Remembering Appa

Today, I thought of my father a number of times. The second week of June often brings memories of him because his birthday was on 10 June - often this was close to Father's Day - and coincidentally he passed away on 15 June.

This year, I travelled up to Kuala Lumpur on the 10th of June and naturally when my sister and I started talking, the conversation turned to him. M claims that my eldest sister and I were my dad's favourites. I'm not sure I remember being singled out for any such special treatment, but when I think of him, I have a sure sense he loved me. 

Mixed up with that feeling, however, is a strong sense of guilt. Because I also feel I failed him. 

I know I disappointed my father when I married D. My dad was very proud of me. I think my accomplishments were always bigger in his eyes than in mine or anyone else's. He was proud I earned a scholarship to pay for my school fees in Singapore, he was proud I had a bursary to pay for my university fees. He was proud I was a teacher. And when I told him I wanted to marry D, it was the first time I saw pain in his eyes. 

He and my mother had come for a visit to my sister's house in Singapore when I told them. The three of us shared a room that night before I left the next morning to return to my rented room, and I heard him sighing and talking in his sleep. He hardly slept that night. The next morning as I prepared to leave, he told me, "Did you think I am useless and cannot find a groom for you? You have stabbed me in the back." Those were the harshest words my father ever said to me. I have not forgotten those sorrowful words in the past 28 years.

I wonder now at the callousness with which I left that day. How wrapped up I was in my youthful love that I did not stay and at least listen to my father's pain. I wonder what dreams my father had had for me. I wonder what future he had imagined for me. And I wonder if I did the right thing. Every year, when I read Fathers' Day messages in the newspapers and on Facebook, there is a sadness inside me, a regret - for the pain I once caused; for the apology I never made.

Even to Old Age

This morning I looked, really looked, at the bottles and jars of lotions and creams on the shelf in my cupboard. And smiled to see how all of them had one thing in common - they were all labelled "firming" or "anti-wrinkle" or "anti-aging" and my favourite, "age defying"! 

Unfortunately, my body does not seem to have heard the message. Since church camp I have been more aware of the truth that I am growing older. Perhaps it was sharing a room with young C; perhaps it was the ache in my knee that doesn't go away and limited me from some activities; perhaps it was Rod's reminder that we are "jars of clay".

But since church camp, I have been thinking (among all the other thoughts) that I need to shift gears, change the lens I view the world through.

A few months ago I wrote about my anxiety over my ministry with the young adults in church. Wondering what on earth I was doing, turning up on Wednesday nights, but not really achieving anything.

But after listening to Rod at the Leadership Seminar on Sat and during the church camp, I learnt two important lessons - church and ministry are not about meeting my needs and service isn't about counting.

I realise I have been hung up on the idea of leaving a legacy and living a life that counts. I think I had, have, a sense of my own mortality. Especially as it becomes more difficult for me to walk quickly or to carry a baby for as long as I used to be able to, I feel older. And every time I feel that, I have an urgent desire to squeeze more into my days, to learn, to try something new, to make my life count. When I was teaching, I had a sense of satisfaction almost every day. I knew I had made sense of something difficult for my students, I had comforted, I had challenged. But since I left school, work doesn't give me the same sense of satisfaction. Leaving teaching coincided with the season when my daughters left to go abroad and suddenly, there was no one left to nurture - no students and no children.

That's why I decided to serve with the young adults in my church in 2006. It's been 6 years now and I have been thinking over and over again - what have I achieved? Who have I touched? And I kept drawing a blank. To be honest, I did start looking for new areas to serve in. Together with 2 colleagues from work I have set the ball rolling to volunteer with the Singapore Children's Society. I figured I would go where there was a need.

But God has shown me through Rod and C, my room-mate, that ministry is not about 'doing' but 'being'. That service isn't about meeting my needs, but about me meeting the needs of the church. That service isn't about numbers - not how many young adults I have mentored - but about faithfully turning up and letting God make His Divine Appointments.

So, my daughters, I have a new lens for the years ahead.  When I am discouraged again, I will remember Ps 71:18

"So even to old age and gray hairs,

O God, do not forsake me,

until I proclaim your might to another generation,

your power to all those to come."

God counts in a different way.

My Father's Comfort

Church camp was profoundly moving. I wondered, before I left, what I would do during the long afternoon breaks between the morning sessions and the evening sessions. But in the end, I needed those quiet solitary afternoons to just sit and think and journal.

The camp speaker was Dr Rod Wilson, a psychologist who is now the President of Regent College in Vancouver. He and his wife Bev are raising their adopted daughter, Jessica, who is a high-functioning autistic with frontal lobe damage. At camp, Rod shared the pain of raising their daughter, a struggle that continues till today; as Rod put it, "it's been 25 years of pain". The stories Rod shared were moving and I am awed by this couple who knowingly adopted a special needs child, after years of childlessness, in obedience to God. Their faith and their acceptance of their pain - seeing God IN their pain - challenged me in a deep way.

In his pain, Rod has asked hard questions - "put God in the dock". And he encouraged us to ask those hard questions ourselves. He said at one point, "People ask me - can Jessica be healed? And I answered, Bev and I - WE have been healed." And it struck home for me that that was true for me too. 

I too have my "Jessica story". A pain that will not go away, will not get better, a person I will need to carry for a long time. But through that pain, I have been comforted and I have been encouraged. I have grown and seen more than I would have if life had been all I had imagined. I have thought deeper, felt deeper. And through my tears God has stripped away my conceit, my shallowness; showed me my insecurities; taught me to have honest conversations; ask hard questions. Taught me that a life worthy of Christ is one that hungers for depth and authenticity. Is there pain? Yes. But when I hurt, when I fall, my Father kneels down and puts His arm around me and comforts me. The pain does not go away, the wound is still there. 

You may see my wound; but I feel my Father's comfort.

Off to KL

I'm off to KL tomorrow. I'm taking a flight ahead of the buses that leave on Mon morning so that I can spend a night with my sister. Then I'll check into the hotel with the rest on Mon evening.

I'm feeling a little less anxious now. I always feel better after I have written out my feelings and faced just what it is that is bothering me. Also, I attended the Leadership Seminar conducted by the Camp Speaker Dr Rod Wilson at church this morning and I'm really looking forward to hearing more! 

I haven't packed yet - better get round to it soon! I leave early tomorrow morning for my flight at 10.30am. If I take my laptop along, I will blog during the week. If I don't, then sayonara till next week! Hmmm. I wonder what mood I will be in the next time I write :)

Knotted Up

Would you believe I have a tight knot in my stomach because I’m thinking of the church camp next week?

I feel 9 years old again, coming down from the classroom, entering the school canteen and not knowing where to sit while I eat my bread with butter and sugar.

I am 18 and sitting alone on the swing outside at my class’s graduation party because in my jeans and t-shirt I don’t fit with my classmates who are now in dresses and shirts and dancing to music I don’t know.

I’m 29 and tongue-tied at a group interview for a leadership post and wondering how the others could effortlessly interject and make conversation when I needed time to think about the question the interviewer asked.

I’m 35 and Rita is furious with me for staying in my cabin and avoiding the hordes of students and teacher colleagues on a 3-day school cruise trip.

At 55, I don’t seem to have changed much. Why then am I going?

It’s the pull of the theme of church camp – “Brokenness”.

Changing Faces

This evening we finally bought the dining table. Yes, now we have a place to dump our things on when we get home and a place to leave mail to pile up unopened :) 

Just as we were leaving the shop, I picked up a pretty cushion that I thought would go well with the tangerine wall in our hall; and D said wistfully, "We should have kept the old cushions and not given them away. I could have kept them in the car and when we drive up to Malaysia the girls could use them to nap." I looked at him incredulously. Truly, I think in his mind, my daughters haven't grown up. They are still 10 and 6, curling up each in one corner of the car, or one in the lap of the other, asleep on the pillows we bring with us on our road trips while he drives. 

But our next road trip is not going to be the same. We will not even all fit into the car, and if we decide to drive up to Malaysia, we would probably have to hire a 7-seater SUV. My family has grown - older and bigger. My family has changed - we eat different food, we speak English rather than Tamil, we take turns to watch different programmes on TV, we have different rhythms to our days. 

Come July, my family sitting round the dining table will be different from my family that sat around our old one when we first moved into this apartment in 1998. I pray, in deep ways, it will still be the same.

To My Friend Who Hurts For Me

Dear friend who asked me why I forgive and how I carry on - I can't explain. Maybe you will hear the answer here... Thank you for calling. Thank you for caring. I owe you.

Pre-departure

Today, finally, I completed the tedious process of filling in the forms I need to submit for my impending trip to the US. There still remains the step of scanning and emailing them, but at least the bulk of the work is done and the medical check up is complete.

The medical check up was the most tedious of the processes. In the time it took for me to get my medical history checked and the vaccinations and tests done, I could have flown from Singapore to Melbourne - or Tokyo! 

I would have been in a much worse temper if I had not been so entertained by the staff at this clinic :) There was the nurse who begged me, "Don't scold me ah" before she thrust a needle into my arm; the receptionist who misspelt my name, then corrected it and forgot to save the correction and proceeded to print appointment slips out for me 5 times before she realised why my name continued to be misspelt; and my favourite - the doctor who urged me "Try to remember the exact date of your polio vaccination" and gazed at me hopefully despite me telling him that I was one year old when I was vaccinated.

I'm glad it is done though. I pick up the results on Fri and send off the forms. The first pre-departure wheel has been set in motion!

Grief

I'm feeling quite shaken and saddened by the news that a good friend of mine was murdered last Sunday by her son. She was just a year older than me and we were in the same cell group in church. MJ had a hard life to say the least. She married early and it was a marriage filled with abuse and violence until she plucked up the courage to leave. She even gave away her youngest child for adoption because she couldn't bring herself to abort him like her husband wanted her to. MJ also was dogged by poor health and struggled financially. Yet her faith in God was strong and no matter how hard life was for her, she never doubted the goodness of God.

At the wake yesterday, I was struck by how her children had grown and it brought a fresh realisation of just how many years had lapsed. We were a group of 4 women in that cell group 3 decades ago and I've not been in another cell group since where we shared our lives with such intimacy and trust. We had been led by an American missionary, but when she left, we struggled to keep going. Eventually I moved and lost touch with them. I'm grateful that MJ's sister and another of my friends from that cell had taken the trouble to track me down. I had not read the papers in a week and had not seen the report of the murder nor the obituary. I'm thankful I had a chance to pay my last respects and to grieve. 

Many times when I had been overwhelmed by my life struggles, I had thought of MJ. My troubles pale beside hers and I know of no other woman who has been as strong as her. Many times I have heard MJ say she wishes she could go Home. She finally has.

Back Home

Does anyone still read this blog I wonder. I knew it has been a while since I last wrote but I surprised myself when I realised that I hadn't written in a month!

It has been a tough two months. The renovations are finally done and we are back home. Most of the boxes have been unpacked and the new smell of paint and varnish is slowly dissipating. It feels like home but doesn't look like home - and that feeling takes some getting used to. We have had to make do without a sofa for a week - it finally arrived this evening - and we are still without a dining table and study tables in the girls' rooms. The project gulped down more than I had budgetted and I feel a pang of anxiety every time I look at my bank account. 

In many ways the house has turned out as I had imagined it. I promised myself two luxuries - a rain shower and a reading nook. I managed to get the first one fixed but the second wish will have to wait till other necessities (such as the above-mentioned dining table) are in place. Some things have turned out to be heartaches. My interior designer seems to fail in getting accurate measurements done. That seems a little like saying my tailor seems to fail in cutting in a straight line, but that has indeed been a repeated failure. As a result, the microwave oven doesn't quite sit snugly in its shelf, the vanity counter he made for my bathroom was too big and we had to move it to the kitchen instead, but worst of all, I can't open my wardrobe doors because he didn't get the measurement of my bed right :) He also built a platform I asked for a bit too high and as a result I have to fix window grilles lest someone falls out of the windows that have now become dangerously low. Sigh.

So my renovation saga isn't over. There are still things to fix and furniture to buy; cartons to be unpacked and clothes to be put away. But it feels good to be home.