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
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.
What do you do when you cannot understand the priest at mass?
My response was to pray that God speak to me directly. I read this sometime ago that not being able to understand the language fully (in this context, Latin), the grace to enter more deeply into the mystery becomes present. That has certainly been my experience while attending mass in Latin. The beauty of Christ is veiled in the Latin language, I found myself free to just be and connect to the mystery of my salvation in an inexpressible way. But when it is in English, a language I am familiar with, it feels really hard when I cannot understand the priest. This can happen when the priest speaks in a thick foreign accent.
God is still present nevertheless. My difficulty in understanding the priest does not undermine God’s grace. I can still “hear” him and I find this very interesting every time I have difficulty connecting to the priest. So in this particular mass, God spoke to me when communion was distributed. I was looking straight ahead at the priest distributing communion and this came to me. The Body of Christ was broken and distributed to each communicant, as we each receive His Broken Body, Christ gather us into One Body – His Body. Then this scripture came alive in me;
“If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.” ><> 1 Corinthians 12: 26 <><
My years of living with Myasthenia Gravis sure connects to this scripture. April of 2023 marks a deeply traumatic event in my journey; I had a myasthenic crisis that led to respiratory failure. The grace of God that overwhelmed me at that time also provided the space for me to connect the dot as to what may be the cause of the disease for me. Just a disclaimer, my view of the body is a whole, not fragmented into multi discipline of medicine branches. I am a whole person with different parts and each part is connected to the other. I felt strongly at that time that heavy metal poisoning was a plausible cause. The Holy Spirit confirmed this through my husband and my Integrative Medicine doctor; as both of them said the same thing to me. With that, we decided to move in that direction of removing all the mercury almagam filling while going on a heavy metal detox protocol. Praise be to God that I started getting better with each dental filling removal and replacement.
You see the poisonous mercury filling were all in my dental cavity but the poisoning affected my whole body resulting in a chronic illness. What does a chronic illness looks like? Imagine this; you have a cold and it lasted for a week, your body recover and you breath normally again. For a person with chronic illness, that one week last for years. It takes a split second for the onset of disease and it takes a much longer time to reverse it. We catch a cold just like that and it takes a week to reverse it. As for chronic illness, the disease may have been brewing through our toxic environment and when it reaches it’s peak, our body are not be able to hold it any longer, that’s when we are forced to stop and pay attention.
Similar to the Body of Christ, when one part is hurting the whole body hurts. When someone in the Body committed mortal sin, the whole Body hurt. We cannot ignore it. We need to nurse that part of the Body to health again. Question is how do we do that? In our highly snowflake and sensitive world, it felt out of place to point out sin. I have that difficulty because I feel that we should mind our own business. So what would be the most plausible way to nurse the wounded part of the Body of Christ back to health?
Personally I think the first step is to be aware that I am also a sinner and to remember what brought me to repentance in the first place. It is this living relationship with God that brought me back to the arms of the One who first loved me. Love stronger than death, most definitely stronger than my sins; touched my heart deeply. Ultimately our deepest desire is union with God for His love is sweet and life giving. Making amends to turn our life towards God is worth it. Repentance is sweet when we are in love and hence I believe the remedy is LOVE.
For someone to commit a mortal sin and not able to repent, it is very likely that this person does not have a living relationship with Christ. In our world where quick fix is glorified, it is so tempting to also do that to our brothers or sisters who is suffering the effect of mortal sin. But in reality, we are human. I started to grasp the reality of not quick fixing the others after becoming chronically ill. Not many people can grasp the fact that my condition cannot be fixed overnight, it’s not just a cold. I had to suffer through unrealistic expectation of others that I should be fine after some short period of time. Some still could not accept that I am no longer able to take too much rice (and carbohydrate in general), that choosing a different lifestyle supports my healing. Whenever I had a worsening, the frown on their faces was distressing to me. For this season of healing, I am also experiencing healing on a much deeper level. Those were moments of grace that taught me that my healing is not overnight. The “ah-hah” connections helped me to see that grace works in time. When the time is right, God revealed His message. So it is the same with the Body of Christ. The part that needed nursing back to health requires heaps of patience from the whole Body. We cannot rush the process!
The journey back to the heart of Christ is perhaps complex or in another way of looking at it, it is super adventurous. The result of our experience depended upon the choice of our view. Plain language may express it as being complex and when we choose to see it as an adventure, we yield our life to trust deeper. An adventure is both fun and stretching. In our journey of repentance, the joy and meaning that awaits us are enormous and it is possible through us saying yes to do the heart stretching work. May we find divine strength in our own journey of repentance and may we find compassion in accompanying the rest of the Body to wholeness.
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.
When I was researching on the whether women has the innate desire to mother, I was pretty surprise to see articles coming from secular sites that said it is a myth. So what they claimed is that not all women has that mothering desire or instinct. I personally don’t agree that it is a myth. The world we are living in are trying to take women away from their natural ability or desire to mother. We were told to be career focused, that motherhood can wait. What seems to be common is that something in us tells us otherwise. For me, it was hard to pin point what was that opposing forces within me – what I presented and live by was a strong career minded women who appreciated her independence. The other other part of me was feeling so satisfied and fulfilled when I spend time giving myself as a gift by nurturing young souls.
That was an expression of Spiritual Motherhood that I experienced as a single unmarried woman. Something unbeknownst to me when I enjoyed my time with my nephews, nieces and Goddaughters. Those years of living out my womanhood as a Spiritual Mother has prepared me to where I am as a physical mother now. The blessing is mutual: I was immensely blessed, so was my Goddaughters. Looking back at those days, I wish I knew these three guiding elements that would help me to be a joyful, effective and fulfilled Spiritual Mother. I share this is in full in this video and here’s the summary for those of us who prefer reading.
The first one is deepening our relationship with Christ. The Catechism of the Catholic Church No. 27 states;
The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for:
It cannot get clearer than this: our deepest longing or we may call it a deep hole that keeps on leaking unless it is filled with the love of God. Having a living relationship with Christ will fill that God sized hole in our hearts. Why does this matter for Spiritual Motherhood? The living relationship with Christ is the base of our lives, this is something for everybody. In the context of our service as Spiritual Mother, a living relationship with Christ will help us in the way of detachment. Long time ago, I had an encounter with someone who played the role of Spiritual Mother to me. She was incidentally available at the time I needed someone to talk through some issues I was facing. The conversation helped me to hear myself out and to calm down from the stress that I was experiencing. So I thanked her at the end of our conversation and she in turned said this: thank you for making me feel needed.
That actually left me feeling cringed. Gosh, the need to be needed can be unhealthy for us. If we are not careful, we can unintentionally idolize it. I acknowledge there’s place for being needed; as a mother I am needed and that’s a reality. To help us moderate and sanctify our need to be needed, we need Christ as our centre. The best way to do it is to make time for prayer. I would propose making the first hour of the day a sacred hour for the Lord. Spend that hour seeking knowledge of God through scriptures reading. It is also really good to read the commentaries on the chapter you are on. The sacred hour doesn’t have to be a full hour; it’s not five minutes either. It’s a chunk of time that you dedicate for prayer and scripture reading.
Becoming a woman of the Word is a way to shape our lives to be better Spiritual Mothers. Who is a better model of this than our Blessed Mother Mary? This brings me to the second element; consecration to Mother Mary. She is the perfect disciple, a woman of the Word and truly a woman after God’s own heart. In John 19: 26, Jesus gave His Mother to us. She’s called THE MOTHER in that verse. How awesome is that! She is our Mother as well! When I finally consecrate myself to her, I had in my heart set on having a relationship with her as well; I want to learn from her, I want to be a better disciple, I want to model after her as a woman after God’s own heart.
With that desire in mind, my consecration to Mother Mary has truly bear fruits of holiness. Areas of my life that needed sanctification were brought to light. Slowly but surely, I am growing in my dignity as a beloved daughter of God. It was also really interesting to note this beautiful connection of how Mother Mary was instrumental to intercede for me. I was so inspired to put aside time to live out my consecrated and intentional singlehood in 2014 and when that period ends, the main fruit was a clearer invitation as well as a clearer courage for me to embrace sacramental marriage as a state of life vocation. So with that fruit, I started a 54 Days Rosary Novena with the intention to pray for my future husband. My intention was to be married to a man after God’s own heart, that God is his absolute number one so that he will lay his life down for me, his bride. At the same time, I also prayed that I become a woman after God’s own heart, that God is my absolute number one so that I would be able to submit to this man God has for me. God wasted no time and got to work on me. The amazing thing then happened in 2017, when I finally decided to consecrated myself to Mother Mary. I did a 33 Days DIY retreat towards my consecration and at that period, I was reconnected to Hans, although totally unaware of the movement God was making through Hans. On consecration day, Hans attended the Assumption mass with me, we were seeing each other back then and the rest is History. Of course I am not suggesting that Mama Mary will lead you to your spouse but who knows!
When we intentionally make time to know Jesus deeply and when we consecrate ourselves to our Blessed Mother, our life becomes richer. This richness is meant to be shared in community which brings me to the third element; becoming part of a life giving community. We are social beings and as a woman, a support system outside our home is essential. It is also important to choose a community of people who are as committed to your growth as you are committed to theirs. What does a life giving community looks like?
Before we get there, let’s be a little cliche in this. I used to roll my eyes whenever people say this to me whenever I pointed out elephants in the room that existed in the community. I almost always get this: “there’s no perfect community, Irene”. Duh! I know, I just wanted to be heard. What it sounded to me was just an excuse to not change. But that line is true; there is no perfect community because we live in a broken world. This is something we need to be aware of when we join a community. A healthy community ought to be imperfect but life giving. Life giving in the sense of speaking the truth of Christ, providing support, encouraging and challenging you to rise up. This is the place you share and celebrate your growth as well as the place to get support when you are in need. A place where accountability is taken seriously. Try to visit different communities and see which one resonates with you most and which will support you in your journey of holiness.
I really wish I knew these 3 element more clearly when I was younger and made it a lifestyle more intentionally. Our dignity as women is God given, we are called to steward our gifts well and therefore express our identity in the best way possible. Our life experience is also so precious, there are times that we are honored and there are also times that we are disadvantaged. As in community, the world in which we live in is also not perfect, it is not always easy to navigate our lives as women. We feel the pains of loneliness, the pains of unfulfilled longings and so much more. Deeper than that is the truth that Christ is still our centre and He is faithful. In this Mother’s Day, may all women be honored in our dignity. To birth and adoptive mothers; thank you for loving sacrifices for your children. You are indeed the pillar of society. To all bereaved mothers, your tears are counted and thank you for growing even more beautifully in your vocation honoring the children that has returned to the Lord. To spiritual mothers, thank you for channeling your innate maternal energy to add colors and positive impact to the lives of our children and most importantly thank you for your sincere prayers for the conversion of the world. Happy Mother’s Day.
My dear sister Bea who was instrumental in bringing me to a space of living out my desire to be known has been supporting me to do something about it. That’s what got me into sharing my reflection weekly during a very trying time healthwise. God is so good in providing friends who supported me through it.
The second reflection is one that prompted me to step out in faith. One of my biggest struggle is faith in providence, it was difficult during my years as a full time lay missionary, it was still very challenging afterwards. With the lion within me awakened, I know what is required of me is just to step out in faith: I do what I know what to do (the natural), and then trust God fully that He will do the supernatural. Here’s the reflection written and shared on 18 December 2022, may you be blessed.
When desperate, call on St. Jude! That was exactly what I did on 9 Dec, asking many companions to pray together with me. St. Jude activated saints around me that loved me into the deep which eventually led me to stillness that brought about breakthrough.
Examining my desire to be healed led me to realise how much I did I not prioritise my body due to limited funds. I wanted to check the state of my body and take the right action, I did not. I wanted to do a proper body detox and cleanse, I did not. I wanted to eat more organic, that happened limitedly. Realising my own sin against my body; I apologized and reconciled with my body.
My body start opening up to respond positively to treatment. I started gaining more sleep with nightly deliverance prayer from anxiety. Then I started embodying a decisive identity of “I am important”. Being decisive to make me a priority led me to my current holistic doctor. With renewed hope, I’ve started a nutritional supportive regime and so far my body is responding well.
Praising God for His favour and thanking you for your continous prayer. As I dare to hope and trust in the Lord, I am also sharing my appeal with you. Please pray about this and I truly appreciate any form of support.
Love and blessings, Irene
#thebelovedwhosufferswell
With this reflection, I attached my appeal and my work in mental fitness promotional poster. For the purpose of sharing it here, I have removed edited out some information due to sensitivity and ethical practice.
The responses I garnered were mixed; some are very encouraging, some even took action to bless me financially, some immediately helped me to promote my work and some went totally silent. The silent part can be deafening and I took it with grace, believing that they are praying for me. This stepping out in faith exercise brought me to realization that I finally get it: I get the lesson that God is teaching me since the beginning of my YES to Him. The idol of my false sense of self sufficiency was well and truly shattered this time. I realized all these while, what I thought was lack of trust was rooted in me trying to control all the outcomes of my life including my attempts to control God. Now I understand the sense of lack of freedom whenever I am invited to trust God in financial providence. With all sincerity, I tried my best to trust and allow God to work but there’s more anxiety than freedom. This amazing breakthrough that came with the awakened lion within is grace from God. I am also seeing this partially as the fruit of my own daily practice of mental fitness. All these has been prepared before hand for me to come to a moment of grace where I dare to step out and I also dare to trust and allow God to provide as He pleases.
So here I am stepping out in faith to invite you to consider my work in mental fitness training. If you are curious about this, connect with me. If someone you know may benefit from this program, send them to me. I pray that you are blessed by my reflection and that you are encouraged to find victory in your challenges and sufferings. May you find the courage to step out in faith!
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.
Food is a great means of unity, celebration, expression of love, reconciliation, happiness and heaps of other things. For me food is my source of creativity. I am a person who refers to recipe and method but never really follow the exact measurement or method. Most of the time, I prefer to modify the recipe to suit my taste, the needs of my family as well as availability of ingredients.
Recently I felt inspired to try steaming fish the way restaurants did. It was a pleasant learning experience because in the past, I could not be bothered doing a few steps process. I like things simple and easy. However, my past way of steaming fish never produce truly satisfactory taste. With the newfound knowledge, I immediately hooked on to the method and started creating all sort of sauces for steamed fish. It was such fun experiments and I look forward to Fishful Friday just so I can create new dishes every week.
Creating food being therapeutic has been a great help especially when changing diet is a neccesity due to the autoimmune diagnosis. Eating healthy can be tasty and enjoyable. All that is needed is a dash of creativity.
I recently came to realise what a great gift is this expression of creativity. It was a difficult morning and I was starting to beat myself up for not being a perfect parent. I knew “being a perfect parent” is a lie, I had that intercepted so those negative emotions did not drag me further. As I was trying (and struggling) to gain better perspective, I decided to create a new dessert for dinner. It resembles milk pudding from my hometown but I have never been able to get any recipe. So with a little bit of imagination of the taste I began my experiment. Praise God it turned out well.
The effect of that 20 minutes of creativity was beyond just yummy dessert, I was able to clear my mind and start seeing things from a better perspective. I was able to show empathy towards myself and to express my loving concern towards my child. My level of happiness increased so was my overall wellness.
I recalled my days in the mission centre where celebration of life was emphasized. We will work together to create a beautiful atmosphere for celebration. The most elaborated one would be an Agape Meal that typically involved good food, well decorated room, well dressed people and heaps of honouring – a setting that enabled expression of creativity in so many ways. I remember having fun cooking, baking and sometimes trying things like decorating and flower arrangement. That kind of excellence has become my lifestyle though not as elaborated. We recently celebrated my husband’s birthday and it happened to be a Friday. I was jumping with joy as that was an opportunity to express myself creatively. I steamed a large fish and made a marble milk pudding as the “cake”. It was a joyous occasion filled with love.
Some of my food creation
The experience of having my mind cleared and filling my love tank through creative expression has demonstrated to me its importance. Creative outlet does something great to our being. It helps us to connect deeply to our true self and hence enable us to appreciate the being who’s made in the image and likeness of God. The direct impact is the release of stress and clarity of mind. In our fear saturated and highly stressed out world, creative expression becomes a remedy to bring us some sanity.
Dear friends, I pray that you are encouraged to make time for creativity, however you like to express it. May you find joy in the little things in life that fill up your love tank. Make sure you also empty your stress tank regularly. Have fun expressing yourself creatively.
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 