Forsaken First Love.

I have a confession to make. I’ve forsaken my first love.

My first love was amazing beyond words. We loved hanging out together, both on one-to-one and group dates. Even with my friends, she always put me first, always made me feel proud. Sometimes, we had conversations all night long, words just flowed out as we yak and yak and yak. I reminisced about how she always accompanied me to my camps. During those good old days, we always find free time in between programs to chatter with one another. Sometimes, we invited others into our chats, especially after the officers’ meetings. Occasionally they stopped lingering around us because admittedly we were a bit too close for comfort.

The pandemic lockdown struck, and she came. It started off as a casual friendship. We began conversing online. She’s slightly shier, preferring small group interactions. But the more we talked, the fonder I grew. In fact, she has so much in common with my first love I questioned if they were even related. She continued to show more interest, and so did I. She never gave up on me, she prioritised me over the others more often than I could imagine. And finally, she won me over. What was once innocent turned out to be more-than-friends. Slowly, I became obsessed with her and even exaggerated her to my friends with fancy terms that I didn’t even know the meaning of.

And slowly, I began to forget my first love. Gradually, she faded away from my sight, and we stopped seeing each other at all. I left her in the corner, didn’t bother to say hi, cared less to even ask how she’s doing and coping. I ghosted her. It has been one long year, and it made me realise how much I’ve forsaken my first love. And with much contrition I say:

Boggle, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’ve forsaken you for Scrabble.

A Christian Reflection:

The pandemic lockdown has hit us hard. Kicked us hard enough that we may have forgotten our first love. It could be online fatigue, the illusion of the ineffectiveness of the virtual community, busyness of the boundless working hours, detrimental mental health, the paranoia of apocalypse, or even a simple loss of interest. Hey, it could even be the ever-present need of pivoting ministries that caught up over our own personal faith. And we lose sight of God.

Jesus reminded the church in Ephesus — who were still in the thick and thin of doing many things for God, mind you — of their own forsaken first love (Revelation 2:1–10). More often than not, the things we chose over our first love for God could be one of so much resemblance that we ignored the difference.The Ephesians had fallen much, and needed to climb back the ladder of repentance. How about you? Perhaps, we may also with much contrition say:

God, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’ve forsaken you for [fill in the blank].