Tulum, Mexico 1992: After dating for three measly weeks and then being engaged for three more fly-by weeks, Trent and Siauw Ling eloped to Mexico and hoped that everyone understood that some things simply must not wait. Twenty years later, it appears that maybe they were onto something!

From Trent Ling:

This topic can rightfully contain no beginning or ending since it has become all encompassing.  How can I move the needle or advance the ball on this title?  It would take a thousand pages just to start clearing my throat.  In lieu of that, I’ll just ramble on for a bit…

Not at all do I ever feel, think, or say, “Where did all the time go?”  Rather, in Christ and with Siauw, where I’ve tasted life to the full (John 10:10), it truly, honestly, God-as-my-witness seems as if Siauw and I have had an exhilarating 20 Trillion years together!  What in the world was I thinking and doing before we got married?  Good question.  Horrifying answer!

I do recall looking for Siauw throughout my life.  Second grade?  Not there.  Sixth?  Nope.  Eleventh?  Naw.  College freshman, sophomore, junior?  Nyet, nol, and huh-uh.  Hmmm…  Then, I took a sad, defeated hiatus on the search, crashed and burned, and miraculously landed in God’s Kingdom!  Back to it, first-year-in-Christ wife search?  Not you again.  Second year in Christ—Wow, there she is!

No wonder God had tugged upon me forever to move to Washington, D.C. from Washington State.  I had thought it was to be the President of the United States, but it was to find Siauw and do this Kingdom-of-God thing for real—the way that we can only read about.

I knew immediately upon first getting Siauw in my sights that she was in fact my long-lost wife.  Clearly I knew that she was the one I had been looking for from the beginning, and that this “chance” encounter had been written in Heaven forever prior.  Remarkably, though she knew none of this, she went along with the maniacal story and eloped with this unknown, busted-down, tragically indebted, horrifically credentialed, physically emaciated, morally emasculated, spiritual basket case.  On paper, we were a match made nowhere.  On the court, we would be a team the victories of which only God could ever claim.

For our seventh anniversary, I gave to Siauw seven dwarfs.  I acknowledged then that many years down the road, we would look back to our first seven years together and see them as the seven dwarfs.  How absolutely true that turned out to be, starting with the eighth year!

Spiritually, with the seven dwarfs in our rearview mirror, God saw fit to turn us loose in 1999.  God was apparently satisfied and convinced that together we would meet defeats, betrayals, heartbreaks, and squalls with “one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father (Ephesians 4:4-6).”  We have.

So, Chart Boy, what are some of Siauw’s greatest hits?

First, Siauw’s needs are fully met in Christ.  I know of nobody else like this.  She has been and remains a needless woman of God; and there is absolutely nothing more attractive than that!  1 Peter 3:4.  Rock on, Boo Mama!

Second, she signed up on a whim to join forces and to help the biggest train wreck in human history follow God’s utterly outlandish calling.  Yo-yo’s would never have it so bad.  People on the Tilt-O-Whirl would point and laugh at the insanity of Siauw joining my gig.  I have met a grand total of zero people up for that!

Third, Siauw’s wise, tireless, selfless, and exhaustive efforts raising our children continue to show and pay dividends to this very day.  From their inception, they were always their own people.  Never has there been any need or inkling for them to pretend, deceive, sneak, or try to spare or tip-toe around needy parents.  Our greatest responsibility will always be to our kids.  Siauw has put that first and foremost from the get-go, and it shows like no other situation I have ever seen or imagined.

Fourth, as we relatively cool our jets this year, easygoing Siauw (who lives with “Mr. Not-Easy-Going”) remains content to bide her time and await the launch codes from Heaven that will send our arthritic existences across the orbits again soon enough.  With everything surrounding us presenting more question marks than answers, Siauw just scoots along in her Boo Mama way as if everything’s just fine.  She even has me convinced!  And convincing me, as everyone knows, is essentially impossible!

Unflappable, Siauw has apparently known from her beginnings that one day she would meet a weird monster, and that she would set out to help him as best she could.  Where sensible people would have headed for the hills, Siauw eloped with the Monster!  And she has managed to keep him viable for twenty wild years since.

Though there’s always more, if it were all “written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written (John 21:25).”

Getting old with someone so sweet:  a sad, little second-grader’s dream come true!

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