Tired…
10 May 2012 Leave a Comment
So fucking tired of people, so fucking tired of having to explain, fucking tired of taking it all in. Just so fucking tired of everything.
So fucking tired of people treating me as if I’m their fucking belonging. I don’t effin belong to you. What I do ain’t your business. Effin’ tired of people asking me questions I have no answer to. If I fucken knew the answer I’d be doing something about it by now, won’t I? Eff off…
Seasons…
09 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in God, Life, Rest, Testimony, Waiting Tags: God, purposeful, reason, rejoice, season, spinster, unemployment
The video below is about trusting God in the season of ‘singleness’. In terms of trusting God in that season, I have to say that I’m very much comfortable in being a single, I revel in it and hope this particular seasons lasts for ever. Yes, I’m those ‘spinster types’.
But one thing I can draw from this video. God is a God of seasons. I don’t mean He’s restrained by time, rather He is a purposeful deity who has reasons for the seasons. I am in a season of waiting and I have been impatient, unable to enjoy the rest that He is giving me. Instead I worry and fret, and I gnaw over each and every comment people pass over my lack of employment. Instead of giving my mind a rest I dwell on the resentment I feel against some people who lord it over me, real and imagined.
So this video is a good reminder for me. He is with me in every season. I should simply rejoice because He is with me in each and every moment. That’s reason enough for me to enjoy and embrace this season.
Desert Riders
04 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in God, Life Tags: child trafficking, desert, Esther, God, justice, Korean, Middle East, one, ordinary, The Crucible, violate
I caught the tail end of Desert Riders[Episode 1] on Channel News Asia. So I went to Google the program and this is what I got:
“Thousands of children were trafficked to work as camel jockeys in the Middle East. At training they were starved, injected with hormones and physically abused. This documentary goes behind an age-old practice masked within a multi-million dollar industry.”
I can either ask why a loving God would allow such atrocities to continue or I can take that step to make someone’s day easier, better or more dignified. I have spent much time dwelling on my purpose on earth. One moment too many in fact. But now it seems clearer that ever that my only purpose in this life is to glorify His name. I don’t want to jump onto the bandwagon of intellectuals who question and dig until kingdom come for some sort of rational explanation for all the things that happen. For one, I am not an intellect and any argument I put forth would have so many holes that a sieve would inferior.
“…and who knows but that you have come to your [royal] position for such a time as this?” Esther 14:4
I am not Queen Esther and I don’t think I ever would ever hold such clout but I have been placed in this position for His purpose. The Crucible was a hard watch. My soul shriveled and my guts churned. Every pore in my body felt the sheer terror as the kids were first physically violated and then the completion of their violation as the justice system in South Korea screwed them over a second time. The violators? Their principal: his brother, his mistress, a male teacher on the staff who preyed on young boys. And the justice system.
I applauded the teacher whom Gong Yoo portrayed. An ordinary everyday man with familial obligations and a ton of baggage — not very different from you and me. He stood up to be counted, he stood up when it mattered and he spoke up when silence was demanded. He made a difference.
I ranted and railed. But how many times have I ‘screwed over’ someone who placed their trust in me because I was too much of a coward and a fence-sitter? Because I was afraid of rocking the boat, because I wanted to be politically correct, because I wanted to retain the popular vote, because…Because I didn’t have the balls to walk the talk.
I do not think it is my calling to the Middle East to make a change or to lobby the cause of these kids who suffer for the sport of rich men and mercenary businessmen. There must be somebody who has the power and proximity to dare a change. It is also beyond me to heal every hurt and right every wrong so God in His wisdom created His children who would do His work. But where I am, I can go to the Karen refugees because while my heart is heavy for the children who hurt, God has set a burden on me for Karen refugees and it is where I must go. Yet, with the gift for words that He has given me I wish to do the littlest that I can.
Photo courtesy of The Tricycle
“I am only one, but I am one. I can’t do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do. And by the grace of God, I will.” ::Edward Everett Hale::
No Way…!
25 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in Dreams, God, Life, Plans, Questions, Waiting Tags: American Idol, anathema, darkness, deaf, Faith, impotency, Isaiah, job, photography, provision, rejection, restless, seminary, trust, uncertainty
[A Yosemite Winter 2010]
There was just no way. She lives half the world away. And until I commented on her blog entry, she would probably never know of my existence. And yet on a day when I just almost choking on impotence and seething in restlessness, I came upon her blog entry. I would visit her blog one or two times a week, there’d be some entries I’d read and some I did not. This particular one had an American Idol logo so I just followed the link without much thought, I have to admit I did not even read the title of the post. But by the end of the post, I was struck and I was blessed.
Let me shamelessly rip off a few lines from her while adding my own chilli:
Rejection doesnt mean it’s the end of a dream. It may mean you’re just being rerouted to something else bigger and better than what you’ve dreamed for yourself.
In the span of 4 months, I have submitted countless applications for a job. Silence meant rejection and replies of regret meant rejection. It was not for lack of trying. Was it my qualification? My friends with less experience and similar grades or less had gotten their jobs decades ago. [I operate on hyperbole when in distress.] Was it my resume? Am I just universally hated and rejected?
So the question was, what was wrong with me? What was I doing wrong? The questions were inward but it wasn’t God-ward. It was not my first instinct to inquire of the Lord. [You know where that road leads to. Hint: first king of the Israelites.] I only knew that I wanted and what I knew others expected of me. I still do not know where I’m supposed to be and what I’m supposed to do. I am in a period of darkness when I am in absolute lack of any light, I have no clue where I am which makes it impossible to know where I’m going. In order to not drop of the cliff, I’m just standing still. This stillness baffles and frustrates me.
So why I am noting all this down, setting pen to paper so to speak? There are things that I write to remember and some that I write to forget. Now I write to forget this overwhelming frustration and impotency but I also write so that at a later time when God has already delivered me out of this uncertainty, I will not forget His compassion. To remember that He is mighty to save.
Uncertainty to me is anathema. Job? Seminary? MBA? Missionary? Thailand? Singapore? Australia? America? Corporate? NGO? Where is He rerouting me? Photography seems so far away from me at this moment. But whatever the case I know God is not indifferent to the tidal waves dancing salsa in my thoughts nor is He deaf to my pleas. It’s just that my lack of trust, I trust Him but I lack working faith in His perfect timing[yes, He makes all things beautiful in His time] and His provision[yes, He feeds the sparrow and clothes the lilies], has got my knickers in a twist. It’s not Him, it’s me.
Through Katelyn’s post, and other little things that I’ve come across, I know He’s there waiting for me realize that His plans are better, His ways are higher and that He loves me more than I do.
Wow! He loves me more than I do myself. Isn’t that something?
Like this:
Leave Me Alone
25 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in Life, love Tags: alone, companionship, leave, Pink, pizzazz, relationship, solitude, warped
Warning before proceeding: This is a dissection of Pink’s song and my own warped emotional response to it.
This song pretty much describes my attitude towards relationships. I am a person who needs a lot of space so I need some room so there’s “enough room for two”. I scram the moment I smell a whiff of emotional neediness. I need someone who doesn’t need me. Sometimes I think I don’t make sense. I yearn for solitude with a fervor that others long for a companionship.
[Go away, come back] X infinity. To say I vacillate would be accurate, yet the word lacks a certain pizzazz.
Why can’t I have it both ways? I wish you knew the difference. Go away. Come back. It would be ideal if the person knows when it’s time to go away and the right time to come back but if I don’t know my own mind, who am I to demand it of someone else? I know I have an unhealthy outlook on relationships, that I have not applied my head knowledge into heart knowledge. I leave God at the door when it comes to these heart-related issues because I’m too busy listening to what my head’s saying.
I know only He can change me. But in the mean time…
Do go away and leave me alone. Wait…come back. Oi…leave me ALONE.
Like this:
I am my worst cheerleader.
24 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in Life, Questions Tags: Asian, darkness, freedom, parents, resentment, solace, tunnel
Now and then I get into a funk. I am not easily affected by events happening around me but one word from my parents and I find myself crippled. Anger and resentment when I feel their sentiments are unjustified. Upset that I’ve upset them when I’m clearly in the wrong. In this day and age, it’s not cool to admit that our parents influence us. At this grand age, I am still living under my parents’ roof and under their largesse.
That pricks at my pride. I enjoy having financial freedom. Even in my early teens, I chose gastric pains over asking for more pocket money. Ethnically Asian with a decidedly Asian upbringing, but I don’t subscribe to the belief that I should live with my parents unless I get married and move out of the family home.
More than enjoying freedom, I loathe having to depend on others for my personal well-being. Nobody owes me anything. I dislike being obligated. But yet, here I am. Tied and moored.
Where is my light at the end of the tunnel? Darkness is all there is. Darkness the only companion. Darkness. My solace. But I might begin to despise my solace.
But the question at the heart of all this is…
What is God trying to teach me? Why am I not getting it? Am I stupid, willful or is it just not time yet? Then WHEN?
[Taken at the tunnel near San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge]
Like this:
Hell Hath No Fury
23 Mar 2012 2 Comments
in Plans, Traveling Tags: border, food, fury, gastronomic, hungry, lust, Thai, unhinged, village
I used to think that I was the only one but it seems that is not the case. Well, it’s comforting because it proves that I am not a nutcase or least I’m not the only nutcase around.
I get MAD when I am hungry.
Reason is a fair weather friend when my stomach is empty. Social etiquette makes a quit exit before I experience spontaneous combustion due to lack of food. Some women experience meltdowns, public and private, over numerous reasons but I’ve had both over food.
I came home after a long day at school. Hungry. No food. At all. I crawled under the dining table in anger at my mom for not knowing, not anticipating, not reading my mind that I would come home famished and I bawled my little hungry heart out. I was 16.
There was a conference in Chiang Mai and I had been planning for months with ways which I would placate my gastronomic yearnings once my plane landed on the Land of Smiles. We were sequestered in a place miles away from decent Thai food. I lasted 2 days but on the 3rd day, I made an executive decision for someone to transport my family to the nearest Thai food. Due to miscommunication, we ended up in a shabu-shabu restaurant. Dangerously close to being detonated, a nuclear reactor would have been less destructive than all of 5′ 2″ of me. We were with guests and my parents were doing their best to be Asians. Polite and composed in the face of a brewing storm. The nervous tics on the guests’ face registered briefly before an angry cloud lifted me up and flew me away to the faraway lands of thwarted gastronomic lust.
In the back of my mind, I was vaguely aware that I must have looked unhinged. Evidenced by that wild look in my eyes and my constant babbling about shabu-shabu not being Thai food. Near tears, I snapped. Jumped out of my seat and with money in hand, I was a woman with a cause, a mission to quell that monster in my belly. I’m sure I cried when I saw the food I wanted to eat. I was 25. Age =/= maturity.
I ordered, I ate. And I smiled. All’s well that ends well.
[This was at a Thai village at the border of Burma. On a completely different occasion from the story above but still the same hungry wastrel.]
Like this:
Attitude of Gratitude
21 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in Life Tags: attitude, gratitude, headmaster, Jasmine Star
Thank goodness.
Thank you.
Thank GOD!
So hard to be grateful sometimes. Harder still to express that gratitude. Last night, I read a post by Jasmine Star and for the very first time since I started following her blog a year ago, I left a comment. I thanked her for her attitude of gratitude. It’s hard to keep that attitude shining, sparkly and new when you’re busier than a Mad Hatter and sick as a dog.
I went for Wednesday prayer tonight. Another reminder. A warning even. It is a command to praise Him.
I am thankful for the reminders to be grateful and people who show me by example how to keep that attitude. Gratefulness is, I believe, an attitude and not just a response to something good which takes place in your life. It is refusing the ingratitude to take over. It is refusing to succumb to that lifelong habit of ‘FML, everyone has it easier than I do’ reaction when things are a little more than what we can handle. Gratitude’s not easy though. Be warned.
I shall leave you with a few words from my favorite Headmaster in the whole wide world:
“Dark and difficult times lie ahead, soon we must all face the choice, between what is right and what is easy.”
Like this:
Critics::Critiques
14 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: critics, daring, defeat, triumph, victory
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again…who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” ::Theodore Roosevelt::
My failures have been resoundingly loud and spectacularly embarrassing. But
“…because the Sovereign LORD helps me, I will not be disgraced. Therefore have I set my face like flint, and I know I will not be put to shame.” Isaiah 50:7
I wish to react with maturity and grace when faced with criticism, especially when there is justifiable grounds for that criticism. It is much easier to brush off and walk away from criticisms that are unfounded and based on prejudice or misunderstanding.
A Little…
13 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in Direction, Life Tags: Desperation, little, lost
A little beaten down, a little disappointed. A little heartache, a little envy.
A little uncertainty, a little doubt, a little angst, a little worry.
A little bruised, a little tear in my soul.
A little tired. A little jaded.
A little desperate.
A little lost.
A little makes a whole lot.
