That's it. The dream holiday to Phuket is over. No, I'm not terribly disappointed or what. I would have been if it was a sudden change, but truth be told I kinda saw it dwindling away slowly.
I've never seen a blue sea before. Neither have I ever went further than KL alone or with my friends. Well, not counting mission trips and school excursions, that is. The shock and depression of a shattered romance last year was a little heavy to take, so I busied myself with studying really hard for the semester and participating in church activities. Beknown to no one else but God alone, I also indulged my thoughts in an internship during the holidays, and with the allowance spend a few days by the blue sea.
All I wanted was to sit on the white sand, allow the waters to lap up my thighs, the sunlight to bathe my skin. I would snorkel with the fishes, do some rock-climbing, and at the very top of the cliff jump off into the sapphire-blue water. Maybe I could even go for one of their spa treatments, spin around in their disco or dance parlors, and top it off with an icy cold beer in one of their numerous beer gardens. I heard that you could see the stars on Phi Phi, meet strangers from foreign lands, salsa under the moonlight and sing to your heart's content.
Sigh. So many plans, and now it's all gone. But strangely, it doesn't hurt as much as it should have had. A trip intended for one was accidentally revealed, and a few others joined, and after that even more became interested. At best there were even nine people going! But one crisis after another. Financial problems, the H1N1 epidemic, parental consent, schedule obstructions. Even little petty politics became involved, and to my own horror I became part of it. Slowly, people dropped out for various reasons, and by the end of two months of planning, it was just me again.
No matter. I was still going anyway. At least I thought so. Then came the straw that broke the camel's back. A political meeting was to be held in Phuket less than a week before my intended arrival date, and everyone is predicting the red, yellow and blue shirts to gather again. My mum, who doesn't really read the papers often, happened to come across the newspaper article. What luck. And she forbid me to go.
I'm not exactly one to be sharp-mouthed, but I still hinted that I was going anyway. She held her ground. I was not to go. She even got my dad worried, and since both of them are going to be celebrating their God-knows-how-many-honeymoons in Japan during the time I'm planning to go to Phuket, she got even more paranoid that I was going to walk out of the house anyway. Like I would even do that. Wait, actually I did seriously consider it.
Dilemma. I left it as that, included it in a short section on my prayer agenda, went to bed.
On Sunday, John Bevere preached the need to submit to authority via a television screen in the youth room. Any other way, according to the Bible, is sin.
God couldn't have said it any louder without scaring the hell out of me.
My final four friends confirmed their pulling out of the trip, and I took an additional 10 minutes to sleep that night.
It sucks when a dream dies. Even if it's a small dream, lasting no more than a 4-day 3-night period. Strangely, it would have been a terrible blow if I had been planning to go all by myself and my mum said no. But God planned it in a way that as one by one my friends pulled out of the trip, I saw my little dream fizzle into the air piece by piece, so that when my mum pulled the plug, it wasn't really that bad. Could have been a hell lot worse and harder to submit to authority.
So, the "submission to authority". That's the agenda for the fast-and-prayer movement that the youth leaders and seniors have been embarking on for the last three weeks. God doesn't always use words; sometimes He uses circumstances which can often be pretty painful. Now I have nothing superficial or earthly to look forward to. The new semester is going to start, module preferencing round 1A opens in 2 weeks, Crusade is going to need help for matriculation. So exciting.
Aww come on, look on the bright side. Because of the holiday, you've been working your ass off in the gym since exams ended, not been buying unnecessary food and items, picked up conversational Thai, and got to know another side to some of your friends that you were hoping didn't exist. Now that the holiday is gone, at least you've lost 6kg in slightly over 2 months, become $2000 richer, and can pick up a Thai girl or haggle with a stubborn Thai peddler.
Whee.
I hope Mum doesn't find out that the hotel refund isn't 100%.
Sometimes, I feel that God has a little pin to prick all the little bubbles which carry my dreams, especially when they grow big enough to cover my vision of His gargantuan blimp. -Valentino Casanova
Build a dream, and the dream will build you. -Robert H. Schuller
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