True North Missionaries Journal

One of my most recent revelations is something that my boss said to me on Thursday, “You’re always living in the moment and not thinking ahead. If you want to move forward, you need to look ahead.”

It’s not necessarily a bad thing to live in the moment. It was quite ironic that she said that because I know that I am a planner. I like to know what I’m doing ahead of time, down to the smallest detail. I used to have a bad habit of planning out exactly what I would do in a day (hourly), but I would never follow through. Essentially, I spent more time planning than doing. In my third and fourth year of university, I realized that it wasn’t working for me and I resolved to just ‘do’. I still planned ahead (to some degree) but I pushed myself to always follow through.

I realize now, that there’s a deeper part of me that used to over plan because I had trust issues with God. I used to feel that I had to do it all on my own, but the thought of having to trust the Lord with my plans terrified me. What if He took those plans and dreams away? What if the things I wanted would never happen? So I stopped planning ahead and looking forward. I began to live only in the moment, in order to just bask in the present blessings that He was allowing me to experience.

It worked for a good 3 years. I’ve come to know the God of my present time and have really learned to see the Lord working in my life as I live it.

However, I realize now that I don’t trust the Lord as much as I thought I did.

Let me explain something first. I am pretty emotional. Some people may think that I’m stoic, unapproachable, intimidating, or strong. The reality is that I am very passionate. When I invest in anything, I invest all of my heart. When I serve, I give all of my heart to the One I serve.  If you really know me, you’ll know this to be true.

Therefore, I know that if I dream, I will invest all of my heart into that dream. I have spent the last 3 years avoiding any thought or dream for my future because I have been afraid to dream for myself. I still struggle with the doubt of, “What if I hope for something that will never come?”. I don’t trust God (yet) to be my Promise Keeper because I am afraid to be heart broken.

I struggle with identifying God as my “Promise Keeper”, which is something that multiple people have confronted me with, without them even realizing. Early in the year, a beautiful sister in the GTA told me “He is a promise keeper. Trust Him”. During the MV SHOUT, Kuya Gelo shared that He loves calling God “Promise Keeper”.

In both instances, I still couldn’t bring myself to trust God, the Promise Keeper.

However, I was at St. Michael’s Cathedral yesterday and the state of the Cathedral inspired a thought. The extensive restoration process that is ongoing inside the Church, along with the scaffolding that’s set up throughout the church led me to think, “No one builds without a plan.”

After the multiple messages and calling to build a temple for the Lord within me, my area, and wherever mission calls me, I realize that I need to trust God so much to the point where I can Hope and dream again.

At my current state, I trust God to work in my life in the present. However, I want to trust God to work in my life in the future. I want to Hope in Him, be able to dream a future full of Joy, and trust that God will fulfill my dreams and desires for a life of Joy. I know it will be hard. Trust is not easily earned, but I trust God enough to know that the Lord will pursue me until all of my heart has been healed, made whole, and restored to Him.

After all, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies; thou anointest my head with oil, my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” (Psalm 23: 5-6)

AMDG

I find so much beauty of the Church in the sacrament of reconciliation.  It’s a very profound external act of forgiveness to someone who is in internal anguish to be embraced again. Can there be more beautiful than the goodness of someone who forgives and accepts? Can there be more goodness than the compassion of someone who embraces and never judges? Reconciliation is the splendour of the Church who proclaims Christ!

I read something about forgiveness years ago and it says, “In the ‘Our Father’, there is no mention of love, instead, we find the word, ‘forgive’. Perhaps forgiveness is the highest manifestation of love.”

I woke up this morning with Audrey Assad’s song, Restless playing as my alarm clock. As I went about my day the song lyrics kept replaying in my head.

Today, I was reminded of how important it is to rest. I had many plans for myself today. As I looked ahead on my day, I could not help but be so exhausted. I just wanted to rest and spend time with the Lord.

I did only one out of all that I had planned. As I reflected on how I failed to do all of my plans today, I realized that it was not such a bad thing. Rest is good! The Lord revealed to me that, in order to really internalize and recollect all of the recent happenings, I had needed to take some time for myself. Not just by myself but, with Him most especially.

The mission to love definitely does not stop, but it also does not mean that we cannot take a rest once in a while.

Today was a simple day. I rested with the Lord and reflected on all of the beautiful and wonderful things He has done for me.

Lord, thank you for the simple ways in which You continue to show Your love for me.

God is good!

I had recently come back from a trip to Philippines and South Korea. It was a wonderful experience and I should have been rightfully excited for it, but initially, I wasn’t. The last time I had gone to the Philippines was to bury my cousin – no, my sister. From my previous posts, you would be able to weave out a few things. 1) I’m fairly old (as I call the youth of my area “my kids”) and 2) I have younger brothers and cousins. In fact, out of 12 grandchildren on my mum’s side, I’m the oldest. My younger brother, Edward, is 6 years younger than me. So for 6 years I was an only child/grandchild, and thereafter, I was an older sister. Even in the community, since the time I joined, I always seemed to be one of the older ones.

Anyways, where am I going with this? Well… I just wanted to paint the picture of how, never have I really had an older sister. My older cousins on my dad’s side lived in the Philippines and it wasn’t until my early teens that the oldest of them moved here to Canada. She tucked me under her wing, and I became one of her 3 younger sisters. We had sleepovers, we would buy matching outfits when we shopped, she would do my nails, and we would talk about boys (LOL). Coming from a girl who played video games with her brothers, and then carried and bounced her baby cousins on her lap, taking part in these girly milestones with an older sister was something rather wonderful. She was incredibly strong, and even in our giggly conversations, this would always shine through.

A little over 3 years ago, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Stage Three. What did that mean? How fierce the cancer was and how much it had progressed meant nothing to me. You can ask my family, I was so sure that she would push through. God is a God of miracles. This is it… I had stored all my prayers and this is Your time to pull through for me, right? I was so sure that she would pull through that even when it was time to say goodbye, the only thing I whispered to her was, “Just focus on getting better. I’ll see you soon!” I never had the goodbye that everyone else allowed themselves to have with her. In my care package that I sent with her I had included a prayer for healing and a shirt of mine she always liked (it has wings on the back) and I stuck a post-it to it saying, “for when you get better and lose weight, like you said!”

As my time for the Philippines grew closer this year, I wasn’t excited. It was difficult for me to even feign excitement, although I tried. The truth was: I was going to face the fact that she was gone. I had tucked away her absence in the back of my mind and somehow, went on pretending that she hadn’t really died. Each time I thought about going back home, I knew I would have to stand before her tombstone and face the hard truth. I wasn’t ready, I was never ready.

The morning of my arrival, the first thing I knew I had to do was go to the cemetery. During the car ride, every single molecule of my body wanted to turn back. As I exited the car and began to walk, my stomach was in knots and my heart was thumping so hard I could hear it. But as I stood before her grave, I felt… I felt nothing. I felt an absence of a feeling. She… She’s not here. She’s not here. I had expected the feeling to be exactly as it was when I was leaving Philippines the last time. The way I kneeled there and hugged her tomb (it was an above-ground box thing) and had placed my forehead against the cold hard marble and whispered to her that I loved her. I had thought it would be just like that. But it wasn’t.

I had left the cemetery that day with this over-abounding sense of peace. I remember walking back to the car, looking up towards the sky, closing my eyes and exhaling, “She’s not here.” And for the first time, rather than focusing on her absence, I was able to really understand the greater-than-Earth place that she’s at.

 “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” 1 Corinthians 2:9

“The First Pentecost does not remain only limited in the moment but is an event that is renewed and renews itself again. Christ glorified at the right (hand) of the father, continues to realize his promise, sending the Holy Spirit to enliven the church who teaches and reminds us and makes us speak. The Holy Spirit is the interior teacher, guiding us along the path throughout the situations of life.”

– POPE FRANCIS

Since this year, I always here about Pentecost Sunday and the story of pentecost but never really took it to heart. Going to Neepawa for a Mission trip (2.5 hours away from Winnipeg, MB) and attending mass at St. Dominic’s Parish, I was really overwhelmed by how important the Holy Spirit is and should be in our lives.

He is the third person of the Trinity and gave birth to Jesus and the church. He is the one that strengthen and empowers us during those hard and difficult times. He is the one who lets us go beyond our human nature so that we can defeat evil.

He is one with God the Father and the Son.

Lord, fill us with your Holy Spirit so that He may dwell in our hearts and give us the strength and courage to go beyond what we are capable of doing. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

 

 

 

 Oh I love you Lord,
Oh I need you here.
Draw me closer to where you are.
I wanna be with you.

 How many times have I sang this song?
How many times have we belted out these words during jam sessions, worships, praisefests? As the chorus played out in my head, this is what Jesus revealed to my heart:

Where I am is here- at the cross. Do you still want to be with me? Do you still love me after this? Will you still love me even if you have to have swords pierce your own heart? If you do, then come closer. Stand before me with Mary. Behold and ponder the love I have saved just for you.

I never really looked at the words of the song until three days ago as I was preparing for a session. Our FTPW didn’t give me the outline until the night before. Part of me was really doubting my ability to give this session justice; I felt unqualified.  99% of the time this kind of talk is usually given simultaneously to both brothers and sisters by a couple in SFC or CFC.

God is so good because through this session I was able to personally realize how much growth my heart has gone through in the past year. I took a deep breath in between my notes and my eyes were all of a sudden fixated on the blinking date and time. Something clicked inside.

I went to my email inbox and typed in June 4, 2013. If my gut was right, one specific email would come up.

….And it did.

I read the email I wrote (exactly) a year ago and laughed to myself after; it was the hardest one I ever had to write. I had to end two decades worth of  “friendship” with someone because I finally realized how much clutter it put in my heart. It was an extremely toxic relationship and that day God made me choose. He asked, “Choose now which of us will be the King of your heart?”

This time, it really would have to be over. My Yes to God was going to cost a No to my friend. I doubted that decision the whole year after pressing “Send” up until that moment with the session points staring back at me.

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His love made me feel Whole.
He continues to pursue my heart and fill all the holes that my sins left behind. His mercy has seeped into every crack and crevice.

His gift of understanding allowed me to be more Open.
The eyes of my heart have been opened. I now see similar situations with different perspectives because I’ve allowed God to be the first man in my life.

His mother’s presence in my life has taught me to be Meek.
When a woman has a real man lead her, she has no need to overcompensate with a controlling attitude. When a woman’s heart is at peace, she allows others to rest with her. My devotion to his mother’s Immaculate Heart has really taught me the importance of submission- submission to her son’s will.

His constant guidance has made me more Elegant.
Beauty in a woman without good judgement is like a gold ring in a pig’s snout (Prov 11:22). I have found the beauty in patient waiting by coming to know my worth as a woman.  I am able to delight in the knowledge that I am worthy to be wanted, pursued and cherished.

His graces keep me Noble.
I will hold myself to a standard of grace, not perfection. When God is first in your life, you begin to align your life to a standard of excellence, a life worthy of heaven. I have become more vigilant of the things in my life that endanger my path to holiness, and I am quicker to dismiss it.

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Thank you Lord for transforming my heart! Thank you of never giving up on me. Thank you for being committed to me and being committed to my life. Everything can and has changed, but you will always remain the same!

We must become Holy, not because we want to feel Holy, but because Christ must be able to live his life fully in us. – Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta