Waiting

WAIT. I'm quite sure everyone I met have had gone through the process of waiting for something. Myself have went through many waitings, too.

• Waiting for the result from that tough education or course's examination, hoping all the labour you put in will be translated into "pass".
• Waiting for the money to be finally paid to you when you are trying to sell off the house.
• Waiting for the next train because you missed the earlier one as you rush for the meeting across the city.
• Waiting for the good news from the doctor when someone you love and care for is ill from serious and life threatening disease that he/she will be okay, that he/she will recover and be healthy again.

So many kind of waitings. So many uncertainties and questions swimming in your mind when you had to wait. In the process of waiting, some of us probably want to share their anxiousness of waiting with someone they trusts but the circumstances around the reason for waiting can prevent us from even saying it out.

Sometimes, that someone you thought can be trusted will be that true friend that stands by you and gives their support by just praying and encourage you to be strong in God. True Friend like Jesus Christ -  non judgmental towards you while they listen to your rambling because you are so bogged down with the issue that made you wait and turned you into illogical person. True Friend who ask you the hard and right questions and did not expect you to give any answer immediately because they know you just needed some time and guidance through the crazy maze you are in and you will find the answer you needed eventually. At the end of the conversation with this True Friend, they still wishes you well and reminds you that he/she will be there for you, no judgment still, and you walk away from that conversation feeling grateful to God for this person for loving and caring for you. And the best part about this True Friend: they can celebrate with you when you share with them as you receives the victory or good news from God.

Sometimes, that someone you thought can be trusted becomes the person you wanted to avoid and run away from as soon as his/her name pops into your mind. This person was once upon a time a true friend has turned into a stranger in your life. This person is no longer the listener that he/she was to you when you were at the lowest point in your life and you wondered where has that good part of this person has gone to. You probably have encountered something like this with this person: "Last time he/she will listen and just pray and encourage me but now, gosh.. the way he/she talk to me made me felt like I'm the one asking for the things to happened to me...", "He/she started lecturing me with Bible verses...", "He/she begins to tell me to buy the products he/she thinks I should be consuming..." and the list goes on. Perhaps this friendship has come to the end and we should part way? If yes, I wish you well, friend.

Well, keeping the pain of waiting within myself can be lonely at times because I don't know how the someone I talk to will react. As Pr T and Pr S asked me sometime ago: "who did you turned to when you were crying in your most lonely, painful days?", I replied "It's God, the Trinity God who held me tightly in His hand and in His love" in those days. Thank You Holy Spirit, for the reminder of who my God is: my Refuge, my Peace, my Healer, amen.

Random rambling - 20210803

Dear Father God,

I just felt like letting out some random rambling off my mind today. Pardon me if my thoughts are all over the place this round...

It's been more than a year I join World Vision Malaysia as business analyst, after I took on the advise from my pastors to go back to normal working life where my skills and talents can be used again by You. It wasn't easy at first because I have not touch database scripting language for more than 15 years, plus the fact that almost the entire world is forced to work from home most of the time due to the C19 pandemic have been in one way or another delayed my job learning from my superior. I thank You, Father God, for many supportive and helpful colleagues to teach me in my work when my superior is not available.

Today I received a SOS from a colleague on certain Word template is not displaying the right information while I was busy in a meeting. I have to admit, as age is catching up, I am not as agile with multi-tasking compared to 20 years ago. It's challenging to try to be focused in a meeting and attending to questions from the other side simultaneously. In the end, I decided to just leave the meeting and focus on the SOS call.

I was attempting to find out the reason and rectifying the error, this colleague suddenly private messaged me with advise to use the checklist to ensure all templates will be working correctly. Although I knew the original work is not done by me, I just said thank you with OK and thumbs up emoticons. Years ago, I probably would have retorted at her message but I don't seems to have that negative thoughts now. I guess the "humble yourself to learn and win" phrase is etched on my mind that I just automatically responded with the happy emoticons. After all, I believe she is genuinely trying to be helpful so that everyone can work efficiently without having errors popping up here and there in the future.

I personally think there are many ways to respond to every situation that happen to me everyday. I can be reacting negatively or positively, depending on my mood during that time. "Speak life" - a term that I learnt from my pastors and godly friends - thank You Holy Spirit, for reminding me always to speak life in my speech. Each day I am given choices to use words that builds or destroys relationships... I pray that I am building and restoring more relationships than the opposite each day. Thank You again Lord Jesus, for setting an excellent example for me to follow each day 💖

Stressed, pained..

Dear Abba Father,

Today is my second day of migraine, stiff neck and shoulder, and a very sore back. I have not taken any medication for the past 6 years each time this migraine attacked me, and I still refuses to pop that famous wonder white pill called "Panadol" now.

Father God, I know my pain comes from my stress level that has reached an alarming level. That's how wonderful You are in creating my body's alarm system each time I stressed myself out by trying to fix or finish my tasks to perfection. Thank You Father, for a time of relief when I stopped everything and just entered into Your presence to rest. That 'Mary at Jesus' feet' moment.. so restful, so peaceful. Thank You Father God, thank You my Lord Jesus Christ, for hugging me tight in that resting moment. Thank You, I felt so loved. I am sorry, Father, for not coming to you sooner and forgetting that I am to be my best, not to be super perfect.

Dear Father God, I just pray that I can have a good rest tonight, knowing very well that I am loved by You and I will be okay and healed from this stress-induced migraine and pain. Thank You for my sister's suggestion to see a Christian sinseh if the pain persisted. Thank You for hearing my prayers, in Jesus' name I pray, amen.

The frequently asked question: "Why God, WHY?"

Dear God,

Here I am Father God, with lots of "whys" in my head right now... and I am trying to put my thought together in this post to the best of my ability...

Just about 2 weeks ago I poured out my heart to you about my work and colleagues, specifically on the website revamp project. I thought You gave me solid reason to leave the project team when the management revamped the organisation chart, and I saw the opportunity to distance myself from the run-a-way-train that is clearly heading towards disaster because that colleague refused to budge on letting the vendor do the job. I thought I had the victory... until yesterday. The victory is short-lived. Argh!!! Why God? Why??? SIGH... 

My manager called and spoke to me, telling me the team hit critical bump and cannot proceed without my input and involvement. What input, what involvement, Father? I already done all I can.. what else can I do when that person is not taking responsibility to do his part? I am in no position to tell him what to do, besides knowing that I was backstabbed by him and I am having a lot of things to do on my side and and... and my manager suggested for the tech team to be back in office to re-strategise... sigh...

Father, can I shout till I run out of breath? My chest is very tight, and I am fighting for air... gasp!

So today I went back to office, thinking I can just tell them bluntly I don't want to get involve in the project. I already planned in my head what to say, until I saw the text message forwarded by manager just before I leave my room: "Bro, I can't come office today cuz I slightly injured my feet, hard to walk. Can we conference once KL comes?". I was stumped, speechless. Should I go to office since he's not coming? More questions came flooding into my mind, bringing along anger + frustration + disbelieve + jaw-dropped + all sort of negative emotion reaction to the surface.

Oh God... what lesson You want me to learn from this? Are You trying to prepare me to lead this challenging person to complete the project, as a feather in my resume for my future position? Tough, this is sooooo tough!! I don't know if I am ready to go through the pain of being a leader again so soon...

I then discovered my car park card was terminated since June 2020 when I reached the office. Sigh... Still, I thank You Father, that I can claim my parking fee back. Slightly troublesome moving forward as I heard the entire organisation will no longer give us free parking, and we need to park at the open car park. Just need to make it a new habit to always carry and remember to take my umbrella when I go to office.

So Father, I met with my manager and after he filled in the gaps for me, since I did not attend several project meetings for the past 2 weeks, I drew on the board to see the big picture and what is the project current status. All I see on the board: TSUNAMI ALERT! Sound of emergency alarm blaring out of control screaming in my head... I can hear my head telling me "KL, you have to stop yourself from going further in the project, you cannot get involve, it's a disaster coming really big and you will be in dangerous zone of being blamed and backstabbed again!"

The lead developer colleague had nothing to show the project team he had started the project. Not even a skeleton site or process flow logic drawing while waiting for the final design and content from the Comms team. All I heard from the feedback over and over again was "I am not familiar/I need to do research". Why can't he just admit he can't do the work and tell the truth to everyone? I blurted out to my manager "Sorry, I can't help this project if he is still refuse to let the vendor do 80% and he do 20%". Gasp! What have I done? What did I just said?? What's going on in my head?! I should have just said I still won't come back to the team whether vendor or he do the work... KL, what happened to you?!

Trying to clear my mind, I just shared my experiences in running website development processes with my manager and convinced him to speak to the project sponsor: I don't see the project can meet the March 2021 deadline with the current situation and attitude issue with the lead developer. The project sponsor can see the problem after 2~3 times noticing his various contradicting statement on what he can or cannot do (hmm.. why can't my manager see it when I already told him months ago?), and in turn advised my manager to make firm decision to axe or keep him in the project.

3pm. Steering Committee meeting via con-call. I kept quiet throughout the meeting, observing what is going on and I was most interested to see how the lead developer reply to the questions raised at him. When the project manager shared on the timeline, he spotted "Website development and completion - 7 days". It's actually an oversight on the project manager as she accidently left out the backend development (35 days). He jumped on everyone, raising his voice to dispute the 7 days by justifying he cannot do the job and calling the timeline "crazy, absurd". Project Sponsor told him to take it offline with the tech team but he refused to listen and just kept protesting. I gestured to my manager not to make any comment but to say "we'll take this offline".

We told the lead developer to come back to office tomorrow for meeting, to iron out the issues and to reorganise the plan. I am now very doubtful if he will turn up. And if he turns up, Father God, I need Your help for both my manager and myself to tell the truth to him, that he seriously do not have the capability to carry the project. Unless he buck up, unless You give us the miracles, I honestly don't believe this guy can really do it.

The CEO came over to our island after the Steering Committee meeting, and after discovering the "lame" excuse of the lead developer not turning up for internal meeting in the morning, he sent out an email instructing the entire tech team to work in office until project completion. Father God, how will this work out in the end, only You know. I can only follow Your lead, and Father God, please help me to stand firm in my decision to tell the truth and not backing down from the pressure of pleasing people and I end up suffering in silence, in regret.

Ouch... Backstabbed!

 Dear Father God,

For some reasons from the very beginning I sensed I will face challenging time for taking the small role in my workplace's website revamp project. Today I found out I am being backstabbed and complained against by the lead developer. I was told he questioned my qualification in the web and technical matter and when I'm around, he's totally another person by saying yes when I says something. It sure hurts Father...I don't think I've overstep my role and boundary in this project. Perhaps it's a "time's up" call for me to leave the project team and just focus on my core role as business analyst instead?

The reason I am in this project team in the first place? They found out that:

• I had the experience of building websites from ground up.
• I had the opportunities to lead a team of wonderful people with skills superior than mine to work on massive web development projects for both big and small organisations across different industries. 

Apparently they had signed and tried to work with my former company 2 years back, but due to scope creep, they dropped the work and thus the management decided to do it in-house.

So, what's my role in this project team? It sounded very simple: I'm assisting the project manager and my manager in documenting the user requirement and assisting in overall architecture design especially in backend, besides providing advise as needed. In terms of hierarchy, I'm at the lowest rank and unless I am asked any questions, I won't be able to say anything even if I sensed something is not right. Simple question like "Hi, how's the progress going?" can be seen as overriding or hijacking the role the project manager, my manager and the lead developer, hence I am very careful with my words.

Honestly speaking Father, I do not know the background of this lead developer. I don't know how capable he is in web development. I didn't get to ask him how many years or how many projects he has done before. From the day 1 I met him in office (after the MCO is relaxed for us to return to office), he has been telling me and my manager how good he is and how he is capable to do the task. Sadly Father, I felt that he is lying to everyone. I noticed that he took a very long time to complete a simple programming request. If I may put my experience into that request, an experienced programmer would take at most 5 days to deliver with the help from the vendor who provided the API. Forgive me Abba God for my strong words: that freaking request he took more than 1 month to do, and to my carnal mind I wanted to shout "WTF!" or "WTH!" to him for all the bullshits he said.

With my manager, I suggested to him months before the start of the website revamp project kick-off meeting to get the development server and environment ready, at least replicating the current website's functionality from .NET to PHP since he said he can only do PHP. Even the manager agreed and tried to help him to get the things he needed. Oh ya, he said he will do the architecture design and share with us. Alas, with few more months to meet March 2021's deadline, nothing is here yet. When I was asked to present the project timeline to the management, I can hear their jaws dropped over the Teams meeting. With him as one-man-show, the project will end in July 2021 (provided he don't fall sick, never take leave, and knows exactly what he is doing). I was asked to realign the timeline to March 2021's deadline and to suggest what they should do to expediate the work. I told them the truth: engage a proper web development company to do it and then let our lead developer tag along so that he can take over for maintenance once the new website is launched. Their response? Dropping a coin into a deep well and dropping.. still dropping... helloooooooooo....? "Okay, Mr Manager, please proceed to look for vendor for quotation and report in the next meeting". Victory, yes? Father, I don't know.. the road looked really long ahead with no end in sight...

Father, until today there is nothing from the lead developer on this project. Manager's simple request to list down what he can do and what the vendor need to do often vanishes into the thin air, or is responded with the standard reply for the past few months "I can only do research and try to develop". I told my manager while I can list down every single thing what vendor and he should do, it will be disastrous for the entire team because he will place the blame on us for "making me do it when I don't know how to do". I declined to list the tasks for him.. again playing my "advisor" card carefully.

The last I heard, he started drinking again. The management knew he had this drinking issue and he went into rehab. Everyone thought he's turned a new leave when he rejoined the organisation but... sigh, Father, I won't comment about his problem because I know myself: who am I to judge him. Unless he encounter You personally and really surrender to You to change him from inside out like how I did to my life, his problem will resurface no matter how many times he go to rehab.

I told my project sponsor (this person is whom the project manager reports to) after the timeline presentation that we cannot afford to take risk with lead developer's erratic behaviour. I shared that while we need to love a person and give the necessary support, but when it comes to organisation's interest, we have to put aside emotion and be professional to bring the project to completion. Father God, I don't know how my project sponsor can understand, but I can only hope my message is clear enough for the management to do the right thing moving forward.

Sigh... dear Lord Jesus Christ, please speak to Your daughter on when to resign from this project team? Please help me Your daughter with the right words when I speak, I pray, and may the management accepts my reason to leave the team, in Your Name I ask and pray, amen.

Psalm 119:105

Your word is a lamp to my feet
And a light to my path.
~ Psalm 119:105

I was having a conversation with sis Min not long ago when she shared how she is uncertain about her future after her graduation at the end of the year. She mentioned Psalm 119:105 and placed her trust in the Lord Jesus to lead her step by step, as she explained the distance that the light emitted from the lamp according to the ancient time is probably just a few feet away. The people back then can't see further or walk faster than the light's radius, and had to be careful to keep their lamp burning so they can see in the dark.

When she finished sharing, I told her about my memory of driving at night on the day my maternal grandfather passed away. I remembered waiting at KLIA for my aunt to arrive from Melbourne before picking up my uncle and his family from KLIA2 that night, and drove back to Kuala Lipis for the funeral. I remember it's already passed 10pm when I left the airports with them and drove rather fast along the highways as they were brightly lit up. Once I reached the Bentong-Kuala Lipis road, I had to slow down as large part of the route do not have street lights.

Father God was gracious to us after we passed Bentong town. A Mara bus (a term my mom and I used to describe express bus) was in front of us, driven rather fast by the bus driver. Taking the opportunity that he's paving the way in the dark, I followed closely behind him. When I saw his brake light, I stepped on my brake. When he turned to the side, I too, followed suit. That night the bus was probably at 130-140 km/h as my speedometer was showing 100 km/h at the top speed. It was about few kilometres away from Kuala Lipis' exit that the bus stopped for his rest, and I continued on knowing the roads ahead will have some lights on.

I shared with sis Min that the whole time of me following the bus reminded me of my daily walk to follow Jesus Christ closely. I don't always see my life ahead clearly, but Jesus, like the bus driver, He is paving His way for me. As long as I keep my eyes focused on Him, to love and obey Him, I won't be lost or afraid. This memory is a constant reminder for me each time I feels burdened or unsure of my days, that my Father God is there to guide me in His love and righteousness. All glory to Him alone, amen!

Hymn - He Leadeth Me

Verse 1 He leadeth me! O blessed thought, O words with heav’nly comfort fraught; Whate’er I do, where’er I be, Still ’tis Christ’s hand that leadeth me. Verse 2 Sometimes ’mid scenes of deepest gloom, Sometimes where Eden’s bowers bloom, By waters still, o’er troubled sea, Still ’tis His hand that leadeth me. Verse 3 Lord, I would clasp Thy hand in mine, Nor ever murmur or repine; Content, whatever lot I see, Since it is Thou that leadest me. Verse 4 And when my task on earth is done, When, by Thy grace, the vict’ry’s won, E’en death’s cold wave I will not flee, Since Thou in triumph leadest me.

Chorus: He leadeth me! He leadeth me! By His own hand He leadeth me; His faithful follower I would be, For by His hand He leadeth me.

Today this hymn popped up in my head as I work through my office assignments, and I remember singing this hymn the first during my Form 5's School Leavers' Service. It was and still my favourite hymn to-date. I thought of the words in the lyrics as I sang it with my teachers and school mates and pondered how my life would look like as we prepares for our SPM and life beyond school days. I don't remember what was shared in the service by the invited speaker, but I believed most of us dreamed of achieving a good education and good job that pays well, and to some getting married and have a good family. For me, I was hoping for my life to have university graduation and good job, followed by faithfully serving in church. Marriage and romance thingy were not in my mind at all.

Life after PESS was "lonely" for me because I suddenly "lost all" my friends. We don't have Internet or mobile phone and the ease of connecting at the tip of our fingers. I don't have the phone at home and the only way to call friends was via public phone which we don't see it anymore nowadays. Over the years I made new friends from workplaces and social activities that I joined. Thanks to Internet and some PESS friends' initiatives, we are connected again "virtually". I went for a few gatherings and I can see the gaps between us when we chatted. Everyone is busy with their own careers, businesses and families. For some of them who stayed near each other, their friendships are stronger and they can literally dominate the gathering until myself felt alienated. Now I hardly join their gatherings as I felt out-of-place, like a square peg. I still keep in touch with them but our interactions are very minimal.

Looking back in the past years, I really thank God for His grace and mercy to me even though I myself went to the wrong ways and yet, He still gently lead me back to Him and His will for me even when I don't see it. Yes, I may have felt lonely after my PESS days but my God have never leave me alone. Yes, I may have felt left out in the gatherings but He is always with me. I may have felt I "lost" my friends but Father God gives me new friends, and the best part is He gives me godly friends who is now my dearest friends that I can grow spiritually, share my deepest fear, funny dreams and greatest hopes with. I thank You Father, for You have and will always hold my hand and lead me home to You no matter what I go through in my life.