It doesn’t feel like 30 years, but that’s how long it’s been. I was 18 when we left the Philippines and was highly distressed and in anguish. I was leaving life as I knew it and friends that have been there for me for years, to face a future that was completely unknown. We left to start a new life in Canada.
Now that I am 30 years older, I can look back at that point in my life and truly know that it made me resilient. We lived for 10 months in Montreal and then moved again to Toronto. Unfortunately, I responded to what I lost and went through a lot of bitterness. I wish I hadn’t; I’m just grateful I did adjust to life in Toronto and made new friends. After that, studying and working went a lot better. If I was told then that I would someday marry a Chinese Malaysian, have four sons and be a missionary to Davao City (Philippines) and then Chiang Mai (Thailand), I would have shaken my head in disbelief. How was that possible?
I have led an impossible life. If you knew what I was like and what I did, you would have agreed with me. Now I am His daughter. I am also a wife, mother, friend, teacher, counselor, worshipper and intercessor. Nothing is impossible for our God who transforms, heals, and loves. I wish I could say that I loved Him right back when I knew Him, but I didn’t. Yet the Lord kept loving me anyway until I did love Him back. Praise you, Lord.
I look forward to the next 30 years. Maybe I’ll be an author then, a counseling teacher, a mom to an adopted child, a speaker. Who knows? I don’t, but what I know is that I’ll be blessed and with the Lord in me and His help, I’ll keep doing the impossible. Future, here I come.
