Just when you think that you have put the past behind you, something happens and all the old memories and feelings come piling on you again. Have you felt this way before?
The meaning of 1 John 4:18 “...perfect love casts out fear” was revelation to me. It is not our faith but our belief and trust in His love that will cast out our fear, fear of lack, fear of inadequacy, fear of failure, fear of tomorrow... It is the confidence in God's perfect love for me that will keep me there. Perfect love is love despite of. He loves me unconditionally, He loves me first... And if I decide to choose to believe that He loves me despite of what has happened and will happen to me, I can have no fear. Focussing and concentrating on God’s perfect love for me will drive out all fear.
And the greatest way to demonstrate that I trust in His perfect love is to give Him my yesterday, and thank Him for every failure, every setback, every pain in the past. Knowing that God has allowed my yesterday to make me what I am today gives me the peace and assurance that I can face tomorrow. God is a God of progress. He’s never standing still. Even when it seems that absolutely nothing is happening in my live or worse, life is taking many steps back, God is working behind the scene to fit me into His scheme of things.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Inspiration & Paradox 107: Time for Recollection
“Don’t tell him (my-father-in-law) that I am not working”, “why did you tell others that you are not working”, “there’s no need to tell others”, “keep these things to yourself”… my mother-in-law’s words repeated in my mind for many days.
For a while I really didn’t get what she meant. It was minutes before I could sense my crumbling pride and work through my own thoughts…
I was a bundle of nerves after I left my full-time job, but I was also very much looking forward to a new leash of life as a stay-at-home-mum. Whoa, new schedule, new objectives, new plans, new tasks and new routines. Honestly, I don’t mind a teeny bit rolling up my sleeves to dish out hot meals for my family, in fact I have a fetish for it. I know very well the importance of coaching my children, enjoy the new routines of morning exercise, cooking and baking, gardening, and putting in more hours on my website, and taking up part-time teaching in the university. But at the same time, I still miss that sense of “thrive and strive” when working in an organisation, especially when the days are so filled with “to-do-lists” and become rudderless with no sense of direction or focus. I seem to be shortening my sleeping hours, hatching more plans than ever, and having more anxiety to do more every day.
I began to understand why I was fazed by my mother-in-law’s words as I recalled my own feelings in my first month of staying at home…
I didn’t like buying groceries on a weekday morning in the cold stores with slow streams of maids and old folks coming in to browse and shop. I am not trying to make a mockery of these people; but being part of that picture made me feel like I am leading a mundane little life. Neither did I like to see mothers all dressed and powered up for work in the morning saying goodbye to their children as I sent Jackie to her childcare centre in my tee and shorts. It was like as if the whole world was reeling under rapid progress, while I just stagnated away in reclusion. And as if these were not enough to bruise my ego, the credit card telemarketer who was soliciting for new members had to drop my call the moment I told him that I was not working. I thought he was mean. Paging through the daily newspapers was also a dread when the economic slump news became massive. Headlines that read “The most important thing to do now is to keep your job…”, “More retrenchment expected…” “Families making ends meet” made the future gloomier by the day and put into me thoughts that I must be a nitwit to quit in such a time as this. I managed to shake off those negative feelings every time it came without trying to figure the reason for them. Some friends said I must be out of my mind to quit my job, while others applauded my boldness to step out of the corporate world. Then I actually felt quite proud of myself – hey, I was not mainstream! I had what it took to go against popular decisions! I realised there was a host of other meanings in those words that I didn’t associate with. And now I recall what the office canteen boss exclaimed when the news of my resignation reached his ears, “What a waste, you studied so much and now you’re going to stay at home to be a yellow-faced old hag, I just don’t understand you people!” and how the department secretary carped at me, “I tell you, the worst job is to be a housewife!” Names like “yellow-faced-wife” and “housewife” sounded terrible to me, but I didn’t care a fig what was hurled at me. To a certain degree, I even thought these people had quite a fair sense of humour.
Were my emotions then suppressed? I’m really not sure. Perhaps what my mother-in-law said just tipped over some large heaps of words that were piled over me before and caused me to quicken to my own inner senses.
Here I am, born and bred in a culture where everybody tells everybody that a good education is a passport to securing a good job, getting a good pay, and ultimately leading a good life. Period. No matter how much welfare you are able to contribute to your family, if you are not pursuing a good full-time job in a well-known organisation, you are not doing anything very esteemed. So when I turned against this social norm, I was actually secretly bothered by how I perceived myself – a small and insignificant nobody.
To say the least, my own self-discovery startled me. I know very well, it’s not my mother-in-law’s fault, or anybody else’s. While everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I sure can choose my own beliefs and not let any negative thought bug me. This time, I blame it on my own egotism that has turned the wrong side out.
I need to go recollect myself.
For a while I really didn’t get what she meant. It was minutes before I could sense my crumbling pride and work through my own thoughts…
I was a bundle of nerves after I left my full-time job, but I was also very much looking forward to a new leash of life as a stay-at-home-mum. Whoa, new schedule, new objectives, new plans, new tasks and new routines. Honestly, I don’t mind a teeny bit rolling up my sleeves to dish out hot meals for my family, in fact I have a fetish for it. I know very well the importance of coaching my children, enjoy the new routines of morning exercise, cooking and baking, gardening, and putting in more hours on my website, and taking up part-time teaching in the university. But at the same time, I still miss that sense of “thrive and strive” when working in an organisation, especially when the days are so filled with “to-do-lists” and become rudderless with no sense of direction or focus. I seem to be shortening my sleeping hours, hatching more plans than ever, and having more anxiety to do more every day.
I began to understand why I was fazed by my mother-in-law’s words as I recalled my own feelings in my first month of staying at home…
I didn’t like buying groceries on a weekday morning in the cold stores with slow streams of maids and old folks coming in to browse and shop. I am not trying to make a mockery of these people; but being part of that picture made me feel like I am leading a mundane little life. Neither did I like to see mothers all dressed and powered up for work in the morning saying goodbye to their children as I sent Jackie to her childcare centre in my tee and shorts. It was like as if the whole world was reeling under rapid progress, while I just stagnated away in reclusion. And as if these were not enough to bruise my ego, the credit card telemarketer who was soliciting for new members had to drop my call the moment I told him that I was not working. I thought he was mean. Paging through the daily newspapers was also a dread when the economic slump news became massive. Headlines that read “The most important thing to do now is to keep your job…”, “More retrenchment expected…” “Families making ends meet” made the future gloomier by the day and put into me thoughts that I must be a nitwit to quit in such a time as this. I managed to shake off those negative feelings every time it came without trying to figure the reason for them. Some friends said I must be out of my mind to quit my job, while others applauded my boldness to step out of the corporate world. Then I actually felt quite proud of myself – hey, I was not mainstream! I had what it took to go against popular decisions! I realised there was a host of other meanings in those words that I didn’t associate with. And now I recall what the office canteen boss exclaimed when the news of my resignation reached his ears, “What a waste, you studied so much and now you’re going to stay at home to be a yellow-faced old hag, I just don’t understand you people!” and how the department secretary carped at me, “I tell you, the worst job is to be a housewife!” Names like “yellow-faced-wife” and “housewife” sounded terrible to me, but I didn’t care a fig what was hurled at me. To a certain degree, I even thought these people had quite a fair sense of humour.
Were my emotions then suppressed? I’m really not sure. Perhaps what my mother-in-law said just tipped over some large heaps of words that were piled over me before and caused me to quicken to my own inner senses.
Here I am, born and bred in a culture where everybody tells everybody that a good education is a passport to securing a good job, getting a good pay, and ultimately leading a good life. Period. No matter how much welfare you are able to contribute to your family, if you are not pursuing a good full-time job in a well-known organisation, you are not doing anything very esteemed. So when I turned against this social norm, I was actually secretly bothered by how I perceived myself – a small and insignificant nobody.
To say the least, my own self-discovery startled me. I know very well, it’s not my mother-in-law’s fault, or anybody else’s. While everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I sure can choose my own beliefs and not let any negative thought bug me. This time, I blame it on my own egotism that has turned the wrong side out.
I need to go recollect myself.
Monday, February 09, 2009
Inspiration & Paradox 106: Wrong Context or Wrong Crowd?
Following is one of those emails that flies around the offices on Friday afternoons. It's a thought-provoking one. The story wraps up with the suggestion that we humans are incapable of appreciating beauty and talent in an unexpected context.
Think about it again, is it "wrong context", or simply a case of "wrong crowd"? What's your take?
**********************************************************************************
A Violinist in the Metro
A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousand of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.
Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.
A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.
A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.
The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.
In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.
No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.
Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.
This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Inspiration & Paradox 105: Perfectly Imperfect Love
This morning I had a chat with Jackie’s child-care teacher…
Children are eager to please the people they love, and they do this by performing - behaving well and doing things right. And honestly, we adults often take advantage of that, don’t we. We show our anger and even say unkind words to our children when they misconduct. And often, they attach our emotions and reactions to how much we love them. Well, this happened to Jackie. In her most grown-up voice, she jested in the middle of our regular bedtime story-telling session last night, “When I don’t share my toys with my friends, teacher won’t love me.” Subsequently, a string of questions led me to discover that her childcare teacher has been teaching the kids to “win her love with good behaviour”.
So there I was at the child-care centre, trying pretty hard to put it across to the teacher in a nice way so that she wouldn’t feel embarrassed or offended, and frankly, most importantly, it wouldn’t cause a backfire on Jackie. I shared with her my concern about what Jackie had been picking up in the child-care, and my earnest request that the kids learned the correct reasons for good behaviour. I told that I would like Jackie to understand that our love for her was not a result of how good her behaviour was, and that her disobedience would not make us love her lesser even though we could be upset and appear to be very angry with her.
Awfully tough, isn’t. As much as we know the right things to do with our kids and want them to grow up feeling confident and secure, sometimes, we adults cannot even really grasp the concept of unconditional love ourselves very well, let alone a three-year old. Without a loving relationship, children don’t seem to have any reason to want to learn to behave in an acceptable. And it’s so hard for them to understand why when they do the wrong things, the love adults flaunt about is not expressed in the way they can understand (hugs and kisses).
God, help us flawed parents (and teachers) have a significant positive impact on our children’s lives with our imperfect love for them!
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