Wednesday, March 03, 2004

Living Life

The past 3 months has the been the best time of my life since Junior College.

I had the most horrendous time of my life in my 2 years of JC. It does not matter whether I suffered out of my incompetence and/or clumsiness in handling the JC syllabus/lifestyle, or that most victims of the unsympathetic University-screening 2-year-course experience the same ordeal, these two years have left terrible marks on me. Any allusion to the aforementioned concentration camp for the soul immediately draws a feeling of nausea and severe discomfort to me.

I speak of this because, having been given some time away from the inflicting elements of the A-Level course, I’ve finally collected my thoughts and emotions in a coherent manner and overcome the strong aversion of discussing anything A-Level-related. I can at last speak comfortably of my experience at the A-Levels.

The two weeks my A-Levels took place in saw me in a sudden resigned bout of teary depression. After the first few papers (General Paper and Economics), I had become resigned to never making the mark to enter University. Yes, it was the most self-destructive emotional choice anyone could make at such a crucial point, but I regretfully did. The failure of my strength of character at that decisive period, once my scapegoat for botching the exams, is now but a sheer embarrassment and another item added to the self-reproaching to-do list. Basically, while messing up the A-Levels was by itself adequately detrimental to my happiness, the awareness of my self-destructive ways that led to it is even more painful and more time-enduring.

Bumping into a JC-classmate last week and giving a clumsy but candid reply to the “So how are you?” question made me realise how much I’ve lived in the past 3 months. I replied her with equal awkwardness, “Living, really living life.” Of course, the circumstance in which we ran into each other was also responsible for my unusual response (I was clad in a short skirt, plunging spaghetti camisole and dyed hair and caught in a bikini shop – something that none of my JC-mates would have even imagined the overlength-skirt-donning, 5-year-old-hairstyled, cosmetics-and-alcohol-virgin Weiling in. As for the outfit that fateful day at Orchard, it was just the occasional wild let-go Weiling who went for such a combination).

But I digress (though only in parenthesis, but that’s what these brackets are for right?). Anyway, in the last 3 months, according to I told my cell group members as we reflected on what we had to thank God for, I’ve been allowed to do what I enjoy and have been doing them well.
I’ve been given a flexible though hectic schedule (the tuition darlings, uncompromising night rehearsals at Cairnhill, driving lessons and having to handle affairs at home with my Grandma now banned from entering the kitchen after her operation) of which I plan my daily affairs meticulously well. I’ve been entrusted with the lives of several children of which I believe I have been dedicatedly and effectively grooming them academically while doing my best to make their learning enjoyable. I have become more domesticated in the aspect of culinary skills. I have had time to care for and give of myself more to Ly, my grandmother and a few others.

Simply, I have been happy, and that’s what I mean by having lived life the last three months.

However, the looming dark cloud of the results coming out threatens to tear my bliss apart.

The A-Level results are coming out within the next 2 days. The results will determine whether I squeeze myself into a local university or punish myself with a third year of hell (i.e. retaking the A-Levels). They will determine whether I can finally discard my loathed A-Level notes. They will determine whether I shall pick up a few more tuition kids or begin dropping them. They will determine whether I can even think of going on a short shopping spree with a group of friends in KL in April. They will determine whether I get pushed back a year in my get-married-young plans.

But nevertheless, I wish to announce for the sake of accountability, that come what may, I have chosen to place my faith in God’s omniscience and grace. His omniscience lies in Him knowing what He wants for and out of my life, as well as what He has made me capable of. His grace means He will never let me experience more than what I can endure.

Whether I’ll have to repeat another year or whether I graduate to the next step of my education, I know everything in my life will work out perfectly by His plans and through His understanding; and this is not the “perfection’ understood by the world.


“And we know that in
all things
God works
for the good
of those who love him,
who have been called according to his purpose.”
~Romans 8:28


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