memento mori

when i die, if you have a memory of me, would you take some time, reach into your heart to retrieve it, hold it in your hands and sit with it awhile? my wake could be in a garden, picnic mats and open mics; you could sing me a song, or recount a memory. i will permit sarah sharing about our childhood sleepovers, sumay sharing about the time i drove her around on her birthday and got us lost for two hours (and dropped her cupcakes), wei liang recalling my half-awake council camp mumbling, james telling everyone about the first time i tried to make indomie. but also, if there was a time i helped you through a thing, or provided comfort and support, or prayed with you, or sowed a good seed in you, would you remember that, too, and allow my death to renew your strength. if i sinned against you, as i have done to many, would you forgive me and cover the hurt with peace.

tuesday afternoon, i rush to scribble Psalm 23 on my notepad as we make our way to the ward. dad tells me to keep my paper, but i'm not done; they'll understand when they receive it.

"you aren't scared, seeing her like that?" her mum asks. why would i be? she smiles, slightly surprised, and nods. as i leave she is opening my letter.

that night i am scheduled to lead a worship meeting in school. once i reach back, though, i head first to the hammock. give my heart space to check itself, give it room to breathe, feed it a few hymns, re-center. it is well, it is well with my soul. at that moment something in my heart clicks. but i know that whatever awaits her is far greater than what this earth could ever hold for her.

wednesday: i wake up to the news that she was struggling to breathe, and then breathed no longer.

friday at the wake, her mum says "thank you for the psalm. it was her favourite."

joel is at the table and my family is engaging him in a conversation about - of all things - army rifles and career prospects in pharmacy. my skin crawls with impatience. as soon as there is a break in the conversation i whisper can i pray for you? an awkward silence at the table. the two of us shuffle towards the front, near the coffin. i curl up in my seat. i breathe, and i pray, at peace, holding the hand of God.

"how are you?" i ask. he pauses. "actually, i'm quite okay." he chuckles. "God has been preparing me for this. It's just that now it's a different season. First it was without the cancer, then with the cancer, and now without Joanna." we talk about our families and campus ministry (turns out he leads NUS Nav?? how did i not know this before) and about God and what it means to shine for Him. he motions to Joanna from time to time.

It's good that I'm more level-headed now, someone's got to be the rational one in the family. It used to be Joanna. Joanna was the one who brought our family close together.
I think it makes a difference when you're able to be that beacon of light for your family. See Joanna, she always made an effort to interact with the older ones. She was always talking to the aunties. And if she didn't make that effort she wouldn't be able to speak into their lives. I think you can do more as a beacon of light where you are, too.

saturday, again, a table of peanuts and smartphones and mindless chatter. jonathan takes a seat, alone, a table away. i am the first one over.

"how are you?"

he says that before the service, his mum was just busy, busy, busy rushing around and doing things. he forcibly took her away from the hall, led her down a path into the woods, and made her have her dinner there. she needed that space, he says. both joel and jonathan echo concern for their mum.

today, just before they put the coffin in the hearse, the family stands by it one more time. joanna's mum is bent over, her fingers tracing the glass, her husband struggling to hold her together.

at the viewing hall her mum is crying. someone says "it's okay, it's okay." but it isn't. it will be okay, but it is not now, and that's okay.

as we leave with hugs i give her mum psalm 91:1. he who dwells in the shelter of the Most High shall rest in the shadow of the Almighty. "Yes," she nods. "You're right. You're very good at memorizing verses eh. When I was a teenager I used to do that. It helps, you know. Comes back to you from time to time, when you don't realise. But it's okay to grieve also, because Jesus wept."

joanna

He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.


may legions of angels bear you up
and carry you away to a place that is so much richer in glory, peace, joy, love, and beauty
than this world could ever offer

God's Transformation, feat. Nick & Ivan

(I'm not supposed to post the (beautiful) photos we took at the wedding yet, so here's a picture from yesterday at World of Coca-Cola featuring an unsuspecting Nick and cheeky Ivan, who had tricked him into trying the Zimbabwean drink that, according to Nick a few seconds after this photo was taken, tasted like medicine.)

--

So I'm with the cousins in Atlanta to attend my aunt's wedding (congrats!), and today I learnt that Nick now leads a youth cell group, and he's been receiving training from his youth pastor. At the wedding today (in a cabin in the woods; it was incredible) Nick and Ivan were talking about Ravi Zacharias and Tim Keller and understanding apologetics and all the things we all still didn't know, yet knowing that it was important to "always be prepared to give an answer...for the hope that you have" (1 Pet 3:15).

They're both eighteen now, and the whole time I was amazed at how different they are from the Nick and Ivan I once knew. Like, you have well-behaved children, and then you have really bad ones. Once upon a time Ivan and Nick were just...people you would never come close to associating with the "good Christian kid".

I remember the year I noticed Ivan's stark transformation from a terror of a child into a gentle, loving, quiet preteen. 2009: I was 16, he was 13. I mean, he was quiet. I was like, woah, dude, I don't even know you anymore. And he told me that at church camp the previous year, he and his older brother Ian had encountered God in a very tangible way for the first time. I guess the transformation was more dramatic in Ivan because Ian had always been the better-behaved kid, but that marked the start of their lives in Christ. Whenever Ian messages me to clarify or challenge something I said on Facebook regarding Christianity, I am reminded again of the work that God is doing in him, and that only God brings us to desire to know Him. While Ian's the more word-focused, "is this biblically founded or not" type of Christian (reminds me of Kenneth the Yale-NUS DF heh), God's work in Ivan is more evident in his relationship with Him and the grace and love that he shows to others, I think.

And I guess I only realised the change in Nick on this trip. I see Nick very rarely, and I had a pretty bad impression of his fourteen-year-old character, to say the least. I noticed it this time: courteous, helpful and obedient to his parents, not distasteful in his jokes (but still hilarious), genuine, not a single swear word. He was talking about his challenges as a youth leader, and the kids whom he really cares for and whom he'd love to see grow up; his difficulties in answering their questions or helping them with their problems, that motivate him to read up more, question more, understand his faith better.

"It's 24/7", he said, and that pretty much sums up my experience leading CF, too. It's a 24/7 job. As a church or ministry leader people somehow seem to expect you to be flawless like God, and you often trip up with a slip of the tongue, or a graceless act, or just about anything when people scrutinise and judge you that way.

It's tiring, and it often feels unfair. "Hey, you don't judge that Christian when he does this, why judge me." Once I poured it out to Yixuan and Baoyun in frustration. Frustration that I had to set higher standards for myself, when it might not even be a sinful act but could be judged to be so. Frustration that I always felt judged, like I lugged about an iron chain of watchful eyes 24/7. And then Yixuan said "but isn't it a wonderful thing to be able to represent God?" That sentence changed the way I saw everything.

Looking at my cousins, I'm also reminded of Theo, and how much he has changed since really coming to Christ around this time last year. Just in one year, he has become such a different person, so selfless and so thoughtful for other people, so helpful, so gracious in speech and thought, so anxious to live out a close relationship with God. It's incredible to witness. And I wonder if people see the change in me. I see the inward change in myself, in my thoughts and decisions and motivations, but I wonder if people who've known me through the years can also see God's work in me this tangibly. I don't think so. I mean, I wasn't a very good fourteen-year-old either, but I think I was a somewhat decent kid. And I still say 'shit' and 'damn' very frequently, and I very often forget to be graceful or reflect Christlikeness in my speech. And I'm a pretty awful child to my parents. I'm sorry, Mum and Dad, that you guys think I cannot stand you guys and would always rather be somewhere else and won't listen and will always do things my way. I was eating Sun Chips on my bed and Mum said "You know, I don't know if I should make you eat better food or just let you learn for yourself, because it's so bad for you and you'll come to see the effects one day", and I didn't say anything because I didn't know what to say, and I continued eating my Sun Chips because well the packet had to be finished anyway and I knew that once the school semester started again I'd go right back to eating junk, so why pretend? And then I thought "I'm probably a terrible child." But then, also, "will I ever please my parents?", and then, "does any child ever fully meet their parents' expectations?"

Anyway, now I'm rambling.


(I never actually try to end a post properly eh, must be a subconscious rebellion against all the pretty concluding paragraphs I try to squeeze out when I write essays)

My grandmother

I'm not close to my grandmother. My family has dinner with her every Sunday, but she's usually talking to my parents in Cantonese. My grandmother is fiercely independent and strong - she's 84, and recently fell in the bathroom and dislocated her shoulder, and the doctor simply popped it back with no problem. She's also fiercely opinionated. For a long while after my granddad died, she warned me never to become a Christian, because my granddad died shortly after converting. (I, personally, am so grateful that God waited for him to turn to His love before finally releasing him of his immense physical suffering.) And later on she was like, well at least don't get baptised, because that way you can still conform to the religion of your future husband, and there won't be family disputes like that of my aunt.

Anyway.

So I'm not close to my grandmother, but she loves sharing about her past, which is why I was inspired to start that website for people to share their grandparents' war stories. I know she dotes on my brother and me, and she's very proud of us when we do well in school, and she keeps on telling us to listen to our parents and treat them well when we're older. She calls home when Mark or I am about to go overseas, and when we've just come back.

Recently she's been giving me a lot of food - pineapple tarts, honey pears and more. When she heard that I was getting a lot of mosquito bites in school, she very enthusiastically gave me some leaves of a plant she had grown. I think she thinks my hostel doesn't feed me, which isn't true, but is very useful hehe. This good ol' honey chrysanthemum tea has also been sweetened with a grandmother's care, and the crackers are actually really good!!! Buttery and crispy and apparently only 60 cents a pack! Sometimes grandmothers know best.

I'm not close to my grandmother, but I feel like she genuinely really cares for me. She keeps telling me to study hard and get a good job, and now I feel like when I'm here in my room studying or slacking off, I have a responsibility to her, too. To give her something to proudly boast about, and to make her feel like all the food she's giving me, the care she's showing me, is worth it.