Author: ChrisAnn Alvarez

“All things are naked and open to His eyes.” – Hebrews 4:13

Most of the time, loneliness stems not from the physical state of being alone, but from feeling misunderstood. Being alone in the recesses of your mind may be the most loneliest feeling. There are our acquaintances, our friends, our family, and we allow them into different parts of our lives; some knowing more of us, and some knowing less. But there are some parts of us that even if we tried to make someone else understand, they just won’t be able to.

For me, people see an areahead, and now an MV, someone who is constantly joyful and positive, a good student, an ideal daughter.. some of those can be contested depending on your relationship with me and the day you catch me on, but there’s a part of me that I feel is so untouchable.. no matter how much you see and how much I tell you, there will always be that part of me that will remain just mine. And I think that it’s when we focus on that part of us that we feel most alone.. You can tell someone about your disappointments, your sadness, and your hurts, but only you will truly understand the deepness of those pains.

God is more present in the parts of your life that you hide. He’s more present in those parts of me that I both try to push away to non-existence but the very parts of me that I hold on tightly to and clench my fingers around pretending both at the same time that they don’t exist, but also being acutely aware of their existence as I hide them. He is more interested in those parts of us, not to scold us or to shake his head in disapproval or disappointment, but to embrace us.

And when even our ugly parts are embraced, we know that we are truly loved.

 

I had long ago thought that as an areahead I had to show continuous strength and unwavering faith. It took many years before I changed this way of leading and I was able to show my brothers and sisters my weaknesses, my faults and my wounds..

I’ve heard about it several times before, I’ve seen it too.. People losing faith. It’s not an easy thing to witness and I never fully know how to respond when someone tells me that they are, other than to affirm the presence of God and His love for them.. but it’s difficult to believe you are loved when you feel hopelessly abandoned.

Even though you wouldn’t have been able to tell, the last few months have been the most difficult for me.

Although I told myself I wasn’t losing faith, my actions showed otherwise. While I still spoke to God, I felt that my words were floating up into the air and disappearing. You can’t really hear me..can you? My anger was contained but showed itself in ways that were uncharacteristic of my personality.

One morning, I stood there in my room and played the song Our God by Chris Tomlin(http://youtu.be/zlA5IDnpGhc) and as I started folding my clothes I started to sing.. I was alone in my house and my voice filled the rooms.. God You are higher, than any other. I sang the words loudly, believing in His greatness; that He is greater than my darkness. The words ran through me as I sang, and I believed each word as they left my mouth. The truth of those words scared every doubt and fear that had engulfed me. I stood there and I started to cry.. I cried out of frustration, out of anger, out of sadness.. and then I heard it..

“Have you lost your faith?”

“No God.. I’m holding onto it..”

All this time, I had felt as though I was losing faith.. I was doubting His love for me. When in fact, I was holding onto it.

The acknowledgement that you are losing faith doesn’t mean that you’re a hopeless cause.. The mere act of acknowledging it means that you’re still holding onto it.

“Young people, being and bringing Christ wherever they are”

Although we are in this community, are we staying true to what this community stands for?

 For me, my parents never forget to remind me when I’m not living out the CFC-Youth life. Although difficult at times, I am thankful for this constant reminder. When I was younger, I used to store different parts of my life in separate compartments. The me at school was different from the me at YFC events. I would swear, I would party, but then on weekends..where was I? I was raising my hands and closing my eyes and telling God that He was my all. Carrying two lives was heavy.. It took years for me to really be and bring Christ wherever I went, especially when I had friends who were self-proclaimed atheists.

Both people within the community and outside the community easily call each other out when they see someone being a hypocrite. If you look at yourself from an outsider’s perspective.. would you be able to see Jesus? But what if He is in your heart but in your tweets are profanity, swearing, and disrespectful words towards your parents? As an areahead, it hurts me to see this.. but brothers and sisters, it hurts God even more. Our actions when we are with people in the community are weighed less than our actions outside it. It is easy to pray and to speak of God when you are at a General Assembly on Saturday morning because you are with like-minded people.. but what happens when you leave that assembly?

Do we regress into being just another person of this world?

We are not of the world, we are of God…

During a shift last week, I had to check up on one of the tenants who missed his medication earlier in the day, which was out of character for him. As I stood and knocked quietly at his door and asked him if he was okay he replied that he was out shopping in the morning. He then asked if I wanted to see what he bought. I was surprised, but I cheerfully agreed. He opened his door and proudly showed me the gifts he had bought for his mom (“Rose”). Strewn across his tiny room was a painting with a rose and music notes (“she loves music”), a large pillow with a pattern of roses, a fancy lawn chair with a table that folded out with pockets on the side for magazines and books, and some tanning oil. He explained that his mom had been sick during the winter and became rather pale so he wanted her to go out and get some sun. As he was describing this to me, he unfolded the chair and motioned that he wanted his mom to put some sun tan oil on while basking in the sun on her chair. He had to make 5 trips in total to the local store to be able to bring all this back home with him!

This may seem rather small for anyone reading this.. but if you had read some of my posts before, you would know that a few of the people I work with were chronically homeless. This means that they have lived at shelters or the streets for a large part of their lives. I know that he had spent a good fraction of his monthly income to get these gifts for his mom so I couldn’t help but be concerned.

“You must have spent a lot on all this,” I told him.
“It’s alright, I still have some saved up. I can always go to the soup kitchen for my lunch and dinner anyway,” he replied.

These words warmed my heart and I would be lying if I told you that I didn’t tear up. The love he had for his mom… The gratitude he felt towards her was so inspiring. He had chosen to show his love for his mom by giving her gifts that he was unable to give her before. Although for me, I never know what to give my mom, it really made me think… Lately my mom and I have been bumping heads, not because of anything either of us have done, but more because of my desire to just be alone, and if your mom is like mine, you’d know that she doesn’t like distance from her children. His love for his mom had reminded me of how I needed to treat my own mom, the woman who gave, and continues to give, me and my brothers her all.

Lord, I thank you for this wonderful reminder.. I’m sorry for sometimes taking her for granted, and I thank you also, for the gift of a loving mother.

After a moment’s creativity, I was spurred to write a one pager a while back on how strange we humans are, especially if we were to look at ourselves from the outside. How we dye the hard protein on our heads (“hair”) different colours, how we paint the toughened keratin on the ends of our hands (“nails”), and although the parts of our faces all serve the same purpose from one human to the next, we insist that one can be “prettier” or “better looking” than the other. We spend large amounts of money (and time and effort to get this money) on brand names that really, are just pieces of cloth with the true purpose of covering our bodies. In terms of history, we are probably at the highest point when it comes to the amount we care about our appearances. Because of this, I can picture God frowning.. we invest so much time on how we look and how others perceive us that some of us, myself included, sometimes forget to give as much attention to our inner-selves; our spirituality and connection to God.

How others see us has become a central part of all our lives, whether we’d like to admit it or not. We have inherently become the generation obsessed with instagramming our healthy meals and our outfits that without even realizing it, the gap between the “haves and the have-nots” has increased. I’m not trying to instill guilt here (as I myself have posted several “ootds” and I’ve used the hashtag #brunch several times), but just simple realization. We need to continuously reflect on our actions and whether they glorify God or ourselves. Are we feeding our souls with true nourishment (#healthyliving, #cleaneating), are we also clothing ourselves with humility and joy (#ootd)? Are we able to reflect our Creator through our actions and show this love to others?

I had read somewhere earlier in the week that just as the parents are specifically chosen for their children, so too are the children hand chosen for their parents. This really flicked a switch within me.. Lately I have been thinking a lot about salvation.. I know this might sound strange, but when I was younger (maybe grade 1 or 2), I used to pray to God that my family and I would enter heaven together. I couldn’t stand the thought of being left here on earth without the two most important people in my life. Now, at 23, I still can’t stand the thought of us not being in heaven together, but not for quite the same reasons as I did back then…

My dad had gone on vacation to the Philippines for a little over a month, and upon his return I wanted the two of us to go to confession then mass together. I know it has not been since elementary school that he has gone, and I felt a tugging at my sleeve to bring him with me.

When Holy Thursday came, I knew that there was an hour of confession before mass rather than the usual 15 minutes so I invited him to come along. He was very nonchalant with his reply, telling me that we had already gone on Sunday and he would be tired after work. I remember shrugging and telling God I tried, but He was unhappy with that answer and asked me to try again.

Just some background on my dad.. He’s not the religious type. At the age of 30, he married my mom, and at that time he didn’t even know the Our Father. He was never raised in a household where God was put first, or even acknowledged. It’s not a surprise then that my dad wasn’t very in on the whole God and church thing. However, through the years, I watched as my dad slowly became the man of God that my family needed and I stand in awe at how much he has changed. From previously discouraging me from attending the activities as they were time consuming, to encouraging not only me, but also my brothers to attend all activities. I never expected the day to come when he would be knocking on my door telling me to get up because we have to go to mass together, even if my mom is at work or my brothers are at my aunt’s, we would go, just me and him. However, although my dad asks us to pray before and during our road-trips, is open and helpful to me serving within the CFC-Youth community, attends mass religiously on Sundays and openly talks about God during family dinners, he still stands there during mass without saying the responses or singing the hymns, and it was only within the past couple of years that I managed to convince my parents to come up with us for communion.

Anyways, the next Tuesday rolled in and I was nervous to ask again. My dad’s a tall and seemingly serious man with a deep and booming voice, and although loving and kind, he pretty much has the last say on things. I went to the kitchen where he was eating lunch and I stood there for a good five minutes in silence before he asked me what was wrong. I took a deep breath and told him that I really wanted him to come to mass with me the following day (as I go on Wednesdays for the Novena.) I hold this conversation very close to my heart, and in order to include it here without divulging such a private moment, I’ll simply say that in the end, he caved in. 

When the next day rolled in, he and I ran some errands in the morning then headed back home. I thought he would have forgotten or might avoid the topic, but just half an hour before mass, he knocked gently on my door and asked if we were still going. I was so joyful the entire drive to the basilica as I went over the process of confession with him. However, we were running late and confession was going to end in 5 minutes. I remember then closing my eyes and asking God to wait for us, just a few more minutes please, this would be the first time in almost 40 years, just a little longer.. When we finally parked, I jumped out of the car and ran to the basilica with my dad taking slow strides behind me. When we got inside, the priest was just turning off the light in the confession box and I asked for him to wait. I watched as my dad stepped in and I in the one further down. I spoke a little to the priest afterwards so that when I had come out of confession, my dad was already standing in the pews. I watched in real amazement as he said his prayers with his eyes closed, and I quietly slid in and began reciting the novena. I continued to be surprised as my dad recited the entire novena with me, and at the end, he even sang Ave Maria. My dad.. singing? It was a beautiful and amazing experience for the both of us, and I came out of this day feeling as though he and I shared a wonderful secret, and I remember we both smiled quietly the entire ride home.

I just thought I would share this moment with other youth.. from someone who has been in the CFC-Youth community for almost a decade.. It may be difficult for some whose parents are not in CFC or are hesitant for their child to take part in activities. These youth may be experiencing a sort of schism between themselves and their family.. but my dear brothers and sisters, I can attest to God’s faithfulness. If we stand firm in our faith and stay true to the teachings, the change within us will inspire others… if we are able to walk the talk at home, our parents will know of the good that this community can bring, and even more importantly, the goodness of the God who loves us all.

I praise God for my earthly father. Lord, thank you for choosing him for me.

Last February I commenced training at another program within the organization I work for; but this time it was with women suffering from addictions. We’re not talking about marijuana or alcohol; we’re talking cocaine, amphetamines and other hard drugs.

All 11 women within the house are either currently involved or have been involved in the sex trade. Although some shifts posed their own challenges, one in particular made it difficult for me to go back to the program. At 6:45am, just 15 minutes before the end of my shift, the doorbell rang frantically. I rushed down the stairs and to my surprise, whoever was trying to get into the house was already in, and they began to scream and hit the walls, using profanity as they walked up and down the hallways. I called them to the front of the house and the woman (clearly intoxicated) ran up to me, face almost touching mine, and she continued to yell. I locked myself into the office and she began kicking the door, and banging on the windows. To cut the story short, I ended up calling the police to escort her to Recovery (another program) to sober up.

I went home that morning, clearly shaken. I took a long walk to the basilica where mass was soon to begin. Although physically and mentally drained, I wanted nothing more than to kneel and find rest in my Father’s house and to thank Him for keeping me safe throughout the ordeal.

That night, I laid in bed going over the occurrences of that day. I thought about the women in the program, my great fear of returning to work, and I started to ask God.. I asked Him to show me that He hadn’t forgotten about these women. Although I never label them as such, in lament terms (and as a biblical comparison), they are, in fact, prostitutes. But beyond that they experienced homelessness, mental and physical abuse, addictions.. Lord, did you forget about them? And before I even finished my question, a loud and clear voice said, “I sent you there, didn’t I?” I was shocked into silence. I was sent, to literally serve the people scoffed at by society, the people who were swept under the rug. It has been, and continues to be, a humbling experience.. It really made me realize that we are His instruments, and although the circumstances may not be ideal, or even good.. we are called, and we are sent.