forever God is faithful

Today was good, and so were the days that led up to it. I've never seen so clearly God's hand in charting my path, but today I did. And for that period of time after I made the call to my scholarship officer and got the news that my appeal had been successful, the knowledge of His goodness His sovereignty and his mercy just overwhelmed me and I sat there and cried. It wasn't joy that hit me first, neither was it the thought 'I did it!!'. It was a profound understanding of God's love for me, and thanksgiving and praise just bubbled up in my heart. It was such a warm feeling (:

It's so so amazing how God works. In retrospect it's so clear to see that He was there guiding me every step of the way. And I now know that He had to first drive me to the point of desperation, of begging him day after day to work a miracle in my life, before I could fully appreciate his hand in all of this. He taught me that I had to submit myself completely to his will, even if my will wasn't in tandem with his. And now I can testify that His ways are higher than our ways (Isaiah 55:9), and his ways are perfect.

When I first went for the A*STAR MBBS interview I didn't really know what I wanted. I didn't have any conviction about why I wanted to be a clinician scientist; only ideas and pieces of information amassed from seniors. And without a doubt, if I'd gotten the MBBS scholarship after just one try, I wouldn't have treasured it as much. I'd have gone away taking God for granted, thinking that I had done it (mostly) on my own. Perhaps that's why I was barely affected when I found out I'd been offered the BSc scholarship and not the MBBS one. I thought then, that God was leading me to purely research, and that the ambivalence I was feeling was peace. A calmness that came from knowing that God was in control. And for a while I was content with the way things were (or rather, lazy to do anything else to change it, and had given up trying for the impossible).

If I wanted to do research, then studying biology in US was the obvious choice. And so I set my sights on U(C)SD. But nope God obviously thought otherwise, and just when I'd decided to sail off to San Diego come August, my sis found out that I'd enrolled myself in the wrong school. ): Another dead end, more panic and stress, and I questioned God. Why why why, just when I'd convinced myself, just when I was all set to go. But indeed it was more than a cruel joke or God having a lousy sense of humour.

I'd no choice but to reconsider UCL biomedical sciences, and for the longest time ever I was convinced that okay, this is it. This is where God must want me to go. But on hindsight it was actually just me being rebellious and wild at heart. I didn't mind being shortchanged (biomed < med) in exchange for the opportunity to study overseas and be freeee. I just wanted to see the world and I didn't care much about what I'd be leaving behind. I didn't want to deal with the burden of deciding all over again if I got accepted into NUS Med.

Meanwhile, God was at work not just in my uni apps, but also in helping me realise what I wanted to do as a career. When I was desperately applying for hospital attachments in an attempt to boost my CV, I was rejected by all three hospitals I wrote to and I thought, okay I'm so screwed. But God had prepared someone specifically for me, my dad's old friend, an orthopaedic surgeon specialising in osteosarcomas. I got quite a bad impression of hospital politics and was kinda deterred from doing medicine locally, plus I realised how limited the help a doctor can give is. But it wasn't a bad thing, because the experience helped me see what I liked/disliked about medicine. The next best thing that happened was A*STAR. I managed to get an attachment with a post-doc without even knowing much about her research area, and it was only when I started work with her that I realised how exciting translational research is. It so happened that she's working on bone regeneration, which is the one of the biggest problems faced in treating osteosarcomas. So it was like all the answers to the doctor's problems could be found in the lab! Which is so damn exciting. ((: And I believe God had it all planned this way, to have my attachments with these two people in this specific order, so that I could find my passion. He planned it all down to the smallest detail! Isn't it so amazing (: hehe.

Back to uni apps, when I got accepted into NUS med there was a whole new problem because I still wanted to go overseas at all costs, whereas my mom and sis felt I should stay. Being accepted by NUS med also gave me a second chance to appeal to A*STAR for the medicine scholarship. So all that amounted to another week of tension, useless tears and sleepless nights.

But thank God all that is over (: I wondered why God had to put me through that extra week of waiting and tension in my family if he was going to give me the medicine scholarship anyway. But as my dad said, it's not just the end result that matters. The family discussions, the meal time and in-the-car prayers, the late-night confessions and heart-to-heart talks..all that mattered. Because they were with people who loved and cared about me enough to talk to me about what they thought was best for me. And I've never felt so close to God before. All the alone time I had, I spent it having conversations with him. And for once, there wasn't a single moment I felt lonely, because he was (and still is) everything I needed.

For the people who actually bothered reading through all that, I hope it encourages you to know that our God is a God who knows us through and through - our deepest desires, our fears, our needs. And if we seek him earnestly and entrust our future into his hands, he will give us what he knows is best for us.

No more standing at the crossroads; all that is over for now. I know another long road lies ahead (and long is such an understatement :/), but I know I'll have Him beside me every step of the way, and the people I love in my heart. Yay (: