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The times when we’re most desperate and call out for God can be the most nerve-wracking moments in our lives. We’re meant to surrender. Yet, it is impossible to control Him. And the reality is, we don’t always get what we ask for. 

Look at what happened to Jesus. He asked for the cup to be removed from Him. This is the perfect Son of Man. The one who lived the life that all of us were meant to live. The one who sought to please the Father. The one who was one with the Father. The one in whom the Father was well-pleased. 

Yet, He suffered the most horrific death. It wasn’t just dying. There was torture – mental and physical. I can’t even imagine it. He could have got out of it. But He faced it. It’s an obedience that I don’t understand. 

It’s true when I say I will never understand it. I think of the times when I cry out to God. One that stands out was when we were told mummy only had six hours to live. You can imagine my prayers. The other time I fervently prayed was as my dad’s ninetieth birthday was coming up. I had planned his party and I myself had a milestone birthday coming up in the following month. For some reason, I remembered that my grandpa had passed away three days short of his ninetieth birthday. 

My mum lived longer than the six-hour forecast. Not by much. My dad had a wonderful party, celebrated me, and then left. To me, these haven’t been prayers answered. I have to make it clear that I had absolutely no choice in these events. I cannot tell you how I surrendered. I wish I could, but I do not have this obedience. I want control. 

Things haven’t always been easy since losing my dad. The heaviness I feel in the knowledge that my immediate family is gone leaves me feeling empty. There are times when the pangs I feel are so real, I can feel an ache. 

The reality is that life is also difficult for most people around me. I don’t expect these friends to be looking out for me. They’ve got to deal with whatever’s going on for them. There are some relationships that I’m reevaluating. It’s impossible to go through such feelings and not ponder on the value and strength of some relationships. I’m sensitive to the ones who’re just way too busy to make space for me, just as I am keenly aware of the ones who never ask – only dump. I’m meant to lean on God. 

But God as we know it, cannot be controlled. God as I’ve experienced shows up when He does and stays silent when He wills. It’s a genuine struggle trying to keep my eyes on Him at points. And I remember Jesus headed towards the cross. How did He keep His eyes on God all that time? It feels impossible. 

The tension I feel is that I know God is good. I believe it. It’s a non-negotiable truth. As I grew up, I felt the triumph of His rescue every single time, when it came to His people. When Abraham failed to trust, God was still faithful. When Moses grew desperate, God was faithful. When Joshua looked upon the promised land, God was faithful – though the reminder was that He wasn’t there for Joshua. He was there for His plan. 

There are so many stories. The walls of Jericho falling down is a big one. David slaying Goliath is a personal favourite. ‘I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts.’ That’s what David said as he looked upon that terrible giant. 

The lepers, the crippled, the deaf and the blind who were healed by Jesus are success stories, aren’t they not? Jairus’ daughter is an incredible one. The healing of the centurion’s servant is another. The feeding of the multitudes and another favourite of mine is the woman with the blood issue. 

So many success stories, to use the language of victory today. Yet there are also instances when prayers were just unanswered. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. 

Where does that leave the likes of you and me? 

I don’t really know. I don’t fully understand how God shows up in the world. It’s outside my control. I struggle with surrender. It’s so difficult when you don’t know what’s going to happen in a situation you’ve been praying about. 

Is this my fear speaking?

There’s another story in the Bible that I have always been fascinated with. And that’s the story of Jacob, who God later names Israel. Jacob is his father’s favourite and in a well-known story, cheats his brother, Esau, from his birthright. It results in a crazy series of events where he flees to an uncle of his, gets cheated, and he really wants out. God tells him to go home to his family and promised to be with him (Genesis 31:3). 

It’s at the point of returning home that fear sets in. He remembers Esau. Wouldn’t Esau be out to get him? Jacob goes into overdrive. I think most of us can relate to this. He makes all sorts of plans, including breaking up his group into two companies to soften his approach. 

Jacob also does one other thing. He prays. This is Jacob’s prayer: O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, LORD, you who said to me, ‘Go back to your country and your relatives and I will make you prosper, I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. I had only staff when I crossed this Jordan, but now I have become two camps. Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother, Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and also the mothers with their children. But you have said, ‘I will surely make your prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted.’ 

The idea of fixing things or taking next steps to avert disaster isn’t novel. It’s not rocket science to step out of the way of something that could hurt you or to fix a problem. In many senses, these steps are lauded in the world. We applaud people for being proactive. 

I think this is the tension for believers in the world that we live in. The idea of fixing, planning, averting, and whatnots, are all considered good but they seem to go against the idea of surrender. 

So, we shouldn’t be too surprised to see that after saying that prayer, Jacob goes to work on how to advance towards his brother. 

Some writers explain that when Jacob did what he did to try and avert danger, he had forgotten the promise that God had made him. He started to rely on his own abilities to get himself out of danger. 

The visit by the Man who wrestles with Jacob is so very interesting at this juncture. It is not Jacob wrestling with the Man. It is the Man wrestling with Jacob. And it’s not that the Man really couldn’t overpower him, as we later see how he so easily puts Jacob’s hip out of joint. It is that the Man wanted Jacob to wrestle. 

We understand that this Man was God. We are told that Jacob did not die although he had seen God, a grace that he was granted. One of the explanations that has been put forward about why the Man wrestled with Jacob is that God wanted Jacob to give up his reliance on self. Jacob’s determination was to get what he wanted and that’s probably the resistance that he put up. Makes me think how often we cling to what we want before God. 

But just like that, at a touch, the Man shows Jacob that he can’t win. Jacob knows he is defeated. At this point, he brings his desperation before the Man. ‘I will not let you go until you bless me.’ (Genesis 32: 26) 

Surrender. 

In light of this story, it feels like surrender could do with a bit of reframing. Maybe surrender does require some sort of step. Instead of following behind everyone else, which is what his self-reliance taught him to do, Jacob’s surrender should have meant that he led the way back to Esau. It would have shown trust in God’s promise to protect him. 

Our work as believers in today’s world is to figure out how we’re surrendering. Are there a thousand desperate steps that we’re taking in all directions because of the worry or fear that’s dominating our mind? Perhaps it’s worth taking stock that the situations we are in may be driving us to the point of prayer – where we have no other place to take our desperation to. I think in the end, we must all do what Jacob had to do, which is surrender by facing God. 

Now, I don’t know what this means for the outcome of our prayers – but I know that this is not formulaic. It’s not a ‘I prayed for so many hours that God must now answer me’ or ‘God will grant me such and such a thing because I prayed for it.’ 

Rather, I think that the invite to wrestle in prayer, which usually comes through dire situations, is an invite from God to us to receive a blessing. In this sense, I’d encourage each one of us to be like Jacob, even when we’ve lost the match, hold on and say I will not let you go unless you bless me.

 

 

Gamora is the most expressive of all my pups. She is also the most dramatic of all too. She really knows how to make her feelings known. 

Gamora is half-pug-half-dachshund and both these breeds are particularly prone to environmental and food allergies. She’s allergic to grass. She’s allergic to chicken. She’s allergic to countless things that cause her to scratch like crazy.

Gamora is on allergy tablets. I manage them depending on how bad things are on any given day. Sometimes, when it’s rainy, she doesn’t play in the garden for quite a number of days and you find that she doesn’t need allergy tablets. It is an everyday job making sure she’s OK. 

The vet has suggested a few different things for us to try to see if we can lessen the frequency of her allergy meds. A change of shampoo and a new supplement which is to be applied on her neck the way we would apply tick and flea treatment. There is some improvement. Finally! 

However, this silly goose of a dog has decided that she doesn’t like the supplement. Every time after I bathe her and apply it, she throws a tantrum. I kid you not. She runs to the waste paper basket and tries to jump on it to topple it. She charges to a door and jumps against it. She jumps on just about anything in sight at this point. 

It is quite a funny picture because her legs are quite short and she scurries around jumping. This angry rounded but somewhat elongated dog looks like a mini dervish trying to cause havoc. 

If she gets her paws on any sort of paper, she rips it up in a fit of anger. What did I say? Drama! 

Another thing that she does is, she shows me her annoyance. There have been times when she’s gone and sat behind the curtain and glared at me. Sometimes she goes to a corner of the room we’re in – whether it’s the bedroom or the living room, and gives me these killer looks. 

Often she falls asleep that way but when she wakes up, she has absolutely no recollection of her annoyance! She comes to me with her bum wiggling, tail wagging, and with the biggest grin on her face. The annoyance is temporary. 

I love how Gamora has made me think. Too often, we are caught up in senseless battles that go on forever and ever. Sometimes, we don’t express our annoyance or hurt. We feel this sense of resentment within, but we never discuss it. It causes a breakdown in our relationships. There’s only so far that we can go. 

It is important to me to think about how I do this in the context of God, whom I worship. It is important to me. Sometimes, people think that being Christlike means not getting angry. I don’t really think this is the case. 

There’s a popular verse in the Bible which says ‘Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil,’ (Ephesians 4 26-27). As I get older, I’m a bit wary about the term ‘righteous anger,’ but essentially, because we are made in God’s image, there are going to be points when we get angry. Anger is an emotion that God feels too. 

It isn’t out of place to be angry when you see bad behaviour. Extreme examples of these would be when you see abuse or bullying. We get angry and rightly so. It isn’t acceptable to treat someone this way. However, for a lot of us, the everyday anger we may be exposed to can be as a result of some perceived wrongdoing against us or some contrary position taken. The cause of the anger tends to be that the wrong was against our ego, something we can find as we dig a little more. 

I think this is where the bit about not letting the sun go down on our anger comes in. It cautions us against holding on to a grudge. There are more explicit commands on this score too. We are told to get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. This is immediately followed with the insistence that we are kind, and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave us (Ephesians 4: 31-32). 

This is hard. They come after a long passage in Ephesians 4, which talks about how believers need to treat one another by putting on the new man and extending grace to one another, just as Christ forgave us. 

This is very hard. I sometimes look at how church has been for me. It has never been a particularly safe place. I remember some of the bullying I faced at the hands of a bully from church. I remember the unkind comments I got about how I look and whatnots. I know there are people I still avoid because I don’t trust the kinds of comments they will make when we speak. 

I am very thankful for the friends I have in church now. There are some amazing people who have become part of the fabric of my life, and whose friendship I have come to regard very highly. Saying this, I think there have been moments when we have annoyed each other. I think too these have translated into us praying and forgiving each other (Mark 11:25), and at many times (at least on their part) overlooking my offenses (Proverbs 19:11) and learning to bear with one another (Colossians 3:13). 

 

I can see a huge difference between how I respond in both these instances. I think when I think about the first group of people – the bullies and so on, I think of people who cause division. I think this type of behaviour could cause anyone looking into the church community to wonder about God and his people. These are the people who cause division (Romans 16:17) and it is OK to stay away from them if they don’t change (Titus 3: 10-11). 

What I know I must do is this. I must let go where I have been angry. Not too many years ago, I started letting go of my anger towards the bully that tormented me for so long. I have to very quickly add that I do not like him. He’s retained his ability to be very unkind to people in general. He doesn’t speak to me unkindly, but I don’t really stop and have long conversations. We hardly cross paths, which suits me fine. 

The process of letting go has really helped. I have been praying for the ability to forgive some of the things he said. It has involved working with counsellors and coaches. It has involved prayer. 

The good thing is, I no longer remember every single unkind thing he said. I still retain the scars. I know this because of certain negative thoughts that I have adopted as a result of the bullying and certain defensive feelings that come into play. But I am thankful that the work on these is ongoing and is mostly headed in the right trajectory. 

Ultimately, I try to remember that Jesus bears scars of my sin. In his case, there was no bad behaviour on his part – it is all on me. Yet by taking my sin to the cross, he has obtained justice from God so that I am shown mercy. This is boundless grace. 

My ability to show this much grace is non-existent. In fact, I think that Gamora puts me to shame when she comes for her cuddles and kisses, after her little tantrum spells. The only one she hasn’t seemed to have forgiven is our gardener – she’s not forgiven him for taking away her kill (the monitor lizard), or for carrying big objects (his grass cutting machine), and for cycling (she hates bicycles). This silly goose of a dog! 

I am thankful to God for little Gamora and for these moments I have to ponder on my response to past hurts. I pray he grants me the ability to show more grace. 

 

There’s a strange peace that resides in my heart as I contemplate the twenty years that have passed since I lost my mum. For eighteen of them, I had my dad right by me as a stalwart. Now I miss him alongside missing her, though her passing is further away than his, and his absence is the one that’s catching me off-guard. I’ve had twenty years to get used to mum’s absence.

As I feel a sense of grief over what I’ve lost with my mum, and now, my dad too, the biggest realization that dawns on me is that I am grieving the loss of something good. This is poignant. Not everyone has this grace. There may be grief, but it could be wrapped in guilt, for instance. I am so grateful to God that I don’t have that pain.

I’m terribly aware too of how the loss of my mum impacted my life. It was all such a shock. I think that’s the bit that really takes me back.

One minute I was getting ready to head out for a movie with a friend and the next I was calling to cancel not because too much was wrong but that mum was feeling a little unwell and we wanted to get her to hospital.

Even in hospital, there was nothing to worry about. Not until they did a CT scan. Then we were told she had about six hours to live.

My mum lasted more than those six hours, but not much more. It was excruciating waiting around and when she drew her last breath, it was surreal.

The whole thing happened so suddenly. I think I never saw it coming. It also makes me so appreciative of my father’s attempts to remove shock from his passing, as he tried to talk to me about it some years before he died.

This loss made it necessary for me to make a career pivot. In a work related blog, I wrote that these days career transitions are trendy.

When I lost my mum, I was living out my ambition of being a court-going lawyer, which I’d held since I was six years old. I loved my work. I still love that time I had in the practice. I speak of it with enthusiasm and fondness.

However, love for my work alone wasn’t enough. Grief took over. I needed an out. My dad stood by me.

Papa even pulled people off my back. So many felt it in their place to tell me to get a grip, that I was wasting the education my parents put me through, etcetera. It made me retreat from so many people. I was exhausted by them.

Over the years, I have at points had comments about how I never went on to pursue the law properly. How I’d held so much promise but … that sentence almost always ends with a shaking of the head.

I’m thankful to Jesus for the reminder of how his yoke is easy and his burden is light (Matthew 11: 28-30).

Jesus’ call to rest and talk about the ease of his yoke and lightness of his burden comes at the end of a fraught chapter. Disciples of John the Baptist come to find out if he’s the one they’ve been waiting for. Then he launches into a validation of John the Baptist and ends by denouncing unrepentant cities.

We rightly understand this to be his rejection of religious burdens placed on people. Do such and such to be saved or gain blessing. Submission to Jesus isn’t a religious ritual.

Submission happens in our hearts and then gets lived out in our lives.

There are huge takeaways from this – not just in terms of how I submit to God. My submission is constantly something I’m needing to work at.

In the beginning, after losing my mum, I worried about how I wasn’t able to build that huge corporate future. I worried about the lack of respect I received after leaving legal practice.

It took me a long time to understand that it was ultimately my identity in Christ that mattered and not the respect of the world. It helped me change perspective and reframe things.

Reframing is amazing. I saw that I needed to make changes and I did. These pivots take into account my broken heart.

In the last two years, my heart broke again – with the loss of my dad. I’m needing to make pivots as a result of that. But my lesson in transitions started twenty years ago through the loss of my mother and the support of my father.

I don’t thank God enough. I want to thank him as I end this. I thank him so much for my mum and I remember her so clearly and so deeply and I love and miss her so. I thank God for my dad. It’s still raw with his recent passing and I’m still needing to make adjustments but I’m grateful for having had him for as long as I did. I love and miss him too.

I’m thanking God for this grief over the last twenty years, for the journey it has brought me on and for the pivots I’ve had to make. I thank him for the people who came into my life as a result of the different paths I ended up taking. I thank him too for the experiences I’ve had as a result of change.

I’d love it if my home (me, papa, and mummy) was still the same. Even writing that sentence brings tears to my eyes. It’s not possible for things to go back.

Twenty years is a long time to be without someone you love. For eighteen of them I had my father. So weird to be without either now. But I trust in God’s promise for the future.