2006 Comes With A Whimper...

So here comes 2006, marking the end of a year where so much as happened.

As the clock struck 12 tonight, I was standing alone outside a bar full of strangers, watching everyone countdown to the New Year, exchanging well wishes and hugs. And it struck me that my anonymity of the moment pretty much summed up my year of 2005, where so much has happened, and for once I did not take center stage.

Probably the most earth-shattering event in my life this year would have been my withdrawal from NUS. Otherwise, its been a year of so much upheaval in the lives of all around me. For once, my world is turned upside-down not because of what happened to me, but more or less because of those in my circle, those that I care for.

So what sort of year has it been?

In church, we celebrated the start of Providence Presbyterian Church. Incidentally, this day is actually PPC’s first birthday. We also saw our youth service “upgraded” into the church’s official Second Service. Our Levite Ministry has seen the recruitment of a few new members, as well as the departure of others. But the core of the ministry seems to have grown stronger and closer, as has the whole second service’s core team members. Its been a year to give thanks, in the ministry.

In the family, my sister finally got married to the man she dated for 13 yrs. We also bought a condo, which they have now moved into. My mom also retired from teaching, after being in it for more than 30 years. She’s now in the midst of planning to set up her own café. Mm… lots to pray for… Hehz…

Globally, its been a year of natural disasters, bird flu, terrorism and elections. All bad news, I guess. No surprise that every church’s favorite sermon topic at the end of the year was on how “The End Is Near”.

In my own life, I finally quit school, enrolled in a new one, started to get a taste of working life, managed to avoid falling back into the crisis mode that pretty much marked my last 2 years. I also passed my driving, and by the end of the year started to be on talking terms with Grace again. Its been a year that has tested me in many areas of my life that had so far been left untouched. I feel that I have grown. I Really do. Of course, ironically, this has been the first year in a long long time that has seen me lose a remarkable amount of weight. Here’s keeping my fingers crossed that my blog entry dated 1st Jan 2007 will not speak of my marked gain in weight.

Sadly, my report card still reads the same failure in my search for a soulmate. In the last 2 weeks, I’ve been telling God I want to finally start letting go of my longing, and surrender my dreams to Him. Its tiring to keep wanting what is not yours to have, and the longer you hold on to such dreams, the more painful it gets when it finally get shattered. I guess as much as I’m a dreamer and an idealist, mebbe I’m also a coward.

Interestingly enough, as soon as I’ve started telling God this, from 3 different sources have come the same question to me… have I ever met my soulmate in my life?

As I reflected on the question, I realized that many times I don’t seem to have a good grasp of my definition for a soulmate. It goes beyond merely someone who has similar taste/interests/opinions/mentality. Its about being able to connect at a deeper level than that… a level that says even if we were to have nothing in common in so many areas of our lives, there is an understanding between us that is able to dwarf those external differences, a soulish connection where we still ‘get each other’. But beyond that, she must also be someone who is able to captivate me. She doesn’t have to be a looker. But there must be something abt her, that leaves me breathless everytime I catch a glimpse of her, that keeps me always longing to be able to take one more look at her.

Is that asking a bit much?

Because I think in all my friendships down the years with different girls, some still close but some who have all but disappeared from my life, I’ve found a little bit in each one of them. In some I’ve found the security to open up about some of my darkest secrets, always safe in the trust of their unconditional acceptance of me. In others I’ve found that instinctive understanding that I always hoped I’d develop with Grace, but which ultimately proved elusive. In yet another I’ve always found myself very strangely captivated by her presence everytime she’s around, a sense of comfortableness that can’t really be explained.

And I guess until I find a girl that does not leave me comparing her with the others around me, but is someone whom I know for sure is the one I’ll want to spend the rest of my life with, I’d always be afraid I’m just compromising out of sheer loneliness. And ‘compromise’ would be just about the ugliest that can show up beside the word ‘Love’.

So am I in trouble? Mebbe. Looks like I’m destined to be alone. Its been a bad year in love and life for me and Paul. Heck, in so many around me, to be honest. We’ve both lost some steam from our early-days enthusiasm to do well in Stansfield. We both ended the year in anonymity – single, and perhaps in a strangely paradoxical sense not alone yet still lonely.

Don’t ask me why I’m so hung up on getting attached. Cos perhaps that’s not my main emphasis. Getting attached seems to me more a solution rather than my real problem. I guess I’m just so tired of being lonely. Not physically, but more… erm… soulishly. I keep asking God… apart from You, where is that Eve you have in store for me, to help me with the burdens I bear inside of me? The one who would stand by me when everyone else stops believing in me, the one who still remembers me when the world has forgotten me, the one who still cherishes me even after I myself think I’m worthless?

And perhaps that’s why my lesson in 2005 seemed to have been 2 very simple ones. The first one is that God really loves people. He really really does. He wasn’t kidding when He said that to love the least of them is to love Him. He wasn’t meaning it in a hypothetical manner. And so everything in ministry is about people. Gone were the days of the supposed ‘big picture’, where we consider what’s good for the ‘system’ or ‘program’, which was in turn supposed to serve the people. The minute the system causes someone to stumble, or causes us to neglect and forget some, it isn’t worthy of merit before God, no matter how much good it has otherwise done.

The second lesson is that I need to give thanks. In the face of so much that is going round in the lives of those around me, I realize how much I’ve been living blindly in the grace of God. My loneliness is real and tangible. It was never a contest of “who has the bigger problem”, but many times if I were to take my eye of myself, I’d see how God intended us to serve one another in order to take away loneliness in the world. When we make someone else feel remembered, valued, cherished or forgiven, we bring a little more of God’s unconditional love into the lives around us. And the only way to draw the strength to always be ready to help others, is from a posture of thanksgiving.

So I step into 2006 with the sober realization that I have 2 lessons to carry over from the last year. And it seems that God has deemed these 2 lesson to be sufficient enough to help me get through 2006, if I but obey. I also realize I’m carrying over into 2006 the scars I’ve accumulated over 26 years, and that some of them will continue to hurt for a long time to come. But I guess the pain is what keeps me alive, and keeps me growing.

My 2006 wish-list would contain just one item – Courage. To face up to the fact that I’m 27, and I’ll need to act like one, and finally learn from some really hard lessons in 2005. Courage also to hang on to my beliefs, as my faith increasingly wears thinner in the face of heavier and larger burdens that is building up in my life and in my heart.

*Gulp*