Ponderings from the Pew

A huge thank you to Janice Seah Teo for featuring my stalking experience in Challenge News - an Australian Christian publication ♥️

Happy new year, everyone! May 2022 bring you the peace of God to deal with blessings and losses that Life brings on.

One of the loveliest gifts I got this Christmas was from my stepdaughter and her husband - a devotional based on the history of hymns and their applicability to our lives.

Today, January 2nd, spoke to me deeply. One of the verses to meditate on was Isaiah 58:11 ~

“The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your soul in drought. And strengthen your bones; You shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.”

The verse accompanied a prayer by Frances Ridley Havergal (1836-1879) written to her friends which is apparently considered to be one of the finest New Year’s prayers of consecration ever written:

“Another year is dawning, Dear Father, let it be, in working or in waiting another year with Thee; another year of progress, another year of praise, another year of proving Thy presence all the days.

“Another year of mercies, of faithfulness and grace; another year of gladness in the shining of Thy face; another year of leaning upon Thy loving breast; another year of trusting, of quiet, happy rest.

“Another year of service, of witness for Thy love; another year of training for holier work above. Another year of dawning, Dear Father, let it be, on earth, or else in heaven, another year for Thee. Amen.”

Samuel Wesley turned this into the hymn “Another year is dawning”.

May be we adopt this wonderful prayer for 2022, and learn the hymn if you - like me - don’t know it!

God’s blessings to you all. ✝️💜🙏🏻

[Edit: Oh, I do know the hymn! I’ve shared it below in the comments.]

CHRISTMAS IS YOU by Pope Francis (2019)

“What exactly is Christmas?

Christmas is usually a noisy party. We could use a bit of silence to hear the voice of Love.

Christmas is YOU when you decide to be born again each day and let God into your soul.

The Christmas pine is YOU when you resist vigorous winds and difficulties of life.

The Christmas decorations are YOU when your virtues are colours that adorn your life.

The Christmas bell is YOU when you call, gather and seek to unite.

YOU are also a Christmas light when you illuminate with your life the path of others with kindness, patience, joy and generosity.

The Christmas angels are YOU when you sing to the world a message of peace, justice and love.

The Christmas star is YOU when you lead someone to meet the Lord.

YOU are also the wise men when you give the best you have no matter who.

Christmas music is YOU when you conquer the harmony within you.

The Christmas gift is YOU when you are truly friend and brother of every human being.

The Christmas card is YOU when kindness is written in your hands.

The Christmas greeting is YOU when you forgive and re-establish peace even when you suffer.

The Christmas dinner is YOU when you give bread and hope to the poor man who is by your side.

YOU are, yes, the Christmas night, when humble and conscious, you receive in the silence of the night the Saviour of the world without noise or great celebrations.

YOU are a smile of trust and tenderness in the inner peace of a perennial Christmas that establishes the Kingdom within you.

A very Merry Christmas for all those who look like Christmas.“

✝️🙏🏻♥️

This is why I’m so proud of my husband Rev Dr Norman Wong and how he pastors the community through the Methodist Welfare Services. Please do consider giving back to society through MWS’ meaningful programmes. 🙏🏻♥️

MWS Creating Change Campaign 2021 – Poverty is rarely as simple as it looks [FULL VERSION] (Eng) A moving story of one mother's silent struggle and budding hope, watch the third installation of MWS Creating Change Campaign's video that explores the issue...

They almost all rejected Jesus, but He never hardened his heart to them. Something so hard to learn but so essential to keep your heart soft and loving.



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THE SECRET OF CONTENTMENT

BATHOS. It’s a word which seems to describe my life: the descent from the sublime. The Oxford English Dictionary describes it thus:

bathos: noun /ˈbeɪθɒs/
(in writing or speech) a sudden change, that is not always intended, from a serious subject or feeling to something that is silly or not important.
EG. A serious play with moments of comic bathos.

That’s my life in a word.

I’ve been struggling with the clinical depression I described in an earlier column in which I had said I don’t know what the exact cause was. After much introspection, I think I finally have found it: disappointment. Not in myself. That I can handle. But disappointment I have caused in others - specifically, my wonderful parents.

They have always been my greatest cheerleaders in my life. From when I came last when I was a toddler in a kickboard swimming race held by my father’s then-employer, the Public Utilities Board, for their family day. While my brother was already setting National records, somewhere in our family photo albums there is a picture of me in Lane Eight with my monkey grin happily kicking away knowing I’m going to be last but absolutely intent on making my Daddy proud that I competed with big kids more than twice my age.

Then, all through my school days, my lovely, dedicated mother (who gave up her own career when I was born), fetched me to and from school, from 5am swimming training to sitting in the ballet studio all afternoon while I trained and rehearsed and trained some more. Then there’s my father who is not the best at sitting still for a two-hour ballet performance. Yet he turned up to every single one I was involved in with the Singapore Dance Theatre and gave me his opinions afterwards, thereby proving he was awake throughout.

Then when I went off to university, he came with me to settle me and my many suitcases in. I will never forget the day he took off on the platform of Oxford rail station to go visit his own university friends and business contacts before flying home. I was standing on the platform when the doors closed and I could see his tears through the window. I’d never seen my stoic Dad cry - ever.

Over the years, during my journalism phase, I knew they were so proud of me. Especially when I was on telly as a business news anchor and all their friends knew who I was. The pride in my father’s voice when he said the whole management team of his company congregated in the boardroom to hear the Finance Minister unveil the Budget for the year. And how they were just as excited to watch and listen to how Andy Lee’s daughter would interpret it with her high-profile guests. It was a pride I had learned to expect.

And what do we know about pride? Well, it comes before a fall.

The stalker episode happened. My career went into free fall. My personal life melted down. And when I finally found the man of my dreams, we could not fulfill my lifelong dream of having a baby.

Since my last column on experiencing this current episode of depression, I've been doing a lot of introspection. What exactly is bothering me to a point where I can't sleep for nights and spend hours in pain and tears without knowing the cause?

I have finally boiled it down to guilt. And it's been the parable of the talents that has been disturbing me.

Jesus tells of a man off on a journey and entrusting his servants with his property according to their ability. To the more able, he gave more. To the less able, he gave less. Five talents to one, two to another, and one to the last.

The able one who had five talents went away, traded with them, and doubled his capital. So did the one who was entrusted with two. But the guy who was endowed with one talent dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money away.

When the master came back, he praised the first two servants for their initiative and castigated the third one who showed no initiative as a "wicked and slothful servant". He took the third servant's one talent away and gave it to the first who had been in charge of the ten talents and cast the third "worthless" servant away into a place where there was the "weeping and gnashing of teeth" - a place of suffering. As it says in Matthew 25:29:

"For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away."

This parable has been haunting me day and sleepless night. I believe I've been given many talents - a wonderful 15-year ballet experience, an excellent education, a one-time high-flying career, a loving and supportive family, and a truly amazing husband.

And yet, I feel I haven't delivered. A descent from the sublime to nothingness. Bathos.

My once high-flying job got derailed by the stalking episode which caused me to leave journalism and I never properly found my next calling. I've consequently felt like I've wasted my education, and as such, the money my parents worked so hard to put me through the University of Oxford and my own subsequent personal investment pursuing an MBA at the University of Chicago. And, to top it all off, I'm not able to bear grandchildren for my parents to enjoy in their autumn years - the ultimate failure for someone who has been dreaming of being a mother all her life.

Guilt.

I never realised that I'd been bottling all this up for years until this post-riding accident happened and I had nothing to do for six months recovering in bed. Then it all came pouring out and plunged me into a downward spiral that I could not stop.

Will God one day judge me to be a "wicked and slothful servant"? Goodness knows, I probably deserve it. Poor physical health and periodic episodes of mental health issues aside, I've lost the ambition, drive and motivation I used to possess in abundance.

During my recovery period, I even started doing some online ballet classes, thinking that if I did something that used to bring me joy and achievement, it might pick my spirits up. Well, that was a bad idea to put it mildly. When you've torn ligaments in both feet that has messed up your balance, not to mention put on 20 kilos in the last 25 years, doing one-twentieth of what you used to be able to do is downright depressing. Not exactly what the doctor ordered.

It took a whole new hobby - horse riding - to provide me with challenges, a chance to face my fears and anxieties head on, and loosen me from the hole I had been mired in.

And ever so slowly, with the angels God has surrounded me with - my husband, my family, childhood friends, new friends and my doctor - I've started to climb out of my downward spiral and am starting to look heavenwards again.

This past Sunday was my church's 27th anniversary and Bishop Gordon Wong, our former pastor-in-charge and coincidentally my brother-in-law, came to preach on Contentment in Christ. The passage he based his sermon on was Philippians 4:11-13:

"I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through Him who gives me strength."

This verse was written by St Paul in his depression when he was shackled in chains within a prison's dungeon cell - facing ex*****on. It made me think: What is my depression compared to his? Perhaps, the difference was that he had found his purpose in life whereas my purpose has been floundering.

Then Bishop Wong told a story that my youth pastor and marriage matchmaker, Reverend Leslie Quahe, wrote in his book Planted by the Waters about someone he calls the "Chicken Lady".

Rev Quahe had stopped by his favourite chicken wing seller in Bangkok to buy some of her fare for dinner, only to find that her stall was closed. He found out later that it was not possible for her to keep the charcoal going during the rainy season as her roof leaked. Together, with some members of his congregation, they bought her a cover for her tin roof while evangelising to her until she one day accepted Christ as her saviour.

The Chicken Lady then invited them over to her tiny hut for a meal to say thank you for all they had done. Observing her humble home, Rev Quahe was already planning to get her a few more creature comforts to make her life more cosy. Her reply?

"Thank you for asking. But I have Jesus. I have everything."

Although I had read that story in his book before, it spoke to me in a new way. Her purpose was not ambitious, driven nor particularly motivated, she was just doing her best with what she had. And she had found the secret of contentment.

Bishop Wong also mentioned another quote that expounded on that secret of contentment with a German saying by Marie von Ebner: "To be content with little is difficult; to be content with much is impossible."

And so I return to my feelings of overwhelming guilt.

Should I feel like the worthless servant who did not do anything with his one talent? Or should I give thanks that I have in previous seasons of my life been able to fulfill the potential that God has given me and be happy that I have known what it was like to have plenty?

I may not be able to give my parents a grandchild. I may not be flying high in my career any longer. I may not even have robust health like I used to have. But there is a truth I will hang on to that I believe will rid me of my guilt and lift me out of my depression.

I have Jesus. I have everything.

~~~~~

Painting: St Paul in Prison by Rembrandt van Rijn (1627)

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~~~~~

Joanne Lee Wong is a writer, wife and corgi mum. She’s not a bible scholar, teacher nor church leader - just a former journalist and member of a Methodist congregation who struggles reconciling her faith with everyday experiences. All views expressed are her own.

The Secret of Contentment How to beat depression with the knowledge of Christ.

FORGIVING THOSE WHO KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO

WHEN my Husband and I went on our first date, we held nothing back. Maybe because we were of a late age to play games: I, 39, and he, 58. It almost became a “who has suffered more?” conversation. Then I whipped out my trump card.

I was stalked.

Now, I’ve mentioned this briefly in previous columns. And once I told the Husband the whole story on our first date, he asked me gently: “Have you forgiven her?”

And my answer was: “She was schizophrenic. She had no idea what she was doing. There is nothing to blame.”

You see, during the five years I appeared every night to present a business show on Channel NewsAsia, her schizophrenia had convinced her that we had gotten to know each other, we had married and had a baby together. I remember receiving a strange, totally incoherent letter from her and just put it aside as a fan letter that made no sense.

After I left the channel to pursue my Masters of Business Administration, she thought I had left her and taken the baby away.

When I returned to the media almost two years later, going back to The Straits Times newspaper where I started my career, my very first column appeared on Page One with my byline photo. It would seem she noticed it immediately and started sending me emails.

They first discussed what I had written, signing off with a “Yours Sincerely”. Then, they got more and more personal, signing off with her initials. One day, her sign off was “Your Hubby”.

Okay, this was becoming weird. Her writing also took an odd turn, reminding me of that letter I had received while on telly a few years ago. Several emails later, her story unfolded.

I, her “wife”, had left her and stolen the baby. But she also took heart that I still went to church. Once, she said she spotted me at her church, wearing a mini-skirt and an afro. Um, if you say so.

Then one Saturday, as part of my weekly column, I had written that I used to spend hours on my weekends at Borders, looking for my favourite books to build my library, despite having a Kindle. That Monday, one of the first emails that appeared in my work inbox was that she had staked out Borders that entire weekend, hoping to see me and reconcile.

That was Freakout #1.

I immediately asked one of my trusted former editors at work, Leslie Fong, what to do. He told me to file a police report. A psychiatrist I had been consulting on the matter said that was not enough and that I should also provide all the evidence I had. Thankfully, something – or Someone – had prompted me to keep every single email she had ever sent me and I took them all – including rather disturbing art work – to the Police and filed my first report.

Their response was to warn her never to email me again. A positive response, but clearly a little too specific. So she took to calling me.

Now, in a newsroom as big as The Straits Times, you just call the mainline operator, ask to speak to a certain journalist and they will immediately patch you through. After two or three times picking up the phone and pretending not to be me, my sweet colleagues told me not to worry. They would be my “secretary” and answer all my calls henceforth. I also asked the IT department to stretch my voice mail to an indefinite period so I could record her phone logs in preparation for my next Police report.

That’s when the nasty stuff emerged. When she was medicated, she would be all lovey-dovey and express her love for me. But when she wasn’t medicated, she would accuse me of sleeping with a variety of men and women. Once, she even described an act she would frequently do with her bolster, all the while thinking of me. Ick.

That was Freakout #2.

This time, the Police sent her to the Institute of Mental Health and informed me three weeks later that she was a confirmed schizophrenic but they did not have enough to hold her. This time, however, they told me if she contacted me by any means, they would take action against her.

What did all this do to me though?

I developed such severe insomnia, I had to take sleeping pills just to get four hours of sleep. My anxiety levels went through the roof. I was browsing magazines at Borders when a shadow loomed up beside me into my personal space. I screamed and cowered… until I realised it was a perfectly respectable friend from the United Nations who was in town and had spotted me. I went into a severe panic attack and he had to spend more than 15 minutes calming me down.

More severely, it was affecting my efficacy at work. My performance was sliding because I was little more than a walking zombie and the lack of sleep was triggering multiple migraines a week.

Every day when I went to work, I had to take different entrances and different lift lobbies. I had to wait till the building shut every night before I could go home. My loving cousin even taught me some martial arts movements to disarm her if she ever confronted me.

Indeed, there was a Sunday when, in the New York Times, a very well-circulated article “The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”, was making the rounds, I eventually read it at night in the privacy of my bedroom. Alas, the writer’s name was the same name as my stalker’s. And when I saw that name, on my private laptop in my private living space, I just had an inexplicable meltdown and cried for hours.

Then out of the blue, I got a bouquet of flowers and a teddy bear from her. Somehow she knew when my birthday was – did an ex-television colleague wish me on-air years ago? What was really alarming was that the teddy bear had a bandage on its head.

A couple of weeks later, when I was on leave, she had apparently come down to our office lobby and insisted to the receptionist that she had an interview with me. The receptionist called up to my desk and my colleagues said to usher her out immediately because I was on leave and she was clearly the stalker. Taken in conjunction with a previous email in which she said she was going to take out all her life savings to hire a private investigator to find out where I lived so she could “whisk me away on holiday”, I saw it as a big abduction threat.

That was Freakout #3 – and I couldn’t take it anymore.

I went to the Police for the third time, and my former editor, Leslie Fong, asked the Commissioner of Police to take this seriously. And, blessedly, they did. They had collated all my evidence and passed it all to the Attorney General’s Office to charge her.

Unfortunately, at the time, “harassment” only fell under the Miscellaneous Offences Act – mentioned after animal abuse, if you can believe that. (I love animals so I don’t say that lightly.)

So, she got away with a light slap on her wrist – just fined S$4,000. Just that? For my four years of torture and career decline? Sigh.

Everyone in the newsroom, who only found out then about my ordeal, said to me that I could finally take it easy because she had been charged in court. But at the same time, the Police and my psychiatrist consultant told me that I had to take things even more seriously then because her “love” might now turn to “hate”.

That was Freakout #4 and the final one I could take.

I continued for a while more in the media, but eventually I just felt too exposed and my work performance was something even I was ashamed of. I needed a break. I needed a long absence from Singapore. I needed God’s healing.

So I left. And I left journalism for good. Journalism – something I held as my calling ever since I was 18.

I know this chapter does not seem to have anything to do with Christian ponderings, but going back to the beginning, when the Husband asked me if I blamed her for the disruption to my career, I quoted the beginning of Luke 23:34 when Jesus said on the cruel cross:

“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

There’ve been many people who have hurt me since the stalker years, but I’ve always held on to this tiny verse. They may not be schizophrenic, but when people don’t know what you’ve been going through, they make all sorts of assumptions, and they don’t know what they are really doing.

Today, I am still misunderstood by many and being ghosted by people I’ve loved. But I don’t hold any grudges. They know not what they do.

I’m no angel. I did not write this to show how big-hearted I am. But I do believe that if we don’t forgive and we don’t let go, we would be the worst for it. Blame, resentment, hatred – these are ways the Evil One tries to shrink our hearts.

Let’s not let him get the better of us. Whatever people do to us, let’s let it go and lighten our hearts with God’s grace. What do you say?

EPILOGUE

Shortly after I left the media, the Law Ministry said they were looking into a standalone anti-harassment act. I immediately wrote to Law Minister K. Shanmugam not to forget the victims of stalkers. Cyberbullying was being championed by the Singapore Children’s Society and sexual harassment at the workplace was being championed by AWARE. Nobody championed stalking victims because we tend to just shrink into our private lives and not want to remember the terror we went through.

The Law Ministry eventually contacted me and asked me to share my story and contribute what I think should be done. It turned my four-year nightmare into something positive. At this stage in our conversation, the Husband shared this from 2 Corinthians 1:3-4:

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer.”

Today, stalking victims occasionally get in touch with me confidentally. I give them practical advice on how to protect themselves, how to get the Police to listen, and how to use the Protection from Harassment Act.

It is only by God’s grace that I can help others after going through four years of distress and suffering. Praise the Lord, indeed.

~~~~~

Protection From Harassment Act: https://singaporelegaladvice.com/law-articles/singapore-protection-harassment-act/

Photo Source: Her World

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~~~~~

Joanne Lee Wong is a writer, wife and corgi mum. She’s not a bible scholar, teacher nor church leader - just a former journalist and member of a Methodist congregation who struggles reconciling her faith with everyday experiences. All views expressed are her own.

SURVIVING DEPRESSION WITH THE MGS VERSE

AFTER almost one-and-a-half years of Covid-19 restrictions, I was finally sat in a proper pew yesterday! At Trinity Theological College, no less.

It brought back so many wonderful memories because my sister was married in that chapel; and now it means so much more because my Husband just graduated there as one of eight supervisors in Singapore who can teach Clinical Pastoral Education to pastors and theological students. (Sorry, I just had to brag a little bit.)

The Anglican pastor who was preaching during the sermon before, Reverend William Tham, quoted from “Every Moment Holy” by Douglas McKelvey – a series of new liturgies for the ordinary events of daily life. Except that the prayer he quoted “Do not be distant, O Lord”, in the context of Joseph (he of the Technicolour Dreamcoat), was nothing ordinary to me at all.

“Do not be distant, O Lord, lest I find this burden of loss too heavy, and shrink from the necessary experience of my grief.

“Do not be distant, O Lord, lest I become so mired in yesterday’s hurts, that I miss entirely the living gifts this day might hold.

“Let me neither ignore my pain, pretending all is okay when it isn’t, nor coddle and magnify my pain, so that I dull my capacity to experience all that remains good in this life.

“For joy that denies sorrow is neither hard-won, nor true, nor eternal. It is not real joy at all. And sorrow that refuses to make space for the return of joy and hope, in the end becomes nothing more than a temple for the worship of my own woundedness.

“So give me strength, O God, to feel this grief deeply, never to hide my heart from it. And give me also enough to remain open to surprising encounters with joy, as one on a woodland path might stumble suddenly into dapplings of golden light.

“Be at work, gilding these long heartbreaks with the advent of new joys, good friendships, true fellowships, unexpected delights. Remind me again and again of your goodness, your presence, your promises.

“Let me learn now, O Lord, to do this as naturally as the inhale and exhale of a single breath:

“To breathe out sorrow,
To breathe in joy.

“To breathe out lament,
To breathe in hope.

“To breathe out pain,
To breathe in comfort.

“In one hand I grasp the burden of my grief, while with the other I reach for the hope of grief’s redemption.

“And here, between the tension of the two, between what was and what will be, in the very is of now, let my heart be surprised by, shaped by, warmed by, remade by, the same joy that forever wells within and radiates from Your heart, O God.”

It’s a long passage, but it felt like I was brought low yet lifted up at the same oxymoronic time.

You see, the reason I haven’t written for a year or more now is that I have been suffering from an episode of clinical depression. I am not being melodramatic about this because this is the fourth episode I have gone through in my adult life and I know what depression feels like.

The first instance was when I broke up with a guy I had been going out with for six years – someone I thought I was going to marry. The second was when I was dumped by another I was going out for three years who cheated on me throughout and married his ex-girlfriend six months after. The third was a long drawn-out affair during the four years I was being stalked and eventually led to me having to leave journalism – something I considered my calling in life.

This fourth episode, however, has had roots in many things. The fact that I cannot mother a child of my own; the fact that my career still has not found its footing since I left journalism; the fact that my health seems to go from one woe to the next; the fact that the last one-and-a-half years has changed me from an extrovert to an introvert and I no longer recognise myself.

Remember how last February I fell off a horse during a riding lesson and broke four ribs? Well, I had to spend six months in bed pretty much immobile to recover. It was so bad that I even developed bed sores on my left ear because my broken ribs were on my right.

Then, as I weaned off the opioids I was given unknowingly during these six months, it triggered an intense rash of intense migraines – sometimes two to three times a week. So I sought treatment for these migraines - now that a new class of preventive drugs have emerged which could have given me a better quality of life since the onset of migraines since puberty – and even that took six months to kick in. During this period, insomnia hit me hard and my sleep pattern was completely screwed up. I’m still dealing with that insomnia, but what it’s taken me ages to say – maybe because I still think it’s taboo in our Asian society – is that I’m now suffering from a crippling episode of depression that no one seems to understand.

Sure, in the previous three episodes, everyone knew the trigger and commiserated. In this episode, however, no one really gets it. Sometimes, I don’t even get it. But there it is, anyway. What Winston Churchill called his “black dog”.

The reason I haven’t written about it before is because the Covid-19 pandemic rages on and is taking lives all over the world. My woes are nothing in comparison to what others and their families are going through. But a friend recently reminded me that no one’s tragedy is bigger than another’s.

So I’ve become a hermit in the wake of this episode of depression. Friends have forgotten me because I haven’t been in touch. I’ve stayed away from anything social – not attending my well-meaning church small group, using Covid as an excuse not to go out for lunch or dinner appointments, avoiding logging into social sessions on Zoom. The only thing that gets me out of the house are medical appointments and my riding lessons – the perfect hermit activity because it’s just you, the horse and the instructor. Not much chit-chat or après-activity to be forced to engage in.

Reports say the Singapore Counselling Centre saw a 40 per cent increase in the number of clients from 2019 to 2020 with stressors ranging from the derailment of school, work and social routines, and financial woes, creating a sense of hopelessless.

I cannot really say I suffer from the above except maybe the social routines, but my depression has made me extra-sensitive to the depression of those suffering from Covid-related woes. Thus, I haven’t felt I had the right to talk about my sufferings while others were going through so much more.

Of course, I’ve been reading all the comforting verses from the Bible. But it’s one thing to read and know something intellectually or experience spiritually, but when your brain chemicals are imbalanced (the cause of clinical depression once it is triggered), it’s not something you can just snap out of or say “this, too, shall pass”.

This week, however, is my old school’s Founders’ Day: the Methodist Girls School.

All week, my Husband has been mentioning the “MGS Bible verse”. Eavesdropping on his Zoom calls, I wondered what MGS Bible verse. Later, when we chatted about it, he was surprised I didn’t know. I guess we never called it that in my time - 2 Corinthians 12:9:

“But He said to me, ‘My Grace is Sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

I’ve heard it all my life growing up in MGS for 10 years. How could I have forgotten? More than any other verse, devotional reading or well-meaning advice I’ve gotten in the past few months, that verse spoke volumes to me and shook the anchors weighing my heart down.

I’m not out of the woods yet, as I’m sure many of you out there are stuck in too, but we can take heart that Jesus’ grace is sufficient for us to overcome our weaknesses and anything that is pulling us under.

Remember that old poem “Footprints in the Sand”?

“One night I had a dream…

"I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord, and
Across the sky flashed scenes from my life.
For each scene I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand;
One belonged to me, and the other to the Lord.

When the last scene of my life flashed before us,
I looked back at the footprints in the sand.
I noticed that many times along the path of my life,
There was only one set of footprints.
I also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times in my life.
This really bothered me,
and I questioned the Lord about it.

'Lord, you said that once I decided to follow you,
You would walk with me all the way;
But I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life,
There is only one set of footprints.
I don’t understand why in times when I needed you the most,
you should leave me.'

The Lord replied, 'My precious, precious child.
I love you, and I would never, never leave you
during your times of trial and suffering.
When you saw only one set of footprints,
It was then that I carried you.'"

Thank you for carrying us, Father. Please continue to do so.

~~~~~

Painting: Ophelia by Sir John Everett Mallais (1852)

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Joanne Lee Wong is a writer, wife and corgi mum. She’s not a bible scholar, teacher nor church leader - just a former journalist and member of a Methodist congregation who struggles reconciling her faith with everyday experiences. All views expressed are her own.

Surviving Depression With The MGS Verse Why I haven't written for so long