past 2 years in summary...

Okay, so maybe this isn't a summary of everything that's happened in the past two years, just a summary of the romantic part of my life. In the midst of planning our wedding, AF and I created a wedding website to share information with our guests. We also shared our story, artfully authored by God, and worth sharing here too...

The beginning

(in Cheryl's words)

Our friendship began after an awkward phone call. I can’t remember the exact details but it went a little like this…

CT: Hey Andy, thanks so much for the brownies you made, I really enjoyed them!

[On my 23rd birthday (in 2007), Andy presented me with a tray of brownies that he had baked himself. I was surprised and my mind started racing about the possibilities. Andy and I had only known each other for a few months and we’d interacted mostly in a formal setting. After placing the brownies on the kitchen counter, my roommates (Katie, Ayano and Hye Won) and I started debating their significance. “Does this mean he likes me?” (Vigorous nodding from roommates)]

AF: Great, I’m glad you enjoyed them!
CT: Yeah… well… Erm… I also wanted to talk to you about something. I just wanted to make sure that we were on the same page. We’re just friends.

[It’s not that I didn’t like Andy. Since our first interaction, I’ve always thought Andy was cute, and I was kind of attracted to him at several points leading up to the brownie incident. But the thing was, we didn’t see eye to eye when it came to religion. Andy had stopped going to church since high school, and I was very much a part of the college ministry at JCA (Journey Church of Atlanta). I promised myself I would only date someone who shared the same faith that I had, someone who was also committed to living out their life as a Christian. So, there I was, as much as I liked him, declaring that we were just friends because I had to, maybe more for my sake than his. It was as tough for me to say as it was for him to hear!]

AF: (awkward silence) My, you have a really colorful imagination!
CT: Haha. Well, I have 2 birthday cakes sitting on my kitchen counter, one store bought cake from my college girl friends of 4 years, and one from you, which you baked yourself. Can’t really blame me for thinking what I did.
AF: Oh, well, I just like baking, plus it was brownie mix from a box, no big deal. I’m thinking about baking something for Tiffany too.
CT: Oh. Okay. Yeah, that sounds good, her birthday is in over a week. Let me know if you need help with baking.

[So, for all the many ways that our conversation could have gone wrong, there we were, our egos a little bruised but friendship unscathed, in the territory of platonic friendship!]

The friendship grows

(in Cheryl's words)

Through a series of ‘coincidences’, both planned and unplanned, our friendship grew steadily over the course of the next 2 years.
After graduating from Emory that year, I moved into an apartment with 3 friends, the apartment complex that Andy happened to be living in. The convenient proximity certainly didn’t hurt our friendship. Knowing that Andy didn’t have too many friends, I would invite Andy over for dinner to get to know my friends. Also, Andy (strategically) struck up a deal with my roommate Esther – each month, Andy paid Esther $15 in exchange for the privilege to do 2-3 loads of laundry at our place. I guess you could see it as very expensive laundry or a worthwhile investment! ;)
The next year, I moved into a new apartment complex (Arbor Hills) and knowing that Andy wasn’t too happy with his living situation, told him about Arbor Hills. Soon, he too was packing up his stuff and moving into an Arbor Hills’ apartment. In a bid to impress the ladies, Andy wanted to pick out new furniture for his new apartment and wanted to buy some new clothes to update his wardrobe. As his relatively-more-fashionable-female friend, I willingly obliged. I helped pick out a couch and some new clothes, all the while motivated by wanting to help my lonely male friend impress the right girl that he could settle down with! (For the record, yes, Andy did impress some dates with his new wardrobe!)

The revelation

(in Andy's words)

Summer of 2009 was a turning point in my life. It was a time to face critical questions regarding values, direction, and self. I was feeling a deep sense of loneliness. Part of this was because I hadn't yet found the right life partner. I had a number of relationships in the past, especially during graduate school in Chicago, but for some reason or another none of them worked out. Things were much worse in Atlanta. I tried match.com, and the experience was discouraging. I was simply unable to articulate who I was through the online profile. I had no common history, no common social context and no common values with the people I met through the website. All of this resulted in a loss of self-worth and direction, and a general sense of loneliness and social disconnectedness. I wanted more friends. I wanted to be involved in the community.
On July 4, 2009 I was hanging out with Cheryl by the pool at Arbor Hills, after yet another disappointing “match”, reflecting on many of these issues. I started making a list of characteristics that I was looking for in a spouse. As I was writing, I realized that I wasn't describing someone hypothetical but someone I already knew! My face was flush and my eyes were filled with tears. I turned to Cheryl and told her that I thought that she was the person described by the list. Cheryl was certainly taken aback, but this day initiated a period of discussion, reflection, and prayer for us both. This day also set me on a path back to faith.
At this point, it may be helpful to briefly summarize my spiritual journey. I was extremely involved in church when I was younger. However, in late high school I realized that the most inspiring, supportive, and genuine friends that I had in my life were non-Christian. I felt that ironically some of my non-Christian friends lived more "Christian" lives than my Christian friends. I felt that many Christians exhibited intolerance, insensitivity, and irrationality. It seemed like religious doctrine and church institutions were actually preventing people from having a meaningful relationship with God. At the time, I concluded that that religion, even God, wasn't for me. July 4, 2009 marked the end of that chapter. With an open heart and mind, I decided to give church and God another shot. Through a process of listening, learning, and prayer, I began to see everything in a new light. My previous assumptions were eroded one by one. When I started to let the many voices in the bible speak, I realized that some of the voices reflected the very concerns that I had in my youth when I left church. I also realized that some of the friends that I made at church were among the most loving and encouraging people that I had known. Perhaps most importantly, I realized that God had been present in my life all along. Now I'm learning to couple the enthusiasm for God and people that I had cultivated in my youth with the life experience that I have acquired in my adulthood.

Lessons from YA life

Like every college senior, I was faced with having to make the decision about my next step after graduation – what to do, where to be, and how to adjust. Like most Christians presented with uncertainties, I turned to God in prayer, as Philippians 4:6-7 reminds us. Initially, I started asking God where He wanted me to be, where the “right place” was, in terms of job and location. But at some point at beginning of second semester, God forced me to be completely honest with myself. I realized that my prayers about being in the “right place” were about me not God, about me wanting to receive maximal blessing. Whether God’s will was done in my life, whether God was glorified was secondary to my being blessed. By the end of senior year, I prayed instead that God would lead me to a place where I could love Him the most. It’s not that I no longer cared about the blessings, I still did but I also began to understand that loving God gives us purpose, direction and calling (as Jonathan mentioned earlier). I also began to understand that loving God is one of the most important blessings

Another important thing to remember as one makes decisions is that God is in control and that we can absolutely trust God. It’s not something I understood fully when I was praying, but it’s something I’ve realized in retrospect. As graduation approached, I received more job rejections and got increasingly anxious. I was stressed out about not finding a job, not having a means of financial support; I worried about what my parents would think and I started to question the value of my Emory degree. In Matthew 6:31-32, when Jesus says that the “Father knows” that we need these things, He means God KNOWS. I was looking for the wrong things. I thought I could handle a 60 hour work week, travel intensive, client facing, high paying consulting job. God had something else in mind. On the very last day of class, God offered me a job - a 45 hour work week, minimal travel, minimal client-interaction, research (not consulting) job. And you know what, God knew better! 18 months after starting work, I’m still finding things about my job that I appreciate - a good boss and mentor, multi-cultural colleagues, a flexible work schedule and a casual office environment – things I never realized mattered until I started working. God provides, He is Jehovah Jireh, it may look a little different in your lives, but God KNOWS and will provide.

Finally, a tangible resource in the decision making process are the people that God places in our lives. Proverbs 12 :15 tells us that seeking out advice is a good thing, nothing to be ashamed about. Since senior year, the insights from other people have helped me to make decisions about my life, both big and small ones. I remember talking to some older/more experienced YAs about my job offer, assessing the benefits, asking for their opinion. One YA suggested that I ask the company for more signing bonus to help out with some of my initial expenses like buying a car/furniture. I had no idea that job offers were negotiable!

A High Tech God

Remember the scene in Bruce Almighty when Bruce is so perturbed by hearing the numerous voices of praying people in his head? Then he thinks of a brilliant idea, why not download those prayers into an inbox like one does with e-mail? you know, prayer-mail.
Cool idea and great movie concept, but ever wonder what God thinks about technology? Does God use it? I mean, the Bible records God communicating with men through fire from heaven, burning bushes, dreams, voices from heaven, bright stars even. Surely technology is antithetical to all this natural wonder/the supernatural.

So this happened at work today.

I created this graph for my coworker.

I sent the file to him in an e-mail. And this is what he got:

Pretty cool and weird eh? My colleague (who knows I'm Christian) thought I was trying to be funny. He's Christian too. He said "While I appreciate the crosses, I'm not so sure our clients will." I was so confused because it still looked like the first graph when he sent the file back to me. I fixed it in the end, but I do appreciate the crosses too. =)

God showed He is no technophobe. Also, and maybe more significantly, modern science, technology and advancement has not left God behind. Modern science and technology, which gives man greater control over his surroundings and a more real sense that he is "god" over his life, is not antithetical to God, the Supernatural and miracles.

Young Adult Life-another non traditional post

I'm finally getting a taste of the freedom and independence that comes with young adult life. Financial, physical, emotional independence, with friends to share it with. I had fun tonight with a group of girl friends I've grown to care about, support, love, pray for. They're an amazing group of women (and still very single and available ;)) and friends I'm privileged to have. Tonight was natural, yet purposeful, fun yet intellectual, secular yet Christian, possibly my first glimpse into the way God meant for Christian relationships to be. Tonight I realised that God blessed me with these strong, supportive, caring, beautiful, wonderful women to share my young adult life with. It's purely His grace to me because this hasn't been one of the things I've prayed for. I realized too that I will miss the friendships and hang out times with these Godly women when I leave here for home.

And so its prayer that I end this post.

God, please continue to grow and sustain the friendships you've so graciously bestowed to me. May I use each day here to serve, love, support, and grow these women. And may there be more of these friendships amongst the church. God, I pray that you will remind us each time exclusivity creeps in, and please PLEASE add to our numbers because I would love for more people to understand what doing YA life together looks like.
God, the other thing I will ask for, and only because You first gave me a foretaste of what could be, is for you to go before me and form such relationships within the church at home. I'm not sure how bearable YA life is without it!

Conquerors

Romans 8:35,37 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

I've read this in a different way for the first time today. The passage acknowledges the fact that in life we go through trouble and hardship, but in all these things we are more than conquerors. More than conquerors. I like that. Let me explain by way of an analogy.

I've been watching alot of Olympics lately. What makes for good, exciting television are the really close finishes/matches. Michael Phelps' fingernail finish inching out his competitors by 1/100 of a second; Shawn Johnson winning the gold medal on the beam by 0.2 points. All great atheletes but that's not what it means to be "more than conquerors". China sweeping the medals at diving and Table Tennis, Usain Bolt winning the 100m and 200m races, by a comfortable margin. That's what it means to be more than a conqueror. It means dominating, succeeding with more than enough energy to do the victory lap.

So apply that to our lives and the tough situations that life throws at us. In Romans, God is saying that we don't just come out of the situations, with scrapes and bruises and barely breathing. God says we are more than conquerers through Christ, and promises that we will triumph over the situations, come out of life's hardships standing proudly with smiles on our faces.
Perhaps the best way I have understood this in my life is in the area of prayer. Very often, God doesn't just answer my prayers, He answers in incredible ways I didn't even think of. I prayed for a job, and He gave me good pay, great colleagues, learning opportunities and great benefits. I prayed for an opportunity to return home to Singapore, and He gave me the perfect trip home, reconnecting with friends, getting spoiled by mum and dad, eating great food. I prayed about coming to college, and He gave me a good education, lifetime friends, a church to grow at. I really could go on.
And I guess the point of all of this is to remind us all about prayers, specifically, unanswered prayers. God knows exactly how He's going to answer those prayers, prayers of healing, prayers of overcoming difficulty, prayers finding that right partner in life, prayers for other people. God will answer those prayers in a big way, in a way that will reflect the fact that we are "more than conquerors" because He is on our side.

I know its hard and improbable and the odds seem stacked against us, especially those prayers we've been praying for years. But I'm reminding myself daily to just keep praying, and to have faith that God delivers on His promises. He always has, and He always will.

it's not over till the happily every after...

I've heard the term "resurrection power" thrown around alot in church, but I don't think I understood it until today. When it comes to God's people, the Bible has recurring themes of God's love and faithfulness but today I noticed another theme, God is a God of happy endings. I guess that's what people mean by God is a God of deliverance (I love how simple meanings get lost in heavy jargon). The Bible, while it is God's story about rescuing mankind, it is also punctuated with stories of God's people going through tough circumstances and how God completely turns those situations around. God isn't about simply helping His people to pull through life's storm, He's about making sure they come out victorious and triumphant!

Consider Job. Rich faithful man back in the day, who received God's favour and blessing. But Satan decides to test Job and God lets Satan strip Job of his property and children and even his health, as part of a test! Job suffers long and hard before God finally steps in and reminds Job that He is greater than any other being and has total say when it comes to earthly and heavenly (universal) matters. But the other thing that God reminds Job of, is that He is about restoration and happy endings: He gives Job back double of what He first had.
And then there's Jesus. He lived on earth as a man and suffered an excruciating death on the cross as well as a painful separation from God. The story doesn't end at Jesus' death, because He rose again on the third day. In fact, not only did He assume His heavenly position (receiving the at least the same kind of recognition that He had before He became Man), He also redeemed all of mankind.
The same is true of Joseph's life, Nineveh's repentance and restoration of favour, Noah's deliverance from the flood and the rainbow the followed, King David's fall to lust and redemption as he understood God's grace and forgiveness, Peter's denial of Christ but subsequent restoration as the rock of the church...

Knowing that God is as much about happy endings as He is about being present in the storms, or loving us in spite of those same storms really helps me cope with the tempest that life sometimes is. We can "consider it pure joy, whenever [we] face trials of many kinds" (James 1:2) because we know that when it is over, something awaits us that leaves us better than before the trial. Know this, especially if you are going through a tough time, because God has a say in it, we will rise again!

The pain often scars more than the happy ending soothes. Is it a wonder that my freshest memories are of the pain and disappointments rather their respective resolutions. Yet as I recount, I know that things turn out fine, often more than fine. Disappointments are merely stories not concluded yet, so perhaps we shouldn't conclude our stories with these disappointments. It gives me something to look forward to, gives me something to hope for. That's what they mean when they say that the person who hopes in God won't be disappointed!
If it's not good, it's not over yet.

A Picture of Ministry

Luke 5:1-11 (from Bible Gateway.com)

1One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret,^[a]with the people crowding around him and listening to the word of God, 2he saw at the water's edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. 3He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat.

4When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into deep water, and let down^[b] the nets for a catch."

5Simon answered, "Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets."

6When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. 7So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.

8When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees and said, "Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!" 9For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, 10and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon's partners.

Then Jesus said to Simon, "Don't be afraid; from now on you will catch men." 11So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.

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I just thought that this was a cool picture of ministry, at least ministry in my life. I'm increasingly realizing that ministry is about God doing His thing, and me simply being along for the ride, kind of like how Peter was in the boat watching and Jesus did His thing and taught the crowds. I'm sure Peter learnt more about Jesus simply by watching and listening to Him, and he got that privilege simply by being willing to give up some of his time and energy to take Jesus onto his boat.

I've definitely had those luke 5:5 skeptical moments, when I'm thinking to myself how silly the things I'm doing are, how it doesn't make sense to be spending my time and energy on church things when the rest of the world is investing its time climbing that corporate ladder or how there isn't any point to loving this person because they won't love me back. And yet I do them anyway (almost always grudgingly and with little faith, if any) and God blows me away with the way He chooses to use those little seemingly fruitless actions. I get my 'fish-filled-boat-sinking' moments when I catch a glimpse of the ways God uses me, not because of who I am or how hard I try, but because God is God and what God wants to do, God gets done, regardless! I definitely get my "I'm a sinful (wo)man" moments as I realize that God uses me in spite of my lack of commitment to ministry and people.

At the end of the day, I know I'm going to fail many many times in my pitiful attempts to love people because I will let them down through my insensitivity, impatience or selfishness (very often all three). I know there will be days when I am so tired of praying for people, questioning if those prayers make a difference in the grand scheme of things. I know there will be days when I get so frustrated that my church friends aren't supporting me the way I believe a church should.

But ministry thankfully doesn't depend on me, because God's at the helm of the boat, teaching and doing His thing. I'm just sitting, watching, listening and letting Him use my boat.