Caleb Tan, 46, never knew his own father. He said: “I didn’t know who my own father was. I had never experienced a father’s love.”
He had a traumatic past. He had always felt he was born unloved. In the papers today, Lee Siew Hua reports: “(Caleb) had not only served time, but had also fled to the Philippines to escape court charges, divorced his first wife, a Filippina, and later attempted suicide.”
Caleb had also thought his mother was dead. But at 12, when he needed to apply for identity card, his grandmother (who was his sole caregiver) placed a newspaper advertisement to trace her. Caleb said: “I hated my mum a lot. Why did she give birth to me if she didn’t want me?”
Never knowing a father’s or mother’s love, Caleb spent his time in nightclubs. Before long, he was involved in fights and spent 10 years behind bars for drug dealing and other crimes.
After he served his time, he made his way to The Hiding Place in 2010. It took some time for him to adjust and adapt. Life did not let up for him though. He later met with a serious accident and “suffered five broken ribs, a collapsed lung and burns on his body, after his short get entangled with a machine for food preparation.”
However, Caleb never gave up on life. He met Grace Sim, 46, who was working as a secretary in a church. They then married in 2018 and Grace came with two teenage sons, Jerel and Jerek (now 20 and 16).
Imagine that, a father who had lived without a father, had to be a father to two young boys. And incidentally, today is Father’s Day and Caleb’s story is not like those familiar stories you often hear on this special day.
In fact, Caleb’s life in The Hiding Place took an unexpected turn when the late Pastor Philip Chan became a devoted father to him - as he was to many, who were drug addicts, gamblers, drinkers and wayward youth.
As Pastor Chan assured him that he would personally take care of him, in that short time, their relationship blossomed. Caleb later called him “Pa”.
Caleb recalled that Pastor Chan gave him “unconditional love”. He also said that as a lost and struggling soul, just out of prison, Pastor Chan’s firm guidance was what he needed and had craved after.
In 2018, before Caleb married Grace, Pastor Chan gave him this advice: “You are not marrying just Grace. She also has two sons. You have to be an example as a father.” Pastor Chan also said that he must spend time to talk and reason with Jerel and Jerek. He said: “Even if they’re your children, they have a right to talk.”
Lesson...?
Alas, in living, Pastor Chan became a father to the fatherless. He stepped up when their birth fathers walked out. And he gave them love when they neither knew love, nor the touch and hugs of a father.
Not by genes, not by blood ties, but by love unconditional, love most transcending, beyond biology, that Pastor Chan stepped into the gap, and dedicated his life for them.
Truly, there is no greater love than a man willing to lay his life down for another; that is, for a stranger to become a father, a father to a stranger. And that selfless love was more than enough for Caleb to love his sons in return.
When Caleb asked his stepson, Jerel, for his blessing to marry his mother, Jerel said: “What took you so long?” And his older brother Jerek said: “I’m happy because I know you will take care of my mum.”
Caleb’s own path to fatherhood was a transforming one. He recalled: “In one tender episode, Jerek reached out to hold his hands on the way to the cinema. Shocked, (Caleb) instinctively felt like pushing it away. But in the next moment, his heart melted and he told himself: “It’s a blessing. This action was confirmation that he accepted me as a father.”
“Then in the cinema, the boy felt cold and snuggled against him, putting his head on his shoulder. “That’s a love I couldn’t have expected,” (Caleb) said.””
At times, Jerek would text him with this simple heartwarming message: “good night, love you.”
As a father myself, with three young kids, I have come to realise that you may have a hand in bringing a child into this world, but it is the journey you take with him that makes you their “Pa”.
Every son born into this world is a father at heart. However he cannot do it alone because he needs a father before him to love him as his own, and as he is. The heart of father is like a candle, a flickering wick no less, and only the same candle can light it up so that the light of fatherhood can be passed down the line to their own children and to their children’s children.
And the legacy of fatherhood goes beyond biological ties. It is founded on unconditional love, a love Pastor Chan exemplified so perfectly in his unfailing embrace of the broken, the vulnerable, and the disowned.
Caleb himself experienced that love, from a man he affectionately called “Pa”. And that short journey with his pa had made all the difference for him and his sons, Jerel and Jerek.
Let me end with what Caleb said. “I lost everything in the past. God has blessed me with a family.” And it is a family embraced and empowered by the sacred ministry of fatherhood, that is, of being a father to the fatherless, a lover to the unloved, and a candle of light against the darkness of abandonment.
That, to me, is the timeless message on this Father’s Day. A message not only of hope, but one of enduring love.
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