One Wish

Unfinished business

Have you ever heard the saying, be careful what you wish for? When I was younger, I wished on a star every night that my father would be reunited with our family. My mother, older sister and I had emigrated to New York where my grandparents lived when I was 3. He had remained in China under Mao’s communist regime and couldn’t leave because of travel restrictions. After Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to China, the relationship between our two countries thawed and my father was able to leave. I imagined every happiness would be ours once my father joined us. The reality was a difficult & stormy adjustment period that at 12, I was too young & inexperienced to understand or accept.

When Andrew was working in Hollywood as a computer artist at post-production CGI film companies, many creative decisions were out of his hands due to politics, poor planning or incompetence. He thought being the art director would solve the problem and jumped at the chance to hold that position at a new office in San Jose. It was funded by a major studio in LA and would be developing brand name video games. Video game market share and profits were rising, eclipsing the film industry so everyone was trying to ride the wave. He experienced practically every management problem in the book according to one of the company directors. Between fielding an assistant manager who wanted his job (changing Andrew’s directions to the artists with his own) and rebellious staff due to unrealistic promises of green cards by the former art diector plus the tight timeline for producing a product, the stress was continuous. After several months, when funding was cut & hiring halted, it became evident that the studio had lost faith in the leaders of the office whose past successes were in 2D not 3D projects. We moved back to LA after 9 months, less than half a year before the office finally closed.

Eventually, Andrew pursued a lifelong goal and switched to being a gallery artist. He was painting large canvases (32“ x 40”) of desert landscapes and had several exhibits but sales were few. People wanted souvenirs or lived in average-sized homes with small wall space. Dedicated art lovers or educated collectors willing to buy out-sized pieces from an unknown artist were rare. One client wanted a green painting to match her living room couch. He sold some prints and earned some commissions but it was feast or famine. What were we doing with our lives? One day, I impulsively cried out in my heart, “God, I just want to travel and learn new languages”. By then, I was working at Target, wondering what tomorrow would bring when Andrew got a job offer to teach computer graphics in the Netherlands at a school starting a new program in video game design. It was a dream come true! We’d stayed at an hostel in Amsterdam years ago one summer and loved the experience. We’d always wanted to return and now we would be paid to live there! Our daughter would be able to visit Europe and learn first-hand about the different countries.

Let’s just say it was an amazing & challenging experience living in the Netherlands for 12 years. Did God answer my prayers? I got to travel but ironically mostly flying back & forth to New York to visit my mother and sister. I also had to learn Dutch which was a painful & mentally exhausting process. Later, I thought the next time I make a request, I should be more specific. Now, I believe God gives us all our experiences to teach & prepare us for each level of life, for a higher purpose and to be a blessing to those around us. We can trust Him to know best where we should go. I have my dreams but I’m not making any more wishes. Life is complicated enough.