Oh Sing His Praises, Magnify the Lord!
By Nigel and Sweedy Ng, Centre of New Life

In October 2019, my wife and I experienced the devastating heartbreak of losing our child through a miscarriage. It was a difficult grieving process for us that was filled with many complex unanswered questions; many forms of ‘Why did this happen?’, fighting negative thoughts about God, and the layered ponderings about whether it was something we did or did not do. Though we received a lot of prayer and support, the grief was hard and painful. We had just lost our first born. It took a while to come to terms with it, fully say goodbye-for-now, and come out to talk about it.

God With Us

While the many questions remained unanswered to this day, one similar acknowledgement that we had during the grieving process was that God was with us through it all amidst the pain and grief. As we looked back, we saw that He was there girding us even in the days before the miscarriage happened. We both also felt certain that our unborn child is a son and that he was named Emmanuel, in line with the affirming reality of ‘God with us’.

Much to the credit of God’s grace poured out over our lives in many ways, we managed to go through that experience with a greater trust in God and a blessed knowing that we do have such a precious and reliable hope in Him.

A Dream from God

Fast forward to June 2020, after about eight months of working through our loss and recalibrating physically, both my wife and I decided that we would start trying for children again. Though we still had the nagging fears of the past, we decided that we would turn to God in desperate prayer rather than focus on our fears.

This was when we had quite a ‘hair-standing’ response from the Lord. Jumping straight into it, the day after my wife prayed to God about our desire for a child, our interior designer (ID) who is also a Christian, and who had just earlier in the year completed the renovation of our new home, texted us to share a vivid dream that he sensed he was to share with us.

Through the dream, he saw that we would be with our baby daughter ‘this time next year’. As for the hair-standing part, he also added this extra detail that, in the dream, we also have a son but he was confused since he did not see our son with us. When he shared that, we immediately knew that it was a dream from the Lord since our ID did not know about our miscarriage or that our firstborn was a son who had returned to be with the Lord.

Besides having goosebumps, I remembered feeling overwhelmed that God provided such an explicit dream to assure us even when He did not have to. Imagining if He had not done this, it could have otherwise been quite an anxious experience embarking on trying for a child again, and wondering (even after you get pregnant) if the child would make it.

God Heard and Answered

Soon afterwards, my wife, having missed her period, tested and was found to be with a child! By faith and through God’s leading we named her ‘Eliana’ which means ‘God heard and answered me’ in the Hebrew language in dedication to God’s faithfulness and loving-kindness. Sure enough, four months later in October 2020, our baby scan showed that our child was indeed a baby girl! In February, we welcomed Eliana to our family.

We can only give thanks and praise God for His wonderful faithfulness and loving-kindness!

As I come to a close, I am reminded of Psalm 34:8 that says “Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in Him” and the lyrics from the song“Let us exalt His name” that sings, “Let us exalt His name together forever, I sought the Lord, He heard me, and delivered me from my fears. Let us exalt His name together forever, oh sing His praises, magnify the Lord!”.