The Hard Stuff
In Ephesians, we have been learning about how God has brought us together in Christ. Cecilia Kang shares about how she experienced the love of the church and learnt to see how God has designed for the church to be a family.
On the last day of Term Two in 2025, I received a call from Jonathan, my third child’s school that he had fainted. When I got there, he was lucid, slightly weak but able to walk to the car. Not much was known as it happened during a changeover of lessons and his friends crowded him when it happened. All the teachers could say was that he fainted. The necessary was done – GP, A&E and observation at home. All seemed normal.
We departed for church camp in Malaysia a few days after, the episode haunting me even as we readied for the trip. The four children were psyched – camp was a highlight of church life they would not miss for anything. But for me, all I felt was exhaustion. Upon reaching the camp site, the crowd, noise and activity overwhelmed me. I hung on and tried but really, I could not bring myself to do another self introduction or small talk interaction. With the children fully engaged, I hardly saw them except for short periods in the day. Whenever possible, I withdrew, finding safety in solitude.
When camp ended and we finally reached home, I felt myself finally able to breathe. Towards bedtime, I lay in the dark with my two daughters singing songs and laughing when I heard my husband shout. I reached him to find Jonathan on the bed, having a seizure.
I think we were both shocked for a full minute and were unable to react. When we snapped out of it and placed Jonathan on the floor on his side, he didn’t respond to our calls. I really wondered if he would ever wake. When he finally did, he was dazed, seemed unaware of what happened, quickly scrambled onto the bed and fell asleep instantly. The other children, hushed and frightened, quickly went to bed. That night, my husband and I roused every hour to check on him. A flurry of doctor appointments and checks followed. I pressed the school again for details of the first episode and eventually a music teacher confirmed that she saw Jonathan spasm on the ground when he collapsed. With two confirmed seizures, an epilepsy diagnosis was made.
Decisions. So many to make. To start medication or not. Which medication to choose. Which possible side effects to accept. To stay with one doctor or to switch to another hospital.
Days became a minefield of which every loud sound and shout sent me into extreme panic mode. Nights were long and unrestful, I found it impossible not to be by Jonathan’s side to check on him. But it was equally impossible to sleep with him in the same room as every mumble, grunt or sudden kicking off of his blanket convinced me that he was seizing. Eventually my husband forced me to sleep in another room. And instead of sleeping, I went online to read up on epilepsy and its long term prognosis as well as on forums of epileptics sharing their life experiences. Even if I managed to fall asleep, my eyes opened at every hour, three am, four, five am. My prayers were short and desperate sentences, please God, no seizures today.
It was unsustainable in every way. The other three children still needed me. I was not the stable, emotionally available and functional mother they needed. I could not only exist for Jonathan and yet I could not stop panicking and it grew to a point where, without turning his head, he could tell the instant my eyes lingered on him and I would see his expression tense. Days and nights merged into one long endless stretch where no real break exists. I began to talk to God in between wakefulness and light sleep.
I told Him that before the seizures started, my days were already filled to the brim and every day I maxed out my energy so I could not understand how I would now be able to continue with each day’s tasks in this state of fear and dread. Inevitably, my thoughts spiralled. Previous discussions from the Book of Job forgotten, thoughts ventured to the dark zone of God being displeased with me for something I had done. Knowing this was not biblical, I diverted my attention to praying for Jonathan’s full healing but even then, I also felt my request audacious. Not because God isn’t able to, but because I knew other children who too, needed healing and whose parents too prayed for the same; so who was I to ask for full healing and to receive it? Sensing again that I was going off rail in my thinking, I struggled to clarify my own concept of who God was to me.
That week, Jonathan seized again during the day in full activity mode whilst with friends. Now, there was no denying what it was and no delay could be justified in starting medication. In between praying for something that you want very badly and before receiving it, there is a window of time when your true impression of who God is becomes clear.
I first had to understand and believe that He does love me.
I recognised cracks in my understanding of God and a hunger to know Him deeper crept in. The truths that I taught my children, I realised then that some of those truths had not been internalised in me, had not been proven real in my heart. In wondering if He would heal – I doubted God’s goodness. In doubting why He healed some and not others – I questioned His wisdom. In despairing of the current situation – I have not yet believed that He truly loved me and loved me like a Father did. Perturbed by my incomplete and erroneous understanding of God, I sought out sound books of good theology that covered this – and the characteristic of God’s holiness struck me deeply. It was not an attribute I was familiar with and the more I read, the more I sensed His sovereignty and infinite power and wisdom over everything in my life. It was staggering to think about how God held life and death of everyone I loved in His hands and He can heal and He can choose not to heal and in all of these, I first had to understand and believe that He does love me.
At the same time, I also took a good hard look around the church and recalled of certain struggles and trials that older saints had with their now grown children and felt in awe of what they’d experienced and how they preserved their faith. Finishing well took on a brand new importance and meaning. Thoughts such as the following lingered: Do I love God only when He gives me what I pray for? If He does not give me what I want, the Bible still commands me to be joyful, so how do I do that? Which mother would not ask for full and complete healing? Which mother will be fine with less? The prospect of lifetime medication worried me – but there are so many children on lifetime medication and treatments. I thought of the children loved and then lost before their time, of parents who lost their adult children to sickness and accidents. I recalled of all the painful things that I knew happening to adult children of parents who grieve. And I knew then that none of these pale in comparison to the next, whether a child is lost young or grown or old, it hurts. Whether a child suffers illness, pain, or later on failure, betrayal, divorce or depression – it hurts. And therein was something I knew mentally before but did not know in a real sense – that my child is in God’s hands. I acknowledge I can do nothing for my child. I can only do my best and then turn him over to God.
The first Sunday that Jonathan began medication, I found myself dreading to go to church. When I sat outside his Sunday school class just in case and for the next few weeks after, the same sense of detachment came and I did not feel like talking to anyone. But what I did not know was that my husband had already told someone in the lift and a couple in the lift who overheard it came to find me later on. I bring this up because I see God’s hand at work in this. Whilst we did not plan beforehand what to say and to whom, Ming found it hard not to answer honestly when a fellow brother asked how his week was in the lift on the way up to the sanctuary. And because Ming chose to give the true and long answer to an innocent question, the couple in the lift happened to hear the story and chose to come forward to encourage and to share their similar experience of their child. I was taken aback and moved - we didn’t know each other well and they didn’t have to but they took the time and trouble to do it. Hearing someone recount of their own shock and fear, describing the same thought processes was like finding a raft in an ocean of water. They ended by giving me practical advice and comfort.
I began to have an inkling of why a church was called family.
That was not all. Thereafter, another brother in Christ whom I had not spoken to before came quietly and sat down, asked how I was and also began to relate of his own scary experiences with his child, his thoughts as it happened and his mentality in how he handled and is still handing the hard stuff. He acknowledged, “Some days, it’s just hard and I wish God would make it easier.” And I just wanted to agree wholeheartedly. Another sister in Christ stood on the stairs leading to the attic and put her hands on me and with teary eyes, began to pray for Jonathan. Another dear sister in Christ too, came to me and talked about how she was overwhelmed by the many big words doctors introduced her with the diagnosis of her child, how these medical terms began to be a big blur and only by clinging to God did anything make sense again. “Please God, no more!” She teared and I teared and inexplicably, I began to have an inkling of why a church was called family. I am referring to the broader feel of the church, when I walk around the compounds, into and out of the sanctuary among people I know, some that I do not, some I know the names of but never spoke to – it is so easy to feel detached and withdrawn. But in those moments of me wanting to be alone, these brothers and sisters in Christ who did not know a lot about me nor me them approached, comforted and encouraged me. If we humbly trust that everyone in church are lovers of Christ, then we can go up to each other and cry with them, comfort them and encourage them.
One morning, I was driving home after dropping off the children at school, listening to worship songs that had been on my playlist for a long time. But for some reason, as I heard the words of Psalm 150 being sang, an invigorating sense of joy and victory gripped me. I felt my heart steady and knew it made no sense because nothing had changed in the circumstances at all. I could not explain the abrupt switch in my mental state and when I got home, I suddenly felt very hungry. Having had no appetite for weeks, this felt very strange indeed. Then my husband texted me from work, telling me that he just read Psalm 149 and felt a joy and conviction that God will take care of Jonathan because He is good and faithful.
It is so true that true rest only comes from our living God.
What does this all mean?
It does not mean God will take this trial away. It does not mean my son is healed. It does not mean life is not going to get less complicated. Even as I go through the practicals of everyday, the medicine, the school, the hospital, the meals, the sleep, the play – I am seeking to stay at His feet to absorb His word and peace that surpasses all understanding and to remember the truths of what He imparted through this. I recall a thought that I shared with a dear sister in Christ as life slowly resumed normalcy and God’s peace yanked me out of the panic mode – which was that this intense period of hunger for His truths and being able to sieve out the fluff of unimportant things felt really precious. And I was sad that it was ending and worried that I would forget all of these things. Yet, our faith comes in peaks and valleys and that is a big reason why remaining in a church is paramount to preserving and growing our faith. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 said it well, “If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”