Bankrupt

Jesus…
You are listening aren’t you?
Please give me wisdom.
Actually I have decided haven’t i?
Please help me to love them and glorify you these last days.
It’s unbelievable how I have become.
I used to split hairs over every nuance in my thought of you.
Now I callously and carelessly go through each day, giving only passing thoughts of you. Out of habit? Religiousity?
Or perhaps it is because we did and we do have a relationship, and you are faithfully holding on to me.
I long for the times when my heart was close to you, when I was growing more and more like you.
Now I can’t minister because I can’t be your mouthpiece because I can’t hear your thoughts.
Now I can’t teach because I don’t have your patience and your compassion and your sacrificial, unconditional love.
Now I am broke because I am not seeking your kingdom and cannot claim that “all these will be added unto me”, but I have to strive to get them – food, shelter, clothes…
And I need to return, not for any noble motives, but simply that I am reduced to eating pigs’ food and I yearn to be in my Father’s palace.
Please take me back.

No Mei Mei! Don't Cry!

Glory has gotten over Aunty Aiyah.

From time to time, she does talk about her, but not in a sad way anymore. Now it's more like "Aunty Aiyah take airplane. Zoom! Yeaaaahhhh, Airplane!!!!"

When she scrolls through the pictures on my iPhone, she still does a double take when she sees Aunty Aiyah’s pictures, and flips back to search for them again, calling Aunty Aiyah fondly. 

But she’s no longer nasty toward Aunty Charisma. In fact, she’s grown quite fond of Aunty Charisma too. Some mornings she even cries to have Aunty Charisma accompany her to school.

So she’s more or less back to her usual self.

She can speak in complete sentences now – sometimes not very grammatical, but generally the sentence structure is there. Munch and I would be so impressed and stare at each other, counting under our breath as she strings together “long” sentences with 6 words, with adjectives, nouns, verbs etc all in the right place.

She puts her speaking prowess to good use too – making known her preferences, negotiating for extra eggs/ biscuits/ stories, and also bossing Celeste around.

“No MeiMei. This is Glory’s towel. Don’t touch Glory’s towel.”

Celeste doesn’t mind it, usually. She adores Glory and is thrilled whenever Glory pays any attention to her. Even though 90% of the sentences begin with “NO MEI MEI!” Celeste would still look at Glory lovingly, the affection and adulation pouring out of her dreamy eyes.

Except when Glory shouts at her. Which is quite often. It REALLY scares Celeste, coz Glory has developed a very loud, bossy, assertive, childcare-centre-tough-kid kind of shout. It literally makes Celeste jump.

Celeste has since learnt that acting cute, sweet, innocent etc gets her nowhere with stopping jiejie’s shouting, so she goes for the oldest trick in the book…WAHHHHHHHHHH!!!

To which Glory would also cry along (coz it means mummy’s gonna come running and tell her off for shouting at meimei), or desperately command Celeste “No, Celeste, don’t cry. No no no Mei Mei!”

Sigh. Hardly the i-brush-your-hair-you-brush-mine relationship I expected the sisters to have.

But I find that when I persist and MAKE them play together and share toys, things do get better after awhile.

Like today, when we brought them down for a ride on the bike.

There’s just ONE bike, and it belongs to Glory. When we put Celeste on it, Glory was so possessive at first, we were on our toes, ready to pull her away should she decide to remove Celeste forcibly on her own.

But when we gave her the big-sisterly duty of bringing Celeste around the blocks searching for a black cat that fled into a drain, she was such a terrific Jie Jie! She held on to one handlebar of the bike, walked responsibly next to Celeste, and explained to her what the expedition was about, giving a rundown of when and where the cat was last seen etc. 

When the expedition proved long and futile, she tried to entertain Celeste by singing songs that Teacher NiNi (Wini) taught her.

But when the expedition grew REALLY long and tiring, Glory announced that she didn’t want to bring MeiMei around anymore.

Which devastated Celeste.

Celeste tried act sweet/cute/innocent to persuade Glory to continue walking with her by gently holding Glory’s arm…. BIG MISTAKE!