beautiful disaster

A week of holidays has chugged slowly by and I feel like I've been on holiday forever.

It's strange, I guess. You would think I'd have every reason to feel happy but I don't. Having holidays gives me more time to enjoy myself but so far I haven't been feeling that way. I've been going out with my friends and having time to dance and spend time with my family but the thing is that it's always been mingled with work because I have to study for blocks right after holidays, and that contaminates everything.

Something I've begun to realise about myself is that I have impossibly high standards. In my mind, the only time when I can be perfectly happy is when a certain number of favourable circumstances line up in the absence of unfavourable events. And that's ridiculous, as everyone knows. Because there will never be a perfect day like that, and if I continue to use that day as the yardstick I'll never be content, never be happy.

Paul says in Philippians, "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want." I remember flipping to this verse during school term and asking God to help me understand what it is to be content. I remember also counting down eagerly the weeks till school holidays. The irony of it all is that I've gotten where I want to be and there's still more I want. There always will be. I've got to stop somewhere.

I've been running so hard and so long this week. Every day it's been one thing after another: chapters to finish revising, friends to meet up with, ballet class to rush for, newspapers to read, tv to watch, QT to do. I quantify everything, measuring them in terms of how they will benefit me, and pack my days up into compact to-do lists until, I realised, lying in bed last night unable to sleep for the nth time this week, that I've made myself so busy I don't have time to think, and so I compensate that by daydreaming in the darkness.

I need to slow down, I really do, and most importantly, trust God a little more. But tell me how to make these abstract terms a reality. Maybe the beauty of it all is that I can't. I can only change the inside of me and wait for God to change the outside.

And so continues my walk with God.

jac was here with you 6/03/2005 10:49:00 am

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My Destiny
Psalm 46 (NASB)
God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change
And though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea;
Though its waters roar and foam,
Though the mountains quake at its swelling pride.

There is river whose streams make glad the city of God,
The holy dwelling places of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her, she will not be moved;
God will help her when morning dawns.
The nations made an uproar, the kingdoms tottered;
He raised His voice, the earth melted.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our stronghold.

Come, behold the works of the Lord,
Who has wrought desolations in the earth.
He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth;
He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two;
He burns the chariots with fire.
"Cease striving and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our stronghold.