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This week's story is by Andrew Lam. Andrew just graduated from the University of Toronto for Mechanical Engineering in 2020. He was also a part of U of T's Chinese Christian Fellowship (UTCCF) during his 5 years there.
In this post, Andrew shares about his struggle with God's purpose and hopelessness this past year.
A little preface to my story, my relationship with God has been for quite a while now a constant struggle of pushing and pulling. I am a pretty strong-willed person, and naturally I have expectations for how my life will turn out.
But God is a God who defies expectations.
For example, I expected university to be a difficult place for me to grow, living so close to the home I so badly wanted to escape. Little did I expect the warmth of community I found and the myriad opportunities to grow. I tried my hardest to leave my Chinese Christian GTA-church bubble, but in my five years at U of T, I think I gained a richer experience of my Chinese heritage and how that intersects with faith and society than I would’ve anywhere else. Wild.
Which leads me to 2020 and my graduation. It was a tough year for everyone, I know; I expected to graduate into a steady mechanical engineering job, preferably in biomed, and live downtown with friends or even start life in another city. I wanted to branch out, find a new church community to grow in, and be independent. I wanted to move on with my life.
But God had other plans. Instead I found myself unemployed, living at home, stuck in between churches, just feeling alone in life. My life had grinded to a halt. Obviously, it’s not an uncommon thing for university graduates to be unemployed for a while after graduation. But for me it stung more than a little. I dealt with the shame of being an engineer while being stuck behind all my peers, who all found jobs while I was left in the dust. I dealt with the shame of having to move back home after trying to shed the weight of my parents’ expectations of me after high school. It wasn’t easy.
It still isn’t easy. I’ve probably applied to over 600 jobs now, with nothing really to show for it. I’ve had chances to land different jobs, but for some reason God has taken them away from me right when they’re in my grasp. I reached a breaking point when I interviewed for my dream job at Boston Scientific. They loved me, I made it past the three rounds of interviews, and everything was looking good. At the last minute, they decided to cancel the position because of organizational needs. That devastated me. It forced me to confront God and ask Him what the heck He was doing with my life. Up till that point I was set on my life going a certain way, but it took Him taking that opportunity away to force me to my knees.
My circumstances haven’t changed much since then. God is still holding me over. I don’t know when the end of this season will be. It’s been a year of questioning God’s purpose in all of this, of getting myself up out of bed every morning to try and make something out of my day. It’s been a year of battling hopelessness and disappointment and feeling lost in life. But God has been quietly changing my attitude, my outlook on life. I’ve begun to see Him more throughout my quiet days in my room. What started out as tense family dinners and tiptoeing around the house became opportunities for healing between me and my parents, for growth between me and my brothers. Though I haven’t made much effort to find a new church community (my own fault), God has blessed me with keeping in contact with a couple strong brothers and sisters in Christ. And the little things. The little things are so important. Listening to new music every Friday. Going out for bubble tea once a week. My small but tight knit community who games with me. Butterfly cookies from the bakery.
It’s been a year of battling hopelessness and disappointment and feeling lost in life. But God has been quietly changing my attitude, my outlook on life.
Hopelessness is something I never expected to deal with. When you don’t have hope, life becomes a lot harder to live. It’s been the greatest challenge for me this year, to continue to hope in something greater than myself. Every day it seems like I’m holding back this tide of hopelessness from crashing down on me. It seems silly, I know; like of course things will work out in the end, but this year has really forced me to find my hope in something other than landing a great job or in others.
It’s made me truly understand what it takes to put your hope in God. And the startling thing about that is that at the end of it all, I found joy.
And so I write this to encourage all of you. God is a God who defies expectations, and He’s certainly flipped my life around. Who knows if I’ll even stay in engineering at this point? All I can do is make the most of what I can, and look to Him for the rest. So if you’re feeling like you have no hope, take heart; a little bit of faith goes a long way. If you’re feeling like this season of life is never going to end, join the party! Maybe it won’t; that’s not the point. Don’t put your hope in that. Put your hope in something that lasts. If you’re tired, I’ll tell you that I am tired too. I can’t offer you much, but I can offer you tons of song lyrics. In the words of a lullaby that has stuck with me this past year:
“Rock-a-bye baby come and rest
You’ve been tired lately lay your head down
Don’t you think baby I know best
I’ve been a Father for a long time
No one knows you better than Me”
I’ve struggled and battled this whole year with the overwhelming weight of hopelessness... but God has been teaching me how to live in spite of that. He’s been teaching me how to live in patience and love and devotion, and that even if things don’t get better, there is still joy to be found.
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