Tag: Trust

Home.

With the amount of times that I’ve had to travel within an eighteen month time frame, most people would assume that I no longer suffer from homesickness. The past three trips (2009, 2012, 2013a) have been by myself; the shortest trip lasting 8 weeks and the longest lasting 6 months. Most people base their judgement on my social media posts and are probably thinking, “Dang, she is living the life.”

Well, reality check: I still suffer from homesickness. I still feel somewhat lost even though I’ve revisited Place A, B and C more than a handful of times. I still feel out of place in a room full of old friends and the nausea that accompanies displacement is very much real.

All those things still exist. Even now. Even when my family is here with me. We all haven’t been together in a very, very long time. Dad’s had to work out of town for the past 2 years and my brother’s had to live away at Waterloo ever since he started his Undergrad. And me, well…..I’ve been traveling to PH.

A few days into our family trip here, I was still feeling so bothered. My temper kept getting the best of me. I grew impatient and volatile. I couldn’t understand it. Shouldn’t my family have cushioned the hypothetical “emotional blow” that always hit me during my trips? Shouldn’t the weird jumble of emotions have stopped because I was with my loved ones? The anger and frustration drained me so much that one night, I decided to just leave the group. The innermost depths of me was craving for something. I didn’t know what that something was, but what I did know was that going to God wouldn’t leave me any more desolate than I already was. So I looked for a church.

I ended up at Sto. Rosario. I got through confession. I kneeled at the Adoration Chapel. I sat through Mass and received Holy Eucharist. And you know what? For the first time I felt good. Not just ice-cream-on-a-hot-sunny-day good, but ‘passing my final exam with flying colours and making the honour roll’ kinda good. I was a fish out of water that suddenly found my way back to the water. I could breathe again.

As I contemplated at the Adoration Chapel I was reminded of a promise I made to Him during the SFC precon praisefest. It just so happened to my birthday too. I told God that I was willing to finally give Him the one part of me that I hadn’t let go of yet- a very specific piece of my heart that was put on reserve. I didn’t have the strength to fight that fourteen year battle any more. It took me that long to surrender. That day He said to me, “Exodus 14:14, my beloved. Do not forget. I will fight for you, you need only to be still.

In the presence of the Eucharist and in front of the altar, I felt God whisper me to me, “Therese, my dearest Therese. You silly stubborn girl. Remember what you offered at the foot of my cross weeks ago? Remember that you promised me you’d finally give that last piece to me? Home is where the heart is and yours just so happens to be with me. It’s safe. It’s in my hands now. I’m happy that you finally found your back. My child, right now at this very moment …you are home. I’ve been waiting.”

All the puzzle pieces fit.
It all made sense.
I felt this sudden rush of peace, of final certainty.

Everything in this world is temporary. Even my family. But God, God is infinite. God is timeless, boundless and endless. I am made to stand in His presence, to bask in the love that is always present in His house.

 

Father, I’m coming home.
Amen. 

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 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.”

Setting the tone

You know when you want to be in a relationship (at least in the brothers perspective) you want to be the one who is in control as in the one who sets the tone because we are the pursuers.  Well in this case in my relationship with my Lord, I’ve been the one who keeps on trying to be in control, well because I want to pursue Him.  At first I thought I was doing pretty good, I’d see him at mass, adoration, or try to see him in my daily life.  But then it began to feel I wanted more from Him.  It began a little difficult to see him as much as I wanted to.  I wondered am I doing something wrong?

I started to see although I am doing my very best to get to know him and my best to let him know everything about me, I started to feel He wanted to take control of this relationship.  He began to say “I need you to trust me,” “my plans for us are better,” and “you need to let me take control.”

Well I think this is one of the hardest things for me to do, I like to be in control, but I also know when I am, I feel like I’m just a presence, running a business, “do this, do that” kind of attitude.  I don’t know how many times I will be telling my self “Tim, humility please” and “Tim, be careful what you say” and the biggest ones is “Tim, trust him” and “Tim just let God take care of it.”  I was really wrong the whole time, it’s our Lord who really sets the tone and is the one who pursues me.

I hope my heart can really answer to this “something greater” for what he wants for me.

@itsmetimmm

My Interior Castle

Continuing my journey as an MV, I ask the Lord where am I in my discernment, where am I spiritually, and how is my relationship with Him.  I desire to know more and more about Him.  After the first few moments reading Interior Castle by St. Teresa of Avila, I could not help but smile to see exactly where I am in my journey.

THIRD MANSIONS. The description of these Manions of Exemplary Life beings with stern exhortations on the dangers of trusting to one’s own strength and to the virtues one has already acquired, which must still of necessity be very weak.  Yet, although the soul which reaches the Third Mansions may still fall back, it has attained a high standard of virtue.  Controlled by discipline and penance and disposed to performing acts of charity toward others, it has acquired prudence and discretion and orders its life well.  Its limitations are those of vision: it has not yet experienced to the full inspiring force of love.  It has not made a full self-oblation, a total self-surrender.  Its love is still governed by reason, and so its progress is slow.  It suffers from aridity, and is given only occasional glimpses into the Mansions beyond.

The first thing to humble me is that passing through these Mansions is not a race, but another reason to come closer to Him.  If my faith in Him is weak then it is my call to have stronger faith through my relationships.  If I have not fully surrendered then I must learn to trust and have more hope.  If I continue to sin then I must stay away from these temptations.  If I have not experienced a full force of love, then it probably means that I haven’t loved my neighbour as myself.  These are such perfect goals for my year and to help me with my discernment.  I ask for your prayers to help me reach these goals.

@itsmetimmm