Waannoi grew up wanting to make her family proud. In Thai culture, getting your parents' approval is important. You listen to your parents, get good grades, stay out of trouble, and try to be a good kid. Family is important, but when your worth becomes tied to what your family thinks of you, it can become exhausting. For Waannoi, she would have to learn that her worth wasn't found in making everyone else happy.
Waannoi and her family believed in Buddhism. They were very poor, and she and her siblings had to learn from a very young age to take care of themselves while their parents were working hard to support them. Buddhism teaches that if you do good things, then you will get good things in return, but life wasn’t always like that. Their hope was in something that they didn’t even know, and the standards they were held to were very high. Waannoi described it as this,
“In our culture, we get very pressured to be good at everything. You need to be good in your studies; you need to be very talented. My parents expected me to be a doctor or a teacher or something like that. I wanted my family to accept and believe in me, but because of our background, it seemed like my family did not love me. It seemed like I was not enough for them. I wanted to make them accept that I’m good enough.”
Waannoi tried to earn her parents’ love and approval through good grades, but it never felt like enough. Over time, she grew tired, began to hate school, and stopped caring about her grades. No matter how hard she worked, she couldn’t earn the acceptance she was looking for.
“I turned my interests to sports,” Waannoi shared. “My friends enjoyed sports and it seemed fun to me. It was something I could decide to do myself. My parents said that my duty was just to pay attention to school, not play sports. They said sports are not going to take me anywhere far and that it was very bad for me. I stopped listening to them, because I never felt like anything was enough. I wanted to prove to them that something I decide can be good too.”
When Waannoi was eight or nine years old, her mother’s friend, who was a Christian, asked her mom if Waannoi could attend a camp called Christmas Camp. Her mom took her there, and Waannoi heard stories about Jesus for the first time. Although she did not give her life to Christ then, that experience planted a seed of curiosity in her.
Years later, during her freshman year at college, Waannoi struggled with English and had to drop the class. Wanting to do better the following year, she asked a friend for help. Her friend invited her to English Corner, a community group run by a local American church, where she met the pastor. She recalled that experience as:
“I thought I could practice my English by talking with him and his family, because they’re American and they all speak English. He introduced his whole family to me, and he invited me to dinner at his house, and he invited me to church on Sunday. At first I was like, ‘What is going on? You invite some random person into your house?’”
The first time Waannoi attended church, she experienced a bit of a culture shock. People she had never met went out of their way to talk to her and welcome her, which was different from what she was used to in Thai culture. But she kept coming back, growing more curious and getting involved in more activities.
“I liked this community. They love each other, care for each other, and are very kind.”
At a New Year’s gathering with the pastor’s family, Waannoi noticed they prayed before eating. Curious, she asked why and learned they prayed to thank the Lord. Her curiosity about Christianity grew, though friends warned her about negative perceptions of American missionaries in Thailand, causing her to hesitate. Eventually, the pastor’s wife, Tang, invited her to dinner for her birthday and then to a church retreat.
“At the retreat, I learned a lot of things that I never knew about Christianity,” Waannoi confessed. “It touched my heart. I tried to run away from my family because I didn’t feel loved, like I was not good enough for them to love me. Tang told me, ‘You’re already loved by God.’ I really hesitated at the retreat, whether I really wanted to decide to believe in Christ. I could see that if I became a Christian, so many things would be changed. It would mean that I would have to cut off a lot of things that are going to lead me to sin, which could include a lot of my friends or part of my family.”
There at the retreat, Tang gave Waannoi a kid’s story Bible and a challenge ... To read the whole thing in one month. Waannoi did and in doing so, she began to see the whole Bible. It made her even more curious. Waannoi recollected one particular story,
“I read the story about the prodigal son, and I was like, ‘Wow,’ because if Jesus is my father, I felt like I needed to accept that and see where he was going to lead me.”
Soon after, Waannoi started attending a small group with the church. She heard at church, “If you accept by heart and by your tongue, you are saved.” There she gave her life to Jesus. She was baptized a year later.
“I stopped running after what my parents expected of me and turned myself to what God expects me to do. I had a more clear purpose. It was ‘How can I do things for God and His Kingdom?’ more than ‘How can I make my family or my friends happy?’ When I read my Bible, I see more about the truth of life; it’s not just about me or another person, but it’s about God and how he wants to use you and the people around you, and how He can use you to help those people. I’m more focused on other people by God’s love more than on me and what I can do for myself.”
The first years after becoming a Christian, Waannoi was scared to tell her family. So, she prayed. A few years later, she decided it was time.
“When I decided to tell them, they were like, ‘Are you sure? Is it just somebody trying to get something?’” Waannoi described. “My mom was concerned, and my dad was kind of upset. The first couple years were really hard for them, and for me to actually talk to them about it. But after that my mom was more calm, and my dad became more indifferent, because I had already decided. That was the time that I feel like they actually let me decide something. I felt released, because I feel like God had a plan for it. I love my family more by understanding and loving them with a true heart. I have better relationships with my siblings and we talk more. God is so good.”
Today, Waannoi is free from the condemnation and criticism that once shaped how she saw herself. God faithfully provided people who pointed her to truth, and through that community, her world began to open up. Through reading her Bible, mentorship, and prayer, God gave Waannoi a new heart and a new purpose—one no longer defined by trying to please others, but by knowing she is loved and accepted by Him.