I didn't realize that it had been so long since I promised my "to-be-continued" post. I am currently in Singapore already. School has started for two weeks, and classes started to be in full swing. It had been a challenge in settling down with juggling all the independent living and the academic expectation, but I survived thus far. :)
yeap that's exactly what I want to share with you. So I moved in here and arrived on August 7, so it's my third week here. Although Singapore is just a one-and-a-half hour flight from home, it feels so near yet so far. My daily life here is totally different with the life I used to have for the past 17 years in my life. I used to have everything ready for me back in Jakarta. I got my maids, my driver, all my meals set, and all my family and friends around. In Singapore, I live in SMU's hostel. Thankfully, I got a single room, so I don't have to share it with a roommate. No, I am not being an antisocial, but I personally think that I need my personal space, private bubble, when I can just have my own 'territory'. I live in the fourth floor which means going all the way up and down the stairs often, I hope it's a good tiny exercise :p I share my flat with another 5 friends from different countries, and one of them is Indonesian too, yay! :) We have a weekly roster on who cleaned the living room area and who clean the bathroom area. My turn is next week for the bathroom, let's see how i'll work it out ;) I have to also do my own laundry and ironing here, oh goodness really I don't have to think about it back home, but it was my concern now. I need to have a proper strategic time management because the laundry machine can have a long queue some time. 200-ish hostel residents with 2 washing machines, no wonder. Aside from doing all the house chores, I do need to look for foods on my own as well. Meals used to always be provided at home, but now, I really have to go out and buy. There's no stove so I can't cook in the hostel (and I can't cook anyways so yeah hahhaha). There are plenty of considerable options to buy food around, but it's just sometimes that when I was in my dorm room already, the will of going out to buy dinner is just isn't there. :p Oh and my hostel is in walking proximity from the campus, only about 10-minutes walk. And it's also about 10-minutes walk to the MRT stations as well. So everything is either by train or by foot. Good exercise :)
To top all the life that seemed hectic already, it needs to be reminded that I go to SMU, with demanding assignments as well. The first week seems to be still okay as I can still have hangout with my friends and all that. But entering second week has given me the taste of reality. Projects, presentations, and other assignments began to haunt me already. I had to spend for like five hours on doing one assignment for one subject alone yesterday. Oh, I am really foreseeing myself to be busy in the near future, especially close to the midterm and finals week.
Settling down and adjusting to a whole different habit and lifestyle have not been a picnic. There are times when I just miss my family and home so much, dealing with homesick and all that. There are times when I feel inferior in compared to my classmates, especially when the subject is getting tough. There are times when I just feel powerless to just juggle these all, and how I wish to return to my senior year when I had really good friends and when everything seemed figured out. I haven't have that many of good friends here. Sure, acquaintances here and there from different classes or different occasions. I pray that God will send me with the friends that I could build a good friendship with that will build me up and help to go through all these.
When I just felt so weary with all these adjustments, I was reminded then I had been putting my focus at the wrong place. I focused too much on my own strength, on my own ability, on my own capability. I forgot that it was actually God who had brought me up to this point. It was God, it has been God all the way. One of my mentors reminded me of the importance of being in God's presence. We should desire God's presence more than His blessings. I put it into practice and change my attitude around, and it really works. There is a surge of Godly confidence and peace that's instilled in me, which gives me a different kind of strength and enthusiasm just to go to class and figure out all the life's hustles.
Every morning, it has been my prayer to desire for God's presence way beyond anything else. "I don't wanna go anywhere unless Your presence is with me. Unless I know that You are for me, I refuse to take a single step further." Just as Moses did not want to leave if God wasn't with him, I also don't want to walk away without His presence. From His presence is where I could find my strength, my joy, and my peace. It's really when we put God as the center of our life, He will make our life worthwhile. We can find our faith in God sometimes paradoxical. I am reminded of one of my teacher's sermons during MSA Camp about Abraham and his attitude of submission. He willingly obeyed God in sacrificing Isaac, until he lifted up his knife when the Lord finally spoke. He trusted God that He is the Lord who provides, and those who believe will lack no good thing. It is in our submission, that we know that we are not losing anything, but instead God is blessing us with so much better things. God saw Abraham of his faith in God and his love to the Lord, that Abraham did not withhold anything from God. And the result is the Covenant.
When life seems to weigh us down, it is a time for us to be reminded that we should entrust it all into the hands of God. When we give it to His Hands, He will take care of it. The Lord knows how to handle our life more than we did, so we should not worry. Our world is always safe in His Hands.
Be reminded that Jesus should always be the center of our lives, and everything revolves around Him. When we keep that in mind, we will always have joy going through whatever circumstances that we face, walking in and out of God's appointed seasons.
Love from Singapore,
Natasha Crescentia.
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