How God planned our 8th wedding anniversary

I know I haven't been updating my blog.

I have been busy with personal life - house hunting in Australia, meeting many new friends who have just migrated, playing a new online game (which I have not touched for the past few days), work and erm, basically having writer's block.

To kick-off, this new entry is about my 'honeymoon' in Australia. Or rather our first wedding anniversary overseas.

So there we were driving towards Melbourne city in the morning. We had just sent Rachel to the kindergarten and would not be picking her up until 3pm that same afternoon.

That left us with about 5 hours of enjoyment. Or so we thought...

I had planned for us to watch the Bourne Ultimatum. However, she wanted to visit the Victorian Market and then take walk around the city. I accommodated to her as she had mentioned numerous times that she seldom come to the city.

Anyway, it was dizzling. We were about 5km away from the city. Yet we were inching our way forward because of the massive highway jam.

After 45 mins of crawling, I had had enough. I blew my top. We were nowhere near the city and still stuck at St Kilda along Princess Highway. I berated her for wanting to visit the city. I shouldn't but I did it anyway. I was frustrated.

C'mon, I work in the city. I do not want to spend my anniversary in the city! I thought I could play the perfect gentleman by accommodating to her needs by visiting the city (by the way a lot of non-city workers seldom come to the city itself).

Well, it backfired. I raised my voice, she retorted. I shouted, she pouted. She started speaking in tongues, I rolled my eyes, calling 'Jesus'.

Right... what a wonderful start to our anniversary - rain, jam, flaring tempers. Romance died - kaput!

So I decided to take a minor detour from Princess Highway. The bad start was enough for us to go back home. The side road took us along the southern bay. No jam, skies were clearing and soon our quarrel was forgotten.

Wow... what a sight! The expense of the skies and seas meeting at the far horizon drew our focus away from each other. No ships dotted the waters. Just pure nature and the cool sea breeze blowing through our windows!

You must be there to enjoy it. Really. Coming from Singapore, a land of crowd and hurried pace, a place of tall skyscrappers, this is totally exhilarating! There must be a God when the sight greeted our eyes, it was just too beautiful. We marvelled at His fingerprints in His creation.

We drove by Brighton (among the most expensive area in Melbourne) and stopped by Sandringham for breakfast. It was a small cafe but the food was fantastic! Both of us felt like tourists in a faraway land.

This place is so quaint! Nice quiet Victorian town with lovely, smiling people. Somewhat like Albany, south of Perth. We could smell the salty breeze, the fresh air and the damp after showers. Everything felt right. We held hands, soaking, basking in the cool seaside atmosphere (chilly when the wind blows though).

As usual, we started looking at the houses for sale. Having spotted a house we liked, we drove to the area which was further south of Sandringham to Beaumaris (see photos here).

Now this place is so captivating! It's a really quiet seaside suburb. We even toyed with the idea of living in that place. It would have cost us at least 0.6mil to buy a small house there! A high price but worth to the last cent, we thought. If you had checked out the photos above, you would have agreed with us too.

And to top it off, we had lunch at a teahouse called Rickett's Point Beachside Cafe.

Imagine the only cafe along the beach overlooking the ocean under the breathtaking clear blue skies.

Simply. Priceless. What more can we ask for? Such a romantic place to have our lunch. Perfect icing to top off our wedding anniversary celebration!

By the time we left the place to pick Rachel, we were fully recharged and in love again. We had to acknowledge that God planned this for us. If it hadn't been for the jam, we wouldn't have discovered this place that we both enjoyed so much.

We had also experienced God's masterhand when He created the earth. Even more so, we were touched by His faithfulness to us all these 8 years of marriage.

Indeed, there had been those times when I wondered how we ended marrying each other. We are so different. Yet the strong, supa-glue that binds us together is not our love for each other.

It is the love from God through His Son - Jesus.

When Jesus is in the centre of our marriage, we can look beyond our faults and we can love each other as He had loved us. Because He heals our broken hearts when expectations of each other fail and soothe our wounds when we hurt each other with our words.

Most of all, He fills us till overflowing with His love. Thus we have the strength and capacity to continue to love each other.

So you see, what initially started as a bad start, God turned it into such a memorable experience for us.

He is indeed the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. He always has the final answer to whatever situation or challenge we have.

To think that my anniversary was on 9/11. Both Missus and I nearly had World War III on our plate.

And what did we give each other for our anniversary? Let's say the night is still young... *grin*