Brooklyn Tabernacle and the power of prayer

Dear Lord,

Never in my life have I felt so empowered by my prayer to you, by what you have enlightened me in my spiritual and everyday life. Prayer is about relationship: the intimacy that we have with you, as the creation of you almighty, as your sons and daughters so that we may call you "papa" with all our affection. Dear Lord you are speaking to me, in my dreams, in my lives, giving me small signs and bestowing me with wisdom so that I may keep my expectations realistic. Yesterday Pastor Peter shared with us the power of prayer through how Brooklyn Tabernacle was built into a house of prayers; tonight, Pastor Richard enlightened us through his cataract and retina transplant story to see the marvelousness and wisdom of Lord. 

Dear Lord you blessed Pastor Richard to share the important message to us that our strength is perfected in our weakness, either physically or spiritually; that through tragedies, we can turn our expectation of God into our experience with God. When we have unanswered prayers, it is because Lord you are doing something deep within me, keeping us humble and grateful, knowing that you are The Lord our God, that your grace, and your grace alone, is sufficient for me.

Amen

The best "fit"

There are times that when we sit idly and think about everything and nothing in particular, we wonder what it is that we need for our lives to be more complete. The phrase "more complete" itself sounds like an oxymoron but if a complete life is theoretically out of reach, it does comfort us a bit that at least we are approaching the asymptote.

Recently I borrowed a book written by Vicki robin: Your Money or Your Life. It is not just another one of those self-help books or finance-management 101s. It is a mindset changing recipe. While I barely started to read its full message, merely reading its book reviews makes me awed at how much the book has changed so many people's lives. Successful people.

When I was young, I used to think money is kind of an integral element of being successful. I need to study algebra and language hard to get into a good middle school, get into the top few percentiles in my level in middle school to get into the finest high school--in flying colours, and getting that opportunity to be amongst the most privileged few to be through-trained to the most prestigious local universities. This was the route that I had in mind when I motivate myself to go for that extra mile, to feel indefatigable all the time, to ride my bike in starlit morning to school at six thirty and to finish my lunch at school canteen in five minutes, followed by a nap of fifteen minutes before the battle is on again.

Such a highly regimented life is like clockwork. I felt I was living it for a purpose. A great purpose. Somehow it put some dubious sense of assurance in my young heart that by working hard, scoring well, I can be highly employable in future and get high-paying jobs and live an enviable lifestyle in the eyes of many--including most of my provincial relatives.

Such assurance ran long and deep that I felt I was ALWAYS on the right track. Anyway thousands and hundreds of other kids are working just as hard to fare well. And I seem to fare better and get all that attention from my teachers and fellows--so no way that I am going astray.

Parents and adults asked about ambitions and dreams, all the time. Some adults really care; others ask to satisfy their warped indulgence in voyeurism. I offered many answers, genuine ones, at various different stages of my life: a scientist and Nobel laureate(that one I gave to my grandparents) when I was ten or eleven; linguistic interpreter(when I was in the finest foreign language middle school in my area); diplomat(when I was eighteen or nineteen); anthropologist and neuroscientist.

Now it is a judge. I really want to go to court, but I do not want to be a litigator. A judge now is my ambition. It seems amazing how my dreams and ambitions can seem a far cry from what they used to be and the way they develop is just: non-linear. There was a marked shift in my interest from science to humanities in my JC days. I never had any trouble with science and maths before: I was the Queen of Maths and Physics back in my hometown. I made the record in my middle school years by scoring full marks for every single paper. But in JC I found out how inadequate when it comes to creativity, the depth of understanding when it comes to scientific truism and the width of knowledge testable in Olympics. I felt inept.

So it is natural that when I felt severely overshadowed in the science arena--especially when it comes to Olympics, I turn to channel my passion and self- esteem to what I could do much better. I could write well, or if not I love to write. I frequented libraries to read, and while I am very forgetful about most of what I have read, if something strikes me that much as to compels me to write about it--I remember it well. Some areas of interest perpetually occupy a special place in my mind: game theory, politics and international relations. These are the kind of topics that I involuntarily draw myself towards to if nothing is compelling me to read anything in general and in particular. Hence comes my inchoate ambition to become a diplomat, or an anthropologist.

That part about neuroscience, it was very hard for me to just let go. Johns Hopkins remains my dream too beautiful that when it almost came true I was speechlessly awed. I felt for the first time that such recognition meant a lot to me. A tremendous surge of self-worth and all that. Lifted in the air--flying without wings.

But then I am in law. Doing well. There seemed to be many variants of specializations stemming from the same broad umbrella three-letter-word called law. I don't feel I am spoilt for choices but I do not feel they are Hobson's choices either. Both of my parents are plowing the legal trade most of their lives. They are not the proverbial rich people, far from that. And I am sure I want my life to be vastly different from theirs. But something in common seems to tie us close in ways that I cannot fully appreciate.

So what kind of life do I want? I was thinking about that when I read Your Money or Your Life. People in hostel like to refer to all of us law students as lawyers, but really, different lawyers can have so different kinds of lives even. A religious one. That is the first thing I've decided this year. It seems that God is trying to guide me along the way, making me reflect upon the people I meet, ways of lives I admire, types of relationships I envy, and trying to figure out the best "fit" for me.

I want a classy type of lifestyle, and I am trying hard to hold myself onto that. But this "classy" type of lifestyle had nothing to do with branded goods, luxury holidays, socializing venues, etc. I love holidays: the thrilling one in snow-capped mountain in Japan as well as those quiet ones in some river-side village; I love good food: those in high standard buffet as well as those local delight sold on roadsides; I would love a magnificent villa, but a cosy small cottage would also do. Everything is adaptable so far as the person I am spending my life with is the best fit.

Then I wonder what type of person I am attracted to. Markedly two types of people , both belonging to a sub-species of Homo sapiens called introverts. There is a magnetic pull from those either highly intellectually gifted or artistically gifted. All the guys I love, or contemplated about seriously loving, have either of the two characteristics. Some guys are nice to me, polite, gentle, having that nice emotional strain and masculine charisma, but most of the time I do not like back unless they strike me as either highly intellectual or admirably artistic.

I am a fan girl. I knew it quite long ago when I was in primary school. But to me being intellectual differs from bring nerdy--it has to be this seemingly effortless style of getting things done, elegant but not swag, quiet confidence but not too much sense of self-entitlement. And somehow my balance tends to tip in favor of those who emanate masculine confidence, so they are very hard to get.

There is one article about becoming the one you fantasize over. You impart that nicely touching element of life that you admire into your own mechanism so that you are like him. This is a powerful way of life-improvement for me. It is such subtle emulation that adds things on my wish list, beautify my new year resolutions, and making me feel that I am living for a purpose. These fragments of small purposes can be so trifling but they are made to mean so much to me.

Simply so I can have a taste of living like you do, though not with you.

To live with a purpose. And to live in the moment. Both are so important ways to live a more complete life. I felt very fortunate to ponder over such words, and I am thankful. For the myriad ways of finding that purpose, of feeling energetically about everything, and of getting that not so dubious assurance that I am, after all, getting somewhere.

When faith is tested

The exams are near but I put myself on this emotional roller-coaster which took me for a wild ride every now and then, giving me no respite.

God has made me see that I should cherish someone that denounces Him. This is rather queer: but in my dreams His message is very clear that I should cherish people around me, whether they are believers or not, and I must have this leap of faith that all will be reconciled and whatever hardship I have been through will not burden me unnecessarily.

But my faith is shaken. I get both impatient an dejected and put on a pair of grey and gloomy glasses when I look at things-- and they look gloomier than before--all things started off so well in one day with every thought organized and every muscle mustered and the atmosphere could turn wrong at the midway point! All kinds of readable tension and pent-up angst is so apparent that I am drowning in it. I feel I am returning to the status quo, I am not making improvement, I am living like an open wound.

For the first time in these two months, I shivered and almost developed shingles. The feeling was terrible-- the rain is heavy and everything felt so wrong when they should be so blissful. I could not muster up courage to alleviate any tension though things could not get wronger. I could not get away from fe sorrow that I was thrown in without being numbed by my pain.

I feel something died inside. That moment, that is not relief, that is not fallen expectation, that is not self-consolation, that is not anything.

Many times I said that there is gonna be one person that makes you feel that even if you look stupid and crap, it is worth a try. Now that part of my faith is shaken too. About all the worth. All the pent-up passion. All the pent-up disillusion. Like many years ago when I ran in the winter for hours to quieten down my feelings, to shout out aloud. I never changed. The feeling never went away.

I am being tested. It is challenging indeed. But I will hold on!

Living sacrifice

The Precept lessons on Romans 12 are amazing. For the first time I feel God's words are clear and powerful--not the first time I feel so, but the first time I feel SO MUCH. A powerful message sent to me last week was to live as a living sacrifice, to offer and present our bodies to Him, and to fulfill His glory.

About this sacrifice a friend of mine was undergoing a struggle about reading the signs of God and not heeding the words of man. God's signs are elusive but once found they are transforming. I felt glad that she found her signs and was able to finding peace and a sense of settledness. What a blessed state! She told me sacrificing does not necessarily start from your whole body, but can be in part, an ongoing sacrifice in a piecemeal manner. Her sharing did not register much on my head until Easter--when I wrote the things I was willing to sacrifice on the paper and pinned it on the cross. It is hard to sacrifice something that I cherish so much, SO much that I do not want to approach it. But it is in Christ that I live so to Christ is what belongs to Him.

Earnestly, I seek the signs and whispers of the God. Sometimes He does speak, He does know me well. He is reassuring in His manners and all anxiety is removed from me. I feel that I am getting closer and closer to His plan for me and in it He planned me a future.

A future that He put in my head when I was most down. The future that might make me the living testimony of God.

See it from afar

There are too many times when I am preoccupied with possessing something: objects in the display window of a fashion boutique, beautiful flowers growing in the garden, pets and people as friends. The desire to possess something gets really strong that sometimes even when I realize such may not be the best way to appreciate their beauty, I continue to be dissatisfied with merely appreciating from afar. There are sudden urges of getting it that compel me to open my wallet, pay for it and get it home, only to discover that when It actually stands on my table, it is less adorable than I thought it was.

And it is not just about the Qatar snowball standing on my desk right now. It's someone precious to me that I could not tolerate the thought of letting go. There are time that I pray hard for a sign or a hint, whether I should press on or let nature take its course. The hint has yet to come: so I will keep waiting and appreciating it from afar, mesmerized.

Tabula rasa

Valentine's Day is not a faraway memory, I can still remember the innate urge to prepare something "special" as the day draws close, to get a gift, not any other gift, but a gift that fits nicely into a series of gifts so that I create a meaning for the gifts that can be remembered, and a gift that whenever it is thought of, it thrills, then after a while, it lingers. When this particular Valentine's Day came, however, I forgot. It occupies a merely numerical existence in my mind that beckons no sweetness; it does not instigate my urge to do something, or in fact anything; it perpetuates a zombified state--a blank created by something taken away.

Or is it a clean slate, tabula rasa?

It always hurt the most when things first went off. It is like the most precariously held expectation starting to tumble down. It may be a small sign, a simple look, an offhand remark, a dismissive tone, but it hurt. When a relationship normalizes, I start to feel it is normal, part and parcel of everyday occurrence that makes a relationship real, that makes a life a life, not drama, a state of being worthy of experiencing, not al-together blissful, but anyway, worthwhile. So such a small sign gets internalized into a mechanism of blind acceptance and self-denial that "a sign is a sign, and a bad sign is a bad sign". Its weight is lifted off the heart. It no longer hurts that much. It ceases being registered in the consciousness of a mind now knowing how to be blissful, and grateful. So the angular shape smoothens, the irregularities normalize, the spikes hammered down. 

So I am fogged in this blissful and grateful state, wrapping myself in blind acceptance and self-denial that everything is good. Badness is temporary. Things change. Things get better.

The truth is: things cannot get worse.

Self-suppression becomes almost an innate attribute but pent-up emotions need to get released elsewhere. Work is a good way to seek solace from. You bury yourself in work, in intensive intellectual working, in a vague comparison that boosts a little bit of self worth; then you try again.

It is like a reboot. Clearing up everything. All the fragments of realisation here and there, all the useful revelations or wasted junks. Gone. No single discretion is involved in that.

Tabula rasa.

I have in me a perpetrual, fear, for this. How to start, from here? From where?

Cowardly, I refuse to face this clean slate that is bereft of all the prejudice or harm I have suffered from. I refuse to embrace it as a new lease of life. I reject the opportunity to be reborn. I want to sleep it over.

So when nights are deep, I cry and bite the pillow. I shiver and I start. I am lost.

And the pattern repeats and repeats and repeats. There is some karma that makes it repeat itself, linearly, inter-generational, era after era, trapping everything inside in a huge engulfment.

The same biting of the pillow, the same shivering, the same startled face with fear. It recurs, just in different physical places, just...feels the same...

When I finally have the courage to say: enough is enough. When I finally feel the true anger. When I finally tell myself to breathe rather than to stand all these. I truly feel alive, burden-free, hopeful, invigorated, tabula rasa.

My fresh start.