It’s Saturday morning and I’m awake by 5am because there’s work to be done at the hospital, and I’ve been scheduled to work every day this week including the weekends. The hospital is a far way away, but patients are waiting, so it’s time to go.
7am. Half the world’s asleep but it’s time to check on patients’ blood results and check in on them before the senior doctors pop in. We see patient after patient. Someone is crying and screaming and shouting because she has schizophrenia and adamantly refuses blood-taking; a patient who was starting to make progress has gone drowsy overnight due to a multitude of factors; another patient’s family member is emotional over the phone and demands to speak to the doctor.
It’s not even 10am yet, and I’m feeling a little overwhelmed already.
It’s work till about noon. My senior has slept three hours last night because he was on-call at the hospital. He considers it a great call because most times, we don’t get more than an hour of sleep on our 30-hour shifts. I try to work a bit harder to relieve him of some workload. He is very efficient.
It’s noon. Grandpa Zhou calls because I’ve agreed to meet him for lunch. I’m so hungry that I’m actually grumpy by this time, even though I’ve had a mid-morning snack from the morning’s flux of events. I go to his home some distance away, he shares with me his joy that the movers are coming into his home to remove the junk that he’s stored up in his house for decades. I am relieved.
We talk. His neighbour walks by us having a simple packed chinese lunch at the void-deck and he proudly introduces me as his god-granddaughter. I smile.
“She’s a doctor,” he says proudly.
I look at him and notices how sallow he looks. He lost a lot of weight since his leg infection two months ago.
“I cannot sleep at night,” he tells me in mandarin. “Do you know what it means not to be able to sleep? You know, I used to have this problem every night. But I used to drink alcohol. Now I don’t anymore.”
He promised me almost 3 years ago that he would stop drinking. He was adamant that drinking was helpful for him then. Now, he insists that it is an expensive habit which does no good for his health. Deep down, he does not wish to hurt me, after all that we’ve been through together.
“I cannot sleep.”
He asks me how to use the mobile phone his absentee son has passed to him.
Then he says he has a gift for me. He fishes out a crumpled yellow MAGGI MEE wrapper and smiles secretly to himself, before he presents the present to me after a pause for dramatic effect.
A skeleton glow-in-the-dark keychain! For a doctor, haha. And he tells me not to give it to anyone else. I laugh, and I laugh so hard he agrees to humour me by taking a photo.
We talk. And pray together. We tuck into a warm meal on a cold, dank day. It starts to pour.
I leave for a meeting in the heart of town, Orchard Road. I’m supposed to meet two psychologists/counsellors who work with young people on a national level- to work out plans on how we can bring the message of hope in my second book, A Taste of Rainbow, to more youths. Their hope and vision is to help youths deal with mental health issues, in secondary schools, tertiary institutions and in the public. They ask how they can help me further my cause, and if I would like to collaborate with them on certain points.
On the way there, I drop by another train station to sign up for the triathlon. It is the second last day of registration and God has finally put peace in my heart to race. I am convicted, that His perfect love drives out all fear and guilt which was smeared all over the walls of my heart like graffiti. I sign up. There are only 5 slots left. There is peace in my heart.
I make my way to Orchard Road, to the youth hub where the youth mental health committee is. I expect an isolated cubicle in an office space but the place abuzz with activity. Throngs of youth at the CHAT Youth Hub are studying, dancing to hip-hop, selling merchandise… the place is glowing with energy. I meet the committee and we have a fruitful discussion. We have plans to reach more schools and the greater public at large together with the health promotion board.
I leave, just in time for a Saturday evening service at church, because I can’t attend the Sunday service because there is work tomorrow too. I walk past flea markets and bazaars and buskers and soak in the colourful atmosphere. I try to get a cab to church but the queues are interminably long. I hop onto a bus just in time. I miss the front bit of the service, but reach just in time.
Pastor shares with us the importance of being loyal to God.
Service ends. I leave for dinner with my folks.
I mull over two questions I am posed in the day. One: “How do you find time to do so many things?”
And over dinner with my parents, “Are you seeing anyone yet? You should.”
How do I find time? I am learning, that when we rest in God and become focused on prayer, He multiplies our time and energy exponentially. Though it was a fruitful and busy day in retrospect, it was thoroughly relaxing, and enjoyable. I have been experiencing a deep intimacy with God of late, and this is the outflow of it.
Am I seeing anyone yet? I should? Maybe.
But I am content with today, and grateful for the little things God has blessed me with along the way- a kind sponsorship to race, getting to church in good time in spite of the traffic, a fruitful meeting with promise. I am grateful, for a yummy dinner, for a $4 vintage ring I found at the flea market, for catching up with an old friend at church.
I am learning, that it is not our own abilities which help us to be great multi-taskers, but resting in God’s spirit, that allows us to flow seamlessly from one job to the next, effortlessly and joyfully.
When we focus on one thing that is Him, He helps us to accomplish many things. He does the heavy-lifting.
So though I sort of wished I could ride to the beach and enjoy the sunrise tomorrow, I am grateful, for the joy of being busy this season. I’ll be going on leave soon.
Tomorrow, is a new day.