The other side of the island

Around this time last year, I blogged about the five blessings that made my year (2015) worth remembering.

It's again, ten days to the end of the year. Has it been a better year, like I hoped in this post?

How do you define "better" anyway? (What was I thinking?) More happiness, less troubles, less emotional exhaustion? I am not sure if my year 2016 was any "better" in that sense. However, something in me has changed. I used to cry out to God to take me Home (while I slept in the night) because I couldn't stand living anymore - and I didn't feel like I mattered that much to anybody. Life would go on without me and perhaps, for certain people, life would be even better. That was the way I was. I realise now, a year later, that I have stopped praying such prayers. Not because God didn't answer them, but because He already did.

He didn't take me Home, of course. No, not yet. But He showed me how hungry I unknowingly was (for the reassurance that He hadn't forsaken me) and filled me good things.

I am still on this other side of the island. I hated it when I moved here 2 years back - and I won't say that I am fond of it now. I miss my friends, the community that I belonged to, the air, the peace and quiet, the sea, the malls, and my freedom to make home home. It is very humbling to live with my in-laws too - in so many ways. However, moving to this other side of the island also meant seeing God's glory shine upon the backdrop of mundane things, the seeming directionlessness, my languishing will to live, and near-mid-life crisis.

And I changed.

The psalmist says that "He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul; He guides in me the paths of righteousness for His name's sake" (Ps. 23:1-3). I think we often think of sheep as passive, dumb, and peaceful followers of the shepherd. How hard can a shepherd's job be? But would God raise a king out of a shepherd boy if his job had been that simple? Some basic facts about sheep that I gleaned from a lifestock management blog today:

1. Sheep run away from perceived danger.
2. Sheep follow other sheep and conform because they find security in numbers.
3. Sheep find it hard to trust.

For a sheep to not run away from perceived danger, to not merely follow the crowd, to let itself be led and to trust the guidance of the Shepherd in an unfamiliar path, it has to see the Shepherd as a friend who has its best interest at heart. A less-than-fully-committed Shepherd would soon lose its sheep. The psalmist both implies that God is fully committed to shepherding and that he is therefore committed to obeying His lead, despite the temptations to go astray. He believes in God's care - that he will lack nothing. Furthermore, goodness and lovingkindness will follow him all the days of his life (Ps. 23:6). There is a sort of boldness in the psalmist's words that I truly admired all these while. It took a move into an uncomfortable zone to show me that the words of the psalmist could be mine too.

If God has shown Himself time after time to be a Friend - a committed one too - why shouldn't I lie down in the pasture He has brought me to? Why should I look down at the waters of sustenance? Or disdain the path because it is rocky, mundane, and seemingly hopeless? I was confronted with these questions at the beginning of the year. It dawned upon me that at the heart of my struggles was not my resentment and disappointment with my hubby's plan to move us in with his parents. Rather, I had allowed my unmet desires and broken dreams to shake my faith in God - that He loved me. The more I envied those who had what I wanted and couldn't have, the more unloved I felt. I let myself think He had conveniently abandoned me. But when I counted my blessings, I knew He hadn't. And doesn't. The cross has sealed the promise. 

So I decided to seize the days I would spend on this other side of the island. I began working out at the condo gym, took on more writing assignments, went on refreshing momcations (while I still had babysitting help from my in-laws), went back to work as a music teacher (my job was a miracle and the favour I continue to receive is a testimony of God's grace), made new friends and signed Sophie up for playschool among other things. God provided for us in ways we never imagined. I don't just hope that 2017 will be a "better" year. Rather, I am actually excited about 2017 because I can't wait to see how certain things unfold - particularly my ever-deepening work with the children, my music, Sophie's growth and development, my friendships, my prayer list, and so on.

We may never return to the other side of the island. I will continue to struggle in various areas and be emotionally exhausted. But I think I could live with these now.

The joy of the Lord is my strength.

Goodbye, 2016.