Tag: jesus

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

mindset matters thymoma healing myasthenia gravis

Mindset Matters In Healing Journey

On By IreneIn Faith, Grace, Healing, Mental Fitness, Myasthenia Gravis Healing Journey, Season of Life, Suffering, The Beloved Who Suffers Well, WorthLeave a comment

The difference between a strong mindset day and a weak day can be felt in my body. On days I feel strong and possible, it normally go that way – strong and possible, symptoms at bay. When my mind are being cluttered with objections to what’s possible, my body gets the bashing – symptoms flare. After years of living with Myasthenia Gravis (MG), my observation is that it is way better to have a strong mindset. It takes time to build up those mental muscles and the good news is that our brain is pretty dynamic to serve us better.

Mindset in the context of healing basically covers how strong or how deep is our belief that our body has the capacity to heal. Do we believe that healing is possible? Knowing the answer to this will help us to see how far we will go. If our belief in healing is not that deep, we can change that because again our brain is dynamic and those mental muscles can be retrain towards serving us better. The next question to ponder is; are we willing to do what it takes to get to our desired bodily healing?

I sure am willing but I was also painfully aware of my own limiting beliefs. It was like a tug of war in my head; I really desire and believe that healing is possible for me and at the same time there’s an opposing voice throwing doubts. My prayer at times like that mimics the father from Mark 9: 24 – Lord, I do believe, help my unbelief. His grace indeed does not disappoint as He continued to help me to strengthen my belief.

During the early days of diagnosis, things can be overwhelming and I was not spared of that. I remember hearing so many noises and I did not know which one to believe. All I knew at that time was that the journey of healing is going to be grace-filled for me. I started learning about more about MG just to gain better understanding on what’s going on with me. The things I learnt did not always sit well with me; in fact some of the information or medical labels was personally quite discouraging. One example is the definition of autoimmunity. It is commonly expressed as your body fighting against you. That did not sit well with me because I believe in a God who made all things well and that includes my body. Our body is made to fight for us, not against us. It is made to protect us but why autoimmune happened then?. That question led me to dig deeper into the health rabbit hole that I got into and I found a definition that resonates better with me. 

What causes disease is first of all a weak body as a result of toxin accumulation. The accumulated poison in our body can then confused our immune system. Therefore my body needed of help and time to detoxify, and then heal itself. With a picture like this, I felt at peace with my body. Knowing full well that my body is not at war gave me confidence and even built up my endurance in the healing journey. Just the change of view or label if you’d like that; change my whole perspective which in turn change my belief system to a more life giving one.

The opposite of life giving is life taking and what often caused that is FEAR. Fear is an integral part of life, necessary for survival but there is also fear created by our hypervigilant mind. These fears are often a result of a traumatic experience. For those of us who live with a chronic condition, it is a traumatic experience to be diagnosed with something that change our lives forever. For me I can no longer be that energizer bunny I used to be; my level of efficiency dropped and it takes me way longer to complete a task that used to be easy for me; at the peak of the symptoms I cannot even tie my own hair. There was a period of time when driving was so hard that I gave up for safety reason. It was hard and it can be scary. So I recognized how my hypervigilant mind would “warn” me about dangers that were often irrational. If not properly addressed, these fears can cripple us to the point of not living well.

Just a few weeks ago, I went for a walk on a lonely road surrounded by beautiful forest accompanied by the sound of the river. On the side of the road were lands owned by independent farmers, so on one of side of the road, I spotted a few empty chemical barrels. Immediately fear kicked in; my heart rate went up and I started to feel symptoms rising. In Apr 2023, I had a myasthenic crisis requiring ventilation that was caused by chemical induced pneumonia. Long story short, I was exposed to pesticides while walking at a park. The memory of the ICU stay came rushing in and it was not pleasant. My survival mind said: I do not want that again. Thanks be to God I became aware of what’s going on in my mind, it was my hypervigilant mind going on high alert and it was irrational. I started doing pursed lips breathing to calm myself. As I calmed down, I started thinking more clearly: I was in a way better state than I was in 2023. I’ve done a lot of work on my body, so my body has way better ability to detox, plus the thymoma shrunk by 50% and scripture said that no poison shall prevail against me (Mark 16: 18)!. I said a prayer and told myself that it is safe, that I am strong enough for this and that if any chemical has been sprayed, it would have been some time ago as evidenced by the appearance of the grass.

Regulating back to safety reinforces in my mind that the irrational fear can be overcome. I finished that walk feeling stronger, climbed about 800m of distance in a 200m ascend without the need of mestinon (the anticholinerase drug I used to help manage symptoms). 

Stronger mindset is a life time of work. As we build our mental muscles, we will also grow more resilient and will be able to do things that was seemingly impossible when we were not living with chronic illness.  Do you find this helpful in your journey? Let me know in the comment what helps you to build a stronger mindset. Let’s connect to support each other in our journey of building stronger mental muscles.

Our being is body, mind and soul. To achieve bodily healing, actions need to be taken to give our body the best chance. I will share more in depth in my next post.

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