Photograph of me taken on 1.5.2009 (at Church of St Anthony of Padua), the 9th month I was pregnant...
It is said that the natural resources of Singapore is nothing but People, a human being.
What is a human being? We asked about how the chicken comes about? Is it from egg first or from chicken first? We have many questions about life as well. However we could not answer them. Did you really think about our meaning of life at all? What is the purpose of living in this world even?
I questioned it. It was my paternal grandmother's death that I had experienced a life lost. So that was the ultimate destiny of a person! Singapore, our common destiny, our shared destiny, death.
But how does people come about? Though I studied and read on books about the process of pregnancy, I was blinded to think that I can abort the 'heart' (the six weeks old foetus). That was a precious human being, from the day it was conceived! How precious it was for people who do not even have a chance to have a baby. Some people tried so hard for babies and yet they had none. Yet, I was blinded. It never dawn on me that I was actually killing a precious life like that!
The human life starts from the fertilization of the egg with the sperm. It slowly develops into more cell division and ultimately the heart is formed and subsequently everything develops slowly in the mother's womb. The 'making of a human being' takes nine precious months. So the human lives should be treasured.
Photograph of Isaac and me taken on 1.8.2009
I bared the hardship of pregnancy and successfully gave birth to Isaac. That is how a life comes about from a tiny egg that met the sperm grow in the womb, and eventually into a full term baby. Another hardship was the labour pain and eventually all the pushing hard to have the baby come to the world. So that was the 'making of a people'.
I too was born from my mother's womb. I grew up, brought up in my mother's house and my parents' are also brought up locally, all within Singapore. Singapore is a small country and do you really know what is the right way to live our life?
John 14:6 -- Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
Remember I told you that I like to catch birds when I was young? Running after them, chasing them. (I love to scare the cats too. This is because they make too much noise at night, scaring me...) In Singapore, these are the fun things that we could do when I was young...
Growing up, I stopped catching or running after birds. I hardly even looked at birds. Soon, it was almost forgotten that I had encounter birds during my working years. After my graduation, worked and then got married and so on. I did not encounter any birds at all. I only had dogs later on.
8 March 2008 changed my life. As you can see from the video above, 11 April 2008 I had a special encounter. I caught hold of a baby bird! How fun was that! And after that, that was not the first time I caught a bird. Over the years, I had encountered more birds. I saw them on the pathway, I saw them in my corridor garden, at my house and while walking along roadsides.
5 June 2012, this turtle dove came to my house.
Something so special and it just made my day. This is because in Singapore there was hardly any nice view. We are surrounded by HDB flats. And that's why this picture's background is the HDB flat, and also my other pictures have background of HDB flats as well.
On the same day of 5 June 2012, when I went out of the house with Isaac and Richard later on, I had another encounter of another bird. I was really filled with ecstasy. It just let me catch hold of it and it never fly off.
5 June 2012 caught the bird along the roadside.
Just last year, there were sunbirds that came to my garden to build nest. And I was able to see the young baby birds!!!!
8 February 2020 bird nest done by sunbirds at my garden.
This was the first time I see real bird nest. In school, I read about bird nest and what the book had drawn the bird nest to be like. But I never had a chance to see real bird nest in Singapore. I only see pigeons having their 'nest' under/ in the crevices of MRT tracks/pillars. So This really made me so proud of my garden.
It's 13 years since Jesus came to me, and he said "Follow Me".
I was dead and was then given a new life till now. What does it means to follow him?
I was lost but found by Christ. I wanted to acknowledge that I am a Catholic, a christian and a follower of Christ.
In the past, an interviewer asked me, "Are you a Christian?" I told him, "No, I am not a Christian."
I even shifted all the Catholic statues out of the house, put them in the corridor cupboard and then brought them to my mother's house. I stopped praying to Jesus. I stopped going to church also.
But because of something which I had done many years back, I was saved.
What did I do? I thought that since my sister can do it, I will do it too. Can you guess what I did?
It's not a glamourous thing to do. It is my own flesh and blood. I killed it. But I did not know that I actually killed it. I was blinded. Doing things without knowing it. I was dead. Even at the clinic, I told them I wanted abortion, they did not stop me. They just let me sign papers. They were supposed to tell me the consequences of abortion, which until now I don't know. I asked the nurse, but she never told me the answers -- what effect does it have? She just told me some 'unrelated stuff' about her husband. "You know lah, man ....." things like that. And at that time, I happened to know the nurse. It was someone I knew at the workplace. She had changed her workplace.
So I never know that I had sinned, greatly sinned.
What's more, after that then I realized that my father had taught me that, "If you have a mortal sin, you cannot receive holy communion." Oh, how greatly I had sinned. Not only do I have mortal sins but also venial sins.
Before my husband came back, we committed adulteries too. He had new girlfriend and I had my boyfriend. So wretched, so badly sinned.
Then I wanted my children to raise up as good Catholics. I started to go church. Little did I know that I had done the wrong things. I never went for confession (reconciliation) and I just went forward to receive Holy Communion. It really never come to my mind what my father had taught me.
So the miraculous things happened on 8 March 2008. I had a dream of Jesus, telling me about 'Singapore'. I woke up and I heard him saying, "Follow Me". I was so broken. I cried for all my sins. Next, I walked to the window and I saw the 'map of Singapore' in the clouds. And Jesus was saying I am the bread of life. Back then I have no idea at all Jesus was the bread of life! I learned from my dreams! During my bath, I was 'cleansed' and washed again with new spirit... Jesus helped me to wash away all the evil spirits.
Now, Jesus said, "Take up your cross and follow me." (Matthew 16:24, Mark 8:34 and Luke 9:23)
If I want to follow him I have to take up my cross. I am still learning now how to take up my cross.
Photographs showing the map of Singapore. Picture taken from my window.
