I was born in a developing country, to a couple who lived on 2 pesos a day…

And then twenty-two years later, I’m living on my own in a second-story apartment, with a garage, a full kitchen, and a daily front-row seat to a Louisianan sunset (when it’s not raining).

It’s a hard thing to reminisce: my future prospects from a decade ago. Twelve-year -old me would have probably told you that I really wanted to become a scientist, but that I was more likely to become a doctor. (Then, since I was a hardheaded little twelve-year-old,  I’d ask you to not tell my parents that, because Asian parents always want their children to become doctors. My ambitions of becoming a porn star wouldn’t stand a chance*…). Doctors are revered in Asia. They achieve some extent of financial freedom, and no other respectable, fluid career is as easily made in the Philippines. Unless its corruption. But truly, back then I didn’t even think about my future. Much less, how it could have been in a different country altogether.

This story really starts all the way back to how my dad met my mom.**

Great story. Ask me about it sometime and I’ll tell you. I will give you the point of it though. They met each other, were converted to Christianity with a Gideon’s Bible (those things are actually really significant—I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for those), and were disowned for their change in faith and getting married in a Christian church. Crazy crazy start for them, you’d think. They started from scratch, living on two pesos a day. What am I living on right now? A credit card and the promise of a nice five figure sum for this year. Can I live on the equivalent of two pesos? Uh no. That wouldn’t even cover the amount of air-conditioning I require to breathe FOR five minutes.  I would die of asphyxiation.  But I digress.

About 14 years later (I know this because I’m two years shy of how old their relationship is), my parents visited America. And all I could really get from their stories about this wonderful country was that the hotel served a free breakfast with things called Bagels. So if you had asked twelve-year-old me why we moved to America, I would have told you that my mother was crazy over Bagels.

(I mean really, who isn’t? I love lox and cream cheese, and the chives… yes. So good.)

We weren’t wealthy by a long shot, but we made do. My parents owned a t-shirt making business and the year we hit 6-figure profits (Pesos), they made the decision to buy our family a life here rather than an SUV. Anything is a better decision than an SUV, but again I digress. We sold the entire business, the sewing machines, the mountains of folded cloth that my siblings spent hours climbing, the big table that my mother bent over and worked on, sacrificing tears, sweat, and occasionally her fingers—she used an industrial cutter that slices through layers of cloth. We sold everything. The house.  My things.  My precious, stupid, twelve-year-old things. My entire life was reduced to two cardboard boxes.

It’s ridiculous how often I find myself reducing my entire life to a couple of cardboard boxes.

Then we were on an airplane for 14 hours. Fourteen, long, troublesome hours, made so by my brothers who, at that point, could not sit still even at gunpoint. Then suddenly we were in America, The United States, the land of opportunity, and all these other pedestal-ic names. But it wasn’t that easy getting through (not that any of the aforementioned parts were easy), because the customs officer at Los Angeles international airport, seeing a family of six on travel visas and twelve cardboard boxes, could not contain his excitement in making our lives a living nightmare for two hours. My parents were not without a plan when they decided to move us here. They wanted to establish a small t-shirt business in California. On travel visas, that is completely legal, almost recommended. It was the appearance they had a problem with. Twelve cardboard boxes and all four of your children? Ha! No way we were planning to go back when our travel visa time is up.

And they were absolutely right on that point, but completely wrong about how we were going to do it.

Because we didn’t do it illegally. That’s just plain stupid.

My five months in California was almost idyllic. There was a pool, I spoke English well, I was making friends with White People (I know I give you guys crap, but you guys really are awesome) and I had no worries whatsoever about the future. My parents? Not quite. In fact, they spent much of their afternoons praying in the bathroom (they told me this later, I didn’t understand a thing back then), because we had absolutely no surety of staying, and if my dad didn’t get a job soon, we would finish all of our savings. We were living with my aunt and uncle in their one-bedroom apartment. We were so blessed to have them as family—need I emphasize how there was six of us? And Four Of That Six Were Children.

Anyways, my dad finally got an interview with a ministry television network in Arkansas. At that point, I have never heard of Arkansas. In fact, I didn’t think it was still in America—but I was so oblivious to the entire thing, I don’t think I really cared. What I did pay attention to, and it was only after the fact had already happened, was that my dad was scheduled to fly to Little Rock on September 11, 2001.

Needless to say the interview didn’t happen that day.  The entire nation was put into turmoil, and it seemed like a very likely possibility that my family was going to have to go back to the Philippines.  After all, who would hire my dad now? Not yet an immigrant even, who would sponsor our family for a visa?

But this network did. They needed an engineer who had extensive experience in broadcasting and that was my father. My dad is a high-baller. He writes articles for several electric engineering magazines, he’s the head of some electric engineering society. He put the cool in Electric Engineering. (Yeah, I just butchered that saying, deal with it. Be thankful it wasn’t worse.) Thus with many anguished tears and thousands of dollars later, we were sponsored to stay in America in Little Rock, Arkansas. All this done very legally.

After 9/11, some sense was knocked into me and I realized I am actually part of this place called Earth–and I began to listen. Not well at first. But then it came to the point that I was accused of Vulcan hearing because I would always know when “ice cream” was said. (In actuality, my parents don’t know how to whisper. They think they do, but they fail miserably at this point.)

Life wasn’t all sunsets and sushi though. We were in debt from all the visa applications and trying to start up. We lived in a sketch apartment complex, but we were happy. I used to wear one outfit to church and I didn’t care. I used to have holes in my tennis shoes, and when it rained, my socks would get really wet. But we were happy. We were happy whenever we’d go to Burger King and my sister and I would split drinks.

We still do.

After I started listening, I came to understand that that happiness cost more than I really could understand. Yes, we were paying for it slowly but surely, but we had an amazing Co-signer. No debt was too great for Him. No cost too overwhelming. No ocean to great, no mind too small.

Six years later, I graduated high school with a full scholarship to college. Three years after that, so did my brother.  Ten years to that time we set foot on American soil, I, a chemical engineer graduate, just finished watching the sunset and am about to run to the pool…in a completely different state, starting a completely new job in approximately 20 hours.

Sunsets, cardboard boxes, decisions between a new car or a new country…it all just becomes insignificant when you realize that there is something far greater than the moment you are currently living in. That there is a guiding Hand in all the crazy. Twelve-year-old me may have known English well enough to speak without an accent, but I did not know God well enough to imagine that I could be speaking it in America.

I’m pretty happy. Take away the apartment, take away the sunsets, and take away the sushi and shopping trips, and the stiletto heels I now own. Take it all away. Because you know that place where you have nothing? I’ve been there. And you know what?

It doesn’t matter when you have Him.

Happy thanksgiving to my family! From  June 14, 2001 to June 14, 2011. Thank you, God, for the past ten abundant years.

Footnotes, dears.

*Sarcastic…You know, just in case.  I don’t think I’d be good at porn… I’m good at scrabble.

** I LOVE HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER. I really want a story like that someday. One that will last more than SEVEN SEASONS.

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