Savoring

"Live like you are going to die tomorrow, learn like you will live forever." I randomly saw this sticker on the back of a funky car when I was in Dominic's hometown at his old college. The phrase jumped out to me like crazy, for one it was in English and not Thai, and it is something that I really have been pondering lately.

Since after we got married, it's hitting me a little more everyday how we aren't going to be living in Thailand forever. In August we will pack up our slew of suitcases, hop on a plane and jet back to our other home.

So I'm trying to live my life in Thailand more in a way so that I savor it: to taste and enjoy completely every moment. Usually, being the human that I am, I forget to delight in it and go through life too quick to notice anything around me or dwell on the future so much the present never truly exists. I have seen how this takes the joy out of life, and hope to God that He will free me from it. 

Last night at a street side restaurant near Newsong (our church),  I was eating glass noodles stir-fried with a rainbow of vegetables, and chicken, covered with a dark red, sweet, spicy sauce.  The dish is called in Thai, suki heng gai, and is one of my new favorites this year. As I was slurping up a bite from my fork and spoon, I was really trying to soak up every part of the experience--the heat, which was giving me and my friends from our women's small group all shiny foreheads; the air, smelling of car exhaust fumes and fried food; the tastes, of my freshly-made iced Milo chocolate drink, and the spicy, sauce lingering on my tongue; the conversation, full of woes of the week, as well as laughter and encouragement; the women, sisters from Russia, Thailand, and America. 

I will miss those moments in little Waxhaw. But whenever I think about missing here, I think about what I miss there, in my other home, that I don't get here. My family and old friends who I have history with, cheap Mexican food, even cooking food at home, coffeshops galore with amazing coffee at reasonable prices, and actually knowing what random strangers are saying to each other around me. I can't wait to get those special times again.

I hope I can savor all my moments, not only the huge ones, like getting married, but also the everyday ones--no matter where I am. Moments on earth disappear in the breeze, but I know I will learn forever.

Show me, O LORD, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man's life is but a breath. 

Psalm 39:5

For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 

1 Corinthians 4:18

Happy Thailand

"Happyyyyy Thailand! Happyyyyy Thailand!"

Not the words I expected to hear the night before my wedding after crying from the stress of the many details that seemed so important that I needed to figure out for the next day.

But these words are two of the few English words that my new grandmother-n-law knows.

Those two words, which she probably learned from a commercial promoting tourism in Thailand, her vibrant eyes, and uplifting smile, were part of the remedy to cure my stressed-out-bride syndrome. As sweet Grandma kept repeating them, holding my hand in her worn and wrinkled fingers, and smiling as big as ever, I started to giggle and smile at her compassionate heart. Slowly the stress and sadness began to float away, to be replaced with "Happy Thailand."

I'm sure part of my heartache was that my American family wasn't there to hold me and wipe away my worries the night before the big day. I could tell that Grandma wanted to speak to me directly, in my language, to try to lift up my hurting heart. She couldn't speak profound, eloquent words, but her simple attempts, giving me the only positive words she knew to speak, were just what

I needed.

My grandma-n-law has taught me many things already. One of them being, that you never need the perfect words or actions to show love, or encourage someone. All you need to do is give out of a compassionate, loving heart what you have--whether you think it is a lot, or nothing at all--it is enough and just what they need.