someday maybe

had a conversation with one of my kids today...

boy: miss kam, maths is so hard! what was your worst subject? or your best subject?
me: er i don't know... i got all As in primary schcool
boy: so good! what school you go?
me: oh i went to this school, same as you
boy: har. then what secondary school you go
me: raffles
boy: then after that?
me: also raffles
boy: but then raffles is the very good that one right?
me: mhm
boy: so good one, i sure cannot go
me: it never hurts to try right?
boy: cannot one lah, all my subjects so lousy.


i was mulling over this convo on the way home today - wish that i could've told him that his worth isn't in his grades or in what school he gets into... wish i could've told him that his worth comes from his creator - and that his creator loves him, that he isn't a mistake even if he's failing school, that he is made for something great. after all, i never believed i would amount to anything even though i got all straight As and went to good schools.

honestly... only Jesus matters...

only by grace

i was humbled this week and awed at God's favour in my life - i was running to class (cos i left my kids alone to get some stuff from the staffroom tt i forgot) and a girl said hi to me. I vaguely registered the 'hi' but i actually didn't know her =/ oops. then i overheard this as i continued speeding past...

friend: who's that?
girl: i just said hi to my favourite teacher

like... omg i can't remember her name and i'm her fav teacher??? i'm guessing it must have been from last year's 'Super Relief Teacher' experience where i taught every single class in the morning session as an internal relief cos they didn't have a class to give me.

but. seriously... THIS MUST BE GOD.

you know you're loved when...

someone gets you free coffee!!! haha.

http://weheartit.com/entry/14449151/via/tiatyra

well that's what Jesus got me today. i went to starbucks instead of getting bubble tea (prompting?) then realised that my friend sent me a starbucks promo while i was in the queue! one for one coffee+cupcake set =) so i got my drink to tide me through the marking... a drink to tide me through tmr... and a yummy cupcake to top it off.

Life Cycles

i've been on this topic for quite some time in science... life cycles - how life just keeps repeating and growing and repeating

so now i've a penchant for linking things with arrows ⇒ like so

anyway... today i was just thinking about responsibility (mainly cos i just received news of increased responsibility recently)... and i can't wrap my mind around it. i'm just so underserving of the position. i'm new, noob, make blunder upon blunder... yet here i am experiencing grace upon grace

and here it is, represented with arrows:

i prioritise rest in God ⇒ God increases me ⇒ people see and increase responsibilities ⇒ i just have to prioritise rest in Jesus' finished work cos i can't cope ⇒ God increases me ⇒ people see and increase responsibilities ⇒ i just have to prioritise rest in Jesus' finished work cos i can't cope ⇒ God increases me ⇒ people see and increase responsibilities ⇒ i just have to prioritise rest in Jesus' finished work cos i can't cope

so awesome.

i do wonder

today as i was finishing up work (or packing up to bring work home lol) i had a random thought:

i'm really not very much good at anything but studying

and then a secondary thought:

i wasn't THAT great at studying... yeah i'm smart, but so are the people i grew up with 

hmm... so come to think of it... what exactly am i good at?? defo not teaching... i'm still as noob as it gets.

.
.
.

i guess i should just become good at depending on God.

eyes on me

"EYES ON YOU!"

at least that's what i've trained my kids to say.

i keep encountering this problem in class - i give out a worksheet, and everyone gets busy writing their name, looking at the questions, and then i get at least 10 questions of the same kind, all asking 'how to do this teacher?' well. usually i try to preempt them... give out the worksheet, get their attention with 'eyes on me', give the instructions, go through a few examples... and then off they are on their own.

and i was just thinking on the way home that i'm probably like my kids when it comes to life. i hit a roadblock... and i spend all the time trying to figure out a way to solve it, pull my hair out... and maybe, eventually, ask God 'how to dooo? what do i do next?' ... God's probably like me on the other end, saying 'eyes on me' but i'm too preoccupied to notice. and He just repeats that and waits (with much more patience than i have in class) and waits till i finally look up and away from the 'problems on my desk' and he can finally guide me through the process till everything is solved.

hmm.

my current occupation

lol. that's probably the opinion of my students... 'why is there always work for us to do??'


that said, i have a few plastic boxes of THIS on my table at work

cool? the kids get to bring em home and grow them into beetles to learn about the life cycle. this part of the education system i absolutely love. though i must say the mealworms shit a lot and are smelly and take up space on my table =P

Lord help me be an educator, a leader, a mentor... not that dude who goes into class and lectures boredom cos it's in the syllabus.

the end of 'hell week'

i have survived the first week of school... and even manage to nua the whole day away today =)
part of this rest was spent watching fireproof and one line of the theme song caught my attention

"love is peace in the middle of a war"

maybe everyday at school is a battlefield... being a teacher is like firefighting
but Christ in me the hope of glory - my peace in the storm

here it is again.
the time to look ONLY to JESUS
and say that the country i'm in doesn't matter
the people i'm surrounded by do not dictate who i am
the amount of work i need to do doesn't matter
the amount of time i have to do that work doesn't matter
how i perform DOESN'T MATTER

Lord teach me to not get caught up in the busyness of life. this should be where i'm at everyday

heart matters

saw this on fbook and thought it was quite cool. we all identify with that kind of sentiment once in a while right?
but well. without the heart... then there's no real reason for living is there? everything would be emotionless and sian. (i say this but i'm still struggling with mine on a daily basis)


on a side note, i was totally absolutely floored at school today - and not in a good way
2012 is looking to be a challenging work year: last class (ALL THREE CORE SUBJECTS OMG), challenging kids (thank God i'm the co-form teacher instead of the form), english department (a very busy department!), staff welfare committee, the usual CCA stuff

man. Lord. help me see that the giants are my bread... and that Your grace is sufficient for me, Your strength made perfect in my weakness (heck. everything that's got to do with work is a weakness as i see it)

[edit] department's changed... just so the info on the web is correct lol [/edit]

simply worship

this home-alone for a week thing is rather liberating

suddenly it's just me and God.... no more hiding cos the parents might just choose an unfortunate moment to walk in/ ask me to do something in which case i'll have to discreetly wipe away the traces of my communion with God and go on pretending that life's cool and i've got it all together

nah. i really don't have it altogether at all... and i'm finally ready to admit it to myself. worship, cry, pray, disintegrate, whatever.




hello Daddy... i'm home now. sorry i ran away.

i'm not busy... i'm just in hiding

hey Lord, where are you? i need to be swept up and away and be lost (and found) in You

i still haven't done my christmas shopping!

rather... i've thought about doing christmas shopping but i dunno who to buy things for at the moment aside from the parents #epicfail

alamak. that kinda shows how dry i really am, how i haven't thought about other people and have no real leading to bless anyone. oopsie.

less than 10 pages into this book i find...

"As a result, I grew up with serious feelings of rejection, fear, depression, anxiety, hopelessness, painful loneliness, and a sadness that planted a perpetual lump in my throat. It was the kind of lump you get when you have a constant ache in your heart and you must continually choke back a lifetime of uncried tears. you have kept them back for so long that you know they have become a torrential flood building up behind a dam. you learn to keep that dam from breaking at all costs because, if it ever did, it might destroy everything in its path. The kind of tears i'm talking about can only be released in the presence of unconditional love and acceptance. And where on earth can you go to find that?"


wow. so perfectly eloquent and real - and that depth of emotion that i cannot don't know how to release, except in the presence of God (which incidentally is the answer to that last question)

a few pages later there's this bit which describes the dryness i've been facing this last month or so (well not all of it, so i'm taking out snippets)


" On the outside it looked as if I had nothing to be concerned about. But on the inside I felt paralyzed to the point of not being able to do much of anything. And I had so much I needed to be doing. Good things. Things i have always wanted to do. yet i couldn't bring myself to do any of them. I had not been like this since i became a believer.

I had lost my vision for the future and couldn't seem to regain it no matter how I tried. I felt useless, aimless, and alone. Even despairing at times. I couldn't see beyond the day, and the day was a struggle to get through... It seemed as though I were being squeezed in a vise and then wrung out like a rag to dry in the heat of the day. I felt trapped by my own blessings - by the answers to my own prayers. i wanted to be anywhere but where i was, if that meant I could escape the misery. And this was a hard place to be because I had so many responsibilities and deadlines that going anyplace except to my laptop would have been criminal."

the answer to that she found to that predicament... and that i've been discovering this week...
the Lord said 'Simply worship Me'




kudos to the author being used by God...
and kudos to sam who forced me to talk, caused me to cry, reminded me that i'm loved till i had the emotional capacity to say 'i love you' again... it's such a blessing to call you my friend =)


excerpts by Stormie Omartian
The prayer that changes everything - The hidden power of praising God

my name means love

so i'm all about Christmas! cos Christmas is about LOVE and GIVING and the GREATEST GIVER OF ALL! and in the midst of this i'm still learning to love myself for who i am rather than what i do

i'm me as God has created me to be
- whether or not i am visible/ am mopeing at home/ am singing and sounding horrible/ am quiet and uncomfortable/ am doing crazy things/ am running an event
- and i'm loved, whether or not i feel it.

and i just wanna to appreciate all the opportunities that God provides to love other people and to be a part of all these CRAZY THINGS

like yesterday's Christmas party:

cutting

drawing

sticking

climbing

pretending to climb?

and God was so very PRESENT there =)

i feel strangely depressed

brought the mother and grandma to have a go on the singapore flyer today and got 2 lovely photos out of it!

but as the title says... well...

i think it must be that time of the month again.

floating priorities

the school hols for teachers are here and i've finally been able to rest! (albeit enforced cos i'm ill =.=)

anyway the feeling i've been getting as i've been resting is of someone having toiled and climbed up this mountain towards some goal... and then having reached that, to turn back and see... well. this.

not that i've climbed out of destruction, but that i've forgotten about what's really important... and left some important relationships behind (feels like i've left them behind to die =P)

what's the point of throwing in all my time and effort? dunno.

i forgot my priorities... put work in first place - and i was consumed by my need to do it PERFECTLY and my inability to do so. but when it was all over, there was no sense of accomplishment, only an incomprehensible sense of loss, like i've forgotten something important... as if i was looking down the hill i climbed and seeing only the carnage of the relationships i didn't protect. so the last few weeks i kept looking at what was going on around me and wondering - why is it that they can have XYZ and i can't seem to let go

the something i forgot => GRACE GRACE
perfection was never mine to begin with - only mine to receive. and only Jesus can take first place in my life. here's to a new and growing revelation of that.

bubbles

i've was thinking about how my life has been in a bubble all these years. incidentally, bubbles is a nickname for one of my friends =P

first the home bubble
then primary, secondary, JC bubble
then the bubble of 'everything provided for' scholarship
the bubble of 'overseas singaporean in london'
and now it's back to the school bubble (just on the other side of the classroom)


anyhow i was thinking that i really don't know anything about the world and how it works. and that i've been too sheltered my whole life. maybe i've 'missed out' on life and really don't understand the world (i really don't understand myself, much less the world...), missed out on some opportunities that i never grabbed.

but by chance God's timing i listened to this sermon by Louie Giglio http://www.passioncitychurch.com/watch/#20111127
and i started thinking... in the God-perspective, it's the grace zone isn't it? Living where God has put you and living for what is right in front of you. so thank you Lord... for Your grace bubble encircling my life.

at work

where the rubber meets the road... i have fallen short

it's time for new growth and new revelation i guess.

to receive His grace and His righteousness... and stop the tears. haha it's been awhile since i've been this pained - and by my own doing too.

for though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again,
but the wicked are brought down by calamity.
~Proverbs 24:16

remind me Lord... Your grace is sufficient for me

i am... nervous

i swear...
every step i take when it comes to ministry... whether in church/ school/ family/ friends... brings me one step further from my comfort zone

my spirit is overjoyed
and my flesh screams... i dont have what it takes - not the experience/ the connections... nothing. i'm nervous... fearful sometimes, cos i've nothing to cling to

but Jesus...
and that's all it takes... cos He who finishes the work gets all the glory