My Father's Saving Hand
It is a long way from the Thai–Burma border hills to a home in suburban Sydney. Peempahn Henley tells her story.
I was born into a strict well-to-do Buddhist family in a village on the Thai–Burma border, in 1980. Life went well for me as a baby until, at 19 months old, I had my first encounter with death. I was afflicted by seizures on and off for two days.
My parents called a medical doctor, then a herbal doctor, then sent for some Buddhist monks, but all failed to heal me. My family resigned themselves to my imminent death, then waited.
Sure enough, I stopped breathing, lying peacefully in my crib, late in the second evening. According to my parents, they had collected everything needed for my funeral, but, amazingly, I began breathing again.
“It was as if a powerful hand had placed life back in you,” my father recalled to me many years later.
My second battle with death came when I was nine. It was a very bad year for our family. Burmese soldiers attacked along the border, and we lost our home and land. In despair, my family moved to the closest of the refugee camps, where we were given rations.
Within a few weeks of arriving, I was struck with deadly cerebral malaria, which put me in a coma. A French nurse, who was volunteering in the camp, took me to a government hospital in a town about 13 km away. There, my parents told me, I was wheeled into the ICU room where doctors did some intestinal cleansing and bathed me.
After being unconscious for three days, everyone was both surprised and relieved to see me waking. Three days later, I was home. The doctor told my parents that had I come in even half-an-hour later, I would most likely have died.
My third battle came in 1992. I was a 12-year-old boarding student in Grade 6. Behind the school ran a creek, which at that time was in flood, so we younger children were banned from bathing in it for several weeks. But the time came when we were given permission to wash there. The water was still very deep, but the school’s rainwater tanks were getting low.
I was playing around with my girlfriends in the water, but I couldn’t swim. As we came close to the riverbank, I slipped my hand from my friend’s shoulder, preparing to get onto a tethered raft. I didn’t know that the water was very deep, the bank gouged by the flooding.
I disappeared under the muddy flood, suspended just below the surface, swallowing mouthfuls of water. As I drifted downstream, I remembered an underwater cave. I dreaded the thought of having my body stuck there. As a good little Buddhist girl, I tried to think of a short chant for supernatural intervention, but nothing came to mind. However, for the past three years, I had heard about “Jesus” in the school. But I had never prayed to Him.
In my fear, I said my first simple prayer to Jesus. It was the cry of a desperate 12-year-old: Dear Jesus, if you help me this time, I will get baptised at the end of this year. A simple bargain.
And He helped me! A moment later, I bumped into a stump, and, grasping its roots, I pulled myself out of the water. Now I had to keep my promise, so was eventually baptised. I had, however, omitted to inform my family at home. I prayed that my family would not disown me, should they discover this before I could tell them myself. But when I told them, to my surprise, they didn’t get angry. I thanked God for another answer to a simple prayer.
Although God always leaves us with a choice, I thank Him that He “worked hard” on me, not letting up until I knew Him and had accepted Him as my Saviour. He could have let me die on any of those three critical occasions.
It was my belief that God kept me alive for some purpose, preparing me for a task I didn’t yet know about, but bit by bit is being revealed.
In 1996, I was a Year 12 student, still in the same boarding school. Again, God was preparing my future. I completed my studies and helped as a teacher in the school. At the same time, the principal allowed me to take some examinations from Cambridge University for college entrance. Since I was a full-time teacher, it took me two years to do six subjects. Then, without warning, in late 1997, I received a letter from my former history teacher, Jared, a computer-engineering student at the time, who was working as a volunteer.
Amazed, I read of his love for me, something he was too gentlemanly to express to me while I was a student.
I was stunned, and didn’t know what to say. For a couple of days, I pondered his question. In many ways, I liked Jared. He possessed the qualities I liked in a man. He had adjusted himself so well to the point that he even dressed and ate like a Karen. He had been studying Thai and Karen so that he could talk to the students. I wished I could say yes, but I was afraid of the future. I was planning to go to college. I thought, If we have a relationship, will it last? How will my [Buddhist] family react toward me if I have a Christian boyfriend? And Jared’s parents to me, an ordinary girl?
Finally, I reasoned against myself, True love is really rare, and I don’t want to get hurt. I did not ask God for His guidance. So my reply was no, but I politely added that we could be “brother” and “sister.”
We did keep in touch by mail, with me in Thailand and he in Australia, until one afternoon in December 1998, he wrote to say he was coming back to Thailand. The school was thrilled to hear this news. Volunteers were always welcomed, because we were always short of teachers. I was happy for the students, but on the other hand, I didn’t know how to react to him.
When the news was announced in a staff meeting, all eyes turned toward me! When the other teachers left, our minister came over to me and said with a friendly smile, “Why don’t you pray about it?” Twice more that day I was to receive the same question. I was beginning to second-guess my original negative decision.
That night, I told God all about my dilemma. In fact I prayed about it every night until Jared arrived in February 1999. When we finally met, I thought how handsome he was, wondering to myself how I hadn’t noticed this charm before.
Eventually I yielded and told Jared that, yes, I did love him, and three days later, we celebrated a quiet engagement party. Jared had all but given up on me, so when I told him what God had done, and Jared told me how his prayers were answered, we both thanked Him for bringing us together in His time. Six months later, I left for college, but we called and wrote to each other to keep our relationship alive. Jared also visited me, once a month at first, but later once a week for two and a half years! Jared’s father married us just before Christmas 2001, a year-and-a-half before I graduated, and I became a Mrs Henley!
My father was really furious, because I had not only married a white man, but a Christian too. We had many problems with my family, who all but disowned me at the time, but during those downhearted days, Jared’s parents were my support. I thanked God for giving me a real family.
A few days after we married, we visited my family. And although they were 500 km away from the college, we made an effort to visit them once a month. Five months after our marriage, I was thrilled to see my father having long conversations with Jared, with my help, and to hear my mum making positive comments about her son-in-law. Although Pa died suddenly of a heart attack a short time later, we thanked God for bringing us that close.
Now, living in Sydney, Australia, we still thank God for His helping us to come together, for helping us to build a strong relationship, bound closer together by cords of His love.
This very special experience helped me a great deal in my spiritual growth, and I communicate with God in prayer, a habit that began at the bottom of a muddy creek in an isolated corner of the world many years ago, just like I talk with Jared.
God says, “I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” [Jeremiah 29:11]. And in my life, He has both promised and fulfilled.
Home - Archive - Topics - Podcast - Subscribe - Special Offers - About Signs - Contact Us - Links
 |
 |
|
Copyright © 2006 Seventh-day Adventist Church (SPD) Limited ACN 093 117 689
