Whenever I take a long family holiday, I get this opportunity to pull away from ministry and life in Singapore and reflect on my life from totally fresh angles. So today is a good time for me to acknowledge something I don't acknowledge nearly enough. It is about my greatest asset. This is usually the key behind every great idea or sermon. This is what turns my 'good ideas' into great ones. This is what often cheers me when I'm depressed and strengthens me when I am weakened. This is what I most often recognize as God's best gift to me. It's my home and family. I can be out there in the world weathering all kinds of storms but the moment I step into my home all these 24 years, I always find peace and security and love and comfort and the freedom to be me.
And the one person who has made my home such a wonderful place to recuperate, refresh and recharge is my wife, Christina. She herself is calm and composed, an epitome of deep inner peace. She creates a climate of stability in the home. And she provides us with such a calmly environment, we just want to keep coming home.
She puts the best food in the world on our kitchen table. She meticulously plans the menu everyday to ensure that each one of us gets to eat our favourite dishes. And it's not just the dishes, but it is the type of drinks we like, the deserts we prefer - she just loves us to the details.
Best of all, she is the one I would want to spend my sunset days with. She just lets me be me. I am never more myself than when I am with her. She laughs at my craziness. She gets irritated with my nonsense but then will smile it off, without ever becoming seriously offended. She frees me to pursue the dreams that God has placed in my heart. She grows through my sermons.
She is so different from me and that makes our relationship so interesting because we still fight like little kids over little things. Yet because she is never a bitter person, she gives me such deep security to be myself in our marriage. She is the one person who knows me inside out, all my faults and all my weaknesses and still accepts me and loves me for who I am. Her benefits to my life are innumerable.
This post is a special tribute to her. Today is our 24th wedding anniversary and life would not have been this wonderful without the Lord and without Christina and my two children, Thea and Reuben.
When I was looking for a wife, my mentor, Lillie Rogers would say to me, "Guna, be very careful who you marry. She will either make you or break you."
Honey, thanks for being the Lord's instrument in making me to be who I am today. Thank you for making these 24 years such a treasure, giving us a legacy to leave behind.
Happy 24th Anniversary, Hon!
