Kelvin Tan, 2006 , Singapore
Father’s Day is approaching and I would like to wish all fathers out there a very Happy Father’s Day!
Fatherhood doesn’t begin with the birth of our precious child. Fatherhood began in eternity with God, our Abba Father. Jesus came to reveal God as “Father” to us in the New Testament.
I have found immense joy in being a father. There was a time when I battled with the possibility that I may never ever get to be a father in this lifetime. My wife Cynthia, and I, have been married for almost 12 years now, but it took us close to 10 long years before we became parents.
As we tried more than 5 years for a baby, we wrote the name of a baby girl we’ve had in our hearts – “Mireille” – meaning “miracle”— on the back of our weekly offering envelopes as we gave to the Lord. Weeks, months and years went by, and the baby we were praying and hoping for didn’t come. Then we realised that we had severe issues with fertility.
From the period of 2017 to 2019, Cyn and I went through 4 rounds of IVF – which is an assisted means for reproduction. Each round of IVF was not only costly, but also very painful (both physically and emotionally). It was especially painful for my wife, as she had to endure around 150 hormonal injections over a 3-year period. To make things worse, whenever our IVF procedure failed, we were heartbroken and devastated. It was very challenging emotionally.
However, we are really thankful to our community of pastors and friends who continued to pray for us, encourage us and cheer us up when we were down. Pastor Bobby Chaw reminded us that in every season we go through, we needed to have faith; for the just shall live by faith, not by sight. Cyn and I made a decision: whether we ended up having a child or not, what was most important was that we could not lose our faith in God and in His faithfulness.
Each time, Cyn and I strengthened ourselves in the Lord and did not lose heart, trusting that God is good and knows what is best for us even when we cannot see it.
At the start of our fourth IVF in August 2019, God impressed very deeply upon our hearts about adoption. We had a personal revelation that adoption is very close to the heart of God – we ourselves were adopted through Jesus into God’s own family! We discussed and decided that if we successfully conceived a baby through the fourth IVF, years down the road, we would want to adopt a second child. But should our fourth IVF fail, we knew our next step. We would kickstart our adoption journey immediately.
Subsequently, our fourth IVF failed. After a time of grieving, we began our adoption journey. From the beginning, we wanted the Lord to orchestrate it all. Rather than “choosing” a baby from a list, we wanted Him to handpick the baby that He wanted us to have.
In August 2020, in the height of the Covid pandemic, baby Mireille joined our little family. We were told that a baby was placed for adoption, and it was a baby girl—we knew instinctively that she was ours—our Mireille whose name we had been writing on every envelope all those years!
Mireille has been with us since she was three days old and she has been our miracle baby for the last 21 months now. Every day, we thank the Lord for her!
Recently, Mireille was diagnosed with “Global Developmental Delay”, rating 1 (out of 10) for every single area of her development. Yet, we are just so thankful to the Lord for placing her in our care and we know that the Lord who breathed life into her, will continue to sustain her, provide for her and protect her. We pray that she will experience the love of God through us and that God’s blessings will have no sorrows added to them. We are so filled with joy every single day, and if we could choose between adopting Mireille or supernaturally birthing a baby of our own, we will still choose to adopt Mireille all over again!
To all the amazing fathers, waiting-to-be-fathers, adoptive fathers, foster fathers, and struggling fathers out there, God who gave life to your children, will continue to sustain, provide for and protect them. He truly can take better care of them than we ever can. Our primary role is to focus on becoming like Jesus, and in that process, become a reflection of Jesus to our children!
May God give you all the wisdom, strength and anointing to parent your child in the ways of the Lord! Happy Father’s Day!