Ok, I’ll tell you why I wanted to stay in TF. In the first place, I always wanted a home. I needed a home. When I was little, my family was my home. They were the people I was close to, could relate to, could trust, fall back on, and everything. Plus my extended family. In primary school I was never really close to any friends. Sure, there were people I went around with and everything, but never close enough to be family. In Pri 5 and 6 I was a self-proclaimed outcast. People didn’t think I was, but I saw myself as one.
In Sec school I learnt to make friends. I had my own cliques. But my family was always closer. I think. And then after I became a Christian, things changed. Suddenly my family just wasn’t my home anymore. They can’t accept me. For who I am. Or rather, what I’ve become. Guess it wasn’t their fault. They didn’t change. I did. Suddenly I was the traitor, the disgrace. Extended family? Worse. In the first place as I grew older, I just somehow learn…not to trust them. Guess it was all the family politics. After this, I was mud to them. Almost like I was caught in adultery in the old days. All the better reason for those who wants my side of the family down. Now they had more …stones to throw.
And then? Friends. In Sec I was much closer to my friends. Experts say teenagers do that. But somehow, my friends never became the ‘enough’. They just weren’t enough. They were a little family, but I wanted more than people who’d go out with me, hang around. My friends did depend on me to be there for them. But somehow I don’t feel they wanted to be there for me. I wanted to be there for people. For I also needed people to be there for me.
I guess I needed, wanted, something more…stable. Where people wouldn’t suddenly run off because you did something that angered them. Something where people are actually committed to each other. I remembered looking in CO. and I thought that’s where I found it. The people there, many times, they had a common goal. They worked together, suffered together, played, planned, cheered. I loved this people. That’s part of the reason why I worked so hard for them. I wanted to be one of them, I wanted them to be my family. For an ECA, these people were really close. Any two of us can talk about orchestra business for hours, without talking of anything else, and not get bored. Our lives centered around it. People grumbled about the work. I was tired too, didn’t like getting up early, getting home late. But in my way, I loved it. I loved spending time with these people who were becoming like family to me. Even if it involves hard work.
It was pretty good, especially the times in the last couple of years. When we stayed back everyday after school to rehearse for the opening ceremony. And ate ‘catered’ rice so hard our teeth couldn’t take it. And ‘Xiao Mu Ming’. Our own competition. Until the song nearly felt like our own song. We laughed together and we cried together. And trained hard. Lots happened. So much. That if you weren’t there, you simply…became a sort of outsider. You don’t
know. We shared so much. We seemed so much to one another.
Sometimes I don’t understand, still don’t. How people who were shared so much, could suddenly be nothing more to you, simply because time is up, it was time to graduate. Not all of them. And maybe to the others, it
was simply a competition. For them it was time to move on. I stayed with those who stayed a while.
Later in J2, when I had some problems with time, I just dropped this part out of my life. Completely. As though it never existed before. Except a few reminisces with people now and then. Like old memories. One reason I could just drop them like that, it was the ‘head of the family’, our conductor. And teacher. Well…when all is said and done, he simply didn’t like me. I wasn’t brilliant, I wasn’t hardworking. I wasn’t even obedient. He did a few things that made me lose the respect I had for him before. Which was a lot of respect. I still respect him, as a human being, as a brilliant conductor. But there is this level of respect, I call it personal respect, that you give only to people …somehow
worth the respect. He lost that.
Actually what he did, was when I was Sec 4. But he was the reason I felt less unwilling to leave the orchestra. I think heads of families are really important people. After all, I stayed with the Lord’s family, even when I couldn’t live with the people and everything, no matter how everything else turns out in the family, simply because of the Head of this family. He was the enormous ‘pull’ factor I can never ignore. And CO, their head of the family wasn’t a pull factor, he was even slightly a push one.
One thing about the ‘family’ in CO was it was a ‘functional family’. I don’t mean that it functions, which is the normal meaning. I mean that it works based on the functions of its members. It values those who perform important functions, in fact, they wouldn’t keep you if you were useless. In this family I had to prove my worth to stay. I sort of did, I worked hard till I could teach the younger-younger ones, I
could perform musically, I was willing to do organizing and projects’ work for them. I was willing to have to prove my worth. I was desperate.
Why was I willing to leave this family? Or why didn’t I want it anymore? At some point, I just didn’t care anymore. At the point of time when I left it, a lot of major conflicts of interest were going on in my life. Somehow this part of my life lost out. Somehow the family role ceased to exist. Perhaps it was that most of the people I was close to weren’t there anymore. Perhaps it was outside influences. Last time I worked hard for the ‘family’ I wanted. Now I couldn’t for that, or because I liked to, cause I didn’t. And I couldn’t work hard just to ‘maintain’ my ‘rank’, though prestige and rank is one of my temptations. I chose to opt out.
My JC friends, quite close. Especially I had two cliques, both close cliques. In the first, my class clique, for the first time, I was one of the major people in the major clique, kind. It was all very fun and lively. The second clique accepted me very readily, though I was very different from them and gave them little commitment. Plus the people I knew in VJ were more … I would call it humane. They could value you for simply being part of them rather than because you are useful in certain ways. They gave me the feeling that they wanted me to be there for them, but they also wanted to be there for me, at least they would try. That is, they cared. And a few of them proved it quite a few times.
Next to CO, I think the first clique was the one that nearly made it as family. They cared, and in that clique I found a friend, Yvonne, who made it clear that in friendships she wanted to give more than she wanted to take. Most of the guys in the clique were Christians, which means we even went out together on what Jacqueline called ‘Christian outings’, to FOP, congre meetings, or someone’s church had something on … the only thing was that there wasn’t anybody I could confide in. Somehow all the Christians in the clique are guys, except me. There wasn’t somebody I could share things like, “this is what God is doing in my life” … some things can, but some things cannot, especially the closer ones. The girls wouldn’t understand. I didn’t tell the guys.
My cellgroups, I had never been close to them. The DHS ones, it is hardly to be expected, I was only there a while, lots of I wasn’t there, and when I was I just sat there. The VJ ones, in J1, it wasn’t all that bad. But I still didn’t talk much. Partly I was still scared of them. Partly, maybe we just didn’t cliqued. A couple of them tried, like Zong Rong. But I could scarcely call them family. In J2, I guess it was mostly my fault. The times in 2nd term when I didn’t even go for cellgroup. By the time I was back, it seemed too late. Mostly it was still just the same thing. I just couldn’t clique with them.
I didn’t clique with my TF cell either. This one’s largely my fault too. Cause a while after I found I didn’t have much to say to them, or rather, I didn’t want to talk to them, I just gave up. They became sort of my duty. And when the duty’s finished, that’s it. By then I almost felt confirm it was something wrong with me. How is it that I never managed to clique with any of my cellgroups? I never had any close Christian friends, except Danica and Jingyu. Maybe there was something wrong with
me. Somehow I just couldn’t clique with Christians.
When I met Lijun, and then Qingyu, later Wanting, at first things were … what it seemed they always had been, so normal. But I tell you, these girls touched me. Things changed. They made me believe it wasn’t true that there was something wrong with me, that I couldn’t clique with Christians. Why, I could clique with them! And they are people, of this strange species, called cell leaders. And I could actually talk to them, eat with them, laugh with them, and enjoy it. I talked and ate with my TF cellgroup because I felt I should. I talked and ate with these girls because I
wanted to. I listened to them, did all kinds of strange things with them, went shopping with them, worshipped with them … and it all just worked. It amazed me, and in the end I was thankful. So thankful.
That was why I was reluctant to leave Touch Youth then. I was afraid it was going to be all gone. And just when it started! The first time I met a group of Christian girls whom I could … live with for really, and love it. It meant a lot to me. I
was looking for a family because I needed a sense of belonging. But I also wanted my family in Christ. I wanted to live with Christians simply because they
are family. And it meant something to me, to be able to live my family in the Lord. It made me very sad when I thought there was something wrong with me such that I couldn’t. And now it seemed I can! I wanted to keep it. Maybe that was when the ‘nasty’ part of the reason I wanted to stay in TF started settling in.
Actually
most of the reason I wanted to stay in TF was
good reason. At least 70%. I did want to serve the Lord. It could be soldiers, it could be not, but they are people, they are precious to Him, and I do want to do something, for Him and for them. That was the majority of my reason. But it wasn’t enough. That is, it wasn’t enough for the Lord. By man’s standard, 50% is pass, and 70% is passing by 20%, which means a good pass. By man’s standard, I got a good pass. By the Lord’s standard, 100% is just pass. 70% is 30% below passing. It’s like getting 20 upon 100. It’s way fail. There was no way the Lord was going to let me pass this one.
I wanted to stay in TF, partly because I found some trace of the family I always wanted in the SA leaders. But you don’t stay in a ministry because you enjoy the people there. Even I know that. But that wasn’t the dirtiest part of the reason. There’s worse.
There was that I was simply
sick of being passed on from one ministry to the next, like some parcel, or worse, a parcel they keep passing on because nobody wanted. That was the time in my life when changes … they are just all over the place. My JC life ended, I was in a new job. It would only last 6 months, and then it was NUS. My Touch Youth job only lasted for 2 months, and then it was East District. I was only Linda’s assistant for like 3 weeks, and then circumstances made me a general AA for the last 3 months. I just came out of the VJ ministry, and if my ‘parcel’ was passed on again, in 6 months I would be passed on to Touch NUS. I was sick of it. Maybe I wanted TF to want this parcel.
There was the church office environment. In many other ways, it was wonderful environment. I wrote quite a bit about that. There was one way it wasn’t. it didn’t affect many people. There weren’t many people like me there. It affected me. Sometimes it does seem to me that in the whole building, I was the only
cell member. There were Lijun and Vivien, they were the cell interns. The CLIs. Then came people like Qingyu and the Steppers. They were the CLs. There were ZSIs, ZSs, pastors, ZPs, DPs, right up to SP, Ps Khong.
There was in the computer program they used for the particulars of everyone in the church, a space for … some kind of status. It was a pull-down list and you could choose like, CL or ZS to indicate what that person was. And all the abbreviations I wrote above are listed, and one more. It’s called CH, which means church member. People like me, who are not baptized, and therefore not even CH, don’t exist on the list. That was the least of it. The thing I couldn’t stand was the surprise on people’s faces when I told them, no, I’m not a cell leader. It was, “Are you a cell leader?” “No”, and then the look of surprise, as though somehow it were strange for a normal Christian girl not to be a cell leader. And then a moment of silence. And then they try to talk about something else, “So who’s your cell leader?” … You couldn’t blame them really, almost all the people they meet in that office are all cell leaders, at least. They got used to it. And I guess the people who usually temped in the office are people quite close to the church, that is, the leaders. You don’t find small fry like me bumping in everyday. I guess I should take it as a compliment. That people think I actually look like a person who has leadership potential. But then after I tell them, they take the other track. Ps Yee Theng went as far as to ask me whether I
have a cellgroup. Hey!
They get this impression that cell members are these lazy people, some of whom don’t even go for cellgroup, who are so lazy their poor leaders have to motivate them to do anything at all. They aren’t correct, but I’ve seen too many good examples to attempt to disagree with them. What I couldn’t take was their idea that cell members are people who don’t really want to serve the Lord, who aren’t even very serious about Him in the first place, kind of lazy Christians. Or else why didn’t
they become leaders? That is, besides the new Christians lah. I know it doesn’t matter what people think, but somehow it gets to me if people think I’m not serious about the Lord. I
am, ok.
There were TF people who knew Anna was my cell leader who immediately assumed I was her intern. They even assumed I know how to lead worship. It was amazing the kind of assumptions they made really. I kept quiet. That is, I didn’t tell them I never lead worship in my life, I did tell them I wasn’t Anna’s intern. And then there were the people who forgot. I told Linda when she interviewed me, I wasn’t a cell leader. Later, when I told her I was booking a room for my cell meeting and I would be responsible for the room, immediately goes, so normally, so,… expectedly, “You are the cell leader right?” Thanks loh. You really think I look like a cell leader, such that you’d forget I told you I wasn’t, thanks loh, but please don’t do it too often, especially in such a way so … confident of the answer you are going to get, such that I almost didn’t want to disappoint you…and the people who told me I looked more like a cell leader than Delia, simply because I talk more. And the people who paused after I told them, no, I wasn’t a cell leader, and no, I’m not a cell intern either. They pause as though they didn’t know what to say, as though they wanted to ask, and if you’re neither of these, then what are you? There was someone I had to say to him, when he looked at me as though he just couldn’t figure out what I was, that I was Anna’s cell
member! And then he looked at me, as though that sure is a strange kind of human being to be …
I don’t know how it works. Somehow I wanted to get out of being the strange species around, I hated all these. It was also a kind of conformity thing, conformity to your environment, and my environment dictated that a cell leader was the right thing to be … Somehow my ‘cell status’ made me a kind of nobody. It was one thing to be a nobody because you’re a greenhorn and young. That I never minded. This was a different kind of nobody. And somehow I minded. Perhaps I didn’t want people to look at me as someone not quite serious about the Lord.
If there’s a last reason this is the one. The worst one. I liked prestige. Always did. Sometimes worked hard for it. I liked being in charge of people. I also liked to take care of people, true, but I did like the feeling of being ‘in charge’ of people, see. And it was nice to be respected, nice to have people think you are good, all the things Jesus reproved the Pharisees severely for.
I didn’t explain the first reason well enough. The home one. It wasn’t just about the SA girls. Mostly it was about that if I stayed in TF, they’ll be a kind of family to me, see, a family where you could depend on the people, they are committed to one another, they would be the family I could tell, “this is what God is doing in my life” to, people who wouldn’t leave because they get upset with me, who didn’t have a ‘time-up’ when everyone goes away, or I do. That was most of the part of the reason I wanted to stay in TF, that didn’t make it to the ‘good reason’ part. I just wanted a home that lasts, really.
