Random coincidence meeting Evan at the coffeeshop on thu night and spontaneously joining her cell haha

I had just texted her two min before and I tot she saw my msg so she tapped me to say hi but turns out she didn’t read my msg and it was pure coincidence wowww

I haven’t attended a cell in years, partly cos I don’t like to pray and I’m not the kind who likes big group sharing so I always make excuses for attending cell (terrible I know) anyway they were sharing about James 4: 13-17 which rebukes people for planning ahead selfishly without putting God in place. not to say that planning is bad, but to believe that we humans have total control over their lives is foolish

And then the cell leader asked if we have in our lives the same instance as James? Where we tried to plan a perfect life only to have God thwart our plans and throw us in another direction? And this guy B spoke up about how he experienced death of his close ones one after another within a short span of time and he admitted he was very angry at God for letting him experience all these grief and loss that he ran away from church. Eventually he met his fiancee who brought him back to church aww

What was more interesting was what he said about the time it takes to heal. he said that it takes one year to move on from the death of someone you anticipated eg sickness, old age, and it takes up to 4 years to move on from the unexpected death of someone close eg accident, just sudden without any reason. Well I did google about this before, but I didnt actively count or take note how long I take to get over a grief so it was kinda interesting that someone/some research actually put a measure of time to such stuff

His sharing also reminded me of what I planned at the start of the year, not really a resolution but I did bring up 2 things I wanted to focus on for 2021. Sad to say, point 1 cannot be completed anymore but maybe God wants me to actively focus on no. 2? well story about the challenge for that another day

And that night in the car we were tuning in to yes 933 and the dj (I think was hazelle) was talking about 2 unhealthy mental habits people have - (this was in Chinese but I translated it so pardon me for misrep)


1. Being jealous/envious of someone’s life based on what you see on social media

yups. many a times we only see things at a surface level. I rmb telling my piano teacher that I wished I was like Mozart or some genius too. But she chided me for being silly; I didn’t see how many hours these people put in to get that result 台上一分钟，台下十年功 [one minute on the stage, ten years behind the scenes] yknow

2. Wishing you could go back and choose another path instead

most of the times there aren’t right and wrong to choices/decisions; whatever we decide just sets us on a different path but that doesn’t mean we won’t be happy or we will be happy. It’s just the butterfly effect of things, any action we embark will set off different consequences and we cannot 100% confirm that if we go back and make another decision, we will definitely be happier

I admit I still have these 2 habits and tbh it’s hard to let go and not be influenced by people/things around you unless you really abstain from social media/outside world and live in cave all alone but wells, more growth to work on it seems. been a thought-ful night.

(side note: b really looks like you sp (‘: and his story is so similar to yours just that it’s reversed in your case)