I was sitting in my chair with my house church members surrounding me and a warm fireplace glowing in front of me.
The Perfect Message
It may seem cliché, but the world truly did seem to move in slow motion.
As I looked at the fireplace, the flames seemed to flicker in slow motion. It was as if the world had slowed down so I could have the proper time to write the perfect message.
I looked at the words I had written in KakaoTalk at least a hundred times, making sure everything looked correct—that I hadn’t misspelled any words or made the message sound too forward in any way. I knew that the words I was sending to my birth mother could be the reason she either answered or didn’t answer me back. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.
I hovered my finger over the send button, apprehensive and nervous about what she might say.
Imagine that—I hadn’t even pressed send yet, and I was already worried about the outcome.
But with one final breath, I pressed the send button.
Waiting for the 1
Okay… now what?
“What is that little 1 next to the message?” I asked my shepherd.
He explained that the message had been sent but had not yet been viewed by the recipient.
“Ah, okay. So we wait for the 1 to go away.”
As I sat there and we went about our normal house church routine, I couldn’t help but peek at my phone every few seconds, anticipating that 1 to disappear. My house church family noticed that my attention was elsewhere and would periodically ask if there had been any updates.
Unfortunately, that little 1 next to my message never disappeared.
I remember going home disappointed and saddened.
The Longest Night
I have always been someone who catastrophizes everything. I kept asking myself if I had said something that made her upset or sad. Was the message too emotional for her? Maybe she didn’t want to reconnect. Maybe it was all too overwhelming and she simply needed time.
Yeah… that had to be the reason she hadn’t answered my message.
That thought was what held me together emotionally for the rest of the night.
When I got home and went to bed, I didn’t sleep.
How could I?
I had just found out about my birth mother after thirty-seven years, and only five hours earlier I had sent her a message. I had to stay awake in case she responded.
Twelve o’clock.
One o’clock.
Two o’clock.
Hour after hour passed until the next morning.
Fortunately, I managed to get about an hour of sleep.
Nothing
The moment I woke up, I immediately looked at my phone to see if there were any messages.
Nothing.
That darn 1 was going to be the death of me.
Why wouldn’t it go away?
Just go away!
I went upstairs to the living room and started talking with my wife about why my birth mother might not be checking her messages. We concluded that maybe she simply hadn’t seen it yet or perhaps she wasn’t properly notified.
I didn’t know enough about KakaoTalk or how it worked, so everything was based on guesses and assumptions.
As we ate breakfast and went about our afternoon, I started to worry even more.
What was going on?
Something had to be wrong.
A Message Request
Then I received an alert on my cellphone.
A Facebook notification appeared at the top of my screen. It was a message request through Facebook Messenger.
But this wasn’t an ordinary message.
It was coming from someone with strange letters.
“Hmm… what are those letters?”
As I looked more closely, I realized they resembled the names I had seen at my Korean church.
But I didn’t have any Korean friends.
And I definitely had never received a friend request from someone in Korea.
This had to be spam.
But what if it wasn’t?
I opened Facebook and went to Messenger. Sure enough, there was a message under that Korean name.
To my surprise, the message was written in English.
The message began:
“Hello. My name is Jeon Si-ha, and I am your younger sibling…”
To be continued.