Tag: service

Wanderlust

I have this unfathomable love for airports and for traveling. I love looking at maps and globes. I get giddy over every customs stamp that gets added to my passport. I love stamps. I adore airplanes (hence my alias paperairplanedreams). Within the past 24 months I have been to more cities and countries than I could care to count. I suffer from wanderlust.

I was “planted” and rooted in PH, but cultivated in Toronto. That really pushed me to have this hardly home but always reppin‘ mentality. We moved quite a lot growing up so I could never really appreciate where I was. Even though we’ve rooted ourselves in Mississauga for a while now, the child in me was so used to relocating that I never realized how hard it was for me to be present in the here and now. It was so easy for me to love every other destination, yet so challenging for me to see the beauty in where I already was.

It affected the way I approached my spiritual life. It became some sort of hide & seek game; God was at my next travel destination. God was two plane rides away. God was five cities to the south and ten cities to the north. God was a twenty-six hour bus ride or a five hour drive. God was in the middle of the ocean, on top of a mountain, or beneath at the caves. God was everywhere to me but here. At home.

Then he slapped my hand, figuratively of course. He used the same voice I use when I reprimand my kindergarten students- firm but loving.

There is no need to search for God because He meets us right where we are. God doesn’t meet us halfway, He meets us right where we are. God is in the people I interact with everyday. God is in the youth I serve with and serve for. God is with the students I teach. God is with my family. God is with my friends. God is in the air I breathe, the sky that embraces me outside, the sun that illuminates my path, the rain that touches my skin, and the ground that catches my feet every, single, morning. God is in me.

You cannot search for what has already been found.

His lesson: it is not in the changing of locations that you will come to know me and my works. Rather it is in the changing of your hearts and its posture that you will be oriented back to me. That you will come to see my love, to know my love and be my love.

I will meet you right where you are.
I will love you where you are.

Remain in me, just as I remain in you.

Extremely Favoured

Thirty minutes after my shift ended today, I walked into my director’s office with a heavy cloud looming over me, and no it wasn’t the one outside that’s been causing all this crazy rain here in the GTA. Approximately 23 days from today I will be hopping on a plane (again) but this time with my family.

I was sure that I’d be coming home with bad news today- that our upcoming family trip would cost me my job. We will be gone all of July which means that I’ll be missing out on my service for the Eastern True North Conference. Since I didn’t feel too comfortable with that, I started a novena for the Western True North Conference in Calgary that’s happening Mid-Aug. I’d be back just in time for that. I don’t know how it would be possible financially, but God has provided for me under worse conditions before. It doesn’t hurt to ask.

To put things in perspective, I was just granted a two month leave (MAR-MAY) even though I only started in September of last year. I’m only five weeks back in my classroom and here I was expecting my director to approve another sudden leave of absence. How was I going to explain to her that I needed 2 months….again?

———

I knew I had to call on Mama Mary so I did the rosary during my lunch break hoping that she’d send an extra serving of peace. She gave me that and a spoonful extra. Knowing how I am, I knew I’d find every excuse not to ask permission today. So I walked into the staff room, had a quick convo with God and He reassured me that no matter what the outcome would be, there was already a victory. Even if I was to lose my job, I would still have my family vacation.

In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths || Proverbs 3:6

Brothers & sisters, I walked out of that room not with storm clouds, but with sunshine and a double rainbow. I am extremely and irrevocably favoured by God. Not only did my director tell me that my leave would be approved, she made it very clear to me that she would ignore any talk of resignation. My classroom is secured. AGAIN. My job as a preschool teacher is on reserve.

That’s not all.

I will be receiving paid vacation time, which means that there’s an extra paycheque coming in while I’m gone. That amount is enough for a round trip ticket to Calgary.

“It’s never about whether or not YOU can provide for yourself. Faith is knowing that you have a God who can do wonders for you. Faith is knowing that He is of divine providence. It was never about you to begin with! So the next time you consider whether or not you can go, take your question to God first, and don’t let it just die with you. That’s the beauty about our relationship with the Lord. Sometimes we don’t even do anything yet he still showers us with abundant blessings. He still wants to keep capturing our hearts. He still wants to reach out to us. But first you have to allow yourself to see the ways in which he tries to reach out to you. All he needs is your Yes.” (July 19, 2012)

The Lord hasn’t stopped showing me how extremely favoured and extremely loved I am. He affirmed me just now by allowing me to reread that old blog post. Little did I know that the “yes” I gave 500 days ago would lead me here, walking on a path made wonderfully and beautifully paved straight for me. 

The Giver!

I will serve the Lord when He gives me “X”!

X = Being a favourable situation, person, object, grades, timetable, salary, co-workers, bosses, etc

How many times have I heard this in one-on-ones, in a random sharing, or when conversations focus on a person’s ” game plan” for his/her life. In fact most of the time I fall into this trap myself. I will serve the Lord when He has fixed my family’s finances. To give a talk when He has prepared for me the right conditions: no rain or snow, someone picks me up and takes me home, food is available, ample time for me to prepare preferably two weeks in advance, etc. When He gives me a good salary so I can save up for my future family.

While all of this is well and good, it is easy to fall into a trap of taking comfort in the gifts and blessings. That when these comforts are taken away, and for sure they will be, that our service suddenly stops because our parameters for service are taken away.

The gifts that the Giver gives are blessings and comforts that He bestows on us for us to better know and experience Him. The Giver is in fact infinite, and therefore His gifts can come in an infinite number of forms. His blessings can come in the form of a sunrise, in fact any person can sense God nature of how wondrous it is. But it takes a different kind of sensitivity to see the gifts in our day-to-day struggle. When deadlines are choking us. When our bosses are breathing down our necks in order to deliver our company’s needs. When our family members are sick. When relationships are tested. When moths come out of our wallets.

It is when our parameters of service change that our focus on the Giver allows us to be sensitive enough to see that the gifts He is giving us has changed. It is when we recognize these gifts that we come to know and experience Him better. Our focus then lies in the Giver of gifts, and not on the gifts themselves.

Our yes to Him is our yes to Him not because we say yes to what He gives us, but because it is Him we say yes to. Our service then becomes definite, purposeful, and unstoppable because the focus is on the Lord and on nothing else.

I will serve the Lord because He has given me “X”.

X = Himself

 

2 Corinthians 1:3-7

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.

Veni Sancte Spiritus.

Come Holy Spirit.

Consume us. Refine us. Purify us.

Fix our eyes on You.

Veni Sancte Spiritus.

The light that leads

“If you haven’t surrendered it to God, then you’ve surrendered it to someone else.”

I recently attended the GTA Area Core SHouT this past weekend and there are not enough words in the dictionary to describe the plethora of events that happened within those 5 days. So I’ll just use one: enlightened.

You know when you’re at a sleepover and everyone’s already passed out cold on the beds and floors. The morning after is hard to get through. You’re tired and exhausted. You have some sort of consciousness- awake but not really. It’s not until someone draws the blinds or curtains to expose the harsh sunlight rays that you feel the urgency to get up. It’s already half past noon and you’ve just wasted half the day away.

That’s how my recent experience with Christ was at SHouT. He turned on the lights. The light allowed me to see everything that was in that room, rather…my life. Enlightened- one’s ability to be spiritually aware. The Lord allowed me to see His plans for me that much clearer.

But see, when you turn on the lights EVERYTHING gets exposed, not just the good stuff. You don’t have a choice. But God is a god of light and peace- The truth, His truth is exposed in all its glory.

I’m facing the skeletons in my closet right now, some I thought I buried a long time ago but really just put a drape over. God’s light drew me to these areas, the crevices and corners, the edges and cracks. The small things count, because to God everything matters. As much as it hurts me to pull out long overdue band aids, I know that with His love I’ll finally be able to heal properly.

“Ate, it’s like when you make a paper boat and then you put it in the water. That’s how you’ll know if your boat is good or not. It might start to sink because of a hole, but all you have to do is just take it out and then patch up whatever holes exist.”

It had to happen this way for me. This was God’s way of telling me to patch up those holes so that my boat could float. How else can I be a better person or leader if I don’t allow God to shine His light on every single area of my life, even the dark sides- the ones I don’t want to look at. In this way, I can confidently go out and allow the God in me to shine.

Send out your light and your truth; let them guide me.- Psalm 43:3

Is that what you really want?

When you spend every waking hour with 20+ other CFC-Youth members for a three- week period the normal conference high quadruples.  You never really come off the mountain experience you’re feeding off of each other’s vibes. We all came with different service backgrounds but what we shared was this search for God in a land foreign to us. Our pathways all merged into some sort of Lord of the Rings quest thus making the journey less tiring. So when the time came that I had to leave my tightly sealed and sheltered CFC-Youth pack to transition back to my regular Philippines environment, I really felt displaced.

Right after the two week World Great Adventure Tour, I went on a five day excursion with my childhood friends to Iloilo, Guimaras and Boracay. Halfway through our trip we stopped by this Trappist monastery. It was part of the day tour and to be honest with all the changes that kept happening I really needed to find myself in something familiar. A church seemed like the best option. Now I’ve entered dozens of churches here in the Philippines and the beauty each one holds always takes my breath away. But there was something different about this one.

As soon as I entered through the gates, my tear ducts hit some sort of overdrive. Something caught my throat and my chest tightened up. Something was tugging at my heartstrings, and it wasn’t being very gentle. All throughout the year I’ve felt God playing hide and seek with me. The moments that He decides to make His presence felt always catch me off guard and I can’t help but feel as if some hypothetical suckerpunch comes flying at me. Ultimate silence filled my head while my heart was being flooded with a million and one different emotions spurred by nothing.

Then out of nowhere, I felt God asking me in the most casual tone:

“What do you really want? I’m not asking you what you think I think you want. I’m asking you to tell me what the desires in your heart are. Of course I know them. I know what will bring you happiness, but I need you to vocalize what YOU want…what you FEEL you deserve to have in your life.”

It was probably one of the most humbling moments throughout this trip. There’s a difference between giving an answer because you know it’s the textbook sample, and giving an authentic, sincere heartfelt reply. He knows what I want, of course he does. Some of the things I’ve been asking for are more than a decade old. But there I was being asked to take centre stage. Would I ask for the same thing knowing that this time He was initiating instead? Was I really sure about what I wanted? I just pictured God smiling down at me, encouraging me to ask for my desires with full confidence.

Before walking back to join my friends for the rest of the tour, I walked over to where the candles for petition were. I took five candles and as I lit one for every prayer I felt myself getting lighter. It was an act of unpacking my emotional luggage. I realized that gaining peace through God would happen as a culmination of reaching different checkpoints. This was one of them. I looked at my five candles, let out an exasperated sigh and confidently muttered Psalm 37:4……

“Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

Called to Love

“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”    – John 15:11-13

I used to believe that love was always being on a person’s side. To stand by them and support them in all that they did. I thought you were supposed to protect that person from getting hurt, from any pain or sorrow.

But the more I grow in my faith the more I realize that my previous definition of love wasn’t love. I was babying the people I was called to love. I was treating them like infants. When you raise a child you can’t constantly treat them as if they can’t take care of themselves. You have to teach them. You have to guide them in the right direction. You have to lovingly correct their wrongdoings. You have to make known their faults so that they can become better. Love is more than protection. Love is wanting the betterment of others. And in our faith, love is doing whatever you can to get that person into heaven.

And in my quest and calling to love, I’ve come to realize that it is not easy. People fight back. People get angry and upset. People make you feel like you’re wrong, like you’re stupid. But I’ve come to know that I must suffer if I am to do the Lord’s work. To build up the fire inside someone, I’ll have to get burned. But it hurts. And it is discouraging. But it strengthens my faith. And when it gets tough, when my heart is failing, I can hear my God speaking to me:

“If the world hates you, realize it hated me first.”    – John 15:18

Alleluia!

Christ has risen! The Lord has blessed us all today. His resurrection restores us in ways our minds cannot even begin to fathom. The outpouring of God’s love on Good Friday was so extreme, it overcame death and we all know the endlessness of His love. Today, I witnessed the overflowing fount of His love as it flowed through my family.

I’ve always wondered what it would be like if my whole family served the Lord.

While journeying in this community, it is inevitable to grow in the desire for the whole family to serve God, especially as a young devoted Catholic. In the past I have been envious of other families where all members served, regardless if it was related to the CFC ministries or not. I’ve experienced the greatness of God in my life and I wanted my family to experience Him more than I was. The Lord softened my heart by revealing to me His faithfulness.

It’s becoming more rare, especially now that we’re growing older, that my immediate family is complete, even for a meal. Usually we’re separated by our different schedules and finding time to all be together is difficult, but our God is generous. My older brother was able to make it home for the long weekend, my parents were off from work, my sister was free for the most part (one work shift), and my schedule was empty. We spent the entire Saturday watching movies and enjoying each other’s company, not too often do we have time to do that. On Easter morning, we all had breakfast together. I may be wrong, but I don’t think we had breakfast altogether, at the house, in years! Praise God. We then headed to mass together, something that we haven’t done together in a while. God is so great! The Lord then brought forth a surprise that brought the warmest joy to my heart. An usher asked my family to serve as part of the offertory procession. Our God is so awesome! My family agreed and this was our first experience serving the Lord together, as one family.

The Lord definitely grants us the deepest desires of our hearts. Jesus is the source of love and unity. He showed me today that He has plans for my family and that we’ll journey together in His time. Christ did not only die for my sins and conquer the grave, which is more than I could ever ask for, but He continues to bless my family in overwhelming abundance.

Thank You Lord. Thank You for Your Son, Jesus Christ. Thank You for His passion and resurrection. Thank You for my family. May You always be the center of our lives. Help us to love one another as You have loved us and aid us in sharing the blessings that You shower  us with every single day. All praise and glory to You Almighty! Amen.