“Is this bottle of essence of chicken for me?” I asked. “Yes, ah mah (my mother) asked me to give that to you,” Yati, my mother’s maid answered. I hadn’t taken essence of chicken for a while. Mum used to give it to me a lot especially before exams. Essence of chicken is one of mum’s love languages. The bottle of essence of chicken on the dining table was a reminder that mum loved me.
I was having breakfast before taking a cab to the airport. I was in Penang for some ministry with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, Asia-Pacific. I have the privilege of serving on their board and we were in Penang hosting a pastor’s breakfast to introduce the ministry to some key leaders there. I also took the opportunity to visit my mother.
Mum is 83. Every time I visit I wonder how much time I have with her. Every time I visit I note her memory and hearing deteriorating. (For reasons I do not fully understand she refuses to get a hearing aid.) This visit, she was also recovering from a bad flu. Must have been really bad because she didn’t have the energy to catch some of her favourite TV shows. I thank God she felt better towards the end of my visit. She even had the energy to go for an after dinner drive with me. We “makan angin” (dynamic translation: feasted on the breeze). She doesn’t drive at night and enjoys been driven around town just to see the sights. (Mum still drives in the daytime, something that really improves our prayer life.)
As we drove she recounted stories from our past. This time she told me why dad was so stressed in his job just before he retired. The stress led to his heart attack though by the grace of God he lived for many years after that. I understood better what my dad went through and how he wanted to shield me from his problems so that my studies would not be affected. (I was in university then.) I also understood that when mum passes on, I would no longer have access to lots of family history. I am trying to remember all she is telling me but also realizing that my own memory is not that hot anymore. I jot key points in my journal.
We come from a small family. There is just the three of us. (Dad has passed on.) My sister lives in Kuala Lumpur. Because of her work she visits mum a few times a year. I too visit a few times a year. We have asked mum to come live with us in Singapore. She says no and we understand why. Her social networks are in Penang. And she lives in Pulau Tikus, an area that has all the amenities she needs. No, mum will not relocate to Singapore. That means I need to come to Penang more often.
I reside in Singapore. In any given month I spend about three weekends in Singapore and one in Malaysia. I am still committed to ministry there. Usually when I am in Malaysia, I am in Kuala Lumpur/Petaling Jaya (KL/PJ). I still have many ministry relationships in KL/PJ. But I sense that from next year onwards, my one Malaysian weekend a month is to be spent in Penang if possible. I have thought about doing this before. It’s time I did it.
The fact that I link visiting mum with ministry shows how work focused I am. There is always so much to do and it all looks important. And since mum is 500 miles away it is easy for her to fall under my radar. But God’s will for how I am to treat my mother is clear. I am to honour her (Exodus 20:12). What does it mean to honour parents? Here are some insights from Patrick D. Miller.
. . . to “honor” parents is to regard them as persons of great weight, to treat them with high regard. (The Ten Commandments, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009, 176)
One way in which we treat our parents with high regard is to care for them.
Honoring father and mother is expressed in concrete actions that enhance and thus give “weight” to the parents, in the most literal way possible: with respect to clothing, food, shelter, and maintenance of general welfare. While there has been a tendency among some to reduce the meaning of the commandment almost entirely to such care, at least in its original understanding, recognizing a broader and more open applicability to the commandment does not mean that one may ignore what is clearly both exemplary of and central to its meaning in any time and circumstance. (Miller, The Ten Commandments, 181)
God expects me to treat my mother in high regard. I believe mum’s physical needs are cared for. The most important gift I can give her is time. Increasingly that is the only love language that counts.