Friday, September 29, 2006

Today I spent sitting in the Times bookshop at Changi Airport. I've always known I love to read, but sometimes I think I'm competing with the space on the floor with the children... like we'll see who leaves first.. HEH. Not me. Of course I triumphed, since I managed to finish half a book without being chased out. I tell you, this requires skill and knowing how to hide from the cashier.


Anyway, I am so super touched by the book I read. It's called 'The Good Women of China' by Xue XinRan. I'm going to HIGHLY recommend this book because it's so good! It's the true life account of how XinRan, a radio journalist/DJ, begins a new on-air programme that gives voice to the suppressed women of China during their 'opening-up' period after the Cultural Revolution, and the stories that begin to unfold from there. They're stories of incest, oppression, sexism, and the relationship between men and women at its most raw. In a country that's long dominated by men and their ideas, what makes a woman good? What is a good woman- do they exist? Do women strive to meet standards that have been set by men, and then only find that they are so daunting whole generations of females never meet the mark? What do they live for, anyway? What are they worth?

Fact is stranger then fiction. It's a book that documents the real life stories of women in China, and yet these stories are so heart-wrenching, so emotional that you can't believe it wasn't ripped from a soap opera. And as you read you you see the world through a different perspective- the perspective of women who never had the chance to express or reach the potential they were truly capable of, and then have to suffer the perception that they're not good enough, or even worse, that they're not good.

So how then are women good?

"If we don’t look down on ourselves,
we are good.
If we know how to love,
how to give love,
how to feel toward other people,
then we are good. "

It inevitably makes you draw comparisons to your own life, and to the women around you. How many women are celebrated? Why can't womanhood be more celebrated? How many mothers and girls give selflessly of themselves, their lives and their dreams in devotion to a man and his ideas?

Shouldn't the world learn how to appreciate women? It's isn't equality that is difficult since it is so subjective, but mere appreciation to a sex that has been undervalued and undermined for years. To our mothers, and their mothers, and the women of before, the good women who have made this world what it is today, and given up their places so the women today may stand firm.

debbie at 12:31 PM

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

sorry, then, if i did not live up to your expectations
not good enough a friend, a sister, a daughter, a person
sorry, then, if it was too easy to let the dirt ride up
sink deep into the mud of the past
afterall it's been eroding layers and layers of my skin away
until what's left is a tiny piece of shrivelled thing
i suppose that'll be my heart
maybe it'll be so pure so pure
without the guilt it carries and the sins
all the 'what-if's' and 'maybe's' and the hundred times i've sinked
maybe i'll be corroded and torn apart
until what's left is substance so clean
i suppose there has to be something left
i suppose that'll be my heart
i wonder what it's like to be purged that way
when i close my eyes and then disappear
you never knew i could go this way
sometimes i don't know what to say
the mistakes keep catching up
will i ever be good enough?
the questions are like hooks that pull my flesh
i don't know what's pain now
i think i've learnt how not to feel
so that i can pretend i've always felt strong
i've learnt how to pretend i can be vulnerable in intimacy
when the walls are so high i can't scale them myself
and i'm afraid when they come crumbling down
you'd see how small i really am
i don't have anything to offer but mistakes
so then how much forgiveness is enough?
wash me like snow, like snow, like snow
that falls gently over footprints and dirt
and in the morning when the rays of light
filter through the dust
we don't know what happened
we only see a landscape of white
i suppose that'll be my heart

Isaiah 1:18

18 "Come now, let us reason together,"
says the LORD.
"Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.

Psalm 51:7

7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.


There's something beautiful about purity- white, white, white as snow.

debbie at 10:47 AM

Friday, September 15, 2006

I have a fear of death and yet it's romantic to me
I have a fear of rejection and yet I fear intimacy
I have a fear of loneliness and yet I fear commitment
I have a fear of losing myself and yet I never found me
I have a fear of unhappiness but yet I'm used to melancholy
I have a fear of truth and yet I crave for it
I have a fear of destiny and yet I want to pursue it
I have a fear of passion and yet I want to be consumed in it
I have a fear of living so brightly yet I like the attention
I have a fear of pride yet pride eats at me
I have a fear of the unknown and yet it intrigues me
I have a fear of lost and yet maybe it'd feel free
I have a fear of depth and yet I want to be drowned

We are walking beings of paradoxes, so complicated and we complicate ourselves. We trust in emotions that fail us despite seducing us to believe in their eternity. We believe in our heart and yet our heart lies to us over and over again with emotions as changing as the wind. We try to believe in others when we can hardly begin to believe in ourselves. We are contradictions and every day of our lives we contradict our thoughts with our words, our words with our actions. We are hypocritical right to the very core. How can we begin to live for ourselves when we are such temperamental masters? Faith is so difficult for us because its a beautiful idea, its beautiful to think that for once, there's one thing about us that won't change. It's beautiful to think we're in control of our lives- but are we really? We can't even master our emotions. We suppress them or repress them, and then we make them masters of us.

My heart and my strength
Many times they fail
But there is one truth
That always will prevail
God is the strength of my heart
God is the strength of my heart
God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever,
Forever

debbie at 9:11 PM

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

I don't know what's wrong with secretaries these days.

Me: Hello may I speak to Mr XYZ?
Secretary: He's not in town.
Me: Ok, May I know when he'll be back?
Secretary: I have no idea.

What do you mean you have no idea? Lol. Secretaries are paid to know these kind of things. tsk.

debbie at 1:15 AM

Sunday, September 10, 2006

I believe in bursting forth like a daffodil
White fluffy and glimmering into existence
I believe in catching a hundred gasps
As a thousand sunflowers proudly gleaming
I believe in staring at the sun
Until there's no shadow left
I believe in loud triumphant sounds
In celebration, in happiness
In life bursting with life
Life bursting with mine
Until there's no memory
It's a glaring presence
So bright, so bright
Nothing's left

debbie at 7:55 PM

Friday, September 01, 2006

As I was sitting beside Lydia waiting for cellgroup to start she turned to me and said, "True Love Waits. How do you interpret that?"

That begun the most meaningful talk I've had this week. You know you can spend hours with people and feel like you've completely wasted your time, or just spend 5 minutes and get a revelation and feel like you've already become a better person. The right people at the right time can be so powerful.

So I answered hesitantly, "I suppose that means that... You don't settle for less. The right one eventually comes along. And if you don't wait, that can't be True Love because then every person that comes along is your true love. What's your interpretation?"

She grinned in her very 'Lydia' way and said, "Yeah I think that's my interpretation too."

She was telling me while I was on the bus with her how going to bible school had changed her perspective on love. A girl without God can be ordinary. An ordinary girl who spends her whole life wishing upon the perfect guy with the right looks, personality and way of romance is nothing spectacular- almost every girl does or will do that.

But imagine instead, a girl who doesn't crave for that. She knows romance doesn't equate to fulfilment in life. She knows who she is in God and puts her security in His love and His vision for her. Her lifelong wish is doing something great that can change the world, and not just a marriage. This girl will stand out from the crowd because she doesn't place her trust in the elusive illusion of a perfect man. More importantly, this girl will stand out because she's secure.

Hey, we should be taught this from young. Instead, media instils in us what we think is 'right'- that every girl should get attached and then get married before she's old and left on the shelf- Hits the raw spot of every girl. We're so insecure; we want to find ourselves in a guy. Some of us would like to find our security as 'so-and-so's girlfriend'. Where does our identity go then? Why don't we get people teaching us that it's okay to be ourselves, and that it's okay to be alone (because alone doesn't mean lonely)? Why don't chick flicks tell the story of a girl who found fulfilment in security with herself and not how some cute guy miraculously solved all her problems- because that's never going to happen?

This is a world deprived of love. This is a generation of youths running around looking for love in any and every place they can find, regardless of whether it is real love or not, we just want to fill the emptiness inside. We look in all the wrong places yet wonder why we're so pathetic. It's so ironic, one man died on the cross 2000 years ago because he loved us, and yet today we go around begging for love from person to person.

True Love Waits. And if you can't go hungry for awhile and eat every piece of garbage that comes along, when the real delicacy arrives, you're likely to just pass it by.

True Love Waits. And if you can't be content in the love of a God who died for you, you won't be content in the love of a man who can fail you.

debbie at 11:24 AM