The 40-something years

In January 2014, I wrote a lookback on my 30s. In what seems like a blink of an eye, here I sit, ready to write about how my 40s went!

This year, I'll celebrate 24 years with my wife, who I love more than ever before. From looking after us when we're sick (especially Covid!), to managing our finances (fixed deposit promotions! SRS! Credit card points!!), to getting good deals for us on holidays (somehow managed to find skiing in Vegas!) and shopping (outlet malls! Carousell!), to slogging through national examinations with our kids (PSLE!!!).

All this while running alongside me to lead our cell and mission work, keeping a full time honourable job, calling me out when I'm out of line, and staying cute on top of it all... 

Well really, what else is there to say of my wife of noble character, worth far more than rubies, in whom I have full confidence, lack nothing of value, and who brings good, nor harm all the days of her life (Proverbs 31)! 

I'm sorry for all the times I've been selfish and grumpy. Thank you for your patience in helping me mature. Thank you for believing in me, and allowing me to shine even throughout my 40s :) You are amazing.

Both of my kids went through PSLE and A levels, and I'm so proud to say, not only survived, but thrived. Implausibly small but sure fingers skittering through complicated piano pieces with determination. Tae-kwon-do competitions, adorably progressing from kicking equally tiny opponents in the shins, all the way through smacking planks with flying kicks. One in university, the other, soon to follow in the same footsteps - not just each other's footsteps, but in God's, who has led them thus far.

Student councils, dance, piano and viola concerts. Outings with friends, and then late night bedtime tuck-ins to share their day with us. Getting caught at 3 am DOTA gaming sessions, and being scolded for an hour. Visiting every Disney and Universal park possible, likely setting some world records for number of Buzz Lightyear points and Space Mountain runs.

Getting drunk for the first time after A levels, completely regretting it, and having to be rescued by me because, yep, too drunk to even move. First BGR and then dealing with a break-up. One moving 10,830 km away from home (yes that is the precise distance according to Find My iPhone), the other marooned on a base with no phone access.

Joining us on our mission trips, bread runs and church life, and volunteering to serve in their own right, no questions asked, because they'd serving with us since they were toddlers, so serving just seems like normal life.

I don't have many children - just the two of them. But I can definitely attest to God's word in Psalm 127 that "Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them". Thank you kids - it's been my great joy and privilege to be your dad through your pre-teen, teen and post-teen years, and I'm looking forward to being your dad as you progress to adulting!

In the ministry, so much has happened. At the start of my 40s, we were leading a cell of about maybe 15 people or so, mostly a little older than us, maybe by 2-10 years. I remember praying then that we had to regenerate and grow the cell and be relevant to younger people, otherwise we would all just grow old together.  Not a bad thing per se, but we could be so much more!

A year or two later, if I recall correctly, the cell had multiplied, but we mostly still retained the same dynamic. Then in my mid-40s, things changed dramatically, starting just before Covid broke out. More and more young people joined the cell through those years, and today, the majority of the cell is more than 10 years younger than me, and we have a "younger people" cell and a "people my age" cell, with wonderful leaders in place for each of those cells.

In my early 40s, we were a couple of years into our bread distribution work. It's amazing that we've now been there for something like a decade and a half. We've become real friends with the residents. We celebrate together, grieve together, pray for them when they're sick, lonely or sometimes just desperate, and hang out together.

As I often say to our volunteer team - the residents don't really need our bread. The Government and many NGOs do a really good job of ensuring that basic needs are met. But our bread opens doors. It's far more valuable for us to walk through those doors and build relationships, than to merely hand out bread. Logistics are important. But big charities can do that much better than we can. So we do what big charities often can't - selectively spend quality time with specific families and become real friends. 

In late 2018, we started another project, to bless our friends in Batam. Through a generous and wonderful brother-in-Christ who had business interests in Batam, we got to know a principal who ran a small school, which was in ramshackle physical condition, but provided loving education for children of nearby squatter villages. 

Together with our brother-in-Christ, the principal and teachers, we've become part of the community over there. We started with 1 or 2 trips, then progressed to quarterly trips, and by 2023, we were sending one team or another almost monthly, and we have a core team of volunteers who have gone 6-8 times each. My wife has been there 11 times! We even brought the principal and teachers to Singapore for training. If not for the Covid interruption, we would have been there even more often.

God's great provision saw us move the school twice from rented location to rented location, before we built a brand new building from scratch, which we moved into in early 2023 (we recently realised we're even searchable on Google Maps now!). Thanks to the principal and teachers' persistence, we've seen enrolment and community engagement grow. 

Thanks to the volunteers, we've always had enough money to keep the school running. Thanks to the volunteers also, we've had the opportunity to bring doctors, dentists and teachers, conduct eye checks and provide spectacles, run games and lessons for the kids, organise educational workshops for parents, and most recently, even set up a computer lab.

Being out there in the field has reminded me that God's miracles, and His signs and wonders, are not rare. It's just that most of them occur out in the field, where He is, and where He wants us to go. Prayers are answered for jobs - just recently we got an excited thanks that the prayer was answered within a day! Prayers are answered for healing. We've literally witnessed the lame and infirm walk again, and what seemed to be irretrievably sick people recover, and get back out to life and work.

And if you think it's some kind of hysteria - it really isn't. 

I have taught myself the language, but I can't really speak it well. I'm forced to use very simple words, and often stumble through each prayer. Because I'm not confident in the language, I speak very slowly and quietly to the person I'm praying for, because I don't want to blurt out the wrong word (and even then I still get it wrong sometimes, and have to backtrack when I see puzzlement in their eyes!). And because I can't catch what they're saying if they speak too fast, they also have to speak very slowly to me to explain what they want prayer for.

So, no drama. No antics. Simply bringing our prayers to the God who answers. And He does. It is an awesome thing to see God work.

At work, my boss changed early on in my 40s, which was a point of real uncertainty for me, because so much of work is about relationships, and I had built a strong relationship of trust with my previous boss. But thank God, the transition went fine, and about half a year later, I got a call while I was on holiday that I would take on a role that combined a few other teams. That was a bit of a shock, but a challenge that I was super excited to take on. (Post-edit: I wanted to record that even I went back to university for a while in 2017, which was a surprise, because I never thought I would go back and study, but a great experience in the end)

If there's one thing I had to pick as the highlight of my career so far, it would be bringing legal/compliance/governance to the leadership table. We had never been properly represented at management or the board before, always submerged a couple of levels below, but now we were right there. And hopefully one day those who come after me will continue to benefit from that.

It was a challenging journey for me to learn how to put on a whole-of-organisation hat, and not just a specialist's hat. It was scary to speak up in front of older, more experienced colleagues in management and at the board, and I'm still learning, even after all this time. But I'm so grateful to have been given the chance to represent our profession and the associated critical issues at all these fora. 

There were crises along the way. Some were technology related, needing us to work together side by side with colleagues from all across the company for days and nights, without sleep, to keep our customers well-served and our regulators well-satisfied. 

Others were business related, with competitors pulling the rug out from under our feet, in order to eat our lunch. These too required weeks and months of intense shoulder-to-shoulder work, hammering away relentlessly at a thousand issues, to make sure we remained the best place for our customers to find solutions for their needs.

I don't want to entirely sugarcoat my 40s. Along the way, a lot of messes have happened too. 

I surely lost my temper with my wife and kids too many times. I wish I could take back some of the harsh words I used, because words matter. But I'm thankful that God has protected my family against my failures, and I believe He will continue to do so.

I definitely could have been more effective in delivering the Good News to my friends. I lacked courage to share the gospel and to pray for their needs, and spent too much time tiptoeing around pleasantries. But I'm thankful that God hasn't lost patience with me.

I made so many mistakes in our work with the school and villages in Batam, wasting money and effort, sometimes creating more problems than I was solving for them. But I'm thankful that despite my inadequacies, God has made so much out of so little.

I often wasn't the leader I needed to be at work. Sometimes I wasn't smart enough. Sometimes I wasn't fast enough. Other times I didn't care enough for my people. But I'm thankful that to have built a team on the principle of Making Others Succeed. When one generation of colleagues decided to leave in the Great Resignation post-Covid, and it felt like we were drowning... still, a new generation rose up to fill the gap. 

So, that's my one afternoon's reflection on my 40s. I'm going to enjoy the next few months of still being able to call myself a 40-something. It's been an awesome decade, full of messes, full of challenges, but God really led me through it all. Onward to the 50s!

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, "Thus far the LORD has helped us." 1 Samuel 7:12