Wrong way - turn back

Once a month starting August, I will have to gather my wits on a Monday night, jump into my little black mobile and hurtle down dimly lit roads to cover council meetings in the township of Melton Shire.

I’m incorrigible when it comes to reading maps, understanding my bearings, finding my way to distant and faraway places. When I’m alone in the car and the road ahead suddenly looks fretfully unfamiliar, my heart beats so loud and so fast I turn down the radio just so I can concentrate on relocating my whereabouts on the Melway.

I can't help but laugh at my predicament sometimes: that someone like me would end up in a profession like this. Everything I’ve been called to do as a journalist an antithesis of how I’ve been shaped and brought up as an only child.

I grew up in a culture of love and fear. A loving mum who, for the best intentions, feared too much to allow me to venture into unknown territory – or run even the remotest risk of falling into any form of potential danger.

Thus, I never knew how to get around in Singapore. The little silver Nissan March dad bought was for the sole purpose of ferrying me to and from school, my four-time-a-week badminton training regime, tuition, birthday parties.

Not that I noticed or felt the tight reigns of mum’s ‘control’. Dad’s personal turmoil kept him busy at work. He was happy with his friends, with a mug of beer constantly in his hand, seated at the bar stool in pubs and private clubs, chatting with waiters and waitresses, bartenders and barmaids. It was a home away from home.

Mum and I had each other. She was my playmate, confidante and friend. Every minute of my life was accountable towards her, every thought and intention passing through my mind made known to her. And for all the monsters that have been created out of her debilitating fears, I love and cherish her dearly.

Perhaps this gift of writing, and the call to write, is the double-edged sword bequeathed to me by an all-knowing Creator King as part of His redemptive purposes. The monsters will remain, only that they may train my hands for war and my fingers for battle with a weapon that cuts both ways; for the faith within me stubbornly insists that we are not fated to be just the sum of our generational ties, the hapless victim of the shortfalls of our forefathers.

To trace it back, surely the default would be to be conformed to be like Christ, if we were made to reflect His image and His likeness in the first place?