I am revamping my room one week into the school year and have picked up this habit of avoiding losing hair ties by hanging them on knobs - like drawer knobs. and i must say, it is very effective indeed. what's better is that when i'm sitting in random places (in my room, of course) and i see a hair tie hanging on a knob... i know it's mine. so everybody, in my act of selfishness, DO NOT HANG YOUR HAIR TIES ON KNOBS because they're mine. hoh.



on a more serious note, isn't it frustrating when you realise how little control you have over... yourself? not in terms of temptation (though that is true) but when things happen, and you can't seem to grasp life at its edges and force it to go your way. i guess i'm writing this because someone i'm close to just got out of a relationship that couldn't work, and i guess i'm feeling pain for that person. just for anonymity and respect, let's name the person A.

there are 2 things that are very frustrating for me. first of all, that i can't seem to share my past experiences because i have never been in a relationship, though i can safely say right now that i'm not looking for one because in faith, i know that if it's going to happen, it WILL happen by God's grace. so i can't give emotionally except to comfort and say that it will get better because it always does.
second frustrating thing is that A knows God but won't/refuse to reach Him. A tells me to pray for the situation that he/she is in because he (i'm just going to stick with the 'guy' thing) says that only God can pull him out of this sadness. but A knows that he is unable (or i would think unwilling) to sacrifice that need for control in his life. and he says to me 'you're lucky because you have faith'. he says he prays from time to time... you know when he needs help etc... so i start giving advice. which never ever has been the case.

but isn't it such a paradox?

to think that we can lead our life the way we want, however we want. it doesn't even matter if you're saving the world or wallowing in debauchery. it doesn't make a difference whether you're the president, the queen of england or a peasant or just the average joe. Regardless of your income, intellect and insight, you will never be immune to what God does in your life. Indeed He blesses! But He can take away. who are you to think that you are above God's control? if it's not His physical intervention like Nature both blessing and destroying lives, it's emotional intervention. When your heart is broken, only God can mend it. People say time heals all wounds - possibly, but not perfectly - unforgiveness, indifference, bitterness will all be part of the scars that are left behind. but when God heals, you feel joy and liberation. when you give surrender your freedom to Him do you experience freedom from life's worries. I mean, your path is set and has been set before the world began by your good Master. there're no more worries, only a matter of how you deal with things as they come. in faith or in your own strength.

i guess surrendering one's strength is the hardest of all - even when you know that the strength you gain as a result of dying to yourself is so much greater and more glorious and definitely more joyous and liberating than you could ever imagine. And them come what may - disaster, heartbreak, destruction, betrayal... you know that in surrendering your Will to His, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel, and a loving hand reaching out to pull you out of the abyss. and in all the sense of

2 Cor 12:9 - 10
"To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

true and beautiful.