October 7 2010

October 7 Three Blessings in Illness

I have experienced God’s blessings more fully during my illness. Let me share with you my three highlights:

1) The love of family, friends, colleagues and unknown brothers and sisters in the Lord. I am so blessed! During this illness, I realize I am well loved. My husband Victor surprised me with his capacity to care for me and do housework. (Keep it up, hubby!) My sisters indulged me with their loving care. They kept me company on hospital visits and traveling to Macau. They ate a lot of my “leftovers” and save the best parts for me to make sure I eat enough nutritious food. This is not a surprise but I do feel somewhat guilty to be spoiled at this “old” age! [Sisters are often better than husband when you are sick!] My friends – indeed I am blessed with many great friends. However I had lost touch with many of them. I am very grateful for the renewal of our connectedness. My primary school and high school friends – we get to chat like kids and teenagers again! My colleagues have also been wonderful, really giving me a break by offering a lot of additional help. I am also pleasantly surprised that many of them remember me in their prayers as well. In addition, there are many brothers and sisters that I have never met praying for me. Sometimes I learn that somebody from faraway pray for me because they learn about my condition from someone…

I am so blessed by others’ love and I pray that I would be able to be more loving as well in the future.

2) The opportunity to pause and reflect on life.

I like to take time to reflect. However the reflections are really quite different when one is stricken with illness. As the possibility of death looms, the meaning of life takes on a rather different appearance. According to Erik Erikson (psychologist)’s eight psychosocial stages of development, I feel like I was suddenly pushed through the middle adulthood stage to the older adulthood stage in senior years. In this last stage, the main question is “Have I lived a full life?” and the developmental task is retrospection, reflecting on one’s lives and accomplishments. I conclude that I am ready to be with the Lord. I am very thankful that the Lord has blessed me with a happy, fruitful life. It is definitely not perfect and yet so full of the Lord’s blessings. [Sometimes we seek our own “perfect” life rather than one blessed by the Lord. How foolish!] I am affirmed that God the potter has made something out of useless clay like me. He has given us (both Victor and I) lots of opportunities (overseas education and work, ministries, experiences, etc.) we do not deserve. As I reflect on my past, the Lord has also revealed my weaknesses and sins. Sometimes I remembered childhood and teenage struggles, sometimes clients I have worked with later in my professional life… At times my failures and shortcomings grieved me. Yet God’s mercy has always been there. I am thankful that the Lord has taught me to understand my past from a new perspective. Also, there is still an opportunity for me to change as He continues to mold me to become the vessel that pleases Him.

The Serenity Prayer –God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to make the most out of both. [I change it from “wisdom to know the difference.” When we know the difference, we have some choices.]

I am blessed by this involuntary compulsory retreat for the opportunity to have a deeper reflection of my life.

3) The gift to experience the love of God more fully.

In my vulnerable moments (physical, emotional and spiritual), I wondered why God is willing to become man, to be trapped in this human body that is so fragile with all the cumbersome basic needs such as hunger, excretion, discomfort, etc. Incarnation is “vastness confined in the womb of a maid.” More so, instead of waving a magic wand to deal with the sinful world from a distance, He chose a path of suffering to save us. “You came among us, lived our brief years, tasted our griefs, our aloneness, our fears, conquered our death, made eternity ours…” (From the song Lord of the Universe by Margaret Clarkson).

In each round of chemotherapy, the Lord reminded me Isaiah 53. In particular v. 3-5

3 He was despised and rejected by men,

 a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.

 Like one from whom men hide their faces

 he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

 4 Surely he took up our infirmities

 and carried our sorrows,

 yet we considered him stricken by God,

 smitten by him, and afflicted.

 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,

 he was crushed for our iniquities;

 the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,

 and by his wounds we are healed.

Christ had taken up our infirmities and carried our sorrows. All pains, all sorrows, all transgressions and all wounds are already dealt with on the cross. Indeed by His wounds we are healed.

May we worship Him!