Dec 16, 2016

i pray you come home

may flowers bloom where you tread. may your voice be a healing balm to those who need it; may your hugs seal tears. may you be mother and sister and friend and as you soothe their hearts with porridge and song may it warm yours too. above all i pray you come back home.

once somebody mused about the beauty of cathedrals to a friend, and she replied, "if it feels like home, go home." i pray that in those stained glass windows and white carved walls you find again your greatest love. that you will remember the locket with the saints you used to wear, and that you will ache to finger it again. i remember the days where you glowed with a pure, peaceful love, amidst all the brokenness on either side of you. you showed me your book of prayers and taught me to say them together with you. love radiated from your soul and you were the mother of the world, of all the broken and poor. He gave you that grace, that anointing, over people and animals alike.

i pray that tonight you remember those days. that He will open the door to His heart and invite you in, that He will lead you into his rose garden and dance with you there. that as you hold His hands and fall in step with Him, you will taste again of His sweetness. dear child, beloved daughter, come home to His arms; find yourself again in Him.

Dec 8, 2016

prone to wander

I.

a high achiever, everything you ever wanted to be. sporty, pretty, slim, intelligent, kind-hearted, humble. a steady woman of faith. she reads and reads. prays up a storm. but her light has dimmed lately. she went for meetings about revival, about the work of God, but she cannot get herself excited about it. things are happening around her but her heart has been dulled. people mistake it for complacency, nonchalance, that she cannot be bothered with the things of God, but it's not her fault, she cannot help the fact that her sponge has become a weight. grey stale water. try as she might she cannot swim out of the murkiness. but she clings to the lifebuoy that will keep her afloat. she will hold on with all her strength.

II.

it was all steady until the pillar of faith came crashing down. distrust: i didn't think you would do that to me. backed out, whimpering. if the journey of faith were a journey at sea, on her boat some dark fugitives have taken refuge: anger, disappointment, envy, hurt, and fear, an insurmountable mass of fear. she flees. she wants to do all that will disregard God. she toys with the desires in her mind. but try as she might she cannot shake off her conscience. she knows that ultimately she must make a choice: to believe in eternity, and therefore put on holiness, or to believe in nothing, and therefore that life is as meaningless as death, and oh, how she would like to die, but with death there are no second chances. but she hates it all. she wants to run. run, dear, just run. every daughter has her tantrums. be secure that you are safe in the knowledge that you are still His child.

(but i am still a good child, yes? i have not given up the faith. look, i still pray to overcome sin. i still do the work of God when He calls me, minister to people. i still live as His messenger. i am still not giving in to my own desires, even in my rebellion. i am not beyond saving. i haven't lost it. i'm not lukewarm. right?)

the point is that even without all of this, He still loves you with an everlasting love, as he loves the next sinner.

III.

"For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too."

"I saw that post-it on your wall just now, you know, and for a split second I thought oh that's pretty, I should take a picture of it and put it on Instagram. And then the sourness came back, no, I'm running away. And instantly the thought vanished. And it all happened so quickly. It was such a trivial thing. I forgot it happened until you brought up the verse again.

I want to have nothing to do with God. All these God things I want to avoid it. Just now when I was on my way here a fleeting thought came to mind, 'don't talk about God at all ah. Stay away from the topic.' And here I am now, crying. You know, I used to be a cell group leader in my previous place. I would read all these books and pray with all the girls and always talk about God. I would get all these visions. I was always talking about God. They called me the God girl. And then now, because of all this, look at where I am. I just cannot shake off my conscience. I know I'm not going to stop dating her, I feel like I have to choose between her and God."

but you have heard before that the worst thing you can do is to stop talking to your Father. you know that He has known your whole life, and any debt has been paid in full. He will wait for you. soak in that love again, and the love will show you where you need to go. you do not need to repent on thorns, resentful and bitter, hating God for being a tyrant against your happiness. let Love carry you. He will only accept a willing offering after all, one given in the knowledge of joy and assurance of hope.

Dec 6, 2016

海阔天空

i still don’t get how he is dead; in every picture and in every video and memory he is so alive, so very very alive.

i was watching old videos on facebook again. carissa and janel summoning an army of singers and filling the corridors of rc4 with christmas carols; open mics; the wondergirls singing 'nobody' with master chun at our orientation in yale with evan banging out a brilliant accompaniment on the piano; bursting into MRTs with NDP songs on singapore's 50th birthday. i am reminded of the wallets' exhilarating chandler's wife performance, mahjong cny parties, sleepovers at the common lounge. man, we were so full of life in our earlier college years. remember our weekly meetups even before college started? winning third place at our first trivia night at brewerkz? watching les mis together? there was so much love. and remember when josh was annoyed that someone stole his cup noodles and he posted on our facebook page and he came back to four cups of noodles left by classmates at his door. even in the difficult times our community worked through the issues together. these are the best days. those were the best days. one of my favourite memories is of y'all uncles dressed like absolute toots and performing 对面的女孩看过来, complete with props: a fly swatter, a harmonica, a flower. after that we all went crazy over the photo of carissa and abel holding hands when they were kids.

following your death a little over two months ago we were jolted out of our studious hermitage. we were reminded that this community is a family and we needed to stick together. we had some fun even during finals week. we studied together, senior study party. we had a steamboat at sau's, which was fun. after the elm formal, in which none of the friends i was intending to go with had ended up going, i was restless and grabbed a few friends and we all just hung out in dylan's room and had a great time just chatting. i miss us, and i will miss us. i wonder, had our community remembered to keep tight and have fun in these later years, if you would have been more in joy than in loneliness.

Dec 3, 2016

words?

I love words. Words strung beautifully carry a sort of weight, a flavour-enhancer, that helps you say the ordinary thing in a way that makes the heart stir. I wish I could write the way you do, midnight blue glass beads, compact words sealed tight that lead me to pause and cup my face in my hands and cry. I wish my words could do that. To you. To anyone. Lead people into that secret world, golden hues, still veiled but not too cautiously. To have words so beautiful they make a heart bleed.


I wonder what you get out of writing. I wonder what writers get out of writing. For me, it's what I need to express myself. It untangles the grey rainy mess of emotions into coherent threads, turns it into something pretty, and when I see it as such my burden is lifted. All the weight in my heart has become that pretty thing, a colourful little bird with a melody, and I can click "Publish" and see it fly off into cyberspace, and it brings closure to the pain of the moment. That's why I need to write.

Why do you write?