Aching for Life

We've been up to our ears in grad school apps, so we haven't had much time to write. But here are a small fraction of the wedding photos that we've begun to edit. (We still have a long way to go before we've gotten all our pictures organized). Cake toppers Clara drew all these table signs! Tea ceremony, with Anastasia as temp dai kam jie. Mom and Dad giving us words of wisdom. Ryan thanking Mom and Dad. Hugs and tears all around. Praying before the ceremony. Lovely Liu ladies. Dad being sociable. Ryan and Mom walking down - already tearing up! Jason and Portia... looks like they were walking fast. Adam and Clara... same smiles! Danny and radiant La Uncle Mike (saying hi to Ken) and Anastasia Best Man and Maid of Honor! Bea saying hi to Liu and Yun kiddos. Getting teary. Walking down with Dad. Being given away. Happy! Sang making us laugh. When I survey the wondrous cross...

It’s now close to the end of September, and I am not proud to say that I have yet to fully move into our apartment. I’ve been going through my boxes piecemeal. In the process, I’m reliving the many times I’ve moved from one apartment to another, one room to another, or one country to another. I’m going through files of stuff from those frenzied last days of packing and moving when I didn’t have time to go through documents and essay outlines and concert stubs and photos and just stashed them all in one folder. It stuns me at least a little that for some of these things, it’s taken me a decade to find the time to sort through them. I wonder when the next time such thorough cleaning and tidying will happen again. I often stop to read things.  Notebooks filled with notes from sociology and political science classes during my STINT year (together with lists the team made of movies to watch together), notes I made while in Yunnan on Tibetan culture, Bible verses on post-its from the man

As a supplement to our vows and for our first mensiversary, Ryan wrote 10 things that we would want to be able to say when death does us part.  One sentence in our vows went, “I vow to love you as Christ has commanded me, striving daily to die to myself for your sake.”  Number 10 of the 10 things Ryan wrote is, “The end was no great travesty because we had lots of practice dying – and because we really lived enough to be aching for Life.” As young ‘uns newly embarking on the journey of marriage, this is our hope – that, as husband and wife, we will learn how to die to sin and self and live unto the Lord, always thirsting for and hoping in Eternity. And thus, the title of this blog. Thanks for reading and for sharing in this journey with us!