@viragomann omg facepalm yep, you're totally right. Thanks. I know what I did now. When I initially set up the OpenVPN client I entered the wrong credentials (and didn't realize it) so it didn't appear as an option when I was initially assigning an interface so I arbitrarily selected em2 not knowing it should have said something like ovpnc1.
Went back just now and changed it. Gateway shows as up. And was able to select it in my firewall rule. Beautiful. Thank you very much.