It's yet another Christmas - too fast, too fast - I think the first one without a proper family around, since I went home in my first year and in my second I was at Beth's. True enough that I hadn't missed home in the past years because I never really left it; at least when I was at Beth's I was in a home, with some sort of a fireplace, in a living room, dining with the family configurations of parents, siblings, and turkey. This year is different I s'pose, going to the minster and hearing choral voices croon to a few same songs I place at the Ritz or Grand Hyatt in my memories somewhere, having a big elaborate meal without the signature touches of mom or aunts on each dish, remembering how Christmas night was usually spent, just aimlessly idling around at home with the telly or looking out the window at the cityscape and faraway lights of CBD......
It's so true sometimes that the more people there are around you, the lonelier you get. The last 2 weeks of socials and meeting up were great, London and catching up and getting to know new people were fab, coming back to York and meeting old faces was good... but I've never felt more desperate to shut in and shut out the world, get in touch with the things in me, with God, before I completely lose it; lose myself, my senses, and what I'm doing. Carol after carol superficially sung to saccharine melodies and a tradition of lip-synching to words half-unmeant; food and appearances dressed up to the nines for a day/week of revelry and then everything vanishes - I had to get away, had to lock myself in my room and laid on my bed, really talking it out, really talking to Jesus. No rehearsed set of I'm-sorry-please-forgive-me prayers, no qualifiers or holding back, just an honest, and acknowledgedly blunt and silly, but honest, dump of everything I felt and thought and struggled with. After a good deal of that and a nap, yes, I felt everything return; the love, the assurances, the reason for doing things, the reason for even living; the reason for being, no matter how unbearably light it is sometimes. Love empowers. And sometimes there's no need for rhetoric or answers, or rehearsed apologies; you look into the face of someone who truly loves you and you ask no more.
And the past few weeks have portended shifting sands on which I've placed certain assumptions about my life and a specific issue. There's so much about this which I've to surrender and resurrender. Assumptions, aspirations, people, hopes, fears, ideas, thoughts, time, decisions, desires. Heart. Meanwhile strange things are happening everywhere for the past few months no matter where I go, whether it's Singapore, Malaysia, York, gosh, even London, strange things that I never really expected, and they're happening all at once it's scary; and as much as I'm flattered there's always this nagging sense of fear and uneasiness that lurks with these things, these Things that begin with, what, a capital BMG. I've avoided them for a year or so, maybe it's time that God unearths the bones and deals with the remnants of carcasses. Mary, Mary, a few of my close friends in S63 used to call me, There's Something About Mary - truth be told I hadn't realised why until now, and their shadows are starting to return... for better or for worse? Let's hope that God's wisdom better steers me with the right attitudes and decisions this time......
