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.