HOW DO WE LOVE ?

Contrary to what most folks were doing, and in spite of the relaxation of Covid rules, we didn't balik kampung for Chinese New Year 2023. My second sister was herself travelling down south and wouldn't be around, so we decided might as well stay put in KL for the season. At least it spared us from being snared in the usual balik kampung jam. So it was just our own small family of 4 and my brother for home-cooked dinners over 2 days and a lunch meet-up with my husband's relatives.

I had no desire to go mall-hopping. Instead I spent 3 days pottering in my garden, clearing and making a nice pathway round it.  The trash - roots, weeds, dying/dead plants -  was enough to fill 5 big plastic bags. Was it worth all the sweat and effort? Especially since as my no 2 daughter points out, the weeds and grass are just gonna grow again. I think so. Physically, my garden looks so much neater now, instead of the jungle it used to be. And spiritually for me, it was like a prophetic act of pulling out all the unwanted stuff  of the past and clearing a path for a new  future. 

                 

 I "decorated" it with 11 bricks as stepping stones, all in a line, as symbolic of an alignment of my family to God's path. Sure, it will need clearing again. But that's to be expected. There's always things we need to "clean up" every now and then, even in the gardens of our lives, so they don't get all cluttered up with all kinds of "rubbish." 

After the days of labor, I decided to reward myself with a show. One of the perks of being a senior citizen is the 50% discount on movie tickets, and the luxury of having an almost empty cinema hall to oneself during week-days. So I sat through   a totally local Made-in-Msia Chinese movie for 1 1/2 hours. Ma, I Love You is  brainchild of Chiu Keng Guan who gave us Ola Bola, which I  enjoyed. And this latest offering for CNY is really very real and relatable, especially for "old aunties" like me. The protagonist is a widow who works hard as an insurance agent to raise up her only daughter. 

I can understand this mom's over-protectiveness, since I myself had to fend for 3 young kids at my husband's passing. It's always hard to "let go" of the ones we love. What struck me about this very Chinese mother with a very Chinese name Goh Bee Ling  was how she equated all her interaction (read interference) with her newly-turned 18 years old daughter as true love.  She may not be quite a "tiger mom", but controlling she certainly is. Though looking at it through  her eyes, it's justified on the grounds that she loves her.

So it is that Bee Ling is very hurt and angry that her precious Qi Qi dares to plan on  leaving her to go overseas to France to study. And that without even telling her about it first. It jars mummy to the core that the child she has spent her whole life caring for could even think of leaving (dumping) her to run off literally to the other side of the world. How ungrateful. Well, I would be hurt too if my kids go to the extent of lying and pretending  in front of me, all the time plotting "escape."

Still we were all 18 once, for sure some of us would have gone through the "no one understands me" phase at one time or another.  I myself have almost run away from home during my rebellious teen years. So I can understand Qi Qi chaffing  at the invisible chains put around her by a mother who can't see she needs her personal space to breathe. Whilst I can relate to not knocking before I enter my children's rooms since it's my house anyway, I can also appreciate it's only polite to knock to acknowledge and respect their privacy. 

Of course there's love; it's assumed that a parent must love his/her child and vice versa.  But how do we love? Bee Ling's "true" love means you must always be with the person you love. You cannot leave them or leave them be. Yet behind such overwhelming love is actually the specter of fear. It's fear that our  beloved will get into trouble, can't/don't know how to handle life properly without us ever at their side...to cook and wash for them, to drive them to work, even to choosing their clothes or hairstyle. It's assuming we know best for the one we love. So we keep on telling them what they should or shouldn't do. Like Bee Ling insists that her own mother go to hospital after a very minor accident, to the extent of calling for an ambulance when the old lady refuses. Not only that, it's the unspoken (mostly unacknowledged) fear for ourselves, that we will be left all alone without them, that our lives will lose all meaning if we lose those whom we love. Especially since a dearly-loved spouse has already been lost. 

Love based on and motivated by fear messes up relationships. It constrains and restricts, it imprisons instead of sets free. So it is, Bee Ling learns the hard way - through her own literal fall - that true love doesn't need to fear anything that happens to the beloved. Because even if/when we lose the beloved, we never lose the love.  John the Apostle of Love puts it so beautifully, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love." (1 John 4:18) 

Is it possible to not fear, especially for the ones we love, even for ourselves? Indeed the world can be a very fearful place; bad things can happen anytime, to all people. That's reality, but there's a bigger truth that overcomes the reality of fear. And that is love, the true perfect love of a God who has done away with the most fearsome of all things - death itself. 

In all my fear and anger, God gave my daughter (instead of me) a dream in answer to my question of where is my very dead husband.  My 8 years old kid saw him very happy in a very beautiful place. That moment 20 years ago was my turn-around. Reality is death steals, kills and destroys. Truth is God lives, resurrects and restores, because God is love. And when we receive Him, we receive His perfect love, so we have no fear in releasing the ones we love to live their own lives. 

So yes, I cried when my eldest walked out of the family home 3 years ago. Yes, I cried again when no 2 ventured out in her time. But the tears are tears of a love secure in the promises of a faithful Father in heaven who watches over them. That's the only way to love, freely without fear.