"His name shall be Joash" - My Father's testimony

I remember clearly back in September 1987 when it all started. My wife was pregnant with my second child, and we were all really excited about it. Our first son, Jo Hann was born in a year ago and the immense joy and laughter he brought to us and our house made us all look forward to the coming of a second son.

We were visiting my mother-in-law back in Alor Setar when my wife limped out of the room. She motioned for me to go over to her, and she pulled me to a corner.

"What's wrong dear?" I asked.

"Something's really wrong," I could sense great fear and anxiety in her voice. "I'm bleeding profusely.. and it hasn't stop since the last 20 minutes."

I was shocked. The carriage was already in the third trimester and my wife was expecting in January 1988. Profuse bleeding at this stage was surely no good sign at all.

The next day I rushed her back to Ipoh, and she was still bleeding when I took her to the Ipoh GH. The doctors checked her in the medical room while I waited outside. And that was when I started to pray in a long long time.

Lord, are you pulling a joke on me or what? If it's anything that I've done wrong, punish me, but spare my wife and my child.. Come on Lord, you can't do this to me can you..

Then the doctor called me into the room to be with my wife. Wearing his long white outfit with a stethoscope over his neck, he spoke solemnly as he penned down his diagnosis on my wife's medical report book.

"Mr and Mrs Tan, I'm afraid that I have to tell you very frankly.. that though I am yet to underline the root cause of your wife's profuse bleeding, but if this continues, there are only 2 outcomes: it's either going to be a threatened abortion, or a miscarriage."

Threatened abortion..

Miscarriage..

The journey back home was a dead silent one. No conversation, no nothing. I thought I heard my wife sob quietly but she swallowed all the tears.

We made a detour to pick up my elder son - we left him in a friend's place to look after him while I took my wife to the hospital earlier on - as soon as he jumped into the car, he said with great excitement, "Mummy! Mummy! Guess what, Jesus told me that I'm going to have a baby brother! And Jesus told me that he's going to be very very cute too.." and he started talking about how his younger 'brother' is going to play with him, run around the house with him..

I looked at my wife, and she was just all ears. Coming from our little one year old son who just learned how to talk, she felt that this is a revelation from God. And little kids don't lie, do they?

That night back in our room, me and my wife went down to both our knees. We were about to pray when I popped the question to her, "Dear, are you prepared to go through the whole thing again if we lose this one?"

With such confidence and assurance in her tone - contrary to her state of emotions when she just left the hospital after the medical check-up - she replied, "This child, this son, is going to be from God. Where medical personals have failed to sustain, God will sustain my son as long as he is in my womb."

And I was in awe.

She prayed, "Lord, as much as you've granted me this child, as long as it is in my womb, it's safe in your hands. Give me this child Lord, and I'll dedicate my life to the upbringing of both kids that you've given me, that in all their ways your Name will be lifted high, your works be exalted, your Kingdom glorified."

And I broke down in tears, such faith of my wife, and deep in my heart I knew that if anything would happen, she was more than ready to give up everything she had to protect the baby in her carriage.

The next 3 months that followed, in my very own words, was a period of grace and mercy. Because never in my life have I felt so assured and peaceful in the thought of the baby that my wife is going to deliver. And the mere thought of the baby would bring us joy and peace, and though the bleeding didn't stop, we were more than prepared for the blessings that we expected from God.

Of course, we didn't stop seeing doctors, not becuase we lacked faith, but becuase we needed some medication..

Then in the wee hours of 11th January 1988, my wife delivered an 8 pound baby that looked like a little white chubby sumo wrestler. His cries - according to the doctors on call that very morning - could be heard from the hallway half a mile across my wife's delivery room. And as she held our little son, I asked her, "So what's his name gonna be?"

"His name shall be Joash."

"What does Joash mean?"

My wife smiled as she craddled the little sumo. "It means," she paused to gaze into my eyes lovingly. "God sustains."

And through the years of my son's life, I have seen how God's grace and mercy has sustained him through his school years, and how God has sustained him in our family, and above all, how God has blessed us through this whole experience. An odd way of learning how to trust in God indeed, but a necessary lesson to learn that God's the one that is always in control, and trusting in His ways are never wrong.

- a narration from my dad's point of speech. The authenticity of this testimony can not be proven unless you talk to my dad personally, of which I doubt any of you people would. -


Postlude: I recently did a Google search for the meaning of my name, and I found out that the name Joash also means 'Fire of Yahweh', so that perhaps explains why I have such a foul temper at times.