Tag: love

Twenty Six

Tina 3 Comments

Also known as: Birthday thoughts

So yeah, I just turned 26. Hi.

I think I’ve just encountered my first sign of aging. I’m still exhausted from my get-together with friends last night! Ah. I invited some friends to a karaoke night as we counted down to my birthday, and I’m still exhausted. Or maybe it was because I got buzzed and had only 4 hours of sleep after before I went out again to celebrate with my family. But truth be told (and I know I’m already thinking in advance), I’m thinking maybe next year, instead of partying like that, I’ll probably just spend my birthday out of town. Or maybe even out of the country.

But like I said, that’s thinking too far in advance.

I had a very good 25th year, and I think yesterday capped it off pretty well. Like I’ve been saying, it’s been an interesting year and I will always look back fondly on my quarter year. It wasn’t easy, but it was a pretty good one. :)

I don’t really have too many thoughts about this year. But as last night winded down, I realized that I have also let go of some excess baggage I had from last year. And it feels nice to do that. Despite my exhaustion, I felt lighter. I felt free.

And maybe that’s the best birthday present I could give for myself.

I don’t have very huge wishes for my 26th year unlike last year. I don’t want to pose heavy questions for myself like last year. Not that having those questions weren’t good. This year, I just want to make it a bit simpler. This year, I’m just going to focus on the word I picked: I will LOVE.

That’s it. In my 26th year, I will love. I will learn to love. I will choose to love.

I will live loved because I have a great God. :)

Especially when that great God is a God who paints the skies in your favorite color because of His love. :)

"Because it had to be love that painted this picture." - Stephen Speaks

So hello, twenty six. :)

2012 Word

Tina 3 Comments

Also known as: My word for 2012

2012: Love

Remember how I was looking for a word to use for 2012?

I think I found it.

Soon after I wrote that post, I already felt that I had an idea of the word I will claim as my own for 2012. But of course, I did not want to choose too hastily, and I didn’t want to decide on a word just because I need a word. I want it to be mine, I want it to be a word that calls to me, one that I can claim and will claim me for the next eleven ten months of 2012. I gave myself a deadline: by my 26th birthday, I should have a word, a draft five year plan and a vision board. Talk about plans, yes?

So I had a list of words that I wanted to choose: initiate, grow, explore, awesome, amazing…but I keep on going back to this particular word. To love. It wanted to choose it already to get it over with, but to be perfectly honest, I was scared at what claiming this word entails. This isn’t just love in the romantic sense but love in every possible aspect. It sounds lovely at first, but when I really think about it, I know for sure that it’s not going to be easy. In fact, I believe it will be downright challenging.

But then I think of the rewards. I mean, it’s love. Again, not in the romantic sense, but you know how they say love changes things, love is a miracle, love is all that? I believe that, too. And because I believe that God is love, I also think that choosing love as my word will bring me closer to Him.

Again, I didn’t want to decide. Until Valentine’s Day passed by and I got back from my first SFC ICON and…well, the experiences for that week kind of sealed the deal and made me accept the idea that this word may have possibly claimed me before I finally decided with it.

So yeah: my word for 2012 is LOVE.

Again, it’s not just romantic love, but love in all aspects — love for God, family, friends, colleagues, strangers. Loving my work, doing the things I love, finding out these things I love, going after the things I will love. Loving when it’s easy but especially when it’s hard and inconvenient. Loving the people who love me back and the unlovable. Not being afraid of love, choosing to love, always choosing love above all else. And finally, yes, let’s include romantic love, too.

I have a page in my planner where that arrow in the photo points, and there I wrote (in my messy script) the things I wrote in the previous paragraph and what St. Paul wrote about love in his letter to the Corinthians. I think this pretty much captured the essence of what love is really all about (this chapter also shows how challenging loving can be, but I’ll probably reserve that for another post).

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Love.

I deserve that much

Tina 6 Comments

Also known as: The obligatory Valentine’s Day 2012 post

“You read too many dating blogs,” said my friend while we were chatting one day.

Looking at the ones on my RSS feed and the ones I’ve been retweeting and reposting on my Tumblr, I realized that was true. I have been reading a lot of dating blogs in the past year. Okay fine, they weren’t necessarily blogs talking about dating exclusively, but they’re blogs from single twenty to thirty somethings talking about love and relationships and who should make the first move and how women should treat men and men should treat women and how important clarity is and all that. Sometimes I feel like my head would snap off from all the nodding and agreeing and mentally shouting “YES! THIS IS IT!” over some of the articles I’ve read. It was almost like I was back to reading those self-help dating books again, only this time it felt closer because I was reading from people my age, people who seemed to understand and who feel exactly I was feeling.

I’ve said it before — 2011 has been pretty interesting, in a lot of ways. I think most of the things that happened in my 2011 was an exercise of sorts — especially for my heart. I won’t elaborate, but I think I have taken a lot more chances than the usual, have said yes more often and have asked for things that I wanted and actually got them. I learned more about waiting (yet again), gray areas and not being afraid, and yes, even romantic relationships despite the sheer and obvious lack of it in my life. Now that I am almost at a new birth year, I wonder if my life is what I wanted it to be…but whatever happens, I think I know that I am and will be okay.

I know I will have no problem writing my Valentine’s Day entry for 2012 because I know I have the material. I just wasn’t sure how to go about it without being too cheesy or God forbid, offending anyone. I just want to have these thoughts out there, mostly to remind myself of what I learned in the past year and to look back next year to see if I have changed and if I have learned to live with what I’ve learned. (OT: I realized lately that I have Valentine’s Day entries scattered all over the web for the last seven !!! years — 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. I may have another one somewhere, and I won’t be surprised if I do.) What’s funny, though, is how I realized that my post for V-Day 2012 is kind of a full circle of what I have known from the first public V-Day entry:

I deserve that much.

Before my year ended, there were questions, things hanging and all that, but everything just boiled down to one statement, one thing I have known for  along time, one thing that I want, have wanted and I know I deserve:

To be pursued.

Bethany Dillon got it right years ago when she wrote about her song For My Love: I really do want to be fought for. I long to be recklessly pursued. I’m looking for true love, something honest and untainted, with no hidden agenda but that it wants to chase after me. I want that. It’s not just about being fussy as a girl, or being too Maria Clara or what. It’s about that yearning deep down that I think every girl has: to be pursued, to be fought for. I want that.

I deserve that much.

It’s not that I am not supposed to do anything anymore. If anything, I learned last year (and the previous year, I think), that you have to know what you want, and you have to be able to do them for someone else just as well as you want them for yourself. To be pursued means I have to be pursuable. To set standards means I have to be able to live to those standards as well. But I shouldn’t forget that my heart is an important thing, and that I accept the love that I think I deserve. And again, I deserve that much.

I deserve to be wooed, to be chased. I deserve to be written love letters for, to be surprised. I deserve to find clarity, to not let things be ambiguous at the cost of my peace. I deserve to be fought for. I deserve to be loved the love that I always dreamed of getting, and I don’t think God would have put it in my heart if it wasn’t His will.

I’m not going to lock myself in some high tower after this. Of course not. I will still take chances, say yes and do pretty much all the things I did last year. I’m still going to work to be pursuable. But this time, I’m drawing the line: because as much as wanting to be pursued means being pursuable, being pursuable also means I have to allow myself to be pursued.

I’m not going to demand perfection from everyone — after all, I am not perfect. But because my God gave His all just to be with me, I have to believe that my love and my heart is worth all that. And I deserve that much.

YOU deserve that much.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone. ♥