sugar musk & grenadine: January 2008

wisdom says

Do not boast about tomorrow

for you do not know what a day may bring forth

proverbs 27:1

a pretty fit?

so its australia day and i reflect..

I go back to 1990 when dad decided that we as a family were to migrate to Singapore for his new posting in South-East Asia. Little did i know that the 6-year experience being over there in Asia as a normal little 10-year old would open up so much for me.

An ordinary girl from an ordinary home in Melbourne, my first year in a convent school in Singapore made me realise that i was a little different on the inside. Culture shock! My classmates thought i talked funny. The education system was so high, i didn't even know what an exam was! No longer was my family just dad, mum and little brother but there was a whole new clan that i was blood related to. I felt so homesick that i'd go on the piano and play 'i still call australia home' every week. I never wanted to call Singapore home.

Come 1996 and dad decided that it was better for me education wise to come back to Melbourne to finish of high school befopre university. But it wasn't. I came back to Melbourne but it didn't seem like home. My parents weren't here, neither was my brother. I was staying with a family friend who were absolutely most hospitable and 'family' for me at that time but nevertheless, i somewhat felt like an international student! I wasn't, but then again i was.

I didn't 'fit in' anywhere anymore!

With a whole flurry of the 8 years of wrestling through the fact that i was Australian but very much Asian, i started to question my identity as an 18-year old. So who was i really?

There brought me to a listening point in my life when i started my journey to come to know my Creator and opened my heart one afternoon on the bench table of my beautiful friend D's home. It is for freedom that Christ had set me free, free from comparisons of whether i was good enough in any way, categories of skin colour, titles, abolishing walls of insecurities and cynicism.

I continue on this road now and each new day is a day of saving grace as i continue to find freedom as i come to learn & know through opportunities in relationships to BE all that i was created to BE right from the beginning. Just as we would seek the mind of the creator of a project or a thing to know what it was intentionally created for, may we go back to our Creator who is God to know what we were initially created for and to BE.

mandate

now that i have seen

i am responsible

faith without deeds is dead

my prayer

All that I am, all that I have
I lay them down Before You, O Lord
All my regrets, All my acclaim
The joy and the pain I’m making them Yours
Lord I offer my life to You
Everything I’ve been through
Use it for Your glory
Lord, I offer my days to You
Lifting my praise to You
As a pleasing sacrifice
Lord I offer You my life
Things in the past
Things yet unseen
Wishes and dreams
That are yet to come true
All of my hopes, All of my plans
My heart and my hands
Are lifted to you
What can we give
That You have not given
And what do we have
That is not already Yours
All we possess Are these lives we are living
And that’s what we give to You Lord