(I apologize in advance for my strange-sounding English. I've been away from America for so long... I'm now speaking such a blend of languages with funny accents - atleast you can't hear the accents on a blog...)
A year ago... I wasn't breathing. It was the week before my wedding. Well actually, four days to be exact. It was September 12th, the day my love would fly from Africa to Pittsburgh. Don't ask me how I did it - how my family did it - how it all worked out... I still don't know. When God calls two people to share life together, it just happens.
Samuel has been the base leader in Ethiopia for several years now. In 2008 when I showed up with all my suitcases as a journalist from USA, traveling to several countries with the goal of writing a book for Mission SOS, both of our lives were inevitably transformed. If you ask us separately what happened during that month, you may hear slightly different stories... but nonetheless we shared some late night cups of coffee, some walks thorough the city and lots of questions. I suppose the most significant things didn't happen though until after I left Africa. He began sending me emails and I later came to find that he sat waiting for replies all day... I suppose I was playing the mysterious girl. But neither one of us could get the other one off our mind.
Not long after we said goodbye in the airport of Addis Ababa, he came to America. And he called my dad..... need I say more??
We had three dates together that weekend. One of them was 12 hours long in downtown Pittsburgh. If you ask Samuel when he knew that he would marry me, he would say on that date.... he realized that we literally talked for 12-hours straight... and still didn't want to say goodnight when the day was done. It was wonderful. But before I knew it, he was boarding his plane back to Africa and we wouldn't see each other for 2 more months when he came again to teach at the SOS Bible school in Pitt. We decided to pray and fast about each other and our future for those 2 months... and write a lot of emails.
It's amazing the things you learn about a person through letters. I think you learn the deep things more quickly than "typical" relationships that may take huge periods of time just to break through the shells and the fluff of it all. I longed for my inbox to tell me I had new mail. I was clinging on his words. I did pray, fast and cry out for wisdom from God those months. I prayed really hard. And I felt peace. It's strange because part of me didn't want to feel peace... but I did. I knew Samuel would be my husband one day and I knew we would spend our lives in the nations, chasing the unreached multitudes of the world. But then April came.
The first few days were naturally a little awkward but like the girl that I can sometimes be, my emotions began to flail. I remember calling Joelle on the first night "Joellllllle... I don't think he likes me.... he changed his mind... nothingggg is ever going to happennnn"... (O thank God for Joelle!) But finally we spilled our hearts. It was perfect. We knew.
He came home to my family for dinner that afternoon and we went to the Yergans for dessert. Everyone loved him. It's so easy to love him. He asked me to come stay with his family in Sweden in June. Ummmm yesss! Then he left. I was so sad when I dropped him off at the airport that I wasn't paying attention on my drive home and ended up with no gas, no map, no phone battery and no food in the middle of nowhere in West Virginia. Four hours later I pulled up my drive and cried. I was heart sick. Two more months of emails awaited us and a few occasional phone calls...
June was wonderful. I fell in love with a Swedish family. They welcomed me and wiped away my anxious fears with the most tender love. Love. Samuel told me he loved me in Sweden... sitting by the ocean. I began to feel butterflies in the pit of my stomach for the first time over him. I was turning into a little girl again... speechless, spontaneous, out of my mind in love. Leaving was the worst romance film you ever could have seen... we hugged in the airport and then boarded opposite gates leading to planes going in opposite directions. Heart ache again..
I came home that time with so many unanswered questions. When will we marry? When will he propose? When will I be able to get back to the land that I love... Africa? I just wanted to be on the mission field with him! Three months later, on September 12th, I made two trips to the airport. The first one was to pick up ALL the Strandbergs from Sweden and Thailand and the second one was to get my Samuel. I curled my hair perfectly, reapplied my makeup nine million times, couldn't eat anything, whispered to myself "just breathe..." GAH! This was our wedding week! (When you have such long-distance relationships... things happen quickly while they can!!)
That night Samuel took my car keys. He drove me to the top of Mount Washington with 100 Chinese tourists -- they weren't really in the plan but we pretended we didn't see them all surrounding us. He got down on one knee............. and I said "Yes!"
Love you my prince! Thanks for asking...
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