of our adoption into God's family.  Things took off from there, and we listened to the adoption sermon series from Austin Stone as well, and eventually, it hit us.  This was it.  Let's do this thing.

Now today is National Adoption Day 2016, and I'm finishing up this post with a beautiful 4.5-month-old baby boy on my lap, with both of us cackling at the sweater vest hoodie that covers his eyes.  Looking back over the 10-year journey that God has brought me on to this point, I can't help but wonder in awe at what the next leg of the adventure will look like.

Growing Up A Mok: Chinese School

Ever since we adopted Levi, one of the most common questions we get is: "Are y'all gonna teach him Chinese?"

The short answer?  We don't know.  His grandparents will definitely try their best, but it's tough for me to consider Chinese school when I went through more than a decade of classes with essentially nothing to show for it.

No offense to any of my teachers -- they are wonderful people -- but teaching kids Cantonese when they rarely, if ever, speak it at home is such a waste of time.  I memorized a lot of vocabulary words during those years, but the dialect is like 90% slang, so the majority of those words were useless in the real world.

I'll always remember Chinese school for what it truly was: a hindrance to my love of basketball.

When I first started Chinese school back in the 90s, it was the heyday of the best Sunday afternoon TV lineup ever: NBA on NBC.  Like 98% of Asian kids back then, I did not have access to cable television, so those Sabbath tripleheaders were my only real glimpse into the rest of the NBA world outside of my beloved Houston Rockets.  I still dream about that intro music sometimes.

We'd be plugging away in class waiting for our next break, and when the teacher finally relented, we would all crowd around the beat-up television set in the corner and try to catch a scratchy, pixelated glimpse of a Michael Jordan highlight.  Someone would have antenna duty, which consisted of twisting and curving that precious piece of metal until a semi-clear image would appear on the screen.

Kids today got it so easy with their smartphones and tablets and Wi-Fi.  Back in our day, we had to work that antenna like a Stretch Armstrong to get a decent picture.

I couldn't get enough of basketball back then.  It was always on my mind, and the obsession manifested itself with basketball cards.  Every week after worship service, it would be a trading frenzy that even the folks at the World Trade Center would be proud of.  And since Chinese school was also at church a couple hours later, much of class turned into a prolonged negotiation.  I did everything I could to collect cards of my two favorite basketball players: Sam Cassell and Penny Hardaway.  This is especially fitting now because my entire collection is currently worth pennies as well.

The strangest thing about Chinese school was that my parents still somehow got me to keep going.  We're not merely talking about a couple of my formative years, we're talking tail end of middle school territory, and I'm sitting in a small church classroom on a Sunday afternoon... still waiting for that cherished mandatory break.

There was a bell involved, but not the fancy kind at normal schools that dings over the intercom system.  No, the Chinese school bell was literally a bell that some volunteer lady would have to parade around the church ringing that signified when everyone could escape from their classrooms for a few minutes.  You just hoped you would be at the beginning of her bell route instead of near the end because everyone was headed for the same place: the basketball court.

Ball is life.  It didn't matter that the break was only supposed to be maybe ten minutes long.  We'd always try to get a game in.  Then the bell lady would inevitably start her march again, and we'd all groan, hang our heads, and head back to class wondering what we were doing with our lives.

By the time we reached high school, my class was the oldest grade for Chinese school.  Nobody really wanted to be our teacher anymore, as I think we had developed a bit of a bad reputation.  Frankly, most people were wondering why we were still there.  Myself included.

Chinese school hit rock bottom when our class consisted of maybe five people, and we had straight up lost all motivation to take it seriously.  We wouldn't stop talking and/or playing paper football, so the teacher punished us the only way he could think of.  He started by putting my friend Evan in a corner for timeout.  Evan was confused at first, but he got to his feet, stepped to a corner of the room, and goofily stood there, looking back at the table where the other four of us remained sitting while the teacher tried to continue the lesson.

But we kept chitchatting, so the teacher sent me to another corner.  And on and on until I swear four of us high schoolers were standing in a different corner of the room, with only one student left at the table with any chance of learning Chinese.  The room wasn't even that big, maybe 10 x 15, so we were all within arm's length of the table.  We were clueless about what to do, so at one point we started doing the wave.  It was bizarre and hilarious -- to this day, I can't think of that story and not chuckle.

So back to the original question: are we going to teach our son Chinese?  Yes, but probably not through Chinese school.  And for sure only the most important words like "bathroom," "are you kidding me," "too expensive," and "beef flat noodle."

Growing Up A Mok: CiCi's

Whenever I'm with a group of people who can't decide where to go for their next meal, I typically suggest CiCi's.  But the idea is almost always immediately vetoed, and I'm left wondering why with tears streaming down my face

For those living under a rock, CiCi's is an all-you-can-eat pizza joint that has somehow developed a bad rep.  They serve other stuff too, like salads and soups and pastas, but only weird people put that stuff on their plates.  Going to CiCi's and eating something other than pizza is like... going to a pizza joint and eating something other than pizza.  There's absolutely no justification.

But I'm biased towards CiCi's, of course.  I grew up on that glorious buffet line.  You can ask my sister or brother -- if we heard we were going out to eat, we would get hyped... until we'd ask my dad where we were headed, and his response would predictably be the same.

"Chinese restaurant."

We'd wail and we'd whine, but an hour later, we'd be spinning a lazy Susan at one of three restaurants our family would cycle through.  It got to a point where my brother hated Chinese food.  Actually, maybe he still does, and that's why he lives in Chicago now.

Then my parents discovered CiCi's.  And everything changed.

I'm still not sure how it happened.  I'm guessing they caught a fateful CiCi's TV commercial that detailed the kids' special price of $1.99, and their eyes naturally lit up like a Christmas tree.

That tiny human price was supposed to cover children ages 10 and younger, so my parents snuck us all in there with a slouch until we were at least 12, possibly even 13.  I specifically remember the cashier giving me some side-eye one of the final times my parents risked getting blacklisted from the greatest pizza place in the world, but what were his options?  Was he gonna card me?  Ask my parents for a birth certificate?

Another time I was so anxious to burst into the restaurant that I exited the car a couple seconds prior to my dad pulling into the parking spot.  But my dad was also so anxious to burst into the restaurant that he didn't register my calls of distress after he had parked the car on my foot.  He was halfway to the entrance before he finally understood my screams.

Aside from the bargain basement cost of entry, let's talk about the pizza for a second.  They offer a plethora of options sitting out ready for consumption; from the classics (cheese, pepperoni, sausage) to the specialties (taco, barbecue, chocolate), there's a flavor for every type of palate.

You know that feeling when you pay for one package of Reese's peanut butter cups from a vending machine but two drop down?  This part is kinda like that.  Not only is CiCi's already scrumptious with the endless supply of pizza, but they will build and cook you ANY PIZZA YOUR HEART DESIRES.

I thought there was a catch at first.  But next thing I knew, my mom had ordered a spinach and pineapple pizza, and our lives were never the same.

You can hate on CiCi's all you want, but one thing is undeniable: nobody makes a better spinach pizza.  It may sound bizarre, but add pineapples to it, and your taste buds will do a happy dance.  As I've grown older, I've added Italian sausage to the mix, so now every food group is covered.

But some things don't change, like my habit of piling up the uneaten pizza crusts like carb-loaded trophies in order to keep count of how many slices I've scarfed down.  Every visit to this legendary restaurant has a built-in eating contest added to the experience.

And perhaps now you understand why it's 2016 and my siblings and I are still celebrating birthdays and anniversaries and other momentous occasions at CiCi's.  And perhaps still sneaking Sprite into the water cups.