I'm floating alot these days. I float because I have erratic sleep patterns because of my school timetable, the Chronicle and preferred social schedule, and when I float due to lack of sleep, I cease thinking altogether and go around feeling like my feet have been taken over by wings and I'm at peace with myself.
I floated -
1) at the adm rooftop today, under the stars and on the grassy patch, a year since my last visit and trying very hard to remember how I felt the last time I was there
2) on Bev's balcony on sunday during morning prayer before church, breathing in the breeze and thinking of heaven as I felt Him land in the middle of our breakfast table
3) while driving home from the airport last night with no cars on the road and my favourite acoustic strains of 'From the inside out'
4) during sleepover conversations, twice this week, as I felt blessed to have the GGs in my life and feeling calm despite the moans and groans of the 'state we're in', and like Julienne put it, this must be what it's like to feel very zen
5) through rainy mornings, soaked shoes and bus rides
6) while praying at Starbucks with four cups of pseudo toffee-nut lattes, filled with faith
7) while playing Cranium after church - there came a point where I wasn't quite thinking anymore and started daydreaming instead of guessing
I'm surprisingly relaxed for my fourth week in school. It's a very different semester from the last, where now my relationships and life outside school matter much more than lectures and tutorials. I've also realised I like writing when I'm thinking of nothing and running on no sleep in thirty-six hours.
Justin and I spent a whole day on the family picture slideshow, digging up crinkly photographs and dust bunnies as we attempted to piece together my grandmother's eighty years of life. But she's more than the smile behind the pictures - her birthday celebration was testament to that. Her friends come from all walks of life, and the ninety-two people who showed up that evening was barely the tip of the iceberg.
If she invited all of them, we would probably need a stadium. Friends and relatives speak about her friendly, unassuming and outgoing nature, her children recount her being a devoted mother and a wife the perfect helper to her husband, her grandchildren remembering her love and affection. But in every single speech that was made, one thing stood out that everyone knew made her the woman she is today - and that was her faithfulness in her God.
Mama's faithfulness was mentioned no less than a hundred times that evening, she being a prayer warrior for everyone she came into contact with, how she woke up at 3am each morning to pray and read her Bible, the times when she would pray with her children and grandchildren before they left for school each morning, the countless occasions she would read the Bible to her grandchildren till they roused from slumber, the quiet hand behind her husband when he planted seeds in two churches, the still strength who started the Ladies' Group in these churches to serve alongside her husband, her continued prayers for all her family members and her desire to see footprints of the next generation walk closely in the Lord.
I never knew how amazing a woman she was until that night. For the first time in the twenty-two years that I've known her, I called her my hero. I truly admired the strength she had in God's plan in every aspect of her life - maybe it's because faith is something I grapple with constantly, and there stands a woman so close to my heart, filled with faith in her Father even though her husband's sudden departure left her a widow at slightly over fifty.
Two generations later, and I like giving myself excuses that the world wasn't as simple as it was then. Maybe it was because she was less educated, less exposed to the world around her and she grew up in her small hometown by the beach and marriage took place within people her community. But those are just excuses. That woman of faith will be built up through prayer despite seeing the world through the stubborn eye of ineffectuality.
So this is the end of the whirlwind that has been my life since the beginning of this year, and tomorrow marks the new beginning that I've been dreading. Yet in between the folds of this honest admission of hating the sights I'll see - the superficial supercilious smiles and the subtle catwalk runways - I keep going because of the days of blanketed starlit skies below me, royal breakfast spreads, random coffeeshop conversations and the faith armour.
Yes I've a serious case of wanderlust, but the USA, Hong Kong and Australia have tired me out that I've never been so joyful to be at home in my little canopy. It's been a packed seven weeks, so much so that my father has no idea where I am half the time. He rang me when I was in Melbourne last week, thinking that I was flying back home from Hong Kong while I laughed at him incredulously over the line. I'm going to reserve my travels now for fear of getting jaded by the time I'm thirty.
May the December mission to find a certain father and hospital admissions and vending machine coffees come soon, though.
How often do you get to see an endless blanket of bright stars in pitch blackness on eye level - that fleeting magnificence of creation will be my motor for the next semester.
