the shape of water

Unable to perceive the shape of You, I find You all around me. Your presence fills my eyes with Your love, It humbles my heart, For You are everywhere


To remember again, to love with abandon, the secret smiles and spring in one's step. The shape and substance of love. the love that drives one to courage and action. the yearning to be seen and be perceived as whole, complete, without lack. the loneliness that surrounds us but also binds us, into a tie that makes it impossible to leave without breaking off a part of ourselves. the folly, the abandon, the euphoria.

 turning 32 thrusted me into an existential crisis, one which threatens to overwhelm and breach the brinks of my joy and satisfaction in what I should enjoy. I found myself deeply unhappy with what i do not have, and what I had in abundance, I could not be thankful for. I rested with spite, my thoughts filled with dissatisfaction, my yearnings turning bitter with every indication of other people's haves. I coveted, I pained, I wept at the injustice of it all. I focused on me and my wants. But did I really want all that I did not have? I do not know. I just wanted someone to tell me - it is alright, you are fine, you have all that you need, all that would bring you joy. but no one could, because no one was me, no one was the one who made me.

 As I am, oh the love of which I am unable to perceive the shape of.

to be fully loved and known

To be fully loved and known by You, to be seen, even if I can't see you in the flames, smoke and heat. It's all enough, for You are the only one who can promise safety and perfect security.

hills and valleys

Unexpectedly, I fell into a valley. The double-blow from the past week that came wrecked my world, even as I thought I might have enough heartbreak experience to brace for impact. But I will never be ready for the hurt that the world is all too willing to inflict upon us, no matter how familiar it all seemed. Unable to process the feelings or understand the conclusion of what had happened in the span of a week, I retreated to a world of music, of silence before God, of C.S. Lewis. I know that the same black hole of suffering and pain that would threaten to suck the joy of me, could be turned into a vacuum of suspended emotions - if I make a deliberate attempt to pause before emotions overwhelmed me.

I still can't cry or hurt. I played the song over and over again, and let the words speak to me.

Perhaps it is because of how little I truly loved anyone in my life; that I have not learnt to love truly, that all attempts at natural affections were borne out of my own craving to be loved. It rings true, but on my own, I am utterly unable to undo the cycle of bad choices, hopes and disappointments that keeps repeating in my life. And perhaps, in this silence and loneliness, the love of God might truly reach me.




"A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

A long and deep embrace. It says, "I don't want to let you go, I need you, you mean something to me, that I no longer can say I do not have an attachment to a living nor non-living thing even as I prepare to leave."

None of it was actually said, but felt. And I didn't want to ask, lest the spoken convey any lesser than my heart caught.

“There are different wells within your heart.
Some fill with each good rain,
Others are far too deep for that.
In one well
You have just a few precious cups of water,
That “love” is literally something of yourself,
It can grow as slow as a diamond
If it is lost.
Your love
Should never be offered to the mouth of a Stranger,
Only to someone
Who has the valor and daring
To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife
Then weave them into a blanket
To protect you.
There are different wells within us.
Some fill with each good rain,
Others are far, far too deep
For that.”

Hafez, Persian poet, 1315-1390

Gifts from above

25 May 2017, eight years after entering the workforce, and I bought my first set of wheels. The reg date, my new work extension number, all point towards a beautiful harmony.

This year too, marks the year of favour as I take up more responsibilities, and continue to grow stronger in every way. These are but signs that this year would be full of abundant blessings, physical for my benefit, pointing to the spiritual and the everlasting. I have hope, that the testing, trials and brokenness of last season had past, and it is time again to reap. But because of what I had to go through, the Spirit prompts me to continually give thanks, to slow down the busy-ness of my soul, and to give thanks for what I have been given. It is much, unexpectedly so. And I pray, that I would stay close to my Master, and walk as He did.

The Lord is my Shepherd, and I shall not be in want.

three years on

And the story continues.

At one point, I thought I might have stopped writing all altogether. Writing, as an exercise, gets into my head and extricates dangerous musings and emotions that I don't know if I can process and make safe again. Living without reflecting or the constant dull ache of memory can be a lot easier. But yet whenever I revisit my past, I find a fresh awakening through what is already past.

The boy from Europe had stepped into my life and left, but yet he lives in a part of my present. I remember him in gratitude and fond memories of us talking about the future, our hopes and dreams. And about anything at all, by the small pond at his place, while his parents busied about the house. The conversations and meals we had, hatching audacious plans to open an R&R restaurant dabbling in molecular gastronomy, basking in the humid summer of Asia we both grew up in, before we first met in the cold rain of Europe. I remember fragments of our time together, those that seemed insignificant at the time, but all so meaningful at present. My brain sorts out memories a lot more discerningly than I thought. We held hands as he drove his dad's champagne coloured Mini around the vast land of his country, laughing at how ridiculous the lyrics of modern pop could be. And it all seemed to explain why my old brain has been telling me to drive a Mini one day.

And I remembered that boy, kneeling in the Garden of Versailles, asking me to be his girlfriend. A boy of old school charms and romance. And Paris will always be to me, a city of love.

The loss of that dream marked for me, the start of wandering in the maze of emotions I didn't deal with. I plunged into a time of much busy-ness and bad dating choices, which were much ado about nothing. The void that the dream left behind became a black hole. And God reached in and pulled me up for air once again, through a period of trial. He proved himself true, and once again enveloped me in His unfailing love. Really? I could still be loved? I wandered so far I thought I was prepared to be lost for good. But God didn't seem to regard distance the same way I did. He never left, and He never changed. The surgery experience in Jul 2016 broke the idols of my life and I finally started to learn to be content in Him. Habits need to be unlearned and overridden, but I know He will lead me. He will not lose me, no matter how long or arduous the journey would be, no matter how I persisted in going off the path. He will gently hold my hand and lead me home.

This would be yet another milestone in my life. He is leading me to another season, where I would give of myself to heavier work responsibilities and of much growth as a leader. My emotions caught up in an unexpected way - that a part of me yearned much more for love, than the work that is before me. But I have already learned, that if God leads me to a place I am not prepared for, He will be with me in the refining process. Pure like gold, I would be. Ashes for beauty, a royal diadem in the hand of my God.

i met a boy

I met a boy in March 2013, in the little town of Bath Spa. It was near the start of my solo journey to Europe to extricate myself from the thick dust of a heady past. A time to explore a corner of the world on my own, to meet interesting people, to see the places I have only imagined. It was liberating, because i had been selfish about it, admitting to myself and God that I really truly wanted to go, for myself. I had anticipated that this short adventure could somehow change a part of me to be bolder, less dependent on companionship and more comfortable with being alone in general.

And then, I met a boy on the second day of my adventure.

Technically, we met in Bristol among friends on a cold drizzling night. We had both journeyed solo to bunk in with friends in the same house. It was a rather quiet but electrical affair, in a way I had thought only resided in movies and the far corners of my girlish imaginations. But it did happen, and have not ended on that kind of half hearted note that seems to accompany every potential affair. He was quiet with a strong build and he seemed to study me with interest from the time we sat down in an italian restaurant. The first thing I noticed about him was that he ordered wine with his meal too, an extravagant thing to do for a backpacker. It happened that we were planning to head to Bath Spa the next morning and it was natural that we made plans to go together after the long walk home after a heavy dinner.

The rain brought with it more romantic overtures the next day.

The weather in Bath Spa was horrid with unrelenting winds and dreary rain. He had an umbrella and offered me his arm as we braved the wind to see the old town together. Honestly, I remembered nothing much about the large Roman bath I was so excited to see, nor the city that housed it. One thing was that Ephesus in 2012 had been too impressive and a single Roman bath in Spa cordoned off like an exhibit seemed to lack lustre in comparison.The second was this stranger I was holding on to, who seemed mysterious and interested in who I was. From the time we were on the train towards Bath from Bristol, he had taken the initiative to talk to me and asked me why I was travelling alone. Being in an adventurous and friendly mood myself, the conversation had flowed on its own. I barely noticed the harsh weather conditions nor the town itself as we chatted and walked around.

We didn't have much time together, just one morning as he was headed to Stonehenge and I had a train to catch to London. Before we parted ways, he asked for my number to stay in touch and gave me a hearty bear hug. It was nice and warm and I found myself hoping that we would see each other. It was all very strange.

I thought frequently about this boy i met for the rest of my trip in London and Paris. He texted me now and then even as he took his trip around the other parts of Western Europe. He sent me pictures of the food he tried, the car parts that seemed to excite him as he travelled to automobile shows. And i thought to myself, this is a boy who had a hunger for life and colour. A boy who travels. But at the back of my mind, I thought this friendship would very likely end at some point, when we ran out of common topics to talk about, when Europe became to me a faraway place once again, when my own journey ended.

But it wasn't so. We continued to chat, we continued to share the bits of our daily lives over the 14000km that exists between the cities we live in, me on the sunny tropical island and him in the grey and cloudy part of Europe. I learnt that he cooks and had a liking for grease in workshops. He was in his own words, a grease monkey. He came back to Asia to visit family in September 2013 and we met up twice. A part of me had expected the strange spark between us to have faded, by the time we met again. But our second and third meetings, though brief, seemed to have given the spark fuel to keep it burning for a while longer.

There is something special about this boy, though I have not quite figured him out.