Love - 1 Corinthians 13

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophesies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away... And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is Love.

This above is from 1 Corinthians 13 , it's always read in people's wedding and I love this scripture.

Frustration

A lots of people are saying we are the perfect couple and the couple that would stay forever. That is what I wished and I believed. But in recent years, our marriage is like a rock on the edge of cliff. Any Small stuff can push that rock out of sight. I have been trying to comprise our conflicts/disagreement, and avoid fight , especially in front of Thomas. But his mood is just like a roller coaster. You don't know what you expect. His temper is getting worse. I've been trying to protect Thomas whenever he is in bad mood, but it seems he is doing it intentionally. I've been very patient and tolerant with his behavior. Thomas is such a sensitive boy and I can not stand to see him get hurt. One time I promised to God - I would never fight with him in front of Thomas. But he knows my 'weakness'. The more I keep patient and tolerant, the more he pushes. What happened last nigh really push me to the limit and made me think differently. This marriage would not do any good for Thomas. Irony all my friends around me think I am a good communicator, but i can not communicate with my own husband. All he done made me speechless and hopeless. I desperately asked God so many times to help me and give me strength and wisdom to hold on this marriage. I've been trying so hard, but marriage is not about one person , it's about two people. I am really tired. Maybe it's time to let it go...

1st Loose Tooth

One of Thomas' tooth (middle in the bottom)is loose and he told me yesterday and I looked at his tooth and it looks almost fell off. That's too earlier - i think. But He got his teething very earlier at 4 month old. He is very excited about it because he thought he could have tooth fairy.

Washing Dishes

Thomas insisted doing dishes for the last several day after dinner. Last night when his dad started to put dishes into dishwasher, he was dying to do it. So I told him " Daddy will leave one for you to wash it later." After daddy had done, I let him stand on a chair so he could reach the sink to do his own dish. It took him more than 10 min. to clean that little bowl he used. And he was so focus on washing his bowl. I was teasing him "You are so helpful to mom and dad. " And he was buying it and I could tell he was so proud of himself to do it. I wish he could keep doing this when he is a little bigger which I doubt it. He did that because he just wanted to be like his daddy.

Simplicity of Life

Thomas told me this morning “I watched the cloud in the sky for a long time and I saw forest. “ I asked “how did you learn that?” He replied “in chapel time at school, Mrs. Porter read us a book saying’ if you watch cloud for a long time, you can see different shapes.’ One time I saw an airplane. “I laughed and then I told him “I liked watching cloud when I was your age too and it’s a lots of fun. “ He always fascinated with what mom and dad did when we were his age. I was glad that teacher taught about that. One time I heard a priest saying ‘you have to teach your child how to enjoy the simplicity of life’. I totally agree with it. Now the whole world seems so focus on material things. There were so many temptations which drag us away from nature and each other. When I was little I didn’t remember I had any toys, but I consider myself had a happy childhood. Whenever it was snowing, I could lie in the bed and stare at windows for hours because ice/snow made beautiful scene on the windows. Using your imagination, you could see lots of different animals or flowers. Sometimes grandma told me stories.

I really like Thomas learn to enjoy the simplicity of life. You don’t have to be rich or so called ‘successful’, but if you know how to enjoy every piece of your life God created for you, then happiness would never end.

A Blessing

I always think I am blessed by this job. Back then along this offer I got another one from Verizon. I didn't know which one I should take. So I prayed and talked to one of my friends, and finally I took my current job mostly because this company was closer to home and less work to do. At very beginning I was not sure this was the place I wanted to be. Didn't really feel good of it. Somehow I chose to stay. The longer I stayed , the more I feel I made the right decision. One time I heard a friend saying the definition of good jobs - good pay, close to home, and less work. I thought about that, it's just too good to be true. But for me I can't get anything better than this. - It's a perfect job for me. I am not that greedy and don't compare with other people. I always feel happy at work.

Recently there was one thing bothered me a little bit. One of colleagues , she quited her job because of another colleague. She was pretty good at her job and I admired her a lot not only the way she was doing her job but also the way she treated people and I had great trust on her. Then one day she was in great fought via emails with this colleague. She filed a complaint against him and asked me to support her because she thought what he did to her was discrimination against female at work and me and her were the only females in the dept. I know that colleague sometime do not get along with people but he is not bad person, sometime just confronted like my other colleagues said. Then things were getting a little complicated and she really put me in hot spot. The day she quited I was so upset because she made me feel guilty about it. I think I did right thing - I just told the truth. I can not accuse other people by feelings.

I still care about her a lot and wish her the best. Also I learned a lesson - don't let other people take advantage of your kindness. - I was so kind to her and she thought I'd do what she asked me to do.

Dumb vs. Genius

At a B/day party the other day Thomas was trying to put a lady bug into a small empty water bottle along with grass and then tightened the cap. A big kid saw it and said it was dumb. And then for the rest of that day Thomas kept using that word as as often as he could. We told him nobody would like to hear it then he said to himself 'dumb'.

The second day we dropped him in a friend's house for a couple of hours, the friend tried to entertain him by doing some fun calculations. Every time he got right and the friend said to him "you are a genius".

Last night just after I got home, he ran to me and asked me a question with a very serious look. "Mom, Am I a genius ? A genius means his brain is bright. " My word 'No' was just about to come out then I looked at his face. I told to him "Nobody is a genius, you can be bright but you are not a genius. " I just don't want to get him wrong idea. He seems try to doing everything perfectly and he is frustrated whenever he think he should do things better. Then he asked me if God was a genius. I told him "Yes, God knows everything".

Recently he is very interested in learning a lots of vocabularies and asked me a lots of questions regarding meanings of different words. Hopefully I can give him the best answer.

To My Mother On Mohters Day

We never got chance to celebrate mothers day together. I didn't know what it takes to be a mother until we got your little grandson Thomas.

I still have a lots of questions about being a mom, some body's wife and daughter-in-law, every time I couldn't get a clue I was thinking about you and thinking what would you do if you were in my situation.

We didn't get much time to talk about, but somehow I know what you would like me to do because all those good memories taught me become a better person.

I didn't feel much needing you until I got my own family.
Being a mom is the hardest job I ever feel, but you did it in a great way.
Never having such a desire to share things with you , because I believe you always knew what to do the best.

I know you've been watching me all the time and telling I am just doing fine because of all the memories I treasured.

Mom - Generosity

There is a lots of thing about my mom in my mind. One of them was her generosity which influences me a lot. When I was grown up, most of the families were just about sufficient but not abundant. But this didn't stop my mom help other people. She was not good at managing our money. I always felt that we were about to be in debt. Actually my parents made good money at that time , but still we were not enough. Me and my older brother were not good at saving money, somehow my younger brother learned the lessons, he is pretty good at it and maybe he was very close to my mom and he felt more shortage than me and my older brother did at that time. A lots of relatives came to my dad ask for all kinds of help , sometime we didn't afford to help, but my mom just couldn't stand people leaving with empty hand, she always found something to help , sometime didn't let my dad know it. My mom always felt their pain whenever they were in trouble. She was hard to say no to them. Sometime we really couldn't help anything , my mom would talk about it for days and couldn't have peace. My aunt was a teacher in Northwest of the country, I have 4 cousins from my aunt, living in northwest part of my home country was not easy back then, 3 of my cousin were grown up in our house from time to time. Mom treated them like her own children, after they got back to my aunt, we still sent clothes , food ,even money to them for a perid of time. Every time they came back to visit us , my mom would spend a lots of money to buy stuff until they couldn't hold them. Even she spent money on others , but for herself she kept things very simple, didn't buy much stuff for her.

Mom And Her Mother-In-Law

Mom treated my grandmother very kind and respect. My grandmother was a tough lady to deal with. She was smart and outgoing person and got around everything she needed and sometime manipulated people a lot. I didn't see her as a bad person , just the way everybody was raised that way, especially when a woman became a mother-ln-law at that time. Grandparents from my dad's side lived with us all their life. I actually was very close to my grandmother, she took care of me and my older brother since we were born. Me and my older brother were never sent to the daycare when we were little because of grandmother was at home.

Two brothers and me plus my grandparents, there were 7 in our family, at that time it's not that big, but our cousins and my aunt and uncle (my dad's siblings) always stayed in our house from time to time. I always felt that it's so crowed at home. Of cause things would get complicated and my grandmother always made my mother looked bad without losing her own dignity - that's why I said my grandmother was smart. She didn't say any bad words about my mom, but at the end of it, it's all my mother's fault. Most of the time, it turned out my dad would argue with my mom. I never heard my mom complained about anybody and she just did what she had to do, of cause I saw my mom sob a lot that time. About the time when I was in junior high school, I started to realize how bad situation my mom was and I didn't understand why she didn't say anything to my grandmother. Then I started to speak up for my mom, a lots of time my grandma got angry with me. I felt my mom did so much and nobody appreciated that, especially the relatives. For a long time I hated relatives coming to our home so I made troubles and whined a lot and hoped they were leaving soon. Of cause I became the bad person to the relatives in the family for a long time. I fought with my uncle and aunt a lot times because I thought they mistreated my mom. At that time, it took me a lots of courage to do that, in my family, no kid could ever fight with adult, that's considered as disgrace and a shame. I actually was afraid when I did it, but I just couldn't stand it anymore.

At the second year of my high school, my grandmother was sick, she couldn't walk anymore until she died on my last year of college, it's been almost 6 years that she mostly lay in the bed. That's not easy for anybody, but she took it very good, very optimistic for all those 6 years, joking around whenever people coming to visit her. All those 6 years, my mother took very good care of her, relatives and neighbors were impressed by my mom. Because of that, our family was nominated to a happy family ( it's called 五好家庭） in the city by our neighbor which we didn't know it until it was announced. That time we didn't have washer or dryer at home, my mom washed my grandmother stuff by her hands, took her a bath and changed clothes daily. Me and my older brother were away home in the school and my dad worked so hard and she was the only one to take care of her. One day my mom's right thumb couldn't move anymore and her knee got injured also because she had to move my grandmother a lot. That really worried us a lot. So later on even financially not very good, still we all insisted my parents to hire a nanny to help mom to take care of my grandmother. One day like a miracle, my grandmother was so touched by my mom and said to me :" your mom is so kind to me and she is the best daughter-in-law i can get. " with tears in her eyes and joy on her face. At that moment it's one of the happiest moment I could remembered since I was little. I was happy for my mom also for our family because mom and grandma were the most loving one for me. I liked to see they both got along each other and loved each other.

I still remembered my mom grieved a lot after my grandmother passed away. She always told me about good things my grandmother did and how charm my grandmother was. I really admire her about that. Later on when I asked my mom ' did you ever hate my grandmother ? ', she told me 'no', I asked 'why', she said she always appreciated grandmother take care of her children - me and my brothers, otherwise she could not finish her college degree in her spare time. She said my grandmother supported her greatly to finish her school. - that's very rare at that time - my mom told me that.

Grace's Bithday Party

Grace is 4 years old today. Grace is Thomas' friend from church. Last night Thomas wanted to write this to her b/day card:

"Dear Grace,
Can you buy me a power-ranger on my birthday ?

Love,
Thomas. "

I told him you couldn't do that, it's her birthday, you had to write something nice to her.

Today we went to her birthday party at community park near by her house. It's a beautiful day to be outside and her mom brought all kinds of the delicious food and kids had great time and adults had enjoyed the food a lot.

Thomas found a ladybug at the park and he put it into a used water bottle with some grass inside, he said the ladybug liked grass. I told him that lady bug was lonely and hungry in that bottle and he agreed to set her free tomorrow.

At the end of it, kids hugged each other and said goodbye and they were so cute when they were hugging to each other.

Mom - Loving Travel

Mom loved traveling, and cherished the beauty of nature. She took time to enjoy it whenever she could. She traveled almost every part of the country because of her job. When I was in elementary school I remembered she was always on the trip away from home for several days to several weeks very 2 or 3 month. The most exciting thing for me was waiting she came back with full of her hands, different candies, clothes, and souvenir. One time she brought me a dozen of handkerchief with beautiful scenes of XiHu printed on it after she came back from HangZhou. She told me that because of the tight schedule of that trip she had to skip sleep to see Xihu. During night she and her colleagues wondered the lake until 2am in the morning. She took all the pictures from different places. One of her hobbies was collecting all kinds of chinaware. At home we're never lack of chinaware. Mom always had extra box to gave to friends or relatives visited us at that time. She went to JingDeZhen and TangShan where both are famous for high quality of chinaware several times. She bought a lot of chinaware from there. I know my brothers still have some of them from her collections. But almost everything she brought back was for somebody else not herself. Only thing I remembered she bought for herself was a piece of ramie cloth.

When Life Burries You, Dig

Last night i read a book 'how Ronald Reagan changed my life' by Peter Robinson who was former speechwriter to the president , just a little piece - one of Reagan's favorite jokes - the pony joke, very inspiring me.

The joke concerns twin boys of five or six. worried that the boys had developed extreme personalities-one was a total pessimist, the other a total optimist - their parents took them to a psychiatrist.

First the psychiatrist treated the pessimist. trying to brighten his outlook, the psychiatrist took him to a room piled to the ceiling with brand-new toys. but instead of yelping with delight, the little boy burst into tears. "what's the matter?" the psychiatrist asked, " don't you want to play with any of the toys?" " Yes," the little boy bawled, "but if i did I'd only break them."

Next the psychiatrist treated the optimist. trying to dampen his outlook, the psychiatrist took him to a room piled to the ceiling with horse manure. but instead of wrinkling his nose in disgust, the optimist emitted just the yelp of delight the psychiatrist had been hoping to hear from his brother, the pessimist. then he clambered to the top of the pile, dropped to his knees, and began gleefully digging out scoop after scoop with his bare hands. "what do you think you're doing ?" the psychiatrist asked, just as baffled by the optimist as he had been by the pessimist. "with all this manure," the little boy replied , beaming, "there must be a pony in here somewhere!"

Reagan told this joke very often to his stuff in the white house, whenever something would go wrong, somebody on the staff would be sure to say, "there must be a pony in here somewhere.'

this is a great story, when life buries you, dig.

A gift from my son

Thomas told me he would give me a surprise because of mother's day.He drew and cut a picture of a little boy with green shirt with buttons on it. He made it in the school. It's really cute, he told me it was a boy and would like me to have it, and he would make a girl picture for daddy on father's day. I don't know where that idea come from, but I guess he thinks daddy likes girls and mommy likes boys. This reminded me one time when he just turned to 4 years old, he asked me 'why daddy always like all girls ? I don't like girls ' because he has seen daddy greeting his teachers every time he picks him up. I told this to my friend and we laughed about it and she said you should tell him that you would love girls and couldn't get rid of them later on.

My mom -2

Mom was grown up in a abundant family, she was sent to a private girl school when she was young. That's how she knew God, remembered the time she was in the state to visit us we never missed Friday's Bible study, every Friday afternoon she'd ask me if we'd go church. I didn't know she was happy to see us going church until then. We never talked about God in our country when I was in the hometown. It's a sensitive topic back then.

She was the most favorite daughter of my grandfather - my grandpa told me this. Because of that, at the late years of my grandfather, he visited our home a lot, and my grandfather got along with my father very well so I got chance to know a lots of things about my mom from my grandfather. She was smart and playful and a beautiful young lady - that's how my grandfather described her. Also she was the most generous person among seven siblings in the family.

She made a lots of sacrifice for her family and our family later on. She was the second child of the family. Before my grandfather owned his own business to support totally 4 families, after 1949 he lost almost everything, in earlier 1950's my mom got admitted by one of best universities in the country, she even bought a ticket and prepared everything, but she didn't go... later on she told me that she couldn't leave because my grandfather needed her to support family, at the time my big uncle (my mom's older brother) was in the college and there were other 5 younger brothers and sister in the family. My grandfather lost income for years and they sold old precious collection for living. I couldn't imagine how they lived like that, I was heartbroken when I heard this. So mom stayed in the hometown and found a job in big company where she met my father later on. She was one of a few of women in that company and made big money by the standard of that time.

Because she lost the opportunity to go to college she dreamed my mom always gave us the best opportunities , especially when we were in school, she could spend all her money to buy books or any supplies for school and supported us to do anything as long as it's for our study. Because she didn't go to college mom spent her whole life in school, she never stopped learning, I was told that my mom was in night school learning 'advanced math' when she was pregnant with me. I remembered she was in school to learn English once a week when I was in high school. She eventually got her bachelor degree from adult college in her spare time. Now being a mom myself, I can imagine how hard to study while you have children at home.

My mom - 1

It's going to be Mother's day this Sunday. I am thinking about writing something about my mom.

She was gone just 3 days before Christmas in 2000. About a week earlier before she was gone my older brother called me and told me she was not doing well, we booked the tickets right away, got on the airplane the second day and had to stay in Japan for one night. That's a really long night for me, couldn't fall sleep so we were laying in the bed and watching some Japanese TV and suddenly I felt my heart sinking and just felt so sad, not heart-broken but hopeless... I was trying to get rid of that feeling, it was devastating.

Later on i knew that's the time my mom was gone, she couldn't hold on and wait for me.

My mom was a very generous person and she could forgive anybody, she had a big heart.

Fortunately she came here visiting us for a short period of time and we took her several places , D.C. , Las Vegas...etc. She liked Washington D.C a lot. After that I got back hometown spending 3 and half weeks with her after I knew she was sick. I never told her that I loved her so much in person, that's not the culture we were grown up. The only thing made me feel better was that I hugged her in the airport when she left for home after 2 month of visiting us. At that moment my mom had tears in her eyes, normally I don't show emotion in public place, but that time I was very emotional after she got on airplane. The weird thing was that she was diagnosed by a deadly skin cancer a month later by everybody's surprise. Everybody from her family lives long, my grandfather died as 94 years old.
All those years, that hug has been giving me a lots of comfort and peace.

A little Trick

Every time Thomas asks for something he shouldn't , he'd tell me with a smile ' mom , I'll draw you a flower if you give that to me '. Now He knows how to trick me a little bit.

This is My Father's World

This Friday I'm going to lead songinspriation in the cell group for Bible study. The first song I pick is 'This is My Father's World'. I love this beautiful song so much, whenever I sing I can see and feel what a beautiful world God created. Here is the lyrics:

This is my Father's world,
And to my listening ears
All nature sings, and 'round me rings
The music of the spheres.
This is my Father's world:
I rest me in the thought of rocks and trees, of skies and seas.
His hand the wonders wrought.

This is my Father's world
The birds their carols raise,
The morning light, the lily white, Declare their Maker's praise.
This is my Father's world:
He shines in all that's fair;
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass,
He speaks to me everywhere.

This is my Father's world, O let me never forget
That though the wrong seems often so strong, God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father's world:
The battle is not done;
Jesus who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and heaven be one.

First time I sang this song was in a church retreat several years ago. We were in salvation camp nearby Dallas area. Salvation camps are always located in the beautiful place. Singing that song was reminding me how lucky I was in such a beautiful place. Most of the time we take granted of it, but that's the first time i 've seen nature around me differently- I feel so graceful that I am created by Heavenly Father and can see everything around me.

Letter to Issac

Today Thomas got a postcard from Issac, and Thomas told me that he missed Issac also, he had Issac in his dream the other day and seeing Issac was in the class with him. Thomas wants to write a letter to Issac like this :"

Dear Issac,
if kids say you're mean, Issac, God thinks you're not mean.

Love, Thomas."

Growing Pain

Talked to my sister-in-law and my older brother over the phone this morning about my niece M, she is really nice and smart girl, freshman in the best university in the country to learning German. Recently seems frustrated by a lots of things i guess, that's why i wanted to put into as 'growing pain', i guess everybody had it somehow. I remembered I had before when i was in college. Under the current education system she is in, most of them don't know what exactly they'd do in the future. I think this is not any body's fault it's the system. In high school everybody has to had the highest scores as possible, the scores is so important than anything else. this is so wrong. How about the social skill or well-being character ? i think it doesn't matter what major or minor you choose in the college, as long as you have the skill to learn new things, you can do anything in the future.

Anniversary

May 4 is the anniversary of dating my husband , it's been 12 years now. He forgot it... He could forget a lots of things. i have to remind him. We had good dinner together, and then went to church for bible study. Drizzling is the typical May of here, i still remembered the day we dated at the first time it's raining whole day and we drove to the fossil rim where you could see a lots of animals walking in the park, you could drive the car and fed the animals. I like animals a lot. ( I used to have several cats in my home when I was young), Sounds weird on the first date ? On the way back, he wanted to go inside a little local bar and i hesitated and so we didn't go there, drove the car in the dark, we felt so close to each other, that night i felt maybe he was the one I was looking for years. Last night, he asked me why we got married in 98 but we met each other in 95, i teased him ' because you never proposed to me , finally i kind of proposed to you... ', he didn't say anything just smiled... that's typical him.

A song

A friend sent me a song 'Don't want to miss a thing' by AeroSmith. it's a beautiful song to listen, here is the some of lyrics:

I could stay awake just to hear you breathing
Watch you smile while you are sleeping
While you're far away dreaming
I could spend my life in this sweet surrender
I could stay lost in this moment forever
Every moment spent with you is a moment I treasure...

Last Soccer Game this Season

Thomas had a very good game today, his team only had 3 players (Eric, Emilio and Thomas), rest of them were out of town, Thomas was really good at soccer, he knows where he should be in the field whenever the game starts it. He passed the good balls to Eric and let him score to his team. Thomas also got a ball from other team and run through all the field to the goal and scored. I don't know much about soccer but I really enjoyed watching Thomas playing. He was tough on the field. He even knows when he should take a break whenever he could at field. We'll sign him up for the next season.