The Sunday Kind of Love

“Elena, come see what Baba planted for you.” I remember that morning like it was yesterday. I am thirty-eight now, but that six-year-old girl with the tangled black hair and knobby knees still lives in my bones. And that garden? That tiny, brick-walled patch of dirt in Islington, North London### Episode 1: The First Garden “Elena, come see what Baba planted for you.” I remember that morning like it was yesterday. I’m thirty-eight now, and that little girl with tangled black hair and knobby knees feels like a character from a storybook. But she was me. She is me. And that garden—oh, that garden changed everything. I was six years old, living in a narrow townhouse in Islington, North London. The kind with brick walls that held centuries of stories and a back garden so small you could stand in the middle and touch both fences. But to me? It was enormous. “Coming, Baba!” I yelled from the kitchen, abandoning the honey spoon I’d been l*****g. Mama—my American mother with her straight blonde hair and perpetually amused smile—laughed and shooed me toward the back door. “Go on. He’s been waiting since sunrise.” Baba was like that. Patient. Steady. The kind of man who didn’t rush God, knowing God wouldn’t rush him. I burst through the back door, the bitter October air biting my cheeks, my pink nightgown flapping like a cape. Baba was kneeling in the dirt, his hands deep in the soil. He turned, the early morning light catching his handsome, Chinese-Japanese features. He was always smiling at me. “Slow down, little bird,” he said in Mandarin. “Come here. Sit with me.” I plopped down, not caring about the mud. “Baba! What did you plant? Can I eat it?” “I planted roses,” he said, gently patting the soil. “White for purity, pink for grace, and red for love.” “That’s boring,” I announced with supreme six-year-old confidence. “I wanted strawberries.” He laughed—a rich sound that invited you into the joke. “Strawberries are good. But roses, Elena, teach us something strawberries cannot. They teach us about the first garden.” “Like the park?” “No. The garden God made before any other existed. Eden. A perfect place where nothing was broken or sad. And in this garden, God placed a man named Adam.” Baba sat back on his heels and pulled me into his lap. I fit perfectly. “Was Adam lonely?” I asked. We had just moved to London, and I deeply understood loneliness. “Yes,” Baba’s voice grew soft. “He had a beautiful home and friendship with God, but something was missing. Someone who understood him. Someone who made him… complete.” I didn’t know what that word meant then. I thought it meant finished, like a coloring page. I didn’t know it meant whole. “So, God made Eve,” Baba continued. “Not from the ground, but from Adam’s own rib. Close to his heart. And when Adam woke up, he recognized her immediately. He said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.’ She was his other half.” Baba paused, making sure I was listening. “Then the Bible says something crucial: ‘A man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.’ Not two people pretending. Truly, mysteriously one.” I thought about it. “Is that why you and Mama are always together? Because you’re one flesh?” “Yes.” His chest rose and fell beneath my back. “We are very different. She’s American; I’m Chinese. She loves coffee; I love tea. But we are one in the ways that matter. One in faith. One in purpose. One in covenant.” “What’s a covenant?” “A promise that doesn’t break. Like God’s promises.” I twisted to look at him. “Will I have a covenant one day?” He touched my cheek with a dirt-stained finger. “Yes. When God brings the right person at the right time. But first, my little bird, you must become whole on your own. You must have your own garden before you invite someone to share it.” I was confused. “Elena, look at me. God made you on purpose. Every chapter of your story has meaning. One day, when you are whole and healed, God will bring someone who is also whole. And you won’t complete each other. You will complement each other. Do you know the difference?” I shook my head. “Complete means you need them to be okay. Complement means you’re already okay, but together you’re even better. Like tea and honey. The tea is good alone. The honey is good alone. But together? They make something wonderful.” He lifted me to my feet. “Come, let’s go inside. Mama made pancakes.” “Baba? When the roses grow, will they be as pretty as Mama?” “Prettier,” he promised. “Because you’ll have watched them grow. You’ll have watered them and learned from them. And that makes everything more beautiful.” I walked back inside, my small hand in his, thinking I wanted to be just like Baba. Quiet. Steady. I didn’t know that this was the first lesson in a lifelong education. I didn’t know that becoming whole—truly, deeply, radically whole—would take me across continents, through devastating heartbreaks, and into wildernesses I couldn’t have imagined at six years old. I didn’t know that the Sunday kind of love Baba talked about—the slow, sacred, covenant kind—was nothing like the love I’d desperately chase in my twenties. I would chase the fast love. The Friday night love. The love that felt like a raging fire but burned out to ash before morning. All I knew then was that my father loved my mother the way the Bible said a man should, and I wanted that. I wanted a covenant, not a contract. A garden, not just a bouquet. But to get there, I first had to become a woman who knew how to plant, water, and wait. A woman who understood that roses have thorns, but are worth the bleeding. Later that night, Mama came to tuck me in, smelling of lavender. “Did you learn something important today?” she asked. “Baba told me about the first garden. Mama, do you believe in God?” Her hand stilled in my hair. I know now she was searching for the certainty my father carried like a warm coat. “I’m… learning to.” “Baba says God made you for him.” She was quiet for a long moment before kissing my forehead. “I’m beginning to think it might be true. Dream of gardens, my darling.” She turned off the light, but I lay awake, staring at the ceiling. I wondered if God was already planting a garden for me somewhere. A garden I couldn’t see yet. A garden that would take decades to bloom. I fell asleep with dirt still under my fingernails, breathing in the scent of roses I had not yet seen. A Reflection For You What does it mean to be whole before you become one with another person? My father taught me that marriage isn’t about finding someone to complete you; it’s about two complete people choosing to complement each other. But how do you actually do that? How do you tend your own garden before unlocking the gate for someone else? These are the questions that would shape the next thirty-two years of my life. And if you’re reading this, maybe they’re yours, too. "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." — Genesis 1:27 "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh." — Genesis 2:24 Join me tomorrow for Episode 2: Grandmother’s Kitchen, where you’ll meet the woman who taught me that timing is everything, and patience isn't passive waiting—it’s active preparation.