Robbery

I thought it was downright unfair. He caught me when I wasn’t looking, and pushed me from behind. Had he attacked from the front, perhaps I wouldn’t have been as mad. As I lost balance, I was overcome with shock, anger and pain. It was the suddeness of the fight, the weight of the wrestle and the blow to my pride that hit me so hard in the face. He threw me onto the ground, slipped his fingers into my pocket to take what he wanted, which was so many things precious to me, and wanted to take flight.

How dare he. How dare he take what belonged to me.

So I didn’t let him go.

He was heavier than me so I grimaced under the brunt of his weight, but when he tried to flee, I didn’t let him go. Gritting our teeth, and forcing his trunk to the ground, I tried to pry his hand open to take back what had belonged to me. They were mine. Those things were mine. They belonged to me. How dare he.

He was in pain, and I was ready to inflict more. He had given me scrapes, bruises, tears and a sore back and I wasn’t ready to let him go. During the midst of the struggle, there was so much fog that I couldn’t see his face. I wanted to see that face, see the face that robbed me of what belonged to me. How dare he.

Straddling him and sitting on his chest, I summoned all the strength I could find within myself and threw his shoulders to the floor, held up his neck so I could see his face. I was hurt, angry and in pain. I was in a large amount of pain, emotionally and physically. How low he was, I thought.

But when our eyes met and I saw his face, my mouth fell open and I leaped away. An angel’s face, it was.

Our eyes met and I fell away. He looked at me, smiled his warm smile- that ever familiar smile- and opened my palm to return to me what was mine. And then I understood.

“I just wanted you to wrestle me to claim back what was yours, that’s all.”

The fog is clearing. And even as I come to terms with my own pain and desperation, I begin to understand that all This was necessary- this This, the depression and confusion and overwhelming sense of loss for the past 35 days- was a necessary tussle with God.

I am beginning to understand. What all this meant, what this all means. Why I felt what I did, why I do not feel what I did anymore. I have struggled with God, wrestled with an angel and I am in the process of overcoming the tussle. I do not fully understand it, still, but I am beginning to, in little ways.

This is how I understand it.

The first wave of depression crept in insidiously with each passing day of knowing that Rainbow would not come to pass this year. The disappointment came with having to deal with the loss, but what brought on the deep feeling of grief was not knowing, not understanding God’s heart toward me. I was unsettled and diseased. In the depths of my heart, I knew God had promised me Rainbow, promised me in a way I was convinced personally and in a way that would make others raise their eyebrows.

But now that it wasn’t going to happen this year as I had expected because they “won’t make it in time”, I didn’t know if I was supposed to surrender and decide that perhaps I had heard God wrongly, or to press into a deeper spiritual tussle with God. Did letting go mean I was undermining the integrity of God’s promise to me? Or had I not been prayerful enough-perhaps I needed to press in and wrestle with angels like a man called Jacob did in the bible, so he could earn his blessings?

I feared pursuing it further, feared taking action to hurry others, rush plans- for time and circumstance seemed to point this was not God’s time yet. Yet, I feared letting Rainbow go, for I didn’t want it to mean that I didn’t have faith to believe the vision I thought God had given me. Was I to give Rainbow up and surrender, or to pursue it in faith? If I surrendered, did that mean I was backing out on God, and if I didn’t, had I crossed from being tenacious and visionary to being caught in my own self-righteous striving?

In th fog, I felt stuck in a damned-if-I-do-and-damned-if-I-don’t situation. To make things worse, I felt caught between two camps, and foolish to both- the first mocking me for not taking action- “Wai Jia, you should try harder. Don’t give up, excercise some authority and responsibility,” and the second saying, ” Perhaps this is just not what God has planned- maybe you interpreted His promise wrongly, and you just have to let it go.”

The grief was partially caused by the loss, but worse, it was being in the darkness, not being able to fathom what God was trying to do with me, and feeling damned on both sides. It felt so lonely there.

Then, the second wave of depression hit. You recover well, think you’ve got it all together when suddenly, you wake up one day and realise in shock that you’ve something new to struggle with- the weight gain. It’s a stage of recovery where people fall prey so easily to relapse. Struggling with what it means, what you now look like, where to go from here. You know you finally look normal, but know that something inside is -still- broken. What is worse than looking and feeling ill, is feeling ill but not looking like it at all.

One day I wake up feeling like I cannot do this anymore- this getting up to meet people and smile and say hello and be nice and study and be all right. I was on a healthy dose of positive thinking and self-therapy until I hit a lid, and that was where professional help had to come in. Nobody does this by themself. I was entangled in pride, shame and guilt. Pride because I thought I was doing brilliantly by myself, shame because I thought perhaps I had slipped up and had not drawn close enough to God for help, and guilt because that voice of “please just be less complicated and save us the money” kept ringing in my head. That’s when the Tiny incidents became Traumatic ones, and everything came undone.

The third wave came like a tsunami and wiped out whatever emotional infrastruture that was left. Rainbow was gone for now, every self-initiated project with good intentions died on me, there was darkness in the Big Brick House, exams loomed ahead, Tiny incidents set off like fireworks… I felt exhausted, fell sick, couldn’t share my feelings with anyone because I hadn’t the faintest idea what was happening, felt condemned and confused with the different opinions people had on my situation, and had little energy at times to meet people, give up myself for them, lead discussions, be engaged in ministry. I had to cancel appointments, turn down requests to help. I felt useless, fruitless and barren.

The last straw came when they wanted to “just check if there’re any remants of clinical depression left”. That unnerved me completely. It made me doubt myself, made me question God, made me wonder if it was an illness and its implications, or if I just needed to quit whining and get my act together. Lonely and afraid of turning 21 this way, the fear of being diagnosed as depressed made me even more so.

Caught in a tailspin of events, I felt I had been thrown onto the ground from the back, and had everything precious to me in my pocket stolen from me in a moment.

How dare He, I thought. Day and night, I struggled. 35 days.

It is a time in the winter, a time in a furnace.

But even in the darkness, there were treasures to be found. In the winter snow, I found buds forming. In the heat of the fire, I found purified gold. I was able to reconcile- that God wasn’t punishing me, that He loves us, and allows trials tough enough to mould our characters but never enough to crush us completely.

I was pushed down and robbed by an angel.

In the heat of the tussle, I gained a profound strength from God, the kind that can only be purified through pain. On the ground in vulnerability and brokeness, I learned humility, the kind that develops in you an abandoned trust in God. In being emptied and crippled, I learned how God uses crises and delayed prayers to break us open, soften our hearts, and renew us- right from the very beginning.

And as I struggled and fought and wrestled with the angel and wouldn’t let him go because of what he had cost me, I learnt that in all suffering, we gain a tenacity for, a profound insight into and a sense of fervent pursuit for God’s face.

I am learning- that sometimes the greatest adversity comes to those God loves the most.

That the greater the suffering, the greater the purpose God has for it.

That the higher the heat and pressure, the closer we become to diamonds.

That it’s perfectly okay to be profoundly aware of one’s inadequacy, weakness and fraility, perfectly okay to feel broken and empty and robbed- because any form of personal bankruptcy bought through this kind of fire and robbery builds a true kind of trust, faith and humility before God.

I am learning that sometimes, we need to know what it means to be completely useless, broken and empty before we can learn what it means to be fruitful and humble at the same time. For fruitfulness without humility is a dangerous, dangerous thing. For we cannot handle glory until we learn to handle pain-If Rainbow had come through just as I had expected, I would have become a proud prick, full of myself. It is God’s grace that all This has happened instead. Great faith without brokeness becomes presumption.

That it is a blessing in disguise to go through this, because it is precisely this kind of pain and perplexity that can enlarge our hearts, widen the breadth of our capacities, and deepen our love for the things which are real.

Now I’ve learnt, that not understanding why is part of the suffering, part of the only kind of suffering that can make you the kind of person who loves God, loves people not for what you get in return, but simply, for who they are, who God is. If I knew why I was suffering, and when it would end, the motivation would keep me strong, resilient. But not knowing why, not knowing when it will end, builds in you faith and love for God and people, not for what you may receive when the suffering ends, but simply, for who He is, who they are, what this process is about.

I am learning- that if we build our lives on the foundations of position, books, projects and accomplishments, suffering in any way will pull us away from them. In times of crushing distress, when these foundations crumble, we will, too.

And I am learning, that if we, however, build our lives on the foundation of God’s love, then suffering of any kind will only pull us deeper, closer into God, into His love, into a deeper faith and joy- so close we can hear His heartbeat.

God is teaching me that true faith doesn’t waver, either when we’re energized by the miracles we think we’ve seen or when we’re completely undone.

That suffering perfects our love- do I claim to have faith in God and the beauty of this world only when I feel my prayers are answered (Kitesong) or do I love and trust Him just the same, just as much when I am thrown down onto the floor, hapless, and robbed of what I think to be my right?

Perhaps it seems like I am making all this up, trying to find comfort for myself in whatever way possible. Perhaps it seems like I am trying to find a new perspective just so I can hold on.

But I am getting help and doing what I need to do. And as I pinned the angel to the ground and straddled him, held his neck up and asked him why, quite ferociously, he smiled at me and only said, “I just wanted you to wrestle me to claim back what was yours, that’s all.”

He paused. “I just wanted you to seek my face out.”

And the fog started to clear.

As with all trials.

He shrugged and smiled at me.