“Believing in God is as much like falling in love as it is making a decision.
Love is both something that happens to you
and something you decide upon.”
— Donald Miller
I remember, during lunch with my friends at the hospital one day, I dropped a coin. It rolled a far way away on its edge, before getting caught in a tiny crevice in the ground and standing perfectly perpendicular to the ground.
The wind was blowing but because of a tiny catch in the wooden floor, the coin stood perfectly on its edge.
One of my friends exclaimed, “Hey look at that! What’re the chances of that?!”
Another said, ” Yea, it’s like striking lottery!”
For some reason, they were so amused. There the coin stood, on its edge, after I’d accidentally dropped it on the ground.
In a tone of mock drama and grandeur, I said jokingly to them, ” Friends, I declare this year to be a year of miracles. This is just the first of many miracles that will happen this year.”
Everyone burst out laughing.
“Yea, some miracle huh-getting a coin standing vertically by accident!”
“No la, Wai Jia! All your miracle points have been used up by this one standing coin!!”
For some reason, we were rather amused by the Accidental Standing Coin.
For some reason, this event stays etched in my mind. For all that’s happened this year already, I truly believe this will be a special year.
On the fifth of January, I received an award which I thought would be impossible to win; On the twenty-seventh of February, A Taste of Rainbow was finally, finally launched; and on the fifth of February, an online friend whom I’d never met but was living a life parellel to mine in a wintry place in a different timezone, flew halfway across the world to see me, over a surreal whirlwind of a weekend.
There were so many obstacles to each of these momentous events: my nomination and application for the award got lost by the university just days before the deadline closed; my book faced hurdle after hurdle and nearly missed the mark for the launch; and my online friend? Well, he wasn’t supposed to come. I said no- I insisted he would and should remain an online friend. To be honest, I didn’t believe he would come anyway. I said I was too busy, and what would my friends and family and church folks say?
But who but God would have planned his mission trip to Cambodia on dates which were perfectly timed with my weekend public holiday. Who would have thought my church mentors were actually game with the idea because of his background. Even then, he very nearly didn’t make it because of his elevated liver enzymes on a blood test. But we prayed, and the enzyme levels came down just in time for him to embark to Asia.
All close shaves. Near misses.
As if anything significant were by some stroke of luck.
Luck. I don’t believe in luck. But I do believe in divine interference. I believe in the wild cards.
I believe that even though there were so many obstacles in medical school- my illness, my missing class to see the doctors, and the book launch happening so close to the exams… that I will pass my Bachelors of Medicine and Bachelors of Surgery(MBBS), and pass well. Not because I’m brilliant, but because of God’s compassionate grace to see me through.
We both also knew that the chances of us, two individuals from opposite ends of the world, actually having any sort of chemistry were down to less than one in a million.
But we did.
It was just crazy. We had squeezed Possibility from the stark realities of chance and statistics. What were the chances, really.
And then you had to go. And the days following that were hard, for the both of us.
I got fed up last Sunday. At church, I told God I was fed up with this. It didn’t make sense and it wouldn’t work out. I don’t believe in long-distance. I don’t believe in Disney. I’m the one who doesn’t watch chick flicks or romantic movies because I DON’T BELIEVE in any of that high drama. That Sunday, I told God, that I was fed up with this because that weekend was just too surreal and this was too tortuous and strange a situation to be in and maybe all of this was just a big mistake from the beginning. Maybe it was all an accident, but it was time to face reality.
You kept saying you had something to tell me, but it “wasn’t sorted out yet”. You were waiting for something and would tell me when it was finalised. Whatever it was, I wanted to move on.
So I wrote a letter, saying it was better for you to get on with your life and for me with mine. So what if we both have a heart for missions, and the poor in developing countries. I am stuck here for the next 6 to 7 years to complete serving my bond as a medical doctor here and to further my training. Our paths would no longer cross. We are almost ten thousand miles away, literally. We don’t even live in the same time zone- who cares about parallel lives?
The sky fell on me the next day, when you had, in timely fashion, received news about what “needed to be sorted out”. I hadn’t known a thing about this, but all this time, you’d been sourcing for an opening here in Singapore. You’d been praying crazy-hard about this, harder after we met, and the doors finally opened for you when you found a missionary placement at the Overseas Missions Fellowship headquarters right here, where my best friend’s dad also happens to work at.
About 2 weeks after we met, you stepped down from your leadership role at church to announce you would be leaving by end of the year for missions. It was then I knew you weren’t joking. You were dead serious about this.
I flipped out.
I completely freaked out. YOU WHAT?
And I didn’t write to you after that because my mind went crazy after I received the news. ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND.
I had a million and one things to say: This was just absurd. I thought you coming for the first time was crazy enough, and now, this? I’m going to be a houseman (junior doctor) soon, I’ll be working almost a hundred hours a week, I’ll be grumpy and moody and sleep-deprived all the time, and what if my defense mechanisms kick into full gear to shut you out? Is it worth it? Are you seriously doing this? What’s going to happen to your job? Your friends? Your community?
I was bursting with a million and one emotions raging against each other like fireworks and completely overwhelmed because I get unnerved by the way you make me feel. This is out of my control. Ever since we met, I feel so acutely my position as a spectator at a theatre, with God as the scriptwriter and you as the protagonist.
It’s bigger than my mind can conceive.
It’s bigger than your mind can conceive.
I’m scared.
You’re scared.
But God has His ways. And at not one point did each of us go our own way- He guided you and I separately, and somehow, the doors opened this way.
We both know, perhaps none of this would work out. You’re not getting paid for this because it’s more of a missionary stint for a few years; You might not get funding to come here; Your blood results could go wonky again (you are on long-term medication for your liver transplant even though you’ve done an Iron Man) and you might not be able to travel because of that. I keep telling you, this could all be a mistake- I could be an ogre, this could be a waste of time, what if you hate this place?
But I guess, God had all of this worked out. For years you’d already been praying about being a missionary to Asia. And this worked itself out to be an open door.
So you’ll be coming before the year ends. You’re doing the biblical missionary thing- selling everything you have and coming to a foreign land to do God’s work, using this place as a base to travel to Cambodia to work with ministries involved in child trafficking and such.
And I guess, to see me. Or else, why Singapore? To be a part of my life. Be my real friend instead of a virtual one.
You had been called to Asia from the start, and where I am, is Asia too.
Is this God? Or just some kind of freak accident, some chick flick comedy that weasled its way out of the big screen into real life?
There’s only one way to find out.
You have no money now. You’ll have to give up your community, your job and your life there to serve God here. You’ll have to give up your standard of living and comfort for a different sort of life. Singapore is no where near third-world but you’ll be living differently, far more simply, for sure, perhaps with stints to Cambodia and such. Your life will be turned upside-down, literally because our day is your night. There’ll have to be a place here for you, people to fundraise for your new life as a missionary, and there’s no telling whether your liver enzymes will come down… (why do they keep getting deranged?)
And there’s no telling if you might see much of me either.
What if this doesn’t work out?
I didn’t say any of this to you because my mind is constantly dwelling on the negatives. I keep thinking and telling you that this won’t work out, it’s not worth it for you and there’s too much of a cost to pay. I keep telling you WHAT ARE THE CHANCES. There’re too many obstacles between us, geographically and otherwise…
…and God Himself had to break me to surrender my thoughts.
You are always grinning and having something up your sleeve to give me another heart attack. You are always dwelling on the positives. You never look at the grim statistics that I constantly look at. You are always betting on the Wild Card.
Prayer, is the Wild Card.
Faith, hope and love are the wild cards.
You pray all day.
“Wai Jia, I gotta remind myself i have nothing left to lose… You, on the other hand… can you imagine spending time with me day in and day out..remember that time we were at Starbucks…?”
You are always joking.
You said that this wasn’t really Work because you weren’t getting paid, but you were happy to receive “your heavenly reward” as payment as a missionary. You said that God was the host, and we were just “invited to join him at His crazy partaaay”. You sent me this video about giving up everything to follow God’s call for your life.
In the quiet of the park yesterday morning where I sat in before going for my exam, God spoke to me like a thunderclap, that I had to pray too. I had been freaking out and freaking out at Him and asking Him how this could possibly be happening and felt Him telling me that He would not force this on me. He wanted me to know, that just like loving God, faith is a decision, too.
I could push you away, just like how I’ve pushed others away.
Or I could pray.
So this morning I prayed for you.
Minutes later, I got an email from you about your blood results. AST and ALP are still deranged. I had woken up with a startle and prayed for you at 6am because I had a dream you were jaundiced and your blood results weren’t good. That’s when I realised that God was telling me, I had to pray. You are doing everything you can to follow God and His plan, and I do no one any good by shutting you out.
Prayer, is the wild card.
I don’t believe in Disney, but I believe in miracles.
“But God doesn’t call us to be comfortable.
He calls us to trust Him so completely that
we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations
where we will be in trouble if He doesn’t come through”
— Francis Chan
* Wai Jia will be taking another exam tomorrow. It is a 100-minute exam where each round of 10 medical students will each be shoved into 10 rooms for 10 minutes to deal with various role-played scenarios such as dealing with angry patients, acute emergencies, counselling patients on various procedures and many other unpredicatable scenarios. In a friend’s words: It’s going to be a carnival! She is thankful for your prayers and support.
Hi Waijia, hope your finals are going well! It's hard to imagine you and the rest of the 4th years I met last year at VCF all graduating soon.
I thought it was interesting that I read your post whilst I was writing mine about concerns in my r/s. In my case I'll probably do my training in Aus and he'll be going back to Sg to work for the government for 6 years.
I've agonised over similar sort of thoughts you've expressed here heaps of times. The conclusion is inevitably whether this r/s works out or not, God has good plans for us. I'm sure you have good friends and family to counsel you though!
🙂 Winnie