This morning, I was just remembering how our good friend Erdia invited our whole family to stay at her house in Houston last fall, and how much fun we had with her family and friends. She's truly a hospitable person that I would like to model after. She had made so many friends because of her hospitality, and even moving from Boston to Houston didn't hinder her from always having a house full of friends on a regular bases in her new home.

I remembered when Tim and I first got married, and as we moved from California to Boston, how lonely we felt and how little friends we had the first year we were there. A lot had to do with us being closed to ourselves and not willing to invite people into our lives. That first year of marriage was very tough. We fought a lot and didn't know why we dated for 5 years but we were suddenly unhappy once we got married. Years later, I realized that it was because when we were dating in college, we were always surrounded by good friends. I had my girls to chitchat and go shopping with, and Tim had the guys to play sports and video games with. We had dating friends that went on double dates with us. We also had elderlies from the local community whom we saw regularly for Bible studies or school events. Our lives were intertwined with many people at different stages of life, and we felt full emotionally and spiritually. However, once we got married and moved to a brand new city, all the relationships were striped away. It was just Tim and I. We thought that as long as we have each other it was going to be enough, but it wasn't true.

Our society is not helping us in anyway to live in authentic community with others. Modernization has forced us to close our front doors unless we could present ourselves in our most polished state. TV ads and department store ads are all telling us that we need to buy this set of tableware and this kind of serving utensils or this type of glassware to be a truly entertaining host. Cooking channels and food websites are telling us to make this kind of centerpiece or set the dining table in a certain way and cook these dishes so that your guests would be impressed. Not to mention clothing ads are also squeezing a foot in and telling us to dress a certain way so we look more presentable while we entertain.

All that gets so tiring, and it doesn't show our true selves. As a result, we stop doing it - inviting people over. Especially if finance is an issue, people feel like they can't afford to have people over. But when does being wealthy equate to having more authentic relationships? It is probably the total opposite.

Whenever I hear people tell me, "my parents are coming from out of town to see us this week, but they'll stay in a hotel. They don't want us to feel like they're intruding." That's just plain bizarre to me coming from a Eastern cultural background. In my mind, I am thinking, "don't you have like 3, 4 bedrooms? You can't spare one for your own parents? You can't let your dearest, closest people see your bed hair and smell your bed breath in the morning or something?" Last time we went to China to see my relatives, even though my uncle and aunt had no spare bedroom for us to stay in, they insisted on sleeping in the living room so we could sleep in their bedroom. I was greatly moved by their kind of hospitality.

I read this TIME magazine online article:

"What happens when you look at the happiest people and scientifically analyze what they have in common? Researchers did just that.

Relationships, Relationships, Relationships

It was strong social relationships.There was a clear answer to what differentiated these people from everyone else — and it wasn’t money, smarts, age, gender or race.

Via The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work:

Turns out, there was one—and only one—characteristic that distinguished the happiest 10 percent from everybody else: the strength of their social relationships. My empirical study of well-being among 1,600 Harvard undergraduates found a similar result—social support was a far greater predictor of happiness than any other factor, more than GPA, family income, SAT scores, age, gender, or race. In fact, the correlation between social support and happiness was 0.7. This may not sound like a big number, but for researchers it’s huge—most psychology findings are considered significant when they hit 0.3. The point is, the more social support you have, the happier you are.

Since our first year of marriage, I am glad to say we've made many good friends, even with a big move from the East coast to the West coast and many hardships along the way, our marriage is growing stronger because of these wonderful people who love and support us.

Our house can be a big mess because of two little, cute tornados, and our back yard could be like a survival zone due to the lack to attention, but our hearts feel fuller than ever before.

My cousin lives with her in-laws. She told me she fights with her mother-in-law from time to time, but they would become closer after they talk it out and reconcile each time. These days, after many years of living under one roof, she would tell me how much she appreciates her in-laws, and that without them, she'd be dead many times over with 2 kids. Instead of trying to avoid conflict and stay at a distant and look perfect and impressive, I think what we long for more is for people we care about to truly accepts us as we are.

We need to rethink this whole thing over, about living in community, as we were first designed to do. The bad and the ugly is not so bad and ugly once exposed to the people who love us.

I will end here with a quote from the movie Good Will Hunting (one of Tim's favorite movies):