Walau Ku Tak Dapat Melihat

It's September 30th, and my heart is exploding.

I turned 28 last week. 28 has been monumental for me in so many ways. There were prayers prayed, blessings spoken, and just such pleasure in knowing that the Lord had me right where He wanted me.

I've been on this journey with the Lord that just keeps getting sweeter as He draws me closer. It's interesting that as I'm writing this, I've got YouTube on autoplay in the background. The song that's playing is as the post title is. It translates to 'even though I cannot see'. The original singer for this song is a visually impaired young girl (who's probably in her mid teens by now). The chorus speaks about how even though I cannot see His plans or place my hope in my life's circumstances, my heart will be turned to Him because I know He is for me.

Birthdays have always been a time of appreciation for my family, recognising that there are people the Lord had brought around us to journey with us and speak into our lives, reaching out to them to affirm them. They have also been a time of encouragement and blessing as the others in the family speak words and prayers over the birthday person. This year has been really, really special.

I took advantage of the safety measures in place to meet more people - in small groups. Being able to zero in on the individuals I was meeting and be more specific and intentional about readying my heart for these meets was a really special process for me. The preparation space as I reached out to different ones and prayed and reflected leading up to the meeting taught me so much. It was time spent with the Lord, as He showed me the beauty in different ones, as He brought things to focus and remembrance.

This year, it was a time of seeing the Lord pepper my days with little surprises, bring so much joy and take my focus away from 'me', so that He could help me see His perspective. He met me in so many ways and I'm just...floored.

There were days when I felt homesick, but it was a lesson on shifting my perspective from wallowing in my seemingly depressive situation being in a place away from family, not being able to make a trip home. There were days where I wondered what it would be like if I was still in the relationship I was in - it's lonely, being here, and it would be so nice if I had a 'someone special'. But then the Lord was quick to remind me of the people He has placed around me so we can journey together. As I availed myself and poured into their lives, He poured into mine, and He continues to do so. It's definitely different from having a special someone, but it's a season where He's bringing my heart to be where He wants it, even with all the hurt and brokenness, so that He can prepare me for the ministry and even the special someone He has for me.

I was in a zoom church service with a church where my Dad was speaking at during the lockdown, and after the service, there was someone who gave me a word the Lord had laid on her heart for me. It was simple - "The Lord will reassure you in all your steps". Such a simple statement, but it's really come to be so key in each relationship and even in the ministry He's begun to lead me to and open up. I was on the bus praying about something just two days ago playing tug of war, and it was like He hit me on the head and went, "Didn't I tell you already that I will reassure you in all your steps as you step with me?". I'm still learning - and every day is truly sweeter with Him.

I said this in one of my earlier posts, that every day is a new surrender. Sometimes it's multiple times a day where I go "Lord, take my heart. Take my emotions.". Now that I'm here with Him, my heart's in a place where I don't want to be distracted - simply because I've tasted of the Lord, and He is good. He's faithful, He's merciful, and I'm so blown away by how He's chosen me *in* my imperfections, *in* my weakness.

These days have looked like lots of conversations in public places where as I'm sharing or listening, He is so tangibly present and I end up a crying mess. They have sounded like calls that happen when He decides they should, where I'm walking with someone over the phone, be it working or praying through a specific situation. These days have seen prayer become natural to me, even aloud where others are clearly listening in - I pray the Lord does His work as the seeds get thrown out there.

About a month and a half ago, I was on my knees in my office as I sobbed and responded to where He had arrested my heart. He gave me a phrase - 'take hold of me'. As I prayed this, it started to really resonate in my heart. That night, I sat at Tasso and was just playing and singing to Him. It was old school - 'Pass Me Not, O Gentle Saviour'. I started wrapping up seeing that it was past midnight, but He had different plans. He decided to respond to my prayer, for Him to not pass me by, and in His humour, 'Take Hold of Me' was birthed.

So even though I don't see His plan, and I don't know two steps ahead of where I am, let alone five, my heart is so turned to Him and I pray I will never lose sight of the eternity He's preparing me for with Him.

Take hold of me, Lord.

 

ps. Right as I finish my read-through before hitting the publish button, YouTube cycles back to the song I started with at the beginning of this post. The exact same video. I'm done. I'm wrecked. In the best way possible.

Sejahtera Malaysia

Today is Malaysia Day, and I am thankful to be Malaysian.

Often I hear "Malaysia boleh" being tossed around as a jab at Malaysia and her people. I've done this myself. Every nation has its quirks, and Malaysia is no exception.

Growing up, I remember holding a blue passport, also called a Limited Travel Document. I was born in Penang, living in Sarawak, and my siblings and I had to go through a student visa application for every year we were there. My father was on a tourist visa for all of his 14 years there as a missionary and voluntary church worker - he had to leave the state every three months. My mother had to get a letter from the school every year (and later on, every six months) to recognise or acknowledge her as our guardian. It was frustrating at times, and I wondered why, as a Malaysian, I had to still do this.

Now that I'm older and I look back, I understand. Malaysia is a federation that was formed on September 16th, 1963 comprising of Malaya, Singapore, Sabah, and Sarawak. Among the articles of the agreement were that Sarawak would keep its freedom of religion, and she would also have control over the immigration laws. I saw this as something very special, and I have been blessed to be able to call Sarawak - Kuching specifically - the home of my heart.

I grew up with diversity in culture, but among a people who stood united. I was rooted in church and community, was blessed to be exposed to, and later part of the rich musical heritage. I was blessed to be among a people who personified the melting pot that is Malaysia.

It was also there that I met Lavender. She was tiny then - I'm closer in age to her brother. Our families used to sit along the same row in church, and it was her late father who was instrumental in getting me involved in the church worship ministry. He was a great encouragement and blessing as he went out of his way to have me as part of the team, which often involved being my ride to and from rehearsals and services.

Now, years later, I am thankful for the training I had there, and this standstill has brought the breaking of barriers. Lavender and I ended up reaching out across the borders - myself in Singapore and she in Kuching, to collaborate in a prayer and blessing for Malaysia. It has truly been a joy and privilege to work on this cover of 'Sejahtera Malaysia'.

There is no simple translation for the word 'sejahtera'. It is peace, harmony, unity in the diversity. It is a hope and a blessing, a meeting in the middle. It is beautiful, and most of all, it is my prayer for the nation.

At the centre of everything I know is my God - the Creator of all. My Creator. It is to Him that I lift this prayer and blessing over my nation, because I know He loves Malaysia - more than I ever could.

I was asked recently if I am patriotic. My heart beats for nations, it beats for people. I love the diversity of culture, and I am proud of my heritage. Beyond the politics and the view that the world has of my country (which I do not claim to understand), I have a deep love for my nation. It is as the Lord has willed, and as such will it remain.

Serahkan Hidupku

The Lord's timing is impeccable, and I am so, so, so thankful for that.

In my previous post, I spoke about emerging from the Circuit Breaker, broken. Part of the journey involved Him bringing me back to my first love. I bought a digital piano, and it's my place of surrender where I just go and play and sing and worship.

As He was working things out in me, He dropped this song on my heart. I got the melody first while lingering in worship, then sat down to wait on Him. He gave me a Malay phrase. I was surprised. Then I freaked a little because I realised that while I had been speaking some Malay, I didn't have the vocabulary to write a worship song in Malay. I opened up my Bible app (I use Alkitab Versi Borneo!) and pulled up Psalms, started to read and just scribble down phrases as they jumped out at me. Less than two hours later, Serahkan Hidupku was birthed.

I sent it out to my family, and to my former housemate (she's Indonesian). Ended up also sending it to the pastor of our Indonesian congregation, and that turned into "Could you please record this with video so we can use it for our services?". Long story short, I recorded it in June and sent it in a couple of days later. I didn't hear anything from them until earlier this week. Pastor P told me that they'll be putting it up this weekend.

I was texting my parents yesterday and sharing what the Lord had been putting on my heart. I had a moment with God in the afternoon when I read some news about my home country and was struck by how I've been so detached, then felt such an urgency to be in prayer over my home nation, and also where I am now. As I was sharing with them, the significance of what was happening struck me.

Serahkan Hidupku is about who the Lord is and my surrender to Him.

This was a song that He gave me on Teachers' Day (May 16th) as an extended response to me waiting on Him for a project I was considering embarking on. This was also Day 40 (!!!) of Circuit Breaker.

Playing the piano and singing are both things that I don't see as areas I'm confident in, but I just obeyed and did the recording.

I held off getting the lyric video done and putting it up on youtube, but then because it's going to be shown come Sunday, decided to get it done.

I got the video up on 08-08-2020. The number 8 signifies new beginnings, and this is really a season of new beginnings with the Lord as He challenges me to take a step out every day. 20/20 is associated with perfect vision. When we keep our eyes on the Lord, we truly do have perfect vision.

August 9th is Singapore's National Day. This Malaysian's song is going to be aired to an Indonesian congregation, on Singapore's National Day. For me, it's a coming together of the three nations, and I am beyond humbled and honoured at this revelation. It means pressing in to pray for these nations. It means that this ripple effect between the nations is something I need to be far more attuned to.

I really don't know what will come forth from this - all I know is that I am going to continue walking as He leads me to the next thing, one step at a time.

I surrender my life into Your hands, my Lord.

Broken.

I am thankful that God meets me where I am.

I emerge from the Circuit Breaker broken.

This is not a bad thing at all. It's been 56 days, and I've been on a journey - an incubation period, if you will. It's been a time of surrender, yielding, obedience, waiting, learning, and breakthrough. The Lord was preparing me for this even before the Circuit Breaker started, and of course, I didn't realise it then. The past 56 days have been quite a ride - I'll share just a little here.

I was in a relationship with a good man, but he was not a believer. I knew this going in to the relationship, but I chose not to honour God and brush Him aside. We were long distance for three years, after which I moved over here and we were fast approaching the fifth year mark.
I'll come back to this in a bit.

One of the things that I had felt led to do leading up to this Circuit Breaker period was to play a song that God laid on my heart every day. I called this 'Project: Snippets'. I struggled with this because I had lost the joy of playing sometime during my college years, and I foolishly let the insecurity build up and poison me. My heart wasn't fully in it. I ended up letting my flute playing take a backseat for seven years or so.
There were many thoughts that ran through my mind when I said "Yes" to God and 'Project: Snippets'. I remember my first week, me fretting about the harmonies being weak and empty-sounding, about my intonation being flat or sharp, about who was listening - or if anyone was even listening. It was here that God taught me to just surrender and come back to Him with a heart of worship.

As I was working through this, God also brought to memory different prayers and promises over my life, and I knew that if I were to want to journey with Him, I had to lay my life down, yield to His leading.

This was when I knew I had to end the relationship. It was difficult, I called my parents at an unearthly hour in tears, shared with them, and they prayed for me and with me. As I sat down to pen the breakup letter, I reminded myself that I was not trying to pin the blame on anything or anyone - I just wanted to be honest and share what I had been experiencing up to this point.
Was obedience easy? First, me baring myself vulnerable with all my insecurities, and now, this. But whether it was easy or not was not my focus. My focus was on wanting to right my relationship with the Father, because I knew that nothing could ever be better than what He has for me.

The days that followed were a lot of worshipping and waiting. He would drop songs in my heart, I would worship with them, record them, put them up on Instagram. Sometimes I would be sobbing, wrecked and overwhelmed by His mercy and His kindness towards me despite me knowingly and consciously rejecting Him. It has been a time of reconciliation and healing, and the healing is still not done yet.

As people and churches got more used to the Circuit Breaker, events started getting organised. Teaching sessions, sharing sessions. I have been going for quite a number of these, just soaking up whatever there is to learn, reflecting on the material and on scripture. There has been so much shared on worship, and I am still digesting my notes from the different sessions.

There were many significant moments during this whole period, but here is one of the more major ones for me.

An opportunity came up - The Blessing Sg. (Watch it here!) There was a call for pastors, leaders, singers, to send in video submissions to be pieced together for a united proclamation and prayer of blessing over the nation. The Malaysian churches had already released theirs, and since it was a closed door project, I didn't get to participate there. I was about to go to bed, and I decided to say a quick prayer. I asked the Lord if this was something He wanted me to do, and if it was, I didn't want to just play nice-sounding melodies, I wanted to play melodies from His heart.

The next morning, I woke up with a song on my heart. As I worshipped with it, the last two lines of the chorus hit me:
You've placed in me the song of Heaven's melody
Your Majesty, I live to sing Your song

As if that wasn't enough of an answer, God being God, dropped a new song on my heart. A Malay song. A song about surrendering to Him. It's been at least 12 years since the last song I wrote, and this is also my very first Malay song. This was truly an amazing breakthrough for me, a significant milestone, and a promise for more to come. Listening back to the song (which I will be recording and putting up soon) still brings me to tears as I recount how He brought me to where I am now.

He's been drawing me to a new thing, and I'm excited for what He has in store. I don't have to ask, because I know His plans for me are good. It will never get old, this whole journeying with Him thing.

He's broken me so he can build me up, make my life into a vessel for His glory. My life is my offering to Him.

It still floors me to know that everything I can give to Him was given to me first. By Him.
Selah.

Still Waters, Clearer Reflections.

I am thankful for times of rest.

It's April, and we're in a state of declared pandemic. COVID-19 seems to be raging, and the vast majority of the world has come to a standstill.

From the start of this global emergency, it was not a spirit of fear that gripped me, but a peace that flooded my heart. Even after hearing that one of the pastors of my church in Catcity had succumbed to the virus. Even after my company was told that we were likely to suffer because of China shutting down first, then Europe. We get a lot of our goods from there.

Being goods-based, my work is classified as non-essential and we have had to shut our doors for now till May 4th. In this time that I have away from the hustle and bustle, I've committed to recording a short chorus or verse a day on my flute(s). It's been a time of learning new things, relearning to use GarageBand, and waiting to see what He puts on my heart. There's been a shift for sure, in my faith, and in learning to be still. Selah moments. Refreshing moments.

A memory came to mind this morning while I was in the kitchen. In secondary school - in Form Two - we were asked to make a list of things we wanted to see ourselves achieve in Vision 2020. While others listed successful careers and making their first million, in my naïveté, I had listed being a housewife, cooking for my family, probably with one kid by then. There's a whole backstory about the housewife thing that happened a couple of years later, but that's a story for another day.

I had done a market run this morning and was just puttering about putting things away, prepping for lunch makings. I had deboned a roast chicken - the carcass set aside for making soup soon-ish, meat shredded for use in my meals over the next few days. I plucked and washed red spinach and water convolvulus - something you could find me doing at home while helping Mum in the kitchen. Did a couple of other things involving getting corn kernels off of the cob and chopping up pumpkin - you get the idea. I joked about my Vision 2020 thing with my housemate when she came to the kitchen to get water, and she replied that I was partway there.

I probably won't be getting married for a while yet, but I am learning to enjoy the process. Getting married and starting a family, raising this family, loving this family, is still very much a desire of mine - don't get me wrong, but the journey to get to that point is one that I am still on. I don't know what will happen a year from now, five years from now, but I know for sure that I am in the palm of God's hand.

My question now is: Lord, what is Your dream for me?

Wawasan2020?

It's 2020.
I am thankful for so many things.

I spent the last week of 2019 back home with my family - yes, all of us. It's been difficult to get all of us in the same place in the past seven years because of us physically being in different places with different schedules. Being able to catch up and play chauffeur was fun, and just spending time together was refreshing. (I got to ride my bike too! I've missed that.)

I'm proud of...
Da Jie for really taking to being a mama (among other things).
Korkor not just for the role he is playing at work, but more importantly in the community he is in.
Rin for being the MVP where she is and being SKJ to Babes over the past two months or so that they have been staying together and working in the same city.
Babes for pushing past mental blocks, starting work, picking up dance again.
I admire Dad and Mum for the relationship they exemplify to us through their journey together, and their taking to new phases of life like the empty nest they now have and how they fill their time together.

The last week of 2019 was a much needed break after what felt like a whole work year of pushing through what seemed to be obstacles, learning, and running on overdrive towards the end. It's been a whirlwind of a year with lots of new challenges, making mistakes, learning to set them right, getting a bit more comfortable with interacting in what should be my mother tongue (still a long, long way to go), settling in to work and completing the first calendar year.

If you can't already tell, 2019 has been a lot of things for me.

Another major thing I am thankful for is this group I fondly know as my 'Senior Citizens'. We have gotten much closer this year, with different ones of us facing different challenges, sharing life and encouraging each other along the way. They are my family here in LionLand. We've ventured into music outside of each of our comfort zones, taken bus rides, shared meals, and we're okay with each other's crazy.

I spent the first day of the new year getting some rest, and then out walking around with TC. After dinner, I got to share a bit of what's on my mind with respect to my approach for this year, and also some things I was contemplating working towards. I live in a society that is largely dependent on paper qualification, and I have been thinking about maybe doing something towards that. This has really been an internal battle for me because of my chosen path post-O level equivalent. I certainly have not taken the common or conventional approach towards things, but talking to TC today helped me calm the push-pull in me with regards to getting a more traditional recognition of my capabilities.

In this coming year, there are areas which I would like to be more intentional about - like sorting out my health, being better committed to CG, and resuming my role in ListenUP. There will be new things with regards to serving in church, getting back into a little more serious flute playing, and working more on learning and practicing repair things and stuff.

2020 is going to be an interesting year.

2019.

I'm thankful that another year has passed, and the Lord has truly seen me through.

I had been talking about a move for a while. It took some time to come through, but I think that it was the posture in which I was approaching it. God's timing is perfect, and He knows. He truly does.

All of 2018, the message was to align, and then things will fall into place. I am thankful for parents who did not give up on me but stuck with me during the challenging times, the tense times, and worked things out with me.

Looking back, as much as it was a new season for them being empty-nesters for real, it was also a new season for me. Indeed, as mentioned in the previous post, I was learning a lot of new things but never really feeling completely overwhelmed. There has been so much patience and caring and encouragement in this period - I feel like bonsai.

Some of my outlook has changed, and there is truly a different drive. It's not the same as the comfortable place I was before, but it is a nurturing environment. I have been given opportunities that I felt were beyond me, and the support and encouragement to step up. What do I really know, right? A lot of things surprised me in the last 5 months (100 days of work ho!) of 2018.

This year, the message is the Aaronic Blessing. I have always looked forward to Dad praying this over us, and my pastoral team in my current home church also prays this over us at the end of the service. I got to actually play a song crafted upon these words at a very special event in October. I don't believe anything is by chance. He prepares ahead of us, He knows before we do. And the cool thing about it all is, He drops hints. A lot of hints.

I had just made a little blurb featuring this on New Year's Eve, and this morning, guess what Dad sends to me.

As I reflect and send out messages to different individuals who were instrumental in my 2018, I count the milestones and the blessings in my life. Now this, this overwhelms me.

2018 was a pretty amazing year. 2019 will be even better.

Don't raise your ceiling; raise your floor instead.

I end today's ramblings with another bit of good news. The earworm that has been bugging me for most of 2018 is now eradicated! I just found the song. An hour ago. And it is beautiful. The difference is that now, I do know where it is from. No more buggy!

Have I mentioned that I have a thing for songs in compound time? It...adds something special to the song. Most of the time.

Hello, 2019!