Exactly a Year Has Passed...

Since I decided to leave IPDA. It was the week before Raya holidays too, last year.

How life has changed so much, eh?

How I made hard decisions that I never, ever, thought I would, and could make. Yeah, I would never, ever have expected myself to give up a full scholarship, and to enter form 6 SIX months late. SIX!

To go back to the regime of school life (minus the comfort of many things I took for granted in all my 5 years of secondary school-good friends, teachers who knew me, the assurance of a good co-curricular vitae..)..

To live at home in a very different circumstance from before, where suddenly everything I took for granted was snatched away..

To uproot myself from a church that I've practically grown up in..

To force myself to question many beliefs that I had, and to admit that yes, I was wrong, and dangerously wrong at that.

But, I've grown so much since then, learned oh-so-much from God, and about God. (And the more I discover about Him, the more I discover there is to learn about Him).

Suddenly, I find myself completely, absolutely relying on Him, and Him alone. Because man has obviously failed me, and my brains and badminton skills and whatsoever else were rendered useless in situations that were simply beyond my control.

Nevertheless, now that a full year has passed, God has indeed revealed Himself to be one mighty, awesome, yet mysterious God.

In terms of school, I made good friends, although I'm definitely not close to my teachers as I was in form 5, they were nice enough to me, and the most amazing thing, God proved to me that indeed, everything was in His hands for the co-curricular part.

You see, in form 6 people constantly talk about posts and co-curricular that constitutes 10% for your entrance to university. Frankly, for me, I would prefer to work on my 90%(STPM), but friends and teachers seemed to worry about MY 10%, asking me to join this club and that club for posts. But I only wanted to be in CF, and really, unlike form 5 where I was involved in 6-7 activities, I had no more energy/will to do that in form 6.

So I started the year in upper 6 contented enough with being involved in badminton and CF. Then a friend left form 6/CF, and Sampat offered me her CF post. Then, in the school badminton team, the captain insisted on stepping down so that I could be captain. We were arguing over it when our teacher heard us, and she veto powered us, 'Joanne, you're form 6, you need it for koko marks, you're captain.' And in Yellow House, I just found out few weeks back, they put me down as the badminton captain. They actually replaced a form 4 girl with me! Their logic was she could get the post next year. And since I only found out about it after they had submitted in the list.. thankfully I'm on good terms with that girl.

And of course, I never, ever, thought I would be picked to enter MSSS, especially since I'd stopped training by then.

Co-curricular activities/posts, something I deemed 'small' and 'unimportant', in light of my current circumstances, yet He still took care of it.

In His own way, God was telling me to trust Him. And since I had no other choice.. it's funny how God needs humble us so much before we actually learn to completely surrender ourselves to Him.

As for home, it's tough sometimes, but, God is in it all. :-)

And while the shift from MT to PPBC wasn't entirely easy, I daresay I'm pretty comfortable in PPBC now. :-)

I think, having to question, and change some of my stubbornly-held principles and beliefs was the toughest part, considering how mule-headed I am. But God has been revealing a lot, through his Scripture, and it's been a truly, truly humbling experience to admit that I've been completely wrong.

All in all, I'd never imagined my comfortable world would undergo so much of havoc and turbulence in a span of a few weeks/months, but honestly speaking?

I would rather be where I am now, in a position where I have no one but God to rely on, than to have all the world in the palm of my hands that I could effectively push God out of the picture, and just go to church, pray occasionally, and thank Him for all the good things I had in life.

Mmm, God is AWESOME! :-) And I love Love LOve LOVe LOVE Him! Hehehehe.