One bright Sunday in December I was awakened at 11:01 a.m. by my crazy, straight-A, athletic friend jumping on me. I was worried. She is not usually this hyper. “Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow!” she screamed so loudly that people as far away as the Philippines could hear her.

“Calm down,” I groaned, not wanting to be awake at the moment. She was still on my bed, and I wondered if maybe she had jumped on one of my vital organs and popped it. “What are you so excited about? And why are you in my house?”

“Get dressed and go down to eat. I’ll tell you there,” she said.

Reluctantly I pulled myself out of bed and found some pants and a shirt. After I got dressed, my friend dragged me downstairs to eat some leftover tofu curry and rice. While I was eating, my friend asked if we could go to a nearby park. My mom agreed.

When we got to the park, I again asked my friend why she was at my house. “You left your textbook at my house last night,” she said, “and I brought it back to you.”

“Yeah, I guess I did leave it,” I replied. “But what were you so excited about that you absolutely had to wake me up from my sleep?”

“Oh, OK,” she said with a sigh. “After you left last night, my cousin sent me an e-mail containing . . .”

“Containing what?” I asked.

“Containing . . . a link to really cool Korean music!”

I was stunned. She woke me from my sleep to tell me this? “Well, what exactly is this music like?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s really upbeat and fun, and even though you can’t understand it, there are subtitles,” she replied, jumping up and down like a little girl, even though she was 14.

So we walked back to my house to watch the video on YouTube. I thought, Hey, this is pretty cool. We watched about five videos. Then my friend had to leave to eat dinner. After that I didn’t see her for a while.

After New Year’s Day I saw my friend again. She again came running toward me, all crazy and hyper.

Oh, boy, I thought. What is it this time?

“Dude, dude, dude—I found something even better than that music I showed you!” she screamed as she ran toward me.

“So what is it?” I reluctantly asked.

“Boys Over Flowers!”

“What?”

“Just come on. I’ll show you!” she said as she started pulling me toward my room. When we got to my room, she didn’t even wait for me to give her an OK, and before I knew it my computer was starting up with the Windows symbol on the screen. I tried to cover the keyboard with my body as I slowly typed in my password. I logged in to YouTube once again, and we watched an episode of Boys Over Flowers, which turned out to be a Korean drama.

“That was pretty cool,” I said when it was done.

She turned to me. “Pretty cool? It’s the best thing ever!” We just left it at that and watched another episode.

Two weeks went by before I saw my friend again. And, yes, she was running toward me, screaming. “So what did you do or find this time?” was all I said. She didn’t even reply, but just dropped her backpack on the ground and pulled out her laptop. I asked if it was another episode of Boys Over Flowers.

“Oh, no,” she happily replied as she pulled up a different show. “I got over that. East of Eden is way better.” So we watched it. A couple of episodes later I noticed the sun going down, and it was Friday. We were still in the middle of watching another episode.

“Maybe we should stop for Sabbath,” I told my friend.

But she said, “No, come on, we only have 20 minutes left. Let’s just finish this one.”

I thought about it. Maybe God wouldn’t mind. So we finished the episode. But then we were tempted again. Two and a half episodes later we finally turned off the computer. I went to sleep feeling guilty.

The next day after church I saw my friend again, and she asked me if I wanted to see a Korean singer she had heard about. “What?” I responded incredulously. “We just got out of church, and I’m still feeling bad about last night. Seriously, we should do the right thing this time.”

“Oh, come on,” she urged while slowly pushing me toward the Pathfinder room, where a computer was located. “We can turn off the music and just read the subtitles. Then it won’t be the same thing. I just want you to see how cool this guy is.”

With the guilty feeling welling up in my stomach, I watched the video. Again I thought it was pretty cool. I also thought about how addictive these videos were. But I didn’t care too much right then.

About a month later I saw my friend again, but something was different. She wasn’t screaming or jumping toward me; she was crying. “What’s wrong?” I asked her. “I thought you were always excited about the Koreans. Remember? Koreans, Koreans, Koreans!”

“Don’t say that word to me anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because I got in trouble,” she sobbed, tears starting to fall down her cheeks. “My grades have been slipping. My mom took my phone and my computer and took the lock off my door. She says I don’t help around the house anymore.”

I was surprised. My straight-A friend, who always helps her mom around the house and never gets into trouble, was in trouble? It didn’t make sense.

My friend just sobbed. I leaned over and hugged her. Then she said the most heartbreaking words. “My mom said that since I’ve been acting like this, it’s as if she doesn’t even know me. She said it’s like mothering an alien. She also said that it seems as if I’ve lost all my trust in God and my love for Him.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My friend’s life was messed up! Then I began to think. Maybe her mom was right. Maybe because of all the videos she’d been watching, she had let everything else go—her grades, her chores, everything.

“Your mom might be right,” I told her.

But she stood up and looked at me in surprise. “She can’t be right! I still get A’s, B’s, and C’s. I still wash dishes . . . uh, sometimes. Oh,” she admitted as she started to see the light. “Is my mom right, Victoria?”

“Sometimes your mom knows what’s right and best for you. And I think this is one of those times.”

“I blew it. I really did,” she sobbed. I told her that if she talked to God about it, He would forgive her. We prayed, and then my friend went home to eat dinner.

The next time I saw her, she wasn’t yelling or jumping or crying. She was smiling. I walked up to her and asked her how things were going. She said that her relationship with her mom was getting better, and that she was spending less time watching YouTube and more time praying.

“That’s good,” I said with a smile.

“Now I feel as if God is always walking with me everywhere—except in the bathroom!” she said. I giggled. I was happy for her. She’d found God’s love and forgiveness.

By the way, the “friend” in this story is actually my conscience. Yes, this story is about me. I learned that God will always love me and forgive me no matter what I do or how long I stray from Him. I can always come back to Him, and He will be ready to pull me out of the drama I’m caught in.

Written by Victoria Ico