Monday, December 30, 2019. The 9pm overcast night sky is cool, hinting the possibility of showers in the evening ahead.

There is a somberness in the air around me. Church Street’s pavements are emptier than usual. Across from me, office workers smoke their evening cigarettes alone by the ashtrays. Their eyes are focused on the pavement, perhaps reflecting about life, imagining replayed memories within the exhaled smoke clouds.

2019 is coming to a close, and nobody truly knows what’s next in the decade ahead. 

A PAINFUL START TO THE 2010s

I was looking forward to the 2010s. I was confident of making a path for myself. Yet, circumstances changed pretty quickly and the early years of the 2010s left lasting impressions that continue to shape my worldview today.

The numbing sense of aimlessness after failing my A-levels in 2010, a slowly crumbling family, and a growing estrangement from my father came in quick succession from 2009 to 2012. Whilst pockets of fond moments existed, such were few and far between.

Failing the A-levels in 2010 was an unexpected scenario I had never anticipated or had the resilience for. I clearly remember that Sunday night ferry ride back to Tekong after receiving my results a few days prior in March 2011. There was an ill feeling in my body. I’d never felt so overwhelmed, confused and lonely before.

God felt so distant and quiet. In the coming weeks, my senses were numbed by the disbelief. I was downcast by what I felt was injustice by God, so I blocked out Him from my consciousness altogether. 

After some cajoling by my sister, I made the decision to disrupt National Service and return back to school to repeat my second year in JC, albeit with a wounded self-esteem. I was a botak walking alone in school, his mind clouded by memories of failure and shoulders burdened by the reality of doing the A-levels again.

Through sheer willpower, I did eventually pass the A-levels in my second attempt. Vindication, I thought then. With relatively average grades under my belt and a new matriculation window ahead, I looked forward to the phase of National Service where I could finally join in the conversations with bunkmates about future plans. 

But in the weeks after initial applications, knocked doors were ignored. Again, my natural reaction was to blame life and unfortunate circumstances on God. My cries to God weren’t in helpless desperation, they were fueled by clenched fists of powerless anger and frustration. 

Shattered, I started reclusing. I stopped socialising much on weekends. Bible studies with my cell group made no impressions on my life. I even stopped singing aloud during Sunday worship. I was a shell. My heart was closing.

In 2012, an unexpected opening came in the form of a new humanities programme. It had to be divine intervention that I was accepted into it, but I wrestled with God again, questioning His purpose. Lord, me studying History, seriously?

In hindsight, my 21-year-old headstrong self couldn’t connect the dots. My heart was in a bad place and my frustrations with God and deepened. I was blinded by zero-sum calculations, ignoring this juncture in life as one of His most significant interventions in my life.

Amidst all the familial and personal struggles, He shone still light on the path I was to take. 

THE DOWNFALL OF A DECADE

With much reluctance and a muted feeling of aimlessness, I took up the History programme in 2014. The adjustment back to school was intimidating. 

Back home, parental dynamics were falling apart, and their regular quarrelling served as a repeated motif of dysfunction and division in my life. To compensate for my lack of self-esteem and guidance, I isolated myself in the sterile quietness of libraries, studying harder, stretching myself over longer hours, pouring more time and energy into extended readings and research. 

It turned out to be a wrong move. Aloneness did not yield fruitful improvements in my quality of work. I was only fairing average as a student. But it only made me strive harder.

The imaginary pressure cooker I put myself in reared its ugly head at the close of 2016. With application rejections from research houses, non-replies from government agencies and zero working connections or opportunities, I reached peak existential anxiety as I contemplated my imminent graduation.

In early January 2017, I encountered a new kind of darkness in life. 

How would I describe my first encounter with depression? 

It’s like a long-tailed shadow behind you. You feel an unexplainable heaviness on your shoulders and it is physically draining. You wake up each day exhausted and despondent. Bright and warm afternoons oddly feel like grey overcast skies. In quiet pockets of the day, you cannot help but feel the tears build up in your eyes. You cry uncontrollably. You are confused by your own behaviour. 

I felt like a fluke, an imposter in a programme, with nowhere to go and no sense of direction ahead. I was crushed. There was nowhere else to go. I felt totally helpless, alone and defeated. I closed my heart once again. 

I graduated in 2018 with fairly average results, without a concrete plan and instead a stubborn impatience to rid myself of joblessness. In a rash decision, I took up an internship opening in an industry I had no particular interest. Work filled the gap, but I was as stressed and clueless as ever.

Lord, give me an explicit answer. Should I stay here in this job, or should I look elsewhere?

Silence. 

By last August, the summation of over-work, poor sleep and the death of a loved one crushed me, and I relapsed into that familiar place of darkness. This time, I felt thoroughly downcast and at a loss of words. I still have so many questions for God.

Another season in this familiar darkness, really, Father? Am I destined to be permanently wrestling with depression? 

My road to recovery continues. 

STEPPING INTO 2020

The decade past has revealed much about me. I was oblivious to God’s quiet interventions and provisions. My headstrong insistence to proactively solve problems relegated His promises and wisdom to the backburner. I did not surrender my heart. I was afraid of having it broken again.

In my sadness, I recently began re-reading Ecclesiastes, not only with an open mind but with an open heart. The Contrast of Wisdom and Folly, Man Cannot Know God’s Way, Death Comes to All.  As I meditated over the chapters this past December, I felt His quiet presence prompting me. 

In this period of deep reflection and journaling, God has been pressing this thought back to me: “You’ve conditionally surrendered a part of yourself, Charles, I want the rest of you without reservation. How much longer do you want to wrestle and run against Me? I will reveal just enough to keep you relying on Me alone. Give me your heart.”

I pray that my story serves as a pledge, a testimony to whoever reads this: your fears, doubts and cries are natural and it’s okay if no one truly understands you. He does. 

Likewise, His promises transcend time and space. It really is a profound mystery. In the rehabilitative process of counselling and re-aligning with God in silence and patience, this stubborn botak is finally learning to stop walking alone. 

Tonight’s sky has cleared with the cool breeze in the air.  One can hear the buzz of laughter and the clinking of glasses from the shophouses in the distance. A new year awaits those that roam Church Street. 

This was a submission to our “Write your 2020 story” giveaway. As the new decade dawns, we’re looking for stories that reflect on your journey with God in the years past and dream ahead with Him for the future.

Stories must include:
1) Where did God take you in the last decade?
2) How will you pledge to follow Him into the next?

Send your 2020 story to [email protected] and stand to win an exclusive set of metal straws. Giveaway ends on January 31, 2020.