Holding the Cup of the Past Year

I hold the cup of my life in both hands and I look into it, wondering what I will find in there. Looking back at 2006, I see a year filled with fear and anguish. I see my own journey through depression, slowly clawing out of the darkness, hoping to see the light of day. I see the false dawns teasing me with glimpses of light, but it is a light that cannot be reached. And then I tumble again into the night. Yet, even in the darkness, I see pockets of grace and joy. I see memorable moments spent with friends and family. Fraser’s Hill, Bukit Tinggi, Palau Payar, a spa experience on my birthday, even a family retreat! I see God’s grace in the beauty that He showed me in creation. Like songs breaking out in the stillness of the night, they helped me hang on. Most of all, they gave me hope. And slowly but surely, I see myself emerging from the shadows inside a pupa, out into the daylight again, changed and as unrecognizable as a butterfly is from a caterpillar. I am transformed, but a butterfly is not necessarily more beautiful than a caterpillar. From a distance, a butterfly flapping its wings in the sunlight looks gorgeous. But up close, one can see its horrifying ugliness, still a bug with a million eyes.

I see my own transformation as part and parcel of my own growth as a follower of Christ. My theologies, ideologies and faith bear not much resemblance to what they were before. It has been a lonely and a painful process, some of them self-inflicted. There were times when I wondered if I should have remained a caterpillar. I wondered if I should go back. And I still do wonder. I do feel once in a while the wonderful exhilaration of being a butterfly, and then suddenly I catch a glimpse of the ugliness within – the arrogance, the pride, the anger – and I would wonder where they’d come from; the erosion of love, joy, even faith – and I’d wonder where they’d gone.

As the wings on my back dried up and hardened in the sun, the wind of the Lord lifted me off my perch to explore this beautiful world in a fresh perspective. Near the end of 2006, even as I was being dragged out of the darkness, the Lord was already bringing me places strange and new. Preaching training? Bible study retreats? Every experience was an adventure filled with surprises, and it culminated with an unforgettable sojourn in Sarawak. I gaze at the last few months of the year and I see that the hand of God continues to shape and prune in the midst of the excitement. There are still dark corners hiding in every part of my life, remnants of the dark night of my soul. There are yet journeys to be made – among them journeys from pride to humility, from confusion to mystery, and from fear to acceptance.

And out of the year that was, I hear a voice. This voice calls me by a new name. This voice calls me to leave the oppressive comfort and security of Babylon to follow Christ with reckless abandon. This voice reminds me to trust YHWH, who led the Israelites out of Egypt and through the desert into the Promised Land; who caused water to flow out of the rocks for them. Isaiah 48 still murmurs in my heart. What this Babylon is, and where He wants me to go, I still do not know. But I have a feeling that I may not be pleased with the answer.

This is my life. This is 2006 for me. It is filled with both sorrow and joy. “Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?” Jesus asked James and John. The cup that Jesus drank too was filled with sorrow and joy. Like Henri Nouwen says, before we can even begin drinking from the cup, we must first hold it. And to hold it means to know what is inside. Looking back at my own life, am I able to not just hold the cup of my life, but to embrace it in all its ugliness, pain and agony? Will I be able to accept it as the cup from which I have been called to drink, one that is different from everyone else’s, but yet connected to theirs in its similarity to the cup of the Lord, in that it is a cup that contains both grief and glory?

Just as there are countless varieties of wine, there are countless varieties of lives. No two lives are the same. We often compare our lives with those of others, trying to decide whether we are better or worse off, but such comparisons do not help us much. We have to live our life, not someone else’s. We have to hold our own cup. We have to dare to say, “This is my life, the life that is given to me, and it is this life that I have to live, as well as I can. Nobody else will ever live it. I have my own history, my own family, my own body, my own character, my own friends, my own way of thinking, speaking and acting – yes, I have my own life to live. No one else has the same challenge. I am alone, because I am unique. Many people can help me to live my life, but after all is said and done, I have to make my own choices about how to live. ~ Henri Nouwen, Can You Drink the Cup?