the threads in her head

Faith is hard.

I don't know if it's age that is setting in, or that I am unused to school and the wheels and cogs in my head has turned rusty, or that so many things can something seems to go wrong at the same time, or that my boyish façade is failing, or...

But staying positive feels like a chore.

This entire weeks has been a whirl. Late nights, nearly falling sick, falling sick. Starting the week saying goodbye to a dear close friend, remembering the loss of another dear close one. Dealing with a nonsense load of emotions turmoil and thoughts and deadlines (oh hello there uni!). Missing someone so badly my heart feels like it wants to break, hearing advice from friendly seniors saying, hey, rebecca, you need to give yourself a chance.

I've been neglecting my quiet time, time spent reading the bible. By some unknown resolve I decided to flip through my devotional booklet, to see what I had missed.

The title for Monday, the day of quiet heart aching, was "never alone"

... (the bible) tells us that nothing can keep us from God's love. In the "rubber meets the road" of real life, however, we struggle to see God's love for us when someone we love walks away. We may know in our heads that God loves us, but we don't know how to live it out, especially when a close relationship is severed. In their palpable absence, our heart asks: What about me made them leave? Our unanswered questions and swirling thoughts threaten to overwhelm us...

... Loneliness is real, and grieving doesn't mean we've lost faith (John 11:35). No matter what we go through, however, we must not lose sight of who loves us most - the One who promised to be there always (Hebrews 13:5)


Now, if I have been more diligent with my quiet time, I would have found comfort sooner than later.

But for now, better later than never.

**

Today, I'm gonna believe in love across oceans. Great love. Infinite love. Love that spans beyond the distance of oceans and time differences. I believe in hope, I believe in waiting, I believe in change, good change.

Some few months later my friends will fly back and they'll tell me how much they miss Singapore food and I will laugh at them and tell them that delicious cheap food makes up horrible uni life, not. Maybe they'll tell me how terrible uni is over there too, maybe not. But I will have stories, and I will tell them, how people sneezed into the back of my shirt on crowded buses, how karene and I walked in loops around ntu. We will laugh over melfunction.

Because bad days make for good stories, and these are a group of treasured friends, who has stayed with me despite me teasing them so so much and bearing with me even when I say their hair looks bimbotic, or when I call them fat, or when I render them speechless.

Because these are friends who laugh at me, and then give me advice.

And then continue to laugh at me :\

To the gang: <3