A Letter to Andreas
Written in early mid-March 2024. I received two successive miracles guiding me to post my info on an international dating website popped up. Then I met Andreas. Now I think that he was just arranged by the Lord to hear my confession. He gave me understanding and tenderness when I was on the verge of breaking down in my battle.
My daily routine now revolves around reading, writing, and praying. Often, I found myself lost in contemplation as I watched the continuous drizzle outside. It finally clears up today, I took the Bible with me to the hilltop park to read.
It seems that my life flows on in calm waters, yet deep within rages a tempestuous sea.
Andreas, I see this as a leap of faith. I must believe that I have been chosen by Him, not my own attempt at all. And I must believe that I am on the path of His revelation. The astonishment has now turned into a sense of vertigo, as if I might fall at any moment but knew I would not.
I become again the child whom everyone saw as delusional. I actually don’t expect a single person can understand me or have a real conversation with me. I know my kingdom is not here, and I am not alone.
Time is a gift, and we are eternal. When I let go of all my self-planned affairs, when I tried to come back to the Christ, when I talked to Him again, when I finally stopped hiding and denying, when I finally got down on my knees and prayed for a sign, when I stripped the customary ideas layer by layer off me, Andreas, I am not yet a born-again Christian. But you came to help construct my born-again story. I really appreciate it.
If even you regard me as a lunatic… I really don’t know. We are just strangers from different countries who could lose contact at any moment, it’s totally irrational to keep any hope. Father, you indicated me twice to go this way, for four times in a day you told me to wait for reply. You know how shocked I was. Father, I really don’t know where you’re leading me, maybe I’m just grasping at straws.
I once said that I haven’t experienced any real hardships, well, that was my self-deception which I wasn’t fully aware of. When I truly heard the revelation of God’s Word, and re-entered the realm of my heart, I finally began to realize that I had in fact been in a miserable predicament all this time.
And I realized why St. Augustine wrote the Confessions.
When I was young, I loved natural science and often forgot to eat and sleep for some knowledge outside the examination course. Later, physics chemistry became my major, but I became a slave in a laboratory at a research institute, caught up in the power struggle among professors and even committed fraud. When I learned about digital asset management system during being a management trainee at ExxonMobil, I used to spend days and nights trying to build a tech solution. Later, I taught myself big data, switched to IT, and became a slave in the IT department.
I was like Jacob who wrestled against the angel and won but became lame. And this is a land of cripples, where everyone seems to have been born slaves, and they never understand why I have a great resume yet can’t even walk around happily like them. I had also pretended that I can walk well, trying to use this resume or some other resources to continue foolish planning, continue to bury my life.
“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”. The truth was once the primal drive behind my quest for knowledge, and now I depend on the truth to regain freedom, although I haven’t regained it yet. However, the freedom found afterward inevitably leads one to choose a certain professional path, delving into it day and night. I don’t know what my profession will be next.
To sustain this primal drive, we must maintain dialogue with Him, persevere in prayer; delve into our own hearts, have soliloquy. My tears flow uncontrollably again— I can speak, I can wield words. Father, thank you for awakening in me this most crucial ability. Father, I need you to enlighten me.
Not long ago, I told a sister who claims to be a Christian and with whom I still have contact, that I feel I can no longer write anything unrelated to the Gospel. She called me, out of kindness, advising me to delete all the content I had already posted, not to post again in the future, not to tarnish the reputation of this group; moreover, she could hardly understand what I wrote, and no one else could understand them either, and no one cares.
Two days later, I began the most thorough self-censorship, started organizing past articles, only to find that much of what I had written in the past three years was unbearable to look at, so I deleted it all. It’s not that they didn’t cost effort, not that they lacked insight or weren’t witty enough, but that all these contents focused solely on the external, filled with anger towards this world, arrogance towards people, and indifference towards myself— I saw the desolation of my soul, I was just abusing my precious abilities.
But I won’t give up on writing.
With Word, He created light and this wonderful world. After the Babel, He gave us different languages, with which we created different civilizations. Since He gave me this language, how can I not pray and write in it?
I used to be good at writing poetry ever since I was a child, but after only one relationship in my early twenties, I couldn’t write a single line anymore.
Father, I want to write hymns.