Remembering

Though Autumn doesn’t officially begin until another week or so, the month of September’s arrival and the cool weather sure feels like the start. It only seems right for me to pay tribute to the ending season.

I didn't know it then, nor did I realize until now that the summer of 2007 was my last real summer. It would be my last summer as a single woman, my last before becoming a mom.

In retrospect, it was an amazing summer. It started with a trip to Hong Kong , with a man I was absolutely smitten with. Though, my smitten-ess with this man also ended during this time. I travelled to three continents I had never been to: Asia, Australia, South America. I was prophesied over the first time. And I encountered a miracle of God this summer.

A friend of mine had been holier than usual this season of 2007. He was high on holiness, devouring all things Christian. So when he invited me to a gathering of Christians where we’d get to meet a real life modern day prophet, it was a no brainer I’d be there.

When he invited me, he failed to mention that the prophet doesn’t speak any English and that everyone there is at least 20 years older than us. But whatever, I was about to meet a modern day Moses.

The prophet only spoke mandarin. While he spoke his prophesy over me, a man next to me simultaneously translated. I was hearing Mandarin one ear and English the other. No doubt, the message was lost and diluted in translation. From what I did understand, the key message was that I will come upon a crossroad soon. At this crossroad, I will have to make a very important decision, a decision that will change the course of my life. With either one, I will be with God, however, one will prove much more difficult and challenging than the other. Something like that.

This prophesy didn’t make much sense to me at the time, it only made me weary of what important crossroad I will come upon, what difficulty I might face in the future. Now, in hindsight, I know much too clearly.

Weekls later, I was sitting in Boston Common one morning writing in my journal and meditating on God. I felt that God was imprinting on my heart to remember. To just remember. Remember the intimacy I shared with him this summer. Remember his nearness. Remember his Love. I kept repeatedly writing down the word, ‘Remember.’

Later, I gather up my things to leave, and start to exit the park. When I’m almost near the gate, I walk by something inscribed on the cement floor. Something in me tells me to go back. I return, and take a picture of it with my cellphone. For the mere fact that it was written in nice fonts and I’m a huge sucker for fonts. And that’s when I saw it. What the words were on the floor. The words said on the ground read: “Garden of Remembrance.”

I would not have made it through the 9 months of pregnancy and the days that followed had it not been for God and his love. Upon finding out I was pregnant, my first thought was, “My mom is going to kill me!” But the next immediate thought was to surrender to God. Everything that I had depended on was stripped when I became pregnant – boyfriends, looks, my independence, my future.

With all those things taken away, I was finally forced to only depend on God. And for the first time in my life, I learned to depend on friends. On family.

Some may say that my encounter with those words “Garden of Remembrance” 3 years ago is only a matter of coincidence, or at best, a matter of fate. But to me, fate is only the secular word for God’s will.

Three years have passed since I first came across those words, almost a year has passed since I was utterly dependent on God, but I hope to always Remember. Remember his love and his grace, his intimacy and his tenderness. But to also Remember the state of being so completely reliant on something other than myself, and to Remember that that is the key to life.

Remember.