Come Awake

Are we left here on our own?

Can you feel when your last breath is gone?

Night is weighing heavy now

Be quiet and wait

For the voice that will say:

Come awake,

From sleep arise

You were dead,

Become alive

Wake up, wake up

Open your eyes

Climb from your grave into delight…

Bring us back to life…

You are not the only one

Who feels like the only one

Night soon will be lifted, friend

Just be quiet and wait

For the voice that will say:

Come awake from sleep arise

You were dead become alive

Wake up wake up

Open your eyes

Climb from your grave

Into delight

Arise, rise, rise, rise, rise, rise, rise, rise, rise, rise…

Tonight

Arise now

Rise, rise, rise, ligth, Oh, light, arise, our delight

Rise, rise, rise, rise, rise, oh, rise, shine, shine, oh shine

(wake up, wake up)

Light will shine

(wake up, wake up)

Love will rise

(wake up, wake up)

Love will shine

Shine, shine, shine, shine

Shine on us now…

Here’s to Hope. I’m sitting in my beanbag arm chair in my room. The aircon is humming beyond the music wafting through my headphones. Outside the noonday sunlight is pounding the verdant, tropical green trees of Hong Kong. All sits in a hot, hazy torpor below vaguely cloudy blue skies.

I’ll be here in Hong Kong for another year. My battered, bruised, weary, broken heart is beating again… cautiously. It’s been one of the toughest years of my life, but that seems to be all I’ve talked about in my previous blog entries. I guess it has dominated my mind, as I’ve lain on the shores of life, gasping like a shipwrecked, waterlogged mariner.

I’m staying in Hong Kong for a number of reasons. For my family, which has been buffeted by the events of this year. For my wounds, because running from problems never solves them. For certainty, because for most of last year I didn’t know where I was going to be next. I lived in limbo. I couldn’t commit to anything. It made it hard to stay in communication. It exacerbated the issues I was going through. I had no place to stand. Eventually you have to make a choice.

And I chose to stay in Hong Kong. Most of all, because I believe that it is what God wants me to do.

So now I’m picking up the pieces. I’m switching gears. I’m going to be doing the PCLL at Hong Kong University: The Postgraduate Certificate in Law. It’s basically the Hong Kong Lawyer’s qualification course. At the end of this, I’ll be the real deal: a trainee lawyer.

There’s been a raft of experiences recently that are blogworthy; worthy of deep and lengthy introspection. Sometimes I write to explore how I feel… but right now they are too raw. Too near. To real… to be explored in the public eye.

I expect I will return to them this year, and you may find them referred to on this blog. They’re now part of the story that God is telling with my life… They will influence me, but I don’t know how yet. I don’t understand them. But I know that all things work to the good of those who love God…

I’m slowly waking up – and its not easy. I still feel very raw and vulnerable. Suspicion and distrust are things I have not needed to struggle with in the past; they are now very real opponents.

My natural inclination has been to curl up into a ball, and just… I dunno… be.

That’s one of the reasons why I have been out of contact with so many of you.

I’m so sorry for this.

 When you’ve needed me, I’ve been floored by my own issues. When you wanted to talk, I haven’t been there. When you needed a friend, I didn’t return your call.

I am truly sorry.

I was down for the count – but that’s not an excuse, it’s an explanation.

And an apology.

 I want to know you again. I want to catch up with you. Talk to you. Send you emails. Hear where you’ve been. Maybe start to tell you where I am, where I’ve been.

I’m still feeling bruised. But you have to start somewhere. And man was made for community. And I want to hear from you.

I want to do the things I haven’t done for so long. I want to laugh again. To discuss the things that matter. To trade poetry and songs.

 To stand in the surf again. In the sunset. With waves coursing around my legs. And a cool wind caressing my back…

And feel again.

 It’s beginning. It’s starting.

This morning
With the dawning
Of a new day
My Lord gave me Hope
To chase the sorrow away.

He opened horizons
Like the lid of a box
And sung through the birds
And the waves on the rocks;
Anticipation
Unfurled like a flag…

 I know now that there is Hope in darkness. That there is beauty in strife. That nothing can extinguish my God’s love for me.

That the flavour of all things good in this earth; poetry; light; love; all that fires my heart and sets poetry dancing like electricity in my brain; is God’s. 

Yet there is darkness. There is pain. There is misunderstanding. I haven’t gotten it all figured out quite yet.

But again,

I’m trying. 

Again.

Trying to find my way.

 Beginning Again?

Work

“I have no fear of drowning

            It’s the breathing

                                                That’s taking all this work…”

“Why did you stop writing?”

It’s a good question. I haven’t posted on my blog for a while… I guess I’ve felt a little lost.

Let me expand on that a little. Things change from moment to moment, like storm clouds chasing clear patches on a bright-sunny-wet-and-wild day. One moment I feel that I have direction: I see signs I recognise; I catch a glimpse of a landmark in the distance; pieces of the puzzle fit together and the whole puzzle has meaning. Hope breaks like sunshine over my life.

I feel that I know where I am.

And I keep walking… and slowly the landmarks fade from view… and the signs become strange again. The pieces of the puzzle look as indecipherable as ever. And I don’t know where to go.

And I’ve been searching for so long. And I don’t have a clue what went wrong.

I get angry, and frustrated, depressed. Despair sets in – and motivation drains from my life… why move, if you don’t know how to reach your destination?

From moment to moment feelings of understanding have been replaced by confusion, and then understanding again. I fluctuate… because I’m not out of the woods yet.

I like to tell complete stories… they may not be entirely complete… but I like them to be coherent, to have some sort of internal rhyme and reason. And, to be honest, I don’t have that rhyme or reason at the moment. At the same time, nothing is settled. I don’t know what will happen next, and I worry that any report I make will be out-of-date by the time you all read it.

And yet… at the same time… I have too much to tell. Too much has been happening, and I despair of ever putting it down on paper.

Some of the stuff that has been happening is too sensitive for the internet… and is so central to my life that any telling of the events that have occurred without mentioning it feels empty to my own ears.

And so the events, and the surrounding milieu of thoughts and emotions, dreams, fears and hopes goes untold… except in person… in crowded coffee houses in the malls of Hong Kong… or late at night over Skype.

I had hoped that my last post “Hard Reset” would cure things. That it would give a vague enough encapsulation of events to allow me to move on with the blogging…

But it didn’t.

I feel like “Work” By Jars of Clay:

“Just in case

I will leave my things packed

So I can run away

I cannot trust these voices

I don’t have a lot of prospects that can give some kind of peace

There is nothing left to cling to that can bring me sweet release

I have no fear of drowning

It’s the breathing

That’s taking all this work

Do you know what I mean when I say

‘I don’t want to be alone’

Do you know what I mean when I say

‘I don’t want to be alone’

Empty spaces with shadows

Hit by streetlights

Warning signs and weight

Of tired conversations

In the absence of a shoulder, in the abscess of a thief

On the brink of this destruction, on the eve of bittersweet

Now all the demons look like prophets and I’m living out

Every word they speak, every word they speak…

I have no fear of drowning

It’s the breathing

That’s taking all this work

Do you know what I mean when I say

‘I don’t want to be alone’

Do you know what I mean when I say

‘I don’t want to be alone’”

I don’t regret that this is happening. I know that God is with me. I know that he’s using it to shape and mould me. I know that I’m making a difference.

But it is wearing me out.

I’m tired.

I’m hurting.

I want it to end.

And so I’m hanging on.

And while I’m hanging on… what I write is not fit for general consumption.

God is Good. And I hope for the dawn.

Hard Reset

I don’t know what to say.

I just know that I’ve got to start again somewhere.

There’s been a storm. I had a feeling it was coming. Maybe I felt it in the air. I was well prepared for it, but it hit with a fury that I didn’t expect, and from a direction that I had hoped to never have to face again.

I fought it; I was strong; But in the end it hurt too much.

All I could do was batten down the hatches and retreat into myself, to hold on to the only thing that has never failed me: My God.

He’s been all that’s held me together through this. At times I felt like I was going to explode, shatter into a million tiny fragments… but when there was nothing left in myself… somehow He kept me together.

It’s been one of the darkest times of my life. I’ve felt defeated; I’ve despaired.

And I mean despair. We use that word too easily these days – I’m talking about that horrible suffocating weight that you can’t help but be smothered by. The kind that makes you just want to go to sleep because then you don’t have to face reality.

Life ached like an aching tooth.

But through the darkness there’s always been hope. I don’t quite know how to explain this. I like things to be logical, I like to know the “why”. It’s like someone holding onto your arm when you should be drowning. The waves are crashing all around you, you can’t breathe, you can’t swim, you’re exhausted… you can feel the deep pulling at you… but all the while there’s something holding you up – and the strain hurts.

Your arm aches because of it, but the ache tells you you’re alive, and is, somehow, part of the promise of salvation.

Now it feels like the storm is subsiding. There is a queer twilight half-light around. The waves are smaller, and the wind is gusting fitfully, but it’s difficult to tell whether this is the end of the storm, or the eye of it.

I don’t know where the storm has blown my little boat, nor where we go from here.

There’s a prayer called “the sailor’s prayer”:

“Dear Lord, your ocean is so big

And my boat is so small

Help me, or I am lost

Amen”

 It’s been my prayer.

The word I have for now is “build”. Each moment is life, and I can choose to idle, and remain in this pain, or to “build” with it. To repair that which has become battered, to rebuild that which has washed off the foundation that remains.

To build into my life, to build into the life of my family. To make a positive difference, because I’ve got nothing left to lose.

There’s nothing else I can do.

Music has spoken deeply to me in this time:

(The Valley Song, Jars of Clay [Furthermore])

You have led me to the sadness

I have carried this pain

On a back bruised, nearly broken

I’m crying out to you

I will sing of your mercy

That leads me through valleys

To rivers of Joy

When death like a gypsy comes to steal what I love

I will look to the heavens

I will still seek your face

But I fear that you aren’t listening

Because there are no words

Just the stillness and the hunger

Of a fate that assures

I will sing of your mercy

That leads me through valleys

To rivers of Joy

Hallelujah

While we wait for a rescue

With our eyes tightly shut

Face to the ground

Using out hands

To cover the fatal cut

Though the pain is an ocean

Tossing us around, around, around

You have calmed greater waters

And higher mountains have come down…

I will sing of your mercy

That leads me through valleys

To rivers of Joy

Yeah…

(Midnight in Philadelphia, Lifehouse)

I know what its like to hide

Sit in your room and break down there and cry

And all I could say was your name

I’ve had my share of pain

But I know it’s made me who I am today

So I look back with no regrets

I look back with no regrets

I know that you are watching me somewhere over the moon

Shouting down that you love me

Wondering why I can’t hear you

If only for a moment

If only in my mind

I could go back to the beginning

And the place I felt like a child…

I can tell you mean well by your eyes

But a Father’s intentions can be turned to lies

Nobody’s perfect I guess

People let you down

I followed the leader that fell to the ground

But you never left me alone

You never left me alone

I know that you are watching me somewhere over the moon

Shouting down that you love me

Wondering why I can’t hear you

If only for a moment

If only in my mind

I could go back to the beginning

And the place I felt like a child…

(Storm, Lifehouse)

How long have I been in this storm?

So overwhelmed by the ocean’s shapeless form…

Water’s getting harder to tread

With these waves crashing over my head

If I could just see you,

Everything would be alright

If I could see you

This darkness would turn to light

And I will walk on water

And you will catch me

If I fall

And I will get lost into your eyes

And everything will be alright

And everything will be alright

I know you didn’t bring me out here to drown

So why am I ten feet under and upside down?

Barely surviving has become my purpose

Because I’m so used to living underneath the surface

If I could just see you,

Everything would be alright

If I could see you

This darkness would turn to light

And I will walk on water

And you will catch me

If I fall

And I will get lost into your eyes

And everything will be alright

And everything will be alright

My friends have been amazing during this time. Thank you so much. The support that you’ve given had has sustained me, when on my own… I don’t know what would have happened.

It’s funny how looking back gives you strength. I was prepared for this. I was given the music, and the words, and the ideas, and the experiences, and the friends and support structures. My relationship with God was strong and close.

I don’t think I’d ever been in a better position to cope with what happened.

And after all that has come, I’m still floating. God is good – and redemption is a wonder. Even things like this can be used to bring about good… and I pray that this will happen. In my life, and in my family.