His-tory

Life is a book. Many, if not all, of us want to write our own stories. But some prefer others to write for them. My husband put it into his will that I was to write his biography after his passing, because he knew I had a flair for words. To help me along, he left behind a bagful of cassette-tapes and a big box of slides containing a spoken and pictorial record of his 40 odd years of human life. He told me it contained everything about his life, known and un-beknown to me. It's been 15 years since he left earth to enjoy heaven. And I haven't written a single word. I think by now, it's well-nigh impossible to find something called a cassette player. So the tapes and slides are gathering dust in the store-room. When I see my husband in heaven, I owe him an apology, because I didn't carry out his last wishes.

Only once a long time ago did I deign to listen to part of a cassette which recorded the birth-cries of our first baby daughter in the labor room. I put it away when his voice came on; I guess the wound in my heart was still too raw then for me to continue listening. Perhaps, instinctively I was also apprehensive that contained in those records would be some things that would hurt me as a woman and a wife, things I would rather not know and indeed weren't needed for me to know...

For  I recalled the day I thought he was going to die,  as he lay in a hospital bed, out of the blue in the midst of all his pain, he told me he wanted to confess his sins. Back then, I wasn't prepared for this kind of thing. I had just come to the Christian faith myself, and was on an emotional roller-coaster ride, trying to get to terms with God, a dying husband and my own fears. So I told him to confess to Jesus. As it turned out, in spite of all my woeful inadequacy and ignorance, it turned out to be the absolutely right thing to do. Looking back, I can only say God did it; He took over the script and re-wrote not only the story of my life, but the story of my husband's death.

And life goes on, unfolding like the pages of a story book being turned over. If we had a choice, all of us would write happily-ever-after endings to our life story. Certainly if I had my way, I wouldn't
have written widowhood into the pages of my story. But happily-ever-after's only happen in... well, fairy tales. Babies grow up and out of all that Prince Charming/Princess Beautiful stuff.
Actually the world's story is one huge mess these days, despite all the so-called progress of human civilization. We applaud exciting stories about cars that drive themselves and imagine a world where in the words of John Lennon, "there's no heaven..no hell.. nothing to kill or die for...no religion too... all people living life in peace..." But the reality is that's not how life works; Lennon himself was killed by an assassin's bullet. Actually if there was nothing worth dying for, there wouldn't be any heroes to cheer, pointless to dream about ideals like justice or equality.  If there was no heaven no hell, our book would be but a blank page, life would be just one big zero - it would make absolutely no difference how we live today, whether we do good or bad, if death ends it all tomorrow. In fact it would be grossly unfair because there would be no punishment for all the evil that humans get away with on earth.

Written in the fabric of our society are such tragic stories....mass genocide just across our borders, and on the home front, in our own back yard, a horrendous story of how mere teenagers can deliberately commit arson and murder their own kind over a supposed tiff about futsal. Stories of child/women abuse, senseless violence, hate and fears of this, that or the other. What happened? Psychologists write theories about how humans have somehow lost respect for the value of life. Life has become so cheap, we can write pages and pages about the terrible things that humans do to one another, and it's not just in the name of religion, race, power or politics.  Nowadays anything goes. We are free to re-write even freedom, right and wrong in our own individual terms. The Holy Bible has a phrase for this : .."every man did that which was right in his own eyes" because everyone was only interested in writing his story his way.

But then there are those who, as Mother Theresa said, choose to be " a little pencil in the hand of a writing God, who is sending a love letter to the world.”  I am learning to let go of my instinct to self-create something that I desire, and instead let the Master Creator of the entire universe design a masterpiece out of me. It's not easy, for many times my human eyes can't see and my human mind can't comprehend the beginning and the end of the stories He writes in my book.  And truth is, I'd rather be master of my own destiny, boss of my life. Why should I give it over to anyone else, much less to God "out there"?  For the simple reason I know He loves me, much more than I know how to love myself or others. He has declared in His own Word, that He has loved me with an everlasting love,  He has drawn me with loving kindness (Jeremiah 31:3) But still, can I really trust Him to write a good story for my life?

Well, I figured I will never know unless I let Him. So I did, a step at a time, albeit reluctantly, for it meant doing things His way, His time. Thus began a one-of-a-kind prayer-journey that took me through 9 months of travail, having to put aside my personal schedule, making inconvenient trips outstation, doing things I would never have thought of or would want to do in my own natural logic. It was like carrying a baby in my womb, and I never did take pregnancy well. But as every mother knows, the discomforts of pregnancy are well worth going through for the ultimate birth of new life. And how true it is that He never lets us walk alone... He sent human angels to accompany me throughout this journey. Few, but enough to keep me going month after month, session after session. It didn't matter that there were times when I didn't know how or what to pray anymore; He saw us through all the 3-hour watches over 9 months - 81 hours in total. Even when on rare occasions when no human support was available, my heart knew I was never alone although my physical eyes couldn't see heaven's angels all around.

And so the arduous journey of prayer turned out to be a blessing of renewed and deepened faith in the goodness of a God who empowers whom He calls, of being drawn close to His heart to be convicted by His love for all, even and especially for those who still refuse to acknowledge or believe. In the process coming to understand it's no longer about my desires, but about learning to pray as Jesus prayed the hardest, greatest prayer of all in His darkest moments in Gethsemane before facing the cross, "Father....not My will, but Yours be done" (Luke 22:42) and truly mean it.

There's nothing more fulfilling than knowing you have finished a job well. That's how I felt at the end of the 9 months 'assignment', confident that something beautiful has been birthed by none other than God Himself.  He has written every page of this chapter of my life, and it's so exciting to see prayers answered and still being answered, even  as He began a new chapter that took me on a 4-leg journey that started from PJ through to Kuching, Kota Kinabalu and Ranau, joining His family from different tribes, races and nations. A family born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. A family that honors the Father and each other in the love of Christ. When He called,  I didn't understand why I had to gallivant across the South China Sea and travel to not 1, but 3 towns across 2 states... What kind of story is this?  One that only He can unfold, for as it turned out, it wasn't just about attending another Christian gathering. At every turn of the page, there were characters who popped up, who needed to hear or be reminded of the good news of a God whose love knows no bounds, whose peace is beyond any human understanding, whose power overcomes even death, whose grace abounds to save every sinner.

Yes, it's an old old story, but one which never loses its meaning, when this world makes no sense anymore, and everything will pass away ultimately. It remains forever true - a story of divine love that alone can bring unity to a fractured world because it's birthed out of sacrifice, not self, based on surrender, not domination. The empty cross and empty tomb of Jesus Christ is the ultimate love-story that actually ends in a real happily-ever-after, if we choose to believe in and engage with a living God.
I think my husband was very wise; he knew I could write a better story of his life than himself.  Just so, I am beginning to understand there's an Author who can pen the story of my life much better than myself. And unlike I, who failed to write my husband's story, the almighty God will never fail to write mine, weaving His-tory into my life to make it beautiful.

"Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be" - Psalm 139:16