A World Without Music

How Upside Down is My Thinking????

There have been quite a few accomplished people throughout history that because of circumstances surrounding their birth, many believe an abortion would have been justified. There’s a well-known story about a woman that had tuberculosis and a man that had syphilis. Together they had four children. Their first child was born blind. The second child was stillborn. The third child was deaf and dumb, and their fourth was born with tuberculosis. When she was pregnant with their fifth child, many in today’s society would think that an abortion would have been appropriate. That fifth child was Beethoven.

Sometimes it seems that we have things turned around, even upside down..even when our motives are loving...as those who advise abortion as appropriate.

I was born at the tip end of a world war and my mother was advised to have an abortion. However in her fifth month of pregnancy with me, my older brother died suddenly when he contracted malaria at the tender age of four. He was their first and golden child.

In those days where I grew up, in Hongkong, my family immersed in a superstitious joy luck club mentality, it was considered evil luck to touch death when one was carrying a child. As my young mother descended the steps of the hospital where she had to leave her only child without even a final touch goodbye, she felt for the first time a gentle kick from inside her womb, as God assured her at that very moment that my brand new teeny heart was beating for her. I was the privileged forecaster of blue skies ahead even though her heart would be seeing grey for what must have seemed to her forever. Five months later, in a post-war hospital on the last night of a long December of waiting, I was born.

From that first moment, God used me to help, long before I was completely formed in my mother's womb. Even though my brain was yet not fully formed, I could make a difference with my little being. She was certainly thankful then that she had not not considered the counsel of well intentioned others for her to terminate her pregnancy. Wartime is no time to have another, some advised. Little did they know, it would be the best of times for another child to come into my parents' broken hearts.

Yes, often, the downside of a child being born of or into negative circumstances is so frighening to so many of us that our tender hearts cannot bear to see it live, We take the iniative to protect it, him/her from imagined suffering-even at the cost of life.

Like my mother, who took a chance and kept me, none of us know the future and the purpose of life being given at that moment. Many of us advise others to play it safe. We choose safe without knowing what safe really is.

In doing so, we place our bets about this little one's future on the downside- the probability of a life without the necessary.. music. But what about the possible upside? A life that may bring with it wonderful music, in spite or maybe because of, suffering.

This possibility calls forth faith; it cannot come naturally from relying purely on human reason. Even the seemingly safer bet, one that comes from compassion, cannot be all -knowing. For it to be true compassion, it must be aligned with truth, about who this precious one really is and what his or her purpose may be in this mysterious life? And the truth is..we don't know everything or even anything for certain about the future of this new life.

Must these little people perish for our lack of knowledge?. Since we have not the light to see the conductor's notes, how can we blindly destroy His music, however dark it may seem. Isn't is safer to hold on to His hand in the dark, trusting Him to burst His song, giving life as He wishes to. Why would one dare to bear the weight of such supernatural responsibility as to decide what is in the best interest of another's yet unlived life, when we are utterly dependent for each breath we take to maintain our own?

Our Crazy Loving Unlimited One and Only Lord,

Exquisite ones,

even now ,..pressing close

to Your beating heart.

Sacred little lovers'

soaring above angels,

sifting through rainbows.

Promises, bursting forth.

Furious, sticky, and crying.

Fleshy, sucking and clinging.

Nuzzling to puzzled breasts

and clumsy hands.

Protect these fragile,

hampered children,

little ones marred

by rape,

by lust

by hate,

by hopelessness .

by drugs,

by drunkenness

by duty,

by one night stands

by spring breaks

by girls gone wild

by convenience

by inconvenience.

so that in the end,..

one by one,

would live

and grow

to know,

to love,

to serve

as You intended,..

from their beginning.