deconstructing jessica

Recording my journey of trying to make it through life and find God, joy, purpose and meaning along the way...basically in search of eternal life here on earth.

LINKS THAT NO LONGER INTEREST ME
!HERO [the gospel in rock]
parousia
jon foreman
switchfoot
duran duran
kevinmax
the O.C.
jason LO

I WROTE THIS
pseudo-memoir

Background from dctalkunite.com

RECENT POSTS

checkpoint woes

god uses tired people too

sun after the rain

to update or not update

re: what i learnt this week

what i learnt this week

gone in <60 seconds

first week of 2008

how i spent the new year

WRITINGS

read between the lines

Monday, March 31, 2008

one month milestone

i can't believe it's already been one month to the day i made the pledge to re-learn what it was like to depend wholly on god. what started out as a tentative one-week trial has managed, only by god's grace and the result of people's prayers including my own, to spill over into four weeks. i cannot imagine how else i would've made it this far (and still hope to make it further). going cold turkey the first week was one of the hardest things to do in my life, but persistence in enforcing discipline gave way to making the routine easier and easier to get into.

in a weird way, the checkpoint jam has been a form of answered prayer because now, i truly have less time to kill in s'pore, which makes it (time) a precious commodity and therefore causes me to spend it wisely with god =).

and the terrible bout of flu (which i still haven't fully recovered from) i had since good friday which caused me to put off travelling to church or work until thursday was also a blessing in disguise, because i secretly relished the opportunity to get sufficient sleep each day and rest my injured feet. haha. unfortunately, my split heel which had healed returned to being cracked by friday due to the unusually dry climate in my workplace...and so did the cuts underneath my toes and whatnot, but at least i've now got ellgy with me.

there's nothing like a good night's sleep (several nights, rather) to recharge the body and uplift one's mood, hence my positive outlook this week in start contrast to last week's. looking back on this past month, i am pleased to see signs of providence as a result of choosing to solely trust in god. people i want to talk to (or wasn't thinking about but lost contact with) bump into me out of nowhere (read: without me having to do anything to "make things right") and the kindness of strangers have seen to my needs for those moments.

the lady letting me finish her wantan mee before making a trip to the ATM to pay her, the guy offering me a seat when we were all stuck in a bus that crawled only a few inches an hour, the guy at the checkpoint's thumbprint access area letting me through so i could get 'unharmed' into one of the queuing lines at the other end...all unknowingly acting as god's extended hands and feet.

another blessing this week is having gotten one more piece of the puzzle in my fractured relationship with my dad, last night. we had another one of those tiffs in the car again after dinner and his last retort was "your motor mouth always has to have to have the last word" to which i honestly objected and said "it's not about the last word, i just want to know." i was referring to knowing what the situation we were arguing about was actually like, for a miscommunication had happened earlier and it obviously cost me something so i was trying to backtrack and figure out what went wrong where.

almost immediately, it just hit me that i really wanted to know something else more. suddenly i just understood what was going on -- he was throwing barbs at me when what i really wanted was reassurance. reassurance that things would be okay and as i reflected on that revelation in the bath later, i realised that this could be applied to all our major quarrels. after a lull in discord of a few months, lately we've gradually returned to butting heads more often.

all my life i have been expecting him to act like a father and more often than not he fails me. so what could i do next, now knowing what i was really looking for and knowing that he would never be able to meet that need because that's just how he is as a person? the obvious conclusion is that i would have to, firstly, recognise when i'm needing that need in the midst of each quarrel and secondly, to find that need in god, my only possible perfect Father in heaven.

it so happened that a friend was talking about a u2 song earlier in the day, which i think is the reason i next started thinking of another song by them (below) i recently heard again last week on tv. mincay3, who 'happened' to be online (again, another example of divine providence cos i wanted to ask him about the song anyway), told me bono wrote it for his dad who passed away in 2001. further research online informed me that bono's relationship with his dad was strained in a typically irish father-son way and that his dad had succumbed to lung cancer.

and i had no idea the song was about a father! so the lyrics really ministered to me at such an apt time.

Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own
by U2

Tough, you think you've got the stuff
You're telling me and anyone
You're hard enough

You don't have to put up a fight
You don't have to always be right
Let me take some of the punches
For you tonight

Listen to me now
I need to let you know
You don’t have to go it alone

And it's you when I look in the mirror
And it's you when I don't pick up the phone
Sometimes you can't make it on your own

We fight all the time
You and I
That’s alright, we’re the same soul
I don’t need, I don’t need to hear you say
That if we weren’t so alike
You’d like me a whole lot more

Listen to me now
I need to let you know
You don't have to go it alone

And it's you when I look in the mirror
And it's you when I don't pick up the phone
Sometimes you can't make it on your own

I know that we don’t talk
I’m sick of it all
Can you hear me when I sing?
You're the reason I sing
You're the reason why the opera is in me

Where are we now?
Still gotta let you know
A house doesn't make a home
Don’t leave me here alone

And it's you when I look in the mirror
And it's you that makes it hard to let go
Sometimes you can't make it on your own
Sometimes you can't make it
Best you can do is to fake it
Sometimes you can't make it on your own

¶ 1:01 AM