Category: JumpStart

Courage to be Authentic

On By IreneIn Coaching, Courage, Faith, Grace, Healing, Hope, Journey, JumpStart, Kingdom Lifestyle, Live the CallLeave a comment

The theme of courage has been filling my heart lately partly due to recent events. When asked how would he liked to be remembered, Charlie Kirk answered with conviction that he would like to be remembered for the courage of his faith. That got me to ask myself: “Am I living courageously for my faith?”. The experience of the love of God compel us to change our way, to repent from our sins and return to the heart of the Father. From the Sacred Heart of Jesus flows the wellspring of life for each one of us, which brings us to live a purpose filled life.

It has certainly been an adventure for me; from the excitement of love to the enduring choice to keep on loving. Almost exactly like my marriage, which by the way was today seven years ago. We began with the experience of love and the commitment to love brought us to where we are today – more resilient and more in love. And as I reflect on my journey of faith, I see a pattern of how it grew and still growing. From the “feeling” of love, I made the commitment to give my life to Jesus and started discovering more about God and myself. The more I see myself from the lens of the Father, the more I heal from my wounds that has manifested in forms like self doubt, severe self judgment and fear of all sort. Fear was (still sometimes is if unchecked) my biggest reason that I held back from being authentic. I feared judgment from others, I feared that others would not want to be my friend if they know what my opinions are, I fear losing my job for my principles and the list goes on.

The remedy of it all is to have courage to live authentically. How can we do that if we do not know who we are? What would happened to how we show up if we believe that we are a horrible person? I’d imagine that we would not be a pleasant company and the outcome would be disastrous. Therefore our courage has to come from the victory of the Cross. I used to be a person who wouldn’t care less of what others would say about me, I thought I was being me because I did not want to suppress how I really feel. So sometimes words that came out of my mouth were sarcastic and unkind. Now being a more mature Christian, I come to appreciate the value of being form more and more into the likeness of Christ, the value to go through sufferings that smoothen out my rough edges. And I praise God that He gave me the time, space and the right appointments that helped to change. It is indeed humbling to think about this gift of grace that has been given to repent and return to His heart.

My right appointments that has helped me in my journey were effective faith programmes and right people on my path. And it began with two amazing programmes that I’d like to encourage us to consider. First one is ‘Who Am I?”, my biggest takeaway was learning about my inner creed. I learnt that what I believed affected how I live my life. Or rather it was the vice verse way of discovering, how I live my life is the reflection of what I really believe internally. For example, if I am always suspicion of people’s motive of helping me, I probably believed that people are generally untrustworthy.

Discovering and healing the image of God and self through “Who Am I?” would prepare a person well for the next programme, JumpStart because now that part of the “baggage” is unloaded, we are ready for more. From JumpStart we will find out more about our passion and what makes us alive. We will also be given the tools to make it our lifestyle. The journey doesn’t end there, in fact that’s the beginning towards a more fulfilling life. From there, I would recommend that we go on a coaching journey. Through coaching whether it is personal or group, we can find strength to overcome obstacles on our way. We find ourselves more inclined to spend time with people who celebrates our growth and our lives will be lived out more authentically.

My life journey has been blessed (still being blessed) with all these right appointments along my way. Dear friends, would you like to explore the possibilities of these right appointments? Connect with us today and may you be blessed abundantly.

With lots of love,
Irene

*This article is also published in livethecall.live

What Does It Mean To Be Fully Alive?

On By IreneIn Affirmation, Celebration, Coaching, Dreams, Faith, Grace, Journey, JumpStart, Kingdom LifestyleLeave a comment

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

Why Pursuing Our Passion is Crucial for Our Children

On By IreneIn Celebration, Commitment, Courage, Creativity, Dreams, Faith, Grace, Healing, Homemaker, Homeschooling, Hope, Journey, JumpStart, Kingdom Lifestyle, Motherhood, Season of Life, WorthLeave a comment

What legacy do you want leave? How would you like your children to remember you? These are questions that I asked myself often. I aspire to be a mother who inspires my children to rise higher and that involves some sacrifice from me. In my current triple-H reality of Homemaking, Homeschooling and Health Healing, wanting to rise higher myself can feel like an impossible task. Parenting is energy intensive and it can drain us at the end of the day. Some days I feel like I don’t even like my child due to the drained energy. And those are the days that I easily fell into the trap of blaming her for not being able to live my life fully. By the grace of God, I am aware this is not to be. My child is my reason to rise higher not my stumbling block.

After days and months and years of reflection and evaluation, I came to see some light. I want to pursue my passion and dreams as my means of living fully. That in turn will fill my tank and that tank overflows to my child. But I also need to be realistic; what works and what does not. How do I move in the ever changing rhythm? What becomes important in this journey? I am going to share practicals in three areas that would hopefully help us to move forward in our journey of pursuing our dreams.

Stress Management
This is an inevitable part of our modern life. Stress is also a nasty cause of diseases, hence it is so important to possess the skills to manage our stress. In my current reality, my days are pretty full as I am the kitchen ministry, cleaning ministry, children ministry, health ministry, purchasing officer etc. I cook most of our meals at home due to our health condition. My child is involved in cleaning, cooking and housework as this is part of homeschooling. This does not make my task faster but it does make our lives more pleasant and fun. Living with Myasthenia Gravis has limited me in a big way and to add that on, being a supporting wife of a struggling entrepreneur added a good amount of stress in my life.

So what works best when life gets overwhelming? Before the downward spiral spins out of control; STOP, PAUSE and BE PRESENT. This helps with emotion regulation. Simply by noticing your breathing or any one sense at a time helps us to relax. Just doing it for 5 minutes can free our body from the grip of stress. Once we are calm, we can acknowledge what happened in a neutral way and then let the grip go. This is helpful on a daily basis and when practiced intentionally, we trained ourselves to relax and let go of stress whenever we need to.

Staying Focused on Your Dreams
What are your passions and dreams? What makes you alive? Are you working on it? These are questions that would give us a clue where we are at with our dreams. If you can name your dreams, write them down and have it in a prominent place. Take encouragement from this scripture;

This serves as a good reminder of what is in your heart and what you are working towards. If you are unsure of your passions and dreams, I’d like to invite you to connect with us at JumpStart. JumpStart is a programme that will help you to discover what’s in your heart and you’ll also receive the tools to plan towards them. Engaging with a coach or someone to accompany you in your journey of the pursuit of your dreams and passions is a good idea regardless of where you are at.

Incorporating Your Dreams in Your Daily Life
Pursuing our dreams as parents is a delicate balancing act. First thing to evaluate is our daily and weekly rhythm. What does your typical day look like? What time do you wake up and then what follows? Are there time in my day that I wasted? I surely have that, I sometime waste my time on the internet doing things like scrolling videos that did not help me to further my dreams. Including time wasting activities in our evaluation will help us to clearly make a decision of what work best for us.

Making pursuing our dreams part of our lifestyle IS going to cost us. Be prepared to make sacrifices for our children and also be gracious towards ourselves from time to time. I am a typical go getter hyper achiever type of person. When I am focused on something, it is not easy to slack that off. So for me, growth is to be able to slow down, enjoy the learning from parenthood, soaked in the love of the Father in my season and be gracious to myself when I did not achieve what I aimed to do. It will take longer for me to pursue my dreams but what’s important is that I am on the track.

These practicals becomes easier when it is lived with great intention. I highly encourage having someone to journey alongside you as you pursue your dreams. Our children are precious and they deserve to have great role models in us, their parents. May you find great fulfillment as you pursue your dreams precisely because of your children.

With lots of love,
Irene

Believing Without Seeing

On By IreneIn Commitment, Faith, Hope, Journey, JumpStart, RestLeave a comment

One of my biggest conviction after living in a missionary community is nothing great can ever happen without prayer. Intercessory prayer played an important part of our Christian life and that is demonstrated throughout scripture. Having witnessed first hand the importance of intercession, I decided to invite a friend to start interceding for JumpStart, a programme I am passionately running now.

JumpStart has turned my life towards the dreams God has for me and I am delighted to have journeyed with and witnessed lives changed through this workshop. The recent message from our intercessory team suggested a time of faith strengthening – a time where I just need to believe that seeds are being planted even if I am not seeing it. For a person like me who’s very result orientated, not seeing anything happening on the surface is very challenging.

How can I continue to persevere when I don’t see a single sign up? When every odds seems to be against me, how can I see through the eyes of faith? With my own strength, I simply cannot. I am blinded by the adversities, the lack of communication and the biggest one is the lack of response. All these things made me question if I have really given my best? I felt really helpless to not be reaping any fruits and that tempted me to just settle for the easier path.

In the midst of the struggle I felt comforted that the still small voice refused to let me give up. Through my struggle, God continue to teach me and encourage me. I came face to face with my poverty – my inability to listen to God and to trust Him in totality. It’s frustrating when things does not turn out the way I want it to be. When faced with my human-ness, I am at times tempted to run away but I knew that is exactly where God is meeting me. It’s a comforting truth that my soul needs to experience.

Would the end result be of great success? I don’t know for now. What I do know is to continue to be faithful and do all that I can to make JumpStart available to more people. For my part now as I could not see anything in the horizon, the best way forward in believing would be to humbly ask for the grace to trust. This grace will also help me to enter into His rest and I believe that the power of rest opens up the floodgate of trust and love.

Dear friends, in times of doubt I pray that you will be carried through by abundance of grace. May you experience breakthrough and may your heart be filled with praise and worship of our Almighty God.

With lots of love,
Irene