we've been examining the book of corinthians during chinese service these few weeks, and it has never failed to speak to me. today we did 1 corinthians 10, on looking back and remembering our spiritual heritage. chapter 10 speaks of the time God brought Moses and the Israelites through parting the red sea, into the desert that had them wandering for 40 years. 40 years, and not days, because they were not faithful, but God still sustained them daily. and who were to emerge from the desert, but Joshua and Caleb- the ones filled with faith, who entered the promise land eventually. these past few days i've been doing a bit of revisitation of my lost past, and how i've probably been 'wandering in the desert' since i was 15.
i had the opportunity to share this a few days back, so i had to mine through the memories, and vaguely remember those days. locked in my room with my books, reading stuff like The Bell Jar, Virgin Suicides, Milan Kundera and watching stuff like American Beauty to numb and escape from the reality of living and the fear of moving forward and being lost in the emptiness of the world. it was no wonder all the literature i was exposed to, coupled with a really trying and unstable period of my life saw me in a really lost state.
thanks to my attempts to be tech-savvy back in those dial-up network days, i had the chance to go through many of my previous blog posts, and wow, i think i may have underestimated the extent of my depressive state.
here's a few of them, not to stumble anyone, but really, the stark contrast of my state of being then and now is quite mind-blowing, and i really want it to serve as a testimony. these were mainly from 2004, because short of the rest of the years that i was going through this trying period, 2004 was really a year filled with physical, emotional and mental pain.
it is necessary, just because God wants me to face those fears, face the verbal, physical and emotional abuse and lies that were fed to me, the horrible and negative lies about the world that i fed to myself through the degenerative nature and downward spiral of my own thought processes. also, to face the sins that i had committed- the things i've said to people in projection of my own anger and hate with the world.
right now, even as i process such dark thoughts i don't think i can stomach a second read because i really hate to imagine myself there and then going through those years of pain, not realising that all i ever needed to do was to turn to God. my 8 years in the desert. sometimes, we think that our years in the desert is really punishment from God to keep us from His blessings just because he executes what He plans.
a punishment. really?
imagine a child strays, and his dad spends all his time trying to get his son's attention by coaxing him back onto the path that he knows is for his son's own good. he doesn't force him into any decision, but is always there, trying to gently guide him back. no authoritative voice booming into his ears commanding him to obey, or else.., or strapping him by the leash. so the son hears him, but refuses to obey, or even worse, refuse to acknowledge his father. at the end of the day, if the son were to come back crying having gone down the path of darkness, what conclusion is to be made but that the son had gone down his well-deserved path?
that was me. and really, it wasn't as though He never tried to point me back to Him. i remember the amazing friendships i had with some Christ followers and the gospel i was exposed to in junior college. some of them i talked about my disdain towards organised religion, some just merely touched me by being the person that Christ was. but i just wouldn't barge. it was the mindset, so entrenched that i held that however God tried to speak to me, i just didn't want to give in. too prideful and too stubborn.
up till the point where i was so broken down and so engulfed and troubled by what i was doing with my life, that all i could do was to turn to Him (that testimony leaves for another day). that was such a humbling moment. to say that prayer of acceptance of the Father back into my life. Jesus broke down all the walls of pride in my life, and with that, i could never turn back to my past.
and that day was the beginning of the promise of God to deliver me out of the desert into the promiseland. has it been a journey since that promise? it has been almost 2 years. acceptance of God into our lives is one thing, but living in full obedience to his purposes is really a whole new level.
at the beginning, i fumbled. i couldn't sense Him. i thought i had to feel Him to know that He was there. i never prayed on my own for a year, lest for superficial prayers like uh, God can it stop being so cold. i lived in a church in Chile, but struggled to find my footing. there even came a point that i wanted to give it up, and started to question His existence. i felt like i was living in my mind, i was reconciling my convictions with facts. yes, people need God, because i hear they have warped concepts of the real, personal God. yes, i need to bring people to church.. remind me why again? those days were such dark times for me. i accepted Him, but i didn't know who He was at all. i was fed sermons on sundays, i listened to downloaded sermons to convince myself of His truth, but in truth i felt so stuck, like i reached a point in my faith where i didn't know how to move on, and i couldn't see how God was real in my life anyway.
i flew back home, visibly stumbled in my faith. i was speaking words of conviction in sharing my experience, but i honestly didn't feel it at all. it was a whole new level of fear. wanting to experience Him, but having no humanness to do so. for the longest time, i struggled to feel anything. i couldn't even cry.
but, i don't know what gave in. perhaps, it was fighting for my faith when i announced to my parents the decision to get water baptised. on that afternoon that i entered the water and emerged as a whole new person in Christ, i got reminded of how He had watched over me even while i was still in the desert. that afternoon, i cried, and knew He was there, and i had to seek him for real, no excuses.
and then perhaps, it was the renewal of hope when my sister came to Christ. i will never know, but breakthroughs started to happen. i had to teach my sister how to pray and worship, and in doing so had to learn how to pray and worship first. she dragged me into questioning me about our faith, that i had to seek to teach. we prayed together. we worshipped together. we learnt together. we experienced God together.
we read the bible and bounced ideas off of each other, and suddenly i learnt a new dimension of His character. the complexity yet simplicity of His love for us, why He moves in the way He does, how Jesus came into the picture and how that is the single act of His love for us, to live as one of us, to go through the experience of the human condition, the sinful nature of which we first got ourselves into, that Jesus had to subject himself to. i remember the upside down kingdom where Jesus as the Lord, came in all humbleness onto earth as the son of a carpenter. i remember how He served His people, how He washed His disciples' feet. that walk up to calvary forever remains in me, and whenever i listen to Via Dolorosa, i remember how the guards pierced the crown of thorns onto Him, i remember the scorns and accuses thrown at Him, and i remember those eyes of His despite the scorns and accuses, of which gentleness spoke nothing but innocent blood shed. and that is what i remember about the King of my life every day. the knowledge that He who created me, created everyone, and He is the only one who can heal me, and the rest of the world.
wow.
those crazy thoughts that i mentioned above- one by one, God got rid of those mindsets. i realised that much of the sadness i felt was due to knowledge of a really broken and sad society and the withdrawal from it was because i didn't want to be like the world. but in order to be not of this world, you fight a losing battle without God, because only He can give the strength and power to stand firm in this world.
and then suddenly, my world whirled around when i saw people around me. i started to see the pain in people. the ones whom i normally get annoyed or angry with. i started to see the potential in people, i started to see people not as how their characters were in their current state, but through His eyes, as people who were a product of their experiences in life and a product of their parents' experiences in life, and people who could be so much more if only they knew of this love higher than the highest heavens. for that, i started to feel His heart for His people, and realised the bondages that sins held towards mankind and that He desired to rid all these in every one of us so that we could live a life of peace and joy. when you realise the depth of His love for us, you just wanna go out there, live out the life of Christ because you're so thankful and happy to be alive, and you want to draw people to know Him as well.
so anyway, i realised i digressed quite abit from the discussion on chapter 10. what i really meant to do was to testify how He brought me into the promise land, into where i am now. at peace, and totally joyful, and i can only be thankful for the transforming power of the cross, because i know that i've been healed, through and through.
i had the opportunity to share this a few days back, so i had to mine through the memories, and vaguely remember those days. locked in my room with my books, reading stuff like The Bell Jar, Virgin Suicides, Milan Kundera and watching stuff like American Beauty to numb and escape from the reality of living and the fear of moving forward and being lost in the emptiness of the world. it was no wonder all the literature i was exposed to, coupled with a really trying and unstable period of my life saw me in a really lost state.
thanks to my attempts to be tech-savvy back in those dial-up network days, i had the chance to go through many of my previous blog posts, and wow, i think i may have underestimated the extent of my depressive state.
here's a few of them, not to stumble anyone, but really, the stark contrast of my state of being then and now is quite mind-blowing, and i really want it to serve as a testimony. these were mainly from 2004, because short of the rest of the years that i was going through this trying period, 2004 was really a year filled with physical, emotional and mental pain.
20 January 2004
sometimes i just want things to change. i just want things to go my way. and that is when turning upside down comes into place. just when i feel that everything in my head is just like a time bomb just ticking by, waiting to explode, when i feel my troubles are just like this burning inferno in my head, turning upside down helps. i feel the blood all rush to my head and i smell this horrible smell of sickness. it is the stench i smell everytime i am down with a flu, the smell that replaces every scent in the world. it is the smell of not being able to smell anything, and yet it smells bad. this is when i feel the weight in my heart being lifted and just poured away to my own abyss of sorrows.
18 March 2004
When I see old people boarding the bus or looking very haggard indeed, chances are that I would give up my seats to them. But it struck me one day, what if these old people I’ve been giving up my seats to were ill-mannered little freaks as children?
What if they were those kind that never bothered to let old people have their seats when they were teens? What if they were unfilial brats who abandoned their parents at nursing homes? What if they were people who cheated on their families and gambled away every bit of cash that they had? What if.. what if.. oh dear, the possibilities are endless. It was then that I realized that if I continue thinking of things this way, I would continue having this ugly and black impression of every single person I meet.
It’s true, from the simplest things, such as people lending me a hand, I would go on to thinking, oh, what if he/she did it as an “act” and not really because he/she earnestly wanted to help me. And I would form an ugly side of that person although I actually know that every single one of us have that hideous facet that we do not know of.
Well, I say, ignorance is bliss. To all those people that do not know a thing, I admire you. because, if you are ignorant, you wont have an idea that you are ignorant, and you would think you know the world, but actually you are ignorant but you don’t know it, because that’s precisely what makes you ignorant. However, to those people who do understand and are not ignorant, they know what ignorance is. They know they should have chose to be ignorant and not spend their time forever pondering about things related to everything.
On the other hand, I can say that I am not ignorant, but since ignorant people think that they are not ignorant, am I ignorant as well? Am I one of those people out there that actually think they know the world but in actual fact, are just like every single one of those painful blogs that I browse through everyday?
I am draining away all of my juices discussing the most mundane things. Such simple things they may seem, but it’s these little things that make life so important.
I just know that my brain would shrivel up into a liquid mess if I ever ceased to indulge in philosophy.
25 March 2004
I’ve reached this saturation point of time where I really cannot be bothered with what my life is all about. When ever I am in one of my small little thoughts thinking about such, such and such, I think about how wonderful it is that all humans keep behind this little mask that does not show their true being.
Because what would we be like if our real guts were spilled out to ever single one in the world? Then there will be controversy. Then those ugly things that humans have been hiding and secretly hoping that noone would realize would be brought to light. Yes, I’ve said before that human beings shouldn’t deny the fact that selfishness is the root of all actions, but if one day, the entire of humankind were to be that smart to actually find out that every action of theirs has its origins of “me, me and more me”, there would be absolute havoc.
I am not contradicting myself on the havoc part, because in my earlier entries I happen to disregard world peace. but I am talking about the extremity of this “havoc”. I wont want world peace but that doesn’t mean I want absolute havoc on earth too.
Now, I am thinking, even if I am able to make out the most absurd of the human mind, what am I going to get out of it? I look at my tiny reflection on the computer screen, I look at the hands in front of me, I hear the sounds of my mother shuffling in the kitchen, I see my pictures from childhood till now hung in front of me. I think, who cares? Who is going to listen to me anyway? who wants to know about all these anyway? most of them are probably too dumb to understand.
Even if I am thinking, I am deeper, others don’t understand me, do I really care? Given my current deranged situation (I am frowning as I am typing this), I think I am most probably giving some strange paradoxical way of thinking that not even I can make sense of. Most people would probably never understand how it feels like to be able to think so much, so deep, you feel you don’t belong here. But then again, is it so important to be understood?
In this world where everyone thinks you must have a motive, people like me, aimless floaters who cease to find anything in life, are just little grains of brown rice in that whole pot of white porridge. Aimless people are considered of no value in society. On the other hand it is not our fault we cant find anything in life. but there’s a thin line that separates aimless non thinking people and aimless thinking people. Aimless thinking people know how to survive. I am one of them, thus I must be strong, I’ll never be one of those people who kill themselves to make a statement. I live to show the people that even though 99.99% of them cannot relate to me, I still wont break down, I still remain sane enough to watch all these people carry on with life everyday.
I read the Bell Jar some time ago. I’ve never mentioned it, it’s not one of my favorites, because I hate it. I hate how Sylvia Plath has managed to relate to people who suffered from breakdowns as she was one of them. I don’t need to know about her, but reading her novel, you’d know she was someone that had gone through the same thing before. She commited suicide. Yes, she is dead, Sylvia Plath. I wondered if she thought like me. I wondered if the reason she died was because she wanted to be nothing.
Blue Diary was finished 2 weeks ago too. Sometimes there are these novels written in such a surreal kind of way. I feel all so depressed reading about it, as the same way I had felt when I watched American Beauty. It’s hard to describe. Like the Virgin Suicides, it has an absurd plot. 5 sisters? All dead because they committed suicide one by one? Who the hell would believe that? it doesn’t happen, but for some strange reason I find it logical. I don’t think the storyline is stupid just because it can never happen. It is the same with American Beauty. Whoever heard of your best friend wanting to f*** your father?
Beauty, from different points of view. Weird story plot, but all the same it stuck onto my head ever since my sis let me watch it. just a shame it was R(A) by the board of censorships because it presented topics like masturbation. Again, us trying to deny and block off truths when it’s been thrown right in our faces. Not good for our teenagers, is their reason. Not true, I say. What is a millisecond of breasts thrust in their faces going to harm them when the message they learn at the end of the day is more than just the female vasectomy?
So what if we are made to believe this way of narrowing down on our learning materials is good for us? Everyone seems so contented here in Singapore, they have this weird patriotism in them. I am not referring to the unspoken pride of being Singaporeans that we all habour, but it’s about the complacence of us people because we sort of believe that every system works best for us so we are just contented with what we have. Not only that, there is this conceitedness lurking in the air, like we do not believe that there are others out there who are better than us. The truth is, we can stay like that for now, but not forever. This first, top notch thing will soon be a passé thing if Singaporeans refuse to accept others as being better than them.
8 May 2004
If my life depended on dreams, I would have a rather long corridor of queer little thoughts captured in one of those little cells that refuse to unbolt itself. One of them is the ‘trapped in the block’ freak accident.
in that cobweb of units, never ending, this flotsam of units all amalgamate into one as I struggle to make sense out of the block. qwweeretrtyoouyiiooowi however as I look out of the building I see cars. Life still goes on, but I am trapped and noone saves me.
The cycle repeats itself over and over. It doesn’t stop. No, my dreams do not spare me. I’ve been having that one ever since I was five.
But nowadays I dream thoughts of a B3 in Chinese, followed by carnage, and then a little girl in charge of me. She is disgusted by that massacre, so she cries out and says she hates me.
Symbolic dreams. I strongly believe that I’m that little girl.
i realised i can never be able to write like i did 2 years ago. the kind of tone, the issues discussed; superficial. today no eyes asked me what was the greatest thing i regreted in my life. i was left temporary speechless by her because there were so many things i regret doing, but yet, it was because of them, those shallow, silly things that i used to do that moulded me out to be the person i am today.
cannot speak much; midyears in 2 days, and an o level chinese paper. me and huiyi have agreed to pace each other in the marathon. i mustnt stop. i wont stop. i cannot stop.
5 November 2004
i dream my own fears. i do not seem like a timid girl, but inside me, i am. i am scared of facing truths, scared of trying hard, hell almost everything. i can never consider myself an achiever because i do not work hard, and neither am i an underacheiver, because i always manage to pull myself up at the last minute and most crucial times.
i am scared of this world. i am scared of facing this world in the future, and i never want to let go of my own world. my own world, consisting of my beliefs. my little beliefs that i religiously write in my blog. but that doesnt reflect my capability to survive. i might be the greatest thinker but afraid to apply my beliefs. believe me i love sharing with people about things, everything under the sun. i can become a philosopher by day, and yet another helpless superficial bimbo by night. it happens. it depends on my mood. discussing about people's looks? superficial, but essential. looks are after all, a part of our lives.
this is what i'm afraid of. never finding myself and being lost in that abyss. i dread days that come by, i dread sleeping at night because i dream about life--- i am afraid that one of my dreams will reveal something about me that i do not want to know.
people know me as a loud girl. i read my farewell notebook and everyone of the entries never fail to mention about my uber loud laugh and outburst or whatever that it. the truth is i only act like that infront of people i know, yet do not know. i am loud, yet quiet. loud only when i feel like it, and quiet when i find nothing in common to be loud about. the truth will always be that people remember me for my loudness. they cant remember me for the times when i am quiet, because i am just nonexistant during those times. what a sad thinker.
and on the other hand, i find myself regretting what i say sometimes. i do not want to sound unsensitive and superficial. i am not like that and i know it. but sometimes i find myself hating myself for the times i hurt people. i dont want to hurt people. i just have a slippery tongue.
i do not like to share my thoughts with people not close to me because they do not know me. i doubt anyone will understand my views unless they know me. what can i say, most people just do not know me for who i am. in addition, what they think of me contrasts to what i really am.
i feel so sad, so sad. :(
17 December 2004
there are times when you feel like stretching out your palm and wishing you owned the world, and had the world. you feel your 5 fingers, and you wish you could just grab hold of the world, because it just seemed so small.. isnt it amazing how many different kinds of things actually exist in society?
but ultimately, one looks for satisfaction. self-satisfaction, to be more precise, and that includes love, money, power.. that makes the world go round. and what makes humans humans.
sigh, and i thought i could change the world.
i think i'm a funny girl. nah, queer is more like it. and i amaze myself with the ability to completely hide my feelings, even show the complete opposite of it. how have i changed over the years? i dont know, and will never know. i know it just came to a day when i realised "my god, look at this world, isnt it all so sick and wonderful at the same time?" and i realised i could never commit suicide just because something was troubling me.
for christmas, i want to hold my life in the palm of my hands. to be able to curl my fingers and grasp my life tightly around my hands, and from then on, to take control of my life. i'll assure you there'll never be a day that i let go. i would grab onto it, and there wont be a day where i'll look back to my past. i do not want to live in my past and my dreams. i want to live my life, the present.so this last sentence has only begun to show its truth to me recently. perhaps in the last 3 months or so. i've been forced to reexamine my past, the past that i've really buried and tried to forget.
it is necessary, just because God wants me to face those fears, face the verbal, physical and emotional abuse and lies that were fed to me, the horrible and negative lies about the world that i fed to myself through the degenerative nature and downward spiral of my own thought processes. also, to face the sins that i had committed- the things i've said to people in projection of my own anger and hate with the world.
right now, even as i process such dark thoughts i don't think i can stomach a second read because i really hate to imagine myself there and then going through those years of pain, not realising that all i ever needed to do was to turn to God. my 8 years in the desert. sometimes, we think that our years in the desert is really punishment from God to keep us from His blessings just because he executes what He plans.
a punishment. really?
imagine a child strays, and his dad spends all his time trying to get his son's attention by coaxing him back onto the path that he knows is for his son's own good. he doesn't force him into any decision, but is always there, trying to gently guide him back. no authoritative voice booming into his ears commanding him to obey, or else.., or strapping him by the leash. so the son hears him, but refuses to obey, or even worse, refuse to acknowledge his father. at the end of the day, if the son were to come back crying having gone down the path of darkness, what conclusion is to be made but that the son had gone down his well-deserved path?
that was me. and really, it wasn't as though He never tried to point me back to Him. i remember the amazing friendships i had with some Christ followers and the gospel i was exposed to in junior college. some of them i talked about my disdain towards organised religion, some just merely touched me by being the person that Christ was. but i just wouldn't barge. it was the mindset, so entrenched that i held that however God tried to speak to me, i just didn't want to give in. too prideful and too stubborn.
up till the point where i was so broken down and so engulfed and troubled by what i was doing with my life, that all i could do was to turn to Him (that testimony leaves for another day). that was such a humbling moment. to say that prayer of acceptance of the Father back into my life. Jesus broke down all the walls of pride in my life, and with that, i could never turn back to my past.
and that day was the beginning of the promise of God to deliver me out of the desert into the promiseland. has it been a journey since that promise? it has been almost 2 years. acceptance of God into our lives is one thing, but living in full obedience to his purposes is really a whole new level.
at the beginning, i fumbled. i couldn't sense Him. i thought i had to feel Him to know that He was there. i never prayed on my own for a year, lest for superficial prayers like uh, God can it stop being so cold. i lived in a church in Chile, but struggled to find my footing. there even came a point that i wanted to give it up, and started to question His existence. i felt like i was living in my mind, i was reconciling my convictions with facts. yes, people need God, because i hear they have warped concepts of the real, personal God. yes, i need to bring people to church.. remind me why again? those days were such dark times for me. i accepted Him, but i didn't know who He was at all. i was fed sermons on sundays, i listened to downloaded sermons to convince myself of His truth, but in truth i felt so stuck, like i reached a point in my faith where i didn't know how to move on, and i couldn't see how God was real in my life anyway.
i flew back home, visibly stumbled in my faith. i was speaking words of conviction in sharing my experience, but i honestly didn't feel it at all. it was a whole new level of fear. wanting to experience Him, but having no humanness to do so. for the longest time, i struggled to feel anything. i couldn't even cry.
but, i don't know what gave in. perhaps, it was fighting for my faith when i announced to my parents the decision to get water baptised. on that afternoon that i entered the water and emerged as a whole new person in Christ, i got reminded of how He had watched over me even while i was still in the desert. that afternoon, i cried, and knew He was there, and i had to seek him for real, no excuses.
and then perhaps, it was the renewal of hope when my sister came to Christ. i will never know, but breakthroughs started to happen. i had to teach my sister how to pray and worship, and in doing so had to learn how to pray and worship first. she dragged me into questioning me about our faith, that i had to seek to teach. we prayed together. we worshipped together. we learnt together. we experienced God together.
we read the bible and bounced ideas off of each other, and suddenly i learnt a new dimension of His character. the complexity yet simplicity of His love for us, why He moves in the way He does, how Jesus came into the picture and how that is the single act of His love for us, to live as one of us, to go through the experience of the human condition, the sinful nature of which we first got ourselves into, that Jesus had to subject himself to. i remember the upside down kingdom where Jesus as the Lord, came in all humbleness onto earth as the son of a carpenter. i remember how He served His people, how He washed His disciples' feet. that walk up to calvary forever remains in me, and whenever i listen to Via Dolorosa, i remember how the guards pierced the crown of thorns onto Him, i remember the scorns and accuses thrown at Him, and i remember those eyes of His despite the scorns and accuses, of which gentleness spoke nothing but innocent blood shed. and that is what i remember about the King of my life every day. the knowledge that He who created me, created everyone, and He is the only one who can heal me, and the rest of the world.
wow.
those crazy thoughts that i mentioned above- one by one, God got rid of those mindsets. i realised that much of the sadness i felt was due to knowledge of a really broken and sad society and the withdrawal from it was because i didn't want to be like the world. but in order to be not of this world, you fight a losing battle without God, because only He can give the strength and power to stand firm in this world.
and then suddenly, my world whirled around when i saw people around me. i started to see the pain in people. the ones whom i normally get annoyed or angry with. i started to see the potential in people, i started to see people not as how their characters were in their current state, but through His eyes, as people who were a product of their experiences in life and a product of their parents' experiences in life, and people who could be so much more if only they knew of this love higher than the highest heavens. for that, i started to feel His heart for His people, and realised the bondages that sins held towards mankind and that He desired to rid all these in every one of us so that we could live a life of peace and joy. when you realise the depth of His love for us, you just wanna go out there, live out the life of Christ because you're so thankful and happy to be alive, and you want to draw people to know Him as well.
The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he 'likes' them: the Christian, trying to treat every one kindly, finds him liking more and more people as he goes on - including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning.― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianitythere is a song by gungor which i recently heard and got really moved by. i think it about sums up the state of how we as people of this world see Jesus and who Jesus really is- the one that i know and love.
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