16 May, 2016. FYP has ended. For real. The end.

Today I went back to school, perhaps for the last time ever, to pack my graduation show booth up for tear-down.

My FYP booth – a year of frustrations, running into dead-ends and sleepless nights, all contained within these two walls.

Time has really flown by. And yet at the same time, it feels like a long time coming. To be honest, my final year in university has been fraught with anxiety and loneliness. My nights were filled with vivid nightmares, and I was plagued by constant paranoia.

Now standing in front of my FYP that was encapsulated in a 180cm by 230cm booth, I wonder if my final year – or even my entire four years in school – put a smile on God’s face. I hope they have.

Some four years ago, He gave me a very specific calling to abandon my own dreams and to apply to NTU’s design school to pursue a route that He had planned for me. He wanted me to use whatever gifts I had as a positive influence.

I was hesitant and afraid, but I chose to trust Him anyway. In these four years, I tried my hardest even in the hardest of times. I confronted my own fear of socialising to devoting myself in building His community of creatives in school.

 

The community that God had planted in our school – we devoted ourselves to meeting regularly, supporting and guiding each other through challenges in school and prayed for our school.

He brought me on a supernatural journey to learn what it means to let go and let God; what it means to let Him establish my every step; what it means to include and remember Him in my every decision; what it means to stop asking God’s plan to fall into my own; what it means to lay my rights down with a “hallelujah”.

I wasn’t the best student out there. I wasn’t blowing everyone’s minds with cool works every semester. I definitely wasn’t scoring straight A’s contrary to the general belief that design school is a breeze to score.

It was in university that I went through some of the darkest and deepest valleys in my life.

I worried constantly about many things: What if I couldn’t major in visual communication? What if I couldn’t get the modules that I needed? What if I couldn’t get an internship? What if I couldn’t get a FYP supervisor…?

But God never gave up on me.

He pursued me in the darkest nights and in the most painful of times. He lifted me from the darkest pits. He blessed me abundantly beyond what I’d imagined.

When I was in the darkest nights, He said, “Create. Keep creating, because it is what I’ve called you to do.”

I got into my ideal major. I got all the modules I needed and most of the modules I wanted. I scored two internships at two well-established design studios. I found myself an FYP supervisor before the official application window even opened.

When I was in the darkest nights, He said, “Create. Keep creating, because it is what I’ve called you to do.”

When I was jaded, He said, “Work, for I am with you.”

When I was in doubt, He said, “Don’t ever discount the partnership that you have with Me.”

He has always been faithful and never once did I ever felt that He had forsaken me. I understood what His love meant – passionate, unconditional, undivided, fierce, loyal, unwavering, long-suffering, forgiving, faithful …

And I continue to discover that everyday.

Now I leave school with a deeper understanding and assurance that I live not for my own, but for Him in me.

I’m thankful that four years ago I chose to embark on this ride He called me on to. My prayer today is that I give praise for the closure of this chapter and maximise this next (hopefully temporal) season of rest and silence while I wait upon Him to send me on towards my next destination in His good timing.

Now I leave school with a deeper understanding and assurance that I live not for my own, but for Him in me. All that I have today and all that I am today, is to Him alone — I’m an heir of His grace. This refining through the fire, wasn’t that hard to bear after all.

The end, NTU. It’s been a life-changing one.