Epinikion
"In seasons of distress and grief,
My soul has often found relief
And oft escaped the tempter’s snare
By thy return, sweet hour of prayer!"
- Sweet Hour of Prayer, words by William Walford
10 years ago today, I remember being sick and stuck and home, assignments piling up; it was the era when I still actually cared about hockey, and I was worried about a must-win A Division hockey match with St Andrews looming after AC's disastrous 3-0 loss to Raffles; perhaps worst of all I had just come out on the bad end of a short relationship - the one that crashed and burned over hockey training and one bad mistake - the one that would define all my other relationships for the next 8 years - and it was like stabbing myself in the throat: hurting and hurting like hell.
10 years ago, on 29 April 2004, I had a very terrible birthday.
April 2004: AC hockey team training camp at Bandar Penawar, Johor, Malaysia
Sometime in between then and the SAJC hockey match, I remember flipping a Bethesda hymnal and I seeing the hymn 'Sweet Hour of Prayer'. Ever since then, I don't think I've even sung it once in any congregational service, and my memories of the tune are at best hazy. But for the 18 year-old who played hockey and breathed literature with every waking breath back in 2004, those words, especially the last four lines of the first stanza, were good poetry. They reminded me of the best that faith could offer, even if faith (and God) seemed absent and hollow during those dreadful few weeks of at the end of April 2004.
It's now 2014, a decade from those very simple days of JC. In the meantime, I've been to NS, university, graduated and got a job. Life went on. (For reference, I recovered, AC beat St Andrews and through the long-sighted wisdom of the friend I wronged, we salvaged the friendship, she became a Christian and is now happily attached to a great guy).
It's tempting to take all those milestones (successes) from those 10 years and wear them as badges of honour. Celebrate your successes, my boss always reminds me, because you never know when they'll dry up. But the truth is, I felt that everything has been quite accidental. Or if you're a faith-believing person like me, accidental is perhaps a flipside of God-directed.
Essentially though, nothing has changed. I still worry and fret about things that will probably be insignificant in a year's time. I admit I've become a bit of a blaspheming questioner when it comes to all things religious, being purposely self-depreciating when no compromise can be reached. And I still live and breathe obsessions - it's just that they're no longer hockey and literature (running and fiction replaced them).
February 2014: NUS cross-country 'old birds'
But it's been 10 years. When the day has come and gone, I will sit down and read the last four lines of the first stanza of William Walford's hymn. With an entire decades' worth of reflection, these words are at worst just good poetry. At best, they've been a bittersweet victory song.