April 22, 2008

• A tribute to my husband

  Today is Sam’s birthday – and I am so grateful that he is alive!
  
  As most of you know, God used this very Xanga to bring the two of us together.  It started with one email that was tipped off by the one major, uncompromisable passion we had in our lives:  missions.  One email led to two, two led to three… and it wasn’t very long after that when I had this feeling that God was doing something.  I was cautious, of course, considering it was all email-correspondence, but somehow I just knew in my spirit that he was the one.  Friends were a bit skeptical too, but because it was a God-thing, it became a real-thing. 

  These days, this is the song I love singing to him, a song that I plan to keep singing 50 years from now:
  
  
  
  One of the earlier — seemingly trivial confirmations — I had about him came the second week of our correspondence.  It happened when Sam innocently told me rather emphatically that he loved Pho (Vietnamese food).  I was really shocked and surprised!  Little did he know that a few days prior to that during some unrelated musings, I had just come to a new and profound realization that my culture was significant to me.  I realized that I wanted someone who would love and appreciate Vietnamese food and culture.  And while that may seem a matter-of-course, it was something new for me; prior to that I hadn’t cared about being Vietnamese.  The timing of his comment was impeccable.
  
  And it turned out to be not so trivial after all.  Vietnamese culture has become such an integral part of our married life.  Little known fact — Sam has been learning Vietnamese for the past few years.  He knows so many words and phrases that I now notice my dad translating conversations to Sam which he already understood!  It makes me smile.
  
  Speaking of languages, before we were married, Sam spent a few years as a missionary overseas, learning an unreached-people-group language.  This language has a script so different from our own, and yet he’s still able to make sense of it.  Little known fact — Sam is currently working on a translation project for this group.  He’s helping to get their Bible onto the world wide web so that all the people in that culture can access the Word of God in their own heart language.  (How cool is that?)
  
  And whenever Sam is staying up late (like we did last night) to work on this project even though he has to wake up early the next morning for work, I am reminded that God really answered my prayers to give me a partner who is as convicted and passionate about the nations as He has made me.  And though our hearts grow faint from all the waiting we are doing, I know that when He says go, we will go — and Sam will be racing me to the plane! 

  This is our “theme song” (played at our wedding as we dedicated our lives to missions):

  Sam has the greatest servant heart.  I find myself challenged every day by how much he so readily serves me in our day-to-day.  It comes so naturally for him.  Even for his birthday — I had plans to take him up to Santa Ana this Saturday to treat him to some Cajun crawfish boil (his absolute favorite) — but because our good friends are moving this Saturday, he wanted to go help them instead!  What a man I have married, huh? 
  
  Every day we are married, I fall more and more in love with him.  I still get lost in his eyes…
  
  

  I love and adore you, anh.  So proud to be your wife.  Happy birthday!
  

  • 5:36 pm
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