Constant Faith, Abiding Love

As I’m typing this, it’s about one and a half months before I know this post will see the light of day (for reasons which will be evident below). It’s about one and a half months before our second wedding anniversary on 17 March 2014, and shortly after PJ’s sermon on marking the milestones in our lives, just as God commanded the Isarelites to set up a memorial before they entered the Promised Land. So this is why I am typing this now, because I was inspired by that sermon and wanted to remember how I felt right now, to share with you at some point. This post will be longer than a Thought Catalog article, but I promise it will be infinitely more interesting and less…annoying.

Here it is, the story of our second year together. That is, what happened besides the washing of toilets, doing of laundry, watching of bad TV and discussing of boybands.

***

Last July, Jon left his job at the Angmoh Firm. Just before he started his new job in October, I discovered a lump at his right love handle. It had been hidden beneath a layer or so of fat (unfortunately, that is what working at an Angmoh Firm tends to do) which he had lost during his break. It felt smooth, as though there was a smallish hard-boiled egg lodged in his right hip. We didn’t think much of it at the time; doctor friends said it could be a lipoma, although it was “a bit firm”, others said it could just be a benign tumour.

Jon got it checked up at the polyclinic nonetheless, and was referred to Alexandra Hospital ("AH") for an MRI scan because the polyclinic doctor rightly didn’t want to brush it off as a lipoma. Miraculously, he got an appointment for the scan about a week after his first consultation at AH.

The lump showed up on the MRI scan as an egg shaped lump just above the muscle bed. It was smooth edged, and was initially diagnosed as a tumour “likely to be benign” due to its smooth edges. Jon was referred to the orthopaedic surgery department at AH, given the tumour’s proximity to the muscle bed. He chose to have it excised and then sent for a biopsy, and the excision was performed on 3 December 2013, just after we returned from our first overseas half-marathon in Siem Reap. We were optimistic, the doctors were optimistic, and it looked like everything would return to normal and we could go ahead and plan for Christmas and the year ahead after he recovered.

The preliminary biopsy results were out the Monday after the Little India riots. I was on attachment to the police then, and I remember that it was a pretty chill Monday, having rightly guessed as I watched events unfold on Channel News Asia the night before that the repercussions of said riots would be far reaching and would end up in the purview of someone with a paygrade much higher than mine.

I was engaged in that great tradition of “speaking IP” – I even remember that it was about some silly argument which escalated into a scuffle  – when Jon called me sounding slightly panicked. I told him that I was busy and could he call me back later, but he insisted on speaking to me there and then, which is quite unlike him. So I excused myself from “speaking IP”, left the room, and heard my husband telling me that the tumour was malignant, a rare tumour called a liposarcoma. It’s a cancer of the soft tissues and is even more rarely found in the trunk as his was.

I won’t bore you with the details, but the days leading up to Christmas were bittersweet, and surreal. We went ahead with our yearly party, me thinking morbid thoughts all the time as I made the shepherd’s pie, marinated chicken wings and diced apples for apple crumble about whether it would be one of our last Christmases together, or even our last. I remember sitting in my car at the carpark at the police station and crying and crying and crying some more and pleading with God to spare Jon. We’d been referred to the National University Hospital ("NUH") from AH, and the doctors there, whom we saw sometime after the Little India riots (really, when did they happen again? It’s all a blur) were bandying words like radiation therapy and chemotherapy about, because Jon’s liposarcoma comprised round cells, which are more malignant, although his margins were clear. His tumour was also about 5cm in length, which put it right on the border of Stage 2/ Stage 3 cancer, as we later found out. What’s more, Jon’s lymph nodes had “lit up” on his PET scan, which could be post-surgery inflammation or could mean that the cancer cells had spread there (which is rare, but not unheard of).

But through it all, I constantly desired to be thankful. It’s amazing how many things there were to be thankful for. It wasn’t the kind of stuff that was just grasping at straws, they were real displays of God’s grace and mercy and His great love for us. For instance:

1. We’d gotten insurance, proper insurance, in June, just before Jon left the Angmoh Firm. Any later, and he may not have been insurable. His hospitalisation and treatment were all covered;
2. S’s wife G was on attachment with THE sarcoma specialist in Singapore, Dr Richard Quek, at the National Cancer Centre ("NCC") at the time we found out about the nature of the tumour. It was S who nagged (as usual) at me to make sure Jon’s insurance was in order, ordered me (like a true AUNTIE) to direct Jon to make various arrangements so his treatment and consultations  could be as subsidised as possible. And it was G who got us an appointment with her boss on Boxing Day, and who offered whatever help she could give as an MO;
3. The speed at which Jon had gotten diagnosed and follow-up action planned – the fact that we knew by December, barely two months after the lump had first been discovered, was nothing less than amazing. Also the fact that the tumour grew where it grew – they usually appear in the stomach, and are difficult to remove completely when they are located there;
4. The strengthening of relationships between us and our families;
5. The overwhelming love and support of our friends – D and AK, all the way from Norway, all the guys, our cell group – especially D and K, my girlfriends, colleagues. 

I’d been struggling with the idea of prayer for a while at the time all this happened. If God wanted things to happen, they would happen anyway – so why pray so hard? Of course this is absolutely fallacious theology and is borne out of sheer human laziness. But through this experience, I’ve seen that God does hear our prayers, and it truly touches His heart when we depend on Him for our needs. The peace that comforted us in our darkest times was often peace that I didn’t understand the origins of. Peace which surpassed my understanding, and peace which I was sure Christ had given, as He guarded my heart and mind.

And now this is where the story arcs, where THE event happens.

I’d earlier mentioned that we were looking forward to planning for 2014. This included trying to conceive (also known in pregnancy forums as "TTC"), which accounts for why I insisted on doing so many half-marathons (in a last blaze of running glory) towards the end of last year, and why I strove so hard to achieve a timing of less than two hours (okay, maybe it’s too somber a story for me to brag about this but – achievement unlocked. Twice. And once almost. 2:06 at the Great Eastern Women's Run. Bleddy hills).

After the good doctors at NUH told us they were recommending chemotherapy, even more scary things you never think about at this age like “sperm banking” came up. So of course we started trying to conceive, although neither of us truly expected that anything would come out of it. Not so soon, anyway.

We eventually decided that Jon would continue treatment at NCC (as noted above), and NCC wanted to do further surgery to cut out even more flesh and also test the lymph nodes which lit up. Jon’s initial surgeon at AH had taken out a narrower margin on one side of his tumour to avoid the muscle bed, and although that margin was clear, it was a little too close for NCC’s comfort. Another thing to be thankful for was that Jon was slated to be operated on by Professor Soo Kee Chee, whom our doctor friends spoke in hushed and reverent tones of.

Following the operation, NCC would then review Jon’s case and if necessary send him for radiation therapy. If anyone is interested, we understand that recent studies have shown that wide, negative margins are deemed probably the most important factor when treating sarcomas.

The surgery was fixed for 21 January 2014, a Tuesday just before Chinese New Year. The Friday before, K made me take a bag of pregnancy test kits home with me after cell group – she no longer had any use for them, she said, because she was having a baby! I hadn’t officially missed my period then, but I thought, ah why not.

And the thought of praying that I would conceive as a sign that Jon would be completely healed had crossed my mind, but I had been too afraid to pray the actual thought out, because what if I didn’t conceive? Would that then mean that God didn't want Jon to be healed?  

It was about 2am on Saturday morning, 18 January 2014, when THE LINE faintly appeared. Of course I dismissed it as dye leakage and went to bed, although I was a little excited. And I remembered that it had been absolutely impossible to wake up in the morning for a run the week before, and that on one of my runs I had felt like throwing up after ending in a sprint. Which has never happened. 

Being kiasu, and of course totally unable to believe what was happening, I did two more pregnancy tests, which were both positive. The ClearBlue test even tells you how many weeks pregnant you are (and it was pretty accurate).

I won’t say this story has a happy ending per se – cancer never does end, does it, although we are hopeful that Jon is healed completely. As JKY puts it, got mens rea can already lor. And TSI mentioned this verse “Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us…” Ephesians 3:20. I remember just knowing, as we waited for the doctors to call after the surgery, that Jon’s lymph nodes would be clear and the lymph node basin wouldn’t have to be removed. Though chunks of his flesh, which were all negative for cancer and would have made pretty awesome slabs of steak if they’d come from a cow, were.

There are check-ups for the next ten years or so, we still have a few more weeks to decide if Jon should go for radiation therapy (the NCC doctors are not too keen, as his margins and lymph nodes are clear and he is still “young”), and there are my worries about being widowed at a young age (greatly exacerbated by the pregnancy hormones) to deal with. But God holds the future, and He holds our hands. How can I keep from singing Your praise? How can I ever say enough, how majestic is Your love.

By sharing this with everyone, I know that I will have to bear whatever unhappiness may come in the future publicly too. For instance, if Jon has a relapse, or God forbid I miscarry. But that will be a story for another time. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Matthew 6:33-34.

Do remember us in your prayers, whenever. I'd be happy to remember you in mine if you let me know about your life. 

***

Friends have said this story is a great testimony. Perhaps it is. But honestly, in the midst of all that was going on, I would have given anything for it to all go away. Still, I remember one day just before Christmas when I was too exhausted from crying to go to the gym, and I thought to myself, what would I be doing if I wasn’t going home to crash on the sofa and worry some more? I realised that I would have just gone to the gym, Jon would probably work late, we would meet for a late dinner, and the cycle would repeat itself. We would be happy, contented, but I figured that that wasn’t how life could have gone on either, if we were serious about becoming more serious in our faith and raising a God-centred family.

Jon thinks the tumour resulted because of the immense pressure he was under at the Angmoh Firm. We’ll never know while we’re on Earth I guess, but I think there’s a pretty good chance he’s right. And whatever it is, it was definitely God’s wake up call to us; baby was His way of assuring us that He is real and with us, and that the grace and mercy He has shown us is but a mere glimmer of His love for us, the depths of which are far greater than anything we can ever imagine.

***

Okay, now that I have told you our story, I must move on to something which has been troubling me since I found out I was expecting but was unable to share on Facebook because, you know, first trimester pantang and everything. You can stop reading now, but if you are thinking of having a kid do consider reading on, if this post hasn’t already bored you to tears. Sorry, one of the cons of my job is a resultant inability to write floweri-ly (see, I even have to make up words to express what I’m thinking).

I’m troubled that there seems to be a sort of understanding amongst Singaporeans that exercise is bad for pregnant women. What I understand however is that unless you are having pregnancy complications, exercise is good and should be done. Even the book released by the Health Promotion Board ("HPB") (very progressive, the HPB, applause in this regard) says so, and so does my gynae. Further if you have a fitness routine and were in good shape before pregnancy, it’s okay to keep up with said fitness routine, within certain limits of course.

At the risk of attracting negative comments, I will come out and say that I have been doing RPM twice weekly (full choreography) and swimming at least once or twice a week since I found out I was pregnant. Baby is perfectly healthy and has a good strong heartbeat. I drink plenty of water during RPM, wear a heart rate monitor, and sit in front of the fan (which I never used to). I am intending to start Body Balance and a bit of yoga (not pre-natal, it is BORING) with the necessary modifications again soon. I have had to give up running though, and boy do I miss it. 

I will end this post with the answers to some FAQs and a request. If you read this, please do not ask me the same questions in real life. But I will still answer you if you do, because these are happy times. 

Q. Do you have any cravings?

A. No, not really, but I am very into beehoon because it has been the sole food I have been able to eat without throwing up/ feeling like throwing up throughout my first trimester. Either fried beehoon (no processed anything, maybe a hard-boiled egg if they have it), or beehoon with yong tau foo, dry with some chilli.

I have sadly developed an ice cream intolerance, and have also stopped cooking because it makes me nauseous. So if you hear any throwing up in the office female toilets, it’s me, and no I have not developed bulimia.

Q. When will you have your next child?

A. I intend to run at least two half-marathons before trying again, one local and one overseas. Jon will hopefully be pushing baby in one of those jogging strollers at the latter. And we will achieve a sub-2 timing. I wish. 

Q. Is it a boy or girl?

A. It was unobliging at today's scan, so we don't know yet. 

Q. Do you want a boy or girl?

A. Either is okay, although I have a slight preference for my first child to be a boy. But I'd be happy in any event. This baby is a miracle, God's little gift to us. 

Q. Do you have a name in mind?

A. Yes. But why would I tell you now?

Finally, and this is incredibly vain of me, but if you notice that I am now a bit plumper around the middle, please do not assume that I have stopped going to the gym or that I have let myself go. I am merely having a baby. 

Loving you, is easy ‘cause you’re beautiful. And it really is. Some days when I wake up and look at you sleeping beside me, tears well up at the back of my eyes, especially if it’s been a rough week at work and we haven’t talked much because you’ve been busy.

I can only remember one major quarrel we’ve had in the past year, but there have been many small obstacles to surmount along the way: when I feel people look down on my job and on me for leaving private practice, when the pile of laundry looms in a busy week and I simply have to do it on a weekday because you won’t have any work clothes to wear otherwise, or the worst of all – when the ants just won’t go away and I’m too knackered to hunt them down and eradicate them one by one.

Through the mundane, the silly, the days I know I’m bordering being ridiculous about things; I know I can always count on a hug from you at the beginning and at the end of each day.

What makes you beautiful to me, is the assurance that I won’t ever in your eyes degenerate into a boring, frumpy housewife, and that you will continue to support the choices I make in life. Most of all, at this moment, it is the assurance that I did the right thing by leaving practice so I could manage the household and look after you. It is also the assurance that I am the prettiest girl to you, no matter if I spent the day feeling particularly unpretty in my black and white which has grown loose from years of weekly washing.

The last time I felt anything acutely was when I was 17, 18 years old – when I still cried buckets a whole year after I thought I had lost the only and greatest love I would ever experience in life. When memories came in snapshots with edges so sharp they threatened to tear your heart apart as they flashed through your mind at night.

A significant part of our six years together is now to me a blur of bus rides and you walking me home although I always insisted you didn’t need to, Friday nights at the Hong Kong Café at Marina Square, and frenetic wedding planning. It’s marked by certain key events of course, like Kit Chan singing Home at NDP 2010 at the Padang, and finally moving in with you and beginning life together almost one year ago today. The blur now includes the present week nights when I wait for you with dinner, then let you watch TV with the lights on and glaring into the bedroom as I fall asleep to the dulcet tones of Max and Gloria, because I know it’s important to you to watch television after a long day at work. When I wake up in the morning and fruit flies are hovering around the empty can of Sapporo on the living room table and I diligently rinse it and bring it down to the recycling bin downstairs, on my way to work.

I don’t think we give enough credit to the sheer amount of time, the minutes, days, weeks and years it takes to build a relationship. Waking hours of happiness, pure joy and delight, nights of sadness and wondering, cold wars and silence. And to realise one day that you trust someone as much as it is humanly possible to trust another fallible human being, that you understand what it means to love him fully and completely with all the love your unworthy heart can muster.

It didn’t start with the acute feelings of an 18 year old, but with the certainty of a 20 year old whose years of guilt, shame and failed relationships melted away when she met you. It was the breeze on a hot, still night, in the face of a 23 year old. And it is the knowledge of the 26 year old who is your wife and lifetime companion, that you are, and this is, the greatest love of her life.

Happy one year anniversary in one week my love. I thank God for the privilege of being your wife.

Make You Feel My Love

I realised today at dinner that Jon and I have been married for more than six months. I keep telling people I have just met that it's been about four. 

***

It has been a nostalgic week and an emotional weekend, not least because (1) Jon and I watched Gene Simmon's daughter singing Make You Feel My Love on The X-Factor, (2) we finally got a copy of Jeff Chang's greatest hits (太想愛你 has been on repeat in the car and in my head), and (3) being greatly excited about Z's upcoming wedding, I finally got round to looking at our wedding pictures properly.   

If there is one thing I regret about my wedding day, it's that I didn't feel how I thought I would feel. People used to tell me they thought I would cry at my wedding. I certainly thought I would. I thought I would be overcome with feelings of love and joy and that I would be wholly focused on the fact that I was marrying the love of my life.  

But some of my clearest memories are of Lynda my make-up artist entreating Joseph our photographer-turned-friend to make sure I kept demure; of Bryan telling everyone to stand up and welcome the bride and take pictures as I walked down the aisle because it was the first (and perhaps last) time I would be in make-up, a dress and heels at the same time; going into a sudden panic when Be Thou My Vision was being sung during the service, wondering whether the version I had given Bryan and Bryna was the same as the one in the programmes. 

***

Conversations I had during the week made me feel nostalgic in general for times past: the days when I first met Jon, the 初恋 feeling of having hours and months and years ahead together, being young and carefree and in love. That was how I thought I would feel on my wedding day. I even went so far as to think about how it might have been nice if I had met Jon when we were in junior college and we had a whole host of memories of late school night suppers and after school walks to look back on fondly. 

(Perish the thought, we would probably have busted our mobile phone allowances quarrelling.)

D Whatsapped me out of the blue last week to say that he went back to OGS for a seminar and that it brought back memories. I didn't think much of it until later that day, when I stepped out of the office into blazing sunlight and humidity. For some reason, maybe because it was so rare that we left work when the sun was still shining that brightly, it brought back memories of the hours we'd spent tabbing documents as pupils, the weeks where I saw him every single day, the time we had a Saturday night dinner of porridge and rojak at Da Lu Xia Mian at China Square (actually, to this day, I'm still not sure what that shopping centre is called), the times we had lunch together, sometimes up to three times a week and on consecutive days because we just didn't have enough energy to make plans with other people. 

I wonder whether I could have felt what I wanted to feel on my wedding day, if I had quit earlier. 

***

This weekend is the first time since my wedding day that I have truly appreciated the meaning of loving Jon and what it means to be married. I've also finally come to the realisation that whatever has happened in the past with our previous relationships with other people, it doesn't matter as much as the present and the memories we can create now, driving around in our orange car singing along to the radio and staying up late watching television, talking nonsense and making stupid jokes. 

My maternal grandfather passed away recently, and his funeral brought back memories of how, the first night Jon and I stayed together, I lay awake watching him sleep and worried about what life would be like when he passed away. 

That's one thing marriage preparation class can't fully prepare you for. 

Whenever it's difficult to wake Jon up on weekend mornings, I hold a finger under his nose to make sure he's still breathing. 

***

And so, happy more than six months anniversary to you Jon Lau, and here's to many more to come. 

Tales of Tai Tai Land

This afternoon at NTUC, I had another one of those encounters that made me think I should really go back to work soon. I was navigating my shopping cart along the crowded passageway towards the cashier – there were other customers pushing their carts in the opposite direction and some just strolling along in the way of those who have a lot of time – when an auntie, whom I did not see, chiong-ed in front of me. My cart nudged the plastic bag hanging off her elbow, which contained one of those plastic boxes which crackle loudly when you press them. You know the kind.

So there was a rather loud crackling sound, upon which the auntie turned not once but twice to glare at me (I’m sorry to say I glared back in a most un-Christian manner). Notwithstanding the glares exchanged, I am very humchee at heart and I took care to queue at a different cashier. Although I did watch her to see whether she would glare at me again (she didn’t, but she had a most displeased look on her face the whole time). And as I was waiting to pay I thought to myself: I never want to become one of those frowny aunties.

***

It’s been a nice three months or so of setting up a home, and finding out new things about myself. For instance, I have found that I CAN and WILL withstand the wiles of uncles and aunties promoting all manner of household goods guaranteed to make your non-financial contributions to the household that much easier to carry out. I have survived NTUC on a Saturday afternoon and Giant on a public holiday (the latter experience in particular is not one I wish to repeat unless absolutely necessary), and I have found delight in other Korean dramas besides Secret Garden (although they can’t compare, not really).

I have also been vehemently denying that I am a tai tai, but since I now know when the tai tai-dom will come to an end, I have decided to embrace it. After all, chief among my activities is going to the gym during tai tai hours. It first struck me that I was in Tai Tai Land when I went for a mid-morning spinning class and I realised the ladies to my left and right were rather more well-coiffed than the usual after work crowd. Some even had light make-up on. For spin class!!! The experience which really takes the cake however was the time I noticed one woman doing her make-up as I went off to shower – and she was still doing her make-up when I came out.

Funnily enough, the two above encounters also sparked I should really go back to work soon feelings. And although people kept saying I should just enjoy my time in Tai Tai Land because I would never have so much time to myself again, I often felt that I was “too young” and should have been doing something “useful” and “earning money”, after all got law degree what. Not that cooking and cleaning is not useful, but again, you know what I mean.

During those moments of self-doubt, I thought about how God has blessed Jon and me greatly in these early months of marriage, and how they would not have been half as happy and peaceful if I had not been home to manage things. I am thankful for having had this time to think and reflect, apart from the noise of the world; God has been present when I take long meandering bus rides just because I can, when I sit in silence on the sofa wondering about life and things.

And I am assured that I did the right thing by leaving practice to go to Tai Tai Land, to “cook for my husband and clean my own house” (yes, I said that at my job interview).