Trusting and more waiting

Don't want to count my chickens before they hatch but things are looking positive.

More waiting as they conduct the reference checks and do their due diligence.

Apprehension arises and self-doubts assail. Will I live up to their expectations? Will I succeed? How will I manage?

God knows. He has the answers. It's ok if I don't. So I'll quit the questions.

And the tide turns

It's strange how some things come full circle sometimes.

Today's interview went well. I didn't realize that till hours later. I was so excited the night before I woke up at 2.12 am. I thought it was at least 7 am because I felt quite energized only to realize I had only slept about 2 hours.

I turned up at the interview location 45 minutes early. This was a complete joke. The receptionist hasn't even reported for work and the building was empty except for the cleaners, who coincidentally were in the exact same color code as me. I guess coral must be really in this summer.

So this is round #4 with the company. After I thought they'd dismissed me time and again. Sending me over to the moon and crashing hard back at earth, shattering my little dream. Someone else took notice of me there despite being passed over. Well, to be fair, I've knocked on the same few doors for TEN years. No exaggeration here. I remembered the exact moment I made up my mind to get my foot through the door. Then, I had dogged determination. It was when I was walking through the backgate of my parents' old place. As I held that green rusty gate, I knew what I wanted to do.

For many fruitless months after graduation, I had every door slammed in my face for having "no experience", "looking too young". Today, I wasn't feeling exceptionally upbeat after the interview because my interviewer was completely emotionless. Like I couldn't read anything from his face at all. It was monotonous, matter-of-factly, ask and answer. As with all open-ended questions, I didn't know how well I fared and left entrusting the whole thing to God.

Hours later at 4pm, I got a call and lo and behold, my interviewer now told me the head wanted to see me tomorrow because I got a glowing report and almost perfect score! Tomorrow will be round #5! I felt like a contestant in one of those shows like American Idol. I just hope tomorrow's panel won't include Simon Cowell. Anyways, Glory to God because I was sooooo sleep deprived and at times, I wasn't sure what I was saying hit the nail on the head.

I'm really psyched up now despite the physical fatigue. They unveiled a fantastic DREAM project for me. Bigger than my wildest dreams I nearly forgot to talk about remuneration package. I am still a tad cautious because I don't want to set myself up for disappointment if this doesn't work out but nonetheless, I think I should give myself a little pat on the back for coming thus far and continue committing it all to the God who loves me so much every step is perfectly ordained. I cannot say that I will not be disappointed if I don't get it but after enduring so much disappointment in this compact time vacuum of August (which is not even up yet), I think I'll handle it better.

Will update with news. Keep me in your prayers!

I wish I was asleep.

I really don't want to be up so late but too many things weigh heavy on my heart. And guts. (literally). I had a huge feast earlier and now my stomach is revolting. This is a repeated trend in the story of my life. I have a weakness for food and I keep repeating the mistake of overeating.

In my younger years, I had the metabolism most would envy and could eat copious amounts and still never be fat. These days, I cringe at photos of myself. Yesterday, while at my grandma's 80th donning an empire cut dress, I was asked by a few different relatives who have not seen me for awhile if I was pregnant. I never ever get that.

It does wonders for the self-esteem. Thinking about it now makes me emotional and sad.

Because I do want to be pregnant. The weight gain should come with the pregnancy. Not because I alternate between binge eating and starving myself to alleviate an inner deeper pain that human minds and hearts can access.

I see myself drifting along aimlessly with no security in sight. My God is my security I claim but certain life choices made previously have rocked my boat big time. Now, the confluences of situation and man-caused factors are making it almost inhabitable for my soul to thrive in my body. Some days, I just want to shut down to escape it all.

Prayer has sustained me a great deal but at this rate, it's more like one step up and two steps back. My husband doesn't seem to understand the least bit how detrimental it is for my mental health as he vacillates in the ocean of indecisiveness and negativity. I do not want to undermine the stress he is facing at work and while he is definitely paying a hefty price, especially for newbies starting a fresh career, I am fast becoming collateral damage.

I seem to have arrived at the crossroads. To have to choose between my sanity or my marriage. My man-made solutions are appear to scream sin which I know will break the hearts of many, especially the God who loves me infinitely. Therefore, I implore, beseech that God himself shows me a better way and gives me endurance and sustenance to ride it out. Yet again. Year after year, I have reached this familiar place of brink-of-no-return. Year after year, I've been delivered, sustained and healed. I do not want to undermine His saving power in a hopeless situation just as this.

But I do need clear indicators. Positive ones to tell me again that HE will be my strength and will see me through. Without which, I doubt I can continue on further. I will have to move on.

Sliding doors moment

Today was Grandma's 80th birthday. It was a huge affair with her siblings travelling many hours by car to attend the birthday celebration. And this is just part one. Some relatives from the US will be joining us in Sept for a belated birthday celebration.

My grandma was one out of 13 children born in Malaysia. Our family was one of the first Christianized families in the coastal settlements of China and left for Malaysia in hopes of a better life as war and poverty ravaged China. The lord has traced us down all these generations even when some of us has gone astray. Today as I set amidst many faces I barely recognize due to years of separation, I wonder-what if Ah Ma had not come to Singapore? After she was the only one out of the 13 then ventured south. What if? What would my life be like?

Providence, they say. It's been all mapped out before this thought even occurred.

Why are the lives of my cousins so different from mine? We don't even speak the same language. Some have gone on to migrate to Australia which is ironically, friendlier to the Chinese population than Malaysia which the Chinese helped to build but the thought doesn't escape me and loops round my brain.

I'm thankful to see them. All the grand uncles and grand aunties. God knows how long it'll be before we meet again. They are getting on their years and with our eldest grand uncle already with the Lord, the clock is ticking fast. They live 10 hours away by driving and GPS doesn't always point us where want to go. Also, I don't speak my dialect at all which is what they speak.

I want know so much more about my family, my roots and how the Lord intercepted and made us what we are today. I want to know the individual strands that form the tapestry but the bits are so hard to gather and collect.

Documentation was scanty at best. We have hardly any photos, records etc. All I have are vague memories of my great grandma before she passed on. Nothing said about great grandpa. I wonder why. No one seems to appreciate when I probe so I shut up.

What a pity. Perhaps I will only find out when my number in heaven is called.

Harrowing

Probably the best word I can come up with to describe the day.

Exhausted to say the least. Nothing I didn't expect. I hate being so confused. I need God to straighten out my thoughts and make my paths straight. From my perspective now, they are meandering with the topography of the Himalayas. It is a rough ascent and I don't know if there's enough stamina in me.

Besides a cathartic release and to get my thoughts in order, one reason I'm blogging is also my way to resist online shopping. It's becoming a disease. The compulsive need to buy. I can be so dressed up anytime with the selection I have in my wardrobe, accessories collection and make up stash with no where to go. Sounds tragic.

Buying is therapeutic. It takes my mind off the heavy matters and as I browse through the pretty things that claim to have the potential to make me prettier, I have hope. Until I receive the credit card bill and fall over backwards. Online shopping is even more insidious and hence more evil, IMHO. You don't receive the goods immediately so sometimes, I forget that I've bought a certain something and when out in the brick and mortar stores and needing that item, I purchase it. THEN it appears in the mail 3 days later and tadah....flea market anybody?

The weekend is here but too short. I feel like I need more time to build my marriage with the husband having endured so much stress. We need a breather to reconnect and just talk again. Yet, we have so many limitations. Time, finances and energy. How do others do it? I wonder. Or is it just me? Especially in stressful Singapore. Please let me know if you have any answers.

Surprises-Who would have thought?

So I have some pending news. Some time ago, along with the disappointments, my mum gave me a prophesy she thought she heard from God. It was very specific. Needless to say, disbelieving and faithless me dismissed her and today, it came to pass.

I called her immediately and both of us felt goosebumps and shuddered. We gave praise to God and marveled at His faithfulness. Nothing is confirmed yet and even if it falls through again, I will learn better to walk by faith, not by sight and manage disappointments. Therefore, I will not let this lesson go to waste.

The important lesson here also is: LISTEN TO MUM.

I'm so grateful she is so sensitive to the Holy Spirit and walking so closely to God. She reads Psalms everyday along with other devotional readings and scriptures. She prays and she walks the talk. Who would have thought that just a decade ago, she was steeped in paganism, arrogant and power-hungry? These days, she is humble, a joy to be with and really radiating Jesus in spite of the trials that has beset our family.

Hope lives and Jesus reigns.

A pleasant surprise indeed. All glory and praise to the king of Kings.

Fatigue

Both mentally and physically.

I literally willed myself to stop thinking and mulling today. Not that the divine revelation that fretting does no good hit. I blanked out after awhile and fell asleep amidst the sounds of heavy piling and construction.

Asher coming over today was also a good respite. I love that kid and it breaks my heart to know that he will grow up far away,  never really knowing aunty Xinying. I am thankful that we'll be spending his first birthday together though. Maybe in years to come, we can physically fly over and reunite for subsequent birthdays. Maybe.

Desires denied. Delayed.

That's been the theme of late-Disappointments and I'm not sure how many beatings I can take. While I try my utmost to stay upbeat and positive, count my blessings etc, it's been really hard to stay emotionally afloat and this has taken a toll on many areas of my life.

I am afraid that I'll run out of options. It already feels like it and that feeling is plain suffocating and claustrophobic. I don't think I ever felt this lonely ever in my life. Yet I don't allow people in. It's a paradox really and I'm confused.

I no longer want to shop. I have gone from taking respites in shopping to obsessively wanting to obliterate all the excesses in my life. So many dresses, shoes, make up that I can never finish using. I know I'll come to regret this decision so I never got around to that.

I sound like a broken record. Maybe it's time to just get sleep and do a stock-take on life tomorrow. Maybe pleasant surprises await.

The agony of waiting

He said he'll be done in an hour. As I say this, it has almost been 2 hours and Christina Perri's famous words from a "A Thousand Years" are looping in my head.

"I have died everyday waiting for you"

Then he bursts into the room and says "done!"

Much of life these days revolves around waiting for the husband to finish his work. This is like penance for making him me wait for me in the past. I have tried my best to use the time constructively but sometimes, (ok more often than I admit), I lose my steam when playing the waiting game.

God makes me wait. Isaac makes me wait. I am...THE WAITER!

Glad to know I still retained a dark sense of humour in these trying times. It's innate.

Now, let me check on the "doneness", for he has disappeared again. Not quite it seems. I try to be understanding. The demands of work are hefty. It's not like I am a stranger to it but now I am.

It's hard to be kept waiting-indefinitely. I wish I wasn't the recipient of it all and these days, besides devouring sermons and books ( I ran out of TV series), I literally try to be still. It's an art. (That I have yet to master). The new-agey people do that all the time but God says, to meditate on His word day and night and I can't even still a stray thought for more than 2 minutes. Like now. I ramble and ramble.

I hope to learn the lessons God wants me to learn asap so I can exit and enter the next phase. It will most probably also contain waiting but then, I would at least have mastered the beginner's course to cruise through the intermediate level. Now, I am but a novice.

Dear God, HELP.

The weekend

Top to bottom: my burger, his burger (double the size), selfies of us and the light making my hair look semi glorious. (Just had to preserve that rare moment)

Echoes of faith

Oh lovely day!

Had a too-long postponed meeting with the lovely Katharina.

We laughed and talked and laughed. That summed up the whole afternoon and simple pleasures like these remind me how blessed I am as I take my eyes off my problems and count my blessings.

On another note I've been doing way too much shopping so gotta cut back alittle unless the job works out.

Leaving that in God's almighty hands.

Your will be done, not mine.

Oh lovely day

The difference

They have it all the wrong way around. Falling in love requires you to bare your soul to the other first. Not baring your body. 

While waiting for sleep to arrive

It's 2.44 am on my clock. Yet I lie awake. I've taken the pills I needed to aid sleep but still, it is elusive.

I've devoured tonnes of sermon in vain attempts to reconnect with God and let Him shine a ray of hope into the dark abyss of my soul. Some light is getting through but barely. The journey of healing starts with one step and it doesn't seem to end. Healing is an ongoing process, at least for me. There is so much going on in that soul I wonder how big it really is to stomach so much disappointments and hurts.

What is it really? Haven't I reconciled the pain of my childhood? The abandonment and neglect of being the unwanted child? I really don't have a clue this time around.

I want a job. A job that I can excel in to feed my confidence, to help build some sense of normalcy again because now, I feel like an alien, handicapped by fears and limitations. I'm afraid the stigma associated with depression would arise if anyone would to find out. Even if I can carry out my job duties accordingly. I just want an opportunity and now, even humbling jobs like customer service, if not for their requirements to work weekends are starting to grow on me. Sure, I think I might be overcome with some sense of shame when one of my mother's friends walk by. Or, some polished ex-schoolmate while I clean make-up brushes but the rational part of me tells me no job is to be despised. I excel at these things even when I was a student. Time shouldn't change that. My aptitude for it remains.But now, I fear the looks of men.

Ideally, a job that I can excel in and capitalizes on my strengths with regular hours and a cohesive friendly team of colleagues and bosses would be more than a dream come true. But now that that is elusive, I have to look beyond and re-start my search to make each day more fruitful. Not just in terms of dollars and cents but just to even get human interaction and contribute as little as I can to society.

If you're reading this, please offer a prayer for me. For breakthrough and for hope while I wait on the Lord. Somedays, I feel like the dark moods are so hard to fight I can barely step out of my bedroom. It takes a toil on my husband as he juggles between the heavy demands of his work and his sick wife. I would love to "snap out of it" but the moods, I can't describe them. Even without a focused thought nor a worry, they afflict me relentlessly. I get debilitating headaches and fatigue.

BUT I thank God I can seek solace in this little diary. Maybe even have a little audience of faceless individuals. So I'm not alone.

The remnant indignation left in me is adamant that I will not let depression, demon or anything really steal my destiny and joy. I believe I have one, ordained by the Lord. Big or small, I don't know but I intend to stick to it and be fruitful in it for as long as I live. What I am now is a dismal cry from what it is meant to be. I want to be more, not just for selfish ambition but because I know that that was the deposit that I carry from above.

So God, hear me. Remember me. Sometimes I feel so forgotten by you. I know it's a lie but why is the furnace suddenly so hot and unbearable? How long more must I bear before I see and feel the first rays on my skin and celebrate jubilee? I know you hear me. Even when it doesn't feel like it. I want to believe..help my unbelief. Give me an indication. That you are here. Right here.

Dealing with disappointments

Dealing with disappointments (yet again) takes out more strength than I can possibly afford now. It robs me of hope to keep moving forward and joy to believe that a better tomorrow holds.

Bleak. Yes, that pretty much describes it.

Pain. That too.

There are only so many blows one can take in the boxing ring of life. After the quota is met, the fighter passes out. It might be temporary or it can be blunt force trauma, forever terminating his fighting spirit.
If he recovers, though the process be arduous,all is good because we live to see another day, another sunrise and sunset, children playing and laughing, a chance to do good.

If he doesn't, there is a mourning, albeit temporarily. Maybe a celebration for a life well-lived (for the most part at least) and then, there will be a new child born to carry on.

Hence, the cycle of life.

Timely much?

Somewhere in between.

Today was a little bit rougher than usual. The waiting got to me. I hate not having any answers. I'd rather a straight-out rejection but I need to focus on the silver-lining. At least they're still considering and I'm still in the running for my dream job.

Also, I got disappointed because..6 months on, still no baby. 2013 must be the ultimate year of waiting to hone my patience. Well, at 30, and after so many years as a Christian, if anything I think God decided to produce 70% of that much-needed fruit all at a shot. Ironically, it is His accelerated "patience-honing" program. I am not enjoying it obviously.Some days, I get by with a bare pass. Others, I'm a screaming bratty toddler on the verge of a mental breakdown after being denied TV time.
**
On another note, I was lamenting to self today that there are so few people I can be completely at ease with and just be myself. No pretenses. Not that I ever tried to be anybody else or someone I'm not but I've tried to disguise what I am. Note the difference? More like, I hide my sadness, my discomfort, my anger etc. As the years wear on, there are lesser and lesser people that allow my true self to be at ease and as a result, I've acquired more and more disguises. They usually range from sullen to more sullen. Occasionally, I have the spaced-out look but sometimes, I'm just escaping mentally to stop the tears from gushing out.

**
Being 30 also meant my skin decided to go all hormonal and "let's show em' we're still young!" mode AKA breakouts. Therefore, I decided to adjust my skincare routine as such so let's all take a time machine and zip back to 1996. Actually, in 1996, I didn't have zits. I had near-flawless skin almost all through adolescence. I was one of those "lucky ones". I rarely empathized and understood the agony of acne (just had to make that rhyme). I've gone back to "clean and clear" and started MATTIFYING moisturizers. Went for the cheapest, a Loreal hydrafresh because I figured it is probably the most teenage-friendly product since the price coincides with teenage budgets and WOW. I am so so impressed! Where have I been? My skin is kept supple and hydrated without any sheen for the entire day! I never had a $15 so well-spent. Basically these two products have been so amazing and kind to me I almost welled up with regret and pain over all the thousands I spent on my skin. Also, they turned me into a near beauty blogger by devoting so much of my post to them. Oops.

So the skincare snob is now even more humbled. Yes, I'm super blown away by Watson's pedigree products. My ichagiku (I still can't spell) hair treatment, HADA LABO (cannot-do-without), Loreal Hydrafresh and CLEAN AND CLEAR (in apple scent no less!). In fact, when Watson's had a 50 cents discount, I went all OCD and bought bottles to stock up. Yes, auntie-mode for teenage products. I'm confused.

That said, I'm still eyeing that $89 blue therapy serum from Biotherm and Shu Umera's Tsuya eyecream. It's crazy pricey for an eye-cream and the best therapy really is to sleep and then conceal dark circles but it's just one of those things I don't give up on.

Yes, somethings don't change. And, if all else fails, I'll just start a beauty blog. ;p

As fad as my colorful personality goes..

Wanted to throw in shades of hot pink but they were already dried up after months of neglect. This teal is new and is a cousin few shades darker than the handiwork of mint on my feet. So there. 

Otherwise, I'm still a tad blue.

Fidgety

Yet again, a trial of my patience and faith. Another one. I'm not complaining and I do believe I'm stronger than before to take it on and my soul is more fortified with faith and bolstered with the encouragement of supportive individuals this time round, giving me strength to stand..still and believe.

Doubts still assail relentlessly and the occasional bout of fear that I'll end up wallowing in an abyss of regret if the outcome is contrary to what I had prepared for.

So I pray and pray and listen and listen endlessly to sermons. Running to God so that I won't run astray like so in the past. So I won't lapse back into worry-wart state. Been talking in my sleep so much and the nasty quality of sleep has been taking a toil on my complexion (oh woe!). Despite my best efforts at resisting and spiritual warfare, the enemy occasionally still sneaks in a despairing thought or two or a devastating scenario in my mind. It's not easy but I try my best to recount every single blessing, even the smallest or seemingly insignificant ones that I so often take for granted and just keep. on. moving.

I'm sure God has a perfect reason in delaying the outcome and though curiosity killed the cat, I won't let it defeat me this time. Delays, they reveal to me the condition of my heart and for the first time in a long time, strengthens my intimacy and dependence on Him. He keeps time best. He is never late. He knows best. No demon in hell can stop Him if this is part of His plan for me.

I just want His plan now. Not mine, not my parents'. Whatever it may be.

Holding my breath

So I turned down the teaching position after much deliberation, thought and prayer. Wise counsel from those who knew me too. It just wasn't me.

Narrowed it all down to two now.

Who would have thought that the second was even an option? Sometimes God really surprises me.

What other surprises do you have up your sleeve dear Father?