#34 This Christmas

It felt strange watching my cousin cry. I had never seen it before. For all the years that I have known him, I had never seen him openly show so much love and affection to his mother like this, now that she was dying. He stroked her cheeks, talking to her, trying to explain to her that we were there to visit.

Just weeks earlier, I had stood by my aunts side watching her cry as she lamented to my father about how she couldn’t use her left hand anymore. Now she couldn’t walk, talk or eat. The cancer in her brain had done its worst in the last few weeks.

A few feet away, sat my wife heavily pregnant with our son. It’s just a matter of weeks before she’s due for labor. My cousin tells me it’d be a great achievement if my aunt could even make it to the New Year. He and his brother have made all the necessary funeral arrangements the weekend before. The same weekend I was busy setting up the baby cot in my room.

My father stayed silent the entire time. He had talked for many weeks about wanting to visit my aunt. But he never did until now. He said his feet and heart were heavy. He said it was hard for him to take what was going on around him. The last time we visited her, he wept silently in the back seat of the car. I made a remark to him - he seemed a lot sadder this time compared to when my grandmother was dying. Perhaps more than my aunts’ life, he was thinking about his own. He had been a very pensive mood of late. Just because we are all destined to die doesn’t make it any easier to take.

I had spent the previous Sunday night talking to my mother for hours. I found out that she too was fearful for her life. She said she wanted to live well past her sixties, but the medication we were making her to take was killing her – so she claims. She wants to move away, live on her own, get a job if possible and taper off her medicine. Her children could not be trusted to take care of her she felt. It hurt a lot to hear those words. Even if I didn’t agree with it, I had to respect that this is how she felt. And so I kept my silence.

After the visit, my brother came up to me and said “I’ve always been very bad at these things…I can never find the right things to say”.

I said to him “I don’t think there ever is a right thing to say in such times. I think being there itself speaks for itself.”

It is very likely that the next time I see my aunt, she will be laying not on a bed but in a coffin.

If that sounds awfully harsh and blunt, it is only because death is like that too. It comes when and how it chooses to. Sometimes slowly like a tree withering away, sometimes abruptly like a trap door under you. Either way, it comes, and there is no refusing.

It’s days away from Christmas. Churches gear up for celebrations, families prepare hearty dinners and people exchange gifts with one another enthusiastically. I find myself in a cocktail of feelings. Sad over the ending of one life, and happy over the start of another. And the rest of us, squarely in between.

Thank you God for the gift of Christmas. It Christ we have mercy unsurpassed, hope everlasting, love supreme. May the world be reminded of this on Christmas day.

Merry Christmas everyone.

#33 A Prayer

Father God,

Please help me. Save me from my sins.  Too many days have I woke up, feeling like I'm running against the wind. Too many days have I woke up knowing how powerless I am against my own body. Too many days have I done the things I don't want to do - yet cannot help but do. I am a slave to my own body. I am a slave to my own heart. Free me God from my chains. Change my heart and give me a new one - one that obeys when I command it. 

And if you will not grant that to me Lord, then lead me away, far away from temptations for which I am powerless to resist. If my heart cannot obey, then grant my feet a mind of its own - that it may flee away from evil and into your arms, even as the body resist. 

The more I try to take control, the more out of control I become. Take control oh Lord. Control me and steer me away from the path of destruction. The more this world gives me, the less I desire You. Take it all away Lord, if you so desire. Take it away if by doing so I can be saved. I do not deserve half the things you have blessed me with in this life.

Forgive me God. Have mercy on me and my family. Punish them not for my sins. Protect them from the evils of this world and the evil that resides in me. Do not withhold your grace or blessings from them because of my transgressions. 

Only you have to power and grace to forgive. Answer my prayer oh Lord. Glory be to you Almighty. 

In Jesus Christ I pray - Amen

#31 When Sin Lets Us Alone

When sin lets us alone we may let sin alone; but as sin is never less quiet than when it seems to be most quiet, and its waters are for the most part deep when they are still, so ought our contrivances against it to be vigorous at all times and in all. - John Owen

#22 Making Babies

I listened to a very personal sharing from a rather prominent local activist, not about his professional life, but about him and his wife's personal struggle in trying to have children. Here it is. 

http://www.bfm.my/couple-struggle-fertility-treatments.html

It really got to me I must admit. My wife and I have been trying intently for more than a year now with no success. Many things shared sounded so familiar to me, especially about how every single month the one thing you both dread to see is 'aunt flow' (or the period) coming.

It's been a taxing exercise, both emotionally and financially. It's hard to explain the anxiety that comes with this struggle. Just like him, we have tried different avenues. Chinese sensei consultations, medical consultations and even minor surgery (a laparoscopy if you want to get technical) all in the name of wanting a baby. Every single month, both of us are acutely aware of what day of the single she is. She checks her temperature every day and wait for tell tale signs from her body. I spend half my time trying to schedule outstation trips and meetings around 'the right time of the month' to be home. Sex is pleasurable we all can agree. But  when you are trying for baby intently and purposefully, you almost feel like you are on a mission to Mars. There are checklist, there are conditions and there is timing to be met. A lot like how Mr. Nagayam says it, you eventually become an almost-expert on the issue of infertility. 

A lot of well-intended people have offered advice. First they said the woman must be relaxed and stress free. So we agreed for the to quite her job. They said go on a holiday and you'll come back pregnant. So we went, several times. No good news. Then they said the man needs to be relaxed too, otherwise there is 'poor motility'. So I (try) to relax more. No good news. Chinese medicine doctors told her no cold stuff, no white vegetables, no coconut milk, no melons, no lifting your arms above your head, no strenuous activities (including exercise). Medical doctors said nothings wrong except, wait, what is this? Oh, one of your tubes is blocked. Don’t know why, don’t how, don't recommend to fix it either. Just try longer. Start thinking of IUI or IVF if you can’t wait anymore.

It doesn't help that everyone else is getting married later and having babies sooner, as if making a baby was as simple as 1,2,3. It's not a competition, but it certainly causes more self doubt and anxiety to manifest. How come others conceive so easily? Almost effortlessly it seems. Why can't we be like that?

And so you go home thinking it over. How hard do you try? How far do you go? How long do you wait? Whose word do you take? In times like this, you do wish you have someone you can talk to about these things.

But it is not something we freely share with people around us. In fact, only people closest and dearest to us know (or bother to ask) about what really is going on. It's a sensitive topic. It's hard to look at someone in the eye and say "We want but we can't." Its a heavy questions with a heavy answer. Not everyone wants to deal with that on their little Saturday night.  

But we have tried taking it in our stride. In fact, we both realize that it in fact an exercise of faith. Understanding faith means understanding that life doesn’t always go the way you want it to. That no matter how hard you pray sometimes, God’s answer isn’t always yes. That whatever plans you thought you have for your life, you really need to learn to give them up and submit to His will, whatever that might be.  

A lot of times, I forget this. With all the options money buy, and how far medical science can take you, it’s easy to forget that the miracle of life comes not by paying doctors with test tubes, but by submitting to God, the source and sustainer of all life.

Where do we go from here? How long do we try? How far do we go with these medical options? Honestly, I don’t know. I search my heart and still cannot find an answer. I know my wife’s heart aches every time she looks at other families with young children. Although I try convincing my wife that we don’t really need children to be happy, Even I find myself smiling down on little children wishing they were mine.

Maybe those paternal instincts are finally starting to kick in.

                                                                                                                                               

#20 Give What You Cannot Keep

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot. 

A profound and inspiring quote that I read today from Jim Elliot. A man who lived and died in the name of his faith. It makes you think very carefully about what truly is important in life and what your priorities are. 

I used to ask why is it that we couldn't live forever. Why must we die. Like anyone else, death was something unwelcomed and to be feared. 

But as I grow older, I realize that without the knowledge of death, we could never appreciate life the way we do now. What we know will always be there will end up being taken for granted. What we fear to lose, we behold and cherish while still present. The fleetingness of life amplifies the beauty in the things we do.

Have you ever had moments in your life where for a very brief moment, even if it was just a few seconds, you thought you were going to die. It has happened to me a few times while driving and once on a plane. I came out alive (obviously) and kind of laughed about it after that. But in every one of those instances, I felt compelled to call my family and hear their voice. It gave me great joy just hearing their voice or seeing them again because for a brief few moments earlier, the thought of being losing them was very real in my mind. All the other troubles, worries and concerns I had been carrying everywhere with me didn't disappear, but they certainly felt less critical.

I guess in that sense, death is the ultimate reality checker. Just look at what it did for the late Steve Jobs. People are forced thing carefully about what they want to do, knowing the life they have is fleeting. For people like Steve Jobs, it was doing what he loved best, and what amazing things he did indeed for the world of technology. 

For Jim Elliot, it was doing the Great Commission, even to the point of death. He will not be as well remembered or as celebrated as Steve Jobs. But for his amazing faith and courage, I do believe he gained something he could never lose.