We have shared our love story with soo many people, but I feel that I was unable to share the complete story each time. Why is that you may wonder?
When people visit our home, or when we meet people (in India), the question is often, ‘How did you meet?’ ‘Is it a love marriage?’ Some ask us in such a surprised tone and wide opened eyes that it makes me laugh. It almost sounds like the real question they want to ask is, ‘Vibin how and where did you find a white girl?’
Some time ago, I went to a coffee place to get my usual large cappuccino and the guy behind the counter, who knows me as a regular customer by now, asked me, ‘What are you doing in Kochi? Are you studying or working?’ I said, ‘No, none of those’ He said, ‘Ok, then a very long holiday?’ I laughed and said, ‘I live here with my husband. He is a Malayali’. His jaw fell wide open, I am not kidding. He said with wide opened eyes, ‘Really?! That is my dream!’ I said, ‘I am sorry, what exactly is your dream?’ He got shy but said it anyways “To marry a white girl”.
I believe that if it wasn’t for faith, waiting and simple obedience to God, we would not have met. Yes, it is a love marriage, but in some ways arranged as well, arranged by God. He is the perfect matchmaker after all.
Last time (read here > How on earth did I end up here? Part 3), I finished with how I met Vibin in 2013, but how we never talked. For 3 and a half years we both went through seasons of waiting and trusting God. Vibin was working as a marine engineer, I was working in China and I had waiting seasons in the Netherlands.
During one of these waiting seasons in the Netherlands, I felt like a nobody - I had no job, no vision, no idea of when I would go back to China. Friends around me were getting married, buying a house, building successful careers and having babies, but my heart was still for China. I was afraid to go back, I was afraid of moving to a strange land all by myself. I had this desire like most young women have, to find him, the guy I will marry. But how do I find him, is he even around? Where is he and what is he like?
I expressed myself to God and to a mentor I trusted. He told me there is no reason to worry and wonder about when your guy will come your way, there is no reason to doubt when you will meet the right guy. Above all, God knows you and He knows your husband, so just pray and ask Holy Spirit to guide you. He gave me one word, CREATE… that word confused me, so I asked him to explain. He said, create your husband, pray and ask Holy Spirit what your husband will be like, write everything down and create your husband in your notebook.
Partly laughing at the idea and partly feeling hopeful, I took my notebook and I sat outside on the roof of my home, it was a summer afternoon in 2016. I started praying and I asked Holy Spirit to reveal to me what my future husband will be like. I started writing down some simple things that came up in my heart, I laughed at myself, but once I started writing it was like my pen kept moving and moving until I wrote several pages.
I had created a person in my notebook, I knew everything about him and I already loved him, although I had no clue who he could be. I did not know his name, nor his nationality.
Putting that aside, still feeling very silly, I trusted the Lord. One of the things the Lord showed me while writing was that; He would bring my husband to the same mountains in China, with visions for the land and for me, that is how I will immediately recognize him. With that God gave me confidence and courage to go back to China again!
A couple of months later Vibin started to follow me on Instagram, I don’t remember what I was thinking when his name popped up, but I do remember this, in October he posted a picture of him having a steak dinner in Amsterdam. The ship on which he worked on was in the Netherlands. I remember seeing that picture with the location Amsterdam, and I thought to myself, glad I don’t have to meet that guy, because former ship people tend to meet up a lot. The funny thing was, when he was having a lonely steak dinner in Amsterdam, I was also in Amsterdam, at the Airport checking-in for my flight to China, totally not interested in him.
I was so excited to return to my dream country, I believed what God had promised, I felt greatly encouraged to continue to pursue my dreams for China as a single woman. I helped open a second coffee house a little higher up in the mountains and I had the time of my life. Even though me and the girls working in the café could not communicate in the same language, we understood each other, we laughed, we cried, I was able to teach them baking and the girls took care of me like one of their own.
I loved every single moment of living in those mountains, the cold winter with no heating and running water didn’t hold me back. I had an electric blanket, an electric water boiler and that was about it. During the winter, there was frost on the inside of my room. My bathroom was all concrete and it took several months to get a sink placed, not that the sink improved anything, because during winter all water pipes freeze. I loved hiking the mountains that surrounded the city, truly this was the most beautiful place I had ever lived in.
October, November, December and January passed and I had moments of loneliness, I wanted to speak to someone in a language that I actually could speak, instead of my very broken Chinese. Back then, instead of writing blogs, I wrote emails to friends and family. But I received very few responses, so I sent out messages on Instagram, I picked a bunch of people, those that usually liked my pictures. Vibin was one of them, he was usually one of the first to like new posts and every time I was surprised. Today he will say, it was because the mountains were really beautiful and my response to him is that ‘You also liked all my selfies!’ and then he has nothing else to say. See for yourself on my personal Instagram account (click here to go to my Instagram)! From October 2016 onwards!
I sent this message: Hi how are u? Thanks for the follow and ur likes :D
A handful of people started chatting with me and I had a fun day sending messages back and forth over Instagram chat. But there was one guy that didn’t know how to shut up, every day he would send a message and soon he realized how Instagram is blocked in China and how it is easier to chat through WhatsApp as no VPN is needed (at that point WhatsApp wasn’t blocked yet).
I remember being a little annoyed in the beginning, what does this guy want from me, I asked myself. Why is he asking soo many questions? Two weeks into chatting, he told me he saw visions about China, God told him to go to China and also, he saw things about me. That freaked me out! I was like, WOW God, you must really trust this guy, showing him so much about me, and while I said that out loud, I felt like someone just hit me on the head!! MY NOTEBOOK! NO WAY! THIS CANNOT BE! But his name is Vibin? What kind of name is that? And he is from India? Are you kidding me God? Then a view days later he told me he had put money aside to travel to China and was asking me about bus routes and hotel prices.
Now let’s go back a couple of weeks, when Vibin received my message, he didn’t feel like someone had just hit him on the head, he felt a nudge. This is how he would say it, ‘God gave me a nudge and He said to me this is your future wife’. Completely out of the blue, he received this, after a season of not hearing much from the Lord he actually started to wonder, ‘God, what are you up to? I want to hear from you’. Then on the 7th of February 2017 he picked up his phone and saw a message from Sarah Lisa, he read it and then the Lord told him ‘This is going to be your wife’.
Can you imagine how weird he must have felt? From what he had told me it went like this; He immediately said Noooooooo! This isn’t going to work, she lives in China, she is Dutch, nope I don’t see this working out. But he knew better than to argue with Him. So, he just thought ‘let’s see what happens’.
Long story short, Vibin had an ongoing deal with the lord - years ago he told the Lord, ‘Lord when it comes to my wife, please you do it God. I will just make a mess of things; I believe you will show her to me’.
In April 2017 he came to China, we agreed to meet each other. Before we met, I asked Vibin what his intentions where, cause most people around me already had their suspicions and I was secretly freaking out because of my freaking notebook. Vibin assured me that he wasn’t thinking much, he just wanted to meet me, he was led to come to China and also speak to me and then we will see he said. Part of me was disappointed, but another part of me was also relieved, but then again very confused, what is happening to me?!
I really did appreciate Vibin for the way he handled it, he didn’t give me hope and he was very bad at flirting, kind of horrible actually. Yes of course I tried to flirt with him, but he did not flirt back, which at that moment I really didn’t like. It was just soo soo good to see each other first face to face, spend some time together and allow God to do the rest.
We met on the 23rd of April 2017, we didn’t even greet each other normally, no hugs, no handshake, no nothing, just a hello. Vibin had already spent a couple of days in the city where we would meet up. Before I arrived from the place I lived, he had already made friends and the first 2 days we didn’t even speak to each other privately. I was like, ok, did he come all the way here to look at me and then just disappear? But thank God some people left town and we were able to hang out, just the two of us. I made him breakfast, I showed him around town, we had lunch with my Chinese friends.
We hiked, we talked for hours and hours, we watched a movie and we ordered in, it felt like spending time with my long-lost best friend. But he was not, he was this strange guy, with super cute eyes and I barely knew him. But then again, I did know this guy, listening to him share what he saw in his visions, looking at him, how he smiled at me, how he talked, the way he walked, the way he approached me, the things he liked, the things he did in his life! He really was the guy from my notebook!
On the 5th day spending time with each other, we finally hugged. Before we hugged, we were sitting on the couch talking and having some tea, we had just hiked and we had taken our first pictures together. We were looking at the pictures and then Vibin showed me a picture of a particular mug, a Christmassy snowman mug. I laughed at it, and thought it was quite random and weird of him to show me pictures of a Christmassy snowman mug in spring.
But then he said, ‘I meant to bring this for you, I picked it up in the US, but it broke so I did not bring it’. I told him how sweet it was that he thought of me and bought something for me, that is just so sweet I said again. It was very quiet for a couple of seconds, he looked down at his phone and he said, ‘Yes I do think of you and I think you are sweet and I like you a lot…’
I got super nervous, I said ‘Really? You like me?’ Then Vibin said ‘Yes, I love you!’ WHAT? Did he just say the words ‘I love you’? I got even more nervous and I responded with my hand reaching for his head, still sitting on the couch together, I stroked his hair. I don’t know what the heck I was thinking, haha, seriously Sarah? His hair? Why not his hand? But this is what I did, I ran my hand through his hair and I said, ‘I really like you too…’
Then, for a long time, we were completely quiet. Neither of us said anything, it was about lunchtime and I was supposed to have lunch with a friend in town, so I got up, told him I needed to get ready to meet my friend. I walked to the kitchen, put the teacups in the sink, and I realized he had followed me to the kitchen. I turned around and we looked at each other very deeply and nervously. Haha! Don’t judge me, what would you do? Then Vibin said again, ‘I do love you, I really really like you’. My heart melted, my mouth was dry, I wanted to cry and laugh, I had no words. I came closer to him and we hugged.
During lunch with my friend, I was still completely without words, my friend had to pull things out of me, and as she slowly heard bits and pieces of what had just happened, I’ve never seen a happier face, she seemed more happier than me!
The next day, I had originally planned to go to the place where I lived, higher in the mountains and let Vibin travel further on his own, but I kept extending my stay, I didn’t make it down to the bus station to buy a bus ticket for another 5 days. Vibin and I had an incredibly sweet time. The best moment was probably when I gave him my notebook! You can fill in the rest, how overwhelmed and happy we were, how scary it was, because who falls in love in 5 days?
I am so thankful to God for leading us to the same place, to fall in love without complications, without a lot of doubt, we knew from the very beginning that it was alright to say, ‘I Love You’. We had such peace, both of us were so happy we were able to wait, to wait and trust God! It made the beginning of our relationship very easy, even though we had to say goodbye after 10 days, not knowing when we would see each other again.
Just before he put me on the bus, he said; ‘So Sarah, I want to ask you something, but please don’t freak out ok? Do you want a long engagement or a short engagement?’ And while he asked, he was checking my ring size. Haha!
We both went our way, and it was kind of nice to be alone, and process everything that had happened, what normally happens to people over a year, or maybe even more, happened for us in just 10 days. My brain had to catch up with my heart!
Please wait for Part 5, where I will share about Vibin’s family hearing the news and how we got engaged in Hong Kong!
Much Love from the both of us!
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