Barely the beginning

When I think about the weight of the time my students spend in my classroom, it frightens me.
Being responsible for their education and, for most of them, their lives is no child's play at all.
I'm not just being humble by saying that I feel utterly incompetent to do that. I truly wonder if I ever will be. If there's anything these months of training have taught me, it is that there is so much to learn. Being a good teacher is really a gift that very few have. And I'm so afraid that I'll unintentionally ruin somebody's life and leave him or her to spend the next number of years getting it back. It happened to me in primary school, and on hindsight I don't believe my teacher ever intentionally meant to do that. but it happened and I am just fortunate that God never left me alone.

I just stumbled across some link and ended up rewatching Freedom Writers. This show always makes me reminisce about my secondary four days in my english teacher's class. She is the most amazing woman I've ever known. I am absolutely sure that she'd prayed for me as my teacher, because I remember the comments she'd written on my essays. God had heard her and answered her prayers. I'd always known that if I ever become one, I'd be the kind of teacher she was to us.
Looking at Erin Gruwell and my own English teacher encourages me a lot but at the same time they make me wonder if I'd ever be fit to be one.

Anyhow, a thought just crossed my mind. I found out recently that she is teaching at our sports school, and my current edpsych tutor's son is in the school. I haven't been able to find her email contact. Perhaps, I could ask for my tutor's help. It'd be so wonderful if I could meet her again :) I wonder if she's still the same person.

Winding down...

ahh... finally some time to unwind from a month full of busyness and..strangeness.

The past few weeks have been weird and unsettling, to say the least. The circumstances I found myself in wouldn't have been that strange if they'd occurred separately, but they all happened as a series of things that just came one after another. Put together, they felt quite bizarre and displaced me out of my comfort zone, pushing me to cope while trying to make sense of them. If I could make some sense and have some answers, it'd probably have helped.. but I don't have them. I'm actually feeling tired from all these unusual situations. and not to mention extremely distracted from my school work.

Besides its strangeness, I had a particularly humbling week. I was losing the attitude of learning and daring to fall and try again to an attitude pride and self-glorification. kinda saddened by how I have changed over the recent years. what had happened to the teachable heart that wasn't afraid of making mistakes? Nevertheless, I'm thankful for this wake up call. This is what happens when my face is not kept heavenward.

It hit me in the shower just now that maybe these few weeks have been a season of testing. I feel stretched because in every situation, one after another, I had to make the decision whether I was going to translate my faith into action. Seriously, nothing was easy. Yet, the truth of what was written in James 2 about true faith being demonstrated through our deeds came home to me. Faith isn't true until it has been put under trial and testing and emerges stronger than before. It was so much easier to know it in my heart that I believe in Jesus, and that I have the heart to love His people and to serve them. But these few weeks, I found out for myself just how much of it was true and how much I fell short of God's standard. How much do I really believe in Jesus and how far am I willing to go for His people? The thing that really troubles me is that through all of this, I'm just struggling and struggling. Where is God in this, what is He trying to do, why is He doing all these and where is the heavenly joy and peace I once recognized?

I'd also like to write about something I deeply regret. During the first week of bible study a few weeks back, one of the discussion questions asked: "Do you recall a time when you thought you were glorifying God but in actual fact, you weren't?" During the sharing, a lawyer from my group shared about how she used to argue and engage in debates about God with non-believers, thinking that she was helping to win the case for Jesus. But she later learnt that hey... God isn't interested in winning an argument as much as He loves the person who is arguing against Him.
This stayed with me every single day till tonight. I think about it often and each time I think about it, I regret making that mistake more and more. I used to boil each time someone criticized God and the truth about Jesus, ridiculing Christians. I just had to give a piece of my mind. Some friends weren't that extreme...they were happy to engage in a dialogue. And I remember thinking that I just have to win this by having the last say and by disproving their arguments. When I look back now, it's so foolish. Not that it isn't good to have a stand, but all of those came out of a very wrong spirit. It was a very prideful spirit thinking that I could prove God's case. Who am I to do that? and I didn't even have to...God's case is already proven. I completely forgot how God passionately loved the people whom I argued with. On hindsight, if I'd come from a loving spirit at that time, perhaps some things would've been different today.

Anyway, it was quite an incredible night spent at nol's place with my ex classmates and other friends. I miss this lighthearted fun and banter we used to share everyday. I had quite the encounter tonight spending the last hour of my week with a blind man. At first, I couldn't understand why he went on and on and on and kept repeating the same questions over and over again. Then I thought.. if I couldn't see a thing and I was completely shut off from things that are changing constantly before me, how terribly insecure I'd feel. What amazed me most was how he knew a gazillion bus routes using kinesthetic memory; using his sense of movement to trace each turn and stop and remembering them by heart. I thought to myself, "How heightened and disciplined his senses are!"

God was illustrating something. Just like the blind man, sometimes, I can't see what is before me when everything seems beyond my comprehension. It scares me, and I feel terribly insecure. This is when it is so important to be able to trace God's voice by heart and navigate using that heightened and disciplined sense of where God is moving. Writing this now, I recall the cloudy vision that pastor saw, where I wouldn't be able to see clearly. But my ears were sharp to hear from God. gosh!! perhaps it's really coming to pass... hmm.... but somehow sharpness feels a little blunt these days.

owells... time to shut my tired eyes :) no alarm clock tonight! whoo! love this genting weather today. please stay for sometime and let us Singaporeans enjoy it while it lasts!

speaking of which... the crazy 8.9 earthtquake + tsunami + infernos + potential nuclear disaster in Japan is so traumatizing I don't really know where to begin praying for them. :(

I've never felt this useless before.

What did God do before he created the Universe?

I saw this question in my facebook news feed a few weeks ago. and I can never forget one of the answers posted.


"it's like we're stick figures on a piece of paper. before God made the piece of paper maybe he ate a burger. how do you explain that to a stick figure?"


I couldn't help gaping in the sch library. I thought it was a perfect illustration of the unfathomable mind of God.

Have you ever lived so long in the grey area that it grew white?
In fact, how many black-and-white moments do people generally have in their lifetimes anyway?
my inkling is, you could probably count them with a single hand.

2nd chances

I used to give tuition to this little girl whose father owns a small hairdressing shop near my home. She comes from a family that is emotionally and financially broken. Twice a week, she would come over to my place for lessons and then after every lesson, she'd get an hour on my piano. Once in a while, we'd head to the library together. After 5 months, she became too tired from extra lessons in school so we stopped seeing each other.

Well, it was a load off my shoulders because school work was getting so heavy at that time. But if I were to be ruthlessly honest with myself, it was because I wasn't a good enough teacher who didn't put in enough heart and effort, giving up on her tantrums easily, and I just let her slip by me. Although I gave quite a lot of my time, my heart and mind were seldom there. I mean, seriously, which parent wouldn't keep a teacher if he/she was a good one right? And the thing is... from the beginning when I first interacted with her, I knew God had a purpose placing her in my life. I knew that as much as I knew that I didn't really think much about what God was trying to do with the girl. just getting by for the extra income... that was all there was to it.

Sometimes, I would walk as fast as my legs can carry me past her dad's shop when I head to the train station, so that I wouldn't have to chat with her. it's the guilt that makes me do that. and in the past few weeks, I began asking God for a second chance. I didn't know how or what to do because there was no way I could ask to tutor the girl again.

And then tonight, I bumped into the father and daughter at my lift lobby and had a little catching up with her. and out of the blue, she coyly asked if she could come to play my piano again. She misses playing the piano :) but her dad didn't allow her to. I was stunned by her question... God's really fast in answering. So I talked to her dad about it and he actually agreed! I think he was afraid that he'd have to pay for her music lessons or that he didn't want to just blatantly ask if she could use my piano.

I'm feeling really happy that God's given me another chance :)

Purpose Driven Life

I envisioned myself fighting to finish this mega assignment before church on Saturday. But this is Wednesday night, and it's completed. How in the world did it happen? God is amazing! Ask, and it will be a thrill receiving inspiration from Him!

I'm really happy to be doing this again. Writing academic essays. I forgot how excruciating and pleasurable the experience always is. This time, there's even more room to craft and be creative.

Returning to daily life after a week of comatose in Kedah, I found myself thrown into the deep end of the pool. In a flash, all floats are off our arms and we sink or swim. how did the pace pick up so fast so suddenly? Pile on a stack of church and social commitments, the next couple of weeks will be crazy. I've gotten my dose of working on the go, and it's incredible. I must say, this stress - I love it as much as I hate it.

Scribbles at the back of a car

As I grow older, my consciousness is scattered across different worlds, belonging to them all at the same time. It felt a little like that when I stepped into India. Tonight, arriving in Kedah was like a seamless stroll into a street across. It really feels like home; it feels light to be back. :) When I was a younger girl, flying one and a half hours up north was the equivalent of one bag of nerves on an annual pilgrimage into another dimension - filled with familiar faces of unfamiliar people speaking a gibberish dialect that faded into my background. Apparently, the two stark worlds have merged. Perhaps I've been traveling to Malaysia so often that it is no longer out of the ordinary, and unfamiliar lives have finally turned into loved ones.

It's a pretty long journey from the airport to my grandparents'. The elder brothers in the front chat intermittently, in between comfortable silences. I was resting on my mom, my head trying to catch her shoulder as the car sped and bumped across highway after highway. I secretly right-clicked and saved the moment as a morbid thought scampered across my mind. One day in the future, I'd never get to do this again, and I'd want to remember how her voice sounds like through the hollow of her back. It's really strange how fear can be love's favourite shadow, and I suppose that is partly why people say life is bittersweet! Sentences were beginning to form in my thoughts. Unable to sleep nor dig for my journal, I opened my laptop and here I am typing them out as we race down an empty night road, rows of shophouses half lit and silently cheering our homecoming party.

Anyone who knows me well enough will know that I have the nose of a dog. Before I can swing the car door open, I'm already flung into the welcoming aroma of the night air in this particular part of town. It is distinct, crisp, warm and lightly scented with Chinese ointment. Woo hoo! My grandpa's all ready and grinning at the gate in his stripped pajamas. Hahaha. Time to shut my lappie. Happy CNY everyone!

Why I love my strict Chinese mum
(link)

There's been this hoo-ha over "the western mom vs. the chinese mom" since the Wall Street Journal ran an excerpt from Amy Chua's memoir about her parenting as an Asian mother in the USA. She's received a lot of criticisms and death threats even since the article ran in the paper. So her daughter's (Sophia) written in in response. I'll leave you to read it - you can click on the link below the title. I got it from my friend's facebook page (yay to mobile surfing!) and totally enjoyed the read on my train journey.

Just as I stepped out of the train door, it hit me in a "!!!!!" kind of moment that I was actually brought up in exactly the same way. It seemed unrecognizably different being lived out through another person's life. I've been so conditioned by years of western education to think that the stereotypical pro-open and creative american parenting style is the way to go that I forgot my parents' current laidback-ness is a not too long ago change.

My mom was always the stricter one - and I daresay she held standards as tight as Amy Chua. I was rarely allowed to watch the television as a child (a pastime that is still non-existent to me now); I was forced to learn the piano - a process I hardly enjoyed; my Dad was prone to pampering me but it was a different story with my grades. Very typically Singaporean-Chinese, except for the television part. Yet, they lent a balance in the way they encouraged me to expand my capacities and experiences and was never for confining me to a measured and rigid route to success.

After I hit 18, I stopped buying the "live for the moment" cliche. I learnt that it is almost the cleverest way to make people live stupidly.

There’s one more thing: I think the desire to live a meaningful life is universal. To some people, it’s working toward a goal. To others, it’s enjoying every minute of every day. So what does it really mean to live life to the fullest? Maybe striving to win a Nobel Prize and going skydiving are just two sides of the same coin. To me, it’s not about achievement or self-gratification. It’s about knowing that you’ve pushed yourself, body and mind, to the limits of your own potential. You feel it when you’re sprinting, and when the piano piece you’ve practiced for hours finally comes to life beneath your fingertips. You feel it when you encounter a life-changing idea, and when you do something on your own that you never thought you could. If I died tomorrow, I would die feeling I’ve lived my whole life at 110 percent.

She's right. Creativity counts for nothing without discipline and perseverence. Life will be meaningless without responsibility and morality. It's not just an either-or; they're two sides that a coin must have in order to be of value.

In spite of

I’m a woman of little faith. I’m extremely thankful that God is who He is. Thankful that the great I Am is constant in spite of who I become or what I do or do not do.

Nothing big, but this is almost a mountain-top experience.

~

White dog, black dog.

It’s a brilliant analogy. In every decision we make, we choose either to feed our Godly character or feed our sinful nature.

In a dog fight, who’s gonna win?