Wednesday, June 22, 2005
An ode to my pastor 
It was the August of 2003 and I was an emotional wreck.
I had just ended a tumultuous 8-month relationship which had brought me to the lowest point of my life. Foolishly rebelling against God, I did everything I knew to be wrong but rationalized away as love.
I cried myself to sleep every night for half a year and it felt like the person I thought I was had died along with the relationship and that I would never be happy again.
You can call it the melodrama of youth.
In retrospect, I am incredibly grateful that God had sent me a fatherly figure in the form of Pastor Tiak. He asked to meet up with me every week to check on how I was doing, not afraid to ask the same questions over and over again- “Did you talk to him this week? How are you doing?” And as much as most people would dread the idea having to report their every action to someone, I found myself looking forward to my weekly session with him.
He had maintained a firm stand against my sins of the past, yet always gently encouraging me to pick up the pieces and walk again. He prayed for me each time we met and taught me so many invaluable lessons in ministering and mentoring.
I will aways remember the day he brought me to the Jurong Bird Park. I spent half the time marveling at the fact that I was there on a weekday afternoon! I learnt that there are some things in life you can’t learn from a textbook and you are who you are because of the experiences that have moulded you.
As much as it still pains me once in a while to think of all that I had gone through, I am glad to know that someone believed in me, which in turn allowed me to believe in myself again.
And here I am, two years later, humbled and a lot wiser.
Thank you, Pastor Tiak, for being my spiritual father on earth.
I had just ended a tumultuous 8-month relationship which had brought me to the lowest point of my life. Foolishly rebelling against God, I did everything I knew to be wrong but rationalized away as love.
I cried myself to sleep every night for half a year and it felt like the person I thought I was had died along with the relationship and that I would never be happy again.
You can call it the melodrama of youth.
In retrospect, I am incredibly grateful that God had sent me a fatherly figure in the form of Pastor Tiak. He asked to meet up with me every week to check on how I was doing, not afraid to ask the same questions over and over again- “Did you talk to him this week? How are you doing?” And as much as most people would dread the idea having to report their every action to someone, I found myself looking forward to my weekly session with him.
He had maintained a firm stand against my sins of the past, yet always gently encouraging me to pick up the pieces and walk again. He prayed for me each time we met and taught me so many invaluable lessons in ministering and mentoring.
I will aways remember the day he brought me to the Jurong Bird Park. I spent half the time marveling at the fact that I was there on a weekday afternoon! I learnt that there are some things in life you can’t learn from a textbook and you are who you are because of the experiences that have moulded you.
As much as it still pains me once in a while to think of all that I had gone through, I am glad to know that someone believed in me, which in turn allowed me to believe in myself again.
And here I am, two years later, humbled and a lot wiser.
Thank you, Pastor Tiak, for being my spiritual father on earth.
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