Happiness begins with Grace.

My oh my, it's been a long while since I've touched this blog. Actually I haven't touched any blog for a long time. So yeah a lot of things have happened and changed for me. I find myself reading a couple of my past blogs and think to myself "wow that was me?". It's a bit strange to find that the person I am now does not recognise the person I was only half a year ago. Strange indeed.

So anyway, I just felt like I have a lot to say right now to a lot of people but I'm a bit lazy to approach these people because I cant be bothered.

Here we go.

If anyone has hung around me lately you've probably noticed that I've been a much more happy person to say the least. It's funny for me because a lot of people go with the assumption that my trip to Vietnam was the break I needed for this to be so, however that is not the case. In fact there are several events that happened in Vietnam which were quite devastating to my family which I will not go into detail for obvious reason. I in fact left Vietnam with quite a few questions about the direction my family was headed and as you can probably tell it was very negative. So yeah to clear up it wasn't the greatest trip, but it was an eye opener for me.

So things began early last year (2010), I went into my first year of uni at RMIT studying Youth work. I wasn't ever really sure if this was what I wanted to get into or not but I was in it so yeah I just went for it. Within every new segment of life came new challenges and expectations, none that I've really lived up to at that point in my life. So basically I grew up in a family and a church surrounded by well Asians, and the expectations was for a first year Uni student, was to be studying, have a job, have a license (which I still need by the way) and do some stuff for church in order to be well considered normal so to speak. So me being apart of this family to speak I did exactly that, I was a youth leader, was studying and had a casual job at Salsas. It was fine towards the beginning and well I guess one could say pretty enjoyable. For me I guess that became the measure of success and in order to be happy I would need to have all of these things down.

But as soon as pressure was applied to me everything began to crumble. I stopped caring about all these things I just mentioned previously and everything just went downhill. School was like "eh screw this I'm gonna fail anyway", being a youth leader was super hard because I wasn't living the model life to show to the kids under my care and on top of that Salsa's new management decided they didn't like me and gave me about 3 hours of work a week which was utter crap. And all of this was just in first semester. I thought that this point in my life was when change was going to happen for me as in my previous years in high school I'd put no effort into anything I'd ever do and hence my average score in my final year. But this was not the case, I'm half way through my apparently break through year and I was already screwed. Thankfully however my tutors were understanding and helped me get through first semester without failing.

So after this comes Hillsong. I came into Hillsong with a pretty negative outlook on life seeing as I just barely scrapped through my first semester of Uni. I wont talk too much about this because there was quite alot, but to say the least there are so many lessons I take out of Hillsong which will be with me for the rest of my life. So they key messages for me were "Momentum has a grace to it", "Jesus is not worried about my storms to the point where the saviour of the world would sleep through it", "we are going to the other side", "Storms do not last" and "my circumstance is not who I am". As you can see already I could probably right an essay worth of writing for each which I probably already have in my other blogs. But yeah in a nutshell, these messages gave me a new insight and some very valuable wisdom to take into my next semester of Uni.

Now with all my apparent answers to my life I entered into my second semester of Uni. I would quickly wind up in a worse mental state than ever as all the pressure got to me again and I would be wondering to myself what have I done wrong. I was pretty useless, I had nothing to contribute to youth, still had a world of issues at work and well I pretty much was on the verge of failing that semester. I must also add that this was only midway into my second semester. So I was in a pretty tough spot at this point in time. The biggest thing for me was that I had nothing anyone could be proud of. This was so crucial for me because all my life I'd done a half ass job with everything. I thought that this year was going to be when I finally had something I could let my parents be proud of since they had given me everything and regardless of everything they still loved me. It's tough because even if I fail they treat me the same and comfort me but I couldn't sit on giving them nothing.

Before I continue, I need to say that the reason I played a lot computer games was because, it was an escape for me, for those several hours I'd play every night it would be the most peaceful times for myself and my mind for the whole day. I wouldn't be fixing my problems but not thinking about them was the next best thing I suppose. The biggest problem of this was that my parents knew nothing of what I was going through so they placed all the blame on the fact that I didn't spend enough time studying because I was playing so much, which I can't blame them since yes its partially true and also they didn't know what I was going through and all they could do was assume the least. So why am I telling you guys this? Well because this escape wasn't enough any more and at this point in time it was time to do something about my circumstance because well life caught up to me.

I went through this and decided it's time to get some more help, so I went back to my tutors and teachers who were extremely understanding and the general consensus was that I was going through clinical depression and was advised to seek advice from a doctor and possibly get some medication. In fact after hearing the symptoms I may have been going through it for well over 3-4 years which could have been the reasons for why nothing ever worked for me and a reason for my laziness and failures. And that didn't sit with me well. To think that well all my life problems could be solved with a tablet once a day was beyond me. Strangely enough a couple weeks down the track Pastor Colin comes up to me and brings up the topic of depression and suggested medication also. It was so strange for me because well I only spoke to two people about it and it was pretty random for me. Probably a week later Jon suggested it also, so I guess the general consensus was pretty much get help. My only prayer was " God do something, do anything".

At this point I pretty much gave up on Uni. My course coordinator helped me get a late withdrawal for Uni and so I don't have any fails on my record which is awesome. I still hadn't told my parents about any of this and still hadn't got any help from doctors. I did plan to go to the doctors before I told them but it never worked out that way. I just kind of waited till the last week of Uni and told my parents everything was over and that all my assignments were done so I just stay at home and worked a lot.

Eventually my Dad sat me down and started talking to me about how I should get my license and so on and so forth, but it eventually struck me and I couldn't take it any more and I told him in a nutshell the reason why nothing is getting done is because of my depression and the mindset that I am unable to do anything so why even try. So I told my mum and dad everything that needed to be said and that following weekend I went to the doctors and was prescribed anti-depressants. I mean it's a bit straightforward but this was the first time I've ever been truly honest to my parents about anything and my Dad went from being angry wondering what the hell was going with his son to the most loving person I know in my life. And that was the best thing for me.

I wanted God to do something for me and He did. Even though it might have been a small conversation with my Dad, my God always does enough and more. That year could have been the end for me became a proclamation of Gods grace.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who[a] have been called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28

See now this is my testimony, that despite everything that I went through I am still here. Even though I'm not studying, I'm happy. I might not be living the model life of an Asian living in Australia but I am living my life. Despite the biggest storm of my life, I'm through to the otherside because Jesus said "we are going to the other side". I'm happy, my parents are happy to have their son and I'm still here and I have a God who is with me. What more do I need?

I still don't know who I am to be or where I'm headed in life, but it doesn't matter because the important thing is that I'm happy now. I might only be working at Salsa's but at least I'm super happy to be there. No need to worry about tomorrow if today's issues aren't fixed. I just get a feeling this year is going to be amazing for me.

I want to personally thank Cindy, Jon and Trinh for sticking it out with me, I don't know how I would have made it through last year without you guys to talk to. And also my Parents for being awesome and also all of you guys at church who even though I never told you guys anything still supported me me in prayer anyway. There are several others I need to mention but they already know how thankful I am to them.

And lastly My God. He is great and mighty. Amen

Peter.