It’s been said, “Life is a blank page. You must put something on it”.

But, what if you found yourself a minor character in someone else’s story? 

Because of my mother’s fate, the script for my life was already written.

Believing that I had my own story to write – and breaking free to live it – that is my story. 

 A Mail Order Bride

It’s true, stories don’t happen by accident.  They are planned. 

Mine was planned by my mother — Ah-ma, a tender, fresh-faced seventeen year-old beauty who brought me into the world.

Ah-ma was a mail-order bride from Hong Kong, to a bus boy in San Francisco Chinatown. Ah-ma was the second of eight children back in Hong Kong. Because she was the second daughter, she was chosen by her parents to marry a stranger 10 years older. 

Her parents sacrificed her happiness, for the greater good — to bring her family out of poverty and emigrate them to the land of opportunity.

They divorced when I was five.

The pressures she carried were then placed on me. 

She constantly reminded me that I was all she had, that I was the one to take care and provide for her. 

Ah-ma wanted me to live the same life she was given, to work hard for the greater good– to provide a life that was worry-free and make up for her sacrificed youth.

Who would want to break their mother’s heart and crush her dreams of a better life?
I Worked Harder

From the time I was thirteen, I worked to help support the family.

When it came time for college, I dreamed of becoming a writer.
 
“A writer?  You’ll die poor.  We’ll die poor.  Is that what you want?”

I worked harder… and became a well-respected, successful engineer. 

And I was miserable.
More Than My Mother’s Daughter

One Christmas Eve, I heard a preacher say, Jesus came to give us hope.

“Hope,” I wondered, “Where’s my hope?”

For decades, I lived on duty and guilt, fulfilling my mother’s expectations. I saw no hope in my future.

Is this what God truly wants for me?

In that moment, I knew that living someone else’s story just couldn’t be what I was created for. 

 I decided, then —

“I am more than my mother’s daughter.

I am my Heavenly Father’s daughter.”

Knowing she would disown me, I made a decision to break free from Ah-ma’s story, to start living mine.

Not every one gets to choose the life they want —

There is pain in making the right choice.  And it’s worth it.

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 “For you created my inmost being; 

You knit me together in my mother’s womb.

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