Addicted

Yesterday, I was on the train into the city. In each of the sitting sections, there are 18 seats. In my particular one, 17 of those seats were filled. There were 5 men and 12 women. Of those 17, only TWO were NOT on their handphones or mobile devices; myself and an older lady who looked in her mid-60s and who seemed to be dozing. There were an additional 5 people standing in the section, all of whom were also using devices.

Get that? Total 22 people, 20 on devices.

Does that shock you?

I am now 30-years-old. I like to think that my teens were not that long ago. In my teens, this kind of thing wasn't seen. I remember getting my first mobile phone, a study Nokia, somewhere around when I was 17-years-old. It wasn't 'smart' and had only 4 pretty basic games on it. I didn't spend most of my time glued to it. 

How have these tiny pieces of technology become so vital to our existence? 

Looking around the train, I felt so convicted. What am I modeling to my son? What kind of a world will he grow up in? Will there come a day when we forget how to speak, how to relate and to interact to one another?

I wanted to scream, 'EVERYONE PUT DOWN THE DEVICES AND NO ONE WILL GET HURT.'

Obviously, I didn't do that. But I do intend to put down my device a whole lot more often. 

Culture Shock

My family on our wedding day (12 May 2012)

Joel's family on our wedding day 

Joel and my family's are incredibly different. Like... Reeeeaaaally different. Our cultures aren't the only difference; but the character and tone of the family units are poles apart. 

Sometimes I think it's amazing how well Joel and I go together, given the vast contrast between our backgrounds. 

In the past, I truly wondered if his family was from another planet. How on earth could people have a completely opposite way of thinking to what was 'normal' to me? 

Recently, we did the unthinkable. We actually moved into their house. Astounding really. We are in an interim period before our own rental is ready for us. 

For me at least, it has been and is still very tough. Not just learning to live with other people, but also learning how to be a family, within another family. Not as easy as it may sound. How do we keep 'us' and what is unique and special about our little family that I love so much, and yet live in and contribute to a greater family around us? 

I'm very sure culture plays a large role in how I am feeling. Perhaps (or perhaps not?) if we were a local couple moving in with their local inlaws, the challenge and change would not be so great. In Asia, there is a more significant emphasis placed on extended family. We have it in the West also, but there is more autonomy between the smaller family units. 

I'm not saying that either side is better, or 'right'. But I am experiencing the 'other side,' and it's been eye opening. 

I am amused to realise that I, and maybe we are all the same, somehow subconsciously expect that other people run their lives in the same manner as myself. I am very systematic in the way I do almost everything. For example, before I wash dishes, I put all the same items together. This means that when I am washing them and putting them on the drying rack, they stack more neatly and take up less space. Does it really matter? No. But it's still the 'best way' to my own mind and therefore is 'correct.'

My husband's family do things completely differently. Are they wrong? No. It's just different. 

So what I guess I am saying is, I am learning that it's ok. It's ok for some people to be one way, and others to be another. It's unlikely that I will suddenly stop being systematic. It's equally unlikely, that they will be more so. But in learning to appreciate the differences, perhaps I will see and know more of life, be less narrow minded, and may even discover ways of doing things that make more sense to me, ways that I would never have thought of alone. 

God is, Himself, so vast, and while he is constant and unchanging, His very enormity means that there is room for many different facets. Maybe I'll know Him better also after this? 

Free Will

My Nanna (my Mum's mother) passed away a couple of months ago. She was an amazing woman who meant so much to me. It was an honour to know her. 

What started the whole incident, was that my Nanna had a fall. In the fall, she broke her hip and had various other injuries, all of which was the beginning of the end. 

Afterwards, my strongly anti-God cousin made an interesting comment about it. He said: if God is real, He should have stopped her from falling. 

For some reason, this statement has stuck in my mind and caused me to think through the whole issue a lot. 

It seems so... silly, somehow, to think that THAT is the biggest thing to be blaming God for. Surely it would be more profitable to blame God for things like the crusades, child abuse, wars, murder, sex trafficking and other forms of slavery, etc. 

And then I was thinking, if God should step in and stop every wrong thing, that would include my cousin's actions of wrong doing. And I am very sure he wouldn't like that.

Or does God only have to stop certain wrong or bad happenings? And who gets to choose which ones? 

We want to choose for ourselves when it suits us, but blame God for not stopping bad when it doesn't. 

But the world just can't work like that. It has to be one way or the other, and for whatever reason, God chose this way, where we are allowed and able to choose bad things and where bad things happen to us. And it's really not God's fault. 

I have had to come to terms with this in my own life and history. So many of the 'bad things' that have happened to me, I would much rather that they didn't. But I don't blame God, at least, not anymore. I know that I live in a world full of humanity and that includes human error. 

I guess the trick is to learn to trust God through the troubles and to rest in the fact that one day, He is going to make all things right again. 

Of Love and Fear

A couple of years ago I was staffing a DTS (Diacipleship Training School) here is Singapore. We were on the week of 'Lordship' and Mark Parker from New Zealand was teaching. 

At the end of the week, he always has one day called 'Lordship Day' which is an opportunity for all staff and students to come to God and fully commit to Him, and to make Jesus Lord over every area of their lives. 

During that day, God spoke to me and revealed that for the majority of my life, I had been ruled by fear. I had allowed fear to control my choices and my mind. 

And it was true. I have so many memories as a child, and then as an adult, of being terrified. I was scared of the dark, scared of performing, scared of being attacked, scared of 'End Times', scared to be noticed, to stand out or be different. 

When God revealed my fears to me, I asked Him to heal me. My favourite childhood memory verse kept coming to me: 

"For God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power, love and a sound mind". 

2 Timothy 1:7

And God did indeed begin the healing process in me, setting me free of many fears and giving me His freedom to enjoy life and to enjoy being all He created me to be. 

When I look at His deep love for me, the value that He assigns to me, and at His protective heart for me, fear isn't even an issue any more. I am able to be all He designed me to be and to go wherever He leads me to go without fear of 'what if?'

I am not now 'fearless'. I still battle with fear and have to make the choice to relish God's freedom through His perfect love for me. But I have to tell you, fear is a terrible roommate.