A second chance for us…. the Sacrament of Marriage
David is my college sweetheart. We met there and our friendship blossomed, that was 11 years before he asked me to tie the knot. Most of those years were when we were in college and university. I have to say those were some of the best years of our lives, as we truly enjoyed our university years. After completing our SAM at Disted college in Penang, we completed our Bachelors and Honours degree at Deakin University, Warrnambool Australia.
We got married in 2003. It was honestly not a bed of roses for us. Despite the love we had for each other, we had so many arguments and conflicts. Coming from very different cultural and family backgrounds, raising a family was… not at all easy, to say the least. Though we were blessed with three lovely children, we found ourselves being drowned by the demands of our relatives and the world around us.
Love itself was just not enough to hold us together.
In 2014, things got really bad between us. It was a time where I just wanted to give up, and throw in the towel. But instead of doing that I prayed and called out to Jesus. I knew he was my personal saviour and I asked him to save my marriage and to save our family.
1 John 4:19 We love because he first loved us.
It was then when I got a very strong calling to go to church. Because I was already a believer of Christ, as a family we would go to church, but only during Christmas and Easter.
During this trying time however, I felt that the Lord was calling me deeper and asking me to commit my life to Him. I told David how I felt and he said ‘let’s do it, let’s go to church.’
So we went to church and saw the priest there. From then onwards, healing and transformation began to take place in our lives. The Lord put amazing people in our lives. The love we felt by the church community was far beyond just a ‘feeling’ or an emotion.
We saw love in action. We experienced love in action.
God put people in our lives who helped us heal, who taught us how to deal with each other and how to deal with situations that arise in our marriage. This helped us tremendously.
Around this time I also felt that I wanted to commit myself to Jesus and I told David that I wanted to be baptised and wanted to baptise the kids as well. I asked him if he was ok to have the children baptised and if he also wanted to be baptised. By the Grace of God, he said yes! And so that was the start of our RCIA journey, which I shall write about in another post.
We were baptised as a family in 2016. In 2018, upon completing a marriage course with dear Vincent and Elaine, we had our marriage convalidated in the chapel at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit. It was a very special day for us and we felt truly blessed by the Lord. Surrounded by His grace, and having our children witness this special occasion, how could we not be blessed? We are very thankful to Fr. Francis Anthony and everyone else who made the day so meaningful for us.
Having our marriage convalidated did not give us the ‘bed of roses’ that we are told marriages can bring. But it put a third leg in our marriage. The third leg that was not in our marriage before the convalidation. The third leg that is now the foundation of our marriage. The one we turn to when we face problems. The one who guides us and enables us to communicate with kindness, patience and self-control.
The one who enables us to love each other through sacrifice.
Our third leg is Jesus. Thank you Jesus for loving us.