prayer request

Okei, everyone, PRAY PRAY PRAY....

My favourite granny (okei, she's also my only granny now) needs to go for a colonscopy on Friday morning.
She's been having constipation of sorts for about 7-8 months, then suddenly she's having diarrhoea.
Doctor is worried that there may be a growth, or that her intestines are clogged up, so the recommendation to go for a scope.

Am praying that it'll all be clear and because she is already 77, that she will not go through much discomfort through the whole thing.

Thanks ah...

benji's now 7 months and 20 days old

I finally got a chance to visit Benji today.
I think he still remembers me, even though it's been 2-3 months since I last saw him.
I could tell he was very excited, cos he peed at my feet. Haha.
Now he's BIG, and still HYPERACTIVE, so you can imagine the repercussions of such a combi. :P

Here are some pics of him.

no skirmish

Someone has recently set an alarm clock in my life.
It goes off at 11pm, or sometimes earlier.
Then, invisible beings swing into action and they refuse to be beaten off.

Nasty memories dash in and out of my mind.
Accusations take stab at my conscience.
Countless fears slash at my heart.

I'm in a battle every night.
My bed is a fighting ground.
My pillow has been beaten and soaked.

Every night, I'm challenged to fight or take flight.
A few years ago, I took flight when the going got tough.
But, I am not the same girl I was.
I may not be the best kind of soldier, but I have learnt that some things are worth fighting for, and my heart is learning to roar.

So, every night, I take up my stance.

Yes, the war has broken out.
And it is no small skirmish.

On occasions, I kept my armor on till 3am.
On others, till 5am.

Once, I finally drifted into sleep, only to be tormented by the worst kind of nightmares--the kind where all hope is lost, and you are in a ball on the floor, feeling that you can't cry hard enough, and you keep hearing an accusing voice that keeps repeating, "If only..."

I woke up from that, with fear taunting me, "What if it really happened?"
It took me a long while to fall back into sleep.

I don't know why I am in this war.
Sometimes, I am not sure exactly which crown I am fighting to win.
But I am determined not to yield.

And in the midst of it, I've fallen in love.
With a single name.

I know Him as Father, Lord and Saviour.
But, during this time, He chose to reveal the beauty of His name to me.

What a privilege it was to hear Him suddenly say, "My name is Yahweh."
I blinked involuntarily, "You mean, You're asking me to call You by Your name? Your personal name?"

And I did.
Last night, I called His name over and over.

The beings cannot stay long in the presence of His name.
One by one, they lost their grip.
And I was left alone in the beauty of a Captain whose name is beautiful.
His name is beautiful because it belongs to a beautiful Him.

He lulled me to sleep.

Every night. I fight a battle.
Every night. I win a battle.

It is my only source of strength, and hope.
The knowing that I will win this war.

He is my Rescuer.

Psalm 91

He who dwells in the secret place of the most High
Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, "He is my refuge and my fortress;
My God, in Him I will trust."

Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler
And from the perilous pestilence.
He shall cover you with His feathers,
And under His wings you shall take refuge;
His truth shall be your shield and buckler.
You shall not be afraid of the terror by night,
Nor of the arrow that flies by day,
Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness,
Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.

A thousand may fall at your side,
And ten thousand at your right hand;
But it shall not come near you.
Only with your eyes shall you look,
And see the reward of the wicked.

Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge,
Even the Most High, your dwelling place,
No evil shall befall you,
Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling;
For He shall give His angels charge over you,
To keep you in all your ways.
In their hands they shall bear you up,
Lest you dash your foot against a stone.
You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra,
The young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot.

"Because he has set his love upon Me,
therefore I will deliver Him;
I will set Him on high, because He has known My name.
He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble;
I will deliver him and honor him.
With long life I will satisfy him,
And show him My salvation."

C.S. Lewis puts it best.

“He that but looketh on a plate of ham and eggs to lust after it hath already committed breakfast with it in his heart”

One day.
I will stop lusting after KFC, Popeye's, and all the other harmful-yet-so-yummy pork fat related luxuries.
One day.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

Building a castle around our own heart makes it a fortress.
Giving it to God allows Him to protect it on our behalf.

“There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way”

I'm keeping watch on often I reply God with "But I..."
There is a fear that one day He'll tell me, "Fine then..." and then it'll be my undoing.

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”

Yeah! That means I was grown up all along! Haha.

“If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world”

That we are made for eternity is a beautiful truth.

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”

But whereas we are given allowance to grief, there is no excuse for fear.

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

Nice.

hairspray analogy

Without love, life is like a prom that won't invite us
Without love, life's getting my big break and laryngitis
Without love, life's a '45' when you can't buy it
Without love, life is like my mother on a diet

Like a week that's only Mondays
Only ice cream, never sundaes
Like a circle with no center
Like a door marked "do not enter!"

HAHAHA ... isn't it so tragically funny!

putting things in their rightful places

Despite my protests, my dad got a new wardrobe made for my room.
It's got 4-doors and runs from ceiling to floor.
Now I can put all (okei, most of) my stuff behind closed doors.

So, despite my protests, I am happy with my new storage space. :)

And my mum bought me a nice new glass-top L-shaped desk as my belated berfdae present.
I lurf huge desks, cos I NEED space to work happily.
Plus, I've got a businessman's chair to go with it.

And my aunt passed me her electronic keyboard.
Now for a few minutes everyday, I can pretend to be Jay Chou in Secret.
Haha.

I need to spend the whole of tomorrow clearing my bookshelf stuff off my bro's spare bed. :P

Hot chocolate is yummy but it's putting me to sleep.

Rest in truth

Validation is powerful.

Truth confirmed is liberating indeed.

Ironically, it takes strength to let go and trust.

baby in cube

Once, there was a moth who was all brown and black.
"Black is pretty nice a color to live with, but brown is just a disaster," thought the moth to itself.
So the moth started to imagine it had a little of some other colour on itself.

First, it was fire engine red wings.
Then, a month later, it added sunshine yellow tear-drops.
When the moth was burnt by a lamp, it started to picture lime green spots in the yellow tear drops on its red wings, to take away its pain.
One day, the moth thought to itself, "Why, I'm a colorful butterfly! Never mind that the colors clash ... I think it adds a whimsical touch."

Slowly, the moth learnt to escape into its land of imagination where no brown existed and it was a beautiful butterfly.
Everytime the moth saw its reflection in the mirror, it told itself, "I'm a princess among the moths--I am a butterfly."

One day, a fren that the butterfly-moth loved dearly came by and said, "You know, you really are a bit of a butterfly. Your feet are not on the ground sometimes.

It's like when we are drawn to an open flame.
At some point, we start to know it will burn us.
We need to change direction sometime so we can not head towards death.
But some of us just want to keep heading towards it anyway, hoping that maybe this once it will not burn.
And they end up losing a leg or a wing or even their lives."

The moth that thought it was a butterfly replied, "Maybe you're right. Tell me when I'm flying too close to an open flame okei? Then again, you've got your feet on the ground so much you're growing roots! Come fly with me sometime."

The fren answered, "Maybe I will sometime. But I might not tell you anymore, because who knows? One day you might just be able to live with an open flame. And who am I to tell you you can't?"

The butterfly-moth laughed and said, "Yeh, you never know!"

One day, the butterfly-moth was flying past a window when it saw a bright blue flame.
Its glow was intoxicating and the butterfly-moth flew zig-zaggedly towards it.
Inches away from reaching the flame, there was a "thunk" and the butterfly-moth came to an involuntary halt.
It was unable to go any further, but as far as the butterfly-moth could tell, it was touching the flame.
"Hey, I have found a flame that does not burn me! I must go and tell my fren and bring him here to see."

As the butterfly-moth flew off, there was another "thunk" and it hit its head against what looked like another flame.
Confused, it took off again, only to hit itself against another flame!
"What's going on?" it said out loud, "Maybe if I call my fren, he'll hear me and come help."
So the butterfly-moth shouted as loud as it could, and flapped its wings against the many flames that it seemed to be surrounded with.
After some time, it realized that its fren would not be coming.
Tired out, it fluttered to the ground and laid there looking up.

That's when it noticed that it was surrounded by many black and brown moths.
They looked exactly like our butterfly-moth, and mimicked its every movement.
"Argh...brown! How hideous! I wish they would go away," it said.

The butterfly-moth turned away to avoid looking at the ugly brown, but found another black and brown moth there staring back at it.
She turned to another side and found the same thing.

Then, with a sudden shock, it realised that all the black and brown moths were actually reflections of its self!
The butterfly-moth had been trapped in a cube of mirrors with one single flame inside.

"No! I don't like you at all ... I have red wings with lime-green spotted yellow tear drops ... I am a princess among the moths--I am a butterfly!"
The butterfly-moth yelled and yelled to all its reflections.
Naturally, none of them ever responded to it.

Confronted by itself on every side, the moth flew frantically from wall to wall.
The flame was no longer as important now, as the moth was desperate simply to get out.
It could not stand the sight of itself, and for once, no matter how hard it tried to imagine itself as a colorful butterfly, it did not work.

Left to its own, and tired out, the moth laid back down on the floor of the cube, and eventually accepted the truth--that it was not a butterfly or a princess among the moths; it was nothing more than a black and brown moth.
Disappointment flooded its eyes with tears, and disgust filled its heart.
"I believed a lie about myself. I am nothing more than a moth," it said, "and a foolish one. Who was I to think I could create?"

Just then, the Painter who had been watching from outside the cube reached in with His paintbrush and carefully brushed a stroke of fire-engine red on the moth's left wing.
"Huh ... What was that?" the moth exclaimed.
Silently, the Painter reached in again and swept the wing with another dust of red.
Very slowly, stroke by stroke, the Painter began to cover the moth's wings with fire-engine red.
Then He carefully drew and colored the tear drops in sunshine yellow.

It was a long and tedious process.
The moth would squirm and try to avoid the paintbrush as it tickled and hurt sometimes.
But soon, it learnt that the quieter it sat, the faster it went.
So it waited. And tried not to keep flying around, looking for an exit.

Finally, the Painter picked out his finest paintbrush and dipped it into lime-green of the most perfect shade.

But instead of drawing boring spots, He started to draw intricate designs on both wings.

By the time He was done, the moth no longer resembled the black and brown moth it had been.
Instead, as it flitted around the cube, it was speechless to see that it was even more beautiful than it had imagined itself.
"Thank you," whispered the moth, "You've made me into a butterfly."

Then, the Painter opened up the cube and let the butterfly out.