Monday - a good mix of rest and nerves.

Had my first passion fruit today. I mean, I've eaten passion fruit flavoured candy, slathered on passion fruit body butter, drunk passion fruit juice - and goodness knows, what other derivatives of passion fruit I've come across! However, I've never seen and encountered the whole unprocessed FRUIT itself.

When I was asked, "Do you know what this fruit is called?" by the person who blessed me with it, I did not know how to answer her question. Decided to be adventurous - and try the unknown fruit for myself. Also, I Google-imaged all kinds of tropical fruit names I could think of, haha (feeling very jakun and suaku) - and voila!

So this is THE passion fruit I've always heard about and tasted, but never seen. Having encountered the fruit now put a 'face' to its name.

Well, they have purple-skinned ones too, but I had the yellow-skinned species today. Scooped out the sweet, aromatic, juicy flesh and crunchy seeds with a spoon. (Both flesh and seeds can be eaten and are packed with nutrients.)

I must say that it was a very pleasant experience. What a marvellous creation of God!

I know this is way random... but I passed by an art-supplies store today, and spied paper clay! I'm so, so itching to get my hands on paper clay now. Mess around with it again.

The last time I touched it was a good 14 years ago. My mum made this cool sculpture of a miniature teapot when I was 11, and stuck a piece of magnet to its back, so we could put it up on our refrigerator door! It was as small as a cookie and everytime I saw it, my heart would melt from its cuteness overload.

Ooops, I digressed. Haha. Told you I am random.

Anyway... today --> my blog title says it all. 'Nerves' was because the hardcopy of my World Living Religions assignments mysteriously got lost on their way to Dr. Jeffery Oh (dateline was in August)- and I received an email today telling me that he hadn't received it...and please would I resend it by 15th of December or I would receive an F on the entire course... :P

I wasn't the only one on his list of students whose assignments he hadn't received and he had been so nice to give us some extra time to resend 'em... but I kinda panicked - because part of the assignments involved written interaction/reflection papers on 5 videos we watched in class throughout that week... and I didn't think that I could remember enough of those videos to write some more interaction papers. Didn't know what to do at first. Prayed. Then I emailed my lecturer and asked him to have mercy!:P

Thankfully, he wrote back to me later this evening (or it would have kept me up all night long worrying 'bout the whole issue) and kindly gave me the permission to send him just the book review and essays, without having to re-do the interaction forms...to quote Dr. Jeffrey, "Do send me the soft copies of your interview & the book review ASAP. I'll grade you on these 2 alone. I trust that you have handed in your Interactive forms but somehow it did not reached me. Blessings in Him...." Ah, praise the LORD!

Trust. What a beautiful word.

Then this is totally unrelated to my blog title (sorry for the randomness again - today is just one of those days my thoughts are all over the place) ~ I feel like I am slowly desensitizing to people's remarks about me 'wasting my medical career', etc, etc. Last time, I would feel really upset when I heard remarks like that - because they really stung. Then I would allow myself to be influenced by such remarks. Fear, doubt, confusion and all kinds of negative emotions would creep into my heart. Haha. I've had to train myself to remember how God's spoken and how I got where I am today... as well as to forgive. Yesterday, I overheard someone telling my boyfriend the same thing. AGAIN. I won't lie and say that it didn't hurt at all - but strangely, I felt a new emotion ~ Compassion for the person who said it... somehow.

My life has had many unexpected twists. There are many more of these to come. Even the path everyone expects me to walk after I'm done with seminary may not be what God has planned. I see glimpses of the future every now and then... and it puzzles even ME. People will always be entitled to their own opinions. Remarks are thus inevitable. Some for and some against what I decide to do. If I don't learn NOW to be undistracted and unaffected by my natural tendency to want to please everyone and by my fears of rejection, I will always have to conform.

I learnt from ED's that if we live trying to conform to the world's trends, we will slowly lose ourselves. We will slowly lose sight of God's purposes for our lives. We will eventually despise and condemn the unique 'shape' God has designed us with and the road He leads us on so that we can be the very best we can be.

I was there once. Lost. Striving for perfection and worldly acceptance. And I don't want to be there again.