Origins, Part 1
Hi UWCCF! I’m Arthur Lam, one of the leaders of the blog ministry. The team is excited for how the Lord will mightily work in this ministry to showcase His glory this term! For the first two posts, I’ll be talking about how the ministry originated and the events that inspired its birth. And so here we go…
It all started back in Summer 2015 when I finished my first year. I was working in Waterloo for that summer and I decided to use that co-op to take a break and relax from the tumultuous academic year. Given the abundance of time I had that term, I decided one day to start a blog. My inspiration for starting at that time was that the many lessons I learned from my first year in university. There were going to be more life experiences that I would learn a lot from and I wanted to put this in writing somehow. I didn’t want to cramp my hands through writing on paper so…why not go to typing on a blog?
I had previously published a post on Facebook about the lessons I learned in my first term of school thinking that it would be a one-time thing. However, it wasn’t that long after that I had the desire to make more of these posts. That was where I discovered Medium, through one of my Facebook friends. It was simplistic in design which quickly drew my attention. I did not have to focus on website aesthetics compared to other platforms and so I stuck with it.
There were a lot of fears to sort out as I started blogging. Were my thoughts going to come out in the right way? Were people even going to read my posts? Should I use more eloquent words and creative structures to make my posts attractive? How can I make my posts genuine and authentic so that people know it’s me speaking through these words? I continued to wrestle with these questions as I spent hours, days and even weeks trying to perfect a single post from conception to finish.
But the Lord worked in me through my writing. He convicted me of my desire to please man in my posts — writing thoughts that they want me to convey compared to the thoughts God desired of me. As I published more posts, I found the words coming more easily to me. But I felt there was something missing in my blog — I thought my emotions were not being properly communicated. It was as if there was a gap between my thoughts and the posts. As I started thinking how to bridge this gap, the idea of a daily journal came to my mind. One of the CCF members at that time in my 2nd year had mentioned the idea of a daily journal to recall how the Lord worked in her life. At first I was skeptical of the idea — could I really commit to a journal every day? It seemed like a lot of work. But then you realize how many thoughts you think in a single day, and how many of them are easily forgotten. So why not capture them in writing to look back on later? And so, it became my New Year’s Resolution in 2016 to start a daily journal. Hopefully it would enhance the quality and content of my blog.
The first six months were difficult. When you’ve missed multiple days in a row, it becomes discouraging and you want to quit. You feel bad because now you have to play catch-up and condense your thoughts in the last 3–5 days into a single entry. However, I persevered through it and stuck to the discipline. My daily journal eventually grew to the point of being cathartic — I could write whatever I wanted in it not having to fear anyone reading it. It not only allowed me to clearly express my emotions, but it also enhanced my prayer life when I wrote down my prayers for some of my entries. Eventually, it helped my blogging come out more naturally — I found the quality of my posts to be better. If I were to write about one of my experiences, I could also reference my journal entries to get a better picture of the emotions I was feeling that day. There came more things to blog about as I served in greater capacities at UWCCF, culminating with two terms on committee in my second and third year. After that concluded in summer 2017, there came the question: what do I write about now? How could I use this blog for the Lord’s glory? It was then that I decided to write my about a major event that I left out of my testimony — my experience with autism.
When I shared my testimony with people, I intentionally left my diagnosis out because I was not comfortable with publicly sharing at the time. I never shared about it for two reasons:
- My parents heavily advised me to not tell anyone about it.
- I didn’t think anyone could empathize with me and understand how my condition affected my daily life.
However, the opportunity for believers and non-believers to learn about my story and see the Gospel in it was something I could not squander. So I began writing. It was by far my most difficult post — there were some things I did not want to mention and it was difficult to synthesize my thought process I had in social situations. But after a whopping eight months, it was ready to be published. The day I made it official (which was this past August), I was super scared. I was constantly pacing up and down my room worrying about the reaction I would receive on Facebook. But who knew the the Lord would use it to spread His gospel! Above is my journal entry from that day illustrates the feelings I went through and how Christ liberated me from my fear to make Himself known.
Even now as I think about it, the amount of attention I got was surprisingly huge. I received messages from my friends that were non-believers that expressed appreciation for my blog post (some of them I had not talked with in a long time!) Some of my classmates even approached me saying they enjoyed reading my blog! I knew then that the Lord had truly used my blog post and the words in there to show His glory in how He had worked through me for my entire life. That was when the thought came into my head — “why not extend this to UWCCF?”
Stay tuned for Part 2, coming later this week! :)
