what did you do when you were young?

2 weekends ago, some of us were making the last minutes of sunday stretch by swapping childhood memories. It was amazing how light-hearted and happy we got just by recalling past silliness. Nostalgia has a magic of its own. Somehow reminiscing about the past is such a human way of forming connections: it's always interesting to get the know what someone was like before you had ever met them.

We discovered surprising little links between the hijinks we got up in school to what we were ended up doing as careers. The irrepressible Redbeanfish was devising codes for her little Famous Five gang to communicate in; enterprising CL was once hauled up by her primary school teacher for being an illegal sticker seller: she had rubbed her mother's perfume on ordinary stickers to latch onto the then-popular "scratch-and-sniff" sticker craze' ; I was always creating stuff to share with my classmates: I cut bad albums with badly written lyrics superimposed on popular songs. I created magazines full of hand-drawn pictures of my childhood mates as celebrities exiting out of limos, hand in hand with hot guys. I had a flourishing little business where I made paper dolls for friends and regularly updated the dolls' wardrobes with new fashion lines of paper clothes.

We also discovered surprising propensity for mischief that lay behind mild mannered faces: A used to make flying leaps off her family balcony in defiance of her screaming mother; SpyMaster used to hide snails in unsuspecting provision shop owners' deep freezers, in between launching water bombs on innocent passerbys.

There were also anecdotes of how childhood shaped your ethical outlook: I will always remember how I cheated on my chinese exam in Primary Six. My chinese teacher had seen through my pathetic attempts to cover up and chose not to reprimand me during the exam. Instead, after all papers were handed up and all people had left, she took me aside to tell me she saw everything I did and told me never to cheat again. It was pure grace. I never expected it from a chinese teacher I had always associated with fiercely knitted brow, tightly pursed lips and a red pen of fury. I never cheated on a test ever again.

You gladly leave some things behind in childhood: your secret and ill-thought crush on Jordan Knight from NKOTB, your deep desire to go for a Richard Marx concert, your notion that Richard Clayderman was the classiest music on earth, your ill-fitting pinafores.

But some things you should just never let go: your irrepressible search for cheap fun, your belief that a good day is always just around the corner, the simple presumption that you were creative and the notion that all you needed was to make the most of today. Tomorrow would worry for itself.

As to all my friends: I raise a glass of ribena (or if you prefer, lukewarm banana-flavoured UHT milk in square little cartons sitting in the sun) to all our todays and tomorrows. Grow like a Champion, Grow.

How glad I am for such lovely company along the way. :)

The Return of a Friend

me
Originally uploaded by neonangel.

Yesterday, though I least expected it - God healed me from a old but nagging wound in the heart. The healing of this 4 year old ache did not take more than a simple minute, over a cheap $3.50 lunch, with a simple sentence - that is the power and profundity of God. That is His mysterious, strange timing.

I have mourned the loss of a very good friend for 4 years - though I tried hard to forgive, to be the better person, to be godly, to be wise, to be strong, to move on and seemed to succeed, I remained incredibly pained by it. I could not understand how our friendship could have meant nothing after all we had been through. Though we still kept in amiable contact, spotted with a few meaningful conversations here and there, BestFriend was only 20% present. BF always felt really faraway, like a curtain had been drawn between us forever.

I resented the distance. I knew what was the right thing to do - Love God, Love my Neighbour with superhuman intensity beyond understanding - but it still caused me heartache to have to do it. By God's gracious ministry, I was not embittered by the pain. But I often ached at the thought of how long it was going to remain in me with all my other questions. Why did I have to keep being the one who reached out? Why should I care in a friendship where I was not sure I was being cared for right back?

"I have always noticed when you were sad and lonely. I am sorry for not being there when you needed me most." Some old hurt just slipped out of me, as if it was nothing more than a thin scarf to be pulled off in a tug. Can a sincere apology have that much power?

"You know what - you are still my best friend." I needed those words more than I knew. A small weight vanished from within , as if it had been nothing more than smoke.

Sitting there and staring at my old best friend talk to me with 100% presence back in full force, I was literally shell-shocked. I had gotten so used to operating at the level BF had set in those 4 years. Suddenly, our friendship was back in full force - the familiarity, the ease, the back and forth, the level of giving, the unsaid assurance of full trust in Christ under everything we said. It was a miracle from heaven. I never knew how little I expected this day to happen until it did.

"I can't believe it. It feels....like a new chapter. Almost like the end of ... a saga."

"I know."
_______________________________

At night, I started thinking of how strangely grateful I am that God allowed me to feel such depths of pain and sadness in the past 4 years. In allowing me to become brutally honest with my heart's suffering, I have grown year by year in my dependence on His wisdom and hence in my ability to empathise, in my desire to reach out, in my boldness to break out of fear that comes from Loving people His way.

Without understanding pain, I would never have understood joy. WIthout tasting turmoil and unrest, I would have never loved peace. Without teaching me loss, I would have never longed so hard to find.

Though the past 4 years had not changed my circumstances in any tangible sense, I knew in the intangible realm, I was soaring. I was growing. Every year was a year of genuine gratefulness, deeper joy, stranger peace - even though pain was always muted but present.

"Though i walk through valleys low, I will fear no evil.
By the waters, still my soul, my heart will trust in you."

'My Heart WIll Trust' from some old HIllsongs album was one of the songs that brought me through the worst of the 4 melancholy years. I love it because it recalls my favourite Psalm 23 - The Lord is my Shepherd.

The words of that Psalm may have been cross-stitched, wood-burnt, curliculed to death by a million ridiculous, cheesy Christian paraphenalia makers but nothing can dim the Truth of its message - in a fallen world, a valley of where the shadow of death looms over every little thing that we do, somehow He will help us find those quiet waters, those green pastures.

Even better, even subtler - By telling us He will comfort us with the rod of justice and the staff of love, He shows us He knows we are in mourning. The Lord does not deny we are in pain. He assures us that it is okay to feel sad, it is okay to mourn and feel hurt. We do not need to pretend it is easy to be godly or that we need to pretend to be happy all the time to be an example of mature Christianity.

In His timing, He will bring healing and peace into our fractured lives: first in profound but intrinsically incomplete forms on earth; later, more importantly in full completion as HIs Kingdom comes.
For a far better exposition on this, read Dr Larry Cobb's brilliant Inside Out. I think anyone who is looking for a honest breakthrough in their Christian maturity should give it a go - it deals very wisely with the truth of how foolish, thirsty Christians can come to grips with their long search for healing, and for inner and outer integrity. If you ever wanted to know how your ungodly ways can be changed through God, and are tired of easy answers from over-smiley christian writers who tire you out with their naivete, or sick of smarmy Pharisees who think change happens when youjust run the gamut of a million rules of Christian Living, this is a great, great Godly book. The packaging of the book may make you scream "Christian Psychobabble Self-Help!!!!! Ewwwww" but trust me, the book is worth getting over your prejudices.

Meanwhile.....Hallelujah and praise the God of the Impossible.

I have found my BestFriend again. : )

It's not a miracle on the Richter scale of the parting of the Red Sea, but it sure feels like a miracle to me.

CEWTTK - Five Loaves, Two Fishes of a talent

My insurance agent/financial advisor has recently morphed into my accountability partner / non-profit consultant by sheer meddling of the Holy Spirit.

we had initially met up to set up a investment account....being both christian, we usually begin our "work" meetings with updates on what is happenign at both our churches and cell groups. He is from shalala-ing charismatic circles, me from sober Presby. Anyhoo, I was sharing about my traumatising attempts to teach weak, unmotivated students as well as my humbling, fumbling attempts to draft the first proper business plan of my short life. He gets all excited about the business plan thingee especially because of the christian-y/ social activist aspects of the business i wish to set up.

WIth typical Charismatic enthusiasm, he got me to pray with him about it before he started attacking my "To DO' list and formatting a timeline of goals for me to achieve. ANyone who knows me, knows I abhor numbers, scary timelines and crap...I am NOT an operations minded person so it was gratifying (and scary) to have someone map it out for me. In short, now i have a semi ready made road map sent from God through my insurance agentt. haha who knew.

FUnny part is that in our discussion, my agent gets hit by a wierd realisation from God himself. He has been asking himself all along what ministry to be involved in at church. Through preparing my plan, he literally gets struck (kid you not, he literally clutched his shirt front) with the uncomfortable thought that he was meant to minister to difficult youth within his church.

Now youth ministry to him is as much of a "WAH LAU EH - CRAP!" as operations/ numbers are to me. So it was payback, Holy Spirit style - i was supposed to make sure he called his church and committed to youth ministry while he made sure i kept to my timetable for business plan. He was just as freaked by his call to ministry as i was freaked by my call to bring my school to where it ought to be.

sigh. god is good. but scary.
humbling so humbling. I feel more and more like jesus' disciples who ran after him saying "How lord? HOw can 5 loaves and 2 fishes feed 5000??? you Mad ah!"

yet i am expected to raise my meagre talent to heaven, break it, give thanks for it and somehow watch the multiplication happen.

Man......I wish I could fast forward to the future. I dont have a clue how to make things happen today. But DIE DIE must try.

bugger.

Big lesson learnt this week:
The one thing scarier than never knowing what you are supposed to do with your life...
...is knowing what to do and having to actually be bold enough to finish it.