Investments

Today my colleagues were talking about investments and insurance options during dinner.

I don't know if investing is The Thing to do at this age. Many seem to be doing that and getting really decent returns. I wonder why they do it - for security only, or to hope for a windfall? Maybe for both?

I don't know why I've never spent my life thinking or planning how to get rich. Maybe I am too lazy. But I do think there are certain stuff in life I would be fine doing without. Branded clothes bags shoes. Expensive face hair and body treatment. High tech IT applications. Concert and musical tickets. Big houses and cars.

I wish from the very bottom of my heart that I would grow old, loving the things I love now, that these things will continue to make me happy. Board games with friends. Walking to grocery shopping, snacking in hawker centers, spending a day in east coast park. Wearing 10 dollar tee shirts. Drinks from vending machines.

As for those medical bills and housing bills, I just need to be responsible enough in planning and faithful enough to give mercifully and thankfully to those who need it. Tomorrow will take care of itself. Because God takes care of tomorrow.

New records

The haze psi in Singapore had struck a record high today as never ever before. Unfortunately, so did my working man-hours in the shift. To think there might be a chance of stop-work order due to hazardous environmental factors! Wishful thinking indeed.

Yes it's rather depressing being worked to the bone during shift only to find out the mistakes I made from the next team after going home. There was no chastising, no blaming, nothing except me thinking that I could have done better than this. Again.

But it was from this that I truly realized also, today, that I have entered into someone else's world at last. From being an outsider, to a tolerable friend, to mildly appreciative, and finally to being fully appreciated. I can't describe how amazing it is to get here, because I thought I'd never would. But then miracles happen and I've been witnessing a lot, lately. Anyway, it encouraged my heart that at least, to somebody, I made a difference. A difference that was, to me at least, not easy to make. And things continue on from here - to build up and support another person, or to destroy and hurt with callousness.

It is a dangerous place to be: inside someone's world. Because it means that you are starting to make a difference. Things you do affect them. They care about you now, and your actions can greatly encourage or discourage them. The relationship can turn sweet or sour easily if it doesn't just fade off. 

On a side note I am really quite amazed by how Jon has successfully insulated our house from the menacing haze using fans and filters. The filters are horribly black now. The difference between our home environment and the outside world is so drastic that, when I opened my door this morning and in the afternoon again to go out, it felt like stepping out of a space shuttle pod into a foreign planet. The sight of the haze outside was so unreal and intimidating and I am glad almost none of it penetrated our living quarters.

How far greater too does the grace of God shield me from the insecurities and pressures of the outside world. More and more so.

Manila in Three Weeks

Flying to Manila in three weeks for a week-long e-campaign this year. Going with campus group again - some people are relatively new to campus, and there are a few from last year who will not be joining this year. Will miss their companionship, definitely! I still remember all of us sitting around Simon in his shared room with Andrew last year, on our last night, dropping tears as we shared our experience.

This time will be different because it will become, in a way, a more familiar experience. Yet there are things that are different. Manila will be a different challenge as compared to Negros. City environment, city kids. Tagalog instead of Cebuano. Different forms of bondage and obstacles. Big groups, more people. And yes, the heart, our hearts may be so easily deceived by thinking that because of past experience, we do not need to depend all the way, we do not need to exert as much effort as last time.

But be it city or rural areas, God's power to save is the same. God's love for the people are the same. Our compassion for souls should be the same, and the way we look at the people should be the same. Our weaknesses and necessity to fully, 100% rely on His powers and His abilities are the same. Everywhere, God saves. Everywhere, people have this common need for love, which can only be satisfied through Him. Because we are made for His love.

As we ran through a video of last year's campaign, although I wasn't in any of the picture slide shows, it did bring back scenes to my mind. How I almost broke into tears in my first classroom, but thankfully manage to finish my sharing. How the teachers in the staff room cried and how I cried with them. How each time the students will look from me at different places in the room with eyes that spoke of a longing for a hope. A hope that is so apparent there and is so apparent here in this garden city, in a different way.

God, prepare me to be your witness. Every way. Every day.

Empowerment

It's been two weeks after my former team leader left the team for somewhere new. And across these two weeks I have really felt the impact of his leadership towards my new role in the team. The way he showed his leadership in encouragement and empowerment.

As I take up a slightly more active role in shift issues administration, I cannot but thank God each day, each shift, for the things I could help out with just because this guy was willing to share information, share experience, and actively involve me in all these things even though I was (and still am) the most junior member of the team. The extent of the things he could have done and settled himself, but took effort to teach and involve me too. The creativity of the solutions he had to finding out information and problem solving.

Most of all, I am thankful that he had trusted, encouraged and empowered me in a way far more than I deserved. I am thankful that he always believes in the best of people, and sees good things in the clumsy new chemist who doesn't even pipette properly and had her hands trembling whenever she uses pincers. I thank God for the times he used to resolve and shield me from the consequences of the problems and difficulties I've caused, and instead taught me not to fear them and positively make me repeat till I get things right.

Although he was a chemist with great skill and technical knowledge, the greatest takeaway I had from him was how to make friends and build people up. He is in his own way a great leader. He gave me confidence in myself and helped me contribute to team leadership in my own way. He despised not the youth of my age nor my inexperience in this field. Instead he even had the humility to see others better than himself.

I am glad that the current leader of my team is also actively training me up and is expressing and showing trust in the work I do too. I am really thankful and encouraged. And I am impressed so hard the fact that I should in turn not presumptuously draw early conclusions about people be they senior or junior. 

To work with a team that trusts and builds up one another is such a joyful and meaningful thing. I hope I can likewise help to encourage and build up the people I work with.

Not enough

I think I always do the right things for the wrong reasons.

Years spent growing up with an emotionally sensitive mother, and an equally (if not more) emotionally sensitive sister, has taught me the hard way when to show tact, sensitivity, and concern. I'm quite thankful for that because now I can almost automatically realize what to do in different situations, to save people's face, to make people not feel left out, to make others feel remembered and happy.

Today somebody even told me that she would want to leave my work place before I do because I am one of the few who really cares about how others feel. It's sad that no matter what others see from the exterior, I can't help being a person who cares only to an extent of wanting others not to feel sad or negative; but very rarely to make others feel happy.

Oh yes, there are instances when I do go all the way to do those things. I remember just in the past month I really went out of the way to do stuff for someone to make the memories left behind of the workplace really special ones. But now for this other person (which I am not close to), I am doing something that people would not do out of obligation, only because I don't want this other person to feel left out.

Why do I so easily allow what people are to me to determine who I am and how I act? Isn't God's love for me unconditional enough to give me a reason to love people the same way? To do things for them from my heart instead of just with my head and hands? And still feel self righteous about it?

Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood

Well, technically, I haven't reach that cross-point yet. But I'm coming nearer and nearer to it. It's right in front and I need to get myself prepared for it.

On a side note, it's rather amazing the way I've come to accept and live with new circumstances, and how people around me have stepped up to it as well. This is really faith becoming sight. And it's true, that daily portion of grace I've given. It sustains me from being stretched too tight. It gives me every reason each day to be thankful.

I don't want this thankfulness to be limited to work. I want it to stretch far and wide, to entrench itself deeply in all aspects of my life. I don't want my experience with God to stop at my workplace. I want it to be further, deeper, stronger, in every part of my life. Every place I'm at. 

I want to be deeply, emotionally, involved with God in my life.

And that's why, at this diverging of roads, I need to pray towards that. Should I stick to something that I love, and continue to function comfortably and competently each day? Or should I leave this, venture into something new, that allows me to just detach myself from this interest so that I can come back to feel, to get into other experiences more? Where are the people that God has planned for me to meet, to get involved with? To pray for, to talk to, to love? How will the roads to come affect my relationship with my family, with Jon, with the church?

My response towards this is what it has been for years and years past: Thankfully, I don't have to make such a difficult choice. Thankfully, I only need to pray and submit to God. The doors He opens, and the doors He closes. Thankfully, the Maker will turn my course of life according to His design, and I would just need to live according to it, to see reason in my life.

Whichever road I venture into is marked out on my road map. And I shall walk in faith.

Sayonara's

I'm in the midst of saying and preparing for goodbyes. All the activities kind of numb the ache of it. And all the preparation in getting ready for new people and new changes offsets the difference that I'm going through.

Yet I know after people are parted, it will be impossible to remain the same as before. Our memories of each other will halt at that time point, but our lives move on at a pace that is impossible to catch up with each day. 

Things change and people change. But I believe there is a God's hand and His grace in everything. And oh, it's so incredible that I've never really felt the 5 phases of change during the organizational take over, but felt the whole cycle so acutely over just this one month.

As much as we miss people who have just left, it is so much more important to continue to support, appreciate, and build relationships with those that are still with us, while we can.