came back from the zj retreat today. retreat was good, gave me quite a lot to chew on. i guess partly cos i'm moving on from one position in the community as a core team member to somewhere else in the community doing other things. i must say though, i'm not as confident as i make myself out to be regarding where i'm next called to serve in zj. where i am in my community now, it's gonna change in the next few weeks as i step down from the core and take my place as whatever else i'm gonna do. which sub-ministry to serve in, how i'm going to contribute to the best of my ability and capacity, what my place in my community is going to be or has been - so many changes. i should have the flexibility of mind and whatever else to embrace these changes as they occur, just take things in my stride.

oddly enough, even as i decided to step down from the core, i felt that there still is a large amount of unfinished business on my part. as if there's still a lot of me to give as a core team member and a lot i can accomplish in this role, except that i'm adamant on leaving. why the adamance? why the inability to look at situations unbiasedly, detached from emotions and based on functionality? i'm afraid that by stepping down now, it'll break my momentum in my growing into my role as a core team member. and that i'm stunting my own capacity to serve.

i guess it's a risk i have to take in deciding. trust that God will give me the impetus to grow again into whatever role i choose to fulfill at whatever point in time, that nothing is impossible through him and that i shouldn't limit myself. shouldn't - an ideal. but have i been limiting myself? oh yes, definitely.

a lot going on in my life right now, so much so that it's getting increasingly cluttered with a lot of thought processes and decisions and feelings. things ought to be straightforwarder now, right? ought to be - again, an ideal. i'm under a lot of pressure to make the right decisions, pressure from myself to decide, knowing that what i choose will affect others. at the same time, i don't want to live my life for others too. Edwina said in the retreat today that there always is a choice to be made between making a choice for ourselves, or compromising. i agree. but what she didn't really expound on also was that in compromising, we've also made a choice. to compromise our own desires and beliefs for others.

i don't want to have to keep choosing to compromise. because there isn't a better course of action to take, because it's the lesser of the two evils, because it's the course that will bear the least consequences, whyever.

but i also acknowledge that my decisions, whatever they may be, inevitably end up having an effect on the lives of others, however big or small. well, i mean the effect on the lives of others would depend then on the importance of the decision to be made. sometimes, i feel like i do things for others at my expense. even if it comes with the price of having to bear unwarranted judgements or hurtful perceptions, i grin and bear it. telling myself it's for the better, for everyone's good and so i should not be selfish. and it's painful when the effort to not be selfish or whatever comes across as being the total opposite. comes across as being totally selfish and bratty and incredibly horrid. it's so terribly hurtful, so is it stupid to keep grinning and bearing it? is it a noble but foolish act on my part to try to bite off more than i can chew and ingest?

God made me with human limitations. even though i like to proclaim that everything is possible through God, i think sometimes everything is possible through God only if he wills it. if God wills me to bear a certain load, he'll give me the strength to do it. but see, he'll give it to me. because it's what he wills, he'll help. but if it's not in line with what he has planned for me, i can only achieve so much, limited by my human self and capacity. and when i've taken on more than i can, i'll break - if it's not what God wants for me.

bleah i hate it when i go on my God tirades cos i always end up sounding like i'm putting God in a box. which i'm not, really. but i'm trying to put some order into my understanding of God and not just take everything in its messy chaos. maybe that's how i got God, at first. as too big, too messy, too immense for me to comprehend at all. like, i knew he was all these, but then because there's so much to know, i only scratch the surface for everything i knew. really, the surface. but when i start to sort out what i know and what i've found out about God, when i start to use my God-given ability to use my intelligence to rationalise things and put some sort of logic to madness, i know things so much better in my heart on top of knowing things in my head. i think the difference between knowing something in my heart and head lies in the really believing for yourself vs the other people truth. i'm always really glad when i start to feel the wheels and cogs in the brain machinery whirring because i feel that's when i begin to really believe, after i get through the entire thought process.

i am the sum total of my experiences. things that happened to me, no matter how significant or insignificant they may be to others involved; as long as they're significant to me, will affect me as i grow and add on to my person. maybe subtract, even? there we have story truth vs fact truth. as long as something's truth to me, the vehicle used to convey the truth to me doesn't matter. but when that something is retold to someone else, it becomes a lie. because the vehicle used to convey that isn't accurate, isn't in accordance with what actually happened. but to me, it's truth. so something could have happened to me and hence remains as my truth, no matter how it's told or what anyone does to convulate the story. but to someone else involved in the happening, seeing things from his or her point-of-view and forming his own truth, my truth becomes a lie and no matter how accurately i retell the story to him, it's nothing but a lie. ahh, i love war lit. was introduced to this whole concept of 'story truth' during Mrs. C's lessons, which Edwina brought up again during the retreat today. (and Chels and i had a 'ohhh we love war lit!' moment of ecstacy again for the 10th time since graduating from ac, then.)

a lot more to say but i shall keep it for another day. need to take the time to reorganise my thoughts and put them into words. words are my sand in my playground of life. i use words to give wispy thoughts in my head shape and a distinct form, like how a girl imagines a sandcastle in her mind and brings it to life using sand.

i shoulda thanked God for the gift of words instead of leadership when we did the exercise yesterday night. spent 1 hour reflecting and staring at the tealights after that. it was an ethereal feeling, just sitting in the dark and staring at the flickering flames dancing in the velvety darkness. brought me back to the time 6 months back at the ym retreat, when my drive to serve God was reawakened again by Edwina's team, too. there was this night when i sat in the darkness staring at dancing candle flames, acknowledging certain ugly truths that resurfaced in me and bringing my thoughts to life as i scribbled furiously in my journal. sat there for a long time too, just dredging up things i had to face and feeling my chest constrict as i finally said to myself yes, hello, you're still there. damn you, but hello anyway. not an easy feeling to deal with too often, i must say. last night too, was an exact replica of that night in January. lying on the floor getting hypnotised by the fragile light, feeling the first tendrils of certain thoughts tickling my mind again and having to finally finally acknowledge that yes, i know you're there - much as i hate to say hello to you, and finally bringing them to life and giving them solid shape and a reality as i scribbled just as furiously in my journal. it was surreal, and yet familiar and achingly painful.

it's true then, that we always try to run away from the ugly truths about ourselves even if we've come so close to acknowledging them in the face so many times before. that it's hard to see yourself for what you really are. the challenge after that is to still love myself for exactly what i am. today's last activity was a prime example - it seemed as though people didn't wanna face up to what they were or what their friends might've thought they were, precisely because what we see isn't pretty, polished, glamourous, PR-ey, or even remotely what we perceive ourselves to be. i struggle with that as a person even now, put 20 people struggling to embrace that reality for themselves together and inevitably, not everyone's gonna be able to do it.

i love my community, i love zj, i really do. i just wish we were all a lot more honest with each other in so many ways, top-down, left-right, all around. and open, too, to what we all need. i guess when we're all so emotionally attached to certain notions or visions or things, it's hard to remain objective and unbiased. same, for my daily living.

ah, God draws parallels in all aspects of my life.