A Mother’s Love

When I was pregnant with Lizzie, I began to appreciate my mom even more. Carrying a foetus inside you for nine months is no joke! Though there were lots of excitment, the pregnancy brought about quite a bit of nausea, sickness and inconvenience!  In addition, I felt very tired most of the time due to work.  Hence I appreciate my mom for enduring the hardship while carrying me in her womb.  You see, she’s married into a very traditional and big chinese household.  So being the wife of the eldest son in the family, her mom-in-law expected her to do all the housechores even when she’s very pregnant!  She had to cook and wash for the entire household which consisted of my grandparents, my dad and his four other siblings!  Many times, there were also relatives who would stay with them!  Naps in the afternoons were usually frowned upon!

After Lizzie was born, I appreciate my mom even more!  I experienced lots of difficulty in breastfeeding and really respect all mothers who tried their best to breastfeed their babies!  So when I realised that my mom actually did breastfeed me for a few months, I was really surprised as most mothers of her generation mostly gave formula milk instead.  I also respect my mom even more because unlike me, she had no family support here in Singapore as she’s from Malaysia.  In addition, my dad then was not a very supportive husband and that she had difficult in-laws.  So I really cannot imagine how she managed three pregnacies altogether!   Later on, she and my dad moved out of the extended family and my mom was all by herself looking after 3 kids, doing all the housechores and sewing clothes for other people in order to contribute to the household income!  She’s a woman who really had a very hard life.  As my dad was not a favourite son in the family, he tried very hard to prove himself in his early twenties.  However, he was never successful and was considered a failure.  As a result, he ended up with bad company and picked up gambling and drinking.  Hence he was often not at home.  But, unlike many drunkards and gamblers, my father never beat my mom.  He loved her, but he felt very lousy about himself.  Hence my poor mom was almost always alone when it comes to bringing up children and putting bread on the table for us.  But I know that she loved him and sympathised him because I could remember vividly that she always locked herself in her room at 7am to pray for an hour!  I know that she’s praying for dad.

I guessed she must have felt damn lousy when we kids always prefer to be with dad because he’s hardly around and when he was, he played with us.  Mom, on the other hand, always nag at us, made us do housework and scold us!  She didn’t play with me or my elder siblings as she’s always busy in the kitchen and sewing clothes to support us.  I never realised how much she’s done for the family until I become a mother myself and as I recall my childhood days!

She was a faithful woman of God. Illiterate, but her faith and testimony for God are far greater than many of us who did so much more bible study than her, sad to say.  After ten years of praying, her prayer was finally answered.  My father heard the gospel and became a christian, a serious one.

I remembered how happy I was after his coversion as we all went to church as a family finally and there was much joy and laughter at home!  We also had lots of family devotion!  It was lovely.  We were not rich in material wealth, but we were happy and contented as a family.  Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with kidney cancer two years later and passed away after nine months of struggle.  I didn’t know how my mom took it at that time.  Her happiness seemed so shortlived and her hardship seemed eternal as she was left with three kids, my sis 16, bro 15 and myself 10.

But God is sovereign, faithful and loving towards those who love him.  He didn’t abandon my mom and she lived on as a brave woman of God.  She brought us up being a seamstress and with the help of my grandfather who was quite well to do.  After my grandfather passed away, my grandma fell into a mental sickness that left her children helpless and unwilling to care for her.  My grandma became fully dependent on people to clean her, feed her and dress her.  When no one wanted to live with grandma, my mom offered to take care of her! Mom got scolded by her mom-in-law almost all the time due to her mental illness but continued to bath her, clean her shit and pray with her!  After one year, grandma’s condition got worse and we had no choice but to send her to a nursing home.  Even then, mom would faithfully go visit her and pray for her until she passed away about five years later.

A few days ago,  I was sick, Kaif was sick and Lizzie was sick.  I felt so miserable as I still have to care for my husband and my child.  I missed those days when I was so well taken off by my mother.  When I was sick in those day, I didn’t have to worry about anything.  I can just rest without worrying, wake up and eat!  Now, I have to constantly think about my baby and husband, cook and wake up in the night to check on lizzie.

As Kaif and Lizzie got better, my common cold and cough developed into serious siniusitis.  Hence Kaif had to take care of Lizzie and we had to get my father-in-law to help as he is quite free at work.  After a few days, I got better but i realised that Lizzie with obvious body language now prefers her grandpa and daddy!  She is constantly looking out for them and wanting them to carry her!  She even cries when they refuse to carry her!  I was so heartbroken and thought that it’s not worth it staying at home after all.  Moreover, I’m always the one disciplining her and trying to get her to develop good habits.  So I don’t always give in to her when she misbehaves.   I also don’t always carry her because there’re always some housechores and cooking to be done.  It’s just so bitter for me to realise that motherhood is not just about sacrificing one’s career, freedom and dreams in hope that the child will grow up with good and god fearing character, and being close to you.  The sacrifice does not guarantee the results that you desire.  Your child can grow up to be so different from what you expect that you wonder if the sacrifice is worth it.

But I thank God for Jesus Christ  and my mom who are my role models.  Comparing my plight with what they’ve been through, I realised that I’m very fortunate indeed!  Christ laid down his life for us even when we were his enemies! He love us even when we turn our backs on him! Our moms too did many things for us which they did not expect any returns and they forgive us when we were rude and ungrateful to them!

May the Lord Jesus help us, through his Holy Spirit, to live out this sacrificial love so that all may know how loving, good and faithful our creator is.   Amen.

Thank you for reading such a long posting!  Here’s a picture of my mom, nephew, Lizzie and niece.