onwards
As I begin to write this, the clock is indicating 11:37pm, it is counting down the minutes to when I am another year older. Today was the last three hundred and fifty sixth day of my being twenty seven. Tomorrow begins something old, something new…
I remember how I celebrated my last birthday. Friends and family gathered around the round chinese banquet table and we toasted our tea cups, devoured honey chicken wings and we made an announcement that we were leaving Hong Kong.
One year later, here we are in these new and now not so strange lands.
It’s funny how experience can make you change. I used to dread my birthday, it felt like it was always leading to a big disappointment. Either I realised how little i accomplished, grew or changed in the past year, how sad that I couldn’t think of a great and unforgettable way to spend my birthday or just waking up to flat feelings everyday leading up to the seventh of February.
This year has been quite different. I don’t know whether it’s because living far away from home with no idea when you will see parents, friends and Hong Kong again has forced me to look forward, to take all things well and to embrace change. Or am I finally growing up without my parents as my backbone? or has being here helped me figure out ‘me’ without an identity rooted in my hong kong background?
All that is to say that I am enjoying the prospect of turning twenty eight this year. Things aren’t all sorted but I am feeling more figured out in who I am and also feeling free-er in not knowing everything.
This January I began taking a class at Regent called New Testament. It has been a most thrilling five weeks so far. Things which have been gingerly sitting in my head have been unpacked, confirmed and expanded. My mind, foundations and love for God has been tickled into excitement. It has been a long time. It feels so good to know that i have so much to learn and yet it’s okay not to know everything. I’m starting to get a very real sense of God’s love for me and I haven’t felt that surety in some years.
I just turned twenty eight.
12:04am.
