Personal Fulfilment

I'm starting to get really busy with..
Work..
Business.. (dothingsdifferent.com)
GB (yes I am still a volunteer with community development)
Church (missions committee)

I don't find my worth in my work. But work and voluntary stuff are fulfilling. I'm thankful. In terms of career and personal development, I don't know if I would want to be in any other situation than I am now.
I am happy =D

We are joyful when we think of the things we have in gratefulness. We are sad when we think we should have certain things but have not.
But lets focus on what we have and give thanks.

Bringing our Longings to Him (2)

When someone breaks up, u always find people say as words of comfort - its okay, you will find someone better. But it is not about finding someone else, but the lost of this very someone who matters to you. Not a matter of replacement or that you will be comforted with someone else, but a matter of lost as to whatever had existed between you and the person who was once special to you. And it's not about finding someone better, because incompatibility between two persons doesn't make either person less than who he is, it merely means a difference between two people in their make up, and a wrong timing in which the two had met. And so yes, let there be sadness at the lost, and anticipation that one day you would meetthe person who wld be the right one at the right time

Bringing our Longings to Him

Sometimes, I wished that you were here. But I wonder if wishing for you to be here, is really a yearning for all that you represent.
And yes, our unfulfilled longings and desires, will one day be met in Heaven when we meet our Heavenly Father.
I’ve realized that love is not possession, but the daily patient prayer for the one you love, even if he/she doesn’t know that you are praying for him/her, that may be the ultimate level of love. And in those times, to give of our yearnings to Him. Talking, negotiating, interceding, questioning etc. , whatever, and He understands. :)

That too will pass

Though the sorrows may be too deep in present time to comprehend, that too would pass. Pain in retrospect always appears milder. And we, who are beings of eternity, suffer pain for that temporal moment, which marks a small little dot of time. One day, we would be free, when we meet our God and He wipes away every tear. When we contemplate the bigness of God and the earth, for that moment, our sorrows are gone. And yet, the big sovereign God would care to love us, each minute detail of our lives. Yes we are precious. And our eyes look up to You in our toughest times.

A Happy Place

Life has kind of taken on a comfortable pace. Today is my 5th day of work. And since day 1, I have been looking forward to work daily. My workplace is nice, with my own laptop, a cosy work station, nice colleagues, interesting job scope. I'm happy. Time seems to fly at work, going for meetings, drafting proposals, brainstorming ideas, reading up articles etc. I'm happy.
Happy happy... In the midst of that feeling a bit tired.
Went for the GB Officers Retreat over the weekend. It was the first time I appeared at a GB event as a volunteer and it was announced over the mike cos all the staff received some token of appreciation. I was announced as ex staff. For that moment I felt a bit sad. And later many came up to me to ask me what I'm doing now, and someone asked if I was interested to take on a job at vietnam with her church! :D Heh. Cool.. I had to do some presentation at a workshop with my ex boss, and it was pretty last minute rush!

Im just rambling..heh...to get things off my head..

I have started a business with 2 great peeps, www.dothingsdifferent.com . It feels great to tell people that! The idea is to share people, places and pdts that are different- Social and environmental angles. We are in the midst of revamping the website...Do buy stuff from there if u are interested!

So in the midst of business, GB as a volunteer, new work... I feel like my career wise seems to be quite good. :D Its a happie happie place to be in.

Im feeling grateful..

I did a quiz on my spiritual giftings at the retreat, and mine were exhortation, faith and mercy. I am praying for quite a few things, and I think it is this gift of faith that has seen me thru many seasons. I supposedly have this gift of faith only because God has been so faithful in different seasons of my life, i.e. after angsting for so many mths, finally a job with a good fit (much much better than a civil svc job). And I'm continuing to believe Him for other things in my life that seem impossible, but only with faith is possible.

Oh yes, I finished this book "The Shack", and I was blessed beyond measure reading it. It made me cry a lot to realise how near Father God is, and how much He loves mankind. And that God was /is there with the kids in the dumpsite - i realise...because of the way God was described in the book. He is Love and Light. All that is good is in Him. We worry because we don't trust He is good. There's a line in the book that has God speaking something like this to the protagonist- have u realised in all your worries abt the future, I am not in them? Wow. I will share more again!

Mr. Grey

I used to think of things in very Black and White terms. Either you love or you don't, either you are right or you are wrong. Either its a yes or a no.

In recent years, Mr. Grey started to appear in my dictionary.
The ability to take on uncertainty is precious. Waiting is precious. The process is important. Because we don't always get what we desire at one time.

But that ability to Hope, to keep Believing and trusting. That is precious.

And the insights that Mr. Grey brings to your life, when you start to see things from others perspectives and stop being dogmatic about your own. When life has no certainty, it is also a life of adventure.

So just let go and fly.

Loving with all your heart

This hasn't been an easy week because it is a week of grieving over the loss of things that are important to me.
Just one of the things is that Friday is my last day in the office. Packing up, documenting papers, filing etc, brings back loads of memories. I have given of my time, emotions, heart to it.
(Grieving sounds badly serious, but grieve and let go was the best statement I ever heard from someone, and I believe grieving is the whole process of reconciling one's loss)

While talking to a friend on MSN about relationships, I thought of a quote I had read in C.S. Lewis's "Four Loves" before. I read it last year when I was contemplating on r/s, and nursing a broken heart. I found this entry in my blog which is very apt.

C.S. Lewis says
"We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him, throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken and if He chooses this is the way in which they should break, so be it."

I don't know which other way to love, except to give fully of my heart.

In the same entry, I wrote this other quote that I had gathered from the book and really liked- it is the "smallness of our love for God, not the greatness of our love for the man, that constitutes the inordinancy."
What the book was saying, was that the early christian writers, like the dessert fathers, or even Augustus, said that we should have no other loves than God. As in, the general idea is always that other loves - e.g. worldly cares, need to be taken away. But C.S. Lewis is saying, it is not about us trying to love man less, the problem is when we love God too little.

Yesterday was my birthday, and whilst walking to the bus stop, I saw a rainbow. It was beautiful. :) Maybe the rainbow was God's gift for me, cos none of the other passerbys stopped like me, to take a photo using my phone. And then I remembered God's covenant with me. He is faithful in spite of all the ups and downs. He has led me through 2 years and 4 months in my work here, held my hand thru different circumstances, and holds my heart in His mighty hand. The Greatness of God's love, or our love for God, helps us to love others with fullness of His love. It is impossible for me to emotionally shutdown to people I love even if they have hurt me deeply. But it is possible to give these hurts to God, and continue to love through His grace.

lessons i have learnt: on love

1. To love I must first know who I am, be true to myself, my interests, my passions, my purpose. That is when I am in a position of security, because I know who I am on the inside.

2. To love places one in a position of vulnerability. It requires faith to love and to give of oneself. Jesus was in a position of vulnerability. He emptied of Himself. He loved us even before we loved Him. This is linked to point one. That is why we need to be secure in who we are before we can fully love and give of ourselves.

Who Am I?

It's a quiet contemplative saturday, and there are many things heavy on my mind.

After a long struggle of 6 mths, I finally tendered my resignation two weeks ago. God has opened new doors for me to work in a more corporate environment, though still a non profit. It was a great big struggle thinking abt the women, the children in the third world. My new job has an international exposure but relates mainly with the developed nations. But I think it would be great exposure and learning for me. =D My last day wld be on the 27 Aug, and my first day at my new job wld be on 1 sept.

I think I would probably have more thots as I go along, but mainly the past few mths has been a lot of identity crisis. Thinking abt who I am, what I like, what I am called to do, how God has created me, vs who people think I am, societal pressures...and making sense of which was which. There were many voices each calling out their own.

Did I betray myself in my choice of career? Betray the calling for the poor? I ask myself this ques again and again..whether I am compromising for a more comfortable place. I ask myself the same ques thinking abt my relationships with people...the things I love, the people I love. And then ultimately it came to my heart. I need to have a heart of integrity that honours God and is true to myself. ;] And so this is the question of identity.

I have come to realise that Christianity is not abt a set of rights and wrongs, rules and regulations, but being led by the Spirit. There is a great liberty that God gives to us....walking in r/s with Him.

Pray that I wld continue to know who I am in Him! =)

Loving means being vulnerable

If you know it is going to hurt, would you still love?

If you know it means being vulnerable, would you still love?

 

Our prodigal (lavishly abundant) God did.

 

These days, the quote by C.S. Lewis keeps popping up in my mind:

 

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."

 

Often we ask people to guard their hearts, but how do you guard your heart when it comes to loving?
Whether it is loving someone, loving a ministry, loving people you minister to etc. To love, brings you to a place of vulnerability. A possibility of being hurt & disappointed, as you open up your heart to someone and something. Maybe, loving with such abundance, is how our Father loved too? On the cross...whereby Jesus was in a position of vulnerability, because God loved the world so much that He gave His only son.

 

How then do we love? I think we can only do it with the Father's help.