Ordinary, Yet Extraordinary

We are Matt and Mili and we have been married for 13 years. Our extraordinary God has led two very ordinary people into many adventures!  

Matt’s father was in the military and he spent his childhood around the world and across the US. I spent my childhood in the Middle East and India and, eventually, came to the US for my graduate Master’s degree in Speech Pathology. How do two people with such different backgrounds get married and stay married? God showed me in a dream that my parents would bless our relationship, despite the cultural differences. That is exactly what happened! No one in my family had ever been married outside the culture as most of my extended family had arranged marriages. Before I came to the US, I had not ever met or interacted with anyone from the US and my parents were not acquainted with the culture either. Despite their unfamiliarity, my parents gave their blessing when I shared about our relationship.  

One thing that helped my parents was that I was living with my American host family while I was at the University of Minnesota, that they trusted. My host family was very supportive of my relationship with Matt, they felt we were a good match and they communicated this to my parents. God works out all the details when we trust Him!  

At our wedding, we played a song about walking into a land of promise with the faith of Abraham and Sarah (Canaan Bound by Andrew Peterson). It was symbolic of the huge step of faith we were taking as we walked into unknown territory for both of us as well as our families. We set out on the adventure of a lifetime, to blend two cultures and establish a Christ-centered culture in our home. So many differences exist between our cultures, but God brought us together and has kept us together. 

We have seen God’s provision in amazing ways as we have stepped out in obedience to His voice. 

One of our God stories is our home-based business. (It is an engineering consulting company where Matt does the engineering, sales and marketing as well as accounting. This is a job that he runs himself, he does not go to work each day. He gets the projects and then completes them.) We were both working full-time when our first baby was born. I left my job as a speech pathologist to become a stay-at-home mom the year our second child was born. That same year, my husband quit his job and the Lord led us to trust Him as our small business became our sole income source. Neither of us has a business degree, nor do we have any experience with running a business. 

The challenges of business include marketing, hiring employees, trusting God with our finances, all of which have a big part of our marriage. We have given up yearly vacations, made sacrifices and lived on a budget as our income varies from year to year. We have also learned to navigate family life with a very inconsistent work schedule. 

Over the years, I have done parenting and homeschooling by myself while Matt worked an unpredictable schedule with urgent work needs. We have learned to be good communicators and a great team as we work together. We strive to keep our home life as predictable and stable as possible. Our marriage and faith have grown tremendously through it all. And, our business, powered by God, has amazingly provided for all our needs for the past ten years. As our family size has increased, the Lord has increased our income to meet every need we have had.

Another God story involves caring for children in need. Kids affected by trauma, poverty, and hunger have always weighed on our hearts. The Lord has led us over the years to support and care for hurting children in different ways. Every time the Lord has shown us a child, He has given us the resources we needed to obey Him. We have seen a supernatural increase in our finances every time He has asked us to care for specific children. If we had additional children in our home, provision for extra clothing and food would appear in amazing ways. We saw the invisible hand of God at work in our lives in visible ways. 

Matt and I each have one sibling. We both wanted a larger family than the one we grew up in. We have been blessed with five children ages eleven years down to a baby. We enjoy our children tremendously and they are the joy and pride of our lives. One of the challenges we have faced is raising young children with no family nearby. Since we are both new to the city we live in, building up a network of friends has taken time. We often found that despite wanting to have a regular date night, we did not have any built-in babysitters. We found that in-home date nights with ice cream and a movie has been an answer to prayer! Having a scheduled time set aside for us to talk and connect intentionally has been wonderful for our marriage!

We have also been led by God to homeschool our children. Without any background in education, our homeschooling has been entirely dependent on the Lord’s divine wisdom and direction. Raising our children and homeschooling them is a God-given calling.

God is our Rock and He has never failed us. We love being married to each other, working side by side, and looking to our Great God for everything. Our greatest testimony has been that when we step out in obedience to God, His power is available to us to do the impossible. Crossing cultures in marriage, caring for the needy, running a home business, homeschooling, and raising a large family- nothing is impossible with GOD.

We are ordinary people, yet we live an extraordinary life shaped by a miraculous God.