How do I summarize a year where I’ve felt the most pain I’ve ever felt in my life, in every possible aspect of physical, mental and emotional pain? How do I summarize a year where I’ve experienced such blessings and had my eyes opened to the greatness God has bestowed upon and planted around me? How do I summarize a year of mega insights, great revelations, unbelievable achievements and inevitable oxymorons?

Simple. I don’t. So henceforth begins a post you’d likely brush over, or go “tl;dr”. Nonetheless, I feel the need to jot down my retrospect of 2011.

When the year began, I already had the inkling it wasn’t going to be as smooth as it should. I like to believe that you spend the year the way you ended the last, and started the current. So I spent the last day of 2010 alone, and in a certain solitude. My then-love wasn’t in town, and even when she returned there was a certain distance we both couldn’t quite identify, but felt. I should’ve known then that it was the mark of a decline, but my obstinate self chose to believe it was a small glitch. Nevertheless she left again for her studies and that was it. The emotional turmoil was tremendously enraging, and for a long long time I kept everything as buried as it could be. I’m a bottler, as many of my close friends already know. So I bottled the whole thing up, yet more often than my supposed occasional instances my emotional ramblings would overflow. How could I go on in a life unlike the life I visualized for the past 3 years? That was I. Such was the emotional stress I felt, or rather allowed myself to feel.

It was also a year of pushing limits, when bodily hurt was driven unto my by form of a marathon, but also the joy of accomplishment and taste of success. Throughout the entire journey, I had the thought of giving up cross my mind a million times. Cramps plagued my last 18km, I ended the race with a bodily temperature of 38.8 degrees Celsius and a blood pressure of 70-80, and dizzy spells lasting hours. At the end, I limped for a good part of the coming week because of my recurred ankle injury, and commented a thousand times about my insanity of running such a trying event. Thank God for His strength, because if I had given up I wouldn’t have felt the same feeling I have when I don the finisher’s tee. Such is the addiction to this victory that I’ve signed up for another.

In terms of business, I can’t be more blessed. In the starting months of my new startup, we hit breakthroughs beyond our initial expectations. And even at the close of the year, God blesses with chances of expansion and growth. But it wasn’t without pain, as too often I subjected my mind to absolute strenuous and continuous pressure. Such was the expectation I had for myself that couldn’t allow for compromise, but such also was the limit I could take in pure creation and skillful adaptation.

They say you can’t go lower than your all-time low. That when you feel the most pain, you manage to numb that part of you and push limits like never before. That, as one of my favourite authors puts it, rock bottom becomes the solid foundation in which you rebuild your life.

In many ways, 2011 was my rock bottom year. Enslaved in service to the nation, stuck doing something you don’t like, slowly made to leave a comfortable position because of a choice to lead the rocky life of an entrepreneur, the loss of a love my whole heart and soul was devoted to and believed in, and the physical strife felt not just in a single event but in the general decline of fitness taken in so readily.

2012 is my year of return. I ended my last on probably the most fun birthday I’ve had for a long, long time. Maybe in 8 years, I’d say. Love is ever evasive, but I hold the tiniest glimmer of hope that someday, someone will come along and restore that passionate advocate of love everlasting. Fitness shall be on the up and up, what with my year being segregated into 2, with progressive running plans initiated for 2 marathons in the year. And of course the business plans we have shall be blessed in the coming-in and the going-out.

I began the first day at church, and just listening to Pastor Prince preach again was so refreshing. He spoke directly about what I was struggling with for a long time now, that is, being planted in a church. Rooted. And my whole last year I’ve been trying. Obviously it isn’t working out. So I’m turning back to God, and realizing that instead of trying so hard, I should let go and let God. I still don’t know where I should be rooted in. But He knows, and He has a way. Another part of the service was the customary 3 requests we make to our Daddy every year. And this year, although it was no different, it was different on my end. I didn’t plan what I wanted to bring before God, I didn’t even think about it beforehand. So when the time came, all I did was take 3 concerns, held them up, and believed God for His own breakthrough in them.

Plant me firmly in church. Bless my business. Teach me love.

In many things I think and see myself as quite capable and well-versed. Yet in those particular things I must remember that if it is not for Jesus residing in me, I would not come close to the competence I pride myself so strongly in. ‘Pride myself’. Yes, that’s the killer phrase. If there is anything absolutely paramount I want to learn and be unconsciously proficient in, it is in giving God the glory. Every. Single. Time.

There is no good way to conclude a post like this. You can’t really put an end to a recap when each recap is followed immediately by another beginning. So while I thank God He pulled me through my most trying year, I thank Him also for putting me in my most blessed one. Jesus is my strength and my joyful song, and He has blessed me with victory over every test and obstacle.

• 88-keys.
• Cajon.
• A backpack, much like Manhattan Portage.
• Shoes. Slippers. I’m a size 43/44.
• An analog watch.
• Angbaos (ultimate pragmatism).
• iPod Classic.
• MacBook Pro (not like it’s gonna happen but hey, no harm!)

And here is my non-materialistic wishlist.

• Fun.
• A well-guarded safe heart.
• Healthy marathon-fit body.
• Anointing and blessings.

Pfft. Such optimism has no place in a world ridden with selfish lovers and heartbreakers. Gone are the days I would stand on the side of love with the belief of there being more to what’s transpired.

I’ve taken on a new perspective to this immaterial and incorporeal notion of love being available to all. From now onwards, I will do the one thing I said I wouldn’t: I am closed to this fantasy idea of love. There shall be no entry into a heart well-guarded.

Let me make this clear: I did not fall for you, so do not assume you’re a temptress of sorts. I fell for the idea that you planted in my head; for the hope of love you falsely gave; for the assumption of there being a future. The crumbling walls you built tumble into debris when you openly declared yourself to be a liar. I’m just quite taken aback as to how much I trusted in your false ramblings.

Congratulations, you’ve won.

My flaws are numerous and extremely prominent. They far outnumber the minuscule ounces of goodness I possess. Yet where sin abounds, grace greatly abounds, and I find myself made whole and totally perfect in Christ’s completion.

Each day Jesus lives in me is each day I grow in wisdom and stature, favoured by God and man. I am blessed with mercy and strength, touched with discipline and commitment, yet imbued with compassion and love.

For truly no one can make me who I am but God. And because I am righteous by Jesus’ sacrifice, I am given full justification and righteousness, ensuring that I deserve the perfection God has laid out for me to collect.

I am nothing and nothing good comes out of my being. Any good that emerges comes from within where Jesus lives, and I proclaim that all glory goes to God and God alone.

Because obviously there’s some discrepancy here. Time to start being a stranger to everyone but those who mean something. I thrive on disdain.

All the regrets I have in life are all of things I didn’t do. I regret not studying in Sec 2. I regret not stepping up to the plate of leadership earlier. I regret not spending my time more wisely before army. Never do I regret the things I’ve done, even the dark bits, because somehow they’ve come to define who I am and how I got here.

So I’m taking my chances. I’ll run and jump off this damn cliff. I’ll just throw all inhibitions away and tell you everything. Because I don’t want to look back to this day, 5 years from now, and say, “I regret not telling her how I felt.”

Conclusion: Girls who can sing and play put me in absolute enthralment.

(My daughter, if I ever have one, will so learn music)

I’ve gotta stop looking at you and feeling butterflies.

When people say ‘only God knows’, sometimes they want the answer too. I know You have the plans. You make the way. But Dad, I’m walking the road. And although I know You’re here with me, I just wish I could be privy to just a tad bit more information. But if not (because obviously You know best)…

Then give me the strength to endure. The wisdom to say the right things and make the right approaches. The grace and undeserved favour to surround me like an aura of affability. The mercy for the things I do and say wrongly. May You also lead me in the knowledge of whether or not this is the right avenue for me to venture in.

You know best Dad. And I trust in You. I always have. It’s not that I doubt where You’re taking me; it’s that I don’t like the wounds this road is causing on my feet and in my heart. Carry me, please?