Tag: god

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

The Fruit of Myasthenia Gravis is Priceless!

On By IreneIn Affirmation, Celebration, Coaching, Courage, Faith, Grace, Healing, Hope, Journey, Kingdom Lifestyle, Mental Fitness, Myasthenia Gravis Healing Journey, Season of Life, Suffering, The Beloved Who Suffers WellLeave a comment

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.

With lots of love,
Irene

Healing is Possible – Thymoma 50% Shrunk!

On By IreneIn Healing, Myasthenia Gravis Healing Journey, Suffering, The Beloved Who Suffers WellLeave a comment

So I had a flare early Dec 2024 which took a worse turn after 2 sleepless nights. With the symptoms of Myasthenia Gravis (MG) not stabilizing well enough by my routine appointment in early Jan, I caved in to 2 doses IV immunoglobulin which required hospitalization. Since I was warded, my neurologist asked if I’d like a chest CT scan done. It has been almost 2 years since my last scan, so I thought why not (even though it was not exactly pleasant). And that turned out to be such a blessing because the scan showed a 50% reduction in size of the thymoma! What a great sign and sight of healing!

What my neurologist said when he showed me the scan report was even more remarkable. He said: “Irene, your prayer works!”. I was so in awe of the scan report that it took me a bit of time to take in what he said. That was a testament of my faith and this faith comes with work (James 2: 17). When I was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis (thymoma present), we were getting ready for me to have the thymectomy surgery done once I was stable enough. However, God has a different plan.

As I was preparing myself mentally for the open chest surgery, I told everyone in my family that was the plan. My mother was devastated considering the nature of the surgery which was pretty major. She asked me to reconsider and look for alternative. But at that time, there was no alternative presented to us. MG was really new to us and it doesn’t help that it is also a rare condition with a vast variability. Looking back I understand now that we were responding to a crisis situation that was pretty traumatic. Our lives changed overnight and we were faced with the unknown. In that situation, we just jumped in to whatever that was available.

As I stabilized, the Cardiothoracic (CT) surgeon was not available. That was on top of the lockdown chaos where everything was in disarray. A year later, I started wondering if God was inviting us to see another way. So I prayed for clarity. The blessing that came out of being sick with MG was my openness to learning (and unlearning). I ended up in the rabbit hole of health and discovered so many things that was shocking to me. Shocking because I have been accustomed to a certain way of living, a certain way of “intelligence” and a certain way of processing information. In the midst of the rabbit hole adventure, I discovered that the thymus still has important functions and roles for our immune system. What a shocking discovery! I was told the thymus is basically useless in adulthood but that is far from truth. So I started to lean on the direction of foregoing the surgery.

Part of the learning process also brought me to the knowledge that Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) modality of acupuncture is helpful for MG. So there I was, praying for a good one and God did not disappoint. I met my TCM Physician who has a Masters in autoimmunity, not only that, he also has someone dear to him that is in remission of MG. What a blessing! Through them, I discovered that it is possible to shrink the thymoma naturally with herbs. So that sealed our decision to go the natural way.

The thymoma diagnosis also made it possible for me to do this. It is well encapsulated and not pressing on any of my organs, so it’s actually pretty stable. With almost zero information (or evidence) on natural shrinking of thymoma, we entered our journey with faith (2 Corinthians 5: 7). At that time, we did not know if anything was going to work. The encouragement I got from people were generally to do the surgery while I still can. And after the MG crisis in 2023, I even told my husband if nothing change in my thymus, perhaps it’s time to reconsider the surgery. Right actions after that led me to feeling better and I sort of forgot about surgery. In the midst of that, we discovered ONE documented case of thymoma shrinking. That was giving me hope. And that hope and faith was rewarded with sight on Jan 2025.

I was overcome by joy and was really in awe of my Good God who sees, known and loved me. Filled with hope, I’d like to share this hope with you. In my subsequent posts, I will be sharing more of what I’ve done and changes that has contributed to the physical healing of my thymus. Do share with me your thoughts on this miracle I am experiencing and if you are in similar situation, do connect with me and let’s help each other in our journey of healing.

With lots of love,
Irene

This Is My Body

On By IreneIn Faith, Grace, Healing, Journey, Kingdom Lifestyle, Love, Sacrament, Season of Life, SufferingLeave a comment

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.

With lots of love,
Irene