Category: Coaching

From Fear to Fullness of Life

On By IreneIn Coaching, Courage, Faith, Grace, Hope, Journey, Kingdom Lifestyle, Myasthenia Gravis Healing Journey, Season of LifeLeave a comment
Teal is the color representing Myasthenia Gravis

June is the month dedicated to the awareness of Myasthenia Gravis (MG) and it has become really close to my heart being on my journey of healing from Myasthenia Gravis. Yes I know the general consensus said that the condition has no cure but I choose to trust in my body’s ability to heal. MG thrivers are sometimes called snowflake warriors for the fact that every case is unique. That pose a challenge of its own as there is no certainty or a good pattern as reference. I have taken the path of looking at my unique condition as an opportunity to experience fullness of life in ways I would not have explored otherwise.

When I was given the diagnosis in Feb 2020, my world was an utter chaos. There were so many things that I needed to consider and to take care of, all at the same time giving myself the best chance to beat this. Not only my world was chaotic, the world around me turned into a real chaos with the lockdown and restrictions started to affect our lives shortly after I was discharged from the hospital. The looming fear at that point of time was intense and I can feel it in the atmosphere. If anything you need to know about autoimmunity, extreme stress is very bad for any autoimmune condition. Mine was triggered by a prolonged period of unmanaged stress plus sudden change of environment. It is also known that people who are immunosuppressed like myself are categorized as being high risk of viral infection. So it was natural of me of being fearful.

I was just beginning to navigate life with a chronic condition and then this virus chaos came about. Fear was all over the place and I was not spared from it. Fear causes stress that worsen my condition and it’s very easy to see how bad it affect me. So I made a conscious decision since being out of the hospital to manage my stress well. This fear business took a toll on me as almost everyone around me were fear filled about the virus. I reached the tipping point real quickly and decided that fear is no way of living. It was sucking life out of me and I did not like it. In my desperation for life literally, I called upon the name of Jesus and asked Him; what should I do? How do I live?

“Let your faith be bigger than your fear!”

That was all I heard and that was enough to propel me forward. The first strategy of winning a battle is to know the enemy and that’s where I started – naming my fear. It was not hard to name them as the first and biggest one that came out was the fear of death. I feared death after escaping death not too long ago. I feared that an infection may kill me because at that point of time I was swallowing 20 tablets daily; a majority of which were immunosuppressive drugs. That would made me really vulnerable. Nailing this fear to the cross and charging forward in life with faith was my experience of saving grace. I have confidence and courage that I will live and thrive. Proper precaution taken, the rest is trust and choosing to live in joy. After all, my health is my responsibility, I personally think it is unfair to put my health risk as a burden for the rest of the society. Praise be to God for His protection; all through this year of healing I have regained strength and is rarely sick.

Putting fear in perspective is an important element in moving forward. The way to do that is to seek the truth about the specific situation. We know that the truth will set us free although it is likely to be uncomfortable. Let’s look at some comparison: if you catch a cold, you know that the chance of you recovering and healing is more than 99%. With that knowledge, fear is by logic small in comparison. The inconvenience of being unable to function optimally for a few days that may bother you more than the fear of death. In my situation with MG, nothing was certain. When I was administered with the rescue medication, there was no guarantee that it will work on me, we hope I respond which I did (with no side effects). Same with the maintenance medication, we can only hope I respond, which I also did until we adjusted the dose. When I asked if a remission is possible, the answer I got was “I can’t tell you for sure because MG is so variable. Some patients get into remission and it came back again, some get into permanent remission and some never get into remission”.

With such variability and uncertainty, it was very easy to despair and let fear grip over my life. But I knew this very clearly, fear perpetuate stress and stress worsen the symptoms. Given the situation, although saddened, I made the choice to live in hope. If some people get into a permanent remission, I shall be one of them. The choice I made to live in the fullness of hope and life carved my way forward. I took actions that would give me the best chance to get to the remission. A massive change in lifestyle was required – diet, habits, routine etc. It was a sharp learning curve to be in tuned with my body again. I realized how brainwashed I was! And that was uncomfortable! One great thing coming out of this healing journey is the deepening of my empathy towards myself as well as to others especially those who could not see a way forward in a fear saturated world.

Being able to face my fears with the truth and knowledge in hand and then move forward in faith has been a great blessing. I live in freedom precisely because I never allow the disease to define who I am. I admit it is not the easiest of journey and fear does creep in from time to time. I allow my self to process the fear and then to formulate the way forward with my Saviour. All this is possible thanks to my years as a coach and also those years in ministering to people as well as support from my inner circle.

Fear is a constant companion whether we like it or not. Some are necessary like in the case of meeting a tiger, you better let your fear propel you run for your life. I would say most fear we face today are opportunities if we allow them to. Dear friends, if you are having difficulty in navigating fear and are feeling stuck, do feel free to reach out to me. I run my own coaching practice and I can also recommend other coaches or counsellors to you. Know that it is my prayer for you to be well. Fear does not have the final say and it is possible to live victoriously. May you be blessed!

With lots of love,
Irene

Abide by Commitment NOT by Feelings

On By IreneIn Celebration, Coaching, Commitment, Dreams, Journey, Kingdom LifestyleLeave a comment

Ouch!!! was probably my response when I had those words spoken to my heart at Eucharistic Adoration last night. It has been a real long time since I last spent time at Adoration. Responding with a yes to the invitation placed in my heart earlier on the day was an awesome decision. It was refreshing and encouraging.

Navigating my new life has not exactly been easy with so many adjustment to make. I was not satisfied with a lot of things, the biggest one was my prayer life. Although I have been confessing my not too good kind of prayer life quite many times, the advice from the confessor only hit me recently. So I became careful to keep watch on my prayer life. The first week seems to excel with flying colours but as time and other demands of daily life took over, it became increasingly challenging to keep up with it.

The faithfulness of God was unwavering. As I struggle to keep my prayer time, I also experienced overwhelming grace. The fruits coming out of my little commitment was just so extraordinary. I noticed myself growing in my desire to lean my ears to listen to the beating heart of God.

So when I whined about the difficulty to keep up with what I want to achieve; like regularly updating this blog and to expand JumpStart, Christ in His loving way showed me what I had experienced these past few weeks of keeping up with my prayer time and encouraged me to abide by my commitment not by my feelings. It was awesome and at the same time an “ouch” moment. Gently, I came to accept that my procrastination and lack of drive to do anything for my own dreams are my responsibilities.

I am responsible for my happiness and my growth. What I sometimes did following my feelings were detrimental to my journey – like feeling lazy (and actually acted on the laziness) to do any promotion for JumpStart or to turn my reflections to meaningful words. Pushing on was never really easy considering my personality. I am blessed by the example set by my disciplined husband who chose to press on even when he did not feel like it just because he knew the outcome would be good.

My prayer was what kind of commitment would I like to give God? I believe that writing specific kind of commitment would help in getting things going. Through this time of encounter with Christ, I realized my strongest kind of commitment would be the ones I made with God and then had them shared with someone whom I can be accountable to. Here is where abiding in my commitment rather than my feelings would be a great tool in bringing me forward.

Dear friends, I pray that you are blessed with my little sharing. If you are struggling to keep up with your journey towards greatness of your being, reach out for help. Spiritual directors, spiritual accompaniers, coaches and mentors are there to support you in your journey. May you be encouraged to abide by your commitment and not by your feelings. Remember to celebrate along the way for every milestone achieved.

With lots of love,

Irene

Celebration

On By IreneIn Celebration, Coaching, Journey, Kingdom Lifestyle, Worth2 Comments

Celebration is an integral part of life and a lifestyle that I am living by. Whenever we talk about celebration, the first thought a Malaysian would typically have is MAKAN (food). We take our food seriously and to mark any celebration, the food plays a very important role. More important than the food is the reason of the celebration.

We celebrate to mark an important milestone, an important event, successes or progresses we made in life. In my coaching training, my coach taught me to apply celebration as part of the principle of a coaching session. I found it really essential as part of a healthy and connected lifestyle. Last night I was privileged to be reminded of the importance of celebration based on St. Paul’s love poetry (1 Corinthians 13: 4 – 8) and that has left me thinking about my own lifestyle of celebration. Have I been celebrating God’s goodness as He deserves?

When I put celebration in the right perspective, I found that it is way to grow in humility. This is how it made sense to me. Through my countless conversation with people I encountered (or I coached), it is common to hear this from me; “Have you celebrated your progress?” or “How are you going to celebrate this?”. It is also common for me to encounter a startled look, especially if the person has just started to talk to me or just started their journey with me. Those priceless responses were my opportunity to share what I believe celebration is all about.

For some of us, celebration can only happen if a big goal has been achieved and yes that is totally justified and necessary. Here I am talking about celebrating progresses along the way, even the smallest progress. I believe celebration is the fuel that propel us towards our goal. Very often I see people getting discouraged because they did not celebrate their progress. For them some progress is just way too insignificant. Think about this; without those seemingly insignificant progresses, can we actually make it to our goal? It is precisely those small steps that brought us to our goal.

You may wonder now, how can celebration be a way to grow in humility? So, this has been my story. The right perspective of celebration for me lies in the WHO. Who am I actually celebrating? Every progress we made is by God’s grace. From my experience, being able to acknowledge that God is the One who made it possible for me to progress in my journey brought me to a place of celebration. Celebrating the One who made it possible for me. When my focus is celebrating God, I am humbled because the focus of celebration is not me, rather it is Him who made me.

Through my journey of having coaching conversations, I also get these question often; “What do you mean by celebration? How do I do that? Must I eat all the time to celebrate? I encouraged people to celebrate their progresses by doing something they enjoy. For example; if you enjoy reading a book by the beach; then set aside some time to do that as a form of celebration. If you like eating, it would be so easy to celebrate though eating is not the best celebration if you are celebrating your progress in weight loss. If you like watching a movie; that would be a great form of celebration. And if you are a people person like me, celebrating with people who cares would be such an occasion of joy. To mark milestones, I would encourage we do something really significant like skydiving to mark your 30th birthday. Or something crazier like leaving your secular job to serve God full time (ONLY recommended if that is what God wants of you). Hence, it is also important to choose your form of celebration wisely.

I am indeed very blessed to be influenced by people who live a lifestyle of celebration from the beginning of my faith journey. These saints-in-the-making taught me the value of living life to the fullest – a life in humility that always acknowledge God as the provider of everything in my life, including the seemingly insignificant progresses I made in my life.

Dear friends, let us celebrate the goodness of the Lord in our lives. He is our reason of celebration and He is certainly worth celebrating as you are worth celebrating. I pray that celebration becomes the fuel for your progress in life and know that your being are worth celebrating.

With lots of love,

Irene