Divine Providence

Have you ever experienced it ? 

None of us like anyone meddling in our life. Even i didnt. Untill i learnt that divine providence isnt meddling, it is the only way i could be taught some sense. And i learnt it the hard way. Today for the very first time in my life when i prayed today i had nothing to ask for !!! A beggar like me !!!! When i fall short of stuff to ask,it really does mean something,but today i had only thanks to give.

We know the kind of people who pray only in a rush of corticosteroids.....(kind of chemical released by our body when in stress) Many of us do belong to the category ourselves.Fear,fight and flight are the only three times we ever join our hands and become beggars now and then,and that too ungrateful ones. The truth is there is a bigger picture.

Years back i prayed for somethings to happen,and i prayed ardently. I prayed with all that i have. Denied i turned bitter and disappointed. At times believing myself to be utterly stupid to believe in Special Providence. It took a lot of time for me to hope again. To hope for something good to happen in my misery sodden life. All my previous posts bear the testimonies to the Hope that i had in Him and trust in His faithfulness.

And this post stand as a proof to it. The only reason i write of His providence is to remind me later some time in my life that He is perfectly able to clean any shit that i had knowingly/unknowingly caused in my life. And if any of you get some of that hope seeped into your senses then that too would be His grace.

When i look at the larger picture today i see why he denied me certain things and why i needed time for correction. And i am also grateful for the pains taken..the lessons emblazoned into me...and the virtue of obedience hence taught. He had discarded everything that i thought would be of utmost importance to me and handed me something far more precious and divine.

Things of this world does not matter. He did provide me all that too though but above all He taught me to trust Him,come what may and to bow down to His command without even an iota of doubt. He promised me a future filled with hope and He stands by His word till this day.

The light at the end of the tunnel that i always used to talk about in my posts...is in sight now :).....by His grace. God's guidance is like a torchlight in a dark tunnel,it might not show you everything but it does show you just enough to take the next step.

The Promise

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

Far and about

Many a times those who happen to read my blog tell me that i write of pain,misery,loneliness blah blah blah and they sort of complain that i rarely write about the good stuff. So today when i am feeling sunshin'y i thought il try and pen up something.

Like everybody else my words flow potentially powerfully and with a writer's rage only when i am troubled. It's very much like churning of a storm or a twister that really does bring the clutter together. All the awesome bloggers that i see here are somehow or the other so messed up inside,in a way many times i have found myself poetically musing about turning into one of them :)

But only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches so what seems so good and perfect to us must be so difficult for someone. What is a fashion or a culture to us,is actually a means for someone to connect to something(even if it is a virtual world) and hence survive. Personally today i wish all of them peace.

So coming onto the title 'Far and about'. I have no idea why i chose to write it,but it was spontaneous. My life's same,problems are same,afflictions are same so what changes ! Attitude. The one stop answer for everything. Detaching myself from my problems,and standing and seeing them from afar they dont really seem that monumental,they dont seem deathly scary either. They look more like bumps,minor pitfalls,manageable. For now.

It's easy to deal with anything,if we just keep our eyes fixated on the light at the end of the tunnel. Not a perfect way to go about but that atleast conditions our minds to the fact that there is an end to whatever it is that is tormenting us.

Swimming,driving back home with nice romantic numbers on FM,coming home,hugging my mom,and having hot scrambled eggs for breakfast did make my morning. I dont care who wants to make me feel as what. I refuse to feel small/dwarfed/poorly destined by anyone else. My destiny lies in the hands of a great God and my eyes firmly adhered to the light at the end of this tunnel.

Life: an act of trapeze

Believe me or not but we do have this strange affliction of overlooking the good parts in our life. For us the grass had always been and would always be greener on the other side. Promises: that's what i had been oddly thinking about during my work out today and realised that God had been good to me and kept some of His promises very faithfully. Where i always used to feel as being the odd one out,today i can gel in and connect well with my family. Happy for that. :)

I am yet to start next phase of my life..marriage and all,but life's good at home with mum-dad too. Bridges have been built,no grudges,no complains and past seems unreal today,one that leaves behind a hint of having occurred a lifetime ago. God had been good to grant me this time in which i could laugh with my family,and honestly these will be the days that i would miss and cherish for all my life to come.

With the sudden realisation of promises fulfilled there arrives also the scent of trust that as long as His presence continues in my life things would get better. I might not get all that i want,but i would be provided with all that i need;that much i believe.

Life is a balancing act. I am not visibly depressed or broken down when i am sad. I still do feel sad,a void left behind by all the friends and people who had promised to stay with me through thick and thin of it...and did not. But i can contain all that and carry on without projecting any of it. Which i consider as a huge personal achievement. Likewise neither i am excessively overjoyed by turn of events in my favour.

I have learnt (and am still learning) that being calm and serene,holding your smile all the while trusting a higher force to align things for you is the best way to live a happy life. I read somewhere be like a duck,calm and composed on the outside but underneath the surface of water pedal like a devil.

A blessed night to every one and a soulful sleep.

I Watch Over You

God has an amazing sense of humor and oodles of style. He talks in surprising languages and by even more surprising mediums. I might have lost my job today but what i feel in me is not the sense of loss,or the fear of being unemployed but a tickling sensation deep inside me....which i know begins when i know He must be at the brink of performing one of His unusual tricks.

We all have been on His roller coaster ride at one or the other point in our lives. There definitely is that lurch that sends your stomach nauseating but the sooner we learn about His not letting us fall and hurt ourselves,it is better. I have tried talking out my problems with Him,but He isn't replying clearly nowadays. May be He wants me to have a blind faith on Him,or whatever but i would definitely like my questions answered once in a while. Some time back i read a story about a son dangling on a tree branch,shouting out for his dad to help. He thought his dad would come,climb up the tree,figure out a plan and save him from falling. His dad did come but instead he just stood right below him,and shouted "jump".

"What ! my dad must have gone mad" thought the boy. And so he didn't. His dad kept on shouting back "Jump son,i have got you". Still the boy didn't. Eventually the branch broke off,the boy said his last prayers,fell down,waiting for the pain to hit,but the very next moment found himself safely in his dad's arms. That day he learnt never to doubt his father the next time he finds himself dangling and fearing for his life.Why do we let our minds and hearts be troubled when someone's got our back. May be we are so concentrated on our problems so many times,that we forget to hear the solution that He has planned out for us. Nevertheless i have always found myself going from a good to a better place,if i trust Him to lead the way.

"Ask and you shall receive,search and you shall find.Knock and the door shall be opened unto you". -Matthew 7:7
That is an amazing promise. Read it carefully and one would discover that it is upto us to receive and to find. All we have to do is to ask and to seek. 

A Note of Thanks

Whatever happens..happens for the best. How far are you ready to believe in it! Sometimes you are burdened with even the need to be optimistic all the time. It's just not humanly possible to be cheery and upbeat 24/7. But just when i feel i am being burdened beyond limits,and being stretched to the breaking point,help always reaches me in some form or other.

It is particularly good to listen to so much optimism from a person who had faced his own fair share of trials.And all along he kept on saying just a thing that whatever happens...happens for good. How the hell is that 'good' for us, that we might find out later,but not necessarily that what we can't or don't see,does not exist. I hope whatever everybody talks about good things finally happening to people who never stop believing in it,turns out to be true. For my own sake i 'want' it to turn out true!

But it's hard to imagine of making it big professionally when we don't see any scope of growth or opportunities lurking around the corner. How does hoping for love in our life makes that happen for us,i am yet to understand. I don't know if any of that would turn out or that if actually piece by piece our life indeed is completing it's jigsaw puzzle on its own,but it sure does gives so much courage to hear from someone that there definitely is light at the end of the tunnel. For talking to me all that,and for just being considerate enough to talk to me,i will be ever grateful to you ashish bhaiya.

I do hope sincerely that your life turns out to be exactly as you want it to be,down to the every single bit of it(hyundai verna included) :) and i do hope that someday i too would be at that side of the conservation telling someone to not sweat out and just wait for right things to come by. God wish i would pass that baton to someone in need...one day!

Something to live for

Someone once told me 'I want to live in a way,so that when i die atleast a thousand people remember me'. His words stuck to me,it's almost impossible to forget the way he told me that. But then i started thinking what after those thousand people die! What after the memories that we have created in mind of others fade,what after the 'best' work we had done is forgotten by even other 'better' works by someone after us! Steve Job's 'making a dent in the universe' is not a cardinal truth of life. No doubt doing good in our workfield gives us loads of satisfaction,doing greater things keeps us alive in people's mind for a little longer(may be)...and then what!

Death is inevitable,in both the forms...carnal and conscious. No one can or will remember us eternally for anything great that we might have achieved. So my point then is why and what have we set out to achieve! I read,write and love surfing through art sites....but why? Not because i want to write a book someday and mint money,or that i want to show off my menial writing skills! I do all that to 'educate' myself,to relinquish my soul with as much pleasure as i can afford to provide to it.

We all remember sitting with our grandparents and listening to their stories. When have they ever shared with us their pride at long work hours and expensive things they had bought! Their stories are invariably always about how they had journeyed through life,their adventures and misadventures, about family, friends or neighbours. My grandparents had come from Burma with my dad and their other children in 1969 when Burma went under military rule. They always used to talk about their house there,their town in mountains,long winding roads to it,the life they once had there,they cherished every single memory of that place,they had numerous little things to tell us like how they used to eat everything in a bowl using chopsticks! (and that includes even rice) !

But never once i remember them talking about their life and work and the difficulties they had to face here,in India! All they had was the memories of a place that used to be their home once. So is slogging at work,making money and building a house enough to gives us happiness! May be not! May be we need to nourish our souls and our senses to make us happy. We never completely understand the purpose of our lives. That is something that only our creator knows. He made us and hence He alone knows for what purpose He did that. In the mean time only thing that we can do is to provide joy to 'us' and 'others'...that's our duty. That joy can come from reading,writing,travelling,painting,or even from giving.

Things don't matter,unless you are giving them away and bringing smile to someone's face. I think that's the best purpose money can serve. A friend of mine,whom i had never even met,sent a wedding gift to my sister for her wedding. How happy it made me,would be impossible for me to put into words! That's what joy of giving is! The best thing you can do for a sunflower is to show it the Sun...the best you could do for yourself is to keep sneaking your senses the potion of it's happiness and joy.

I Like...

Smell of earth in the first rains

Perfume of a loved one that lingers behind..

Hug from a friend when i need it the most

Warmth that fills my heart when i know i am loved.

The sweet rainy mornings

when i don't have a care in the world

just a cup of coffee and a lovely book

to hug myself sitting by some lonely corner of the room.

The cool breeze of winter nights

when christmas is just around the corner

the slow hum of a song faraway

and wiggling my toes under the blanket.

To sit in the sunny mornings

with paints in hand

splashing them mindlessly

around me colorful little flowers.

Suddenly receiving a letter from friend

that shows how much she cares

both smiling and crying to myself

and loving you and hugging you,my friend.

Those unexpected messages in my inbox

that says wish i was there with you

and then closing my eyes and sending you a hug

when the world doesn't seem mine at all.

I like when i know i am blessed

that somewhere my God has good plans for me

being blessed with a good family and caring friends

I could thus rest in His faithfulness.

Variable Constants

Change - nobody likes it,actually we hate it...and hate it to such an extent that we scowl and scamper and resist with all our might and fight against it and it really doesn't matter how many times we might have heard that "change is the only constant thing in the world"

i hate d scenario when people change,their attitude towards us change,our importance in their lives change,or their priorities change it doesn't matter but my little devilish ego gets hurt when i sigh and finally find out that i might not be d same important person for them that i once was !!!

but why do i concentrate so much on them that i forget the real important person in the deal...that's me !! what if this change is actually bringing something good onto my way !!! what if it is actually giving me an opportunity to grow on myself....when i think of this the only image that comes into my mind is that of the caterpillar 'Absolem' in 'Alice in Wonderland',its not a pretty site when he's dying but he is wise enough to understand that its a phase. So let me rest in peace that whatever it might be that's changing in my world, it sure will bring some good things my way