Making Sense Of It All

So I get a call from Karen at 11 am while I am at work in Ballarat. "Er, honey, are you free to talk?" she asked, although I sensed a keener desperation in her voice. "What's up?" I say, and she tells me that she woke up today to find the house flooded. Water was leaking from the lights in the ensuite and had made its way into the master bedroom and what was even more worrying was that it had somehow made its way downstairs into the dining area.

I tried to suppress the initial instinct to panic, and the images of Titanic-level water gushing into the house that was playing in my head. Instead I switched into problem solving mode and tried to think of who she should call first. I then changed out of my theatre scrubs and told who I needed to that I needed to attend an emergency back home, and thankfully they were very understanding at my workplace.

I get another call from Karen while driving and she tells me that she was worried because water heater at the back of the house was letting out hot air, and I tell her to get away from the backyard to somewhere safe. The house was secondary to her safety and I try my hardest to keep within the speed limits. The Titanic was now exploding in my head, and I could not be there to save my wife.

It was a long hour and twenty minute drive home, and I called frequently to make sure she was okay, while trying to figure out what I could do from all this distance away. Find the main water supply and turn it off. She manages to call the plumber and he tells her to find the main electricity switch and turn that off too.

I felt a little more settled after that, and soon my thoughts naturally drifted to the question we all ask ourselves in times of trouble - "Why me?" and, if you are so inclined, "What is God trying to tell me? Have I displeased Him in some way?"

There were fleeting moments of anger, bargaining and denial all in the short space of my trip home. We are all meaning-making creatures and I was trying to make sense of this 'tragedy' that had blindsided us on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday morning.

Now I use the word 'tragedy' here carefully because, really, compared to everything else that is happening in the world right now (whether reported or unreported), how dare I classify this as a tragedy. But it was a mini-tragedy nonetheless - I was faced with the prospect of homelessness, and potentially months of work on the house. The thought of that still sends shivers down my spine.

By the grace of God, things were worse in my head than I had imagined, which is usually the case. Karen was safe when I got home, and she had dried up most of the house. The water was no longer dripping from the ceilings, and apart from some short-circuited wires and some skirting damage, I would like to believe the house has escaped relatively unscathed.

The insurance company was really understanding and helpful in our times of need, and the tradesmen were friendly and even brought some humour into a serious situation. We found out what the problem was - the original builders of the house must have accidentally driven a nail through a pipe above our bathroom, but instead of taking responsibility and fixing it, they left it alone - it'll be right - and the nail had held out until now.

We are now waiting for the building assessors to come by and see what needs to be fixed, which we are praying won't be major. We still have a roof over our heads, and Karen is safe, and that is the main thing for now.

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So why did it have to happen?

Here is how I have been processing it. This has happened:

1) For absolutely no reason. I think that sometimes we try too hard to justify everything that goes on in the world. We try and make sense of bombs going off and of buildings collapsing and of natural disasters that rob people of their lives and their homes. We are meaning-making creatures, after all, and meaninglessness does not sit well with us - every tragedy should result in goodness, and everything  should happen for a reason.

Try to apply that reasoning to the perpetrators that have never been brought to justice, or to the victims who carry their tragedies unresolved with them for the rest of their lives. Try to apply that to the people who have tried to live healthy but succumb to their cancers anyway, or the occasional smoker who lives well into their eighties.

We do not live in a fixed moral universe. The sun will shine and the rain will fall equally on both the good and the evil people of this world. Yes, we often reap what we sow, but not always, and yes, there is the law, and a judicial system in place, but justice is rarely swift nor adequate in our fallen world.

We live in a broken world, and all we can do is try to bring light into the darkness and life into areas where there is only death, and it heartens me to see some of us trying to do exactly that.

2) God must be punishing me for some sin. Once again, this thinking does not sit well with me for a couple of reasons - firstly, this really depends on your frame of belief - if you were an atheist, then No one is punishing you for anything, if you were a Buddhist, perhaps this is payback for some sin in a past life and so forth.

In my Christian frame of belief - really, God has forgiven all my sins on that cross where Jesus died. Not some of my sins. Not only the sins I committed before I became a Christian. Not only the small sins. All of my sins. Past, present, future, and really, is Christ's death on the cross not big enough to cover any sin? All of my sins.

3) God wants me to learn something from this. Now this perhaps, I can subscribe to. I am not being punished, but I am being refined because God is still interested in who I become and how I interact with the world around me.

I think if there is one thing that God desires from me is my full dependence on Him. That means to humble ourselves completely and depend on Him alone.

What does that even mean? 

I must say that I don't fully comprehend that yet - we are created to work and look after this earth that He has made, and we naturally take pride in what we have accumulated and built with our own hands.

For me it was this house - I remember that a lot of my confidence came from this home we had acquired, the furniture we had painstakingly assembled, this land we owned. It was a source of great pride.

If there is one thing God despises, it is the proud, because it is with this same pride that we pass judgement on other people's lives, it is this pride that shields us from the real problems affecting our communities and the world we live in, this pride that leads to self-centeredness - when we were made to love our God and our neighbours as ourselves. Strangely enough, this pride does not bring satisfaction but discontentment - a need to acquire more to validate our very existence.

And so here I am, humbled once more before God, as He pries my hands a little more from the things that I am desperately trying to hold on to dearly, reminding me to let go a bit more of the things that invest all my confidence in.

I have to let go of my sureness in this house, all my belongings, my beloved wife, my dear family members, my job, my status, my health - all these things that I thought I have control over, or think that I am in control of - it is days like this that remind me that I am in control of absolutely nothing.

And so I come before my Creator once more with fear and trembling, and truthfully, I am still learning what it means to trust Him more, especially in my comfortable middle class existence. I have not known hunger for the longest time, I have been spared from homelessness, my health has had one or two scares in the past but I have my health now.

I am still trying to process this, and writing about it has allowed me to put my thoughts into some cohesive form, although in truth, I am still shaken by the thought of what could have been, especially if neither of us were home to notice it in time.

Letting go of the tangible things that I can put my trust in to put my faith in the unseen is so hard even for a 'veteran' Christian like me. Days like these show up what my foundations are truly made of.

²⁴ “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. ²⁶ But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. ²⁷ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” Matthew 7:24-27

Call Me, Maybe?

We are blessed to be in an era where technology is moving at breakneck speed. Our smartphones are now an extension of our bodies, our laptops are getting lighter yet more powerful, our video games are now motion-controlled, our films jump out at us in three dimension. Now if someone can invent self-cooking meals, self cleaning dishes and self-cleaning and folding laundry, I can then safely say that we are at the pinnacle of human civilisation.

One of the things that we are moving away from is the humble home phone. I don't really use it anymore nowadays except to call back to Malaysia to remind Mum that yes, I am still her son.

Ah, such memories, the telephone. I remember the good old days when the set we had at home was the corded phone with the analog ring, and it would give that satisfying whirr-click whenever you made a phone call. As four or five year olds, we were making such important phone calls - randomly garbling at some stranger in Bangladesh about how our five-year-old day was, or telling some nice French auntie what we had for breakfast.

It wasn't long before the phone bill arrived and our parents had a near heart attack, gave us a good scolding before they decided to buy a lock pad for the phone. It was quite simple really - a small lockpad that fit into one of the numbers was all it took to stop our grubby little fingers making calls.

Ta-da! Itchy fingers cured!

A few years rolled on and there was great excitement in our household when we finally got the telephone with buttons instead of an analog ring - what amazing technology! Our parents got a little forgetful and our tiny fingers got itchy again - and once again the bills with the interstate and overseas calls arrived, and another lock pad was required.

How phones probably look like to all kids.

The lock pad for the button-operated telephone was a plastic square that only had the number '0' exposed so that you could ring for help if needed (kind of like the grand-daddy of the 'Emergency Calls Only' on our modern day smartphones). We had so many fun days chatting to the nice Emergency Operator sister....

One of my proudest moments as a child was hacking the locked telephone. It was out of desperation really - I needed to call Mum at her office, and I sat there blankly in front of the telephone, the orange plastic monstrosity standing between me and my mother.

A natural curiosity had overwhelmed me about how these phones worked - because even when you pressed the buttons on these newer phones - you could still hear a clicking noise in the phone corresponding to the number you had dialled.

And here was my brainwave - I wonder if I could tap out the numbers on the receiver. And so I tried - 9 - nine light taps on the receiver of the telephone. They had to be light taps, mind you - anything too heavy and you risked getting disconnected and had to start all over again. -2- two light taps on the receiver and so on till I completed the seven required numbers.

An actual picture of my
seven-year-old self

I cannot describe to you the simultaneous joy and pride I felt as a seven year old when the phone started ringing and I heard my Mum's voice on the other side.

"Mum!" came my triumphant voice. "Yes, is everything okay?" she asked, before realising "Eh, how come you can call me one? You broke the lock is it?" came the undertones of impending punishment.

I was too excited to remember why I had called her in the first place, and was just dreaming of all the phone calls I could make now that I had hacked the phone.

We'll get to talk again, random French auntie!

Another land-line phone trick you might want to try:

If you dial #196 (or maybe without the hash, I forget) on your home phones in Malaysia and put down your phones, it will automatically ring, and you can pick it up and prank your parents by pretending there was a call for them. Watch them walk all the way downstairs and then speak into the phone quizzically when there is no one there. Make sure you run out of reach at that point when they realise they've been pranked, and make sure you've hidden all the rotans (canes) first.

This method is also good for waking up family members in rooms with a connected phone, which my father used as a substitute alarm clock to wake my brother up for work!

This tip was provided by my primary school friends when we were eleven, who had obviously spent a lot of time hacking their phones as well.

Thinking about Eating.

I remember being told this story when I was a child - my uncle had gone out and bought a whole carton of bar soaps. In his mind it made complete sense - it was a non-perishable item, and you could keep it for as long as you wanted. If prices of soap went up - well, you have just saved yourself some money. A few months later, and he had only gone through three or four bars of his hundred-something soaps sitting in his store room. He noticed that the rest of the soaps had lost their perfumed scent, so he had to throw them out.

One of the things that I am re-learning here in Ballarat is how I eat. People who share a meal with me will always wonder if I had eaten at all that day - I would always be the first to finish, I would eat at least three bowls of rice in a sitting and I used to 'push past the point of pain' - eat despite being full. (Hands up all you Asian children).

My friends used to joke that I didn't have worms - my whole gut was just one big worm. (At first I laughed. And then I ate my friends.)

I try to think about my attitude towards food, and in a way it is heavily influenced by my parents. Growing up, two things were valued in the family- education (including books) and food. My clothes were hand-me-downs, I had to be fairly imaginative with sparse toys, and entertainment (cinemas, video games, expensive toys) was wasteful. These were things you weren't meant to spend money on.

Food, on the other hand, was not regulated as strongly. As kids, my Dad would change about a hundred ringgit worth of fifty sen coins, and a jar would sit downstairs. You were meant to have fifty sen a day as pocket money, but no one really raised an eyebrow if you took more to spend at the school canteen.

In a way, I guess my parents, like all parents, wanted for me what they couldn't afford in their days. Dad used to tell me that he was so poor during his college years that he and his best friend would just drink tap water for lunch, and that would be all they would have for lunch. The thought of my father having to go without a meal still knots me up in my stomach and almost brings me to tears.

And so we ate, and we ate, and let's just say I was quite the tubby little boy growing up. I have pictures of me as a nine year old with my shirt buttons begging for mercy as the buttonholes wrinkled from trying to contain my little elephantine body, while I grinned like a mini Kim Jong-Un.

Were it not the dual mercies of puberty and my bout with dengue, I think I would have required my stomach to be stapled about five years ago. Heck, the doctors would have taken a look at me and offered to staple my mouth as well, I think.

It's true what they say - once you hit your thirties your metabolism slows down a lot. The only problem is that now that I am well and truly into my thirties, I still eat like my twenties, and therein lies the problem.

These are a few new ways I am learning to look at my food:

1) Do not deny yourself anything. What?! I hear you say. I know, he's trying to get us to fatten up so that he will look thin in comparison, you say.

I actually learnt this lesson from Karen - if you feel like eating something, just go ahead and eat it. If you deny yourself anything, that food item is suddenly placed on a pedestal and we all know that we want what we can't get (hands up all you unrequited lovers).

Suddenly the M&Ms become a guilty pleasure and then you binge when you finally do get to eat it because you never know when you'll be able to eat it again.

And so nowadays, if I feel like eating something, I will. Not in large amounts. Just enough to satisfy the craving. So stop when you are full. Food, like everything else, should be made our servant, and not our master.

2) You don't have to finish it. A lot of my attitude towards food is based on an inherited scarcity mentality. My survival instincts tell me that whenever I eat, it may be my last meal, so stock up! It may have been true for our ancestors and perhaps in war time, but it does not apply to us today.

Nowadays I no longer 'push past the pain' and stop when my tummy tells me I am full. You don't have to clean up everything on your plate. Really, it's okay. You can always cook that meal again or return to the restaurant.

Contrary to what your parents were brainwashing you with growing up, no one made a sizeable donation to the starving children in Africa just because you finished all the food on your plate.

The war is coming! Eat!

3) Shop wisely. I believe that the way we eat starts all the way at the choices we make at the supermarket. Never shop when you are hungry.

We live in a generation of excess - we have rows upon rows of fresh and processed foods and we are spoilt for choice. There is a convenience store or a supermarket within driving, if not walking distance from wherever we live.

And get this - the food will always be there. We shop so often from a scarcity mentality again - as if the war was coming. I have seen mothers with supermarket trollies that creak under the weight of their weekly groceries, filled almost to the point of overflowing.

Or maybe they ran an orphanage. (No, it was definitely a mother.)

Grocery shopping is retail therapy for some.

Don't buy double of anything. That other packet of Tim Tams or Oreos will be there when you return. The more you have at home, the easier it is to reach for it when your hands are not doing anything else, even when you are already full.

One other tip - sometimes we think we are hungry, when actually we are thirsty. Drink two glasses of water when hungry and wait for five minutes to see if the sensation goes away. If still hungry after that, then eat.

I am no health guru and I am myself learning to view my eating habits anew. It is not easy considering that I come from a culture where we meet up over meals, late night suppers are everywhere and we are obsessed with finding out where the good eating places are.

I have no inclinations to be thin, just healthy. I hope this helps some people think about our eating habits as well. The word 'habits' suggest that how we eat is influenced subconsciously. Maybe you have some other realisation you have come to about your eating habits. Thinking about how we eat and why we eat are the first steps to changing these long-standing habits.