One of the great fears that my mother has is me becoming a spinster hoarder when she is gone. To prove her wrong, I have resolved to constantly embark on ambitious cleaning missions.
Today was one of them. I was on leave, and had given strict instructions that I was to be treated as if I were on holiday. No chores. No unecessary movement.
Of course that plan failed.
"Can you...oh, you can't right?" My mother said this morning, looking at a stack of dresses. Then she mumbled, "But anyway they are yours, you washed them."
So of course I could. I had to. I brought them up and hung them in my cupboard.
Then, since I was already doing something, I decided to clean out the three drawers in the study room. It had dawned on me how much clutter there was in there when I was hunting for my dongle last week.
So out came a trash bag. And from the drawers, out came years of wedding invitations, letters, postcards, bookmarks and an extraordinarily large amount of notebooks and lanyards. Wedged in between them, were poems and scrawled 'notes to self'.
This poem, in particular, lived in my bible for years until I got my bible rebound and took out all the bookmarks that had been slotted between the pages. It was written in 1996, after I had heard a sermon by Uncle MW in Sunday School. He had asked how many of us would still be Christians in 10 years' time, and had shared that many of his church friends from his MYF days had backslid and turned away from God. That got me thinking, and when I got home, I wrote this poem. 5 years ago, when I turned 25, I remembered this poem and wondered again, would I still be a Christian in 10 years' time, when I turned 35? I guess that was one of the reasons why I changed church. I needed to go to a place where nobody knew me and where I could concentrate on being a Christian without feeling isolated, ironic as that might seem, seeing how I've been sitting alone in service for most of these past 5 years. It doesn't feel so lonely when people don't know you.
Ten Years
Ten years down this winding road,
which people all call 'life',
would I heave my earthly load
without my Jesus Christ?
or would I chase the nation's dream
and collect lots of cash,
forgetting who has given all things,
my Lord, my Jesus Christ?
Would I stop in the big race
and forget my chosen goal,
of pressing to the finish-line,
To win that highest gold?
Would I then join another race
and compete with other 'rats'
seeing who gets the 5Cs first
and which rat is the best?
Or would I still be holding on
To my saviour's hand,
waiting for that blessed day
I enter Gloryland?
Would I say with no regret
that I have kept the faith,
and ran and fought the ran and fight
through the storms and rain?
I can only hope and pray
the latter will be true
and say in my sunset years,
"Lord, I've been true to you."
1996. Gen.
And this is a note to self that made me smile, and wonder if I should get a dog at 31.
Note to Self
If you stay single,
- get a dog at 27
for emotional support
for something to love
and care for
for a chance to feel
heartache
- travel
to escape from weddings
to asset financial freedom
to see the wider picture
to learn and love nature
It was tough deciding what to do with the rest of the stuff. I had kept 4 wedding invitations that I had really liked for their innovative design. But then after looking at them again, I thought, "Heck, why would I want to keep other people's wedding invitations for?" It was the same principle when it came to Christmas cards with pictures of other people's kids.
I kept letters and cards from J though. I should mail them all back to her. Also letters from L when she was studying in Australia. And postcards from India and Taiwan. And postcards that struck me as really well-designed. All these, I tied up with a blue ribbon, which made it look rather romantic.
I kept all the notebooks too. And a cow scrunchie from the $1.99 store which had amused me to no end when I bought it.
Also kept a list of names of Thai schoolgirls I had met during a Chiangmai mission trip when I was in Sec 2. I wonder how they are now.
