Recent Thoughts

I figured that whatever thoughts I had and whatever lessons I had learned, I really have to write it down, I do not trust my head, do not believe that it can contain that much information. Maybe some I can absorb and learn right away, maybe some I can’t. I am sure writing it down will give me more chance in the future to be reminded or to relearn.

I just read A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis. It’s Lewis’ personal writings to reflect upon his reactions towards his wife’s passing away, and the response to God that he finally decided on. I found it very honest, very descriptive, too many details that honestly I had troubles understanding them. But it is amazing to learn from the way people think, how the thoughts developed, how feelings are described in words. And what I found is mostly true for me.

I dare not compare what I went through with what he did. I have been in grief too, but grieving over myself, and my own loss of “possession”. Selfish grief. Nothing really, if compared to most of the grievances went through by people around the world. But the reality is that it is there, and I can’t just brush it away knowing that it is small compared to others. I saw the need to learn to overcome it, to learn how to response correctly in God’s presence.

My experience is not losing someone to death, but more of losing someone whom I thought I would spend the rest of my life with, maybe forever. It’s childish, it’s selfish. But I guess it suits my level of spirituality. Thinking that I have gotten over everything, proud to be okay, just to find out that, there are things that I just can’t control. Things like feelings. Maybe instead of trying to make those feelings totally vanish, I thought I should learn how to response to those feelings instead.

In the beginning chapter of A Grief Observed, Lewis wrote:

“There are moments, most unexpectedly, when something inside me tries to assure me that I don’t really mind so much, not so very much, after all. Love is not the whole of a man’s life. I was happy before I ever met H. I’ve plenty of what are called ‘resources.’ People get over these things. Come, I shan’t do so badly. One is ashamed to listen to this voice but it seems for a little to be making out a good case. Then comes a sudden jab of red-hot memory and all this ‘commonsense’ vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace.”

I learned from him that I should first be honest with myself. I am not that strong a person to say I don’t mind this and that, the reality is that I am troubled. But am I gonna let the troubles take over my whole life, control me into this lunatic girl who behaves whatever way she wants? Well, I’ve gone through that and I can safely say no. Now, I want to know, I want to learn what response from me that will please God.

Then it comes the time when I was very depressed and sad, I ran to God, I cried out for Him, but without any answer. I was questioning whether God is ignoring me altogether? I’ve even come to think that I may be not one of the ‘predestined’ one and He has never deserted me because I was never His in the first place. Stupid thought, I know. But whatever thought came through, I knew deep inside that He’s still there, upholding me quietly.

Lewis continued with these:

And so, perhaps, with God. I have gradually been coming to feel that the door is no longer shut and bolted. Was it my own frantic need that slammed it in my face? The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just the time when God can’t give it: you are like the drowning man who can’t be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.

On the other hand, ‘Knock and it shall be opened.’ But does knocking mean hammering and kicking the door like a maniac? And there’s also ‘To him that hath shall be given.’ After all, you must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can’t give. Perhaps your own passion temporarily destroys the capacity.

Someone told me before that usually it’s our own expectations of what we want to see happening blocks our view for what God is working on in our lives. Something along the line of what Lewis explained, or maybe sometimes we focused too much on our pain, on ourselves, that we are blinded and deaf to what God wants to teach us.

And lastly of course, another very important point I have so far experienced and also learnt.

“My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence?”

The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins. And most are ‘offended’ by the iconoclasm; and blessed are those who are not.”

The shattering is painful. I do not dare to ask pain from God. But if that is the path that God wants me to go through, I pray that He gives me strength with it. I want to keep believing in Him, having faith in Him. Rev. Stephen Tong once said “A man is how he responds to God”, reminding me each day that whatever I am doing, I am responding to God, and if I am to do that, I pray that I will always respond in a way that pleases Him.

Thank you Lord.

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