It is time to reflect. When I take a closer look, I found many important event happened in my life in lent. I am not a very "religious" person. I know I live a Christian life, but hardly "hear the calling", partly because I don't spend enough time in deep diving my religious mind?
Anyway, here it goes. The first event I can remember is my dad. There was once he suffered a serious illness, an unknown virus attacked him. I can give you a picture of C19 before vaccine. High fever throughout the weeks, leading to gum bleeding, lung infections, kidney, lungs, pancreas, gut health deteriorating and the doctor had to put him into induced comma. We spent the weekend in the hospital.
My sister participated in finding the pathogens by going through multiple sleepless nights, scanning through my dad's blood samples and finally we had a breakthrough. I'm not going to pretend like I know any of those pathology term as my sister is a biochemistry scientist. Doc gave my dad some antibiotics that particularly pointed to the virus and we see daddy's life sign started to improve.
Finally, doc agreed to take him off from induced comma, so he can slowly gain back his own strength without relying on life support. And true to us, after many hours, finally my dad can open his eyes, slowly gain back some motor function. Later he made a, well ... Almost full recovery from the sickness. And then he shared what he "saw" during the holy weekend. That was like 30 years ago, I don't remember I feel any touching about how he was saved by Jesus.
Now that I am looking back in my life, I can start counting how blessed am I. Back in 2005, i sneaked out of church, trying to go to the convenient shop to buy cigarettes. A group of thief hold me up at knife point and robbed me. I lost my watch, my cash, but they allowed me to keep my laptop computers 😂 now that I'm thinking, they could have killed me and keep the laptop as well, but they don't. Besides, my then girlfriend (now ex-girlfriend because she's upgraded ranking to home minister) helped me paid one month of my car installment. I had a safe and peaceful Easter following year without realizing that could have been the end of the story.
Fast forward to several years later, home minister was 9 month pregnant 😂 I wasn't a Catholic still, but I'd rather sit in the church bench singing for the choir then going to buy cigarettes. We were so worried that whilst singing Pange Lingua and then the baby come. 2 weeks later, as planned, a healthy baby girl was born.
Six years ago, whilst lent started, so as C19 lockdown. I was running around finding cigarettes again. Since cigarettes is not necessities, therefore no supply during lockdown 😂 and then Easter came, I am proudly declaring I'm one month off cigarettes. Probably one of the most outstanding story how a person got off from smoking after almost 30 years of addiction.
And the most recent story happened 3 weeks ago. A stroke took away my left side mobility, and today I am attending holy Thursday mass. I used to blame how hard life is, and forgot to give thanks to how I got through those hardship. I am looking forward to see more blessing coming my way, and the only prayer I have is, allow me to have strength to face those challenges.
Gracefully having dinner with my god aunt and wife after holy Thursday mass 😂 sorry I'm not going to write food review, but do enjoy the photo session. Vegetarian dinner at Sangeetha.
