When Love Gets Overwhelming

As many of you in the group already know, my twins were conceived through IVF donor embryos. In other words they might have grown in my womb for 9 months, but I have no slightest idea who their biological parents are, except they are fellow patients of IVF treatment. Being such precious babies, it is a great challenge for Adrian and I not to spoil them and give in to all their whims and fancies. Yet it is exactly due to the uniqueness of their coming to being that we have to make sure they don't turn guinea pigs and be experiments for our parenting style, for we'll never get a second chance again. We still pamper them in our own ways, Adrian spoil them by relaxing on their choice of food, while I spoil them by spending much money on books they ask for. As they grow, our love for them becomes overwhelming when we don't change our style of loving them, and they find it difficult to cope with love for a 4-year-old kid when they are turning 7 in two months' time. It's time to reflect on how we show them our love and not overwhelm them with it.

Adrian dreads coming home for dinner. Mind you, I'm actually quite a good cook if I say so myself. I can easily whip up a quick and presentable meal to welcome brothers and sisters in Christ and have a great time fellowshipping. Yet Adrian dreads the idea of coming home for dinner. Simply because my cooking is a manifestation of my love for the family. And he is overwhelmed by this love. His working hours are irregular, sometimes he can get home only after 8 or 9pm, and by then he would have no more appetite for dinner. If I have kept food for him, he would have to force them down his throat just to keep me happy. But that makes him suffer. I have come to learn to cook only for the kids and myself and leave only soup for him so that the pressure is less on him.

I have only 1 sister, and she is 11 years younger than me. She went to the States to do her Masters in 2006 and settled down in the States, tying the knot this year. She has always been my baby, I have always looked out for her, prepared her breakfast daily even when my mum had a helper, altered all her uniforms for her since she was in P1 until Sec 3 when I got married. For a long while she was at a loss without me at home as she was so used to having me pamper her. She asked me why couldn't I get married later when she's grown up, or why couldn't I continue to stay at my parents' after wedding. When she was in P4 and due for her steaming exams, I would chase after her everyday with a cane because she won't do her Chinese assessments or read Chinese storybooks. Naturally I wanted the best for her, and the best is EM1. With her Chinese results, she needed a lot of whipping to get to Band 1. Thank God she scraped through an 85 and got into EM1. She really hated me those days including my mum, and I was nicknamed the stepmother. they couldn't understand why the emphasis on Chinese and it was my way of loving my sister. Now that all has gone past, my sis finally sees my point of view then, and in fact want to send her children to Singapore to study under our bilingual system when she has kids in future.

Some of you who know my disciple Natalie Chan would know her dramatic childhood and family background. When it was decided that I should be her discipler, I gave my heart and soul to the extent of giving advices on her parenting style, her marriage, how she should manage her time. While she truly needs help in all these areas, I didn't realise I'd overstepped her boundaries and made her uncomfortable with me. Perhaps it's the difference between our education background, perhaps it's because I'm always putting up a serious front, she just feels she can't truly open up to me for fear of hurting me even though she considers me the dearest person to her. I have unconsciously overwhelmed her with too much love, so much that even her husband of almost 9 years couldn't give half of it. I'm so proud of her that she finally managed to face the problem and resolve it with me before 2008 ended, so that we may start afresh in 2009. She's been too used to being independent and making her own decisions, to suddenly have someone come in and treat you like a baby who doesn't know left from right is indeed a pain in the behind. But I'm so glad this is all settled now, and I can look forward to natalie picking herself up and accepting our friendship once again, doing the follow-up study once again.

When love get overwhelming, it can actually hurt. How interesting.