Living for Him

My neck aches as I turn to look in the direction where I heard someone calling my name. "Sorry, I have to take a few seconds to turn my entire body!"

I have had better days. Days when my body work with me and for me. Days when I can jump and run and twist my body. This week has been agonizing for me. My right shoulder and neck hurts till a fever envelops me in the late evening as the day at campus drags on. I know I can not have the same body I had 10 years ago. Neither will my lifestyle be the same as it was when I first started working in Kuala Lumpur. But despite these aches and pains that some say comes with age, I now learn to live for Him; my Lord and my God.

Taking one day at a time is what I practice these days. Pressure to perform at work, at home in church and in my social circle has resulted in physical exertion most days. I can see no other way to release these stress other than to commit it to the Lord, each day, each hour, each minute, each second. Living my life just for Him and making a difference in someone's life each day helps spur me on. Living each day for the Lord and realizing that I would not have any other way, inspires me to make each day count, each encounter one that glorifies Him.

I dislike cooking but have been cooking for my family since my friend and neighbour stopped cooking for us. Again, my cooking stint started as a blessing in disguise when I started suffering from food poisoning everytime we ate out. It didn't matter how clean the restaurant was. I could not stomach the food! Each episode left me weaker than ever and I began to lose my appetite. Cooking dinner after work was a struggle. "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak..." I had to rush home daily to be able to put dinner on the table in time for the family. It was simple stir fried in the beginning. Most days, we survive on "one-pot dishes" and simple stir fried greens. But we learnt to live for the Lord and gave thanks each day for the food that laid before us. The stomach started to build up strength and dinner started to improve in its complexity! One day we could have korean soup while another day would see chinese herbal chicken on the table. Thank God my husband and children appreciates my cooking although nothing has changed about my dislike for sweating it out in the hot kitchen. And with that start, I lived one day at a time until the arrival of my Cambodian maid, 5 years later.

Vanna came as a sprightly, young girls, almost petrified by the strange language and culture in our homeland. She was a 19 year young lady with only 3 years of Khmer education in Cambodia from the Siem Reap Province. We had prayed for a relaible and trustworthy maid for many months before finally deciding on a Cambodian maid, after weighing its pros and cons. After viewing the biodatas of Cambodian maids at a local maid agency in Bandar Puteri, we paid a deposit for a young lady. As God would have it, she arrived 2 months later and was declared unfit for work after testing positive for hepatitis B. My 8 year old daughter, Ophelia, when told of the situation replied "Oh, she didn't get an "A" for her test, so she has to be sent back to Cambodia?" Apparently, the girl cried whe she knew she would be sent home. i am not sure whether the tears were more of mere disappointment or from the sheer fear she had at discovering she was carrying a disease that may be detrimental to her in her later life. Anyway, having waited for 2 months, we are left with no maid and were asked to select from a new batch of biodata which was more impressive than the previous. This is how God works in amazing ways!

We selected Vanna from amongst the hopefuls. It was another 3 months' wait before she finally arrived in Malaysia. We took her home 2 days before Chinese New Year. It has been 2 months since she started working for us. I am thankful because as i live each day for the Lord, He has provided us with a reliable and intelligent maid. Though she spoke very little English when she first came, she can now converse comfortably with me over daily household chores. She has since taken over the tedious job of cooking for the family, leaving me with time for my family.

Life would have been unbearable with a sore shoulder and a pain-in-the neck if not for Vanna whom God had blessed us with. That's living life for the Lord for me!