Because while I've made a few breakthroughs, it's not over yet. Thursday was breaking point. It was almost unbearable. It took Af, a woman very much older and wiser than me whom I respect very much, and who has been on my journey with me since Kitesong to tell me this- that I've got to get professional help, and finish off where I left off.
"It's got nothing to do with how strong your faith is, " she told me. Okay, I said. Okay.
The past twenty days have been like a suffocating fog, worsening with each passing day. Thursday was breaking point. And I knew the responsible thing to do was to get help, go on maintenance, and to finish off where I had left off months and months ago.
"It's go nothing to do with how strong your faith is. It is an illness, and you haven't finished your course of antibiotics, that's all," Af told me. "It's time to do so now."
Thursday was breaking point for many reasons. Too many things have happened since the year started. Thrown, tossed and spun around clueless by the recent bombardment of Tiny incidents, the fog made my head heavy with confusion. For months and months, I had kept praying for A Taste of Rainbow to come through for me, kept praying that things would happen, that someone would call me and say yes, they have a use for it and would like to get it published, that my experience wasn't for nothing, that it had a purpose, and that it would touch the lives of many, many people with rose petals and confetti falling from the sky.
It didn't happen. And with each passing day, my heart sank lower. The disappointment grated my heart with a pain I couldn't explain to anyone.
Because it's not just another community service project. A Taste of Rainbow is a Story cut too close to my heart, and part of the pain in my soul found a place to nestle within its pages.
"Let it go," Af said. "It means too much to you, Wai Jia. It cuts too close to your heart and God wants you to let it go. When you finally do let it go, things will happen. You'll see. "
Too many things have happened since the year started. Incident after incident shattered me and left me more confused and overwhelmed. I had to see my old counsellor yesterday. He is very old, broad, white and... Italian. Leonardo has been one of the angels in my recovery thus far, but his work with me is over, and this illness needs more specialised help.
For the past twenty days, the fog clouded my vision and God's telegram to me got stuck midway. Yesterday, it finally got through.
So this is what these past twenty days have been about-
-Power, in the wrong place.
Rainbow has too strong a Power and hold over my life. In actuality, it really is nothing more than a stack of paintings, an artist's manuscript, at most, the deepest part of my heart exposed on paper. But I have made it more than what it is, tying too much of myself, the pain in my soul to it, putting hopes, expectations, wishes, imaginations on it. It's great power over my recovery, and it’s failure to bloom the way I had wanted it to, dissolved a part of me so close to the secret part of my heart that part of me died along with it with each passing day. I tied so much of my soul to it, because of what it meant to me, that it became so difficult to let God to come into the picture.
Unconsciously, unintentionally, I left God out.
The Tiny incidents which happened at home- having my sister leave for the States again and struggling with the hole, the instability left behind, seeing someone throw up after a meal because of bulimia-in-denial on new year's eve, having to struggle coping with family dinner conversation that attacks me in different ways- precipitated too many feelings of insecurity and fear because of the Power certain mirroring childhood events have had upon me. Leonardo says that because of this Power, these incidents become, for me, not Tiny incidents, but truly Traumatic ones.
The remark my mother made jokingly and the casual remark by that passer-by on my running showed me the Power of other people’s opinions on my life, the power I let them have over me, and the power I have lost because I no longer control my weight (I have cellulite, ha) and I run slow- the old ways which Anorexia and I used to gain control over my life no longer work. They no longer work, I have lost that power which never really belonged to me in the first place. I have allowed it to rest in the hands of people who can never love me the way God does.
All the projects I have tried to initiate at the beginning of this year have all died on me. On my knees and at breaking point on Thursday, I finally understood why.
God has been shouting through a loudhailer to try and get to me, trying to tell me that I've put Power in all the wrong places. Power in Rainbow, power in Anorexia, power in other people, power in projects to find self-worth- when in actual fact, all power really belongs to...
... God. And God alone.
Too many things significant to me have been shaken in the past twenty days. Family, food, friendships, Rainbow, Tiny incidents... each one leaving me in ruins, tearing me down, because God wants to build something new within me. He is telling me to stop, and to listen.
Everything I have tried to control has turned its back on me. That which I have not tried to control has gained control over me. God's message has become so loud, and so clear- that I need to let go, let God be God, and trust Him with Rainbow, with my security, with my life- all of it.
I am learning I cannot try and gain approval from this world. That achievements, projects should have no power to decide how worthy I am. That it’s not about what I do, but who I belong to. Whose I am.
God's child. God is teaching me about Power, and about how it belongs to Him- alone.
I took the Power to save others and myself into my own hands when the battle really belonged to God. I need to give all the power and control back to Him. It is called surrender, but Surrender with a flag of victory.
How do I even begin to explain it.
It’s cruel and beautiful irony. That until I give up power to God, I will never see the manifestation of His power in my life. I need to trust God with all of my life.
So you're really taking this God-thing seriously, huh? I hear you say. What do you think all this is about?
I've two things to do now. One, to continue with professional help. To continue till I'm fully recovered, because the truth is that, I'm not. I've made a few breakthroughs, I've recovered on some fronts, and not on others.
Two, to let A Taste of Rainbow go. To let it go because it cut so close and meant so much and I was imposing an expectation on it, unconsciously wishing deep inside that it would in some way parallel, shadow Kitesong. To let it go because Abraham in the bible had to do what Abraham did. To let it go, reach the point of being fine to trash, burn it, put it aside, because in a strange and peculiar and personal way, God wants me to.
God wants me to?
No, it's not about giving up on it. It's about letting go. Letting it go, letting the pain put into it go, putting it aside and letting God be God. Surrendering, the way He wants us to, not with a white flag.
I've to learn that God doesn't expect us to work to bear fruit all the time, and we don't have to work to make Him love us more. He loves us as we are.
I've to learn that God has a different agenda this time-I can't expect everything to turn out the way I had planned. I've to learn that people are going to ask me, "So how's your second book going?" and be all right to tell them that it's put on hold now, maybe forever, because of what God is teaching me through this.
I've to learn that not many people are going to understand this post, and that I don't think A Taste of Rainbow will be published anytime soon. Maybe never. NEVER. And I've to learn to be okay with that. To be okay with that, and God, too.
It hurts.
So it's time to let it go. There may be no Rainbow. Because it cut too deep, too close, meant too much. I put myself on the line and eveything I had on it. And God, being Himself as in the bible, has a funny and seemingly cruel but ultimately beautiful way of making us surrender what means most to us. So that God can be God.
I hit rock bottom on Thursday, and it was a wake-up call. So it's time to go back to professional help to continue on where I left off.
"Remember it's got nothing to do with how strong your faith is. These hurts inside came from your past, your childhood- and you're just getting help to find out what they are, that's all. Rainbow needs to be exorcised. And when it finally is, things will come together, you'll see. " Okay, I said. Okay.
So I've decided to get professional help on my remaining journey. But before that, they want me to get a psychiatric evaluation to see whether there're any remnants of depression left. It's a recurrent condition, they say, and they just want to be sure- normal people can't diagnose depression accurately because sometimes the symptoms are hidden. They just need to be sure so I can get the right kind of help.
I'm scared to death by that. Okay, I said. Okay.
You know, I'm scared. Scared of what they might tell me, of the pain this process will uncover, of what I will have to bear to get this all sorted out. Scared that this is a journey I'll have to walk through by myself, holding on to nothing but God's hand. Scared that no one will understand. Scared of the rough and challenging time that lies ahead. Scared that I'll have to do this and take all my medical exams while doing so. Scared that I'll be turning 21 this way. Scared that it may be too hard. When is it going to end.
Oh, God.
But I want to, because I know God'll see me through this. I'm scared, but the fear never grips me the way it used to because God has proven to be so real in my life thus far. Real, not like some fuzzy idea of a big man upstairs with a lightning rod. I know somehow, something beautiful will come out of this all.
"When you've let it go, when you've sorted things out, when you've surrendered everything to God and let God be God, everything will come together, you'll see."
Okay, I said. Okay.
When I made the appointment with the doctor this morning, she incidentally told me that the publishing of Rainbow would have to be postponed. They've set aside money for it for the launch in 2009, because it won't make it in time for the eating disorder campaign this February. They won't make it in time.
From her voice, I could tell she was afraid the news would crush me, but I said very calmly, "I know already... even before you told me. I knew Rainbow wouldn't come through at this point in time. God told me on Thursday. He told me Himself."
Rainbow will have to be released, killed, excorcised-it will have to die before it can truly be birthed, bloom, before it can truly live. I will have to kill it, let it go, let the pain inside it go, release it to the point where I don't even care if it gets published or not.
It will take a White Funeral, a slow death of purification and sanctification for myself, before it can live again, if ever. And if it doesn’t resurrect, at least, I know I will.
I married myself to a book, to the Power it had over me, and brought death onto myself.
Now, I need a White Funeral.
A White Funeral for Rainbow, a White Funeral for myself, a White Funeral for Power which was placed in all the wrong places.
A White Funeral. The Funeral that God has settled already. The Funeral that's already been paid for.
I'm going to get help. I'm scared, but it's going to be okay.
To all of you who have been keeping me in prayer, thank you so much.
And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
- 2 Cor 5:15
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