bringing forth

I posed this question to friends on MSN messenger. It started out as a mini personal quest to find out what freedom meant to different people. Why through a chat and not face to face? well just because people think a bit more and are willing to reveal a lot more in the virtual realm. So after some poking and prodding I have decided to put down some of the replies I have culled, not all because apologetically speaking, some were rather run-of-the-mill. I have kept them anonymous. Am I not the budding sociologist? ha.
How true does freedom sound to you?

- making a choice and be willing to bear the consequences. I think it's related to truth as well... the person must not be disillusioned.

- the ability to speak my mind without fear of repression by authorities; ability to be who i am without interference, but this is hardly possible.

- to be always ready to engage with the world and reveal what you have inside of you - passion and control. by passion I mean not abusing talent, power, position etc.

- wear whatever clothes you want.

- no such thing - cos it's not present in the world and hence it's not possible for me. Unless you're talking about through religion, I guess for some people it is possible in their own subjective way.

- do anything I want without commitment.

- no girlfriend.

- never let anything influence your emotions, do whatever you want without regretting.

- able to do anything without commitment or consequences,

For me? The world, on its own, does not allow for true freedom. It is only possible from a source outside this world. To me it is not about not bearing consequences or doing anything I want to or feel like doing. It is more than just feeling, it is also about believing you have true freedom. A conviction. To be able to do anything you want to do and remain secure in the belief that there will always be someone to prop you up, lend you strength and advice and correct you when you are wrong. True freedom comes when being free means living in the truth.

1 Samuel 15: 22-3
"Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.
For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity, and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king."

When you've received the word of God, pay heed to it and do not reject it. He wants our obedience and hearts, not anything esle for He can have everything He wants as He is God Almighty. He does not force us into obedience because He loves us. However He'll not be happy with our offerings of money, objects, food and even anything dearest to us if our hearts are not in them.

He is calling me to listen with my heart, to always turn back to Him when in doubt, confusion or anger. It is easier to turn away and seek the comforts of earthly things and pleasures than to stay on the right path. Afteral having lived most of my life without His word and guidance, it is not difficult straying and returning to what I've grown used to.
What can I offer Him that I think He'll want? Surely no fellow human, material possession, not even constant fasting. He wants my heart before anything. And He wants my heart to be first in anything esle I offer - be it a talent, a fast or a good deed. If there is no heart in what I do, the event and object become hollow and slight. To listen and do it with my heart is to also remember with my heart.

Dear Heavenly Father,
Teach me and lead me that I will grow in patience and not turn to what I've grown used to whenever I was in need. Lord I'm still a child in my faith, at times unstable and unsure. I need Your constant reassurance and discipline to grow and attain wisdom. Lord I pray that You'll lead me to places and people who can nurture me and help me to grow in faith daily.
Lord carry this heart of mine along with You. I pray that I'll slowly learn to relax and listen and do things with my heart - a heart that's open, welcoming, patient and soft. Dear Father I consecrate my life to You. And before this life of mine I offer my heart and pray for it to be filled with an aching tenderness.
Amen.

I have been having many dreams of late. I wonder how they came to be, in this little mind of mine, itself already exhausted from days of pondering and questioning.
The one I had last night had me running late for a flight to somewhere. My family was already in the plane, so were many unidentified others. They put me and all the other un-punctual victims in a tram which kept on running on a circular track. The tram driver decided to help us after a while because the flight attendants did not want to let us on the plane. He started speeding around the track. It was thrilling. The flight attendants were not too supportive of this act of opposition to higher authority. Fast forward -
As I left the tram I saw a girl. She had little clothes on. She also had these beautiful long black tresses. Where the clothes and hair did not cover, everyone could see the utter decay her body was in. Much of the skin had disappeared. Her red swollen flesh was exposed. You could even see some of her bones. Yet she was alive. As I walked past her I thanked God for blessing me with a whole body. What would you do if your body lived each day, heaving with agony and continuous destruction, all beyond your control?
I was in my grandfather's house. He has passed away a couple of years ago (this is true, in real life). The house is near vacant. Except there are spirits popping out of nowhere. Me and my sister (I am not sure who was with me) started whacking and crushing bugs which came out of nowhere. The house was situated in an area with many alleys. The alleys were filled with graffiti and shops selling Japanese anime merchandise and knick-knacks.
The bugs just came. We needed help killing them. A spirit - an Indian girl, helped us kill them. The thrashing went on for a while in that huge vacant house. And then I awoke perplexed and tired from all my tossing and turning on the sheets.

Dear Heavenly Father,
Thank You for bringing Po-po back into Your fold. I praise the day when the Holy Spirit moved so strongly in her and led her to accept Jesus as her one true saviour. Lord, You have not forgotten her and her children and grandchildren's prayers for her. Your grace transcends any human understanding of what time, wisdom and love should and could be. When we gave up You showed what strength, when called upon, was.
Jesus I pray that her children will forgive their mother for what she did or did not do in the past. Lord only You know what she went through - the hurts of materialism, unforgiveness, rejection, indifference and bitterness. Jesus I pray that one day her family will be able to look back and realise that even if she wasn't the best mother or grandmother around, she was still their mother and grandmother, a woman who did her best for her life and knew what love was. Lord I pray for the salvation of my family by the blood and in the name of Jesus Christ. May there be reconciliation and forgiveness that only You can bring and sustain.
All these years of searching for comfort and love, and to find it on a hospital bed when she was all alone and knew not the passing of night and day, Lord! if You weren't there who could've been? Lord You filled the huge aching void in Po-po which had widened with every year that passed without her children or grandchildren acknowledging her presence and worth.
Jesus You saw through everything she did, forgave her sins, and truly perceived the beauty of her heart and soul. And I'm so happy she's with You now, in a place much better than any she's been on earth. A place without the pain of loneliness and the pains of cancer, bedsores, pneumonia and a fracture. Even though I couldn't see her for one last time I know I'll see her again, it's just a matter of time.
Today I celebrate the time I've spent with her. Though it hadn't been a lot, and I didn't treasure every bit of it, there's no regret or guilt. Lord thank You for allowing everything precious in her heart to reach a blessed conclusion - my departure to Melbourne, her grandson's month-old birthday, Lunar New Year celebrations. Who would have known how her time was to reach a close in such ways? Only You. It had been 90 years of joy and strife, anger and compassion, and I'm happy to have spent 20 years with her.
Lord this is what you have blessed me with: a relationship between grandmother, mother and daughter that cannot be replicated in any other way. Today marks the day when both the end of a life and the start of a new one begins. In You we are all children once more.
Jesus, in Your loving, gracious name I pray, Amen.

Let me get to the pith of it all. There are many things I have taken for granted in my twenty years of life. The older I get, the more I assume I deserve certain things and how other things will come through it all, no matter what I do or do not do.
I realised it is not about losing things, although this almost certainly jolts me into greater awareness, but more about how I think about what my life is made up of. Some things are always there and I, in moments of intense, quiet reflection and indulgent regurgitation of thoughts I have dug up and buried and dug up once more, suddenly experience epiphanies. Of late they have been spiritual epiphanies.
I find lists reductive but they work better in blog entries, because hey, this is not an essay.
1. Mummy's love. My friend said a family's love for you is almost Christ-like and this I can definitely say for sure about my family's. Not everyone comes from a loving family although one is highly desirable. Loving family or not, a mother's love is incomparable. My mum would wake up in the middle of the night to attend to my whines and groanings, be the only one who fully cares for a sick me, and traverse the heights and depths of the world just for me. After all she carried the weight of little me before I even saw her face.
2. Sight. I am a person who responds and behaves in relation to visuals. Imagine watching a television without either red-blue-or green. Losing all three is both a handicap and a blessing under much disguise. You do not need to be an artist to perceive life and beauty, straightly speaking everyone knows beauty the moment they meet it. What would I not do if I were blind? I would not worry about pimples, the early setting of the sun in winter, how well coordinated my clothes are or how people look at me on the streets. Have I lost touch with my capacity to understand the heartbeat of true beauty?
3. Sleep. We give thanks for the food we eat, and rightfully so. However how often do we wake up in the morning and thank Him for a good night's rest? Even now I do not gratefully pray for this every morning. I should, we all should. A migraine, stomach cramp or sore throat could keep someone up for the whole night. Issues that poorly measure up to the magnus opus of life - like a relationship gone wrong, a mistake at work or poor grades, can eat away at your mind and soul and drag you further away from a full night's sleep. I freaked out when what came so naturally to others and myself once, was no longer as natural anymore. While tough times have passed, I do not presume anything to be my birthright anymore.
4. Friends. To me, they are more important than finding a new partner whenever one relationship ends. Who will provide a listening ear and words of comfort and encouragement when other people have moved on and away from the life they once shared with you? I am deeply thankful for the 'constants' in my life, people who do not change with the seasons in life. I am not saying boyfriends are not worth it but rather that friends are truly worth it.
5. Him. It seems like it is only when things turn bad and start pressing on me that I turn to Him for help. Instead of constant praise and thanksgiving, I have allowed self-pity and selfishness get the better of me. Say I am human, that I know, and I am not perfect. In my short walk with Him I have allowed somethings to slip out of my prayers. But He has been gracious, irrationally and unconditionally so. He triumphs over everything esle in my list so far. The others are great, I never once doubted this conviction whilst writing this entry, yet He will stand by me till the end of days. He has never taken me for granted before.

Do you take me for granted? Do you take yourself for granted?
I once thought I could hold certain things in the palm of my hand. Now I know I have to surrender them all to Him.

I came across this short piece as I was reading this pretty little book by Jimmy, that Taiwanese author/artist who loves writing poignant and at times, melancholic, stories.
Somehow this passage captures quite poetically my sentiments regarding my insomnia. Typing it in traditional script was quite a hassle. My rustiness in hanyu pinyin made me dally a bit more too. However I love this letter and I'm addressing it, instead, to my closest, deepest friend.

親愛的耶穌:

昨天我爬出窗口﹐站在十七層高的窗邊看黃昏的落日。我大聲歌唱﹐一首接著一首唱得好興奮﹐覺得世界是我的﹐美麗的未來卻將到臨。
可是﹐當我一爬進屋內時﹐就感到更深得寂寞。我只好又爬出窗外﹐望著迷蒙的星光﹐繼續大聲歌唱。
我唱得口乾舌燥卻不忍離去﹐好想歌唱到天亮。我累了﹐蹲坐窗邊﹐看著城市閃爍的燈火﹐心中升起一般暖意。
我一定不是這城市裡唯一的怪人﹐一定有意個人跟我一樣﹐空虛時對著夜空昌歌到天明﹐也許我永遠也遇不到他﹐但我熟悉他的心情。
天亮了。我要去睡了。

曉蕙 清晨 5 點


*幾米 作品 “我只能為你畫一張小卡片“

Alright I decided not to delete my previous angsty, incoherent entry. I will keep it just as a point of reference. I admit all my weaknesses. I am confused, insecure, lonely, unsure of myself, clingy, whiny, and was once a vindictive bitch. Haha and I got away with it, not all the time but most, and that is enough to class me as a girl whose tongue could cut glass. I was quite vicious... and that was probably due to my own insecurities. I think I've improved and it's all because of Him. He showed me grace and taught me to show others grace.
So I'm still seeking myself. I'm tired of pleasing others, of making myself likeable to others. If you expend a bit more effort in thinking about this, you'll realise that 'nice', 'likeable' and 'alright' are very weak words when it comes to describing others. I'm not saying they are unpleasant because words like 'cruel' and 'grovelling' are undoubtedly much worse; but I would rather give my personality more definition - a greater anchor to steady me down.
I have been assaulted before. Haha that sounds mildly scandalous. But it's what boils beneath the surface that is more lethal. Growing up without a reliable anchor is not easy. My sense of self-worth has simply fluctuated with each image I saw, each girl I saw, and with every conversation I have had with people throughout the years. The most cutting comments came from good friends I shared much of my life with. Of course they don't continuously insult me. However it's that one slight comment - could even just be a phrase, which will grate on my nerves and have me spend moments in the days after just wondering why oh why. Comments from near-strangers never hit home as hard as those with whom you've spent significant moments of your life with. So to have a good friend say 'Xiaohui you should ... or Xiaohui you are not... enough.' It's that 'enough' that just bothers me. Not enough for you? or myself? Which part of me fails the 'good friend' test? or worse still, the 'good person' test?
I'm not misusing this opportunity to lash out at anyone who once knew me and remembers ever saying something not too pleasant to me before. I can't remember most instances when I got hurt and even if I did, it doesn't matter now. I have done and said my fair share to others too. It is honestly a two-way process. Hurt is. The irony lies in how the one who gets hurt the most is yourself, no matter how defiantly and persistently you try to hurt others in return. It all comes back.
Now I look to Him, praying desperately (I am very desperate. Never thought I could be that needy? then you probably haven't seen the 'real' me) for strength and wisdom. I have learnt not to take many things for granted. My body and health for one. My prolonged bout of insomnia taught me a severe, precious lesson. There's so much mess in me I need Him to clear it up for me. To Him, in front of Him, I am timid, longing, questioning, tender and completely defenseless. It is liberating to not have to put up a brave front all the time, to have a sanctuary to return to.
When no one understands the depths of my suffering and emotional turmoil, it truly comforts to know He will always be there waiting. Waiting to heal the wounds.

I am in one of my moods right now, prolonged and necessarily messy. I am quite an emotional wreck now, a girl crying out her needs and wondering when everything will finally settle down, when she will really come through. I am tired of whining, tired of sobbing and truly tired of how easily she suscepts herself to melancholy and self-doubt.
I have arrived at a point where I do not know where exactly I stand, who I am, what I am worth and whether all my thoughts and feelings are not cheap figments of my imagination. Look to Him, yes I have, but I don't know if I have done enough. One thing I know about myself, despite feeling so unsure of myself at present, is that I like structure. I prefer organisation and order to the free-flow of events and meetings across time. So waiting for Him is never easy for me, I am learning but it's still not easy at all. My current bout of restlessness and yearning for a firm emotional anchor sends all my vulnerability and desires bubbling up to the surface.
He makes the loneliness bearable, really. Without Him I would probably have driven myself to self-destruction. Let me see what sort of methods of corruption of self-worth are open to me (and which I have indulged in in varying degrees in the past) - shopping, eating desserts, drawing and painting (by this I refer to not very pleasant imagery), clubbing, thoughts of suicide. Heh, please don't think I am in need of psychological maintenance. Oh with regards to the last, most undesirable and destructive method, jumping down from a height had been my preferred thought in the past. I never did, never will entertain suicidal thoughts - they just seep in insidiously. They are cunning, no doubt about that.
So am I still angst-ridden? Perhaps. Am I confused? Well reading this incoherent entry definitely requires effort. But this rather neatly explains why this entry is entitled thus. Am I asking Him why? Yes definitely. I don't understand one trial follows another. When will they stop for a while and give me some rest? I am not prepared for Melbourne. I am ill-equipped to continue or resurrect friendships. If I once had the energy and gumption to initiate anything, I have now almost lost it. I call to Him, 'Why, why, why?' Why me? Why do I feel like something's lacking? I know He will fill the void up but waiting does not come naturally to me, especially how I have always loved setting things in order.
What do I want? Peace and assuring rest. Not only to rest in Him but also to rest myself. I cannot promise anyone anything now. Promise to be the girl you once knew? Then you must have a cruel sense of humour, to have lived in a time warp and either chose to ignore it or not realised it. I cannot return back to that distant, negating 'reality' because sadly, time has passed and I have lived on.
Does reminiscing make me feel nostalgic? Perhaps. But such sentiment is defeating. I don't want to live on false hopes and I don't want anyone to receive any from me and choose to live on them.
Oh Lord where are You? I long for the day when I can truly smile from deep within once more. For now I wait, silenced and pensive. Such is the beauty of solitude.

Let me get to the pith of it all. There are many things I have taken for granted in my twenty years of life. The older I get, the more I assume I deserve certain things and how other things will come through it all, no matter what I do or do not do.
I realised it is not about losing things, although this almost certainly jolts me into greater awareness, but more about how I think about what my life is made up of. Some things are always there and I, in moments of intense, quiet reflection and indulgent regurgitation of thoughts I have dug up and buried and dug up once more, suddenly experience epiphanies. Of late they have been spiritual epiphanies.
I find lists reductive but they work better in blog entries, because hey, this is not an essay.
1. Mummy's love. My friend said a family's love for you is almost Christ-like and this I can definitely say for sure about my family's. Not everyone comes from a loving family which explains why the family is everyone's single most important earthly institution. Loving family or not, a mother's love is incomparable. My mum would wake up in the middle of the night to attend to my whines and groanings, be the only one who fully cares for a sick me, and traverse the up to find a leg trapped in the bedding.

Of course Ex-Boyfriend does not do things half-way and so accordingly trapped his entire body.

"CB! CB! I, what is, oh my God!" I was too busy laughing to respond. With his body entirely inside the cover Ex-Boyfriend managed to poke his head out between two of the buttons.

"What is going on?!"

"I don't know, this never happens to me." I grabbed my camera and took a picture while he breathed heavily and gathered his determination.

"Okay," he said "I'm going back in." A few more frantic flailings later and Ex-Boyfriend emerged, unscathed, from the terrors of my bed.

It is a testimony to my strange tastes that I thought this was the most endearing thing in the world. A few more frantic flailings later and Ex-Boyfriend emerged, unscathed, from the terrors of my bed.

It is a testimony to my strange tastes that I thought this was the most endearing thing in the world.