It took a suicide attempt, jail and a fiery accident before he turned his life around

Caleb Tan lay in a dilapidated house in the Philippines. He had just woken up after a failed suicide attempt, where he had ingested a large box of rat poison and 80 sleeping pills.

Then he heard a still, small voice tell him: “I created you. Go back to Singapore.”

He was at his wits’ end.

Depressed, alone and broke in a foreign land, he retorted: “But how to go back to Singapore when I’ve overstayed here already? I where got money to buy air ticket and pay the fine?”

Again, the voice said: “Go back to Singapore.”

Suspecting that the voice was of God, Caleb challenged it: “If You really are God, You help me. If You want me to go back, You open a way for me lah.”

FLEEING SINGAPORE

Caleb’s addiction to drugs had led him down a life of vice. Just in his 30s at that time, he had spent nearly a third of his life behind bars. He thought that marrying his Filipino girlfriend in 2007 would transform him.

It did. But only for six short months.

Then things went downhill. Caleb, who was selling drugs to support his own addiction, introduced his wife to drugs. He also resorted to cheating and stealing, which led to the court charges and him fleeing to the Philippines in late 2007.

“If You really are God, You help me. If You want me to go back, You open a way for me lah.”

There, he fell back onto his old ways and was eventually chased out of his wife’s family home.

His then mother-in-law took pity on him and rented a place for him and gave him a small allowance. The money allowed him to buy broken rice, a small piece of animal fat and cabbage.

He also used it to buy clean water. To make that last, he would lather up with muddy, mosquito larvae-infested water before using two scoops of clean water for his final rinse.

Caleb was on the wanted list in Singapore, but he knew life in a Singapore prison would be better than his current life.

COMING HOME

Caleb first became a Christian in 2000 when he was sentenced to a year at the Drug Rehabilitation Centre (DRC) for drug consumption. It was Good Friday.

“I actually accepted Jesus then because of a piece of cake,” he recalled with a laugh.

Some inmates had told him about a party, where the organisers were talking about God. “I just accepted lah, free what. But I was stubborn, I didn’t open my heart (to Him).”

Sart S (second from left) and Caleb (second from right) became good friends after entering The Hiding Place together in 2010, with both breaking free from their drug addictions.

But getting back to Singapore was not going to be a piece of cake; he was going to need a miracle.

With only his ex-wife to turn to, he asked her for help. As God would have it, someone gave her the money to send him back. Caleb was arrested upon arrival in Singapore and subsequently tried and sentenced to 12 months in jail.

While he was thankful for the short prison term – his shortest ever – he was worried about what would happen to him when he was released. He did not have anywhere to go.

ALL FOR MONEY

While incarcerated, Caleb was introduced to a prison fellowship, where he got to know a Sister Angie. She suggested he go to a halfway house upon his release.

She also asked him to meditate on Matthew 6:24 while serving time.

“People used to call me ‘7 Eleven’ because 24 hours, seven days a week, I had drugs to sell.

As he thought about his life, he realised that his pursuit of money had been his downfall.

“When I was young, I was bullied in school. I told myself that when I grew up, I wanted to be the bully and to earn money and power. So, I worked towards my goal. I joined gangs and did all sorts of illegal things.

“People used to call me ‘7 Eleven’ because 24 hours, seven days a week, I had drugs to sell. My mother and my grandmother couldn’t control me. I was in and out of DRC and prison, spending over 10 years in prison.

Knowing it was God who had pulled him out of the abyss, Caleb resolved to turn his life around. 

“I’ve had enough. I want to try and serve God,” he told Sister Angie. “I want to go to the halfway house.”

FROM ORPHAN TO SON

When he arrived at The Hiding Place on September 2010, Caleb was taken aback by how the founders – the late Pastor Philip Chan and his wife, Christina – treated him. 

“I don’t have any blood relation with them but they treated me like a son … all my life, I did my best to buy and earn love. But here, it was so freely given to me,” an emotional Caleb shared.

Caleb may not have any surviving relatives but he found spiritual parents in Pastor Philip and Christina, whom he affectionately called “mother”.

His grandmother raised him after his father died. Growing up, he thought his mother was dead too, as he had never seen her.

He only knew of her existence after his grandmother took out a newspaper advertisement to look for her as her details were needed to make his identification card.

“I hated my mum a lot. Why did she give birth to me if she didn’t want me?”

“From young, there’s a lot of bitterness and hate inside,” he said. “I hated my mum a lot. Why did she give birth to me if she didn’t want me?”

Experiencing God’s love through the Chans and the halfway house family, while discovering God through the daily Bible studies, Caleb was so touched that he asked to be baptised three months later.

INTO THE FIRE

Just eight days after his baptism, on December 6, 2010, Caleb got into a serious machinery-related accident. He suffered five broken ribs, a collapsed lung and second-, third- and fourth-degree burns on his legs, stomach and back.

He was pulled into the machine after his shirt got tangled with the machine. A solid stainless-steel rod, as thick as a finger, had pierced through his back, breaking five of his ribs. But miraculously, the rod bent and broke before it reached his lungs, so his life was spared.

A steel rod that pierced through his back, breaking five ribs, bent and broke before reaching his lungs.

When the accident happened, there was no one nearby.

As Caleb shouted for help, the only person that walked past continued on his way as he was hard of hearing. Desperate, Caleb cried out: “God, You help me!”

Suddenly, the person turned and ran over to stop the machine – he knew which button to press. This was another miracle because he had never handled that machine before.

Caleb suffered fourth-degree burns on his left leg from the accident but the bone was miraculously unscathed.

But Caleb was not out of the woods yet.

Doctors warned that the fourth-degree burns to his left leg likely extended beyond the skin to affect his bone. They would need to remove the affected portions of his bone and re-join it. One leg will be shorter and Caleb would not be able to walk normally again.

BURNT BUT UNSCATHED

Pastor Philip, who was with him when the doctors delivered the grim news, assured Caleb: “Don’t worry. The Hiding Place will take care of you.”

The promise shocked him. “’I have got no relationship with them, why they give me this promise?”

Caleb at a church talking about how God has changed his life.

After the operation, the doctors told Pastor Philip that Caleb was very lucky, someone must have been helping him because the fire had burned all his flesh but the bone was unscathed.

“A lot of miracles occurred when this accident happened. It was my turning point,” said Caleb, who now celebrates December 6 – the day of his accident – as his spiritual birthday.

“This showed me the God that I believed in. From then, I began to open my heart to Him because I’ve tasted His goodness and love in my life,” he said.

SCARRED REMINDER

A decade on, Caleb, 46, is a full-time staff at The Hiding Place. He also got married to Grace and is now a stepdad to two teenaged sons. The couple met when Grace was at the halfway house to make pineapple tarts for fund-raising.

Caleb has also repaid most of his debts and will be getting the keys to his own flat this year.

Caleb got married in 2018 after meeting his wife while making pineapple tarts together to raise funds.

“Now I understand God did not create my life to be like how I lived in the past. This is the life that He wanted me to live. He even blessed me with a wife!

“Every time I see the scars on my body, it’s a reminder to me of God’s goodness. When I’m stressed and want to give up, I touch my scars and say ‘cannot lah’.

“Without God’s grace, I would be sitting inside prison or dying,” he admitted.

This is an excerpt of an article that first appeared in Salt&Light.

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