04/02/15 
Throughout my life, from what I could remember, I never knew what it truly meant to have a personal relationship with God until I met my wife. Growing up, I always had this thought that it was always enough to just go to church every Sunday with my parents and that fulfilled my obligation as a person of faith. But to truly understand what it means to be a man of faith, I honestly could say I did not have any clue at all. I never truly reflected upon understanding where I stood as far as my relationship with God, nor did I understand the meaning of having a relationship through his son Jesus Christ. To understanding of how I came to realization that I truly did not have a strong faith requires me to give a brief history into my life and how I met my wife who has helped me regain my faith.
My mother and father were both Catholics, so I was raised in a Catholic church and always remembered from my childhood that every Sunday we would go to church. When we moved to the US from Nigeria, my brother and I were both sent to Catholic school from grade school until we finished high school. In Catholic school, we had a religion class which required us to read the Bible. I never reflected upon what I was reading because I always felt that the religion class was another history class where at the end there would be an exam on the material that was just read.
When I entered college is when I could say I began to stop going to church and I had no thought as to how that would affect my life. I did not completely stop at first going to church, it was a significant event in my life that made me stop. My father became seriously ill when both my brother and I were in nursing school, it was a stressful time in our family because of the time spent with our father in the hospital. My father did not get any better while in the hospital, around this time, I remember my mother spent a lot of time praying in the hospital chapel and frequently praying a lot by herself at home. As my fatherЎs health deteriorated, he was brought to a medical floor where they could monitor him closely. I hardly visited my father at that point, I guess I was fearful of what was happening to him and did not want to face it. A few days later we had word that my father was getting better and the doctors were planning to discharge him on Sunday. My mother was extremely happy that her prayers were answered and that my father was coming home. That very Sunday morning that he was to be discharged home, my mother had received a phone call from the hospital that he died. The last time I remember being in church was to attend my father's funeral. After my father's death my whole family became depressed, instead of growing closer to one another we began to fight and distance ourselves from each other. My mother worked long hours so I hardly spent time with her, and my brother and I preoccupied ourselves with our studies so we can graduate.
Working as a nurse, I found it stressful and overwhelming at times. I almost felt like I wanted to quit and change my career. The time I spent off from work I would go to the mall alone, I would sit on a bench for hours and just watch the crowd pass me by. I just felt empty and alone. I always thought that my feeling of emptiness was related to me not having a significant other in my life. I thought that this empty void will be filled if I started to date someone. The only problem is that I never dated anyone before and I did not know how to start. I always had people trying to set me up with someone but I was never interested in blind dates. For me, I did not want to find someone who was not looking for a serious relationship. Having that kind of perception towards dating was difficult for me, especially when I did not know where to look. Out of my despair, I found myself sitting alone one day and asking God, is there someone out there for me? Around this time I was already getting burned out from the demands at my workplace and was looking for an escape. Through some miracle I received a phone call asking me if I was interested in a job. I gladly took the offer even though the job was in a neighborhood not in the best part of the Bronx.
It is here at my new job that I met my wife Mikyoung. I did not see her much because we worked different shifts and she used to be floated to cover different nurses. To me, Mikyoung was very pretty and I already have this misconception that she was already seeing someone so I never approached her, and if I knew she was single I would still be too scared to approach her. About two months passed when I mustered up the courage to talk with her and realized she was single, so one time I was planning to head to work early in the morning to talk with her more before she ended her night shift. To my luck, my plans was completely shut down when I arrived at my assigned floor to find a different nurse there and not Mikyoung. I did not dare to ask the nurse what happened to nurse Mikyoung or to her whereabouts. I just went on about my business until the night nurse told me that she had jammed my floor printer, so I had to fix my printer and then after I spent thirty minutes fixing it, she then tells me she also broke the printer on another floor and asked me to fix it. I hesitantly obliged to her request and went to the other floor to fix the printer. It is in the other floor with the broken printer that I saw Mikyoung and that day I had enough courage to ask her out for a lunch date, which she said yes to.
I was not expecting much from our first date, and was not expecting to hear what she had to say to me. She revealed to me her struggle living and working in America while her whole family was back home in Korea. She told me that she would not have survive living here in America without her faith and trust in God. She revealed to me she did not want to marry someone whose faith was not as strong as hers and who does not have a personal relationship with God. At that point I was kind of puzzled as to what she meant by having a relationship with God because I thought she meant going to church, which I have not done for quite some time. I was just so amazed by how strong her faith was to Lord and how it has carried her through her times of hardship while living in a foreign country alone. I was never much a believer in love at first sight but something drew me to want to be closer to her. I donЎt know what came over me, but at the end of our date I told Mikyoung that I would marry her a year from now.
We ended up getting married after one year of dating with the approval of her parents. But before my wifeЎs parents flew in from Korea to tell us that they approved of the marriage, my wife told me that she was praying very hard to ask God that her parentsЎ hearts will be open to approving our marriage. At first her family was hesitant to accept that their daughter was going to marry me and I was scared they would say no. Ultimately her mother spoke to both of us saying that her decision to approve our marriage came from an answer she received after praying to the Lord. Shortly before my wifeЎs parents were about to return to Korea, they told my wife that they wanted to see us get married before they return to Korea. I was completely shocked and what my then fiance' told me because we had only five days to plan for a wedding. It was an absolute miracle we were able to plan a wedding in such short notice.
Thanks to my wife I found the courage to return to church and she has helped me slowly restore my faith in the Lord and the belief in the power of prayer. I am the kind of person that always believed that through oneЎs own strength one can overcome hardship. I understand now that is not always the case and that there are limitations to what human strength can achieve without God in our lives. What I learned from my wife is that to have a true relationship with God is to trust in his divine power to overcome the hardships in life that human strength alone cannot overcome. I see now that it was GodЎs plan that lead me to find my wife who helped save me from turning away from God.