1/3 of Year 2019

Before we even mentioned about 2019, let me share about the year 2018.

Nearing at the end of 2018 during the season of feasting, celebration and gatherings, some friends and I followed traditions and catch up in each other’s life. What we all have a sensing/prompting and agreed upon that 2019 won’t be an easy year for everyone.

So, even though it has only been 1/3 of the year 2019, there are so many things that happened in just the year alone, it makes me wonder what other challenges or lessons or how tough the rest of the year is going to be. The term I used it to share with my friend always is “Don’t you feel like this year we are on fast-forward?” and they always stare at me and give me this weird look of like, what a way to describe it but not wrong.

In these first 4 months, i have gone through a major emotional ride by having a fight with my closest friend, entertaining the thought of giving up on the friendship all together, feel lost & meaningless, feeling the hearts shattered in piece, heart healing through the hurt, God’s constant providence and presence.

In regards to my friendship epsoide, bygones to the case details of what happened during the friendship, the trial and test question that I have gotten from God was “Do I want to continue on this way (loving others, even though there is nothing to gain & even though it might hurt)?”.

My response to the question that appeared before me was “I don’t want anymore”. With that response came the fall, I gave up and rejected God’s love for me and for others. I stopped modelling God’s ways and spiral down to believe the lies that tells my heart that “nobody loves me, nobody cares”. I got angry and depressed that suddenly I was unable to share my heart with my LG, they are only concerned about their own convenience, selfish and not only not interested to be involved in others life, yet didn’t welcome others to be involve in their lives too. I lost my meaning to “why am I still serving with the kids ministry (They are not my favourite things) ?”. People who are good are planning to leave at my workplace, there are a lot of backstabbing, finger pointing and fault blaming happening and I kept wondering to God, if i should still be staying or leaving the place.

Everything seems to came to a standstill and I became so lost in my life purpose. I seem to have given up God’s ways, hence everything that I have set out to do for God become totally meaningless. I felt that I have given up the world of colours and pick to go back to see the world in black & white. I refuse to go face all the issues that are placed right in front of me and bringing back an old promise that I made with myself to fix my eyes – Lasik. I decided that I was going to deal with everything once I can get my sight in focus, I make to obvious to God that was my intension too. And so once, you make such prayers, would you think that God would have let you go at that moment? Nope.

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The moment I came back from overseas, a few days later my ex-leader caught up with me and asked me how are things? Well of course, we as habitual humans, i replied that I am fine. With that leader, a sequence of events happened and I can really sees that God hears when we cry and pray to him.

Even though my faith to continue to believe in Jesus is challenged, i discovered more and more of myself that I never knew existed. I have always shown the symptoms but never officially taken down the root issue all along. With this I am thankful the people whom God has sent to point to me the ways and guide me along where to go, so nice of God to place ushers for the small me.

This 1/3 of the year have been realy tough and I can forsee that the year this year won’t be such an easy battle.

I am just praying that

I will survive the year…
Be Strong & Courageous..
Persevere in God…
Trust in God…
Fall in Love with Him even more.

Praying that others will join me on this journey too. We are preparing for a take off.

“Love is a choice”

These words were shared by a friend. I am writing here to remind myself when I look back.

Since this is often easily forgotten and easily mistaken to think that love is a feeling.

1 John 4:19 (NIV) “We love because he first loved us.”

Pray that I don’t give up, to persevere on.

In my hurts… Do you want to journey with me?

Heyyy friend…. I suddenly felt that I wanted to send you an update.

Since you were not present in the previous meetup, I was in a really bad shape (it is also the reason why  you all didn’t hear from me so often since the start of this year). Even though we denied it, but we all know that a once broken point, not matter how much we try to mend it by ourselves/with the help of others, the moment the other person hits the similar point. That spilt will open itself even bigger and ever so present and clearly to us.

So recently, what happened was something happened with a close friend of mine. So an expectation that we have have conflicted before, yet we have never spoken about it. Her being someone who tells me that some things need not to be spoken & we honestly never spoke about it. But I believe when it happened before, I did mentioned it and she is aware about the issue there. So this time it was a catalyst that shatters all my emotions because I was asked within myself a question if I wanted to continue this way and my response to that question is, “no I don’t want to anymore”. 

With that my world shatters again as well as my emotions, I wasn’t sure if I ever shared with you before that during the times when you all know me, I have always rejected what I feel. I do things or actions purely by thoughts & it haven’t been years that I am ever so lost once again. Office is looking really blank, office politics is terrible, I have no idea why I was there anymore and it is better to leave but I have no idea where to go. Church group wasn’t easy as well things were really difficult, I couldn’t find any solution to how things are spiralling. I have no idea why am I serving with the kids ministry anymore when I didn’t really like the kids in the first place. Even when I wanted to ask for help from my friends, all of them I knew have really tough situations that they are facing and doesn’t seem to be very available to listen to me or help me out or give some advice/guidance.

Even when some friends did hear it, they could only feel a sense of overwhelm sadness that comes out from me, they couldn’t provide me with guidance or any assistance. During the period of these few months I keep wondering – “I want to die. God/Jesus, when can I go home to see you? I want all these to end – don’t want the pain nor cry anymore”.  I honestly, didn’t have the heart to want to celebrate my birthday this year. Until 20th April that one of my leader who raise up and left our church group, decided to catch me and ask me “How am I doing?” and like every adult human, I went like “yeah I am okay”. She prompted more questions which I briefly answered and only later she revealed that she received an image while praying for me from God.

The image “A clear road. Suddenly something dropped & the whole image shatters into pieces.” She is always very scared to receive such images & so what actually happened. After I heard that, I fused up about things in my life. Cried a little while I was sharing and starting to have more and more expression showing again in a few minutes. No doubt I still feel that my heart is in pieces (honestly by myself I have cried a few times already). I turned to her and honestly said “I don’t know anymore. Can you please just tell me what to do?”. After she heard everything, she only replied “So… originally the crack lines are already there. It is so fine that you won’t see it, but when a few event stack together and drop the fine lines just spilt.” and that I am lost & should speak things out with the girl. She spoke many many other things but that are the only few things that I registered. One thing that really hit me was “oh! I am lost” because I didn’t know that about myself.

So the next few days, I can really see God moving in my life, firstly, a nice kid teacher that I knew came up to me and ask how have I been, and he suggested that I take a break from the kids to tune myself first, which I did. In my office, a guy resigned so he set the resigning process of everyone else into motion. After which, I discover issues about myself during the last meetup. Some of them were tired and doesn’t seem that they wanted to come or could make it. Even though they have already given their words, I have already concluded that they won’t turn up. (Based on what? Nothing! Simply because the previously there was one person whom broke the trust I have given her, the whole group of you seems to be affected together with it) And I realised that things have yet to be settled in my heart. It is true that even though I have spoken to the girl & put the incident behind us. The hurts still exist, when I dig my heart, I can still feel the lines, the hurts, the pain & them in pieces. It also bring me on a very sensitive edge, very minor things it will bring me to an extremely depressed mood. I also asked myself if I still believed and trust in Jesus anymore. Yet no doubt, I still see his handprint in my life, like bring a random friend to accompany me (just be beside me), minor worry about money (I got fed food for 3 lunch & 3 dinner in a week – saved a lot of money). So he is still there or how my friend phrase it just there, while I wonder about my things.

I know, the easiest way to not get hurt is to bury myself with hobbies, things to do and be busy, yet I know I will still long for companionship, love from people and want to love others. Yet either I build or mask on top those hurt from previously but when similar incidents happens, it will trigger those hurts again. Recently, I attended Celebration of Hope and did managed to cry myself buckets for awhile but my heart felt a lot more whole now, but I can still feel a bit of like burnt surface that kind of feeling from it. 

I wanted to share with you to see if you want go on to discover and healing yourself this journey together with me too? Because I am aware these symptoms even though discovered during the period when I am with you all, but I should be streamed from when I was a kid. Just wanted to share these with you.

Walls – Following from “2 Very Strange Dreams”

We always say that we don’t build up walls but in actual fact, we guard. Almost against everything and anything.

When everything build up walls, we often think back to incidents during our 10+/20+ years, our hurts, pains, reasons why we change to be who we are today.

However, who build up and adapt to the world only when they are 10+/20+, so no actually we build up walls when we are a kid and that meant during the time when we are 0 to 9 too.  We have been unknowing carrying those walls around with us.

Some walls are opaque, some walls are transparent, some are kind of blurry but still doesn’t really block our sight. However, we all know something about walls, even though they don’t block our sight. We navigate around them. Why? Simply because we know we know they are not meant to be walked through because we crash into them and it hurts. We don’t want to be hurt.

We, by ourselves, am very familiar with the room, some walls we know are obviously in front of us. Solid and really spoils the view, others we might not even knew they were there, until people come in and crash into those walls that we realised there is a glass wall there or we ourselves, accidentally walk into it.

Be it the glass or the solid concrete wall,  God never intended us to build up walls. He wants to know us inside out, he wants an intimate relationship with us. How can we be intimate with others while holding on to our boundaries? How can we fully trust, if we hold on to those walls? It only reflect my interstate that I don’t trust fully. I don’t trust people fully, while it also reflects that I don’t trust God fully. And now he comes to me with the challenge – do you want to continue this way?

Sometimes, while we are busy watching our vertical walls that we place up to protect ourselves and guard again others, we forgot about to look down and up. There are 2 more walls that we often forgot, they are often in concrete and really steady, we even name them differently and that is our —  floor and ceiling.

Our ceiling, have we ever looked at something & thought to ourselves along the line of “Nope impossible”, “it cannot be done” and “that’s crazy, no way”. We often limit our own potential because we judge our own abilities, our circumstances, others etc. Our own ceiling & judgement place a cap to all the potential that God sees in us. The floor, often times we just place things on top of it or we starts staking things up from there. Because in order to utilise the most space or stack the highest tower/empire, we are have start from the bottom. However, how do you know that your current the floor is the bottom?  What if the floor you are currently standing on is 3f and there are still 2f & G below?

Why do we do limit and do this to ourselves so often? Why do we try to define God with our own minds? Why do we put God in a box, when we ourselves are actually the ones who are living in our box.

The Parable of the Sower, Matthew 13: 3-9. Many people knew this as an evangelism passage to encourage people to persevere. However, ever wondered why God refer us to trees?

Nobody plants a tree in an apartment, why? because it won’t be able to get enough sunlight from the walls, it won’t be able to get watered from the rain, the ceiling won’t be able to contain its growth height, there is not enough depth for the tree to grow deep, because one day the root will hit the concrete floor restricting its growth, making it very unstable and dangerous.  However, what do one do if the plant still need to grow but there isn’t enough space? They uproot the tree and plant it unto another soil that can allow its root to grow deeper, to grow taller and stronger.

Be prepared cause the day will come, where God will require to uproot you, in order to move you so that the roots can go deeper.  Break down all the walls so that you can grow stronger and break through the ceiling to grow to your potential to bring light to his people in the dark and testify to the world the glory, majestic and awe of God in creation.