Former radio personality turned jeweller Maddy Barber was brought up in a traditional church.
She loved singing hymns in Sunday School and served in the choir. At the mission school that she went to, she aced its Bible Knowledge classes easily.
“We learnt and memorised things, but I didn’t understand much of it. I didn’t know why did Jesus have to come to set us free? Why did He need to forgive our sins? What did we need to repent from?” said Maddy, now 52.
But she thought that was “all there is to faith” – until she went through a divorce in her early 20s.
She learnt that if she wished to remarry, she could no longer get married in church. The experience left her feeling exiled and cut off from the community she grew up in.
“I continued going to church, but I was slowly disengaging from it out of anger and rebellion. It’s like I used to be the favoured child, but now I no longer knew where I stood in the family,” she recalled.
“Being a fool, I cut the nose to spite the face. Jesus became collateral damage,” said Maddy, who walked away from the church and kept her distance from God over the next decade.
She had such a deep-seated anger towards God that all her friends in the faith knew it was wiser not to make any mention of “Jesus” in front of her.
Prior to her divorce, Maddy had been working as a radio presenter and producer with the Perfect 10 show on 987FM. Radio was the first job she landed after graduating from school.
Moving overseas for work
After her divorce, Maddy moved to India for two years where she became a radio software consultant who helped to set up numerous radio stations in the country.
Thereafter, she moved to Thailand and became a programme director with Virgin Radio there. During her time in Thailand she met and married Britisher Wez Barber.
Her mother and friends would visit her often.
“They didn’t shove their faith down my throat. They continued praying for me even though I was far from God,” said Maddy.
Maddy married Yorkshireman Wez Barber. whom she met in Thailand.
Maddy became instrumental in helping the radio station rise up and become the top contemporary hit radio station in Bangkok, Thailand.
However, she was drawing a local salary of just over S$3,000 a month instead of an expat pay package.
As their salaries could barely cover their rent and their two children’s international school fees, Maddy decided to ask her boss for a pay raise.
“My request was declined, though they were really supportive of me and the work that I did,” she recalled.
Maddy working with Virgin Radio in Bangkok.
The family had no choice but to move into another house where rent was significantly cheaper.
In that neighbourhood, Maddy noticed many empty houses which were sitting around for months or years without being successfully leased out.
First foray as a property agent
A bright idea hit her. Since she loved building websites for fun, why not try listing and marketing those empty houses in return for a month’s commission?
With the encouragement of her husband, Maddy began calling up the numbers listed on the signboards outside the houses and offered her services.
Soon, she found herself pocketing a few hundred dollars extra a month from this side gig.
“I began to see light at the end of the tunnel for us – perhaps our family could have a better life now,” she told Salt&Light.
The cheaper housing estate that the Barbers moved to in Thailand.
She began showing homes to mainly expat clients in the weekends. On weekdays after work, she would be busy doing up the housing listings on her website.
“Clients were drawn to my listings because they loved my photos and the way I captioned them. It helped them see the houses in a new way,” said Maddy.
“I wondered why I wasn’t happy though I had so much going on for me …”
Yet despite her putting in the hours and leveraging on her strengths, her closing rate for the houses was low at 5% to 10%. Most of the time, she lost out to full-time agents who could show the houses whenever their clients wanted to have viewings, instead of having to wait till the weekend.
“I was pushing myself so hard, moonlighting on top of holding down a full-time job. Yet it wasn’t paying off. I felt very tired and discouraged,” she told Salt&Light.
She began to feel trapped in her radio job – her bread and butter – which no longer challenged her. Connecting with others through real estate made her feel alive. The creative side of her really wanted to take the plunge and become a full-time property agent, but the risk of income instability was too huge for her to bear.
Maddy with her family in Thailand. Photo by their older daughter Libby.
Oftentimes she would watch her salary deplete just a few days after it came in, as they had to pay recurring monthly bills.
“I was spread thin. Unable to see an end in sight, I lost all joy. I wondered why I wasn’t happy though I had so much going on for me with my dear family with me,” Maddy admitted.
At that time, her best friend, who had become a Christian, came to Thailand for work. They arranged to have a girls’ night out at her hotel.
“My husband gladly released the exhausted me to have some fun. Our plan was just to stay up late, have some good heart-to-heart talk and then sleep in the next morning,” Maddy told Salt&Light.
A strange thing happened in the hotel room
While she was in the hotel room, Maddy noticed her best friend had a book next to her.
“What’s that?” she asked. Unknown to her, her best friend had felt prompted by God to bring along that book – Destined to Reign by Joseph Prince – on that trip.
Giving Maddy a somewhat hopeful look, her best friend replied: “It’s a book by my Pastor. Do you want to read it?”
“Is it about Jesus?” Maddy shot back.
“Kind of,” her friend answered hesitantly.
“Then, nope,” came Maddy’s firm response.
Maddy with her best friends. EJ (on the extreme right) was the friend who brought the book to the hotel room.
Both of them continued chatting till late at night, so Maddy planned to sleep in the next morning.
However, she woke up earlier than usual, feeling a deep restlessness in her spirit.
She glanced over at her friend, who was still in deep sleep.
She pace around the room multiple times – from the bed to the toilet and back – not knowing what to do with herself.
“I had no choice but to look at the book that was just sitting there. I was annoyed at myself for not bringing my own book so now I just had to open that book,” she recalled.
“Tell me about grace”
It was a book about God’s grace. As she read its preface, her whole being was moved to the point that tears began flowing down her face.
“I felt like the prodigal son who was being welcomed home. The love of my Father washed over me. I realised that when the Holy Spirit moves, we cannot help but believe. We don’t choose God; He chooses us,” Maddy told Salt&Light.
