TRUST, FAITH, LETTING GO…

And everything else that’s hard to do. Can’t share much now but the whole month of August has been one of the craziest month in my life. First the death of my Uncle, then another death of someone in Penang, and then the death of my wife’s best friends dad and above all, my wife and I have been going through some really, really trying times of the highest level of uncertainty and anxiousness. Someone just made a statement just the other week, “Why you seem so moody recently?”, and that is exactly how the toil of my anxiousness has taken on me.

There are days I feel my hearth crushing in, days where I feel so frustrated that I imagine a knife through my head (I AM NOT SUICIDAL. IT’S JUST AN EXPRESSION OF HOW FRUSTRATING THINGS CAN GET… sometimes) and days where I stare blankly after hearing news not knowing what else to do. The funny thing is this was something we prayed for but the uneasy ride was something that I was never prepared to endure. To me, it was like, “Oh great! God answered our prayers!!! Hallelujah!!! The end.” But lo and behold, it didn’t just end there, a greater sense of uncertainty enveloped my heart with the current “don’t know what to expect” stage.

I am a guy who lives on certainties in live. I plan and ensure strict execution for everything from both small things (time to make it to church on time) and big things (the birth of our baby, who do what, who take care, when, etc) and I try my very best to ensure that I have all my basses covered. I hate it when my plans don’t work out due to some “extraneous variables” and I hate it even more when I am put in a spot where I am helpless to do anything to improve the situation. It drives me crazy. And that’s exactly the situation where I am in. It doesn’t help that apart from this ordeal I have to go through, there’s a 3^rd variable (our baby) to make the whole equation a lot more exciting. So you see… while I am caught up in the ordeal to handle, I have to also handle the baby at the same time. I cannot emphasize how crazy my life is now.

To elaborate further, yesterday (Sunday) when my wife decided to still proceed to go to church despite some not very good news in the morning, I couldn’t help but to feel worked up. To me it was like taking a really unnecessary risk just to go to church. I felt very strongly that we should stay at home and rest but she insisted on going to church. At that point of time, there was no logic in the decision that was made. Considering the unknown number of risks (accident, walking too much, standing and sitting during the service, bumping into people, additional effort taken to get ready for both her and the baby, walking all the way down and up a 3 storey flight of stairs, plus her having to go back to work the next day… etc) it would be a really bad decision to make at a time like this. We could have all stayed in, there would be significantly a lot less movement and effort and risk. To me staying at home ensured better certainty – going to church increases uncertainty and I don’t like that (based on my personal assessment).

However, something struck me at church that Sunday. The first worship song on that day was “It Is Well With My Soul”. For those unfamiliar with the history of the song, the song was written by Horatio Spafford AFTER undergoing tragedies after tragedies in his life between 1970 – 1973. In the span of 3 years, he lost his only son to scarlet fever, lost all his investments he made in property due to a fire and lost his 3 daughters in a shipwreck. You can read about it more here. The amount of grief that he had to endure during those 3 years and the years thereafter would have been massive. How can anyone go through those periods and yet be sane? And yet, through his ordeals, he wrote “It is well with my soul, It is well with my soul”.

The verses of the song really struck me that morning. Isn’t my God the almighty God who has seen me through the years? Isn’t my God a God who has great plans for me… plans to prosper and not to harm me… plans to give me a hope for the future? Isn’t my God a God of miracles? Isn’t my God the God who created the universe? Isn’t my God big enough? Why then does my soul continue to lay in absolute anxiousness and disregard to the almighty God I believe in? Why then do I strive to make the future I think is best instead of leaving it in the hand of my almighty God? Why then does my action reflects a lack in trust in someone bigger and mightier?

It was a lot easier when God hadn’t answered our prayer. At that point of time is was praying for something so if nothing happens, status quo. But now that God has answered, if God does not continue to see us through, it’ll be an impact back to nothing. That would really sucks.

The journey is not easy. Letting go and letting God work his way in us right now is really tough. To just lay back and submit everything to God with the events that are following is like driving screws into yourself to screw yourself on the chair so you not move and to entrust everything to God to work out what is best for us. There’s not going to be two ways about it. Like a painter painting a masterpiece, I cannot simply pick up a brush, dab in into my favorite color and try completing the painting only to mess everything up. I have to completely surrender everything into the painter’s hand and to trust him in what he does. Tough like hell. But results are ensured heavenly.

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.

It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.