Heavy with symbolic value, rings often have Stories behind them. I’ve been asked countless times about the ring I wear, most times to my amusement.
“Are you married?”
” So who’s the new person in your life?”
I always laugh politely, and then deftly shift the limelight away from myself. There is a Story, a long one at that, one which I’ve never explained in full.
A lot of friends have been talking about relationships lately- I suppose it’s a new phase of life we are entering. Twenty-one. Tis such a young age, isn’t it, to be attached? Most of us aren’t quite ready for marriage, are we? I thought aloud, and I should have prepared myself for the various opposing views bombarded at me like a pelting storm. I’m surprised- because most people I’ve spoken to say they are ready. It made me wonder what it was really in particular that I wasn’t ready for, why it was so, when I would be, and the values lurking underneath these thoughts- whether they were skewed, maladjusted or just downright strange. It set me thinking.
Most of the people I spoke to have known God all their lives. They’re steady, grounded, matured- full of vision and faith for their futures. Thus, even my closest friends haven’t fathomed why I consider myself un-ready, and it set me thinking deep.
I’ve only known God for about 4 years or so, just before medical school started. Before that, life felt like one dark blanket under which I was suffocating under, and it’s only recently that I started to experience the goodness of basking in sunlight. While believing in God has been the best thing that’s ever happened to me, its first few years have also thrown me onto my knees, forcing me to overhaul every old belief system I ever held on to, and the excruciating process of purging manifested itself in the most tumultuous storms in my life- depression and anorexia. It’s only been lately that God has walked me out of it, and I once again feel like a child, watching the world with new eyes in awe and wonder, discovering and rediscovering things I never knew. It’s silly, I know, but I feel all but four years old living life all over again.
Don’t they always tell you to live your best for God while you’re single, and not to rush into what will come in its own timing? Nonetheless, like a determined detective, I interrogated myself. Was the ring a convenient excuse to distant myself from entering into something I was too uncertain of? Was I hiding? Was I afraid? Friends have asked me over and over, and I find myself tongue-tied, at best.
Having just walked through the darkest moments of my life, I find myself wanting to spend this season of my life finding my feet, and growing to know God more intimately. Like a blind man seeing the world for the first time, I find myself discovering bits of life and parts about myself I never knew before, and I’m amazed, constantly, by this process of rediscovery. Like a child playing with his own fingers, I find myself awed by the mystery and wonder of what God has given me and yet I never took notice of before all my life. So right now my eyes are transfixed on God, on His creativity, sovereignty and wonder, and on the beauty of life.
Being in a relationship is altogether another moulting process to go through, one of dying to oneself, and perhaps most appropriate only after one has securely found one’s identity in God’s love. I think I’ve so much to learn before entering that phase of my life- about servitude, humility, submission- qualities which go against the very grain of one’s wilful nature.
As fantasial as it sounds, I have come to believe, through a series of consistent and freaky events, that God’s message for me is to remain faithful to this cause of growing in Him, learning these lessons till the day I graduate. The time is now- to learn and to prepare my heart.
So the ring will come off then.
The missionary who sat me down to chat with me at a medical outreach carnival last weekend connected with me immediately because we found so much in common. She, too, had a ring Story. Born in Australia, she backpacked alone to Indonesia to help the poor and needy, with a ring on her finger just like mine, believing in God to be her all-sufficiency. The week she lost her ring, her pastor coincidentally called her from overseas to tell her to open up her heart to someone who may enter into her life to serve the underprivileged together with her. That weekend, a Singaporean mission team went to visit Indonesia and her husband-to-be was right there.
While I’m not saying anything as dramatic as that may happen to me, I do believe that God has a plan for me, for someone out there, and no ring is going to stop His plans from unfolding. Love is like that, I think- you’ve known this person all your life, unromantically, but suddenly in the right season, sparks fly, or you’ve never seen this person before but how come it seems like deja vu? So I think in the right season, at the right time, things will -just- happen, in a way we least expect, and we will have the assurance that God timed it, planned it. Everything will fall into place- the person would want to do missions too, he’d love God, have a good heart, we’d have the right chemistry and understanding for each other etcetera etcetera.
That said, I was a little disturbed by what my own time of reflection revealed. For deep below these seemingly well-reasoned explanations, I found a bag of fear lying like a sack of old potatoes in the basement of my heart. For I’ve heard too many stories, listened to too many warnings, met one too many Confused/ Scary/ Fickle/ Overly-anxious/ Bad Men. I’ve never been in a relationship, for what I discovered before entering one always made me sigh in tremendous relief, the way you would after dodging a speeding race-car on a roadrage.
I’m happy to meet people, make friends, form deep, lasting friendships now. After all, relationships don’t happen in a day. But I was surprised, of how much the thought of someone asking for any more from me right now terrified me. I’m still afraid of Bad Men (the terribly charming but flighty kind, the pretending-to-be-godly kind, who’s said to a chain of girls-“God’s told me you’re the one”, the smooth-talking kind…), of the terribly slick and poetic things they say and don’t stick to, of what they feel and then conveniently don’t feel.
One grows wary of one’s own heart. For I am an artist, and mine pulsates and gravitates the way an artist’s does. Yet in spite of my desires, I seize and attempt to gain mastery over it, again and again, lest it falls into the wrong hands. For the heart is deceitful above all things… who can fathom it? -(Jeremiah 17:9)
Shocked and shaken before, it has become fragile, wary, Vulnerable, and now taken captive behind a fortress for protection. And it makes me wonder who would be brave enough to go all the way to regain its trust, to prove faithful and true, to break through the stony fort to retrieve it from deep inside. I’m afraid, petrified- of things too fast, too soon. Just the thought of it grips me like a vice and turns my insides into chaos. I wonder how long it would take for my trust to be won again.
And then there’s that part of me, a by-product of Disneyworld, which believes women should never, ever initiate- that knights are supposed to do all the talking, swordfighting, pursuing, and dragon-slaying… you’d have to kill me first before I let anything out. So I wait, mute, and talk to God. Feelings arise and yet, I vacillate, hiding, bringing it before God and Him only. For while I trust that God’ll protect my heart because it is ultimately His first, it’ll take some time before my defenses come down again.
Perhaps the most excruciating bit of this whole process is the part poised between friendship and courtship, that nebulous, undeciding, tension-packed period filled with questions, imaginings, fears and longings. It is that which I find my heart most afraid of- the sleepless stress of it all, partially from past experiences, unnerves me completely.
I wish people were honest, forthright and certain. I wish signs were easier to read. But everything is clouded in such uncertainty and second-guessing that I can only have God to count on. I also happen to believe that unless one can see oneself married in the next two or three years or so, one might not be ready for a serious relationship. So shoot me for being terribly old-fashioned. It made me wonder why there’re no rules to this whole thing- I think I might need an Idiot’s manual.
So while it was not easy, I had to admit to myself, that that’s partially why I’ve got my ring on. When I was five and my best friend proposed to me, I mustered the strength to tell him squarely (though I felt like jelly inside and wanted to pee in my pants), “I can’t marry you because you’re shorter than me. We can still be best friends, okay?” We both genuinely believed that height was crucial factor to our eternal happiness and left it at that. But something tells me that reason won’t quite work for me now- and I don’t want to be famous for an episode of urinary incontinence in public.
So more than what I think God has spoken to me, perhaps the ring provides a temporary cushion from my fears, too. A place deep inside, hurt before, has gone into hiding now, deep within the woods. It’s got a big scary mask on and a rifle strapped around its shoulder, making pleas to keep a safe distance away from it. Please don’t tell me anything now, not now- it would scare the living daylights out of me. I’m not afraid of cockroaches, or the dark, or para-gliding, but please don’t give me flowers now.
It would give me a heart attack.
Not now. Later is good. When I’ve found my feet firmly planted in God, when I’ve found my sole security in His love, when I’ve taken the time to moult, and learnt to prepare myself for the next phase of my life-where I’ll have to swallow my pride, die to myself and put another human being first- all in the name of this strange thing called love.
Later is good- when I graduate, when I’ve been given enough time to overcome my fears, when I’ve been won over by someone’s consistency and endurance, his faithfulness, courage and truth. Later with a wild bouquet and a handwritten note and a hug and a new ring and some plans for missions would be good. So for now, I think I’ll just trust in God and wait patiently, take this time to grow in Him and allow Him to melt my fears, and pray that whoever it is would be faithful, brave and patient too.
I think when the time comes, God’ll tell me so, and the person, too. We’ll -both- be ready. I don’t know why, but I think the ring wouldn’t matter, wouldn’t pose a barrier at all. Nothing stops His plans, does it?
Maybe I’ll lose it then, maybe something’ll happen to make me take it off. Maybe when I graduate and I’m ready, when God’s timing arrives…
… we’ll both -just- know.
And then I know my new ring will be special, because it’ll be from Him, too.
– Psalm 37:7