In His Steps – Page 3

Faith

January 4, 2015January 3, 2015 Tina 1 Comment

On November 23, I wrote this post that started with this:

Sometime around last week, I started to feel this tiny little worry because my word for 2015 hasnâ€™t found me yet.

What I didn’t write after that blog entry was that my 2015 word found me soon after posting that.

I can’t remember how I found it, or how it found me. The thing is, the word has been with me ever since I started writing my second book, but I didn’t really notice it because I was too worried with too many things, and I was struggling too much with Delight. I was torn between wanting to find my next word and thinking that maybe I should focus on the word that I have now before moving onto the next. I figured that my word will find me, or I will find it; I just needed to give it time.

But like I said, soon after I wrote that post, before December rolled around, I found my word for 2015.

Faith.

By “finding it,” the word has been sort-of literally staring me in the face all this time, in the form of my next book‘s title, Keep the Faith. I just had that moment: why can’t FAITH be my word for 2015?

And then all the struggles I was having at the end of the 2014 started to make sense. With how I was being asked to wait, and how there were some things that were totally out of control that was driving me nuts…all through that, God was asking me not just to choose His joy, but also, to have faith.

I haven’t completely figured it out yet, but soon as 2014 ended and 2015 came in, I kept on holding onto that: to have faith. In the midst of the struggles, the confusion, the chaos. In the midst of the feeling that I am disappointing people, or in the midst of all the little inconveniences. In the midst of happiness, and the fatalistic feeling that comes after that asks, What if this doesn’t last? In the midst of the anxiety of the new year, and the things I will say goodbye to and the things that will start, and the moments in between that I am desperately wishing wouldn’t be so hard. In the midst of good people and difficult people. In the midst of these thoughts of what people will think, or what they will say or do about certain decisions I will make. In the midst of uncertainties and certainties, I always come back to these words:

Have faith.

I knew from the moment I found this word that this isn’t about me finding out what I believe in, or looking for faith that I have lost. This faith is about realizing and recognizing God’s faithfulness in my life – every second, every minute, every hour, every day.

Faith is about trusting this faithfulness that I have known and experienced, knowing that He has got this covered, and He will not let me fall.

Faith is also me being faithful to Him just as He is faithful to me. It is about me being faithful not just in the big things, but also (and especially) in the small things, because these are all gifts from Him, and I should be a good steward of them.

Faith is about bringing my current faith into a new level, because He wants to take me deeper, and He wants to make it richer. There is so much more I don’t know about my faith, and this is the year to learn about it, and experience it.

If I could be totally honest, I’m a little bit scared of this word. Somehow, Faith reminds me of Courage, and I am feeling the things that I felt when I declared the Year of the Brave.

But we know how all that turned out, right? So there’s no need to be scared.

Perhaps this scared, apprehensive feeling is already a lesson on trusting God’s faithfulness. Because when was He ever not faithful to me?

So 2015 is my year of Faith. I don’t have quotes from blogs or authors about this word, which is just as well, because I think the best thing to go about this is to go to His Word, which has more than enough stories of faith than I could ask for. :)

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” – Hebrews 11:1 (NASB)

I like that word, conviction.

Have a great 2015, everyone! May we all see, recognize, and experience more of God’s faithfulness in our lives this year. :)

14 (Joyful) Things About 2014

December 31, 2014December 31, 2014 Tina Leave a comment

Sometime around end of November, I tried to recall what had happened to my 2014 when I was hit with a realization:Â whoa, a lot of things happened this year.Â No kidding.

I think the thing about 2014 for me, is how a huge chunk of the year seemed to go by in a blur. The obvious culprit for this feeling this is work, as it really ate a lot of my time, but I think other than that, there were really so many things that happened this year that it was almost overwhelming.

When 2014 started, I tried to make it a habit of tweeting at least three joyful things that happened to me in that day, using my 2014 hashtag, #takedelight. I think I lasted doing that daily up until April, where I stopped, and then started somewhere else again, and then stopped again. It was an attempt to remember and be grateful everyday, which was a fun and hard exercise. I wished I had kept at it, but even if I didn’t get to do it everyday for the year, thinking about it reminds me of what my 2014 was supposed to be: a year of delight.

And this is why I like year-end recaps, because it gives me a chance to go through the year one more time. I suppose writing this would have been easier if I had managed to keep at the daily #takedelight things, but even if things weren’t documented, it didn’t mean it didn’t happen. To me, anyway.

This 2014 recap is a lot less…I don’t know, emotional (or heartbroken, really), than 2013, but like I said, there’s a lot in 2014 that happened that I didn’t really expect. And in the spirit of that daily project I never got to finish, I’m calling this 2014 recap 14 Joyful Things About 2014. :)

I think the biggest and most important joyful thing that happened to me this year is doing the 33-Day Consecration to Jesus through Mary retreat.
I heard about this through a friend last year, but because I wasn’t really a Marian devotee back then, I didn’t think about it much. Then came January and my friend encouraged us all to do it. I ordered the book, thinking it would take a month to arrive, but it arrived in 2 weeks, just in time to start the retreat on the next suggested date. This led to my first consecration date on March 25, which was a pretty significant date before but because of this consecration, is now significant in a different way. Then I did it again with our community, and I finished on December 8, which, again was another significant date for me in 2013. I don’t think these are coincidences, really, but a way of Mama Mary telling me that she’s got me, and she has me under her care, so I need not be afraid. My friend said that to prepare for miracles when we do this consecration, and you know what? She’s right. :) Ave Maria.
Travel, as always. I think there was one time early this year when I realized that I seemed to be going places almost every month. That kind of stopped around May, but there were still a lot of places I went to, near and far, this year. There’s Cagayan de Oro in February (that I never got to blog about!), then Calaguas in March for my birthday, a part of Quezon that I haven’t been to in April, and then Pangasinan in September. On the international front, I went to Japan in May, and Thailand and Cambodia (will blog about Siem Reap soon!) in October. I almost went to Sagada this December but we scrapped it because of some changes that was happening in our lives, but that just meant I’ll probably go there next year. Here’s to more places in 2015!
I released my first book. Wohoo. As my thesismate told me last night: you are now an AUTHOR. Sometimes, it still feels a bit surreal. :) I’ve always been so scared to send the things I write for editing, and releasing them out into the wild because they’re my babies, you know? But I realized that there’s really nothing to be afraid of, and it’s actually fun. And this is a fulfillment of all those dreams since I was a kid. :) I realized that this thing is something that I wouldn’t mind doing for my entire life, on top of speaking about books, and just doing wordy stuff.Â Because man, I really love words. Read More

The Only Gift

December 25, 2014December 25, 2014 Tina Leave a comment

A few days ago, my brother called me while I was at work and asked for my Christmas wish list. I opened my mouth to answer…

…then closed it again when I realized I had no idea what I wanted for Christmas.

Okay fine, I was just a bit too busy with work to really focus on those ~~seemingly insignificant~~ things. So I asked for time and tried to think of something, and I still came up short. I eventually managed to text him a few items I wanted later that day, but they weren’t things that I really, really want. In fact, some of them were just things I put there for the sake of having a wish list – nice to have, but not necessarily necessary.

It’s not that I didn’t know what I want, or that I didn’t want anything, really. I suppose we can count this as a sign of ~~aging~~ maturity,Â as I haven’t made a wish list for my birthday or for Christmas ever since I turned 27. However, as I pondered on it further, I realized why I didn’t have a lot of things on my wish list this year.

It’s because God has granted most of them already.

Well, the ones that I asked for in all my prayers, anyway, which were the ones that I really, really, really wanted.

Direction.

And no, it’s not One Direction. ;) Early this year, I prayed for direction, because I felt like this year was the time to move, the time to do something new, especially with my career. My personal deadline was mid-2014, but God answered the prayer earlier, which led me to transition, which led me to one of the craziest adventures I’ve had this year.

I will write about it eventually, but let’s just say that this adventure led me to hold on tighter, to choose joy more, and to learn to be grateful. When I asked for direction, God really gave me that, and funny thing is that He kept me in the dark so I would learn to trust that He was leading me in the right path. In answering my prayer for direction, God made my faith stronger…and well, there’s a lot more to learn, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I got what I prayed for.

Open Doors.

This is connected to the prayer for direction, as I often prayed for doors to open when I asked God to lead me. But the more concrete thing with this is what had happened recently: I thought I lost one opportunity because I chose not to acknowledge it, so I let it go. I didn’t think it would come find me again, which I took as God telling me that that was one door opening for me again.

You know sometimes it still surprises me how swiftly God moves when the much-awaited perfect timing comes. Either that, or I just have these expectations that God’s timing is just slower, when really it’s on time.

But other than that semi-cryptic things I wrote up there (which I will write about eventually), there were many other doors that opened to me this year, in terms of travel, writing, and speaking. I realized a lot of things about myself, and what I really want to do in my life, and it’s both exciting and scary.

But I think that’s what open doors should really make us feel: excited and scared. But more excited because how can we be scared when we’ve got God on our side? :)

Forgiveness.

One of the things that I really prayed for this year is the grace of forgiveness – forgive others, forgive myself, and be forgiven. I ended 2013 with thoughts on this, and carried it over until 2014. I pondered, struggled, and worked on this in my heart, up until I had finally accepted that maybe there are some things that will really take time and that there are some things that I will probably never get, so I told myself that maybe what I wanted isn’t necessary anymore. Maybe I should just learn to live with what I was given, you know?

But you know what? It’s always when we surrender that God starts to move in ways that will always surprise us. It’s as if He’s just waiting for us to give Him the reins, and the moment we do, He moves like that, and we get the things we want in such an amazing package that we wouldn’t want it in any other way than He had given it to us.

And so forgiveness. Of all the gifts I received this year, this is the one I am most thankful for. So much of last year and early this year had me asking so many questions about what happened, had me feeling angry and sad at myself and at others because of the things I did and what they did and what I lost. I honestly didn’t think that reconciliation would be possible. But God had other things in mind, and He answered my prayer in the most perfect time, and I am just in awe and so grateful that He did.

It is a great grace to really experience forgiveness. How humbling it is to be able to give and receive it face to face. And as my friend said, truly, God works for the good of those who love Him. :)

All I want for Christmas

Looking back, this Christmas is now a lot more special because instead of asking for material things, I find myself just giving thanks over and over again. It feels like a huge bonus – not only did Jesus come down to be human, but He answered my prayers even if I didn’t deserve any of it. I believe He answered them for the same reason why He came down to be a child on this day: because He loves us.

And because of that, what else can I ask for? :)