Please help me help him in Your strength, LORD.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (2Cor.12:8-10)

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by: dopey

it's easy to admire and adore .... placing the object of your admiration on a pedestal and casting on his/her shoulders the burden of being always exemplary. it is also easy to condemn and scorn .... dismissing and tolerating as circumstances may befit.

it is hardest to be a friend .... a friend who does not demand inhuman exertions and accomplishments ... and yet willing to give second and third chances ... to believe that there is yet beneath the rough exteriors a precious diamond.

to bestow a love which benefits the object with the affection able to make the person better than him/herself.

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I had feared that my reaction to his death - the outpouring of sorrow - has been overdone emotionally. But the feeling for Rev. AT has come from a fact, the more I recall and remember his work and his being--intense, both in heatlh and in sickness. His death was worth the mourning; not because his life was not complete, but because it was a very good life lived--a very good brief life, worth of admiration as much as grief. If I may call his death untimely, for the brevity of his life, it only means that I still wish for more of him, here.

posted by Graciana@Home at 6:25 am

Of late I have taken little notice of this blog, writing principally on papers or emails.

Got to the fourth chapter of Dickens’ Great Expectations—a slow reader that I am. Hilariously grim, Dickens bares the moral element of a child in such a way that as soon as a child becomes self-aware, he recognizes guilt and not innocence as his main secret knowledge. Dickens seems to have a belief in children in their virtues in correspondence to their nastiness. Conscience is such a terrible thing to the sensitive young Pip when it acutely judges and accuses him of stealing, even when his circumstance insists him to do so and reasonably (?) eradicates his guilt. This depiction of a child triggered memory of myself as a seven-year-old, ‘contemplating’ of (I did not recognize the word then for sure) suicide (my very first suicidal thought, that is) when feeling very badly about giving a hard angry spank on my brother’s shoulder (or back). This was done after a rather viciously mischievious act he as a five-year-old performed on me—he used a fork to scratch my face. Wicked, wasn't he?

The week 2-8July passed in disorderly haste, and I was dog-tired most often. Regretted for being a flop and went limp at Picasso’s Vollard Suite and PP’s presentation. I knew it was not dull or tedious, it was tormenting because I was worn-out. At home, I too often went fuming boiled over what I personally consider frenzied loud laughter over absurdities. Bedroom has been my emotional refuge. Patience was much needed, knowing each has his/her own idiosyncrasy. Others too have to bear with me: for my over-meticulousness in putting things in their place according to type/shape etc, for not being flexible. I simply dislike what they call disorderly order, like the chaos of a dining table after a convivial dinner. Sigh. I was so easily piqued by trivial things; the whole thing was a pure waste of breath.

Weekend was not sugar and honey. Things most upsetting and unpleasant were P. AT’s admission to ICU, C. S’ collapse at her house, K. T's anxiety—also a tearful squabble with AK shortly after PP.

Plied with mental exhaustion I did not really feel like going for Sunday’s OSG dinner, prefering the girls not to hear the unbosoming of a troubled person. It turned out that the humble rendezvous—the eating place across the church—did not hinder the wonder the meeting did on me. The thunder during the sudden downpour that prompted us of time, also the drizzles as I walked home, brought what John Newton told Wilberforce in Amazing Grace so vividly to my mind, ‘God sometimes speaks through thunderstorms, sometimes through gentle rain.’ There was certain truth reinforced during the meeting. Uplifted, this week so far has been going entirely unruffled. I truly hope that this is not just a passing craze, but something of lasting reforming faith; that it is not that I get so worked up after we all sit around together and practice togetherness, and assume the good feeling of togetherness is something of spirituality. I suppose caution born of humility is always well worth it?

It is eleven at night now, and I am going back to the torrent of words of Hagopian's Back to Basics.






Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. (Romans7:20)

posted by Graciana@Home at 5:06 pm

Indeed you are much exceptional for your restless yet serene keenness to make sense of your life, of your existence, of your whole being. Not much of flattery, and reasonably honest—as honest as you can expect someone to be in this world that has gone ‘out-of-original-style’—I have always regarded you Olympian in almost every aspect of life, superior and broad, in intellectual interests, and in wisdom of connections, and in spirit. So thank you, it is an honour to have you share your self. I would like to wish you in your every endeavour, the possibility of living virtuously in any station of your life: that no matter how diseased a society can be, it will not condition and corrupt such a morally sensitive person as you; that in this world of less-than-man, you will discover you near the end of it properly a man—a Christian one. Well, you are a Herculean in strengths really, but also in weaknesses—such as being daunted by the office aunties. =P For all your goodness and absurdity and foibles, you sure have grown more endearing to me. =)

More blessed years ahead to you. Grace today. Grace tomorrow.

Sincerely,

posted by Graciana@Home at 2:47 pm

A handful of people have suggested similarities in our characters. Living through with her, I am affirmed that we are alike in one particular routine: we cry ourselves to sleep almost every night, or more accurately, on every other night. Fortunately as roommates, we are clever—we take turns. As if the timing has been set up, like the rising and the setting of sun. And as if it is divine providential, when immediate consolation is essential for remedy, God bestows us with a friend by our side. Both D and I are often worried stiff about responsibilities to others whom we care and who care for us and we grow nervous thinking of and planning our future. One day when D struggled to stifle her sobs, I came near to hug her and asked what have made her so sad. She replied in tears and jerky speech, ‘I am confused of how to give attention to everyone in a fair, adequate, and most honest way.’ I thought to myself, oh my, did not I just cry over this some nights ago.

AK too discusses and consults more frequently about a PhD abroad these days, and how he looks forward to one day teaching in a reformed University in Indonesia. UK is most zoomed in as destination for further study, and by evening I would have imagined living in another society most class-conscious like Singapore, from financial covetousness, intellectual snobbery, to linguistic prejudice. Here I teach English; there I could be grammatically challenged. Charles Dickens would not have named his book ‘Great Expectations’ for no reason, would he? Picturing poor, unsafe, and unruly Indonesia too prompts me of Raffles’ tragic personal life across the sea. He lost his wives and four children to harsh conditions in Java and Sumatra. My heart is nearly broken in anxiety, everyday. As much as I am happy and thankful to be beside AK, what if I am not good enough a helper? What if as a helper, I am not strong enough, physically, mentally, spiritually? Possibly I will get immensely insane—and be another Mrs. William Carey.

Yesterday I woke up with puffed-up eyes. Today it was D who was with single eyelid. So supposedly, by rotation, tonight it is my turn to weep. It is a hunch. You know, like it really rains on days our grandfathers heave a sigh, ‘looks like it is raining today.’

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