In this season of life, I learned a lot. About myself, and about things in life. Yesterday, I spent whole day with a close friend of mine, Siew Min. Just chilling. We talked about life, about things we go through. Its pretty awesome to see how we both have come so far. Yet at the same time, each season, there are new things to battle, new things to learn, new things to fight for. What an exciting life I m living. All glory to Jesus :)
As I was pondering on my life today. I realized, being 8 year Christian, I have been really harsh to myself. I expect myself to be perfect, or at least be able to iron out most of the things already. But recent events really break me and make me humble. I thank God for all these. Have always tried to manage and balance things on my own, not realizing that I have pushed God aside in the solution part. Now I know, apart from doing my part, I cannot leave Him out of the picture. I always thought it was my own thing and I MUST force myself to solve it. But the truth is, I m just not perfect and I constantly need His grace.
Being in the working world has revealed a lot about myself too. For instance, I realized that I m not a very detailed person. I forget things easily. And at times I overlooked things. Well, do I have this problem before? Yes. But being a student, I wasn't forced to deal with this part of my life. I could still do well and manage. Now that I m working...how can I ignore details? It is totally ESSENTIAL.
So, these past few months, I feel rather bad as an employee, feel that I could not perform, and a lot of times beat myself up for being careless. Tried many ways to be more detailed, but as much as I try...there will still be things that I missed out. So I guess in my mind there is this battle, that I do not see myself as a good employee. Rather disappointed with how things are. Got scolded a few times by different people, and felt really bad about how things goes...going to work isn't exciting anymore.
Nonetheless, the more I try to solve it, the more I realize, there are more and more things to look into. So I ran to God....not knowing what else I could do as it is rather disappointing. Detailedness is indeed not my strength. And as much as I try, there will surely still be one or two things I forget. So as I was praying one night, God brought me to my past, and the first day when I worked. He asked me: Do I think I have improved very much in this detailedness area from day 1 I worked....I thought about it...."yea...indeed I did improve. But the point is, I still forget things, and I still upset people!" Then God asked me: "So you expect yourself to be totally flawless and perfect within a year you work? You have been like that for the past 23 years! Think about it....you have not been in this field before. You study psychology, there are so many new things which you have to relearn, many things are totally new to you...Can't you have some grace on yourself. The point is not whether you forget things or not, but the point is have you improved?"
God told me to think about the process I have been through and learn to appreciate my experiences. See, He is right. It is not that I m living in ignorance. But throughout the process, I have learned that I cannot do everything on my own. I need to learn to focus and prioritize, I need to learn to say NO to certain task with the things I already have at my hand, I took bullets before, I rough it out, I learn how is it like to talk to suppliers, to negotiate prices, to do a brochure, to manage a website, to talk to regional offices, to run an event, to do some social media marketing.....I have actually come quite far! :) ...Do I get better each day as I rough things out? I do! :)) See...this is the one thing that I fail to see time after time. I just want myself to "ting" and become "the perfect employee". LOL. Foolish? Yes.
*Pats on back* :) Well, that is just one of the examples. This season of life, is yet an amazing one for me. I rough through SO MANY issues in just one season. The transition period is the hardest most people say. They are totally right! Hahaha. You just have to get used with everything else which weren't there before. And you got to manage, learn, make mistakes, fall, getup, try, learn and all over again until you get it right!
But in the midst of all these, we often forget about one thing. That we need grace. The grace of God and the grace on ourselves. I have learned that, it is necessary that we have grace on ourselves, to learn that we are not perfect...and constantly we need God to be with us. Yes we can be disappointed, upset, frustrated, stressed up with life. But who do we go to? We go to God...be broken...and get restored, and tomorrow is a new day. I have learned this season very much, that when we have grace on ourselves, we perform better. We become more positive.
Using my workplace as an example: For the past month, I have been going to office everyday with a mind that today I will learn something new, today I m going to conquer all my work. Do I still struggle with the same thing? Yes. But m I more positive? totally. Even if I m being scolded, I realize I m learning to take it in more relaxedly in comparison to before. And I have become more THICK SKIN! Lol. My brothers told me that it is necessary to be thick skin when we work. If our skin is too thin, we can go for any job, but we will surely not last the distance. One scolding or mistreat, or unfairness will result in us resigning. Wow...now that is the first word of wisdom I heard from him :P hahaha...Kidding. He is an amazing brother. Love him a lot.
So.... with this grace we give, it tears down the expectation we have on ourselves to PERFORM beyond our own capability. Recognize our weaknesses, and continue to motivate ourselves to keep going instead of giving up. And most importantly, make us need God even more :) I cannot do anything without His grace. And...this grace on ourselves, is indeed very important. And it can only come, if we come broken before God, allowing Him to come in and enlighten a few things about us by receiving HIS grace. My ibu Shirley Boon calls this the breaking of false self image. hahaha! And I realize how important this grace is so that we won't constantly beat ourselves up and become wounded in our soul for not meeting our own CRAZY expectations (humans....). Not saying that we can have the passport to slack. But grace fuels us to keep going and acknowledges us that it is alright to make mistakes.
See, this is something common every Christian would tell you. In fact, I told many people about this too. But telling, and going through it, is really very different. It was a struggle for me as I haven't been graceful since my study years (beating myself up for not having expected results). And does this make me feel acceptant of myself as an imperfect human being? No!
But to be graceful is indeed something really essential as a human. That you have to acknowledge to YOURSELF, you are actually not perfect, or expected to be perfect. You are expected to learn along the way and become better. This past month, being graceful toward myself, I have realized I have become more graceful to others as well. :) Love your neighbor as yourself - depicts the grace you have for yourself also determines the grace you have for your neighbor. If you are stingy in your grace for yourselves, you will be stingy in giving grace to others...especially your loved ones...who need it very much as well being imperfect human beings.
The one dinner both Melvyn and I have on this date (25th October 2010) with ibu Shirley, and ayah David, the prayer meeting marks a change in my life. This date, I will never forget. These two people have made me realize so much about life within an hour of dinner. To go before God, broken, and deal with everything we have in life with God, not with one another or myself. Some solutions need grace from God..See...it is only very common that as human we often leave Him out of the picture, thinking that it is our own problems to solve. Its not His fault. Of course it is not His fault! But I came to realize that we need the grace of God, not because we have done anything wrong, but we need His grace to help us have grace on ourselves. Him being our example and model. The grace of God allows us to let God in to do a deep work in our lives to bring us to greater heights and new breakthroughs. And a lot of time we are too afraid to let Him in, because it means being pushed to an uncomfortable zone. But the fact is, He can only do deep works and spiritual operation when you are ready to come before Him, being graceful enough with yourself to accept the imperfections He about show you, the pain to go through and know that you need Him all the time...to deal with them. We need God to help us open up our conditional grace be it toward ourselves or others.
I thank God for these two people who come to shake hell's hole, sharing their lives, and breaking lies for me to see what I cannot see sometimes. Since the beginning of the year, this is the One thing I have been waiting ALL YEAR...Since beginning of the year, I felt that 2010 is going to be an amazing year of breakthroughs. This is indeed the best year of my life, because in this season, I have learned so so much that I couldn't imagine I would have learned all my life.
Grace is therefore a gift from God.....and also a CHOICE of your own (whether to give or to receive) :) .If you are struggling with certain weaknesses in your life or others' weaknesses, I just want to let you know...you are still worthy, they are still worthy... and it is not about being perfect. But it is about going on to perfection that concerns God. Have a little grace on yourself and others, it will take both you and the other person a long way
Therefore, I finally understood what it means when someone say.....You need the grace of God to carry on in life.....His grace is the benchmark...and His grace helps you to have grace on yourself :)
toodles~
