“It’s not humanly possible to give that kind of love”: Young man with terminally-ill bride lives out marriage vow to love her in sickness and in health

Newlyweds look forward to a honeymoon period after the wedding, where they would ensconce themselves in a private bubble of sweet and tender love.

For the Wangs, that honeymoon period only lasted three months.

The couple celebrating Cornelius’ birthday a few months after marriage in 2020.

When Cornelius Wang, then 27, married Amanda Lim in 2020, he knew she had a life-limiting illness called Primary Pulmonary Hypertension (PPH), which meant she could only have a few more years to live.

PPH is a rare lung and heart condition. Generally, patients diagnosed with this condition would see the disease progress rapidly from the fifth year of diagnosis and pass away soon after.

When Amanda was diagnosed with it in 2017, her doctor estimated that she had 10 years left.

Yet Cornelius strongly believed that Amanda was “God’s best” for him (click here for their love story), and married her.

In those few months after marriage, the most “normal” couple thing that they did was to select their Built-To-Order (BTO) housing unit in Toa Payoh East.

As the COVID pandemic was raging on then, Amanda also started attending online classes for her Masters of Arts in Ministry degree that she was taking at a Bible college.

But that was as normal as their post-wedding days were.

To be an instrument of love to his wife

Ahead of the tremendous trials they would face in the years ahead, God spoke to Cornelius one night in October 2020.

“I have made you like God to Amanda,” God impressed upon his heart that night.

Recalling that God had told Moses that He had “made Moses to be like God to Pharaoh” in Exodus 7:1, a gradual understanding of what God meant came to Cornelius.

“Moses was God’s instrument of judgment to Egypt. I realised God was using me as His instrument of love to Amanda. I knew that because I myself had experienced Christ’s deep love for me years ago, so I also need to love Amanda and give myself to her,” said Cornelius.

A month later, Amanda’s doctor started her on yet another trial drug for her medical condition. Ralinepeg was the name of the fourth type of drug they were trying, on top of the three other kinds of medication she had to take.

As the dosage increased over the weeks, the degree of side effects that she faced also heightened. She experienced headaches, body pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and severe stomach cramping.

One of the side effects of trial drug Ralinepeg was vomiting.

Whenever she woke up in the middle of the night to vomit, Cornelius would get up to check on her. 

Apart from supporting her emotionally, he also became her hands and feet – helping her retrieve things as she easily became breathless.

As he accompanied her to her multiple medical checkups, he would work on his laptop in hospital.

During the first two years of their marriage, Amanda frequently sunk into an emotional funk.

“I felt like a burden. I asked God why let me get married when I am not contributing or value-adding to the marriage. I wondered why He would not take me home now? Yet if He did, I was also worried about leaving Cornelius behind,” Amanda, now 32, told Salt&Light.

Experiencing Jesus during the long nights 

While the days felt dreary, the nights felt longer. Amanda faced many sleepless nights either enduring pain in her body or throwing up in the toilet. 

Yet many times during the night, Amanda felt Jesus Himself sitting at the edge of her bed.

“I can’t see Him, but His presence was so tangible that He felt as real as Cornelius who was sleeping beside me,” she said.

“I am very tired. Can You make my pain go away?” Amanda would ask Jesus in the dead of night.

“Sometimes the pain went away, but a lot of times it did not. He just reassured me that He was with me and that I was not alone in my pain. His presence then was so strong.”

Sometimes, she experienced His presence manifesting as a fresh coolness in the air.

“I breathe in His healing presence in the air, breathe out my pain and I immediately feel better,” she related.

Amanda experienced Jesus sitting by her bedside during the long nights when pain racked her body.

She came to a point where she began emerging out of despair and viewing her illness differently.

“There were a few people who were facing difficulties in their lives who reached out to me and God reminded me that I could empathise a lot more than others because of the daily pain I suffered myself,” she said.

I began to see my illness not as a weakness, but as a strength because I am able to empathise and journey with others in a way that not many others could,” she added.

For Cornelius, now 33, those few years of marriage were not filled with worries over how much time Amanda had left to live.

“The impending sense of loss was not on my mind. Since God says she is the ‘best’ for me, He would already know how much time she has left. Rather, my calling is to love and support her as best as I can,” he told Salt&Light.

“I was more concerned about drawing strength from God to sustain me in the day-to-day caregiving, asking Him to help me each day,” he added.

Drawing strength from quiet time to be strong for his wife 

Every morning, Cornelius would wake up at 6.30am to worship and pray to God before starting work.

“The level of love and care that Amanda needed was way more than I could give,” he admitted.

“It is not humanly possible to give that kind of love. I realised that I need to continually come before God and receive His love for me in order to give it to Amanda because I cannot give what I don’t have.”

He added: “I am very clear that I am not the source. I am just a channel, a conduit of God’s love.”

His quiet time with God became a space for God to minister to Cornelius and impart His perspectives, promises and strength for the day.

After two and a half years of taking the Ralinepeg drug, her doctor decided to put a stop to it as the side effects she faced – even vomiting blood – outweighed the benefits of her taking it.

By that time, Amanda needed a wheelchair to move around and had become visibly weaker and thinner.

In September 2023, Amanda was put on the last – but supposedly the best – drug option for PPH patients, called Veletri. This treatment required a tube to be surgically inserted into her chest so that the drug can be directly infused into her heart.

The Veletri pump.

As a permanent open wound was being created, Cornelius’ caregiving responsibilities now included caring for the wound and keeping it sterile.

He also had to help Amanda shower, clear her commode, prepare her medication and massage her back daily.

Cornelius learning how to prepare Veletri in August 2023.

Whenever Amanda worried about whether her wound was getting infected, which would be deadly, Cornelius also had to be on hand to reassure her emotionally.

“By the end of the day, I felt so drained from all that I was doing. At one point I was working, then caregiving and studying part-time after work. I was still serving in ministry as well,” recalled Cornelius, who currently works as a vessel operator in a shipping company.  

He had started pursuing a Masters in Intercultural Studies at TCA College part time, as he felt prompted by God regarding a missional call on his life.

Simultaneously, he and Amanda were serving as Young Adult mentors to a cell group in church. Amanda wanted to use the remaining time she had left to live out her full-time ministry calling. Cornelius joined to support her.

Cornelius (in green) and Amanda (in black) serving in Young Adults ministry from 2021.

To cope with the demands on him and his time, Cornelius continued turning to God every morning to be refreshed.

Apart from receiving the love of God so that he was able to give more, Cornelius had realised by this time  that it was the fear of God which kept him going.

“On some days, it was too tiring and I felt like giving up. But I knew that if I really dropped out and leave Amanda, then I am disobeying His call to me. If I disobey Him, I could lose the intimacy I have with Him. That was something I didn’t want because I really cherish my intimacy with God,” he told Salt&Light.

The building up of resentment 

The reality of caregiving as a young husband hit as the months wore on. Despite his fear of God, Cornelius found himself comparing Amanda with other women he could have married.

“I complained to God about why I had to go through this and put up with this. What was so wrong with me marrying a normal and healthy woman?” he said candidly.

In a “normal” marriage, both parties give of themselves to each other, but Cornelius felt that he was always giving his all to Amanda while she could not give anything back to him in return.

Amanda with her Veletri pump and her cat Muffins at her feet in December 2023.

One felt need that went unfulfilled was that of love-making. In those years, the couple rarely had sex as it was too physically demanding for her; her medical condition meant that she did not have the muscles nor breath for it. Amanda also did not enjoy making love as she was prone to urinary tract infections after.

At times, Cornelius also found it burdensome that he had to give up other activities that they used enjoyed doing together, like stress-free outings in nature or sports.

“But I knew that all these are my human weaknesses. When God called me to this, He would have already accounted for my weaknesses and given me everything I needed to pull through this,” Cornelius said.

His mentor helped him to see that he was falling into the trap of comparison, and he repented before God for having thoughts of other women.

Through a worship song during his quiet time, Cornelius heard God reassuring him that He would provide for all his needs.

Cornelius also confessed to Amanda all that he was wrestling with in his heart. The couple subsequently sought the help of a marriage counsellor to bring trust back into their marriage.

“We learnt to spend intentional time together because Amanda is not just my patient, she is also my wife,” said Cornelius.

The dire prognosis of six months

The Veletri treatment initially appeared successful in reducing the heart failure rate for Amanda. However, by the end of the year, her condition plateaued, and then worsened. The drug was no longer working as effectively as it once did.

By February 2024, Amanda was both bedbound and homebound – she now had to rely fully on an oxygen concentrator to breathe.

Cornelius helped her with most of her basic needs, including brushing her teeth and toileting while she lay in bed.

The following month, Amanda was warded in hospital after vomiting up blood.

Amanda was hospitalised and was told of her prognosis in March 2024.

It was then that her doctor gave her the grave news.

“We have done everything possible to help slow down your condition. There is nothing else we can do except to refer you to try for a heart and lung transplant. Otherwise, you probably have about six months left,” he said.

Amanda felt both hopeful and sad.

“I have been waiting for death for years and now the official pronouncement had come. Yet I knew God had been sustaining me and I believed that He could heal me and move even in this impossible situation,” she told Salt&Light.

Despite her grief, she was filled with expectancy as she felt God was not done with her yet. During her quiet time one day, she felt God speak to her through Isaiah 43:19 that He is “doing a new thing” and “making a way in the wilderness”.

She wondered aloud to Cornelius whether she was being delusional in clinging on to the promises in those verses that God had given to her.

Hearing this, Cornelius wept.

Over the next week, Amanda went through a battery of tests to determine her suitability to be placed on the waitlist for a heart and lung transplant at the National Heart Centre.

In the midst of this trying and seemingly hopeless time, God began revealing more of Himself to Cornelius.

Once, he was in the shower when he muttered to God out of frustration: “So you gave us this flat but, in the end, it won’t really be for us.”

He was referring to their BTO flat. They had secured it despite overwhelming odds – for every unit in that block, there were seven applicants. Yet it seemed to Cornelius that Amanda might not be around by the time construction of the flat was completed.

As soon as he muttered that statement, he felt a rebuke in his spirit. A sense of unrest squeezed his heart.

“Did I say I am not giving you both the flat?” came God’s reply.

Cornelius tried to rationalise and justify himself before the Lord, but the feeling of unrest did not lift from his heart until he repented for his disbelief.

From then on, Cornelius took God at His word. That rebuke became a promise that Cornelius clung on to: That one day, both he and his wife would move into the BTO flat.

During that difficult period, the couple began a new routine of setting aside time every Saturday morning to worship God together. Amanda played the guitar and both of them sang unto the Lord.

“I am doing a great work in your marriage, far beyond what you can imagine,” God told a tired and weeping Cornelius during one such worship session.

“I will follow You all the way. I will not exchange great for good in wanting a ‘normal’ marriage,” Cornelius responded to God.

Amanda being assessed for suitability for a transplant in April 2024.

Another morning, when Cornelius was feeling exhausted from caregiving, he sat before the Lord praying for strength. He received a vision.

He saw himself sitting on a flight of stairs on a mountainside, and Jesus was also sitting beside him. It was a steep flight of stairs and both of them were simply looking out at the scenery below.

“You need rest,” Jesus said to him in the vision.

A few days later, the couple received the news that the National Heart Centre could not place Amanda on its waiting list for a transplant. They were told that her condition was too rare; she would need both a heart and lung transplant from the same donor and that has not been done in Singapore before.

The news hit Cornelius like a death sentence. He had assumed that God would come through for Amanda through a heart and lung transplant done in Singapore.

Amanda also knew that they were running out of options.

Looking beyond Singapore for medical treatment 

After taking a few days to grieve and let the news sink in, Cornelius got back on his feet.

He contacted overseas transplant centres all over the world – from Australia to India to Canada – to see if any of them would take up his wife’s case.

“I wanted to do my utmost to save her and faithfully love her till the end,” he explained.

In the meantime, Amanda’s cardiologist had already put her on palliative care. Yet when he saw Cornelius’ efforts in not giving up their search, he referred them to his cardiologist friend in San Diego, in California, USA.

The University of California San Diego (UCSD) was the one that came back to them with the earliest appointment date: July 2024. As the clock was ticking and Amanda was believed to have only three months left at that point, they decided to go for it. The appointment was for Amanda to be assessed if she was suitable to be placed on a transplant waitlist there.

While waiting for a donor there, they also planned to take another trial drug called Sotatercept which was available there but not yet available in Singapore. It costs S$19,000 per jab, and had to be administered every three weeks.

Packing all of Amanda’s medication for their trip to San Diego.

Knowing that seeking treatment in San Diego would be costly, the couple crowdfunded on donation platform Give.Asia and raised about S$800,000 (including offline donations). 

About half of that sum of money went to the air ambulance flight to medically evacuate Amanda from Singapore to San Diego as she was wheelchair-bound and needed to be on constant oxygen support.

Taking the air ambulance.

Cornelius and Amanda flew to San Diego in July 2024.

Amanda onboard the air ambulance.

The cardiologist there took one look at Amanda and immediately knew she needed a transplant as she was experiencing end stage heart failure.

When they met the transplant doctor, they were told that they just needed a lung transplant as her heart can be remodelled along the way.

However, they were informed that they needed to pay S$2 million upfront for the medical costs associated with a lung transplant operation.

Cornelius knew Amanda’s parents were trying to raise some money, but he did not know if they would be able to come up with the full sum. The couple decided not to ward themselves yet but to buy themselves more time to raise the money.

Amanda taking a rest break a few days after touching down at San Diego, before being hospitalised in July 2024.

As Cornelius sat at the table in the home that they had rented in San Diego, he cried out to God in despair over what seemed like insurmountable obstacles that stood before them.

God brought to his mind how the Israelites could not find water in the wilderness but He saw the water that was available beneath and made it spring forth when Moses struck the rock in Exodus.

A few days later, Amanda was rushed into the hospital’s A&E as she felt unwell from a bloated stomach. Just three days of being warded there set them back by US$58,000 and Cornelius was weighed down by worry over how they would pay it all off.

As tears streamed down his face in the ward, God spoke to him.

“If a billionaire were to assure you that he will provide, would you be assured?” God asked him.

Cornelius thought: “Of course. What is $2 million to a billionaire?”

“If a billionaire can give you such assurance and he is a man, can’t I, the Lord, give you such assurance?” God asked him again.

Cornelius wept and surrendered his fears to the Lord.

To buy some time, Amanda received just one jab of the Sotatercept drug. In the end, their financial concerns regarding paying for that drug were relieved as the drug did not work for her.

Subsequently, Amanda’s parents managed to raise the rest of the funds that they needed by mortgaging their house, selling their car and borrowing from others.

Every day was a battle as Amanda, whose health was deteriorating rapidly, waited for a suitable lung donor.

Amanda waiting for a transplant in July 2024.

Amanda’s parents and their helper flew in to San Diego to help, but Cornelius remained Amanda’s main caregiver. Whenever she coughed out blood, he was on hand to suction it away. He was on standby to attend to her various needs, such as massaging her back to prevent sores and aches from the long hours of lying on the bed.

Driving to and fro the hospital and staying overnight to care for her meant that his sleep was severely affected. On average, he only had about two hours of sleep every night while they waited for the lung transplant.

Cornelius caring for Amanda in the hospital at the UCSD.

To get through those days, Amanda proposed that they do an “intensive worship camp” whenever they could until something good happened.

Every day in the hospital ward, they took turns to play the guitar, and worshipped and read the Bible together.

The couple worshipped together while waiting for a suitable lung donor in August 2024.

At the end of the month, they received the good news to be on standby as a suitable lung donor has been identified.

However, their hopes were dashed as the lungs were assessed to not be in good condition by the time they reached the hospital.

A few days later, the Wangs were informed that there was another suitable pair of lungs. However, the same thing happened.

Amanda became agitated with all the waiting, and cried out loud asking for lungs.

The very next day, she fainted and stopped breathing. Doctors realised that her lungs had collapsed and sedated her. She was unconscious for the next eight days.

Amanda in ICU on life support in August 2024.

Cornelius was extremely worried but it did not cross his mind that he could lose his wife if a suitable pair of lungs did not come in time.

“To me, it was always a question of how much did God want to stretch our faith? How long must she be in this condition before He finally comes through? I believed His word to me that we would return back to Singapore and move into our BTO flat,” said Cornelius.

Amanda warded in the ICU in UCSD.

While Amanda was still unconscious, Cornelius received the news on August 21, 2024 that the third suitable pair of lungs had been found and that the green light was given for surgery.

The surgery took about six hours. During that time, Cornelius and Amanda’s parents prayed and had the peace to head out for a brief dinner before returning to the hospital.

The surgery largely went well. However, Amanda suffered heavy bleeding in her new lungs and had to go back into the operating theatre twice in the next 10 hours.

Amanda’s mother updated their church community, family and friends in Singapore with each latest development so that they could uphold her in their prayers.

Eventually, Amanda pulled through the critical period.

“It was then that we knew that God had fulfilled His promises to us,” Cornelius told Salt&Light.

Amanda, a few hours after the transplant surgery.

Post-surgery, Amanda’s basic functions regressed to that of a baby’s. She could not sit up, eat solid food, talk or even lift up her phone to type out and communicate her needs. She had to be in diapers.

Her family journeyed with her and celebrated every milestone with her, the moments when she could talk, feed herself or stand up by herself.

Amanda, one month after her transplant surgery.

On October 17, 2024, Amanda was discharged from hospital. She continued receiving physiotherapy in the home they rented in San Diego.

The day Amanda was discharged from hospital in October 2024.

Entering into God’s season of restoration

As time passed, caregiving for Amanda became less intense and Cornelius could continue working remotely for his company from the US.

Amanda sharing her first testimony of God’s healing in a church in San Diego in December 2024. There were many more to come.

Before they left for San Diego, he had resigned from his job as he thought his company would not want to keep him while he was overseas. Instead, his boss made a way for him to continue working for their US office.

“On hindsight, God really provided for us,” Cornelius marveled. “We could stay in the US for some time because I was working and my company insurance helped cover some of the medical costs.”

God also spoke to Cornelius about future restoration.

He had been praying about whether to take their cat – called Muffins – back from their friend in Singapore once they returned home. Muffins used to be Amanda’s therapy cat when she was ill in Singapore but they gave her away when they left for the US.

Muffins was Amanda’s emotional support cat when she was ill in 2023.

Their doctor in the US said Amanda was allowed to have a pet, but Cornelius did not want to go through the heartbreak of separating with Muffins again should anything happen in future.

“I want you to have her back. I will restore to you all the things you thought you lost due to Amanda’s illness,” God told Cornelius while he was praying over the matter.

Cornelius was amazed that God would care enough about them to speak to him about a cat.

The couple flew back to Singapore in July 2025, one year after they first arrived in San Diego.

It was just in time – their BTO flat was renovated and ready for them to move into it a few months after they returned to Singapore. God kept His promise to restore: Their marriage has picked up where it left off before Amanda’s decline – including physical intimacy.

The couple with their cat Muffins in their BTO flat in Toa Payoh East.

Today, Amanda has regained most of her abilities, with the exception of her legs. She uses a motorised wheelchair to move around, and needs special shoes to walk in.

Her disability has not stopped her from becoming a pastoral staff at her church – Church of Singapore (Marine Parade) – where she oversees the millennials. She ministers especially to those who have faith-related questions about suffering and illnesses. 

Amanda still lives on with limited time left, though. Patients with a lung transplant live on average for seven more years, though the longest in the world has been recorded at 20 years.

“I will live as long as the Lord wants me to. I want to steward my life well and make it count,” Amanda said simply.

For Cornelius, God had brought him back to the vision that he once received to gain a deeper revelation of where the Lord is taking him through this journey.

A few months before he flew back to Singapore, Cornelius had a second vision of himself sitting on the steep stairs on the mountainside with Jesus.

“Do you know why you are sitting on the stairs?” God asked him.

The answer came to Cornelius instantly. He had always desired to climb the mountain of God so that he would grow both in Christlikeness and in deeper intimacy with God.

“I want to go far with God, however far He takes me,” Cornelius told Salt&Light.

“Climbing is hard work. The journey upwards has been costly. I didn’t expect it to be so intense but it is a privilege to go far with God when His presence is with us.”

In case you missed it: Read Part One of Cornelius and Amanda’s love story here.

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