New Start Coming!!

October 25, 2006.


That was the date Ah-Lam's Diary was born. My very first blog entry.


Sitting down tonight and reading through my past entries and comments from others, it is amazing to to me how this blog had been a chronicle of my life's journey for the last 2.5 years. It 'documented' the absolute lowest moments of my life thus far, but even so, reading my old entries tonight have shown me a sense of direction in my life's narrative.


In an entry dated November 21 2006, I posted a list of questions that I was wrestling deeply with. I concluded with: "Why is it that after 16 years as a pastor, I feel more and more lonely and less and less at home in the church community?" The very next entry documented me turning down opportunities to serve in Christian organizations and ventured out to volunteer for the Aids Committee of Toronto. Little did I know at the time, that would prove to be the beginning of a major turning point in my life.


The following year, I was diagnosed with depression. I cannot describe the sense of absolute and utter darkness and hopelessness that became my everyday life. More than once I had seriously contemplated suicide. During that period of darkness I made a mistake that would change my life forever. In the aftermath, I left professional ministry, and the church community that I had devoted practically my entire adult life to serving.


At that time, I looked for friendship among those I trusted the most within the church, instead I found rejection and betrayal that to this day stab at my heart. I was casted off, and thus began my exile from the Christian community for over a year. In many ways, I was "wandering in the wilderness".

But as it is so often the case within the Biblical narrative, it is in the wilderness that one hears God's voice, and new life begins to germinate...

The point of this is not to rehash old wounds. Rather, through looking back now, I see a direction to my life that I haven't noticed as clearly before. From my increasing feeling of being a "stranger" within the institutional church, to my experience of speaking to secular audiences as part of my work now, to the project in Sichuan where I used music and the spoken word to encourage the students in an non-religious setting, I feel more and more certain that perhaps the purpose of my life is to use my gifts and abilites in word and music to bring encouragement to those outside of the religious circles. From speaking in a Mosque in North York to performing in a school in Sichuan, I have noticed a common need: people's hearts need to be ministered to.

In many ways, the trip to Sichuan was the "final push" for me. As such, in the very near future I will be taking another major step forward in this journey. I will be closing this blog, and migrating it over to a new personal website where I will continue to write with the intention of encouraging readers. Additionally, I will launch a new website that I hope will be a new written word platform for "marginalized" voices. I will also be looking to be active in the community doing concerts and speaking events, all with the simple intention of being an 'encouragement' to whomever I cross paths with. Stay tune for these exciting new beginnings, and for those of you who are the "praying types", please remember me.

So, in the very near future, we will say good-bye to "Ah-Lam". But at the same time, we will say hello to "Alfred", hopefully another step closer to whom I was made to be...