Birthing a new baby

1 year - that's how long it took to 'birth' Mutiara, my very first BM book. Its a beautifuul baby; but then everything born of God must be beautiful, yes! I give all the glory to God for surely He is the ultimate Author of this book.
Sure I have always had this 'thing' to write, even as a teenager. I still keep the cut-outs of my poems published in newspapers in those days when i was spouting lovey-dovey heart-wrenching prose of those emotional highs and lows of my teenagehood. Even then i have always had this dream of writing a novel one day that would hit the best seller list... ah, the stuff of romantic dreams of long ago days...what happened? well, i got married, the kids came, and somehow the dream got parked somewhere at the back of the brain-bank, marked "KIV". And then, my husband passed away, and in his will to me, he mentioned i was to write his memoirs; to assist me in this task, he left me tons of cassettes (hallo, in those days, we still used cassette player la) on which he had pre-recorded his thots on life, fatherhood, marriage, me, him... one time, i listened to a recording of the cries of our first baby - my eldest princess. After awhile, i decided it simply hurt too much to listen to all his collection; and so i left them aside to gather dust. I told myself i would get down to executing that part of his will when i retire and have nothing else better to do with my life... and so, the dream of writing got parked again into "KIV".

I guess it would hv remained parked forever in KIV, had it not been a dream born of God. Some 35 years down the line, He resurrected it in a most unusual form. He sent me an Encourager, a human angel i first met at an orang asli conference and then again when she came to preach at our church BM service. She approached me to write a Bahasa devotional for women. I blinked, who me? And then i thot again, why not? After all i have always wanted to write.... and so the dream grew wings.... looking back, i stand amazed at how God began that work in me even before i knew Him...

At the gila-gila age of 12, I took on the name of Christine, like most gila-gila teenagers of my generation; adding an "English" name was considered "kool". Of all the thousands of names I could have chosen, it had to be Christine. No other. 11 years after I called on the name of Jesus, I discovered Christine actually means follower of Christ. And i am reminded of God's Word in Psalm 139:15-16: My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How awesome it is that God had already even then laid claim to me, without me ever knowing it....

People are surprised i can converse and write so well in a language that is not my mother tongue. The funny thing is as a Chinese, i can't speak my own dialects well. ( Praise God i am learning now in my old age, as i sit listening to our Pastors preach in Cantonese every Sun morning in the Chinese service ) The secret of my fluency in Bahasa is even funnier - i fell in love at the tender age of 15, swooning head over heals over my BM tuition teacher, a Muslim. Ah, the throes of unrequited puppy love... he was my inspiration to sweat over Bahasa. I remember how disappointed he and I was when i got a 'mere' C3 in my MCE then. Thank God it was the temporary madness of teenage-hood and the gila cinta phase passed. But the good that came out of that - my skill in the language - stayed stuck in the brain cells. I didn't get to use the skill at all for the next 25 years of my life, but what God has planted stays, like a slowly germinating seed in the heart's soil, waiting for its time to sprout . And at age 50 it bloomed - Mutiara is the resulting flower. So today I can only thank God for His faithfulness, at what He started in me, nurtured and perfected it, true to His Word in Hebrews 12:2 , Jesus Christ is the Author and Finisher of my faith ...

I stand in humility because I can boast nothing that is mine about this book. I remember His Word in 1 Corinthians 1:27-29 that God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. What else can i say? God would choose me from so long ago, when i was weak, foolish and base... and today He is the One worthy of all praise.

The only thing i can boast is mine about Mutiara is the blood, sweat and tears of the birthing process. The easiest part was actually the writing; the ideas came, though i had my moments of doubt as to what i should write that could take the reader through 180 days of meditating on God's precious Word. The hardest part was the most tedious; re-writing after my Encourager-turned-Editor slashed, added and reworded most liberally my very raw first draft. At first it hurt the ego; and i had to remind myself it's her job to edit and mine to obey, becoz it's God's book and it has to be THE best and that's why God sent her to me for that very purpose. But if i thot re-writing was difficult, the most difficult was yet to come - for the first time in my life, i knew what lay-out meant. And again i thank God He already prepared someone to do what I could never do on my own. My dear dear cell mate volunteered to undertake the most frustrating part; attending time after time to details like spelling, spacing, punctuation marks and all that most boring-est stuff that goes behind writing a book... this 'mid-wife' literally tore hair laboring with me and Ed to birth the baby. We even went thru panic attacks when the files 'crashed' towards the end, probably becoz of too many amendments. I was so afraid the 'baby' would abort!

Oh, how we prayed, and prayed and prayed. And God delivered end of the day. So I surrender this labour of my love unto the Lord, that it may bless every reader as He intends it to. To God be all the glory. I am looking forward to bearing more 'babies'. Indeed no. 2 is being conceived even now.... after all, my Master Jesus said,
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last - John 15:6