wow, it’s been a long time! Actually I’ve been meaning to write for a really long time, and one night I did actually write out a post, but then had some login problems and the whole thing was lost. But here I finally am.
what is it that I really wanna say though? I’m not super sure. I think when I don’t write, there are so many things I think of writing, but then when I actually get down to it… and now I’ve used the word “actually” 3 times in the last 75 words.
Ok let’s start with what I’m listening to at the moment – easy, small talk topic haha. I suddenly felt very nostalgic about/for this LaserDisc (!!!) that I watched, like, every day for a month or something – it was of Chicago live in concert. Before that, I’d only known them for their popular ballads, but that LD changed my life. I liked their non-ballady songs so much more. The horns section – wow! But unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a DVD version of it… well I’ve just managed to find it on YouTube, and so I think it’s time for me to restart the search for a legit version that I can own. Love it. Just a snippet for you – did you know that this is how the ballad Hard To Say I’m Sorry ends? This is why they always fade it out when they play it on the radio…
It just brought back memories of how music used to really play a larger role in my life… I mean, music is still important in my life now, but it’s really restricted to the role that it plays in respect to prayer and worship. Music in the secular sense… it doesn’t exist in my life anymore. And I’m not sure how I feel about that. I went through a period of time last year when I felt, maybe I really should stop for a while and pursue this music thing… but it seems that the feeling has since gone, and now I’m just back in a place of uncertainty, nostalgia, and just general wistfulness about it.
aiyoh, what happened to safe and easy small talk? 😦 I guess I’m in a rather weird space right now. I’m actually very grateful to God that I managed to get into a much better place in my relationship with him in the last 2 weeks before Easter. A big part of that was a Lenten reflection we had in our worship ministry. It was a really small session with just 6 people, but it really marked a turning point for me where I decided on a small and concrete step to help me u-turn and start moving towards God instead of away from Him – just pray one decade of the rosary every day.
It worked like a charm, because part of my avoidance of God stemmed from not wanting to talk to Him in an intimate and open way, and I felt that praying the Rosary would allow me to follow my desire to pray, without myself freaking out because it got too vulnerable too fast. So I did that, and before I knew it, I was spending a little bit of time in ado here and there, and then a few daily masses here and there, and then I managed to have the way paved for me to go for confession, and I had a really great recon session which I’m really grateful for.
But here’s where it gets a bit complicated. It’s kinda like yoga – hear me out. I used to go for Bikram yoga pretty regularly, like every week. Bikram is standard – you do the same 26 poses every time. So after a while, you start to really know your body, and whether you’re improving or having a bad day. Then after 4 months of practising, I suddenly stopped because of stuff that happened. When I came back to yoga about a year after that, I kept having this problem of pushing too far, too fast. My mind remembered that I should be able to stretch to a certain distance, or hold a pose for a certain amount of time, and so it charged ahead and tried to do it, but my body was in a very different place – it had reverted to pre-yoga days, and in fact even worse than that because I had put on weight in the intervening 1 year and also gotten older and more unfit haha. So I would happily charge ahead, and then totally crash when my body finally managed to communicate to my brain that something wasn’t right.
I feel that that’s exactly where I’ve been in my prayer life over the past 2 weeks. I was so happy to come back to God that I wanted to go straight back to where our relationship was when it was at its peak, forgetting that I have spent the last 1 plus year in a really bad place, and have in some ways become even further from Him than I have ever been in my life. So I find myself sometimes charging forward with enthusiasm, and then suddenly realising that I’m not ready for this, and then retreating really quickly. It takes time to build back a rhythm, trust, familiarity and warmth, all that stuff, when there has been hurt in a relationship, and mine with God is no exception. A certain chemistry still lingers, and it’s hard for me to realise that I’m still a long way away, though facing the correct direction now, and that I should take baby steps, or else I’ll quickly crash.
So yeah… it’s kinda hard right now to know which way to move, and I’ve kinda come to a standstill. I’m thinking of going back to the Rosary for now… my worship head was sharing about how he’s come to really treasure the Rosary, and the intercession of our Mother Mary, and if I think back to where I was when I first started to grow closer to God, it began with an inexplicable draw towards praying the Rosary – previously considered by myself to be a rather boring and pointless repetitive prayer. Let’s see how it goes 🙂
Happy Easter guys! Born again = baby = baby steps 🙂
snowfelon 