how apt it is that not too long ago, when i was living in my walled-up, bubble wrap world where dreams didn't exist, i wondered to myself: if God were to take away what i love or deny me what i wanted with all my heart, would i still be able to say, yes God, you're good all the time and i love you?
it's easy to say that i'll trust in God for all the plans he has for me, come what may, when all's going so deceptively smoothly in my life. it's easy to proclaim that i love God when he gives me the results i want or blesses me with the dear friends in my life. it's easy to say that i want to give everything up to God when i have nothing to give up.
but when life's not so smooth sailing, will i be able to say the same? if God doesn't give me what i want, will i be able to say the same? and if i have the world to give up, will i still be able to say the same? i don't think it's quite that simple, really. it's one thing to say things with your lips. words come cheap. it's totally another to mean what you say.
and i've found that over the last few days, one important thing i've learnt is to say what i mean, and not just parrot things off the top of my head cos i think it's the right answer. i've learnt to smile at the little things that life surprises you with, even if the night before you feel like there's never gonna be anything to smile at again. i've learnt to want to live like there's no tomorrow, and even love like i'm not afraid, though i may get burnt in the process. i've learnt that hurt is transient, i have to want to let go and put my mind on letting go of it all. i've learnt that i'm a scarily stubborn soul, even to the point of delusion. i've also learnt that i'm stronger than i think i am, behind the fragile, porcelain-like exterior.
i think i can safely say that i'm learning to trust God so much more, learning to really understand what it means when i tell myself that God will always give me what i need and what he knows to be good for me, though this may not necessarily be what i want. in other words, what i want may not be what i need, and God knows that through and through. such simple words, but they mean so much. it means not asking God why he didn't answer your prayer when you don't get what you want so badly. it means telling God that you totally trust in his plan for you, even though you may feel like crap now. it means to be able to walk through a darkened doorway, scared as you may be, with all the certainty in the world that the most beautiful light waits for you at the other side, even if you can't see it. it means so much, and i'm just finding out the tip of the iceberg of what it means to totally trust in God. it's hard to understand why we have to suffer from the hurt when God doesn't give us what we want so dearly, and yet we HAVE to understand that the hurt's only temporal and beyond the hurt, beyond the pain, beyond the tears, there lies something so much better, so much more beautiful.
and at the end of the day, even if things don't work out the way i wanted them to, i'm still me. i'm still Kelly Marie Ang, still the girl with so much more inside than she shows to the world, still the loving soul who has such a great capacity to love because she was made for that, still the slightly hopeless romantic tempered with a bit of real world cynicism, still the girl with so many questions about everything, still the girl in love with life and all it has to offer. i'm me, and nothing that happens could ever lessen my sense of who i am. i just learnt that.
it's important to love who you are, really. because if you don't love you, how do you expect others to love you, and how can you love others? and if things don't work out, remember that it's not cos you're not good enough. it's just not the right time, right person, right everything. God took the time to make me in his likeness (ahaha he must be a very pretty man if my mirrors have been accurate), God took the time to imprint in me all my unique individual traits and give me the gifts i was born with, God took the time to plan out my life for me, even though he knew that at certain junctures i'd be hurling expletives at him. if God did this for me and the dunno-how-many billion people in the world, don't you think you must be worth at least something to him? i do.
and to my dear Lynette: thank you.
