God calls each one he loves from the time when he/she was in the womb of his/her mother. God has a plan for each one of us for our good. His love for the person is infinite and his desire is to have each one in full union with him and he will do anything to attain that purpose, that is also the ultimate goal of our existence.

As I look back into my childhood, I can see the plan of God and his leading hand in my life. My mother told me I was very weak when I was a little child, quite often attacked by various kind of sickness. The most serious one was tuberculosis. That time, many children in our village got the disease, since there was no good doctor or hospital in the village, the only treatment was to take herbal medicine. Other children got well with it except me. I was becoming very sick and vomited blood, my mother was scared and she carried me on her back and walked to the town
far away to look for a doctor. The doctor’s comment broke the heart of my mother, ‘Why come so late? I can only try my best and see if she can get through the night.’ He gave me injection and told my mother to observe me during the night, there could be hope if I could struggle through that night. I have no memory of what had happened that night, but I survived. It must be the love of God for me that saw me through.

Quite often I got fever and was not allowed to go out of the house though longing very much to do so. I could only look through the window to watch other children playing outside. I must have felt my own physical weakness, I would stay quiet and did not request to go out. As little
children long to enjoy outdoor activities, I was feeling sad to be inside the house all day long. I would ask my mother when I could go out, but every time the reply I got was, ‘Be patient, one day you will be out again with your elder brother to join your play-mates.’ This one day took
long time to come. Some other kinds of sickness would come to me to try my health: I got sores all over my body. It was hard to take care of me, with the ulcers at different parts of my body, it was hard to lay me down to sleep without pressing on the wounds. My mother and grandmother had to take turn to carry me carefully so to let me sleep half hanging in the air to lessen the pain. Then all my fingers and toes got boils on them, they needed to be wrapped up during my sleep, but I would pull the bandage away when I woke up, then the same procedure had to be repeated. In my constant sickness, I also got worried and I asked my mother in tears, ‘Will I die? ’ It must be a heart breaking question for my mother.

The real heart breaking happening for my mother was the death of my two younger brothers. The one after me died at the age of two. He was a healthy baby, I saw his photo at the album and I still remember his face. He grew happily and healthily under the love of the family. When I got sick, my mother spent most her time to take care of me, my younger brother was left to the care of other family members. One day, they found him with cough and thought that he had caught flu. His condition got serious rapidly and he died of pneumonia. My mother was greatly grieved and her health was affected. She was expecting the next baby during this hard period, when my other younger brother was born, he was weak. He only enjoyed the love of the family for a few months before he went to join the other one in the love of God. The death of two sons, one after the other, was too much for my mother, my grandmother told me she dared not to mention anything about the two babies in front of my mother and the nice smile on mother’s face vanished for a long time.

As I grew up, I often wondered why being the weaker one, I was not the one who died. The more I reflected on my life, I came to the discovery that God does not work according to human logic, he works according to his plan of love for each one of his beloved children, often in mysterious ways. The more I looked back into how God has led me and protected me with his loving hands, the more I was grateful to his infinite, immense and unconditional love for me. My heart was always filled with love for him. The gratitude and love in my heart swelled into a strong desire to give myself totally to God. Actually it was his love for me calling for a response. I was chosen in love, by Love and it was God who gave me the grace and courage to response to his great love. Don’t you think in love with God is just romantic, it is also, or better say, most of the time it entails sacrifice and suffering. It is scary at the first sight, but when one is attracted by the love of God, nothing can stop her to trod the way of the cross with her lover. I will share my own experience next time. (To be continued)