Wife and MUM 04/2013 – Love and Rotten Eggs

Thursday 4 July 2013

On the last week of each month Irene travels to Singapore to support her daughter. Her daughter would be busy in the office and usually manages to get back home late in the night. Mother and daughter has a close bond and with a grandson who laughs enthusiastically and kisses his grandma unconditionally, Irene looks forward to the trip lovingly.

Each trip is planned out carefully. She is part of church choir who practices every Wednesday night and Sunday afternoon. In addition for every first and third Sunday the choir renders a hymn of praise. Therefore Irene plans her trip to avoid not attending practice on Wednesday and rendition of hymn on Sunday. She scrutinize the calender and bus-coach schedule to ensure she will not miss practice or rendition if possible. She generally purchase her ticket for a Thursday trip on the fourth week and get back on Tuesday of the first week. In this way she achieves her objective of not missing practice and rendition. I asked her why she goes to all this trouble. Her answer is “We must be committed to the team. What if everyone of us do as we like. Also when we serve in the singing ministry, we must serve diligently and faithfully.”

For the three weeks when she is in Malaysia, she would be looking at cloths for her grandson, utensils for her daughter and food for her son-in-law. Therefore shopping for her is a joy, because she builds love into her shopping.

Today, Irene went to the market to get a fresh chicken to cook and bring to Singapore. Her son-in-law likes “Kaya - Coconut Jam" for spreading over the bread. To prepare home cooked Kaya, it takes fresh eggs, pandan leaves, coconut milk, sugar and flour plus probably four hours of constantly stirring the ingredients and watching the fire. She enjoys her labor of love so it is not a chore.

Last night she bought the eggs, sugar and flour from the supermarket. This morning at the fresh market, she bought the coconut to make coconut milk.  The first step in making the Kaya is to prepare the eggs. She broke five eggs into a bowl. On breaking the sixth egg, there is this pungent, smelly odour. She has broken a rotten egg into the bowl. So there goes the Kaya. No Kaya for her son-in-law this month.

Kaya can be bought from the supermarket, the coffee shops and lots of others places. Therefore this is not an issue. The interesting aspect is what is next after breaking the rotten egg into the bowl? The essence of a person character comes across after a negative unexpected event. An unexpected event that cause discomfort to us. How do we cope?

Irene called me to show me the rotten egg in the bowl. I suggested we wrapped the eggs up in a plastic bag and throw it into the garbage can.  Irene says if we do that the whole neighbour hood will smell of rotten eggs, and within a few hours worms will be seen wriggling out of the uncooked eggs.

What Irene did was to scoop up the rotten egg and washed it down the drain with plenty of water. Then cooked the remaining eggs after which they were disposed of in the garbage can. In this way, there would be no rotten smell and no worms to worry over.

“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.”

- C.S.Lewis

Questions for reflection:
1. What positive actions can I take when faced with negative unexpected events that does not work in my favor?

Cheers.
Hope to see you soon.

Papa Coaching

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