Follow-Up on The Humbling Experience

After the humbling experience a week ago, I was determined to work on managing my emotions rather than letting my emotions manage me. Emotions, especially women's emotions are always unstable, changing from one day to the next and even from one minute to the next. If we allow our emotions to control us, there wouldn't be much lasting joy.

Right now my focus is on managing my emotions rather than letting my emotions manage me. Only when I can be self-controlled can I be a better helper and have a more gracious spirit.

So far the week after "the experience" has been quite good. I'm able to watch my tongue better, to control negative emotions right at the onset before it becomes full-blown and uncontrollable. I've even succeeded at holding my tongue on numerous occasions not to "tell lao gong what he should do" and try to pray more instead.

The result: A happier lao gong and a happier lao po!

A humbling experience (Part 2)

That night I asked God to come into my life to deal with this issue in me. If I was going to minister to the youths, to my students at tuition, to our cell members, to be a good helper to my husband, I cannot continue to let my emotions rule over me.

What followed after the prayer seemed like a nightmare. My emotions went into roller coaster mode. The streaks of rebelliousness, of feeling unfairly treated got more frequent and more intense.

God was allowing the full measure of my problem to come to the surface so that we can really deal with it. He was also allowing the situation to seem to get worse for me to test me and push me to have a higher level of endurance.

Sometimes it would get demoralising because every time I resolved to change, something would trigger me off again and I would fall back into the same negative behavior.

All this while, I didn't tell lao gong that I knew I was in the wrong for my own behavior. I kept it between myself and God. (So that he can't have something to use against me in our next quarrel. You see I was protecting myself and in the process, I wasn't submitting. )

Finally one day after one of those lectures, lao gong asked me, "What's wrong with you?" I then broke down and told him what had been going on all these while. That actually I knew I was wrong but I just couldn't change and I didn't want to let him know that I felt I was wrong because I feared that he would use it against me in our arguments.

Lao gong told me, "You should have trusted more in my love for you. By not telling me all this, you would just cause the misunderstnading between us to deepen and it would make you feel that you're all alone."

Yup I shouldn't have tried to do things my own way. I should have trusted in lao gong's love for me. I also should have trusted God that by submitting fully and exposing even my most vunerable part to lao gong, God would do the rest. He would protect and bless me.

That night was a humbling experience cos I had to admit all my mistakes in front of lao gong and God. I realised how difficult I had been when I stood my ground and hardened my heart against lao gong. I frequently judged him by his actions and my own emotions rather than being more discerning to God's voice.

As women, we all have our own hang-ups. We all can have different tolerance levels for different issues. Not being able to tolerate certain behaviors doesn't mean that we're right. Neither does it give us a right to try to change the situation by being ugly. Instead we should go to God in prayer and ask Him whether the problem lies in our perspective or with our husband. And if it's really our husbands who "have a problem", then we should wait upon the Lord to guide us as to what we should do.

Most of the time, we try to take things into our own hands and try to "set our lao gongs right." But God calls for us to submit and help. We can help by praying and asking God to open doors for us to say something that is truly from God and not from ourselves. If it's from ourselves, most of the time it would just come out negative rather than positive. If we follow God's timing, our husbands will listen. If we don't, we'll just end up harming our husbands, dampening their spirits and making it difficult for them to love us.

I'm still learning. But it has gotten better after the night I confessed to lao gong that I was the one in the wrong. It doesn't matter what lao gong has done. He is answerable to God. What matters is my reaction to what lao gong does. I am not just answerable to God but I'm also answerable to lao gong. Because I'm his helper and I'm suposed to submit to him as unto the Lord.

Lao gong says my behavior towards him affects his day alot. When I'm happy, it causes him to have lots of motivation towards his work, gym workout and ministry. When I'm moody, I not only affect his mood, but I also affect the family.

I asked him, "But there's only 2 of us in the family what."

He says it's not just the 2 of us. It's us as a unit, our spiritual health, the atmosphere in our house and more. If I can be strong and resist the devil, I can be of lots of help to the family.

Ok drive all self-pity out and take control over my emotions!

A humbling experience (Part 1)

The last 2 weeks have been a really difficult week for me. Though we had lots of fun going out with our new cell, I also had a hard time coping with my own attitude and submission issues. Again. Yup I'm still learning.

A few months back, I had a big argument with lao gong.

"But I thought you wanted to be a submissive wife?"

Yup that's the problem. If I'm really submissive how come I can't approach our issues properly without being a quarrelsome wife?

The problem is that though I wanna be submissive, I can't manage my emotions well. I can only submit when I'm happy or when lao gong does what I think he should. But when I strongly disagree with something, my emotion takes over and you can tell I'm not the least bit submissive by the tone I use when I talk to him or the type of tantrums I throw.

During the quarrel, lao gong said, "You have to learn how to manage your emotions! You have to stop allowing your emotions to control your behavior!"

Of course during the quarrel I refused to admit that I had allowed my emotions to control me instead of me controlling my emotions. I refused to talk to him and just went to sulk in a corner by myself.

After I've cooled down enough and lao gong was asleep, I asked God, "God, do I really have a problem?"

I didn't hear anything. I couldn't cos at that time, my emotions were still in control. I still had resentment in me and that made my spirit insensitive to God's voice. So I went online to surf abit and dropped in on Joyce Meyer's website, which I don't usually do. That was the 1st or the second time I dropped in.

And the online sermon for that day was "Managing Your Emotions."

I was truly like, "Oh my God."

As I listened to the short 15min sermon, what Joyce Meyer described seemed exactly like what I felt very often. And she mentioned that most people have a problem managing their emotions. That our faith and spiritual walk at many times is ruled by our emotions, how we feel about ourselves rather than what we know the bible says.

Ok I gotta go start tuition. con't my story in the next entry.

Ah don't beat my backside

I feel sheepish again for not updating for such a looooong time. But recently lao gong set up a new house rule. That both of us are not supposed to be on the comp after 10pm. This is to make sure we have quality time for each other. So I really have not much chance to update. Mornings and afternoons are the times I reserve for QT and worship. After all the meal times and preps for tuition, I really feel so hard-pressed for time.

But i really wanna update regularly. Lao gong set another house rule. To sleep by 12am and wake up by 6am. We didn't accomplish either till now. Cos we're always out at night these days and by the time we come home and settle down, it's always past 12am. For 3 days, I've been having plain green nails on my left hand and red flowers on green nails on the right hand.

Cos lao gong didn't have time to finish up the manicure. And last night at 1am when we were finally ready for bed, lao gong suddenly says he's hungry. Again. So we had to walk all the way out to buy cup noodles and after everything, it's already 2 plus. So we ended up waking late again and not accomplishing enough work during the day.

Hai I must be a better helper. If even the helper loves to sleep till 12 noon, how can she help the lao gong to wake up early?

Fishing Story (Special Edition)

Remember a few months ago I shared about God causing all the fishes to die in the long kang because of 1 man, which was my lao gong as a sign to him that he shouldn't have gone fishing?

Yesterday lao gong told me he wanted to go fishing again and felt the peace of God telling him to go. I felt very strongly (well I got pretty upset actually) that lao gong shouldn't go but tried to remain open to God's comments on what He felt about the whole situation so I asked Him to give me a sign if I was wrong by way of lao gong's catch. Or lack of it.

Lao gong also asked God for a sign and prayed that if he doesn't get any fish, it would mean that he was wrong and that it was his own desire telling him it was ok to go fishing and he would apologise to me first thing when he sees me.

God not only gave lao gong a fish, he gave him his biggest fish ever fished in his entire 19 years of fishing career. Yup lao gong started fishing ever since Primary One or even before that. Teo, Randy and Quek also went but didn't catch anything. Haiz...I better be slow to speak, quick to listen and slow to anger. And also learn my lesson of submission.

By the way, this seabass weighs 7kg. God is really amazing. I think He has a sense of humor too, don't you think so?

Marriage Counselling

7 August 2007

Today we went for to meet our marriage counsellors Matthew and Dolly from our previous church WEFC.

Hey it takes effort to work out a good marriage. Doesn't mean lao gong's so good to me and I try my best to submit means that we have a perfect marriage. And doesn't mean couples who go for marriage counselling are couples with "problems".

We all have our differences and sometimes don't see eye to eye with certain issues. Though as the wife I keep trying to submit to certain issues, I may remain unhappy bcos the differences are not worked out or resolved.

Yup so we had a really good time at their place. We had an amazing dinner with home-cooked bryani rice, garlic prawns in lemon juice (I'm not sure what it was but it tasted really good), chicken rendang, vegetables. Then we had strawberries and cherries and dessert was home-baked apple crumble with Hagen Daz ice-cream! I haven't eaten so much in quite a while!

Ok food aside, the sharing was very refreshing. We updated each other about our lives and me and lao gong managed to share some of the difficulties we face in our marriage. We felt so comfortable telling them everything in our marriage and it was also very refreshing to hear from people who could tell us frankly how we're wrong in certain ways and how we can resolve our problems. But ultimately it also takes an open spirit to take all this in cos it's not easy to hear someone else tell you that you're wrong. All in all, today has been a great day.

And best of all it so happens to be our anniversary! Not the actual wedding anniv but the monthly anniversary of the day we got together. We had lunch at Jack's Place and lao gong bought me a pair of Charles n Keith slippers.

And the one that I liked happened to be a promotion item so we got it at a good price. God is good! All the time!

FOP

Went for FOP on Sat with homecell and Vinita. She seems to gel really well with the young ones. We invited her to join our home cell since she fits in so well haha. But I think it was bcos of her gentle & very pleasant disposition that made them all feel so comfortable with her.





This year's FOP was Delirious and Don Moen. Hmm finally can start to appreciate Delirious abit more. We even jumped a bit. Me in my heels, Vinita, the students and Shawn. The stadium was fully packed and they were still turning people away one hour after worship began.



But this year was much better. Those who got turned away received a free cd and a priority ticket that allows them to join the VIP queue the next day and get priority seats. Wow great idea.


The worship was really great. When Don Moen played the first song, the anointing was so strong and I could feel a jump in my heartbeat.


Sunday we went and did the queueing thing all over again. This time with Andy Tan, Sally, Mei (Heli), Nd Quek, Lit Kah and Jiesi. She came late and was one of those who got turned away but she persevered and came on Sunday. We all went for a great supper @Geylang with lotsa frog porridge! Great weekend!

Some of the people at our home cell look alike at times. Below is an example on FOP Saturday.