How I Spent Vesak Day

Vesak Day came upon me as a surprise mid-week, and having just come back from legoland Malaysia last weekend (more on that in my next post), I was totally unprepared. What to do with the kids? Should we bring them out AGAIN? Should we just buy that lego X-Wing toy my elder boy has been badgering us to buy and so gain some peace in the household (as he will be busy fixing up those thousands of pieces)?

In the end, my body sort of dictated what to do. As I was coming down with a bad case of runny nose with lots of mucus that would suddenly flow from my nose and demand blowing it in a most vigorous manner, and a tight throat that would lend itself to incessant coughing bouts, I decided in my muggy state of mind on Tue night that I really needed a good sleep on the public holiday, and that is what I did. I turned in relatively early, pleading feeling ill to get my Husband to do more of the chores of putting the kids to bed, and fell asleep at a decent time. Just so happened that since I slept relatively early, I ended up waking up at 7 plus am bright and chipper and feeling much better (ah the powers of sleeping early!). So seized by my newfound sense of well-being, I decided to make a batch of banana pancakes, after mentally taking stock and confirming I had all the ingredients I would need on hand. Turns out the website with the recipe is a little misleading on the prep time and cooking time for the pancakes. Digging in my overstuffed fridge to locate that bottle of baking powder and walking back and forth from the dish rack to get all manner of bowls and spoons and forks took me quite a while and ended up with quite a respectable mess of bowls and dishes for he maid to clean at the end. However, the end result? Respectable pancakes that fed each of my sleepy children as they woke up and I took care to feed them milk later, so they would have appetite to eat. My mum, Husband and maid also each got a pancake and my maid was most appreciative, saying the pancakes were very yummy and she could taste the banana. I realised the pancakes went better with a big dollop of jam and even better with Nutella. Eventually my Daughter caught on and only wanted to eat spoonfuls that were 3/4 Nutella and 1/4 pancake.

Then after a nutritious breakfast, I actually left my kids to their own devices for a while (not before defrosting some meat for lunch) and actually sat down to organise my research for "Difficult Teachings of Christ" which I am facilitating in a few weeks time and to plan my lesson(s). I ended up with about 10-12 possible lessons. And I was scratching my head how not to make it another "lesson" on anger or overcoming sin, but that is a lesson that would challenge them to do something specific and out of the ordinary. And that they would slowly but gradually change to become different from the mould of society and stand out as Christ followers.

Anyway, I spent a good 15 minutes doing this to classical music and was thoroughly enjoying myself when I got distracted by some kid needing attention. Could also be my own short attention span. So I bathed each kid and got them changed into day clothes and then did some exercise book on phonics with Hao En. Again I'm amazed at his memory cos he seems to recall poems we read many days or even weeks ago. The night before when my hubby was reading a book to them, he asked Hao En to read some pages and I was quite pleased to note he can read common words like "the" and "it".

Ok then I started cooking their pasta pork lunch and after again googling for recipes, I saw a picture I liked with pumpkin and kale, confirmed Hao En didn't like the tomato based kind, and started cooking. The satisfaction was in setting out the food really early and letting it cool, and at around 11 plus am when I think the kids would start to get hungry, I just set the food out on the table and they started eating! Easy roast. Then needing a bit of me time, I went off to Tampines Mall food court armed with my latest book (this hilarious, laugh-out-loud book called "The Year Without a Purchase" written by a genuinely funny guy) and had a peaceful Long lunch. Then I headed back and realised both my Father and hubby think it's a bad idea to swim right after a rain (something about pool water being dirty). So after a bit, including my kids asking for another round of the pasta, I had the idea that we should pump the tires of my hubby's bike and take the kids out for a bike ride. We got ready and I set off with Jeanine to go to Tampines interchange to collect my bike which was parked there while the men went to pump the tires with the boys. To cut a Long story short, we cycled around the Neighbourhood with each kid and then ended the day with yummy and cheap zi char at the Coffeeshop near my house. What I realised was that it is difficult to have a deep conversation with one's parents, even if the kids are not there to distract you.

Then we got back and I hit the sack with the kids and fell asleep with them soon after. It was quite a good holiday and I think I do enjoy cooking for my family and indulging in free and healthy past times :)

The Guilt of a Working Mother

Just caught up with an ex-colleague who is a fellow working Mom who moved from a high-stress job to a less stressful organisation, but still working full time. As we were commiserating about how working mums often feel neither able to fully commit at work Nor ever feel we spend enough time with our kids, we hit upon a mantra which may help us (or me in particular) navigate the guilt-ridden waters in our exhausting journey.

It was something which a Director once shared as his parenting philosophy. He said "I have always said to God, God, these are YOUR kids, I am merely a caretaker for these lives which you have assigned me in this life." I think if we were to think like that, to only focus on our roles as Mother or Father and not to worry so much about how the kids will turn out, because there is no way we can control that outcome, then I would be a lot less stressed. I just need to think about my input into their lives, and how I can help them along I grow up into mature, fulfilled adults who can navigate this world of ours, and I should be all set.

Hmm what would that entail -

I should Ensure they always have nutritious food (and not junk food), get enough sleep in an airy, comfortable space, they have enough hobbies to occupy them, get enough exercise and they love learning. And I think I should Ensure I spend some time with each kid every 3 daya perhaps? So every day I spend some special time with one kid. So that I'm available. And cos each kid likes doing different things, eg oldest likes Star Wars and physical, imaginative activities like playing house or doing science experiments, second likes reading and puzzles and third one likes going out, I can plan something each day. And when they come to me with questions or I find them doing something unacceptable, instead of yelling at them or ordering them around, I should model the right behaviour, and explain the consequences of their actions to them, tell them my views, and let them choose. And I should pray for them often. That is the most important of all, I think.

A Random Thought

Recently I have been musing at the endless variety of music and songs a simple 7 notes can generate. Ok, granted they are on ascending scales, but the infinite possibilities they create for music just defy my comprehension. Being a music lover, I would often marvel at the simple catchiness of certain tunes and how simple they really are, only to be astounded at the depth of emotion of the next. Favourites include "Only Hope" by Mandy Moore, Legends of the Fall theme song "The Ludlows", theme song of "The Piano", of Gladiator, "Paradise" by the Piano Guys. Catchy tunes include "Return of the MAC" (the one with the chorus "like the ceiling can't hold us", "Miss Independent" by Neyo, "Hymn for the weekend" by Coldplay, "Go Love Yourself" by Justin Bieber etc. The list goes on and on. Not to mention the transcendental tunes of certain Christmas carola (eg rendering of Angels We Have Heard on High" by The Piano Guys), hymns and Christian songs.

Last last night, I was reading two articles shared by a fellow facilitator, one of which used very big words and represented something I have felt in my bones ever since I was a new Christian but in such a theoretically sophisticated way, that's i marvelled at the endless variety of words and books and literature a mere 26 letters can produce.

You could think the same of 7 Colours and the infinite variety of images and paintings that result from them.

Im not sure if I'm going anywhere with this, except that God likes to use simple building blocks to make very complex and different and sophisticated designs. Take our cells and genome for instance. How we can apply it to daily life? I Guess it assures us that we will never be obsolete cos just when we thought all was said and done and we can never come up with an original thought or idea or thing worth being useful to anyone, this assures us that we definitely can, and we ought to keep ideating and innovating! -And that combinations of things in new ways can certain produce something quite different and new.

Slowing Down to Pray and Hear God

Hello again,

I am currently reading an old book I had on my shelf for a really Long time - "Too Busy Not to Pray" by Bill Hybels. Haha it's an oxymoron I know. However, due to some tragic events involving my relatives, and some soul-searching, I decided that I should really get down to pray more intensively for all my unsaved loved ones, "war room" style. However, after doing it for a while, waking up really early in the morning to spend half an hour on my knees interceeding, I realised that I lacked the techniques to do sustained spiritual warfare or be a prayer warrior. My prayers become short and repetitive and I'm done without feeling like I did any sustained battle.

Then my bible study facilitators group talked about doing topical Inductive Bible Studies next after we finish with Parables, so I suggested doing a study on intercession. Then just so happens I started delegating roles within my cell group early this year and I took up the role of outreach IC. And after thinking about it a while, I figured the best way was for us as a cell to come up with a target list of 1-2 persons we would like to outreach to this year and to figure out together how we can outreach to them individually and as a cell. After we did that, and brainstormed, I realised prayer was a start and volunteered to do a topical sharing on prayer soon after. I also opened it up to the rest to also prepare if they had materials to share. So this is how I came to be reading this fusty musty old book that I had read and forgotten.

The book, though a deceptively small-sized paperback, is really good! It's not a classic on prayer for nothing. And it helps that it's written by a guy who has a racehorse temperament who cannot slow down. Ok so after going into reasons to pray and techniques or rather, principles to follow (cos he emphasises that prayer to our living God is not formulaic or a chant we can use to make Him so what we want, it's about getting a deeper relationship with God, which will make us more powerful impactful Christians), this brings me to the purpose of this blog post. The author challenges each one of us to really slow down our lives enough to pray (Yep! No more praying on the go! Or rather supplement it with something else) and to do a 3 -step process every day.

1) We are to journal a 1-page entry every day where we reflect on our day
2) We are to write out our prayers on another page
3) We are to listen to God after that

He guarantees our spiritual lives will have a change after that. So, I'm going to try this out for a week. Starting from today. Sorry if you will become my spiritual journal for a while! :)

Soulmate

I was recently having lunch with my colleagues and we were laughing about whether it was important for a couple to share common interests (thanks to a colleague who is going on follow-up dates after going on a cruise for singles). After some probing, it was revealed that this colleague of mine is not too keen on this lady due to a lack of common interests. She was more Chinese (her interests - karaoke and HK dramas) whereas he was more English-speaking and had other interests that did not include hers. Intrigued, I polled various people around the table on whether they thought having common interests was important for any relationship to last. The conclusion was that it definitely helps, but you need not if you have enough other things in common like religion or if both have different interests but one of them is easy-going enough to go along with the other person's interests. If both have different interests and both refuse to budge to participate in the other's interests, well, I guess the relationship has to have other groundings (e.g. religion, perhaps kids?).

Anyway, this made me think of a wish I used to have when I was young - that I would find someone who was an exact clone of myself. I know many people cringe when they are asked if they would like to hang out with a clone of themselves, but I used to be filled with delight and glee at what marvellous wonderful conversations we would have and what fun activities we could enjoy together. Because this person would be an exact replica of me, she would totally understand where I was coming from when i made a remark (and how I am always looking for the funny side of things and to have a good laugh), she would instantly agree with me when I share a view that is against the grain and against mainstream and be like "Totally right? I fully agree with you!". She would care about the same altruistic causes as me (eg helping people find their passion, life their lives abundantly the way Christ wanted us to, which actually means carrying the criss, not having all our flesh wants), and be enraged about the same trends (eg environmental degradation, over prevalence of wireless technology and slavery to mindless entertainment and games). We would spur each other on towards our goals, having the same goals, which would be so refreshing since I feel like I'm going it alone most of the time. She would laugh hysterically at the same jokes, chuckle at the same foibles I encounter at meetings. She would understand how certain things transport me to the divine (eg a perfectly made cup of Hong Kong milk tea, certain songs, a really good piece of writing), and not laugh at me if I really dread or struggle with doing certain things (e.g. paying bills, keeping track of my finances, having insurance). She would help me look on the bright side of people and things, just like I always do for the people around me, and share verses to encourage me. This would be the closest to a soulmate I could come to! Of course it would be great if she had some differences from me like it would be fine if she was more reserved (somehow I tend to get along better with more reserved people), better at certain things, had a slightly different view on things but who could explain it so gently to me she would never break my heart.

In fact, in my life I have had the privilege of encountering some people who embodied certain traits I described above. Eg there was this guy, K, who was as idealistic or even more idealistic and non-rat race-chasing than me. He was a Christian when I was still a Buddhist-Taoist and puzzling about the futility and emptiness of the academic paper chase. At that time, he seemed wise beyond his years and we would have long conversations, sometimes deep into the night, theorising about life and people. I will always remember him fondly, having nursed a huge crush on him for more than 2 years. Another person I can think of is my best friend of many years. She is my ideal chat mate and we have such awesome chats because she is as eloquent and of the same intellect as me and we have enough common shared experiences to laugh at the same things and to empathise at the same horrible experiences we encounter. This best friend of mine is currently in HK making lots of money and living the high life. I know, my soulmates are greatly varying :P The last person I would like to cite is this girl I met in university, who if you believe some of the things she shared at certain private moments (which she would deny afterwards), went through some horrible stuff in her childhood. But she is the most warm, supportive and gentle person I know. She doesn't have a mean bone in her body, and in the 2 years I have known her, she never made a sarcastic or caustic remark, never made you feel bad when you spoke to her, and as a result, you knew your innermost secrets and fears were safe with her. This doesn't mean she agrees with everything I say too, which would be insincere, but somehow she would try and empathise, laugh about it even, and somehow get her point across, that perhaps I wasn't totally right. What a wonderful, marvellous person! I must say others who share my sense of heroism and grand feats for God might be people like Elizabeth Elliot, Keith Green etc. I love these great giants of the faith! Unfortunately, I don't have any living person whom I am close to, who is of the same mind as me on these issues. Though I have been praying for a Christian sister who will be closer than blood, this hasn't materialised so far. Ah well, we can't have everything in life, and in the meantime, there is Jesus who is always with me. I just need to get closer to Him. A lesson in itself! More in my next post.

Mindfulness

Recently due to the setting up of several WhatsApp groups at work, I have found myself constantly glued to my handphone. I used to marvel at how my boss (who is now on maternity leave) could respond to any WhatsApp msg within half an hour, and now I am one of them! But I must say this sort of responsiveness comes at a cost. I am a lot less mindful of what i am doing at any one time, of my surroundings, and even when I'm supposed to be relaxing, I find myself checking my Hp several times an hour, which smacks of a kind of distractedness which surely cannnot be good.

Due to the close shave with death my second Son experienced (for more on that, see my previous blog post), due to my fatigue from responding to WhatsApp msgs and fighting a fire all morning, I have been rethinking if I want to live this way. This was further confirmed from chatting with another coworker who talked about how she went from being always very conscious and deliberate and aware of what she was doing, where she had placed her things, to how one day she had carefully laid out a piece of Bak Kwa for a Bak Kwa sandwich, then absent-mindedly went to the kitchen and spread jam on her bread! When she came back out to the living room she was scratching her head as she never would have made such a mistake! We both realised and concluded that this sort of distractedness surely cannot be good for us long-term. I'm therefore a lot more aware of what I am doing now. I vow not to check my Hp so much and to not respond so fast, so immediately off i can help it.

Which brings me to another point - that of fear of man or or God. We all know we ought to fear God rather than man - stories of Daniel, Paul's lettters etc etc. But I am realising that practicing it in real life is much harder than I thought! For instance - why do i respond so quickly to my bosses? Why do I feel so edgy and full of unreat when they are angry or unhappy with something not going well? I feel quite ashamed - these are all redolent of fear of man. And I also realised I don't have the physical consistution to survive in a constantly high stress environment. I start feeling like going to the toilet,I get mysterious aches in my chest and armpits, I am just not doing well. So my conclusion is I need to get off this treadmill of seeking man's approval all the time, and just do what's right and do the best jin I can each day, as a love offering to my heavenly father And if that doesn't get appreciated, so be it. I should look only to my Heavenly Father for approval every day, every moment. Pray continuously, rejoice in the Lord, be joyful always, give thanks continually.

I cannot give thanks enough

Last week was a rough week for me, with events developing very fast, work spiralling out of control and meeting after meeting, but I do want to give thanks for 2 very important things that God did for me.
Yesterday at the food court, I was eating with baby and mum and maid and my 2 boys were playing with the escalators. To cut a Long story short, my younger boy ended up hanging onto the handrail of an escalator, walking up the metal side bar on the outside and didn't jump down in time and as he went higher and higher he started sobbing and there were horrified gasps from Singaporeans all round as I ran there and asked him to jump down. After a while he was too high and I ran up the escalator in the hopes of catching him on TOP and thankfully suddenly he was in the arms of a black t shirt stranger. I was soooo relieved. I wouldn't have caught him in time and I think he would have fallen and hit his spine from such a height and perhaps have been paralysed if not dead. I still can't digest this. I almost lost my boy or became a parent to a paralysed child. I think I seemed to have been very tired that day and my reaction time was like in molasses. Cos that morning I was answering WhatsApp messages nonstop from my bosses and fighting a fire. And then shocker number 2: I realised my wallet was missing. After hunting around fruitlessly, suspecting even this poor shuffling male cleaner who cleaned our table and kept touching his pockets (my mum trailed him to the toilet), I just sat there morosely at the foodcourt bench, in a daze, thinking about the money I lost, the need to freeze my credit cards and the cost of replacing my IC, and as I walked off, this young man came running up to me and said, did you lose a wallet? I said yes and he said they have it! Apparently I left it on a table next to the escalator l. Thank God!!!