Year of the stretch

2019 stretched me. It stretched me great. It stretched me beautiful. I owe it to myself to not forget. Years from now, I will look back at this challenging time and remain grateful.

It is an overwhelming task to put experiences into words, particularly when much has happened. Much needs to be said and yet it almost feels disrespectful to try and do so. On the one hand, my experiences feel too sacred to talk about and, on the other, the responsibility of using words sincerely feels too big. Yet, I feel responsible to try.

The stretching began sometime in the middle of 2018. Relatively put, the years before that were a lull. I imagined then that life was going to continue in a moderate and ordinary pace with some unordinary circumstances popping up here and there. I'd deal with those abnormalities and move right on with 'normal' life. That was how I imagined stability. I wanted stability, and often even mocked at feelings of highs and lows. I was done with highs and lows, you see, and I had determined that I was not going to be subject to fluctuating emotions anymore. I imposed the same standard on my spiritual life as well. All the talk within Christian circles of spiritually-fulfilling times and that of missing them during dry seasons had gone stale for me. I refused to be swung to and fro like a pendulum. I was a big fan of levelheadedness and believed it to be the ideal Christian countenance to strive for. Storms may brew, hardships may arise, and I may walk through a valley, (even the Psalmist did so after all) but I was going to remain stoic. I was going to stand unmoved on my Solid Rock. I realise now how incomplete that understanding is, and I am grateful I didn't remain there. I wasn't performing very impressively based on those standards, anyway. But in quite a parallel to my solemnly stoic standard, life seemed very uneventful then. It felt like a flat line where I could neatly insert work life, social life, marriage at some point, kids perhaps, and so on. It now sounds like I am describing dull chores but it made perfect sense to me then. I had devised a way to explain life to myself and set expectations around a flat kind of life. It's possible I could've gone too far in that endeavour. It's possible I could've made a caricature of it. The relieving fact is I didn't. 

This is the part where divine intervention enters my life. Not that the divine was missing earlier, I was just not catching it well. This is not to imply I have now 'arrived' in terms of tuning into the Holy Spirit. I hope to never stop unlearning. Speaking of which, a new kind of unlearning began as I returned to Sias for the millionth time (third time returning and year number four, to be accurate) in August 2018. I was determined to make it my absolute final year at Sias. How exactly? Learn from the previous year's failure and apply to PhD programs again, except this time I was going to get in. How did I know that? I obviously did. There was no way I was returning to Sias again. I refused to become one of those perpetually-stuck-in-Sias people. Not a fool-proof strategy, I know. So many loopholes, I know. My actual point being, I was determined. I was more determined to leave Sias than I was determined to get into a PhD program. PhD was a natural choice for the big step out of Sias. It would help me extend myself from being Instructor to Professor. It would help me flourish into this complete, independent, and successful woman I knew I already was somewhere inside of me.

We are all familiar with the general maxim that not everything in life goes according to plan. In my case, though, it is safe to say nothing went according to plan. I couldn't hold on to my determination to leave for too long albeit the desperation I had felt it with. My custom made structure tumbled. But the truly absurd part is I didn't crash along with it, like one would expect when your world falls apart. On the contrary, I was quite relieved to have unburdened myself of it. I decided to not apply to PhD programs the second year in a row. Back then I assured myself I would apply again another time in the foreseeable future. However, in retrospect, that decision was only the beginning of my unravelling. This is how I know God is gentle and patient. He takes us through life one step at a time. Back then, it was sufficient for Him to get me to a place where I would lay off the burden of school applications I had imposed on myself. He told me, "you are here, so be here". Graduate school applications are time consuming and stressful, and they do a really good job of taking you somewhere else. And so, this is how God presented to me my first challenge: recognising Peter Hall (foreign faculty residence at Sias) as a community that I belonged to. The majority of the foreigners living in Peter Hall are Christians. Community, fellowship, and matters like that are things we Christians are generally quite obsessed with and for good reasons, which is beyond the scope of this blog-post so I won't start listing them here. But getting back on track to the point I'm trying to establish, in the past I had mocked the referencing of Peter Hall as a community. It upset me because I hadn't experienced it as a true community. Apart from some general observations I had made in that respect, I had accidentally got to be a close albeit 'invisible' witness of the lack of accountability in a certain setting. And thus, my attitude of mockery. And now I felt compelled by God to recognise it as a community. Community is a sacred reality to be blessed with, not a cheapened word to be used casually. Yet, I didn't resist this aspect of the challenge very strongly. When God of the Bible goes parent-mode and tells you, "because I said so", it is kind of hard to argue with that. The more difficult layer to break through for me was seeing this strange Peter Hall community as my own. Three years of familiarity hadn't given me the sense of belonging. I had made many friends, yet I had held myself back. I had never felt so 'other' anywhere or anytime else. Peter Hall is a White evangelical bubble in the middle of China. I now call it home, and the community my own because God gave me a place here. And I simply accept it in faith.

The process of my unravelling has been intense but so surprisingly quick. And I've still only touched upon the beginning of it all. The second challenge God nudged me into was about my identity and it is closely connected to the PhD plan I had so easily defaulted to. He asked me, "do you trust me?" I wondered why He would ask me that. Of course I trusted Him, had I not been following Him all this time? What is that if not trust? Yet, He kept asking me, "do you trust me?" I slowly began to realise He was tapping into the little unacknowledged fear I had had when I decided to not apply to graduate school the second time. I had felt a little concern that I would end up never applying again, which would mean I was giving up my PhD dreams. And this was how the right time came around to tackle this hidden corner of my heart. Did I trust God enough to let go of my dreams? My honest answer was no. Dishearteningly so. I was a fraud, after all. Claiming to follow Jesus Christ, but only following my own ego. A disciplinarian god would speak similar words I spoke to myself then, but this is how I know I follow a loving one. This loving One took no offence. He simply wooed me into trusting Him more. He asked me more questions. What is stopping you from trusting me with your future? Why is it so difficult for you to let go of your PhD plans? Why is being a strong and independent woman so important to you? Why do you need to prove it to the world? Or is this about proving to yourself? What if you gave up your dreams? Have you, then, stopped being a strong and independent woman? And what if you weren't one? With each question, He peeled off one unnecessary layer after another. And finally I realised that I had been believing the lie that if I weren't a strong and independent woman, then I'd be nothing. This one knocked me down fierce. I was afraid to let go of that cherished perception of myself because I was afraid to be nothing. I am now in a life-long journey of learning to see myself as my Creator sees me, and not how the world defines me. Who am I in my innermost core? I am a beloved daughter of the King. And I am in fact strong, secure, and bold among other things; but those are not what give me my identity.

By far the most painful unravelling has been the third challenge God put before me. He orchestrated circumstances in my life so perfectly it was hard to ignore this aspect of my life that I had had the tendency to belittle until then. It was clear He wanted me to not put it aside anymore. This part is what people usually refer to as the love-life, an area I hadn't bothered much with exploring seriously in my noble endeavour to be a strong and independent woman. Let me clarify that I'm not asexual, nor have I pledged myself to celibacy. I had actually fallen in love at least twice by that time of my life. By the way, people can fall in love without being in a romantic relationship, if you didn't already know that. So, there I was, so proud of myself for not needing a man in my life. And if any man who had interested me didn't seem to value me enough, I was done with him. I was not interested in giving more than receiving. I refused to put up with such an unfair arrangement. So I wasted no time purging my life of such a man. It wasn't easy nor effortless, but I got quite good at maintaining this genius system to filter out men not worth suffering for. In fact, the system was so ingenious it had been allowing absolutely no one to get past a certain point because that was just how it was going to be if true men had become such a rarity these days. I also experienced time and again how inconvenient love actually was, and how uncomplicated and beautiful life was when I was not romantically interested in anyone. So, I was absolutely content staying alone because I was not lonely. I was, more importantly, at peace. This was my version of self-care. Love didn't need to happen, marriage didn't need to happen. And if it was in fact to happen, it would, without it having to be such a draconian task. If you asked me then to choose between love and career, I would have chosen career without batting an eye because I would rather rely on a career than rely on a man. In the middle of this massive commitment to self came the imperative invitation to stop making decisions with regards to men the old familiar way. I found myself in a circumstance similar to those I had faced in the past with regards to men, and yet so different. I knew I had to handle it differently. I was a little uncomfortable with the significant focus this aspect of my life was receiving, given that my tendency in the past had been to treat it insignificantly. It has taken me a while to believe that God thinks of my love-life as something quite significant. In fact, I'm not sure if I fully believe it yet. All my life I have treated the desire for love as weakness, and so I have fought it with every fiber in me. I have often told myself that some things are simply too good to be true and that is why we have fairy tales. What I can say with confident certainty at this point, however, is that for some reason God doesn't want me to spend my life alone. He is bent on bringing someone into my life, which is why He required me to change my ways so that I would let the right man stay. I did try my best to operate differently with the guy He brought into my life last year. My efforts continued onto the first half of this year. In retrospect, though, I realise how clumsy my efforts were and it seems like I got so much wrong. In fact, it appears as though my old filter system would have saved me so much pain. And still somehow, I have changed for the better. I opened myself in ways I have never before, and I let myself be vulnerable no matter how scary that felt. But even that wasn't meant to be. And as of right now, I am not in a relationship nor am I even interested in one. I am still tired from the last experience, which was actually not even a relationship. I haven't broken my legacy yet. So, it appears this part of my life is still to unfold. My Father wants to bring me joy and companionship. He wants me to trust Him that if He said so, He will do it. Not me, not anyone else, but He will. Even when nothing seems to be going right. Okay.

A visible and practical manifestation of all the unravelling I have been describing is my recent decision to change jobs. I am completing my first semester working in administration at Sias. It has been a breath of fresh air. But it has also been a lot of stretching. I found myself completely removed from all that had been familiar at Sias, and a new perception was thrust upon me quite forcefully. I have had to reevaluate and recalibrate. I have felt the need to define and draw lines to be able to perform my job responsibly, and I have even been relentless in a few cases. I have had to rethink what friendship truly is. I have had to separate myself and protect my sanity in solitude. It is not overstating to say I am truly a changed person. The Holy Spirit broke into my personal life, social life, and professional life and completely transformed me. I don't know how this much change could happen in a span of a year and a half, but I can't deny that it did. And the marvellous thing is that there's more. 2019 has been a year of colossal stretching in preparation of something to come. I can only wonder,.. if this was merely preparation, what on earth is the fulfillment going to be. On that supremely encouraging note, I bid farewell to 2019 that I have fondly named as the 'year of the stretch' and welcome 2020 with an open heart and mind.