CHAPTER 18

TRANG BANG

NOTHING LEFT FOR ME HERE

SEPTEMBER 1986

There was one person I needed to visit before leaving the country. Ma was still living in Trang Bang, and despite the emotional gulf between us, I needed for her to know my plans. A mother should always know where her children are in this world.

Not surprisingly, I found her working in the noodle shop. Within moments of Ma seeing me, she asked, “Have you decided to return to CaoDai?” Her eyes barely made contact with mine.

I suppose it was proof of some level of Christian transformation already taking root in me that instead of lashing back at my ma with defensiveness or rage, I responded with gentleness, with tears.

“Oh, Ma,” I said, barely above a whisper. “No, Ma . . . no.”

Ma’s gaze bored into me, effectively saying, Well, then why have you come?

In her inner person, my ma possessed a beautiful, laudable faith—that much was easy for me to see. It is just that her faith had been pointed from birth toward the wrong god, a truth also plain to see. As she stood before me, eyebrows stitched together, consternation etched on her face, I envisioned her spiritually transformed, redirecting her faithfulness toward Jesus. For a moment, I could see it; yes, this would someday occur. How I covet this peace for you, Ma.

I was compelled to tread carefully here, to measure my words and guard my tone.

“Ma,” I said, thinking through each syllable, each phrase. “I love you. And I know that you love me. I know that I hurt you very deeply when I left our family’s faith to follow Jesus. I understand that you were very angry, very upset. I am your daughter! Your own flesh and blood.”

My ma was listening with great interest to everything I was saying. Oh, Father, please help me to say words that are useful here. Please do not let me hurt my ma.

“Ma,” I continued, “all those years that I was suffering so deeply—my burns, my scars, my agony, my pain—you would have done anything to make me feel better, I know, but all you could do was cry. You could not provide joy for me. Or peace. Or comfort at the level of my soul. You could only shed tears for me and offer me CaoDai, which in the end was no comfort at all.

“But Ma, when I encountered Jesus, the joy and peace I had been searching for came to me just like that. I was comforted from deep within. It is only in Jesus that true peace is found, Ma. How could I turn my back on him, when he gave me this critical thing?”

My ma said nothing in reply. Truly, what could she possibly say? She knew that the words I had spoken were true; during my worst days—when the pain was greatest and the medicines were hard to come by and no amount of massaging could console my angry skin—she could hold me and she could cry with me, but she could not make things okay. In Jesus, I had come to understand that all things really do work together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose,[18] and while I could not yet see precisely what that “good” would entail, simply knowing it was promised was enough to help me hang on.

Jesus can help you, Ma! I wanted to cry out to her, even though I knew the prompting to accept him had to come from God, not me. Oh, how he would help you, the moment you invite him to step into your life.

I knew Ma struggled with an impoverished self-image from the time she was a little girl. Instead of going to school, she cooked soup to sell to schoolchildren. Ma would peek through the classroom windows for hours upon hours, desperate to learn her letters, her numbers, her shapes. That poverty could be transformed into something beautiful in Jesus. In God, Ma would see the plot twists not as turns to be despised, but rather as part of the route that would lead her straight to him.

I left Trang Bang thinking about my ma, and about Jesus, and about my old friend Thuy. I had lost touch with Thuy while I was in Russia and when I returned to Vietnam, I asked about Thuy and her family. Most people I spoke to believed they had relocated to Belgium.

I thought about Thuy’s lessons regarding prayer: “The more we cry, the more we pray,” she used to say. And oh, did I know a thing or two about tears! As streams of sadness coursed down my cheeks en route to Hanoi, where I would board my flight to Havana, I weighed the truth of Thuy’s statement. Yes, we pray more not through laughter, but tears. It was then that I began pleading with God to save my ma.

On that bus ride to Hanoi, and on countless occasions since, I thanked God for my good friend Thuy. She demonstrated the gentle spirit I have aspired to ever since. She taught me the value of bringing peace into all situations. She taught me to listen well, to speak carefully, to pray faithfully, and to bear pain with great faith. She taught me to embrace wisdom, not shun it, counting wisdom a friend all the days of my life.

Even now, as I write these words, my eyes pool with tears. What a gift Thuy was to me! What a lifesaver when I was adrift at sea. Oh, Thuy, should you ever discover these pages, may you know what a treasure you are. When I had nobody else to turn to, you appeared to me as love, levelheadedness, and light. Oh, that we all would have such impact in other people’s lives, drawing them to Jesus by the way we listen and learn and love.