Grace:

My first encounter with God was when I was eight. I just knew that God would be there for me and that He loved me. I brought everything to Him in prayer with child-like faith. 
In P4 I was introduced to the world of elitism and encouraged to excel all the time. I became easily stressed, and anxious about how my academic plans would fail. Everything felt meaningless, hopeless and I spiraled into a depressive state over time. I was vulnerable to sin, acting on any desire to feed my worries instead of looking to God. But in a youth camp, I felt God speaking to me personally and comforting me in my brokenness. So I made a decision to live for Christ.

At the start of Sec 1, I was riding on a spiritual high and managed my devotions easily. I started serving and joined a discipleship group. But the realities of school and life overwhelmed me and I again battled old sins. Over those years I went back to prioritizing studies over God. The frequency of my devotions dropped and then stopped completely. With the lack of frequent accountability and my devotional time now gone, I entered into a dry season of life. I went day by day relying on my own strength to do well academically. Only to fail miserably and suffer weekly breakdowns. 

My mentor encouraged me constantly to trust God. But I could only do so in my head and not in my heart. I realised how helpless I was one day, that even if I put in my 200%, God’s will may not be for me to excel. It took me a long time before I accepted His will may be different, but He works for good. In the recent 2018 youth camp, I broke down knowing how much I had chased the world and ignored God again. After that camp, I rededicated my life back to Christ and felt the same joy and peace, I found some 4 years before.

Today, although studying still seems to be a coping mechanism whenever I start to stress, I'm learning to trust God and pray to Him every step of the way. I know faith is what God has called me to experience in this season of life. I am thankful for how God has met me at every step of faith along the way. Although there will be many more mountains to be moved, I know God can use my minuscule fraction of faith.