When I came to the Catholic faith, the scripture from John 10: 10 seized my heart. It was a promise from Jesus that He came to give me life, life in abundance. Just a year after my baptism, I had the privilege to discover what being fully alive means. It has been an adventure with my Lord; one that taught me the deep meaning of my faith. As I reflect on my years living life in abundance; the meaning of it is deeply rooted in me living out my purpose in life.
As a young woman freshly out of university, I had no clue what purpose meant. It wasn’t until I embraced my Catholic faith did the discovery began. One of the most impactful workshop that helped me in the process of discovery and systematically planning my life is JumpStart. The experience was like looking into the deep well of richness in my life through the lens of Father that ignited a boldness to dream and to plan toward making those God given dream a reality. Even through sickness, my mission never change, in fact God refined and clarified my dreams through the crosses I carried. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to bring about a meaningful difference in the lives I encountered through JumpStart. Having JumpStart tools has indeed helped me to live my life to the full. How can JumpStart change your life? Find out more here.
As we discover and live out our mission, may the word of St. Irenaeus of Lyons encourages us;
With lots of love, Irene
*This article is also published in livethecall.live
Growing up things has not been that hard for me. I also have the tendency to take the easy way out. Seemingly blessed with good brain, being born in relatively stable home and having the privilege of being native of the land has also given me easier opportunities. I get into uni with my native quota and upon graduation it was relatively easy to get a job. Then changing job gave me a huge leap in my paycheck. Being a driven person, hitting target was my aim because earning a bigger paycheck was of utmost importance. It was not too hard but it was not too easy either. Being raised by my strict father, it was in my system to make things work for me. Even when I cried over my decision, I have to try to make things work and not giving up too easily. Those foundation has given me a good starting point.
Despite all the worldly successes that I experienced in the past, my heart was never satisfied. I was yearning for something more and that yearning eventually led me to quit my job and be in mission fully covered by God. Boy the lesson was tough. I grumble often and still did not learn my lesson of trust until Myasthenia Gravis (MG) made an entrance to my life. In the first few years of living with MG, I still did not grasp the real value of patience. Only after the crisis in 2023 did I finally grasp the meaning of patient suffering.
My desire for complete healing, I mean complete healing was and still is strong. I am only settling for the best and so I set myself to a heck of a journey. I know for a fact that allopathic medicine can only bring me to the point of monthly maintenance subscription. The management protocols are not designed for healing, only for control. But control is necessary to buy me time and give me clarity on what needs to be done.
In my quest of reversing MG, I learnt patience. At first rather reluctantly but eventually I understood the value of my suffering. God the Father invited me to live a life as the beloved who suffers well. I said yes though I did not know what does that entail. I was still restless and eager in an impatient (or lack of trust) way to get rid of the modern medication I was on. When I woke up in the ICU room realising that the cup of suffering was not to pass me, that was my moment of victorious surrender. I began learning patience as I was well aware I needed time to heal. I needed to be patient with myself and trust the process. I made a remarkable recovery journey. Got us a new off roader to serve us for our land that I signed the S&P of a week prior to ICU admission; travelled to the neigbouring country for a friend’s wedding – all within 6 months post ICU.
However, I was still a slow learner of patience even through the physical need to suffer. My life was still chaotic and God came to bring order to the chaos. I restarted scripture reading discipline which I thought was too hard after having my child. It was not the easiest restart as my nervous system was still on a high alert. I literally fought with my four year old back then to secure my sacred hour in the morning. Even though I knew I needed to be patient, my disposition was still an impatient one – deep in I did not give myself the space to really be. I still did not know how to properly allow myself to feel, I was swinging the pendulum between hope and despair. But I also noticed the time of recovery becomes faster and faster.
Then came the minor flare end of 2024, it was not too bad, even turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I know now that all my physical actions worked to heal my thymus and shrink the thymoma. That flare became the turning point of helping me to realize I have allowed stress to consume my being. Stress that resulted in a flare. It took me quite a long time to stabilize again. Through that I learnt the value of patient bearing of suffering. I also learnt that I had heaps of unprocessed and hidden fear. Those fear were false evidence appearing real. When I decided to face them, they came out bigger and scarier! Faith and techniques I learnt through the years was my remedy of these fears. My faith was put to test and I was willing to walk the rugged terrain of suffering to get to the side of victory. This victory was also fueled by our dire financial situation which I will share adventure of it in my next post.
Months after months of practicing simple breathing exercise has helped me to calm down relatively faster. I first learnt of pursed lips breathing after my ICU stay. It was a necessary part of my lungs healing. Till today I am still struggling with phlegm built up two years post extubation. I came to realize that I am only affected at a certain time of the day, most likely coinciding with the trauma of the time of reintubation. That helped me to learn about the power of mind body connection in healing. I started making it a point to build a stronger mindset that serves me using all sort of hacks from dopamine hacks to positive self talk to applying scriptures in my specific situation. The stronger mindset resulted in me being able to handle difficult things much better. For example, I used to think that exercise was too hard for me. What actually happened was the underlying fear of triggering MG with exercise. But I had a lung condition that took too long to heal, so I started walking on the treadmill for cardio exercise. It was initially hard but as I kept telling myself I was doing hard work, my brain kept rewarding me with quality dopamine. It gets easier and I even expanded to the bicycle as well as weight exercises.
As I keep expanding my mindset to one that is ordered towards the Word of God using physical and tangible techniques, I found myself more and more able to handle stress and challenges. I just show up in life together with MG. Knowing my limit and keep expanding it as well. My nervous system has become more regulated and calmed down. This greatly helped with healing. Not only that, the pages of the scripture jumps out in real life for me. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” – Philippians 4: 13; became my theme of this season. Truly I can only do all things because of the strength I received from Christ. His strength helped me to patiently bear my suffering, learnt from it, grew in endurance and that endurance produces hope that does not disappoint.
Dear friends, what sufferings are you carrying? How would you like to grow in the virtue of patience and perseverance? What are your hope for the suffering you are carrying? Let’s connect to share more about this.
I used to be a person who proclaim certain ways of eating some food as being food crime. How could someone possible put rice on pizza? Or what a strange way to eat chips with ice cream! There were heaps of comments that I would make as I was a picky eater. Then the ultimate funny thing happen when I actually started liking the very food crimes I used to judge. It started when I ran out of ingredients to cook the conventional way. What’s the best next option in that case? Creativity kicked in and I started experimenting making food in ways that was crime for me. Those turned out to be the most fun experience as I managed to turn a challenge into a blessing.
Seeming misfortunes happen all the time because our plans do not always turn out the way we want it. The matter here is our response towards those incidences. Some are small matter that can be easily turned into something good and some are heavier stuffs that need time and space to make sense of. Big stuff like the diagnosis of Myasthenia Gravis for me was not a pleasant thing that happened. I certainly did not choose that misfortune. However, I have the power to choose my response to move forward to make this a meaningful season in my life.
The experience of making the best of the worst that happened reminded of the song, This is How We Overcome. It says: “You have turned my mourning into dancing, You have turned my sorrow into joy”. Such powerful way of turning the worst scenarios into a blessing – turning to God almighty for help. Even your deepest hurt can be turned into a gift to the world. That brought me to a principle I learnt in prayer school that says: “Your deepest hurt becomes the launching pad of your greatest calling”. More often than not, this is hard to comprehend as deep wounds like childhood trauma often scars people deeply. So much so that some chose the destructive path.
Tragic childhood trauma like an abuse is indeed very detrimental to the person. It confused the child and sent wrong messages to the child which in turn destroyed the true identity of the child. It takes a lot of work and heaps of courage in the part of the victim to rise up to victory – reclaiming their true identity as a beloved child of God. We know for a fact that none of us are immune to trauma whether inflicted by a trusted person, teachers, schoolmates etc. Treating ourselves with great compassion and taking the courageous path of healing with trusted companions have proven to be a path towards great victory. Putting these misfortunes in its right place bring out blessings that would otherwise be hidden.
In my current season of immersion in Positive Intelligence (PQ), I see a connection to this concept. The author of the book, Shirzad Chamine shared his childhood wounds were indeed blessings in disguise. It took him heaps of work to be where he is today, a deeply compassionate person who is directly blessing me with this programme. The inspirations drawn from this program is beyond what I imagined. Being an active gift and opportunities seeker in all circumstances is a powerful gift to self and the world we live in.
Dear friends, what are you facing today? I pray that you are given the grace to turn EVERY circumstances into a blessing. My father’s death which was a tragic event has taught me so much about life precisely because I choose to grieve with gratitude. This blog is one of the beautiful fruit coming out of that season of grieving. Be encouraged dear friends to be conqueror that is capable to tap in the grace of God – turning misfortunes into blessings. In the event that you need some help in getting there, feel free to contact me for coaching information.
Recently we recorded a podcast with the title The Cry for Affirmation, that turned out to be such a powerful and healing experience for me. The past year has been focused getting my body back into a new optimum and we are also aware that the past year has been tough for most of us. Isolation has been especially hard for me due to my natural preference of being around people. Little did I know, I slowly lost sight of my true self. I have not surrounded myself enough with people who live with a lifestyle of affirmation. So happened word of affirmation scores high for my love language.
With the challenges of the lockdown that rendered us to react rather than respond also has activated the survival part of the brain big time. Reacting to every announcement made became a constant fight or flight response. Not only it is stressful for the body, it also has the ability to rewire the brain in an unfavourable way. I was constantly tired, unmotivated and found myself settling for the small things. We have managed to find ways out of those episodes of reactions.
God is truly generous in providing resources like the availability of communion, books, courses as well as master classes that I can learn from. We dare to dream bigger with each hurdles we overcame. It has been a slower process when we are isolated. Going back to coaching is also a great blessing and now being part of my friend, Justin’s podcast Don’t Just Talk Lah, I am provided with a platform to give. All these works are possible also thanks to my body’s healing progress. I have the attitude to give as I am, although still not 100% healed yet as I occasionally get mild symptoms.
The recording of the affirmation episode helped to dust off the dirt that covers the whole true self. I have somewhat become less affirmative through this challenging year. Being affirmed through the recording, I was so energized and decided to live that more fully again. So I started affirming my daughter for every little things she did well, even to the detail of her listening to my instruction. She was glowing with joy with my new attitude; so was I and my husband.
Challenges ahead when met through the truth of own goodness can produce wonderful results. When we choose to overcome problems and deal with sin through the lens of our inherent goodness, we are elevated to a place of higher praise. I believe that is a place of freedom and happiness!. After all, if negativity has ability to rewire our brain unfavourably; positivity ought to do the favourable rewiring.
Dear friends, if you are in a place of uncertainty or are embarking on a new venture, do surround yourself with people who affirm you or hire a coach to achieve better results. A coach will help you see new perspectives when you are met with blockages; hear you out and affirm you in your journey as well as celebrating progresses with you. May you be blessed in your venture and remember you are worthy of happiness and joy in life.
Fully Alive 