about time -

so yes, if you're still here, i've finally moved:

http://www.rustacular.tumblr.com

seeya on the greener side

x

340

I think there are some things people need to know. (I don't know if people still come here anymore - but if you do, thank you)

1. you are not the only one struggling:
people all over the world are struggling, right here, right now; it's almost like it comes with life, y'know - to live at all is to struggle. 

2. you are not the only one fighting:
people all over the world are fighting - breaking past their struggles, moving forward, holding on to what they know as true. 

3. you are loved:
as much as I thank Jesus that I am His and Romans 8:38-39 is indeed what it is, I'm not talking about any sort of 'spiritual' love - I'm talking about real, solid love. Someone, right here, right now cares for you, is thinking of you, hoping for you. Remember that. 

It's almost the end of the first semester, which I know was a short two months, but a good (and tough) two months at that. Always growing, always loved.

(:

339

hello.

It's been a while - I do want to move and I have set up a site but I have been so overwhelmed (largely in a good way) since moving to the UK. Yes I am in the UK!

I don't know. I think for all that's happened, I really don't have anything to complain about. School's been good, save for the math lecturer that goes too quickly and the stats lecturer that goes too slowly. I've really been enjoying myself and the intellectual challenge that comes with it. I think I'm slightly behind work, but that'll change, I guess. 

People have been good too, but tiring. I love meeting new people - but deciding sorta who to invest in, to have coffee dates with and to put in the effort into establishing real good friendships has been tiring. Finding a church (!!) has been tiring too. I miss the feeling of loving people and growing with them and giving anything to love them and serve them and just be there for them. I know I'll find that group here, and am already starting to feel that way with certain groups of people, but I really want to find a church that puts Jesus in the centre (actually puts it, not just says it), and I can grow in and love with.

Soon, soon slow. 

God has sent me here, but more than that He has gone before me and He has called it good. Amen. 

We are more than conquerors - and in the NLT, it says that we have overwhelming victory through Christ who loved us. Man, that's amazing. That's really really amazing. I don't even man. But amen. 

338

I haven't been here in a long time, and I doubt I'll be here for much longer - I'll be moving, as I somehow like to do with every new season.

The past month and a bit has not been the easiest. I've been challenged in, I dare not say most, but definitely uncomfortable ways, having my identity shake-shake-shaken, beliefs challenged, but character moulded and refined. 

But I have made so many new friends, and my heart holds so much anticipation, and with anticipation, some hesitation as well. It has been more than comforting to know my future is good - and I have such security in that; and the sole reason for this security is because I have a great saviour, who loves me with such a fervent furious love.

It is amazing to know I'm not going to the away alone, but not just that I have great company, not just in the UK but in Bath as well. To know a cosy group of kingdom brothers and sisters will be flying right along with me is amazing. To think that God prepared this far in advance for each of us to bless each other is so so mindblowing. :') 

It is this that has been carrying me through: 

Faith Under Pressure

Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.

James 1:2-4 (msg)  

337

God has been so faithful, and I'm just so so super amazed.

In the spirit of full disclosure, there is a lot on my mind. In particular, there are 3 things I really want settled in the immediate, and 1 before the end of August (pretty much). But in the midst of all this, God has been so faithful.

I got up to share my testimony in front of the JC cluster yesterday, not knowing why on earth I was doing what I was doing. But I'm glad I took that step of faith. It's incredible, because when I started out I would never have expected to have made such an amazing group of kingdom friends we all call family. It was a long process of growing and struggling, but it's good to know there's only victory on the other side. 

There was someone there yesterday in particular and that was really quite amazing, just to see how God is working.

Keep on keeping on. 

336

Looking at the way I've lived my life in the past 5 months, and the choices I've made, I think I've learnt a lot about my character. 

It's good that I'll be catching a 3 week break at the end of it all, before I say that a new season in my life has officially begun - some things are so arbitrary, really. 

--

With so many things drawing to a close - north b (in which my time was spectacular), just a month and a half left of work, there are so many things just starting - getting a visa, the new varsity cg, moving to university  hopefully getting a license.

I think it just dawned on me that I am fortunate enough to still be in my youth. In fact, be in the very beginning of my youth. It's incredibly easy to get jaded, but I want to rinse this indifference off me and live intentionally. 

I have been given a life I can use beyond myself, beyond focusing on the necessary. I want to use it wisely. 

335

So it's been a bizarre, draining couple of days -

So I shot a question up to God:

"Why am I feeling to drained when your spirit is supposed continually refresh me?"

And within a second, He told me this:
"Because you took your eyes off Me"

And then I immediately drifted off into sleep.

334

For as long as I can remember, I always thought when I sung the phrase "I am yours", it was display of my commitment to Jesus. Like, hey! Look at me, I'm totally giving my life to Him.

But today, for the first time, in the midst of my weariness and muddled mind, I realise it's got nothing to do with me at all.

It is with great privilege I can declare these three words out. Because He came down from the heavens to call me His. That is why I can say I am Yours. It is a affirmation in the identity and inheritance I have in Christ. It is the reassurance I have when anything tries to topple me. Because I am yours, nothing can come in between us, and there is nothing except victory waiting for me at the end of it all.

It's been the toughest couple of weeks I've gone through in a while. But y'know what, in my weakness, his power is made perfect.

Amen.

333

I was writing a post while I was at TCC today but I forgot to save it (I was on my phone), so now it's gone.

I suppose it happens.

It was about a couple sitting on my immediate left, a strange combination of a Caucasian man complaining about Singaporean nuances (which make us Singaporean, really) and a Chinese lady with a less than accurate English accent, although to be fair, she was trying a best. He had a magazine, sorta like the finance version of The Economist, and she had a Chinese novel, which for the life of me I could not comprehend.

And I wondered how strange the human life is, how infinitely beautiful and complex our stories are, and how the mystery of it all is such an essential ingredient.

I'll never know how and why I meet the people I do, but I will always be grateful for exploring a little bit more - inch by inch - of this incredible planet we've been given for a home.

We were shrouded by haze for the past week, and when the sun finally came out again on Saturday, it wasn't the sun that you saw, but everything that the sun lit up. The sky, blue in its best hue, the clouds, in its best contrast of white. And I stood up in wide open awe for the next 5 minutes.

We've got this strange funny thing called souls. It causes life to happen. It makes you incredibly mad and sad but delirious at the same time.

And it was fearfully and wonderfully made.

332

This life is not about how much you love Him. 

It's about how much He loves you. 

331

I got a couple of texts this week asking me how I was - "how are you?" 

Now that's a strange question - because I honestly don't know. If you'd ask me what I've been up to, I'd be able to easily answer that, albeit with a long message. If you asked me whose I am, I could answer that too. 

But how am I? 

Steering away from the typical "why fine, thank you" - I honestly do not know. I sorta feel suspended in this time that is almost all yours. You know where you'll be in a couple of months - getting on with your life basically, and these few months has been a good time to stand still and really soak it all in. So I s'ppose that's what I've been trying to do. Soak it all in. 

I realise I really miss writing essays. I absolutely love writing essays (on subjects of interest, of course). It starts from choosing the font and formatting of the essay, and the physical touch to typing on the keyboard and watching words appear automatically on the crystal clear screen. The intellectual curiosity it stimulates as well - the gathering and processing of knowledge, physically flipping through the glossy pages of too-thick-for-its-own-good textbooks, and forming a coherent argument after countless drafts, to finally holding the hard copy, watching the black ink transform the white sheets of paper into an medium of knowledge.

I think I realise this every Sunday my pastor is in town, but I am infinitely blessed to come from the church I come from, to receive the revelation and the truth that will set me free every. single. week. There's nothing that can beat that. 

I used to write a lot better. 

330

Things I've been enjoying lately:

1. Having my pastor back!

2. Listening to really good sermons, not just by my pastor but plenty around the world

3. Drinking (and tasting) good coffee

4. Planning my next trip and how I'm going to get there

5. Reading good writing.

On points 2, 3 and 5:

2 - I really recommend you listen to the Walk This Way series by Pastor Jude of The City Church (Judah Smith's), and The Expectation Gap by Steven Furtick of Elevation Church. Both these churches are incredible and their pastors are incredibly incredble. 

3 - Nylon Coffee Roasters has some of the best coffee I've tasted in my entire life. Working where I work has really exposed me to this new industry which has been catching on so quickly, as well as the workings of a business. I will forever be grateful spending to have spent 5 months here. 

5 - I'm not necessarily referring to books, because I have recently read a lot of marvellously written blog posts. Not in the language they use, but what they reveal. 

I honestly cannot wait to take a step back and indulge in nothingness for about two weeks. Because that's all the break I am going to get. 

329

I read a book over the weekend. 

It was the kind of book I stayed up till 2am to finish, where I tried to read as fast as I could to get to the next page, to figure out what was going to happen, to hope they didn't die. 

I spent the next few days thinking about it. 

It wasn't a revolutionary, best selling, award winning sorta books. Those are good too, o'cuz, but I read a great book over the weekend, 

the kind that lingers in your mind, 

and I am very pleased about that. 

:) 

(PS, if you read The Winter Rose while playing Passenger's Let Her Go, you will bawl. Don't say I didn't warn you!) 

328

I am the woman caught in adultery.

Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them. As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd. “Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?” They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust. When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?” “No, Lord,” she said.

And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.” (John 8:1-11 NLT)

The woman is I.

The Pharisees would have if they could, but my Saviour could, but he would not.

That is the immense love of Jesus, and boy, it doesn't stop there. On behalf of every believer, myself included, who has ever portrayed Jesus as anything less than full on love, I apologise.

He could, but he would not.

327

Back,

and I've deactivated Facebook and Twitter for about a week + now so I feel this is the only appropriate place to say this:

I need a to-do list.

Being in transition is quite fun, really - if not immensely tiring.

326

I am at changi airport terminal 1 with a good friend of mine to meet a good friend of ours in Sabah, Malaysia.

I funded the trip myself with an exception of a little bit of money my mum gave to me to spend, by working at a job I really love and tutoring a boy I really like to teach.

I sit here in extreme gratitude for this is a lifestyle I would really like to live, and to think at 18 I am getting to live it already is just blows my mind. I started travelling semi independently at 16, and less so now.

I'll be heading to the UK to study at the end of the year for 4 years, and ideally, after that, I'd love to start my own business and keep on travelling while building my Saviour's kingdom.

There's a lot on my mind and I'm so immensely blessed I find it hard to take in.

I'll be boarding now, so I'll catch you when I'm back.

325

I am realising, with a greater revelation each day, that I need Jesus.

I need Him with a great desperation, with every beat of my heart, every fibre of my being. 

and I'm not exaggerating.

In fact, it's probably an understatement. 

324

Sometimes you gotta know how to make yourself happy.

Sometimes it hurts (regardless of a lot or a little, pain is still pain) - so you cry a little, let the tears run. Then you take a deep breath, and make yourself happy. 

Whether it's giving yourself a reason to keep smiling, buying yourself an ice chai latte, screaming to a friend, or talking to Jesus - make yourself happy, and life moves on. 

I think this is how life works: more people will get rejected than accepted, more people will fail than succeed, more people will cry than laugh. But at the end of the day, we all make it. We will make it. We will do something before our time is up, we will make a difference. And I don't think it'll be easy, but it will happen.

The past 4 months have passed in such a whirl. Sometimes I slow down and stop and start to think about what I've been doing, and I can't say I've been doing very much at all. 5 more months left and it's university, and I'm so excited, and there are a terrible number of 'ands' in this sentence. 

I have decided D is my favourite chord and A is my least favourite, which is a pity because they're in the same family of chords. 

323

There are one of two things you should have, I realise, that'll help you succeed. 

Drive, or sheer brilliance. 

I quite envy people with an insurmountable amount of drive, the drive that doesn't come from pure ambition, but rather - purpose, calling. The drive that allows you to conquer every mountain, and to pick yourself up after every failure - because God knows - we're gonna fail. 

Sheer brilliance is fun to watch. I like to believe everyone has been given at least the potential of sheer brilliance in a certain category of their life. Some never find it, some instantly do, and some just can't be bothered to work towards it. 

I like watching exceptional people. People who are either so good at what they do, or so determined about what they do. It's refreshing to see people so full of spirit. 

Also, I've noticed, on a rather unrelated strand - people are so unhappy nowadays. 

322

The past week has been a little dry and a little disappointing - I spent most of it wondering "when am I going to live an exceptional life" / "what can I do so I'll live an exceptional life"

Without realising this:

I already live an exceptional life.