Professor Doug Petersen and his wife Myrna have an honest conversation with City News on living with glaucoma, making marriage work and the positive future ahead.
Prof Doug Petersen was recently in Singapore with his wife Myrna. Prof Doug preached at the weekend service at City Harvest Church, after teaching a full week on the Old Testament at the church’s School of Theology.
A dear friend of the church and its senior pastor Kong Hee, Prof Doug has been central to CHC’s growth in Pentecostal theology scholarship these past few years. He, together with Prof Byron Klaus, both formerly from Vanguard University in California, USA, were the organisers of the Global Pentecostal Summit held at CHC last November.
In this interview, Prof Doug and Sister Myrna tell us about the current season they are in, given his difficulties with his eyes due to glaucoma. Shortly after this, he underwent an operation in the US to insert a stent to relieve eye pressure. Despite their challenges, they exhibit gratitude. He is especially excited about his “third career” (after starting ChildHope and lecturing at Vanguard), which is helping CHC and its School of Theology to become a centre for Pentecostal theological education.
We understand you’re celebrating your 55th wedding anniversary this year! Congratulations! Please give us three tips.
Prof Doug: If you married young, make sure you married the right one! (Laughs)
Sister Myrna: You both love the Lord, so if something breaks, you fix it.
PD: We met when Myrna was 14 and I was 15. I travelled a lot the first five years of our marriage and Myrna would have to manage all the kids or I wouldn’t have been able to do what I was doing. “Don’t sweat the small stuff” – that’s probably the best one.
By that measure what counts as “big stuff”?
PD: We haven’t had any (laughs). We’re very much equals. Myrna has a very strong personality. We’re very much peers, with two different perspectives: I’m an academic, Myrna’s much more practical.
So that’s two tips. What’s the last one?
PD: There has to be trust. Some things I’ve done seemed way out there! (Laughs) So there needs to be a level of trust that I’m making a good decision, for example: “Let’s go to Central America for a year!” Why would we do that? We were there 25 years.
Sister Myrna, Prof says there’s been no big stuff, but what do you think?
SM: We always reduce it to small stuff, because we have good communication. So then nothing becomes a big crisis. We have had sickness, and we have had things happen that are challenges, like now, his eyes. The last two years (since Prof Doug’s issues with glaucoma) have really changed our lives. He needs a lot more help and so that changes my life. But we just do what needs to be done.
PD: Well, we certainly had the big things: Myrna had cancer and went through chemo then and all the years thereafter; I got some kind of a parasite that ate away at my stomach – I didn’t work for a whole year. That was challenging. In the middle of that, I had a lot of leadership roles, and I just had to switch roles with whoever worked with me. So, we’ve had challenges but we’ve also been unbelievably blessed. As I look back, the lines have fallen for us in pleasant places. It’s amazing.
How will you be celebrating your anniversary?
SM: Probably quietly. We’re not party people; we’ll just do it with family. We have two daughters that live close to us, so we’ll probably just go over to our daughter’s and have a special cake.
Living with a degenerative condition like glaucoma is difficult. How do you still praise God?
PD: First, there was that panic. But you have to recognise that stuff happens and you need to adjust. I also recognise now—if it had been earlier in my life, I don’t know—God is sovereign and He does things we can’t understand. So most of the time, I try to be normal. There will be flashes when I’ll feel sorry for myself, but they won’t last very long. I recognise that I can pray for people, I can preach, I can teach, but my status? I have to leave it to the Lord’s sovereignty. I don’t think it has anything to do with having more faith—the Lord figures all that out. People could have a car accident, lost a leg, they have to adjust.
Unfortunately, my problem means Myrna has to adjust, because I can’t look after myself; I can’t go out on my own. I can’t even see my food. I can’t see my hair when I’m getting ready in the mornings. And so, one is limited and Myrna has to do everything. I’ve gone from complete independence to dependence. So I think it’s probably hard for her, but we make adjustments.
I’ve always taught and preached, and I’ve been able to do that, even with this kind of dilemma. Fortunately God has given me good memory and it hasn’t faded out yet. So I can teach just by prompts. Preaching is much more difficult. I feel like, “What if I get halfway through and have a brain freeze?”
Has it happened?
PD: No, but I’m aware that I’m going to be speaking for 45 minutes, and I don’t even have any prompts—
SM: And you can’t read any notes.
PD: Like when I was at SOT, they had a big screen in front of me, and I couldn’t see a thing. But [Chiong Xiao] Ting the translator came and I just asked her, “What’s it say?” And she’d read it, then I start up again! (Laughs)
That’s great teamwork!
PD: She is fantastic!
Sister Myrna, how has being a caregiver impacted you?
SM: Well, things are very different now because he was so independent. So I would say I feel frustrated sometimes, you know. And it’s frustrating for him for have moments when he has to stop working because the eyes just don’t work. So he’s frustrated a lot, and then I get frustrated. I’m getting used to him not being able to do all the things he could do, then I forget—“Oh, you can’t do that.”
We don’t go out as much as we used to. Because, of course, it doesn’t mean anything to him. You can’t go out for a walk to see the sights. Everything’s difficult, where you’re walking down stairs—everything. So we just go where it’s familiar.
Even when we do go somewhere social now, like if we go to a dinner with friends, he can only see the person right in front of him. He doesn’t have peripheral vision. It’s not as enjoyable, and then we feel bad because people don’t understand or think you’re ignoring them but it’s because you can’t see. He has lost 99 percent of his sight – he only has one percent sight left in both eyes.
PD: I’m classified as legally blind.
SM: But we have a wonderful family. They’re supportive. And we try and find the humour in everything. He can break dishes because he can’t see where to put it down, or he’ll knock it over.
PD: If I put down my glasses on anything brown, they might as well not be there! (Laughs)
SM: I spend my day looking for glasses (laughs). I keep saying, “Could you just put them in the same spot every time” but you know that’s not the way it happens. You just take it off wherever you are, and then I have to go on a hunt!
PD: We laugh a lot. The last time we were here, I had somebody on either side, and somebody behind me, and Myrna took a picture from behind and sent it to my kids. They thought it was the funniest thing they had ever seen—here’s their dad being dependent!
Last March when [my eye condition] first happened, the first person I got in contact with was Pastor Kong. Over those next few weeks, I thought it was over. I mean, how can I keep going when I can’t see? He was so encouraging, he said “It’s not over. We’ll just take you as you are, just say what you’ve always said.” I took some of that on faith that I can do more than I think, which is true. Everything takes longer, but I think I am teaching as good as I have in the past.
We heard you retired from Vanguard and will be coming to help us at CHC. What lies in the future?
PD: I see this magnificent opportunity in what CHC is doing. So, whatever I have left, I want to dedicate it to putting my assets to the service of this theological education. I think any theological education needs to be good, it needs to be accessible, and it has to be affordable.
City Harvest is like a machine. There’s the capacity to do something extraordinary across Asia, because I don’t think there is any Pentecostal university that could match the quality of our professors (who are now teaching the various theology courses to CHC members); they’re all world class, and they’re all really Pentecostal.
The goal is to bring along the younger ones (potential teachers and lecturers) because City Harvest has got an army that can be trained. And City Harvest has the capacity to spread that news, and the financial wherewithal to do something unbelievable.
So (we will do) everything from theological education to bringing a centre for publishing, like the pivot of a network. And I know how to do that, and if I don’t, some of my friends know. Pastor Kong is just a wonder—he just makes it happen.
We have these really great professors, great scholars—they’re all Pentecostal and they’re all practitioners. They’re very excited to teach Bible school classes. It really takes them back to their roots. And it’s meaningful—they’re used to teaching 14-people classes! Soon, we’ll have 1,000 students.
Do you have a message for our church—you’ve come to know us pretty well—about where we’re headed?
PD: I think CHC can be the tip of the spear for what’s happening in Asia. And it’s not to be exclusive—we want to be inclusive, involving not just the pastors and the pastoral staff, but the church members who have the heart for what we need to be right, theologically.
Although it takes that big team to make it happen, our goal is to make theology a part of our church, not separate from that. CHC is like a model—I don’t know of another church like it. It takes a strong leader to lead the church that way.
It’s like what Paul was to the Romans. When Paul did his great theological treatise, his argument was this: “You can understand how wonderful the Good News is and what I’m doing. You become part of the frontlines by sending me to Spain; through your support you enjoy the same reward.” Paul was blessing the church (with this opportunity to evangelise by partnering with him), not pleading with the church.
And I think that’s what we have here, a church that is anxious to get better (theologically). It’s unusual. It’s extraordinary.
