[continued from yesterday's post; series started 07/05]
It wasn't something I was looking for at the time. I'd grown out of chasing skirts, and settled into a satisfactory Christian life, focusing more on things above than around. (Colossians 3:2) Back to the small Church of Christ at the East Main congregation in Nacogdoches, where I found purpose and satisfaction that I was doing the right thing at the right place at the right time. Suppose it is these times in life when things sort of fall into place.
But I sure didn't recognize it when it happened. To flash back a little, my somewhat-elderly neighbor (and landlord) out in the country called one day, asking if I'd like to join he and his wife for Wednesday night service, as they were leaving in a few minutes. Couldn't gracefully back out, so agreed.
They picked me up on their way to church. I didn't feel totally comfortable about it since I wasn't active at the time, but here we go. In a short while we'd made it to town and pulled up to the modest building where services were held. Not many cars in the parking lot - in fact only two, because that evening only five people showed up, me and my chaperones included. The other pair was a guy named Doug and a Chinese girl named Chenjean. I remember so clearly to this day the moment I set eyes on her. Not because it was love at first sight (which it wasn't) or that she was a ravishing beauty (pretty, but not distractingly so). It was because I'd never laid eyes on a Chinese before, except on a TV show or in the news. She was different, and interesting. Besides, I took it for granted that she and Doug were a couple.
This series is about a journey into yet another language, so we'll flash forward now about a year and a half. It turns out that Doug and Chenjean were not really a couple - except in his mind - and, upon realizing that Chenjean would make the perfect wife, I proposed and we got married on June 24th of 1988. So here I am, now married to the Chinese culture.
Go figure...after years of acquiring and honing skills at mastering Spanish, now the advantage would be to learn CHINESE of all languages.
But I didn't. My greatest and most lasting regret is that we didn't move to Taiwan right after getting married so that I could learn the language. My mind was much more young and agile in those days, and two years of intense immersive study would have done it. Since Chenjean and her sisters - and their spouses - here in Houston naturally prefer to speak Chinese, even when I'm around, the entirety of our marriage would have been much more comfortable had I become fluent. But, I didn't.
However there was an effort very early on, which was somewhat fruitful...
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