bringing forth

It was a camp that I was not sure I wanted to attend, right up till the very last moment. By 'very last' I mean 2 hours before they set off to the campsite. He has been incredibly patient with me because how I came to Him was through a fairly similar process. My wilfullness perhaps?
The campsite was at Upper Plenty, in a house built by the hands of the owner himself, from mud-bricks and hewn logs. It is amazing looking at what the human body is capable to creating. And even more amazing thinking about what He has created and is capable of creating.
We went fishing at a lake just a short walk away from the house. It looked rather dismal given the weather, which clouds seemed liked they almost wanted to give birth to torrents of rainfall. This was the first time most of us encountered fishing and given the context of attending a Christian camp, came the sometimes apt sometimes lame fish analogies.

Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.
Matthew 4:19

The best thing about the stay in Upper Plenty were the friendships. It feels great (and that is a gross understatement) to have friends say encouraging words to you. All it takes is One word of affirmation to bring joy to someone. I realised, from personal experience, that it does not hurt and is definitely not difficult to say something good to a person you care for and love.

Then why do we not as graciously, and generously extend words of encouragement? Is it more difficult to say 'You look great today!' and 'Thank you, I could never have made it through without your company.' than 'Your eyebags are looking worse each day.'
Do we doubt the sincerity of our words and intentions? If we do, are we the ones who try to stopper a friendship from blossoming into something even more beautiful and lasting? Maybe, for me, it is a deep sense of insecurity. I have had friends in the past say hurtful things to me. Perhaps they didn't know what bad things their words did to my confidence and perception of self-worth. Realising what standards people have set for themselves and others, I was afraid that I could never match up ever - so I also likewise created standards by which I could judge others, and myself with.
I am not advocating lying. If there is one saving attribute of a friend, show your friend grace by saying good things about it even if the rest of your friend does not seem quite as wonderful in your sight. One good can conquer all bad. Although one bad word said can make anyone forget ten thousand other better ones said.

I am grateful to Him for giving me friends, whose friendships I often think I really don't deserve, who comfort, encourage and correct me. Honesty surely doesn't preclude the development of a sensitive spirit.

Sometimes we blame others when relationships go wrong or when we're wounded badly, but have we asked ourselves if we have placed ourselves in a position where we make ourselves vulnerable?
Have we made excuses for how we handled our feelings so carelessly? allowed ourselves to be ignorant to the resistances of our hearts and minds? How often have we made ourselves victims of our own choices?
I write this is response to a friend's current plight, one she has landed herself in largely out of her own doing. And which has correspondingly instigated me to think of what I have done in the past. It is no longer about gauging how the balance tilts - who caused more damage in the relationship and who started the downward spiral. I wished it was less of me but honestly that is selfishness.
There are many things I want to say to her like - You shouldn't have started something when you knew it was going to mess up your emotions, amongst others. But I should really speak more to myself. If it is so obvious looking from the outside, why do I not realise it from the inside, me being within me all the time?

On to self-induced vulnerability: it was a matter of momentum. By the time I realised how much leeway I have given to that ball of an issue, it was several steps ahead of me and I sure did not know how to stop it. My friend was not going to stop my ball for me, hers was playing an entirely different game with her.

And I guess likewise with this other friend of mine. I told her she wasn't very immature. She knows but she doesn't do what she knows she should do. Does that count for immaturity? Well a little but that does not discount her self-knowledge.

We are all chasing for things we can never possess. So why do so many of us still continue a chase we know we cannot win?
More than the object or subject we are chasing after is the idea behind the chase. Empowerment comes not first with achieving what we desire but primarily with knowing that what we run after leads us to where and what we want to be.

What keeps me happy

• chocolate soymilk
• warm baths
• earphones on and singing silently with the music, hands punching air emphatically
• in the passenger seat as a friend cruises along the expressway
• no breakouts
• life drawing classes
• my heater
• rich warm brownies with vanilla icecream
• good long chats on the phone
• good long chats over food and drink
• arranging stuff
• staring at the sky
• dimsum

check the word in bold. Together with long socks and a comforter, they give great sleep, which makes me very happy indeed =)

Do you sometimes scroll down the list in your mobile phonebook, or run your finger down the names in your address book and wonder: Who do I want to contact and meet up with and is free at the same time? Well I do, on a considerable basis, in fact.
As the bar of colour highlights each name as I scroll through the names in my mobile, reflections on the state and nature of my friendship with them flash through my mind. The exercise evolves into a mini-evaluation of my social life. My mood is usually more optimistic from A and deteriorates as it inches toward Z (yes I have friends whose names begin with this consonant). The flight itself is usually a fairly temperamental one - with peaceful halycon drifts, hiding amidst thick clouds, exhilarating nosedives and, you know the call, turbulences. Oh this one, nah don't think the meeting'll work out. Hmmm we haven't talked in ages, should I give it a shot? Oh! I didn't know he/she was still around, should I delete the contact off but it maybe useful having the number around? Ohhh - you gave me such a hard time, I wonder how you are right now... Yeah I should check how you're coming along, hope you're free.
Most of the times I get tired. The number of contacts are both too many and too few. It is a dance that is hard to keep up with sometimes. The music gets to my head and my partners sometimes swirl me around too fast. That is why it is better to be alone at times. No pressure and certainly no issues with matching foot with foot, leading/being led, or the rigours of understanding body language. Am I being selfish? Well I definitely have been accused of being more self-absorbed than giving. How true that is I can't and won't bother gauging. Time alone is a precious asset I think I don't treasure enough whenever it comes by. It is that time when everything fits into place - no one is contactable, that desire to contact soon fades away, the place is quiet, the weather fits the descriptions, and the materials for actualising the solitude are at hand...
For me I have the Word, a journal notebook, a pen, a set of colour pencils, a sketchbook, a computer and the flow of good music, a mug of water. Feet up on table, lamp beaming warm light down, hands moving to the rhythms of my mind. I am alive and well in my inspired solitude. It is all choice, feeling and appointment. Like dancing with someone but with a grace that is rather, different.
Am I making sense?
Perhaps not completely to you who are reading this. I guess my point is just this: I love the company of friends, couldn't have made it so far without them; but sometimes the relationship which allows me to truly move ahead is not found in a phonebook or email contact list.
Is there a name which I can call upon any time and know that I will receive company? and whom I wouldn't mind spending time with?

i carry your heart(i carry it in
my heart) i am ever without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear, and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet); i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

- e. e. cummings

to the enduring beauty of words:

I love those who love me,
and those who seek me find me.

That is the promise of the ultimate relationship ever - be it friendship, partnership or family. Do you not yearn and desire something as absolute, as pure and honest as this? That what your heart calls out for it'll find and receive freely?
How many times in the past have I fallen into the grips of cynicism? Last night I was talking to xy and I differentiated between passive and active cynicism (as you can see I'm in the midst of writing essays hence the pseudo-critical approach). Passive refers to how you have lost hope in many things, if not all, in life and though you hunger for meaning it alludes you, hence you simply live life as you possibly can, trying to get by with what's there. Active cynicism arrives when you try to deal with that gaping hole in your life, filling it with activity after activity, relationship after relationship, indulgence after indulgence, thinking that they will all help soothe the hurt and mask the desperation.
I think they both manifest themselves concurrently in varying degrees in any one cynical person. You are neither this nor that but both. However, no matter how much I try to classify and reconfigure my understanding of cynicism it still boils down to one thing. The insatiable desire for hope, acceptance and meaning in life.
Trust me on this, I know cynicism well, I have lived through virtually all of my teenage years trapped in its snare. For me, it started with my mind and slowly made its insidious descent into my heart, corrupting and slowly corroding me. The more knowledge I gained from the world - through the media, books etc., the more cynical I got. I had many questions and I thought I could answer them through the material in front of me. Of course the answers weren't sufficient and the questions just kept increasing.
As cynicism started to manifest itself within me I began taking it out on my relationships. Nah they didn't collapse, in fact some developed even better because we both shared similar sentiments with regards to the world. The world. A most spectacular and yet imposing creature. Why did life seem so inherently empty? Where were the meanings and relationships I wanted so much? Maybe it's better if I just remained detached but retain that little bit of disdain and bitterness. Afterall plunging myself into alternating states of depression and vengeful glee helped 'protect' me. They were like defences, a way of keeping anything I thought hurtful at a distance.
Through cynicism I honed my sarcasm, a sarcasm that probably had more bite than laughs. Covering up the gaps in my life isn't the answer though at that time I wanted to think it was enough, given that ignorance is a fool's bliss.
To me now, true wisdom is to know where it comes from. This is when you know that it is an ever-flowing fount, one that never ends.
I have been hurt before and will still encounter more hurt from now on. However unlike last time I won't be as bitter because I know where to find hope and reassurance.
Don't you wish you could experience and hold on to hope? Something that will pull you out of the doldrums and reassure you that it is not a chance or a passing encounter - that it will stay and continue being your only hope?

There's a song that's inside of my soul.
It's the one that I've tried to write over and over again
I'm awake in the infinite cold.
But you sing to me over and over and over again.

Sing to me the song of the stars.
Of your galaxy dancing and laughing and laughing again.
When it feels like my dreams are so far
Sing to me of the plans that you have for me over again.

So, I lay my head back down.
And I lift my hands and pray
To be only yours, I pray, to be only yours
I know now you're my only hope.
-Mandy Moore/Switchfoot, 'Only Hope'

Cynicism and bitterness do not have to always eat away at who you are. Let hope step in and take the place they have in you.

This is not some cheap trick to get people to remember that I am going to have a birthday soon. If they forget there's nothing I can do about it and the year will still go by whether we all recall ours and others birthdays right?
But I have been re-visiting my past blogs and reading some of my posts there. Ha. interesting how I have changed much since then.

napth.blogspot.com - this one features just One incredible post. when I read this lone ranger I was surprised just how close it hit home. I think i messed up the password and forgot how to get in or something. I seriously had no recollection of this blog - instead I was looking for this one -

luxnapth.blogspot.com - heh my junior college angst. I deleted a lot of personality tests I did in the past. They were really inane useless filter, occasionally visually pleasing but hardly morally and emotionally satisfying.

pat pat lux, you've indeed come quite far. here that's 3 more candles on your cake.

A friend said she liked this phrase so I'll etch it in virtual memory by entitling a post with it. Better still it perfectly describes my current emotional and mental state - one filled with a thickening and confounding sense of ennui. I am kind of stuck, been praying intently on this matter for months, but I know that the way out of this connundrum is only through Him.
Please do not read this and start worrying as to why lux is still thinking about this. I think a lot, like most females do, and I may think more than a number of us (though such reasoning may make a very weak argument but who cares?). I avoid mentioning names but those who know about it, and I am sure a number of you do, may wonder - in those quieter spaces of your life when you start thinking about your girlfriends' 'inner worlds', "why doesn't lux end this asap?"
Because it is hard to let it all end there and then. I have prayed for Him to free me of any unGodly spiritual and emotional bonds which could let Satan creep up and gradually secure a hold on me. I have prayed likewise for her. Yet it is hard. I definitely do no want the friendship to end if she still considers it a friendship to begin with. I certainly do but when the other party relates nothing of her life to you and no communication takes place, you can't possibly call that a relation-ship can you? What are you relating?
So with her having closed off most doors of interaction with a somewhat fierce sense of indignation and vindictiveness, I can only relate through Him. He has been very faithful and patient with me. The webs of confusion and complex interweaving threads of emotional turmoil in my heart can only be understood and freed up by Him. There are parts of me even I don't dare to venture into. It is a mess, I conclude, so I'll try to stay out of it for as long as possible. I realised just how deeply words cut into you
"A good man out of the good treasures of the heart brings forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things... For by thy words thou shall be justified, and by thy words thou shall be condemned." - Matthew 12
and I knew I have said wrong things in the past, have repented and apologised; but it hurts to have someone continually hurt you in indirect ways, knowing they'd cut right through.
Now I ponder my actions and thoughts. Lord what is Your plan for me? for this friendship? Is it hopeless for me to pray that it'd return to what it once was, when friends are friends and living is loving? I pray Lord You'll lead me to where You think is best for me but deep inside me, I'm hoping that *cross my heart* it'll be where I'd rather be.
Does it mean that if it doesn't work out it failed? I've gotten past that stage of thinking in bipolar opposites. I definitely didn't regret what happened. Guilt however took time and lots of praying for healing. Grace. Hmmm forgiveness is not a feeling. Grace too is a decision, a deep-seated conviction that when given blesses you with a security and lightness of being that truly sets free.
Am I a loser for making myself go through these tedious motions? No. Do I consider myself a loser if I find out she is not going through something similar? No. And neither do I consider her one if she does. He did not forgive me and support me through this only to see me fall into emotional disrepair. So many times I wonder how difficult it must have been for her throughout all those months having no one truly secure to turn to. Do I pity her? Maybe then, maybe now. Do I sympathise with her? Well yes, even if we are/were on different emotional planes now/then. He of the utmost love, grace and faith in me. Where does she get her strength from? Does what she have now sustain her enough?
I am in a state of intense prayer. No not desperate like I was during my periods of insomnia, but deep and thoughtful. Does He want me to continue being a friend? Is it in His plan or has it run the course He wanted us to? I have no answers. His time is not in my time, not how I expect and understand it to be. Now in a position of worship and thanksgiving for all He's allowed me to be and all He's taught me to be.
With what I have, I put my thoughts and emotions into words for others to read; that maybe if they ever felt or will feel like how I am feeling now, they will know they are not alone. And who better to fill that space of loneliness than Jesus? =)