A Place for Tears

On 8/7/10, as Zichun and I were travelling to prayer meeting, there in the sky was the most solid rainbow I have ever seen in my life. It reminded me of the rainbow in The Golden Key. With one foot planted over the Kembangan MRT and the other stretching to East Coast, it was imposing and majestic… and the first rainbow I’ve seen in Singapore that I could see the complete arc of! I also noticed it was a double rainbow, with a faint arc outside the main one.

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The past two years of my life have been a major shift into full ‘work’ gear. After the emotional roller-coaster of university which ‘toughened me up’ and made me feel I still had to toughen myself further – and what with starting work and having to steel oneself to working in close proximity with suffering / disease / death everyday, I’ve developed quite a lot of the armour that most adults, especially working adults, not to say doctors, have – ‘toughness’, doggedness, cynicism – the need not to feel so much so that one is able to swing into action when things need to get done, and try not to bat an eyelid when things go wrong, the better to be more efficient and get through the day without wasting too much emotion on antagonistic personalities, bureaucratic red tape or the personal tragedies of other people so as to conserve more energy for the next work day. The first year of work, also known as HOship, went by in a blur of 12-hour work days and up to 6 or 7 overnight calls a month, meaning at least 30-hour shifts on little or no sleep. That’s the essential ‘trial by fire’ that every HO has to go through – to toughen you up for the rest of your career and ‘burn all the dross’ away, in the area of work performance My personal life, for a while during HO-ship, was an irritant to me as well, and I preferred to keep emotion out of my life entirely so as not to interfere with my ability to work.

So, during this time, had I been praying much / going to church / reading the Bible?

Praying, yes, but not much dedicated time to praying or time spent deepening my relationship with God (let’s just say that my prayers were a lot more of the ‘desperate plea’ kind and not so much of the ‘quality time’ kind). Going to church – not so much, considering I had to round on a majority of weekend days (not to mention the weekend calls, etc). Reading the Bible – almost none, sad to say.

I told my mother I felt I had nothing to talk to God about during HO-ship. There was so much tragedy every day, not just in the sickness itself but in all the social issues that one runs into in hospitals: neglect, lack of love, poverty, homelessness – while it did not shake my belief in God, it made me feel that it was a bit awkward to talk to Him heh. Having been a skeptic when I was young, I’d been through all the questions of ‘why is there suffering in the world’ etc ad infinitum before I even became a Christian, so at least these questions didn’t bother me at this stage in my life. However, seeing all the suffering, in practice, made me just feel like sealing myself up so that I would not be bothered by it, the better to be more efficient to help the individuals who were suffering. I didn’t know how to talk to God about it. In church we hear so much about God’s wish to heal – and then one goes back to the hospital and sees all the ill people. It’s hard to see where God fits in sometimes. That’s why I say it felt awkward to talk to God – it’s feels like “what’s going on man!”. (I do know the theoretical answers lah, I know how to answer myself. Just takes some time to get used to reality.) It was better to just do my best for the patients, because I believed that when I did my best I was helping them the most.

(Of course, it’s not just the tragedy, in working life it’s important to be ‘tough’ also so that one doesn’t waste emotion on all the sheer frustration, stupidity and inefficiency that one encounters more frequently than tragedy!)

Besides, having to be ‘tough’ in itself put a kind of distance between me and God. I was doing my best to convert all my ‘weak emotions’ into practical, businesslike love: channeling all feeling into helpful action, so as not to be inefficient. Yet this seemed to be at odds with being vulnerable before God and waiting on Him (‘waiting’? I seemed to have no time to ‘wait’..) And it seemed that all the rest of the world was spending its time and emotions on very small things.. people (I mean both in and out of hospital) would get worked up and horrified at all sorts of things that weren’t even the real tragedies. When you’re trying to be ‘tough’ it’s difficult to identify with weakness and it’s difficult to be able to show real loving Love. It’s also difficult to love God.

OK, then the story changes again, since I became an MO two months ago. Life has become better and there’s more breathing space – for God, for Star Wars – which I didn’t think about AT ALL during HOship – and some recreation (at last.. haha) and for reading up. Am still trying to find a healthy balance among the above

Actually, in retrospect, I think there IS only one way to get through HOship, and that’s to do anything that it takes to survive, so the ‘being tough’ was probably a phase that was necessary albeit not healthy if extended even after one has the luxury to be less ‘tough’. So now that HOship is finally over, it’s time to work out the following questions because now one finally has the breathing space to do so:

1. How to ‘run the race’ and ‘beat my body to make it my slave’ in a way that allows God to be in control of the race rather than me; how to study hard to be competent and be diligent and always improving in my field and still have time for God. (actually that’s not so hard.. it just means cutting down on Star Wars)
2. How to toughen myself up spiritually without allowing my ‘being tough’, in a worldly sense, to compromise my relationship with God.

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Anyway, in the prayer meeting that we went for on the day of the rainbow, the pastor prayed for breakthroughs, so I prayed for a breakthrough for myself in the area which I’ve described above (I guess I do have insight into my areas of weakness and where I need to be prayed for lah..) I felt that God was telling me that there was no need to be so ‘tough’ and it was time to let Him get close to me again by allowing myself to be vulnerable and to care more for the things that I see are wrong in the world. Of course it’ll take time.. having spent the last 10 years trying to convert myself from a ‘useless dreamer’ into an ‘practical doctor’ (‘O where are you going? said reader to rider’, yes thank you Auden and Yeats) – I’m still trying to find a balance. Then at the end of the service the pastor, who had also been told about the rainbow, mentioned that the rainbow is a sign of God’s everlasting kindness and His promise to be there for us. Someone gave a word about how God was reminding us that there is a place in our life for tears, it doesn’t matter if at times everything seems to be going wrong, but through the tears God will always be there like the rainbow is there. (Ok those weren’t the exact words, but that was the spirit of the thing).

So that was God’s amazing message to me, which He put a physical sign of in the sky for me to see so that I will always remember His promise of everlasting kindness

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In the days since then, I’ve learnt a few things during quiet time. Over the past month or so I’ve been reading 1&2 Corinthians and now 1&2 Samuel and Philippians (some of it from following the 40-day fast book). I won’t elaborate on everything here but the gist is coming together now -

Some areas that I need to work on:
- not look out for my own interests (haha.. my interests meaning Star Wars…!!!!) only but those of others / Christ (Phil 2:21 – “For everyone looks out for his own interests, not those of Jesus Christ” / Phil 2:4 – “Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others’)
- relearn sacrifice (in 2010 God has blessed me so much with a full and happy and very complete life that I realise I’m so comfortable I have to remind myself that it’s an honour to suffer for God! heh) … even though I guess for now the biggest sacrifice I’m called to make may be the very simple act of spending less time on Star Wars!
Phil 1:29 – “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him.”
- to keep a place for tears.. and pray and feel more for those around me and the painful issues in the world.

So I hope that the year to come will be one in which I re-fix my eyes on Christ and His aims.

If it were left completely up to me, my own aims would be:

1. study hard and be a good doctor
2. draw and practise diligently towards my dream of being a good artist
3. spend more time with loved ones and friends
4. run, cycle and swim more and become fitter and complete the marathon in 5 hours this time!

I think God would like me to make sure, though, that I put Him above all those priorities… I don’t think the two are in conflict though. But the aims of God are greater.. and as part of those aims I would also hope to become more loving, gentle, womanly &c. And learn not to be afraid of being weak but trust that God will be my strength.

There’s a lot to do!

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