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Amazing Love Dedicated to Thuy Mong Le Submitted by Paul Twenty five months ago I chanced to meet a beautiful Vietnamese lady named Thuy,pronounced "Twee". She and her family had been in America less than four years, her father having received an immigration visa after many years in Communist "reeducation" camps and subsequent government harassment. I was then a 39 year old Caucasian man, divorced and scarred, with a solid resolve never to marry again, as I had never come remotely close to finding in a woman the parallel principles and convictions I lived my life by. I was ready for a new beginning and had received a job offer in Honolulu, but I instead decided to remain in Seattle to give this new friendship a chance. Talk about a new beginning! Traditional Vietnamese culture (which I found to be trmendously rich and beautiful) prohibited us from being alone together much less dating, so for many, many weeks we spoke together by telephone evening after evening, questioning each other, inquiring and pursuing and exploring each other's beliefs, each other's truest hearts, and each other's wounds. I came to know her as a woman of honor, noble and straight and proud, her great beauty running like a vein of gold to her very center. And I began to fall in love with her, and very slowly, her with me. Three months later we held hands for the first time, nine months after that I proposed, to which she gently refused, saying that it was too soon. A Vietnamese daughter's behavior reflects directly on her father, and as the Vietnamese community in Seattle is large, she wanted to avoid any possible hint of reproach upon him. Seven months later, however, she accepted (!!) and received my ring. Our wedding is planned for August 5th of this year, with our honeymoon in Hawaii to follow, and promises to be both beautiful and unique. We will combine the traditional Vietnamese with the traditional American, my Dad as a retired Baptist minister presiding, and with all of us expressing the joining and blending of our two cultures. With our great difference of culture and upbringing, we have had our share of small, cultural misunderstandings. But with our deep understanding of each other, we know the huge difference of offenses done accidentally and those done on purpose, and so greater love, growth, and trust are the results. My sweet Thuy once told me, "I don't know, but everything I do, just love", which stands as our guiding principle. We believe love to be the highest estimation of one's worth, and represents our final, irreplaceable choice. It's been said that the greatest thing in the world for a man is the precious light in the eye of his one, true love, and I know now from experience the truth of that statement. For me, being truly happy for the first time in my life, both of us experiencing real love for the first times, and our looking ahead to our own family in the years ahead is just one of the restorations we've experienced, another being the healing and banishment of deep, inner injuries in both our hearts. Thanks be to God for the blessing of my sweet Thuy.
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