Father kills daughter - Mental Illness is real.

“You are a selfless, loving and devoted father.” 

That’s the words of Justice Hoo when she sentenced Tan Tian Chye, 66, (“Mr Tan”) to two years and nine months in jail yesterday for killing his daughter. But taking into account that he had been in remand since 20 Nov 2018, Mr Tan was released yesterday, the same day he was being sentenced. 

This is one case where justice rightly took the road less travelled when the love of a father was pushed to the edge. It is also a case where the tragic crash of mental illness and a caregiver’s devotion ended up in a stranglehold that led to one’s daughter’s death. 

When Mr Tan strangled his daughter to death, he was diagnosed for “suffering from a major depressive episode and significant caregiver stress.” In fact, the judge noted that “Mr Tan and his wife had been on the verge of suicide as their daughter became increasingly unreasonable.”

It reports that Mr Tan and his wife did everything his daughter asked of them. They bit the bullet when she scolded them incessantly, found fault with them and even made them bow before her. Their daughter was mental ill, and was diagnosed with panic attack, when she fainted in the MRT in 2012. 

She was also diagnosed with agoraphobia (“a condition which made her anxious in unfamiliar environment”) and “hypochondriacal preoccupation”.

Here’s a rundown of what the parents have to bear, everyone of them eventually led to the last straw on that fateful day.

After the daughter was diagnosed with panic attack in 2012, she became “anxious about leaving the flat on her own and her boyfriend moved into the flat with her. She also became more particular, and would ask her parents to clean items repeatedly until she was satisfied.”

In 2017, she forced her parents to borrow from their relative so that she could apply for a BTO flat and also ”made her younger brother return $50k her parents had spent on his education.”

When she discovered she was not the sole beneficiary of her mother’s CPF nomination, she “scolded her parents until her mother changed the nomination.”

In mid-2018, she demanded her parents buy industrial fans to blow away secondary smoke coming into their flat. Subsequently, she moved out to her aunt’s place to escape the smoke. 

And according to the DPP, “(she) became more insistent and abusive, and blamed the accused and his wife for not loving her and not providing enough for her.”

Alas, the last straw came on 19 Nov 2018, “after (Mr Tan) picked her up from the aunt’s place, she told him over lunch that she felt like killing him with a fork.”

She then verbally cursed and abused her father throughout the journey. And “upon reaching home, she went to the kitchen, and (Mr Tan) picked up a metal pole to arm himself out of fear that she would harm him.”

“In the kitchen, when he saw her pointing a knife at him, he hit her with the pole and after she fell to the floor, he grabbed a cloth and strangled her with it.”

Mr Tan then called the police and told them that he had killed his daughter.

When Mr Tan heard the sentence yesterday, he thanked the judge, prosecutors and his lawyers and said: “May God bless all of you.”

Lesson? Just one. 

At the sentencing, the judge remarked that this is a sad case that could have been avoided if timely help and appropriate intervention were received by Mr Tan and his family. This is true, because at every critical intersection, the last straw is often the most unexpected one. 

As I am writing this, I have no doubt that many families can identify with Mr Tan in the same way that many could identify with the case of the father-in-law who had stabbed his son-in-law thrice on the chest for his impenitent/arrogant behaviour (which all added up and drove him off the edge) He too suffered from depression). 

Of course, the two cases can be distinguished, but my point is that the last straw is often the unseen, unplanned and unsuspecting intruder into one’s life, and it is described as a “featherweighted straw” because, most times, it doesn’t take a push of great emotional magnitude to cause one to snap, but a light nudge would suffice to change the course of one or two lives forever. 

This case is tragic because, as a father with two young daughters, I could feel his love and devotion for his daughter. Without a doubt, it was a love so compelling that one is prepared to dedicate his whole life or give his life to his daughter without any consideration. 

But to be cornered by circumstances that converged or conspired to overwhelm a father’s love until he had to act in that way speaks of a tragedy that is beyond words, beyond punishment, and beyond imagination. 

The judge said: “It is unfortunate because that much needed help, support and intervention were not sought by or given to the Tan family during those years for their daughter and, thereafter, for the accused.”

Well, let me end by saying that, as a conservative and tradition-bound nation, it is really the last resort for a father (or mother) to want to seek help due to the social stigma involved (amongst other considerations). 

And as a corollary of that is this grim reality that there is always a dark competition between what is the last resort and what is the last straw that breaks the soul and will of a “selfless, loving and devoted father”. 

Tbh, at times, who wins this dark competitive race is determined by who gets to the finishing line first, that is, it is a race between seeking help as the last resort and unwittingly allowing the last circumstantial straw to fall due to a father’s protective, if not, sometimes biased, love.

 

Mother kills son and herself - Mental Illness is Real.

As W.H. Auden once said: “We must love one another or die.”

But how do you come to terms with a mother who strangled her five-yr-old son and then fatally stabbed herself? How do you reconcile a mother’s love that tragically compelled her to take her son’s life and her own?

Japanese national, Nami, 41, was suffering from major depressive disorder, but was undergoing treatment, according to the Coroner’s findings. 

Nami sought help at least three days before the tragedy on Nov 14 last year. She was treated for Low mood and anxiety. She told a psychiatrist about her suicide thoughts and feelings of depression. She informed her doctor that she was not sleeping well and was anxious for the past few months. She lost her “appetite, weight and hair”, and “had palpitations for about a week.”

Nami left nothing unsaid about her condition. She even told the psychiatrist “she was stressed about her son... (who was autistic and had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), without revealing the exact reasons.”

And she was not without help. Nami was “immediately referred to the emergency medicine department at Singapore General Hospital, where she was denied being suicidal but said she had been feeling depressed for a year.” 

She even assured her private psychiatrist that she won’t harm herself for the sake of her children. She has a younger child and her husband was a businessman. Yet, refusing such a thought, she did admit that she had “one transient, short episode of thinking of ending her life a week prior.”

This were the trail she had left behind, and on that fateful day, on 13 Nov, she also left a suicide note. In the note, she said her medication did not work and told her husband “she was going to take Sotaro with her.”

At the time, her husband was on a business trip to China, and they last spoke on 10 Nov, according to the Coroner’s account. 

Here is what happened as reported by Cara Wong.

“According to the maid, in the night of Nov 13, (Nami) read storybooks to her children until they fell asleep. She later texted the maid to tell her that she had taken Sotaro to the hospital as he was “having a fever””.

“However, the police investigation showed that (Nami) had likely strangled Sotaro in the living room using a long elastic band and raffia string.”

“Around 5:40 am, she drove out, with her son’s body covered in a white blanket, to Lorong Sesuai.” And she then fatally stabbed herself “near Bukit Timah Reserve.”

Alas, how do you stop someone whose mind has already made up? The grim narrative haunts me because she left the child who is presumably normal and took the one who is not. But she did not leave him alone. As his mother, she journeyed with him till the end, even if an end premature. 

Here, I can only deal with the facts, as I would not even attempt to address the cause. For who truly understands the mind and all its complexities? 

Like the mysterious world that lies deep beneath the vast ocean, doctors of the mind are at times merely lifeguards by the beach looking at the endless expanse of a person’s mind not knowing what is pulling that person down, and equally clueless about how far down the unknown depth that grips goes. 

A novelist/poet Stevie Smith said: “I was much far out all my life, And not waving but drowning.” 

That must been how many people like Nami felt in their mental ocean struggling to stay afloat. I guess at times they wish so much to stop the struggle and sink effortlessly into the deep that calls out to them, thereby allowing the darkness to drown out the pretentious light for the call to save oneself. 

Mind you, Nami was not without medical help. She had in fact sought it, and shared her anxiety and transient suicidal thoughts with professionals. 

I trust she had a community, even if but a handful. She had her husband, maid, children and even wrote to her brother, “pleading with him to raise her younger son together with his children.”

In every naturally conceivable way, Nami shouldn’t have any reason to cease the struggle and sink in. Yet, her waves from a shadowy distance had sent a mixed signal, one of rescue and the other of letting go. At some point, she had drifted much too far out in her life to ever saw the need to swim back to shore or within visible sight. 

Alas, at such rare times, the inevitability of life is its inevitability. And I know, by writing this, I have taken a road very much remote for travelling, entering the dark woods where one is perpetually struggling to existential exhaustion. But I am not one given in to the pretentious light when the struggle seems endless, and the pain unceasing. 

When a life or two is gone this way, when the waving stops, and the ocean is still once more, we who stand from afar are always reminded to hold on tight to our loved ones, and to look into their eyes to remind them that we must indeed love one another, or die, and die only when our time is up.

 

Carers fatigue - Who cares for the carers?

As the carers care for the mentally ill, who then care for the carers who themselves have become mentally ill?

Mr Jared Goh shares his story in the papers this morning. He gave up his job at a multinational company to take care of his sister, who was diagnosed to have anxiety, panic disorder and agoraphobia - a condition of being anxious in unfamiliar environments. He is also taking care of his mother, who has health issues. 

His sister was warded at IMH in 2013 and was put on medication. She stopped taking the pills and became suicidal. 

Jared said: “I was feeling anxious, not knowing what else may happen next. I was feeling lost, not too sure how I could help especially when I thought I could have some time for myself, and then I got activated to attend to her.”

Jared admitted: “There were thoughts of “Why me?” and “Who else?” I didn’t sleep well, and because my work was also demanding, I almost broke down.””

Jared’s case follows after the recent case of Tan Tian Chye, who hit his mentally-ill daughter with a pole and strangled her to death in 2018. He was sentenced two weeks ago to two years for culpable homicide. 

Mr Tan was diagnosed to have major depression. The burden and strain of taking care of his daughter drove his wife and him to contemplate suicide. 

I recall an author once struggled with depression too and this is what she said about it: “Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced...It is the absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope.” (JK Rowling). 

That is the reality of depression, not that you have to struggle with it, or you have to be medicated for it, but to struggle with and be medicated for it without end. There is just no light at the end of the tunnel, and the darkness is getting darker, even the walls are closing in. 

We can live with many paradoxes in our society, you name it...faith and doubt, hope and uncertainty, joy and sorrow, and rich and poor. But the paradox of our developed world is more insidious than that. It is the paradox of the objective and the subjective. 

There is no doubt that we are getting objectively better, with longer life span, increased income and wealth, much better healthcare, more education for all, and our technology has been growing by leaps and bounds. 

We therefore have the power to solve many of our problems, yet, the one problem we have completely left behind is ourselves, our mental health, our subjective well-being. Alas, the objective appearance of progress has not resolved our subjective condition of regress. Happiness in technology is no happiness in humanity.

In any event, the insidious list goes on and on. Climate change is an indictment of our nature, our insatiable appetite. The invisible hand of the market drives us to the edge of our own destruction. 

How about inequality? Little hope can be reaped from there, as the top fifty in this world has more in material possession and wealth than the combined total of the bottom half. Can we then turn the tide around? Or is this a major system error? 

And as we herald better days with technology, globalisation and progress in human rights, we also see greater division caused by them, whereby the hypocrisy of the status quo (or the establishment) is unravelled. That is why many are turning to the far right, to patriotism, to national populism, and to religion, because no one watches over the watchmen. 

My point is about a society of hope. The one Rowling cried out for. Without vision, without hope, the nation or society perishes. But hope can die stillborn too when we pay lip service to it. 

And hope can disappoint deeply when it is exploited as a means to the ends of just a handful in society, leaving the rest to languish in their own broken devices - lucky are those who survive. For some, death is the ultimate escape. 

Returning to Jared Goh, I believe his issue, his struggles with caregiving, is, a cry for hope. His “why me?” and “who else?” largely epitomise the dearth of hope. 

As I write this post, I am mindful of the many who are suffering with no end in sight. Mental illness is often a social disease where it is not so much the good intention that fails us, but the institutions, culture and system that have betrayed us. 

Kindness is definitely not dead. It is flourishing in many hearts. But kindness alone is battling social distortion, social inequality, social deprivation and social predation, and that collectively pushes us back, even though we strive to move forward together. A delusional treadmill of progress?

Can we then make it as a society that fight for hope back? Can we view progress not as accumulation just for self, but one of cooperation and sharing for all, especially for those who need it most? Can we turn the pyramid upside down, allowing not just a change of hearts, but a change of lifestyle, a change of values and a change of priorities? 

Believe it or not, I believe we can. I am intentionally evoking hope no less. And in any event, many are doing it, giving selflessly, even anonymously. 

But ultimately, we need a change of perspective and system. We need a change for good, not just with policies, but with conviction and consistency. That is, a change from a society that is struggling for hope, every shred of it, to one that gives hope and a helping hand, almost instinctively.

 

Eugene Peterson - the Mess Part 1.

I recall a time when the late Pastor Eugene H. Peterson was asked by a young woman in his Church, “What do you like best about being a pastor?” 

He said. “The mess”. Yes, he said that - the mess. That’s what came out of his mouth, unplugged. Later, he clarified: “Well, not exactly a mess, but coming upon something unexpected that I don’t know how to handle, where I feel inadequate. Another name for it is miracle that doesn’t look like a miracle but the exact opposite of miracle. A slow recognition of life, God’s life, taking form in a person and context, in words and action that takes me off-guard.”

He added: “Theologian Karl Rahner was once asked if he believed in miracles. His reply? “I live on miracles – I couldn’t make it through a day without them.” Still another name for it is mystery. Pastors have ringside seats to this kind of thing. Maybe everyone does, but I often feel that pastors get invited into intimacies that elude a more functional and performance way of life.””

Imagine one who wrote countless of books, won a Gold Medallion for The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, has a degree in Philosophy and several honorary doctoral degrees under his belt, and founded a church in 1962, “Christ Our King Presbyterian Church” in Maryland, which he had served for 29 years before retiring in 1991, and all that vast and deep experiences compressed into this answer: “the mess, the miracle, and the slow recognition of life, God’s life, taking form in a person and context, in words and action that takes me off-guard.” 

(Off guard? Who and what can still surprise such a towering intellectual?) 

Anyway, I believe that kind of miracle, that kind of unravelling and unfolding, the furnace-defying life, takes a lifetime to minister to a lifetime. 

Alas, there’s no overnight changes. Be extremely wary of it. For a nocturnal turn of a life is largely superficial, mostly transient, if not wholly deceptive. True transformation is always about the anonymity of small changes, because sunlight burns when it is concentrated; but it nurtures when it is moderated, carefully measured, like a silent dance of trust, patience and hope.

The farmer knows that intimately. It is a truth that is timeless for him. He has no illusion about seeds. They are all the same. Their smallness is never alluring. Their uniformity doesn’t inspire hope. 

A life like a seed is like that. It is messy. It is unsightly. It is even deformed. But the miracle is not in that seen state, that unripe condition. The miracle is in the slow recognition of a life, that dedication to press on, to bring that life into fruition, into the light. 

For a farmer does not plant a nondescript seed and then return in an hour, clear the soil, exposing the seed, and expect a harvest. If he keeps doing that, he will kill that seed, smother a life. 

Nothing grows in haste. Overnight changes is a myth. Life’s trajectory cannot end with one smug stroke. It needs to be drawn against the axis of time, hope, patience, resilience, and most of all, love.

Jesus’ parables is all about that; it is about a seed that wasn’t, that shouldn’t, that couldn’t, yet, in his hand, a life fully dedicated to another, that same seed bore a garden, and that garden enriched many lives. Indeed, gratitude begets gratitude because grace abounding transforms even a life most unlikely. 

That is, to me, the highest definition of what it means to be pastoral, that is, a shepherd who tends to his flock in the most mundaneness of life, yet at the same time, surrounded by the most miraculous beauty of one’s life-source. That is why a true shepherd is never overwhelmed by circumstances because as he embraces his sheep, he knows deep within that he is in turn embraced by the one who tends to his life.

At the end of the day, as a pastor, it is never just about solving a problem, attending to an issue, fulfilling a target, astounding a crowd, or achieving worldly recognition. It is however about nurturing a life, even if no one ever gets to know about it. 

The shepherd doesn’t care whether his rescue of a sheep would be photographed and published, archived for all to marvel. All he cares about is the rescue, even for only one who has gone astray. When a shepherd is obsessed with the fame of a rescue, he like the impatient farmer who couldn’t wait for an overnight harvest, kills the soul as well as his own. 

Let me end with the good pastor’s words (Eugene Peterson), something we can all learn from: -

“Incrementally, without noticing what I was doing, I had been shifting from being a pastor dealing with God in people’s lives to treating them as persons dealing with problems in their lives. I was not being their pastor. I could have helped and still been their pastor. But by reducing them to problems to be fixed, I omitted the biggest thing of all in their lives, God and their souls, and the biggest thing in my life, my vocation as pastor.”

“I began to assess what was going on. Unaware of what I was doing, I had been making a subtle shift in attitude toward the people to whom I was pastor – and I had been doing it for several months. I was trading in the complexities of spiritual growth in congregation for the reduced dimensions of addressing a problem that could be named and understood. I had been doing this quite a lot.”

Indeed, not everything that could be named and understood cries out for a solution. At the risk of reducing a life to a religious label for targeted resolution, oftentimes, a companion in another’s life journey is silent, and the greatest comfort or encouragement one receives is the sound his companion’s feet makes, just to know he is nearby. 

E.M. Bound once said: “The (pastor)…is not a professional man; his ministry is not a profession; it is a divine institution; a divine devotion.” And if I may add, his church is not in the walls he hides behind. Neither the hierarchies he has built for himself that tower in babellian wonders. His church however is in the heart of every sheep that walks into his life. That heart is open, wall-less, and it is not about trading problems for solutions, but one’s vulnerability for another.

 

Eugene Peterson - the Mess Part 2.

Yesterday, I went to visit my father-in-law. He was in the hospital after a knee surgery. A little background here is that he has been a pastor for the last 42 years. That’s long time for a life dedicated to stand by souls who crave for a hand to hold, a face to relate to, and a heart to share one’s brokenness. 

Now I know a pastor’s calling is sacred, but what do they really do or experience in that calling? What do they have to rise above when everything around them is falling apart? 

In this day and age, where the pastors we have come to know lead megachurches with thousand-strong congregation, and they are also adored and adulated, is the pastor’s job really that difficult?

I think it is fitting here to cite St Augustine, a prominent African Catholic bishop, who attempted to describe the role of a pastor. It is no easy read for the prerequisites of a job. Here is the job scope of a shepherd of broken/wounded hearts.

“Disturbers are to be rebuked, the low-spirited to be encouraged, the infirm to be supported, objectors confuted, the treacherous guarded against, the unskilled taught, the lazy aroused, the contentious restrained, the haughty repressed, litigants pacified, the poor relieved, the oppressed liberated, the good approved, the evil borne with, and all are to be loved.”

That’s a rather high calling right? 

Anyway, I read a book “The Pastor” by the late Eugene H. Peterson many years ago, and recalled one incident the good pastor encountered that had stuck in my memory. 

The year was 1955. The young seminary student Eugene had a rather unusual encounter with a church janitor. His name was Willi Ossa, a German. He said that Willi was one of those people who profoundly shaped the process of him becoming a pastor. But it was not a positive encounter, trust me. 

Willi was severely negative about the church. He had seen it all and wanted to warn the young Eugene about becoming one. His outraged hostility had a grounding on his past experience. 

Willi had lived through the war and “personally experienced at close quarters the capitulation of the German church to Hitler and the Nazis. His pastor had become a fervent Nazi.’” Willi knew little about deep theology then. He only knew that “the state church he had grown up in hated Jews and embraced Hitler as a prophet.” Willi was a witness to history of how a church became corrupt, siding with the evil of the time. And Willi “watched as they turned his beloved Germany into a pagan war machine.”

Ironically, Willi became an unwitting advocate against organized religion when he told Eugene that “churches, all churches, reduced pastors to functionaries in a bureaucracy where labels took the place of faces and rules trumped relationships.” Pastor Peterson wrote that Willi liked him and didn’t want him, whom he saw as a friend, destroyed. 

So, one thing led to another, and Willi, being also a very serious painter, offered to paint Pastor Petersen. In the book, Pastor Petersen wrote: “Every Friday I would sit with the afternoon sun on me, mostly silent, as (Willi) painted and Mary (Willi’s wife) prepared a simple supper. Then we would walk the six blocks to the church.”

It took a few weeks to complete the portrait. And guess what came out of the church janitor’s artistic strokes. Pastor Peterson described his portrait as such: “He had painted me in a black pulpit robe, seated with a red Bible on my lap, my hands folded over it. The face was gaunt and grim, the eyes flat and without expression.” When Mary first saw it, she exclaimed in German: “Krank! Krank!” It means “Sick! Sick!” 

When Pastor Petersen asked Willi why Mary would say that, he replied: “I told her that I was painting you as you would look in twenty years if you insisted on being a pastor when the compassion is gone, when the mercy gets squeezed out...” He then turned to Pastor Petersen and said: “Eugene, the church is an evil place. No matter how good you are and how good your intentions, the church will suck the soul out of you. I’m your friend. Please, don’t be a pastor.”

That young Eugene took the advice and turned it on its head. He became a pastor anyway and founded a church in 1962, “Christ Our King Presbyterian Church” in Maryland, which he had served for 29 years before retiring in 1991. 

This brings me back to my father-in-law. He had his own stories to tell about the people he had encountered. But I will always remember what he said to me once, “Mike, my calling is to the people God has entrusted to me.” And I trust, the entrusted lives also included leaders too.

Alas, misshaped lives are not uncommon everywhere we go, and healing wounded hearts is one of the key callings of a pastor in the humble refuge he resides in called the church. But the church is far from perfect. It can become ugly, and in rare times, as Willi puts it, it can be perceived as an ally with evil. 

For those unfortunate occasions, the church was supposed to be one that stands apart from the world where the source of her hope is not on things that offer only temporary solutions and pleasures. The tragedy is that the means often become tyrannical, and subject the end to a compromise or deformation that, like Willi said, “suck the soul out of you.” 

For decades, my father-in-law and many pastors in his church have stood in the gap to personalise hope, exemplify love and embody joy to their sheep who have been crying out for a living testament to the faith they have been reading about in the Bible. 

In the end, it is the people that the shepherd’s heart can never let go. And their lives matter because the true shepherd leaves no one behind. His journey is for a lifetime, and his road, no matter how treacherous, is one that his sheep never travels alone.

Let me end with these questions posed by Pastor Petersen. 

“In our present culture the sharp distinction between a job and a vocation is considerably blurred. How do I, as a pastor, prevent myself from thinking of my work as a job that I am expected to do to the satisfaction of my congregation?”

“How do I stay attentive to and listening to the call that got me started in this way of life – not a call to make the church attractive and useful in the American scene, not a call to help people feel good about themselves and have a good life, not a call to use my considerable gifts and fulfill myself, but a call like Abraham’s “to set out for a place…not knowing where he was going,” a call to deny myself and take up my cross and follow Jesus, a call like Jonah’s to “go at once to Nineveh,” a city he detested, a call like Paul’s to “get up and enter the city and you will be told what to do”?”

Indeed, if you read Jeremiah 12:5, this scripture will challenge you: “If you’re worn out in this footrace with men, what makes you think you can race against horses?” 

Pastors run that race, both on foot and on horses. His is a long journey in obedience, in the direction of what his Saviour had overcome. It is thus an obedience for a purpose beyond the squabbles of men, the pettiness of their blind ambitions. It is also a race that he never knows where it will take him. 

But as long as his eyes are on the crown of life that is imperishable, his hope will always rise above the circumstances, his faith above the uncertainty, and his love, as Augustine puts it, above the temporary earthly affairs of an intemperate soul.

 

CS Lewis - Joy forevermore.

Yesterday, I received news from a friend, sharing that someone he knows and treasures deeply has a cancer relapse.

It was a painful news since his friend has been fighting it for so long, and at one time, seemed to have overcome it. They have also been praying for her, and though his friend was delivered then, it now seems like the affliction has returned.

My friend thus questioned his faith. He asked me, “where is God in all this? Is he there?”

This morning, I thought about him and the noted apologist CS Lewis. He too fought for his dearest wife, Joy, for five years. She had bone cancer. She succumbed to it after a long battle. 

Considered a giant of the Christian faith, one who wrote scores of books about it, even inspiring many who have become great apologist of the faith, CS Lewis was himself tormented to the core. 

He once said that "death of a beloved is an amputation." He did not say "like an amputation". It's neither a metaphor or analogy - its viscerally real to him. He was not mincing his words here. It is not armchair philosophizing. It’s real. It’s pain. It’s amputation.

Ever the effervescent author, CS Lewis wrote a book about it entitled A Grief Observed. He had to disguise the authorship for fear that people might be shaken by the unravelling and brutal honesty in the book. 

CS Lewis felt deeply that the book challenged all his preconceived and idealistic pronouncements about the faith. And for a moment, in the eye of the storm, CS Lewis lost his apologetic mantle, resilience and persuasiveness (at least it seems that way), which he had excelled so well in with the books he had written about defending the faith. 

Here is what made it so painful: CS Lewis loved Joy. He wrote that she completed him. Notwithstanding her previous marriage and 2 sons, he found in her a love that stands closest to the love he has found and experienced in God. They were in fact inseparable. Two peas in a love pod. She encouraged him, inspired him and transformed him. Joy was joy indispensable to CS Lewis. 

After her passing, CS Lewis took her two sons in. He treated them as his very own. He also kept his faith, yet at one point of the book, he blamed God for misleading him up the garden path of hope and then, squashing it with one cancer diagnosis after another. Can you blame him?

However, coming to grip, he wrote this, "We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, "Blessed are they that mourn," and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination."

I myself saw the same mortal reality in the eyes of my loved ones when they stood beside the bed of another before he breathed his last breath. When my brother-in-law finally let go after more than 7-year battle with cancer in October 2016, the collective souls in the room collapsed. For that moment, our collective faith was silenced, as we witnessed the passing of a life. Indeed, for those years before, we all trekked up the garden path of hope, but it was not meant to be a long tenure in a place of healing. 

However, after all the pain CS wrote that “God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to know it down.”

Alas, CS Lewis grew stronger in the faith and understanding after Joy's departure. You can say that he lived out the dark, cold bowels of his writings, every vowel of it. And he passed away soon after his beloved's demise, but his belief stood firm (and inspired many, till today).

He was better for it (so to speak) because he confronted (unavoidable) pain, consorted with it for a while due to the fragility of humanity, but broke away from it for the unsurpassed eternity that lies before him. It is one eternal desire he wished never to extinguish.

This was the endearing apologist’s own words: “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trust it?”

Indeed, CS Lewis tested his rope. And it stood the test of time, pain, grief, trials and even death. 

So I return to my friend’s plea for a miracle in the life of another. It is a young life full of promises, full of hope. I too join him in prayer, pinning for a turnaround, that is, a much longer tenure in the garden of hope and overcoming. 

In a life, there is always hope. And we cling on to it, resting on the knowledge that the hand, upon which a life emerges, is also the same hand that offers life both in abundance and for eternity.

 

Anil David - A life lived for self and others.

If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. But for Anil David, 53, (“Anil”) he got much more than just a fishing lesson in life. He got a community that gave him a second chance and he made the most of it.

But for Anil, the proverbial second chance saw him going to prison thrice before he woke up and decided that he would turn his life around for good. 

I write this post because I believe Anil’s journey thus far epitomises a life that had personally experienced two ways of living: one for self, and the other, for others. And his life is well-narrated by Wong Kim Hoh, Deputy Life Editor, in ST today. 

At eight, Anil was sexually molested by his late uncle. Over a year, he was a silent victim. ”This episode scarred him, filling him with self-doubt, low self esteem and trust issues.” As a result, Anil “flunked his O levels, passing only English.”

After his national service, Anil started selling insurance. He met with some successes with his creativity. 

He recalled that he would search the obituary for Chinese towkays, attend their wake, and help serve drinks. When approached by the son at the wake and asked how he came to know the deceased, Anil would say, “Your dad gave me very good advice.” With a grin, Anil said: “One month later, the son became my insurance agent.”

But “impatient for the good things in life - fast cars and designer labels - (Anil) took shortcuts, by illegally dipping into his clients’ funds.” This was to be his first brush with law, when he served five years in prison in 1995 for siphoning nearly $100k. At that time, he was married. 

But, even after serving time, Anil was not done with living his life the way he wanted. He said, “sin is delicious, like a juicy mango. But too much of it will give you diabetes.”

In 2004, that diabetic awakening came when he was caught for the third time and served a prison term of eight years. “I was really down, I felt I had come to the end of the road. My wife and two daughters wanted to have nothing to do with me.” Can you blame them?

But three times’ the charm for Anil when it comes to second chances. And in prison, he found faith, thereby ending a life lived just to please himself. At that crossroad of true brokenness, Anil vowed to rebuild his life, reconcile with his family, and “apply himself so he could pick up new skills.”

In any event, that crossroad was timely as Anil was assigned to work in a call centre in prison. It was there that the chief executive of the call centre talent-spotted him. He noticed that Anil was good at selling. And after he was released, Anil started his own social enterprise, namely, Agape Connecting People. That route was not easy. He had a few hurdles to cross. 

First, he was determined to reconcile with his family. He said, “I chose the name Agape because it means unconditional love. I’m here because of the unconditional love of my wife and daughters.”

Anil’s first step to reconciliation was to write a letter to his elder daughter through the Yellow Ribbon Project. Soon, his wife and daughters forgave him. I believe that was the second prison Anil needed to be truly set free from. For the first prison (he was released from) was when, in his solitary cell, he found faith. 

In the interview, Anil was asked what does purpose mean to him? He said: “Dedicating myself to a cause beyond myself. It fuels my motivation in life, giving my life meaning and direction, inspiring me to make a significant contribution to the world...I know my God, from whom I get strength, leads me in this pursuit.”

With that purpose and strength, which was essentially others-directed, Anil found faith of another kind, that is, the faith of a community that believed in him. In addition to his wife, who pawned her jewellery to invest in his call centre in 2012, the chief executive whom he had worked for in prison plonked in $20k as initial capital. Anil later repaid him after one year of business. 

But the community support did not end there. With his past records, Anil faced many closed doors in his solicitation for financial support. He was just “unbankable”. But two kind souls, who headed investment firms, however saw beyond Anil’s past, and invested nearly $500k into his business. “They told me: “if you ever become all for profit, we will pull out all our investment.””

Stepping out of the crossroad of second chances, Anil put his heart and soul into first rebuilding his life and family, and second, rebuilding his vocational calling. He thus worked a 18-hour day, “often surviving on cup noodles and preparing all the materials himself.”

Today, Agape Connecting People (“Agape”), a social enterprise, has “turned around the lives of nearly 600 people”. It employs nearly 150 staff, “half serving time in prison and the rest are ex-offenders, senior citizens and other “disadvantaged people wanting a second chance in life.” 

During covid CB period, Agape was the “”first level triage” for distressed callers, helping to calm them down before channeling their calls to the hotline’s trained professionals, including psychologists, counselors and social workers.”” 

Agape has also expanded to “offer a full suite of services including call handling, e-mail marketing, Webshat interaction and social media management.” Currently, its chief executive is one Joseph See, who had left his job as head of acquisition and retention at StarHub. 

Joseph said: “I guess it’s a calling, something I felt I needed to do. Anil wanted to impact more people and couldn’t do it alone. I felt he needed help and my former bosses gave me their blessings.”

All in all, the mission to stand at the crossroads for those who need a shoulder to cry on and a hand to hold gave a new lease of life and freedom for Anil and the many staff under his leadership. In fact, Agape won a slew of awards including The Most Impactful Social Enterprise (2016). 

Anil said: “It was a breakthrough I have been praying for. It affirms my belief that work is a platform where ex-offenders can redeem, and other disadvantaged people can prove themselves.”

Lesson? I have one, and it is in Anil’s own words. He was asked, “what do you say to cynics who say: A leopard never changes its spots.”“

This was his answer: “A leopard with dreams and measurable goals in the company of good men can change, but a leopard who persists in keeping bad company will find it hard.”

I guess our “spots” should never define us. We all know that. It has even become cliché. Yet, our greatest enemy is still ourselves. 

Anil was practical enough to say (or imply) that good company is half the battle, for what is still needed are dreams and measurable goals. The former is conception, the latter is application, and with good company comes the transformation. 

Here, I believe a man or woman who keeps dreaming, even with dreams marred by spots, is someone who never gives up on himself (or herself). And a person who never gives up, will never allow those dreams to die stillborn. For the womb of one’s hope comes at three points of intersection: never giving up, going beyond ourselves, and the faith of good community and empowering circumstances will eventually meet us at our crossroad. 

So, let me end by saying that, most times, second chances and successes are strange bedfellows. When they come to those who are not ready to receive them, it can ruin them. For second chances can be taken for granted, and successes can change us for the worse. 

But when it comes at a point of true repentance, with a heart and conscience surrendered to a purpose beyond ourselves, second chances and successes will transform our dreams to reality, and change lives for the good of society.

Indeed, when you teach men how to fish, you feed them for life. But when you give them a second chance, at a crossroad when their time has finally come, they become fishers of men for society, and they will feed many others for a lifetime. Amen.