Fearfully and wonderfully made...
“For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.” [Psalm 139:13-16]
Today, I shared at two chapel services at a mission school. I quite enjoy the challenge of communicating effectively to different groups of people, but the intensely private part of me sometimes finds it difficult to lay bare the things on my heart to a roomful of strangers.
Since not all present at chapel were Christians, I decided to dig deep into my past, and shared some little known facts about my life.
I told the teenage girls that I grew up during the “Stop at Two” era, when the government strongly encouraged families to only have two children. Till today, I can still recall the television ads and posters on the campaign. One visual in particular has stuck in my mind through all these years.
This poster was pasted in the Teban Gardens Post Office Savings Bank (Yes, we are talking about over 20 years ago!) It showed two girls sharing an umbrella and an apple. I think it was a transparent umbrella. I can’t remember if there were words on it, and I don’t know if I had learnt to read by then, but if there were, it probably read “Boy or Girl, Stop at Two”, which was the slogan of the campaign. The message was so clear to me, even as a young child. I instinctively knew that there weren’t enough umbrellas or apples for the girls as it were, so a third child would make things more complicated.
Then, a surprising revelation changed my entire perspective of things.
I can’t really remember how old I was when my mom told me this. She said that I was almost aborted – not because they didn’t want me, but because she had complications when she was expecting me. One month into the pregnancy, she started to bleed. Now, she is very certain that it happened in the first month of pregnancy, because she said her periods were like clockwork, so once she missed it, she knew she was expecting.
My mom told me that they planned to have two children, so they were very worried by the bleeding. She said my dad took her to the best gynae he could afford. After examining my mom, the gynae said that the child couldn’t be saved. He said he would give her an injection, and she would miscarry that night. If that didn’t happen, she was to go back to the clinic for an abortion.
I think my parents were too shocked to say no, and they went along with the plan. My mom was given the injection. But later, they panicked. In the end my dad took my mom to a Chinese physician, who managed to stabilize the pregnancy. My mom said she was so worried that she stayed in bed for a long time, afraid to move lest she miscarried.
And so I was born, full term, in the early morning of 21st May. By 12, I was taller than the nurse who took my height!
I shared this with the teenage students to tell them that God really wanted each one of us to be born, despite what we may feel or think about ourselves or our families. I urged them not to believe the lie that I did when I was their age, that I was unwanted and unloved.
But in recounting this story, I too was blessed beyond measure. I was probably preaching to myself as much as I was to the girls, as I repeated this story twice today. It’s a story that I’ve forgotten in recent years, in the never-ending battles for survival in East Timor.
A wave of profound gratitude rises within me as I remember that I came so close to being flushed down the toilet bowl as a bloody lump of cells. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. What did God see, or feel as He reached out to hold on to the cluster of cells that would eventually become me? I shall never know the answer, but just thinking of it makes me want to…cry.
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.” [Psalm 139:13-16]
Today, I shared at two chapel services at a mission school. I quite enjoy the challenge of communicating effectively to different groups of people, but the intensely private part of me sometimes finds it difficult to lay bare the things on my heart to a roomful of strangers.
Since not all present at chapel were Christians, I decided to dig deep into my past, and shared some little known facts about my life.
I told the teenage girls that I grew up during the “Stop at Two” era, when the government strongly encouraged families to only have two children. Till today, I can still recall the television ads and posters on the campaign. One visual in particular has stuck in my mind through all these years.
This poster was pasted in the Teban Gardens Post Office Savings Bank (Yes, we are talking about over 20 years ago!) It showed two girls sharing an umbrella and an apple. I think it was a transparent umbrella. I can’t remember if there were words on it, and I don’t know if I had learnt to read by then, but if there were, it probably read “Boy or Girl, Stop at Two”, which was the slogan of the campaign. The message was so clear to me, even as a young child. I instinctively knew that there weren’t enough umbrellas or apples for the girls as it were, so a third child would make things more complicated.
But you see, there were three children in my family. I have an older sister and a younger brother. That puzzled me. Why did my parents have three children when everywhere, they were told to “stop at two”? As a child, I was already showing signs of the intellectual curiosity and persistent mulling over questions that would characterize my thought life. And without any suggestion whatsoever from my parents, I came to this morbid conclusion: I was unnecessary. My parents could have just had my sister, skipped me, and then give birth to my brother. That would be the perfect combination. I was simply an extra child, the second girl who perhaps shouldn’t have been born.
And believe it or not, I grew up thinking that of myself. I have never told my parents this, because I think it would break their hearts. Somehow or other, by the time I was maybe six or seven, I decided that I was the middle child who shouldn’t have been born.
Then, a surprising revelation changed my entire perspective of things.
I can’t really remember how old I was when my mom told me this. She said that I was almost aborted – not because they didn’t want me, but because she had complications when she was expecting me. One month into the pregnancy, she started to bleed. Now, she is very certain that it happened in the first month of pregnancy, because she said her periods were like clockwork, so once she missed it, she knew she was expecting.
My mom told me that they planned to have two children, so they were very worried by the bleeding. She said my dad took her to the best gynae he could afford. After examining my mom, the gynae said that the child couldn’t be saved. He said he would give her an injection, and she would miscarry that night. If that didn’t happen, she was to go back to the clinic for an abortion.
I think my parents were too shocked to say no, and they went along with the plan. My mom was given the injection. But later, they panicked. In the end my dad took my mom to a Chinese physician, who managed to stabilize the pregnancy. My mom said she was so worried that she stayed in bed for a long time, afraid to move lest she miscarried.
And so I was born, full term, in the early morning of 21st May. By 12, I was taller than the nurse who took my height!
I shared this with the teenage students to tell them that God really wanted each one of us to be born, despite what we may feel or think about ourselves or our families. I urged them not to believe the lie that I did when I was their age, that I was unwanted and unloved.
But in recounting this story, I too was blessed beyond measure. I was probably preaching to myself as much as I was to the girls, as I repeated this story twice today. It’s a story that I’ve forgotten in recent years, in the never-ending battles for survival in East Timor.
A wave of profound gratitude rises within me as I remember that I came so close to being flushed down the toilet bowl as a bloody lump of cells. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. What did God see, or feel as He reached out to hold on to the cluster of cells that would eventually become me? I shall never know the answer, but just thinking of it makes me want to…cry.
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