Choosing you.

I’m now in Hong Kong, visiting your relatives, and it amazes me to realize what this all means, and how far we’ve come, this fast. We’re talking about plans to visit your parents in Canada next year before we marry. I never imagined things would unfold this way, this fast. Did you?

Crazy fast, how all this is happening and unfolding. But I guess, both you and I know, how crazy and wild and adventurous God is and can be. So here we are, in the middle of Canada and Singapore, just waiting for yet another surprise.

Just before we left, I had a long talk with dad which I didn’t share with you immediately about. It was one of those talks I have with him before I intend to do something big and crazy like going to Nepal alone when I was 18 during the political unrest, like wanting to go to Africa to live in a mudhouse, like saying, yea, this is the life I’m choosing. It’s going against the grain of this world, but it’s good, and I’m at peace, I know you don’t understand, but will you support me?

I think it bewilders them to think about why I chose, still choose you. Why not the previous guy, who came from a wealthy background? Or the other guy who’s a doctor now? Why a missionary, why someone with a liver transplant, why can I be so sure.

But I just am. As sure as I was when I decided to go to Nepal, as sure as I was when I decided to write Kitesong, as sure as I was when I decided to publish Rainbow and share my story. Every bit of it sounds illogical, but makes perfect sense to me. I am crazy like that.

 

I guess it’s hard to explain, how I see God’s work in this all. How randomly we crossed paths, how there was overcoming thousands of miles and impossible barriers, how, at the end of the day, I see your heart for the poor and love for God. Even in Hong Kong when I’m just supposed to be visiting your relatives, I had the wonderful opportunity to attend part of a missions conference where I got to meet and talk to a handful of inspiring medical missionaries because you were visiting the local branch of the international missions organization you serve in Singapore. Though it was such a small incident, I see how our interests and goals further each other’s, and I am as convinced as you, that God has a plan for us.

I couldn’t answer all the hard questions dad had for me. Where are you going to stay when you marry? Do you have enough money for the both of you? What are going to do if something happens to his liver again? Do you know he is on longterm medication?

My logic is this: that yes, you had an illness, yes your longterm meds have a list of side effects that put you at risk of other things that I am well aware of. But I said this to dad, that I know now, that if I found out that I, instead of you, had cancer next week, you would not leave me. Dad agreed, he has always liked you, but he likes to ask me hard questions so I don’t plunge headlong into things and jump over a cliff, pun fully intended, heh.

Why don’t you wait a little more, maybe consider someone else?

I just keep imagining what my life would be had I chosen the previous guy or someone else- I would probably end up with higher and higher living standards, chasing higher and higher qualifications, going to further and further places for holidays and mingling with people of higher and higher stature.

But God is asking me to go slower, go lower, be humbler.

What makes you so sure he’s the right one? Do you understand what you are saying- you are going to undergo a massive downgrade. You are my daughter- you have lived so comfortably all your life- are you prepared for all this?

Prepared? Never. But I know, that it is precisely that we are facing all these hard questions, that we are on the right path. Was living with the poor ever going to be easy? Can I guarantee nothing will happen to you liver? Can I assure you I will not miss staying in a condominium with a pool and gym and going to fancy restaurants because I have grown up that way all my life?

No, I can’t. Yes, it means not having a car, or our own house, or eating out at nice places for dates. It means I may be widowed earlier than other people (I am not being mean, we have discussed this openly before.) It means I cannot live up to my parents’ hopes and expectations of me marrying another doctor and living a cushy life.

 

But I can say this- that choosing you means living more simply. It means coming closer to the heart of God and learning to be humbler, simpler, and purer. Choosing you means overcoming slavery to materialism and fear of illness and pain and loss to choose faith and love and hope. Choosing you means choosing missions over money, faith over fear, God over gain.

 

Choosing you means going through a lot more battles which I wouldn’t need to fight had I chosen someone else. But I know, we will overcome in the end, because God is with us.

 

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?”

–       Romans 8:35