Picture Mindful.

Honestly.

I’m somebody who goes with the flow. This is whom I’ve always been. Some people have told me that it’s an impressive skill especially when they consider how effective I am at working under pressure and doing things last-minute- but there are just some things in life you don’t just rush into. Some things take time and careful consideration. You do this with things you especially care about, things especially close to your heart. Sure, the tendency to be ‘I’m-going-with-the-flow’ is still there, but thankfully there’s a little more tact and thought behind things you hope for. And this comes effortlessly.

Having said some about ‘going with the flow’, it’s becoming more and more clear to me that growing up involves considering others in my decisions more than just myself. It means actually being responsible as opposed to just doing the minimal. It sounds like such an obvious thing I know, but sometimes we miss out on the obvious things. Some people, like me, take a while to learn these things. They get underlined only in specific situations where you have to take a step back and go, “Oh crap. So that’s how it is!” After that realization you either continue on as you were, “I’ll get to it later” (Never.), or you consider what are things that need to be done in order to move appropriately, according to the decision already made.

Now throw into the mix how just because you’ve made a decision, that doesn’t necessitate that things will go as smoothly or end up according to plan. How lame is that. Such is life.

But seriously. If I mope, I ought to mope with hope.

As a professing Christian, I know that all these things will eventually pale in comparison to being with Christ for all eternity when I die. I’m not being escapist here, it might seem like it, but I believe I’m being realistic. When I die, I can’t take anything with me from here- the house I hope to have, my amassed fortune of home appliances (These are things I have a weird penchant for), this woman I’m learning to love- all these, I take nothing with me.
This is how funny life is for me as a Christian; it is real enough that the most tangible things I see are the bills I have to pay, the hopes and doubts that I have, yet at the same time, all these things are but a blip in the context of the big picture of eternity.

Moving between big picture and small picture well is something I’d like to get better at because most of the time I’m stuck to the small screen. One day at a time, I guess.

Honestly.

Where Is Home?

Today was the 2nd time that I was rejected a visitor’s visa for a country I won’t name. 

At first, when the rejection came, I didn’t know how to respond. As I reflect on what went through my mind at that exact moment- I come up blank.

But I have to come face to face with who I am. I’m a third-culture person. I’m from another country but I’ve grown up in another that is not my own. There will never be a chance that I can be a citizen of this country and the only way for me to continue staying here is to have a job, which will grant me employee status.

With this rejection, I have to come face-to-face with who I am; Look real close at who I am economically and socially. Maybe I’m just embellishing, whining about a visa rejection, some straight-up first world problem? Ignoring the plight of countless others who have no choice but to leave their home because of war or some other horrible injustice that has befallen them. Now I feel silly. Now my visa complaints seem infinitesimal.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from this visa rejection the 2nd time around, it’s the same as the last rejection: I’m thankful that my citizenship in Heaven is not based on where I’m from, or what I’ve done for myself economically or socially in life. No. It is based on Christ and His finished work on the Cross for me. I don’t see the fullness of it now but when I groan in disappointment of the now, a sure hopefulness within me springs forth when I think of the life after.

Would’ve been great if I got that visa though.

Staking Lives

Allow me to verbally vomit online.

This is a weird-yet-exciting time in life for me. I see so much truth in what wiser, older people have nuanced to me in days past, “The person you become in university is the who you’ll likely be for the rest of your life.”It’s been a year-and-a-half since I’ve graduated from university. Looking back, I can’t help but acknowledge that this rings true.

I don’t mind change. I don’t mind the fact that Jesus has changed my life.That’s a gross understatement. I’ll never get over the fact that He has saved me. He has completely changed the trajectory of my life in ways I could have never imagined.

How I wish that manifested itself in the way I lived my life in response to that goodness.

Yet in the midst of thankfulness, there is a sea of uncertainty within me that surfaces every now and then. It billows and froths, and I’m wondering and wondering if I’m doing the right thing. Perhaps the issue isn’t whether I’m doing the right thing: the issue is whether I trust God. It is a hard thing to trust God- more especially, One I’ve yet to see. It is hard to trust that He is sufficient in loneliness, in insufficiency, in feelings of sadness not tied to anything in particular, really. The latter moment mentioned are the type I hate with a vengeance. There’s nothing like feeling sorrowful or melancholy for no particular reason. It has you taking lightning-quick self-inventories, gasping hopelessly, and you’re eager to pin sadness to anything that is reasonable enough to be a coherent reason- just for the sake of being able to explain that ‘meh’.

But I like the fact that I can acknowledge difficult, confusing circumstances in my life to God. David shows us in Psalm 51 as he groaned  for redemption, writhing in agony over the consequence of his choices.

I am called to hope and trust in God as He has revealed Himself in His Word. My heart takes refuge in the fact that this God that saves is faithful. I saw it this morning reading through some in the book of Acts. He was the same God with Paul as he got flogged or stoned for sharing the Gospel, He was the same God who moved through what Peter spoke as 3000 people came to believe in one day.

He is the same God who has saved me. One day at a time. 

Parting Ways With Ordinary Days

Multiply. Oh my, Multiply.

It’s quite evident by now that I am not the most prolific blogger in the world but, believe it or not, there was once a time when I would post even twice day.  

The blog was hosted on Multiply. Yeah, quality is another question. Ofcourse, I cringe when I read through posts from that time because a majority of my writings summed up my life as an angst-ridden, pimpled teenager. There is a raw naivete that I miss sometimes from those days. I literally did not know anything and my emotions were all I went by which made me type down rather furiously whatever felt right on my fingertips. There was a firm belief that every experience warranted me wisdom. The thing is, sometimes we don’t ALWAYS learn from what befalls us. We make the same mistake again and again and again. It did not help that not many people read my blog, so I was left to my own devices and onwards I wrote through the decade 🙂

Well, I found out the sad, bittersweet news today that my blog, Ordinary Days, no longer exists. The only remnants now are the brief words that appear under each hyperlink result when you Google ‘Ordinary Days phrahncsis’.  All my thoughts over the course of more than a decade condescended into the pages of that blog. She was my baby. A vortex of understanding, confession, documented confusion and the odd self-realization. The highly-adjustable viewer privacy options, a black hole of pseudo-secrecy. All 300+ entries. The paragraph-sculpting. The amateur wordsmith-ing. The intentional subtleties. The ‘poetic vagueness’- a refined way of describing a)the numerous indulgences in unclear, irrational writing with hopes that cluttered thoughts would iron themselves out in the attempts and b) my nuanced pining for whatever was love without reciprocation.  

I’m not as bothered as my sentimentality is putting across (Or am I assuming now that I had made that tone clear enough?). Just wish I had the chance to say ‘goodbye’ and have some sort of ‘closure’. Whatever that means. 

In light of the life I’m living now and the new priorities I am fighting to prioritize, Multiply is a very unnecessary thing to preoccupy myself with. It is exactly why I’ve only looked at that blog only a handful of times over the past 3 years. Sometimes good things can become bad things. Memories of what was really can cripple us to stagnation. It doesn’t work well because Life is Dynamic. It keeps changing. Anyway, in the grand scheme of things, my life and my experiences, as real as they are, are only a blip in light of an eternity with Jesus. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for cherishing memories and experiencing new things. But it isn’t a bad idea to have an eternal perspective on Life and all that it entails within itself. When we die, that’s it. Everything pales in comparison to Life After. It’s very humbling. Maybe a little insulting and dismissive to some.

So this shouldn’t burn too much; nostalgia should not equate to an emotional breakdown! As I squint my eyes and try to reminisce whatever I wrote, each flicker of a memory written is an opportune time for me to reflect on how far God has carried me faithfully through the years- as a wandering, searching soul and as a Christian. Everything has converged into the day my life changed, the day I got new eyes and a new heart. It may sound limited and constricting. But I say, “It is BEAUTIFUL!” And I have the rest of my life to figure it out.

So, I’m not going to have that option of showing my future kids and wife whatever I wrote as a 15-year old. I sure as heck am going to miss that blog. But, I guess it’s time to move on. I don’t know if I can ever write with complete, unadulterated honesty and reckless abandon here. But I will write real whenever I can.

So long, ‘Ordinary Days’. 

No Sleep, You Wondering Sheep

Shuffling feet, with creaking bed/Exasperated sigh, in darkness tread

My mind’s the one wandering/While my body stays put

I stare off into the side/There the ink black stood

Try to count sheep/But my thoughts are one of them

We’re a wandering flock/Shepherd lost us again

We’re running about in moonlight/The air bleeding with freedom

Following our wits, our feet and newfound dreams

There’s no need for anyone’s leading

As the hour nears late/With the wind more soothing

And sleep begins to tickle like a feather

We settle down here, within the star’s gaze

We bury us in green pasture.

I Know It. I Know It?

I know it – but do I believe it?
There are times when I do but the times when I don’t 
Are those that seize me: they are aplenty
There’s a myriad to mention
The constancy of my imperfect perception of you is depressing
I would’ve thought by now
I would’ve thought by now I would’ve figured it out
That you are you
That I’m infinitesimal me
That my ways are minuscule
And pale next to the gravity of you and who you’ll always be
You always were- even when I never was
Even when I never was, you loved me already
Before everything created, all that that my eyes can’t see
I see clearly- nothing almost
What I can- you’ve entrust’d
Grace unmeasured
Merely intellectually known
My heart yearns
Honor the times I groan
Grow the belief in my heart
Finish what you now own
Grow to fruition what you have sown
In my heart of hearts, sit enthroned
Glisten bright within like your blood on the wood shone
I know it. Teach me to believe it. Teach me to live in light of it.

This Race

Housesitting for the Oswalds for a couple of days; their housing community has facilities for each villa block- I had the entire gym to myself today.

Truth be told, I don’t like going to the gym. And for 2 reasons: Firstly, I can’t afford to have a membership whilst be consistent enough to avail of it, secondly, I find gyms boring. Now there’s a chorus of guy friends (‘Chorus’ sounds very feminine.) who would staunchly disagree with what I just said but that’s just my opinion; I find playing sports to be twice as fun. If only I had the gusto to actually go out to a court and shoot some hoops.

Now with today’s gym situation, the only things I did use were the treadmill and the rowing machine. I love running; I’ve grown to love running. Running feels right. It helps me clear my head or atleast helps my mind move in that direction. With today in particular, I had a lot of things to think about. 

Amidst all my thinking, it was good to remind myself of the Gospel. It’s a daily habit I’ve been working at; it keeps me sane and helps me not forget how God’s sovereignty extends to all areas of my life, always. Running on that treadmill, staring into the mirror blankly in front of me, I couldn’t help but whisper a prayer asking God to keep me as His for the rest of my life. I want to finish this race of life well. Whatever that entails. 

The sweet ‘running’ encouragement at the opening of Hebrews 12, comes to mind,  ”Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

I am not alone in this race. There are those who have gone before me. There are those who are running with me. There are those who will run after I’ve run.

“Don’t let me forget who I am, what You have saved me to and what I am ultimately heading towards.”

Express Yourself..

The motivation to blog is ever-so-low these days. Is that a good sign?

For me personally, I think it is.

It means I have people to talk to and my ramblings are a lot more coherent now than they’ve ever been. I now can relate to songwriters who pour their heart into their craft because within it they have the ability to be clear in ways where words in conversation couldn’t suffice. I’m not songwriting- but I feel that I’m thinking and expressing myself better than ever. How I wish this was the case in university and high school.

Less blogging also means I have less time to be introspective..about the ‘lack’ in my life. I realize now that I don’t want to write eloquently (Or maybe redundantly, according to more accomplished bloggers?) at the cost of being over-reminded about how half-empty my life is. Because it’s not at all. And I don’t want to dig hard for dregs of fulfillment when I’m actually learning what it means to be content in life. I don’t want to work hard to create an area of despair in my life when it isn’t. But, ‘Learning?! What the hell does that mean?” It means I’m yearning to accept that what life is right now, is actually just right. Otherwise life is going to be a perpetual regurgitating of ‘There’s greener grass on the other side of the fence..”.

Writing has become a lot more personal these days. I try to write less; I try to confide in God more.