flood of thoughts....

1. My friend is going away...... for a long, long time!
She's going away for a whole year, perhaps longer. My dinner kaki, my friend, my confidant, my sounding board, my reality check, my babysitter....

Feel very apprehensive at this thought and yet it is only less than 2 months away! Sadness, terror, are my first reactions.

I don't like long distance relationships of any sort. I live with them but I don't like them... grumble, grumble....

2. What am I doing?
I am at the place in my life where I am asking myself if I am doing what I am supposed to be doing. I need to seek the LORD in earnest yet I am reluctant, feeling like I want to be right (as usual!) and think I know best!

3. The aftermath of Camp... TERMITES!!!
My kitchen cabinet is infested!!! noisy fellows who have been VERY BUSY while we were away at camp! aiyoooooh! praying that infestation is isolated or isolatable! otherwise, gotta move to new house liao!!!

4. Backache n such!
I got a bad, bad backache. As long as I remian motionless, I am ok. This is probably the result of the hotel bed and long car ride and AGE. I sure hope I will be better tomorrow..

5. Being a Christian aka yourself all the time!
I heard that the campers in the bus were less than civic minded on the way over to Cherating and left a mess in the bus. I feel very "pai-seh" cos the bus driver would have had to clean the bus after us. His job was to drive us there, not to clean up after us and our mess. It would have been really nice if we left the bus the same way we found it... clean and tidy. What would he think of us Christians? They're just the same as anyone else, or worse?

This "being a Christian" thing has been on my mind much. Do we tire of "being a Christian" and wish for time off? When we do take time off, what happens? Where do we do it? We must not do it when the leaders are around, lest they think badly of us..... We do it when there are non-Christians are around so we can "blend" in...

I had a non-Christian friend who said that he hated hypocrites. I agreed with him but took light of what he said. As I got to know him better, he showed me examples of what he meant and then I understood better.

It's not only when we say certain things in front of one person and something else to another, it's also the way we behave in the presence of certain people too.

I understand that different people have different interests and because of this, we may steer a conversation one way or the other. Granted that this is true, I can't help but think that sometimes we go on a tad too much on "spiritual" things to church people...

I wonder if I am judgmental here...

I wish that we could talk about all sorts of things to our brothers and sisters and not have to restrict ourselves to "CHURCHY" conversations, sprinkling in jargon here and there to seem more spiritual to our church friends. I am all for "blessing" people and speaking life to them, but let us not restrict this to conversations with believers only.

I also wish that instead, we could speak in sincerity to all who cross our path. That we could "bless" someone who is not a believer, and tell a bro or sister in Christ of an upsetting incident where we were at fault and did some "un-Christian like" things and ask them to pray for us instead of reserving that for our non-believing friends (who we think might justify our actions) for fear we might be judged by our brothers and sisters for having reacted wrongly.

I think we can and should do this but I too, have failed miserably in this area..

Let me try again, let me try again...

Pains of parenting...

I have not been writing for some time now and feel once again as though I have to gather courage to write my thoughts and days down..

My kids are growing up fast and I feel so privileged to be able to simply watch them grow. The way God designed us, I really can appreciate how the human mind developes as I watch my two boys.. Things (good and not so good!) that they pick up, the emotions which are sometimes so transparent and even primitive.. things we learn to conceal as we grow older...

I want to try to teach them different stuff these days... I have not dealt much with human emotions and variables in our lives which make each of us react the way we do in different situations. Ok, an example is that people have different personalities and we should not simply react to a situation but also consider other people's feelings....

I would like my boys to be considerate of others. I also wish them to be confortable with and accepting of themselves and who they are, warts and all! The list goes on and on...

Parenting is a rather tricky business. We do what we think is best and at the end of the day, our offspring may turn around and tell us that they never asked us to do this or that FOR them!

We hear of parents toiling to ensure that they have enough money to put the children through their studies and instead of appreciating the efforts, children say to their parents that they never asked them to do so in the first place and would have preferred that the parent spent more time with them instead! This is especially in light of the child, a teen by then having gotten into some sort of trouble....

Both are noble reasons (in that the parent was doing something good by providing and the child was making an appropriate request of parents spending more time with them) but as a parent, how can one undo this? How can parents "make things right"? That is a parent's affliction, a insatiable desire to "make things right" for and with their children!

So, we trudge along, trying our level best to gauge and balance, not always succeeding in our quest of being that perfect parent.. many times losing sight of the fact that the LORD wants us to simply LOVE OUR CHILDREN and allow Him into the equation.