Eternal Peace

THE AIR-CONDITIONED COLUMBARIUM

GARDEN OF Open daily: 8am-8pm | Public Holidays: 9am-2pm

• Located next to Commonwealth MRT Station

• 99-year lease commencing from 1964

• Clean and peaceful environment

• Transfer of urns or exhumation can be arranged

Single and double niches are available with the following donations:

REGISTER AT OUR COLUMBARIUM OFFICE

400 Commonwealth Drive Faith Methodist Church

Queenstown Chinese Methodist Church (Level 5)

Open Monday to Friday, 9am-5pm (Closed on Public Holidays)

Tel : 6479 8122 | HP : 9670 9935

Fax: 6479 6960

Email: gepc400@gmail.com

* denotes revised pricing ( effective 1 April 2023 )

For booking of niches, please contact the columbarium office to arrange for an appointment.

Some of you would have experienced getting a wood splinter embedded in your hand. As you try to extract the splinter, bits may come away but some remain stubbornly buried. You then fluctuate between finding ways to remove it and ignoring it while hoping that it will somehow disappear.

Apostle Paul wrote of a "thorn in his flesh"—a problem that plagued him. It is unclear what it was, but he sought the Lord to remove it several times. For reasons unknown, God allowed it to remain.

For some of my clients, the thorn in their flesh is a difficult spouse. Complaints about their spouses include that they are demanding, difficult to please, badtempered and to top it all, unwilling to come for counselling.

Clients living with such a thorn in their flesh may seek counselling in the desperate hope of learning some way of behaving around their spouse which would satisfy the latter and thereby reduce conflicts. Some plead with the counsellor to invite, coax or even trick their spouses to undergo counselling and thereby get their spouses to change. Needless to say, such attempts rarely work as counselling does not work vicariously. This means that the person who needs to change must take responsibility for their own behaviour and make the necessary changes.

Unfortunately, the client who comes for consultation is often on the receiving end of bad or unreasonable behaviour. So, what do I offer these clients besides a sympathetic ear?

One response is to help them not to see themselves through others' eyes. For example, if they have been blamed for causing their parents' divorce, I try to get them to see that this is untrue. How can a six- or seven-year-old make two grown persons fight so badly and cause them to end their marriage? The reverse is true too. I have met adults carrying the guilt of "forcing" a parent to stay in bad marriages and suffer. They had come to believe their parent's "If not for you, I would have left your father/mother earlier."

Another response is to help them learn to live with it. To consider and focus on the things that they can change and not on those they cannot. To accept that life is far from perfect. The workaholic spouse who hardly acknowledges your existence or the embittered spouse who feels life is unfair are thorns that we may have to learn to accept and live with. I am not suggesting that we do not hope for some change. Rather, we ought not to hold our breath in anticipation of any change happening soon. Also, I am not suggesting living with abusive or cruel behaviour which is destructive to both the victim and the abuser.

The change we can make is how to live life despite these thorns. If we cannot control the weather, we can at least bring an umbrella or plan a wet weather programme. So, if my spouse is not an outdoors person, perhaps I can still organise hikes and go with my children.

If we can take control of our lives, then we are not ruled by our circumstances. And just like splinter bits that mysteriously disappear, we may find that with time, our thorns become less debilitating.

Darius with his wife, Joyce and their children, Faith, aged 6 and Reuel, aged 3