Songs Map (Pt.3)
On the early morning of April 12, the day I finished writing this article, I woke up from another nightmare.
It seems to have become a pattern that every spiritual breakthrough is followed by an elaborate Satanic nightmare.
It took me a long time to recover, but I was prayed for.
Unfinished Prophecy — Grimes “Know the Way”
I couldn’t adapt to the polished white-collar lifestyle of a top-tier CBD multinational.
I tried, in every way I could. But I just couldn’t.
Because they were too normal.
How could they arrive here so naturally, live with such peace of mind, while I had become a walking corpse?
If they too had walked through fire and storm, then why could they still engage in competition, enjoy life, build families—
and I couldn’t?
Colleagues would often say I had depth, that my thinking pierced to the core—
so much so that they often couldn’t understand me. My solutions were sometimes a “dimensionality blow” to them
Even I found the work content hollow and dull, all surface and no substance.
But why did I still have no confidence?
Why couldn’t I speak smoothly, navigate social scenes with ease, post travel photos and gourmet meals online, and look like someone who had it all?
It felt like I had climbed aboard a massive luxury cruise ship, dripping wet, shivering from the cold.
People wrapped me in fine clothes and told me this place was good, that it was safe.
But I kept noticing—
these people had never swum through the open sea.
Many of them didn’t even know how.
This ship had countless roles and compartments. It ran by a set of rules, and people simply adapted to those rules to gain short-term personal advantage.
They understood everything.
I, on the other hand, felt like an alien.
I didn’t understand the language of this human world, yet I was forced to walk within it.
And still, I kept spotting rusty boilers, rotting planks, cracked masts…
and stains left by the sea.
To this day, I still don’t know whether that unease was my anxiety playing tricks on me—or whether I had instinctively smelled danger beneath the surface.
The days passed in a haze of boredom. I couldn’t even find the words to complain.
Everything felt fake.
A year later, I was rotated into the sales department to fill a vacancy. It was a thunderbolt I had long anticipated.
That was the most demanding post, and the department head was notoriously difficult.
I could feel her dissatisfaction with me—but she had no choice.
Yet during the handover process, I noticed something:
The outrageous workload wasn’t due to complexity—
but from the outdated, repetitive manual work done by my predecessors.
It could all be automated.
By the time the handover ended, a plan for full automation had already formed in my mind.
And for the first time in a long while,
I felt something spark.
At the core, I had never been someone who followed the rules.
Not once, not since childhood.
As a kid, I would ignore the syllabus and dig into science beyond the textbooks,
obsessed with understanding it deeply.
Once I realized escaping my family and my closed-off hometown was my only way out,
I fought my way to top academic scores and made it to a university in another province.
When I saw the dishonesty that dominated the fight for graduate school recommendation spots,
I abandoned all bonus point applications and simply scored top marks in the entrance exam.
When I could no longer tolerate academia,
I found work instead—at one of the best companies.
Maybe I couldn’t let go of my ex-boyfriend back then
because I had always been like this.
I could start over again.
Once I saw a viable solution, I would pour my whole heart into it—and I knew I could pull it off.
Every day after that, I stayed at my desk late into the night, working on the automation plan after finishing my regular duties. I didn’t seek help from the IT department.
After so long, I finally had something that set me on fire again.
I had to do it on my own.
And in that moment, I seemed to have found it again—something beneath the ruins I could cling to:
Something simple. Naive. Stubborn.
Within just three months, I had self-taught databases and enterprise systems
and built every detail of the automation program.
Those days felt surreal—
from the outside, I still looked like the same exhausted and clumsy person.
But inside, I felt as if I had finally grasped a lifeline.
After another three months of failed implementation and ongoing bullying from my superior, I resigned—on my own accord.
I walked away from a job everyone else envied.
By then, it had been exactly two years since the breakup. We had run into each other a few times at the boxing gym. During the pandemic, he even reached out to me briefly—and then vanished again, completely.
I still don’t know what I did wrong.
But after I resigned, I finally made the decision to stop thinking about him. I felt utterly repulsed by this one-sidedly open relationship where I am sincere and vulnerable, but the other person remains closed off.
Somehow, he no longer mattered. All my former dreams—academic prestige, tender love, stable work, a comfortable life—
none of them mattered anymore.
Even though I was still filled with confusion, even though waves of doubt and grievance continued to crash inside me,
even though I had no idea whether I’d made the right choice—
All I wanted was to cling stubbornly to my own convictions—
to walk my own way.
“I know the way
I know the way”
After resigning, I entered the field of big data.
Every evening during those two years, I passed through the dazzling CBD skyline.
Towering glass buildings loomed like giant stethoscopes, listening endlessly to the heartbeat of global capital.
But they felt distant now.
They had nothing to do with me.
And all I heard, in my headphones,
was Grimes’ muffled voice murmuring—
“I know the way, I know the way, I can believe in me…”
Lord, it was only after choosing Grimes’ “Know the Way” as the final piece in my music map that I went to read the full lyrics—and realized that the song is, in fact, a lament over the loss of religious faith, a mourning of the comfort and beauty that faith once brought.
She’s giving up the cross
She’ll end her faith in love
I know the way, I can believe in me
These lines could very well have been the footnote of the first seven years of my twenties.
Interestingly, the song ends with a Russian phrase—“Мне нужна газета”—which means “I need a newspaper.” And it was at the age of twenty-seven that I began to pay attention to the turmoil of the world, starting from the level of values. I came to realize that only the values of Christianity were acceptable to me; only its worldview offered a coherent and whole explanation of the world.
Then at twenty-nine, exhausted from my way, I finally turned inward, began to examine myself through the lens of Christian faith, and once again called upon Your name.
Now, I’m almost the same age my ex was when we first met. I don’t think he was an evil man. Just… deeply pitiful.
All our conflicts, in the end, came down to this: I was pouring all the sensitivity and gentleness You had given me into a void.
It took me a week to write this piece. The sorrow I began with has since turned into release.
I can now accept, with peace, that he never tried to love me—he didn’t know what love was. And I too had changed: from being earnest, to being addicted to hell.
I wrestled with the question—physically, emotionally—whether I could still be seen as pure.
Perhaps that’s the very part You want me to surrender, to let You redeem.
You want me to know that You call me Your bride, the one You love, the apple of Your eye.
You want me to see my past clearly and let myself go. To look upon myself with tenderness—and to look upon sex with tenderness, too.
I don’t know what happened to that woman, after You said, “Go now, and sin no more.”
A single woman lives always under the gaze of a world that flirts—always half-ready to step into love. I think the only reason I haven’t had any other relationship since is because no temptation has yet been strong enough.
If one day, I give myself wholly to the one man in marriage—and it’s a man You have predestined—then every other “possibility” before that would have only ever been impossibility.
Which means every emotional surrender outside that one covenant would be unfaithfulness.
I know I will regret it, I attach too much significance to commitment. Even in hope, regret will still hurt. So I cannot pray for love as Tina does. She has her own problems.
Lord, this world is too dangerous.
I can only hide myself in Christ.
No one may find me—unless he first finds Christ.
All I ask is that You hide me well.
And send someone—a reborn Christian whom You have approved—to find me. Let him be real enough to challenge me and communicate with me sincerely.
If You are preparing in me a heart that has been broken and matured, so that I might see his brokenness through Your eyes, then I need him to look at me the same way.
That kind of gentleness that belongs only to the reborn—I think I’m worthy of that.
But such a man will likely be someone extremely cautious.
Which makes this a puzzle only the Holy Spirit can solve.
Now, I can face the brother I have feelings for with complete calm.
I don’t feel sad. I don’t avoid him.
I even once thought I no longer had feelings for him.
But two days later at the next gathering, I realized—it wasn’t that my feelings had gone, I just no longer projected myself onto him.
I still notice all the little details about him.
And in those details, I see a kind of preciousness.
Whether that preciousness belongs to someone I like or just an ordinary brother, I am willing to appreciate it all the same. I don’t care.
Even if You told me that he is not single, I would still be glad.
This kind of feeling is so free.
Through this man, You have led me back to tenderness and hope for people—for love itself.
And that, Lord, is more than enough.