supLise!

31.05.09 speech:

"Surprise!

I hope that you 2 had a good time in Sydney and a pleasant flight back I want to say, before anything, that it's an absolute honor to be here today and be a part of this milestone with you guys, and of course with everyone else.

And an even greater privilege to be able to share with everyone and just express how your lives, both individually and as one, have made a difference in my life.

T-Sue - you're a bundle of joy and encouragement, always eager to see where I'm at in life, with God, always ready to as the right questions to guide and support. I want to say thank you for being you.

T-Ren - you astound me. you've got answers to the questions before i ask them, and you seem to know how to riddle them for me to learn. I thank you for being a great teacher and friend. Thank you for being you.

I thank God dearly for both your lives.
thank you again, for contributing to helping me become the person i am today.
As friends and family, i love you both heaps."

T-Ren, T-Sue, Happy 25th.

Deivi.

milestone

delayed post, but valuable all the same.
to those of you reading this who don't' really know or don't know a great deal about my childhood, there's a few things i need to clarify, to help you understand why this is so meaningful to me.



growing up, anyone can tell you that i was always closer to my father, than my mom and still am.
my father would push me, discipline me, beat me and very often put me down, break my spirit.
the thing that was hardest to accept, i guess, was that despite all of this he would not let anyone so much as look at me wrongly. and yet from what I've heard and from spats over he years I've learned that i never copped it half as bad as my sisters did, and i was worst.

my father was a hard man, took a lot to make him smile, laugh, enjoy, it took him a death to shed a tear. and nothing was ever quite good enough to need his support or encouragement.

i remember, end of grade 2 (for me) at home, getting ready for the certificate night, I'd run to my father and say 'dad! dad! i finished grade 2, aren't you prod of me?' again after grade 3, grade 4 and onwards, around about year 7 i stopped caring what he thought.
it was always the same answer, a cold 'yes.. yes.. good boy, now run along' type of thing

end of year 12 i thought, 'I'll wait til the end of the night, if he doesn't say anything then I'll ask him.'
end of the night came, he didn't say anything. so i asked. again, same reply (minus the 'run along' part, i think he realized I'm a bit old for that now.) i chose not to contest it and left it at that.

2 Sundays ago, however, i was translating, and i honestly can't express what came over me as i did, the words i was speaking were speaking to me, and as i looked over from the upper room, i saw my father wiping away tears as he listened to my translating. among others that day, my father came up to me and told me he was proud of me, that i had done a good job and that truly God is using me here.

its a 19year old milestone.
why it's taken me 2 weeks to write about it - I'm still having some trouble with it sinking in.

- Shmavo