By faith, my sister and I booked our flights to Bandung, Indonesia, for January 2017 to facilitate our first overseas retreat for a para-church group based in Singapore.

However, my sister was eventually unable to come with me. Her condition deteriorated and she soon passed into the glorious presence of God in March 2017.

An unwelcome road

I remember that, in 2009, both of us resigned from our respective polytechnics after many years of teaching without realising that the other had done so.

We were studying part-time at BGST in December 2010, when we facilitated, for the very first time, a retreat for a small group at Labrador Park. 

For the first time in our life, we worked together as we sensed God leading us to facilitate silence and solitude retreats. Keeper’s Loft was thus established, a ministry of soul care with the Lord as our Keeper. 

In 2011, both of us were diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer.

But we continued with the retreat planning and studies at BGST after we recovered from our treatments.

Then in late 2015, my sister had a relapse. Her condition was bad. And I was super triggered. For two months I could not attend to her. By God’s grace, my youngest sister and her friend walked alongside her in this period.

Chiew Kwan (back row, blue top) and her sister (front row, green top) after a Keeper’s Loft retreat that they ran in May 2012. They had both just recovered from surgery and radiotherapy after their cancer diagnosis in end 2011. “My hair had just grown enough for me to drop my wig,” says Chiew Kuan.

I struggled to keep negative thoughts from consuming me. What if the cancer cells were also all over in my body? What is going on, Lord?

I was confused and scared. I could feel the sadness like a thick, heavy weight pushing me into an endless pit.

Precious breath

By God’s divine intervention, I happened to read Henri Nouwen’s Sabbatical Journey: The Diary Of His Final Year.

Nearing the end of the book, something shifted inside me. Nouwen died shortly after his sabbatical. He had been planning and was excited about the next season of his life. He had no inkling that he would die of a heart attack shortly after his sabbatical.

Yet, each day of his last year was fruitful to the end.

Each day that God gave him breath was precious to God; it was so significantly precious that he was still meeting people, ministering to them and planning for his return from his sabbatical.

It was such a clear message to me. I sensed God saying to me that each day that He gives me breath to live is precious to Him. If this is how God views my life, I cannot view it otherwise.

God alone knows our endpoint; God knew Nouwen’s endpoint. Yet, He chose to bring people to Nouwen to minister to up until his last day. 

God knows my endpoint. My focus should not be on the endpoint. My focus should be on each day I have breath! 

The comfort that God knows

The year 2016 was an amazing one of God’s grace for my sister. She was obedient to God’s calling even though she was struggling through the palliative cancer treatment. She sensed God’s prompting to still come with me for our various retreat assignments. And God used her to minister to the individuals at the retreat.

The amazing thing was not just that others were ministered by the Holy Spirit through her. It was also how she was supernaturally filled with fresh energy and refreshed emotionally each time she came.

The high would last for a long while. Then, when she started to feel herself going downhill emotionally, the next assignment would lift her up again.

“As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. God knows our frame; He remembers we are dust.” (Psalm 103:13-14)

It was truly by God’s grace and power that she lived her last days fruitful and well – so well that many were surprised when she passed on in March 2017.

Grace for the moment

Shortly after my sister passed away, my daughter received news that a young leader of a student movement in a developing country had died in an accident at a waterfall.

He was a brilliant young man who was only in his late 20s and planning to get married. The movement in his country had high hopes of finally having a local leader to head the ministry. Then he died suddenly. The world cried out: What a waste!

But  it was not a waste. Each day that he was alive was precious to God. It was so precious in God’s sight that He exposed this young man to trainings and opportunities overseas to interact on the international platform. He was obedient to God’s call and he lived his short life on earth to the fullest.

God knew this young man’s endpoint; God knew my sister’s endpoint. By His grace, He nudged both of us to resign from teaching and started this ministry of soul care through retreats.

As I reflected on my last years with her, I realised that my sister touched many more people’s lives in that last season of her life. She lived well to the end, purely by God’s grace.

At peace in sufficiency

God knows.

This is no longer just cognitive understanding for me. It is a deep knowing that God, my Creator, knows.

He knows my endpoint. Every day that I am alive is a precious gift of life. Each day is precious to God  – and I cannot help but see it in the same light.

So each day, I look forward to the assignment my God has prepared in advance for me to do with joyful expectation.

It is sufficient for me to know that God, my Creator, knows.

READ MORE:

Breaking the silence: A foreign domestic worker and rape survivor’s story of healing

God was not surprised

“Lazarus was dead for four days. So was I”