On call for life

I got woken up from my stupor at 0450 this morning, by my persistently ringing home phone.

... though not in time to pick up the call.

in an attempt not to be melodramatic and harrassing potential callers at 5am in the morning, the next hr as i lie in bed in suboptimal consciousness, i prepared myself for the worst.

parents acutely ill? parents robbed and hacked down and police called? the state of no subsequent calls and their switched off mobiles suggested otherwise. oversea relatives acutely ill? oversea relatives dead? more plausible. my mum still holding everything together? my mum not holding everything together and having a meltdown? the fact that she attempted to call at 0450, makes a meltdown more likely. and not hard to imagine my dad trying to give a spill of his insights and ineffectually convincing her in her meltdown why she should not be melting down.

end of the day, my ability to plan despite not fully alert and oriented surprised even myself. by 6am i had it all worked out, including what do i say to my clinical director over the phone requesting urgent non-paid leave, which travel agency to go to first for tickets, and how do i manage my own psychogenic polydipisia while grieving and distressed for the upcoming 11hr plane trip.

then i called parents.

dad awake.

me calmly: "what's up?"
dad: " huh? i didn't call you!"

PHEW.

now i am drained. and overcooked my oats in the microwave which splattered everywhere and needed cleaning. an upcoming day without endorphins to subacutely sort out subacute people's subacute problems.

it came to me, that i am oncall 24/7, whether oncall for work or not, and subconsciously i've accepted it ages ago. i am certain many others in a similar situation are not as neurotic and live on thoughts of the best not the worst. but maybe, like that occasional brainless colleague who did not realise he/she were on call and got caught in a shock but still ended up working a reasonable shift,  oncall mode, at the end of the day, probably doesn't really have any great deal of benefits.

but it is impossible to undo the realisation, once you became aware of the oncall status. 

but at least for now, not need to call the clinical director, and psychogenic polydipisia not resurfacing.

not yet.

Lord have mercy. and be on site for me.

9, 10. 11/10

9. Saiai

theme song for Yogisha X no Kenshin. I guess I don't have to say much more.
...and Masha sang this in SH as his first performance out of japan. ^__^
though...comparing to the Masha-only version (with him kissing a caucasian obasan in the MV...囧), I like the KOH+ version more....
kou-chan struggled with it, but i still prefer to hear her voice singing this song.



10. Tokyo

again, one of my old favourites... that didn't make it to masha's best collection album last year.
just really liked it, maybe its the MV. although a lot more new and good ones followed, it never failed to stir something in me.
really hope Masha can sing it more often during live concerts.




11. Lets be a family
comparing to the other 10, not particular excited about this song but... I really want to give it a mention because of what Masha said about his journey of writing the song:

"trust" does not equate "understanding". i personally believe, when I trust someone else, the responsibility entirely rests with me. It is I who wanted to trust you--you carry no responsibility. To me there is no such thing as "being betrayed", because I myself wanted and was willing to trust another person. When one starts to think one understands another, the thoughts of "being betrayed" would often arise. The presumption of "I understand you" is often the most frightening, whether it be between friends, colleagues, bf/gf, or family members...

it was eye-opening, and immensely humbling. i am so thankful that i came across these words before formally starting the trade.
a trade with the ever present temptation to believe, that as i advance in it i would somehow hold the power of superior understanding and knowledge of others.
these words slapped in the face, and kept my feet firmly to the ground.
...and i love Masha for such anchoring insights.

more from the SH film festival~

beautiful Masato-sama was in SH too~

so angry with the presenter who when realising he could not pronounce Masato-sama's name, just completely ignored him.
so unprofessional. seriously if you don't have the capacity to hold an international film festival... don't hold one.

my life just took a busy turn recently, with Masha recently joining both FB and weibo.
...after he came bk from the SH film festival realising how popular he was even outside of Japan.
...and his FB updates are now bilingual...
*faint in happiness*
so now a large part of my day is spent...checking updates and liking and commenting~
so distracting, i hope i can still go back to work alright.

and Masha says...about SHnese girls:
The weather was really good in SH. I saw lots of girls wearing mini skirts exposing their thighs. very good skin, and long legs. I wish i can come back and visit SH more often.

~not making this up~
~you sleazy ojisan~

lol.

and absolutely heart this photo:

7-8

Masha...
first time I heard you speaking English. you are not bad AT ALL. despite the limited vocab and the hesitancy, you spoke accurately in a very natural way, and without much of an accent.
and..."I need to concentrate." you still get anxious before your shows... even if it's just one song... in china.
and your new song for SK-II was awesome.
and you are on facebook now...
and you are on weibo too... you are really going international.
and i hope you had a nice time in SH. I just realised i shop for tea at the same place in SH as you(joyous!).
and I will drink more pu'er tea like you now. ^__^


7. Phantom
Zankyou is prob my fav Masha album. just the title itself stirs so much emotion in me, and there are a lot of songs from Zankyou i really like (incl Keshin).
Out of this big collection of likes, phantom is prob the most unforgettable.
the lyrics were not uplifting. similar time as Keshin so i do wonder if he could be mildly depressed during that period of time.
but then... watching Phantom at Mt Inasa 09...
it was breathtaking, and to me, the very highlight of my fav Masha concert.



8. Good Luck
i've been playing the same CD in my car for half a yr now, and have grown so used to listening to Good Luck--
--on my way to the hospital in the early hrs of a morning during oncalls.
a nice simple old song, that quietens the heart.
it descalates me quickly.
so that i then have the capacity to go and descalate someone else.

lol what are you looking at?

and you are in Shanghai....
and i wish i was there... :(

now time for withdrawal...

soon after i voiced my faithlessness in korean dramas...
the whole last week, i fell in love with Queen InHyun's Man.

once in a blue moon one finds a korean drama with characters of normal intelligence,
once in a blue moon one finds a korean drama not insightlessly schizophrenic,
once in a blue moon one finds a korean drama that despite a strong love line, all efforts have been made to tell a good story.

i still remember how i abandoned it after 1st episode, thinking its mere palace politics + modern day messy love triangle.

.... none of that. i am so glad i watched it.
and now seriously withdrawing.

it ended well too... i was preparing for the worst...
and the amount of gossip about the actors after that last episode~~*faint in joy*

then i clicked open this MV...
1st impression: gosh the song is awfully familiar.
but...took me more than 5 secs to realise it is a remake of Masha's "sunflower".
i should be ashamed of myself... i will go and self-examine in remorse.
but... can't stop watching(and listening) now ^__^

the randoms

haven't found many gd jap dramas to follow this season, so after years of not watching korean drama, I ended up following two recently.

...confirm for me again that korean dramas are overall insightless and do nothing but encourage avoidance of one's own responsibilities.

...and the ones that try to be deep and meaningful are more intolerable than the brainless romantic ones.

the King 2 Hearts so easily grabbed my attention at the start, to the point i thought korean drama was finally having a breakthrough with this one. sadly, storytelling just spiralled straight down the atrocious end... i still find ha jiwon & lee seungki really brilliant actors, and the chemistry between them was amazing(when they are actually 9 yrs apart) such a waste of gd acting...

Rooftop Prince on the other hand is typical silly korean romance from the start, but because its overtly silly, my expectation was not high. music was nice, costume was pretty, suspense was kept, and there was a nice wrap-up in the last episode, that made some basis sense.

my expectations of dramas these days are so low... as long as something exhibits some sort of commonsense i will label it a gd drama.

now both are finished for over a week. there is no withdrawal symptoms, I don't miss them at all.

so, bk to jap, still following Legal High. Masato-sama (who usually play meek and mild ojisans) is so different and brilliant this time. love the pressured speech.

lunch today is prob the best lunch i've had in a while. new bubble tea place in chaddy called "Bubble Cup Signature" (how lame). but 40% off this wkend, and 50% sugar tasted 50% sugar. owner was a 40+ anxious fob obasan who looked so overtly stressed out about everything during the brief period i observed her.

i like her, i think thats easily me in 20 yrs time.

then found food in the food court. spicy fish with tofu... it came in a giant bowl and though not too authentic, was full of chilli and peppery goodness and thoroughly warmed up my GI system.

shop owner was a 60+ ugly fob ojisan who dressed young, but for some reason his glasses and his long puffy messy hair and the way he moved around reminded me A LOT of Masha.

so, satisfaction on all fronts. XD i am so going bk to that place to eat next time i am in chaddy.

(if anyone finds it grossly disturbing that i check out random sexagenerians in shopping centres... im sorry.)

4-6

4. YOU

There are songs you listen to... a hundred times over...
...it then goes on replay in the car and gets completely ignored... for a thousand times more...

but the one day you again pay attention to it...
it is as beautiful, as the first time you listened.

my very first Masha song.



5. The Hill of Promise

The first time I watched a live performance video of Masha's was "Heaven".
It was an eye-opening experience for me (who back then was still meek and mild lol). to cut a long story short, I was very scarred.
but fortunately by then i was already won over by his insightful interviews....
so at least he didnt get blacklisted as a silly sleazy ojisan.

and then the warmth of this video cured my PTSD.
i initially thought his look for that concert was horrid: silly puffy hair... and those red pants... 囧 but after watching him sing this song, it instantly became one of my favourites.
and the horrid look became endearing too.

Masha sang the same song at Mt Inasa twice... once for his 30th and the next for his 40th.
The brilliance of the 40th performance, and the complete lack of deliberate efforts to impress--
simply made me feel...
growing old and ugly, is really not such a bad thing.



6. Hotaru

this song kind of grew on me over time.
I always found it nice... along the same line of "Hatsukoi" and "Let's be a family", simple... love songs... nice, but nothing really stood out for a while...

then i can't even remember why or when... it made its way to the favourite list...
maybe its the music...
maybe its Yoriko Yoshitaka's smiles in the MV... she's a bit of a bad girl among that grp of mediocre upright young actresses... but i was always fond of her... even before seeing her in that MV.
maybe its the lyrics...
Where were you before you found me?
What kind of world were you living in?
Who did you love before?
Were you hurt by someone?
Have you been crying for a long time?
...strangely steadfast and settling.

3/10

Ikiteru Ikiteku

This song made it to my top 3 straight after it came out...
brilliantly honest lyrics, plus cute happy song and MV for the doraemon movie...
I really dont have an immune system to this combination.

now let me just take a break from the song itself and admit to my own pathology-- that i believe in this world there are two categories of people, for one of which, the pull of non-existence will always be stronger than existence.
...regardless of the amount of worldly gains (or as we christians much prefer to call it... blessings.)

i hopelessly belong to that category, and hopelessly hope, that such a category do exist.

I've liked masha for this many years now... and still i've underestimated him. He who's so comfortably authentic, so successful and well respected, so certain of his purposes in life... I have not actually imagined him to also be someone who sees "existence" itself as some form of overwhelming hardship regardless of its many associated gains...

...and somewhat desperately hanging on to an external purpose to justify carrying on such hardship.

That's right, I am not only living for myself
I live so that the genes from hundreds and thousands years back could be praised
With this life, I will live now. Today we should live on.

i am in tears watching him singing those lyrics in such positivity.
ganbatte to myself too...

2/10

Beautiful Day

This has been my fav masha song for years, until takenover by Keshin. initially i was in love with just the song... until i watched the adorable MV and became more in love with that... then a bit later found the lyrics translation... then this song became perfect.
although for some strange reason, the pessimistic inappropriateness of Keshin grabbed me just that tiny bit more... XD

it really gave me the strength to survive internship that year:

the thongs you bought on your way
didn't look great but maybe just right
things that embarrassed you, things that you could do nothing about
today is the day to accept them all

tomorrow we should live on
though lonely, but we are not alone
everything happened today seemed "just right"
maybe a miracle
Beautiful day.

It is one of Masha's "non-popular" songs, prob didnt do well in the charts. i was not very happy with masha (and decided i wont even like him so much anymore) for at least 7-8/12 when i realised with horror he didnt include Beautiful Day in his 20yr best collection album... >_<
...but then he cut his hair and composed a nice new song and did a beautiful therapeutic mv
and all else no longer mattered... XD

i like masha who did Keshin, and i like masha who did Beautiful Day, but i adore masha who did both Keshin and Beautiful Day.

1 out of 10

ok time to release some tension.

havent gotten around to find a violent shooting/killing computer game yet. (am i so degraded that i need a violent computer game? @_@ noooooo... )

hence, still in denial, but now, this will do.

have been wanting to compile a masha fav 10 list for some time.

i think it was really just waiting for 生きてる　生きてく to come out and complete the picture~ XD

i will start. 1/10:

the top masha song for me is Keshin. It has a somewhat socially and culturally inappropriate MV that I often shy away from admitting it is my favourite masha song. (2 unfortunate friends danielle and ning are still very scarred... from being forced to watch it by me...)

its been a few years, i still love the song, and the mv too. maybe the mv even a bit more than the song itself. for a few years now i have been obsessed with getting clothes in that shade of blue. (the lastest addition to the wardrobe being a cardigan in that colour 2 mths ago) dreamed of having a bookshelf in that colour too.

so, quite far from getting sick of it.

and, i just discovered its actually a reasonable tension releaser for me.

if interested, can check out the rabbit head and the squatting toilet.

Sherlock

i've been having lots of vivid dreams lately... quite a few nightmares included. apart from stating the obvious that i am having more REM sleep... i do wonder if this is in some disturbing way, PTSD by proxy.

my patients these days are largely balls of anxiety, somewhat in my own league.

the worst of those nightmares occurred 2 nights ago.
i dreamt...
--that sherlock was doing evil things.
what was worse...
--that sherlock was BL.

lol

to salvage my fav childhood hero from the danger of being permanently ruined, i am finding solace in the original canon and gd old granada sherlock with JB and his manic depression...
that dose of old fashioned eccentric decency really did its trick.
and thank goodness, and thank goodness again, there were... no gay jokes.

even without sherlock... 5mins with an old-fashioned kind-hearted grandpa-like watson sensei just warms the heart. ^__^
i still cant make up my mind which of david burke and edward hardwicke was the better watson for JB... the styles were really different, but they really seemed to have morphed into each other so well.
but maybe i am just biased, about both of them.

when i first started this blog 7 years ago i then just discovered the poem "221B":

Coin of ours can never ransom
Years now prisoner to Time:
Roars the bus, where once the hansom
Trotted on the trial of crime.
No more now a Stradivarius
Played by fingers long and fleet
Sounds the dirge of plans nefarious
Foiled by him of Baker Street.

Could we, with an eye clairvoyant,
Find the dear remembered door,
Which, with trembling, many a client
(Fair or famous) stood before?
Here it was that Roylott forced an
Entry, like some savage bear;
Here, bright eyes of Mary Morstan
Fell to Watson's ardent stare.

Were a time-restoring charter
Granted by the grace of Heaven,
Who would not this tired age barter
For a night of 'eighty-seven,
When, as fog through pane and curtain
Softly grey comes creeping in,
Wise-immortal-strange and certain-
Sherlock plays his violin.

*hearts* then, and *hearts* still now.

Jeremy Lin... and the rest

i had another argument with my mum regarding the current business. she's deeply hurt about how deeply ungrateful and twisted i am, and has fallen into one of her dark silent moods which she hasnt been doing for a little while. but hopefully, this can put some breaks on her urges in the future... and hopefully not work the other way round.

it seems that I just turned my back to reality a little and now the whole world is crazy about this Jeremy Lin thing, well, especially the Asians abroad population. i know the mainland chinese population would very much like to as well... but the fact that he's twnese made everything just slightly awkward(...which i think is quite a welcoming relief).

i've been finding it hard to rejoice about this brother in Christ's achievement, despite the fact that any of us happen to achieve anything on such scales being rarities, and despite basketball being the only sport i can understand and enjoy spectating. i've attempted hard to inspire myself with his testimonies... but... end of the day it lacks the personal touch i was desperately looking for in someone at such a unique position, and its really not deviating far from what comes off the usual church assembly line. you hear similar things being proclaimed by aunties healed of back spasms so that they could serve soup in the church soup kitchen without spilling, or girls of their menstrual pain so that they dont have to go through the traumatising process of popping a celebrex before P&W rehearsals.

but maybe... such testimonies are exactly what christians should be doing. and i am just as savage as any fervent pagans for viewing them in such flippant ways.

i have an almost pathological aversion to the never failing connection between God's grace and "success" in all facets of life, and the distress and discomfort we invariably have to go through when we are being perceived as failing, that the christian and secular world are surprisingly, frightfully similar in meting out such perceptions.

its tough being cancerous. Its probably impossible being a christian, and cancerous. a melodramatic faith performance would be expected of you. anything short of a miraculous healing will likely result in bitter disappointment from, if not yourself, maybe the most of your social network, and especially the ones who likely will not even be much grieved by your departure.

Has JL's Christian views only become worthy up there on the pedestals because he succeeded in the secular world? and all his 3-pointers now automatically a form of somewhat christian triumph? and what if he becomes injured? then fails in the volatile professional sporting world? what then? we wait till his next surge of success to have the heart and gladness to say to the world that there is again good evidence that God is among us?

i love my list of favourite ojisan christian writers. not only that they are able write insightfully sympathetic things... every time i see an unimpressive photo of them i have the sense of comfort that they could just be the driver in the car behind me horning angrily as i doze off at the red light, or the grumbling customer in chinese restaurant after finding half a cockroach in his stir-fry. Strangely, thats the kind of ppl that earns my respect most easily.

i probably would be frightened working with bosses who like to motivate underlings to become superhumans or love machines, but i will have great respect for one who despite objective evidences of his/her successes, christian or secular, would through professional interactions, be able to reveal to me that he/she is just as painfully and ineffectually human as any other sons of Adam. and any chance of "love" or success, arises only from that.

and that, certainly is not a Christian exclusive ability. reflecting back, majority of the past registrars who managed to shape and inspire my work philosophy(...in their variable shapes and forms, and entirely not because of how perfect or respectable they were), were non-christians.
and i can only thank God for their presence and how much God has blessed the path of this life through them.

and how can i forget that my one and only role model of many years is a non-christian? certainly wish i can continue to learn many things from FM, and he could continue to be that one and only role model for me, for many years to come.

Mark Galli writes many redeeming words, and those were exactly the ones i had wanted to hear this week:
"We are too often tempted to justify our existence on this planet by doing something "significant," by "making a difference in the world," so that we can go to bed at night feeling good about ourselves. But the Christian message is about a God who judges and loves us in our insignificance—that is, when our selfcenteredness has sabotaged our ability to make any fundamentally sound contribution to our lives or to others'. This God speaks to us the frank word that not only do we not make a difference in the world, day to day we threaten to make the world worse by our sin. But in Jesus Christ, he has judged and forgiven us through the Cross, and now he uses even our insignificant efforts to witness to his coming work in Jesus Christ."

I recall an interesting occurrence with a pastor last weekend. He visits our church often, and over the years has said many great things. now that same wkend i happened to have upgraded my mobile to a smartphone for the very first time, and really... had very little idea how to use it, even in terms of making a call.

so as the pastor shared about his afflicted physical health in the last few months and how he was telling his treating doctor how dare anyone to suggest operating and removing anything from his body, i discovered with horror that my new phone was telling me that it didnt have a sim card and i could make emergency phone calls only.

i certainly wonder sometimes why i go through thoughtless panic at the most inappropriate times just like then i became paranoid of evil spidermen dropping from the church ceiling to attack me and my phone's only able to make emergency calls. (wait it can still make emergency calls? even if say the church... really... has evil spidermen hiding on its roof...)

so i sat there, insightlessly and panickingly fumbled and prodded and shook my new phone hoping to make it work again, and listened on, of the pastor launching into numerous attacks about the medical profession, of one about a medical friend of his, previously talented in evangelism now disappointedly just wanted to focus on his career, of another about how MBBS truly stands for something silly and ludicrous, of how all doctors are arrogant except for one (which i suspect is the only one he knows personally from this church)...

retrospectively i wondered... if the fumbling and preoccupation with the phone was really about delusional evil spidermen, or it was really a subconscious passive aggressive defense mechanism that someone shouting such ill-informed abuses from the pulpit really has nothing positive to offer to my spirtual life and hence not worth paying attention to?

i dont know how obvious my panicked movements in my usual low-profile back row position was, but towards the end of that sermon he related about how he once yelled at another church member of his for playing with a smartphone during his preaching, only later to discover that the person was checking bible verses and taking sermon notes on his phone.

it would be interesting to know whether the story was told by coincidence or on purpose, but i guess i wouldnt have the chance to know. at least, i was obviously prodding and shaking my phone, looked nowhere near bible flipping nor notes typing.

and i was unremorseful. as the church was dismissed and the pastor stood at the back shaking everyone's hand, i was still preoccupied about my spidermen, with head bowed and fingers picking at the sim card slot of the phone, when he stretched his hand right into my face.

my memories of sermons are usually poor, but that one with its medical abuses and associated inappropriate phone behaviour, and that hand stretched right into my face stuck firm in my head. retrospectively i feel genuinely sorry for the old man afflicted with probably serious health issues and God knows what kind of emotional torment to the point that he could only release his stresses by attacking the medical profession from the pulpit.

and i sincerely hope he could claim some sort of victory rather than ran into the risk of offending his social network, if not himself.

yet i would have much more respect of him, if instead of what he said, he could stand there and tell the congregation frankly that he now really dislikes doctors overall because of the stresses and traumas some members of that profession may have inflicted on him.

now, no spidermen dropped from the church ceiling that day, and my phone miraculously recognised its sim card as soon as i left church and arrived at box hill central. I wonder still what kind of lessons God was trying to teach me through that ludicrous little episode...

but first i must have some self-control in not being delusional about spidermen, and learn to leave matters when its completely unnecessary to sort them out on the spot.

and, this, really, is not that hard.

My Father's Suitcase

It has been years, and this is still full of awesomeness. especially at this moment in time, it is more true than ever.

"So let me change the mood with a few sweet words that will, I hope, serve as well as that music. The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite question, is: Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but—as in a dream—can’t quite get to. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy. "

- from "My Father's Suitcase" by Orhan Pamuk

and to my own parents who have managed to make a living hell out of the precious time that really should be one's most relaxed and happy, which one really may not have another chance of in a lifetime.
thank you for being so destructive.
yet i fully understand why you come to such thoughts and actions, and could not help pitying you.

i only have my pen... not an impressive one... but i only have my pen.

mental state deterioration

we had a horrid run of 2 wks plus of absolutely impossible workload, and everyone (except pharmacist, God bless her~)expecting things to be done with the exact same efficiency as when ward was fully staffed... while refusing to offer any help and only adding to the stress.

i ended up in tears last friday at work (which i have not done since internship). mental state deteriorated since... saying nasty thoughtless things to ppl... then realising it... then mental state deteriorating even more.

and attending interviews in such burnt-out state... needing to say how passionate i am about my job... was a herculean effort.

however a conversation today redeemed me:

nurse: blah blah(patient)just said he wanted to kill his psychiatrist.
consultant (easy-going and happily married with 2 cute kids): I don't mind! Kill me, kill me now!! (in stressed-out tone of voice)

i asked her if she would like to spend sometime in HDU...囧

but that was redeeming.

before consultant left today, she forced me to take my afternoon off---
and i happily complied.

God is humorous

I finally caught up with my mentor today. Hardly saw her after neuro last yr. my gosh...even just half an hr of conversation was so...insightful,encouraging and to the point... just cleared my mind.
really therapeutic(didn't expect her to be so therapeutic after all!)... so glad I chose her at the start of the rotation, and stuck with her... even after being suggested multiple times by seniors re: there were things she should have done for you but did not/let me know if you want to change mentor blah blah blah...

I want to become a psychiatrist like her~~~~ *starry eyes*

and i come back to the ward to discover my pt out of nowhere changed her mind abt some major life decisions and unloaded it all onto me. God is humorous, but I freak out too easily and fail to appreciate His humour MOST OF THE TIME. or maybe I really should acknowledge there is no simple happy endings? ie. we really cannot fix pts and unrealistically think their lives might be sorted out "along the way"?
I have a long way to go... God help me.

今天重读完FOOTPRINTS后最想說的一句話：還是請祢把我抛下大海吧！

Ashes to Ashes

I have noted with some kind of a disturbing relief that I have finally become sick.
a long overdue swollen hurting throat, coryza, muscle aches, lethargy...
a sickness I have longed for 7 months ago, but never came at the time I wanted.
A time when I day by day felt I had drained all my motivation to push on for the next, and yet felt too guilty to take time off but prayed daily to become physically sick so I could legitimately rest from the daily trauma.

When I tried to think back to the past year, small and big things became so bright and shiny, that they glared into my eyes.
The seemingly endless desperation and failure ongoing from the start of the year, in stark contrast to the sheer joy and peace of the daily motions towards the end of it.

Maybe there are people around who deserve my apologies:
The poor friend who deserved a happy cozy farewell but instead witnessed me laughing hysterically as my car got scratched in the car park and wondered what really was going on.
The poor neighbours who were ready to call the police (its true!) after hearing me screaming and crying so loud because of what i thought to be the end of everything, but what essentially was just... "a bad day at work"?

and ones who deserve big thank-yous:

Friends who have kept me alive in the past year.

The reg I have so wanted but never got a chance to work with. Still I had the privilege to witness her never failing effort going an extra mile to make others' lives a bit easier, even while carrying her own burdens and stresses...

The consultant and reg who within a week completely lifted my spirit from my yearlong(even longer) gloom...
the same consultant who set the rare priceless example of genuine concern and humility combined with charisma and intelligence, that will inspire me striving to be the same in many years ahead...
and the same reg who's so therapeutic not with charisma but with brokenness and negative energy. Such is what can motivate me to push on in times I feel too ashamed to push on in my own brokenness...

And I still want to make a mention of The Professor's Death Song:
http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/2011/janfeb/professorsdeathsong.html?paging=off
The last days of the last working year was dedicated to this wonderful article... I find such honesty so touching and redeeming.
I pray Christianity can continue to empower us to approach this universally uneasy concept of brokenness with honesty, understanding and grace.

I have finally become sick.
I felt this is finally the conclusion of that epic working year.
And I love such an ending to the story.

"justification"

another profound line from Mark Galli:

We human beings have a way of turning profound truths into justifications for all manner of behavior.

..............

after realising all this...

I should forgive more.

Hopeless Prayer

*how many times do I have to post this...*
but indeed... only once in a blue moon we are this honest.

Hopeless Prayer by Mark Galli

"Ask and it shall be given."

So lots of people asked that 33 miners trapped a half mile beneath the earth be rescued. And they were.

It's the sort of thing that makes prayer that much harder, don't you think?

Some people make it sound easy. "God has spoken to me clearly and guided my hand each step of the rescue," Carlos Parra Diaz, a Seventh-day Adventist pastor at the San Jose mine, told The Guardian. "He wanted the miners to be rescued and I am His instrument."

When extraordinary things like this happen, it brings out the megalomania in some people. But I think a local Catholic priest had it right: "God has heard our prayers." Lots of prayers from lots of people.

And it was given.

When this sort of thing happens, I feel like I'm being set up. If prayer never "worked," I could deal with it sensibly. I could just give it up. Or give up one type of prayer—intercession. Just stop praying that God would do this or that, change this or that. Prayer could just be communing with God. But when God answers prayer like this, it sets up this god-awful expectation that God gives to those who ask.

"Ask and it shall be given" is a nice, warm saying, but it should really be, "Ask and sometimes it will be given." Or more realistically, at least in my prayer experience, "Ask and once in a blue moon it will be given."

Answers to my prayers happen so rarely that I am SHOCKED, SHOCKED, when they happen. I'm not talking about everyday prayers—for safe travels or healing from a cold. God seems to take care of travelers and colds whether I pray for them or not. I'm talking about prayers for things I really care about, people I'm really worried about—that a friend might come to know Jesus, that a loved one will be healed of cancer, that a relative will give up drugs. There seems to be an inverse prayer corollary in my life: the more important the prayer, the less likely it will be answered. But indeed, once in a while a big prayer is answered—like the college friend who became a Christian, or a church member who was healed of cancer—and my jaw drops and my eyes fill with tears. I'm astounded, again, that God would answer prayer.

This after living the Christian life for over four decades.

* * *
When it comes to the REALLY BIG prayers, well, I'm a hearty believer. I regularly pray for peace on earth, but it hasn't done any good. Still, Jesus said it would happen, and so as far as I'm concerned, this prayer will be answered.

Some day, far in the future. That's the rub with REALLY BIG prayer. It's so far in the future that it feels pointless to pray it. It's so assured of happening—whether I pray or not—that you think, What's the use?

And yet Jesus tells me to pray such prayers: "Our Father … thy kingdom come." Pray for the thing that's going to happen whether you pray or not. Pray for the thing that is so far in the future and so unimaginable that you feel silly praying for it.

He's also the one who said, "Ask and it shall be given." I'm pretty sure he meant this for big and small prayers, and everything in between.

Ask for things that are likely to happen whether you pray or not.

Ask for things that are unlikely to happen.

Ask for things that get answered sometimes but not others.

Ask when you feel like asking is selfish. Ask when your asking feels foolish. Ask when you feel hopeless.

And it will be given.

* * *
It's that last state—feeling hopeless—that characterizes my prayer life most days. I have so few important-to-me prayers answered that I'm afraid to pray for such things anymore. Who wants to be disappointed with God again?

So I find stories like the answered prayer for the Chilean miners more irritating than inspirational. As a CNN story says, the miners "showed us there is hope even when the worst seems certain." Well, for me when the worst seems certain, I have the hardest time having hope. Sorry, CNN. Lesson not learned.

Fortunately, having a hopeful feeling when the worst seems certain is not a Christian idea at all. When the worst seemed certain, Jesus pleaded with God to avoid it. It was not a prayer confident of bright tomorrows: "Take this cup from me. But not my will, but yours be done." It was prayer grounded in the realism of unanswered prayer, to a God who is to be prayed to because he invites us to do so whether we feel like it or not, to a God who runs the universe splendidly, whether we pray or not.

Here's the lesson I have learned from Jesus, a lesson reinforced by four decades of failed prayers. It doesn't matter how I feel when the worst seems certain. Jesus didn't say, "Ask when you feel hopeful." He just said ask. And he said it will be given.

What exactly will be given is not entirely clear! When it will be given is not noted! How it will be given is not specified! Jesus is being his usual elusive self in this enigmatic saying.

But two things seem clear. First, we are to ask God for things that are important to us, no matter how we feel about God or prayer or the thing prayed for. In Jesus’ theology of prayer, there is no hint that prayer is the way we transcend desire, as if having desire was a sign of spiritual immaturity. Desire is apparently what humans do, something woven into the fabric of our humanity from day one, a divine gift, the first hint that we are made for something outside ourselves, a something that can only be realized by taking the first small step of asking. Prayer is not a way to overcome desire, but the first thing we do with it.

Second, once we announce our desire to God, it’s his job to deal with it. Prayer is not manipulating heaven to fulfill our desires. It’s putting what we desire into the hands of a loving, if inscrutable, God and letting him fulfill it in his time, in his way.

Of course, sometimes he’s gracious enough to answer it in our time and in a way that makes sense to us, like reaching down into the bowels of the earth to raise those who were as good as dead.