Life's Journey with God

Program 1: The Good News about Chaste Love (on Formed.org) It is interesting to listen to these very real people, who are part of  Courage , share their story on their own personal experience of same sex attractions. Sexual attractions can easily grow into "using" for our own self pleasures. "I realized that the people I used to idolized turned to being sexualized instead." One interesting thing one of the members shared was, "Doing it (sex) was a distraction from the guilt that I was doing ." As the readings these past few days has been pointing out, sin begets sin. Although we know the goodness of the Lord, yet we still very much sin in ways of the flesh. St. Paul wrote " In my inmost self I dearly love God’s Law, but I can see that my body follows a different law that battles against the law which my reason dictates. This is what makes me a prisoner of that law of sin which lives inside my body." (Rom 7:22-23) Indeed, the temptations

For the first time, I stepped into the CPSC yesterday. I've always known its existence in Taylor's but I never thought that one day I would actually use the services provided by the Counselling and Psychological Services Centre. One very large fear I think is because of the society's perception of mental health issues and the need for counselling. People will probably look at us differently. Family will probably say things like "what's wrong with you" or "it's all in your head". Looking back, I've always struggled with unbalanced emotions, more so in the last couple of years, and sometimes, the difference or the drop in emotions will be so drastic, even my body can't cope with it. Not only will I start having anxiety attacks, going into a irritable state, mentally going to dark places, I will also start feeling nauseous with a painful ache deep within that squeezes all happiness and joy from me. So when I broke down in uni yesterday (

For the period of one month, I've taken to changing the way I live my life, the way I see things, the way I speak, act and think. And it has honestly been a great journey so far. Never have I been able to see Him working in my life as clearly as I have now. So much opportunities to be part of something, to grow in my faith, have also fallen into my hands. From being a speaker in LOST camp, to facilitating in the upcoming Soul Sisters 2.0, I never thought I would be here one month ago. Giving testimonies is definitely something I thought I would never be asked to do because my life isn't even close to those I look up to, isn't something to be modeled after, isn't worth listening about. Or so I thought. But just two weeks ago, I was in El Sanctuary, Melaka, giving a session on prayer and sharing my personal story of how I found God through the mass and through the community. I realized that no la, God was always there. I was just blinded by my own self interests and s

“Step by step we're getting closer, Little by little we're taking ground." That is precisely how I feel right now. It's just been tiny eenie bitsy steps everyday closer to God. But truly all praise and glory to Him for allowing me to fall and yet rise again with much more fervent and determination than before.  It's a moment in my life where things doesn't seem like a mess, when it doesn't feel like everything's out of control. I know God's in control and I've been letting Him take control of it all (almost, I try). Things have change, I've changed. What was different is that not only have I managed to stay away from temptations to indulge in media content for the sake of satisfying my desires, I also have greater self control and self will to want to stay away from that because I know where it will lead me and how it will affect me. I have also been stressing out a lot about plans after graduation lately (the past few months in fact) and ha

I decide to restart journaling by writing reflection questions in my reflection book/journal as I think that will really help me keep track of messages to take away from the daily scripture readings and to gauge how much or how little I've grown spiritually, how I can do better, what has been good and what has been bad about this reflective approach in efforts to regain my connection with God in my prayer life. And then I decide to read back some of first few entries I made last year somewhere around July too and it made me realize I probably haven't moved forward at all. Things like being humble, being aware of my pride and cockiness, paying more attention to my actions and words. It's still the same things I have to work on, still the same stubbornness and pride in me that is causing me to stay stagnant and maybe even taking a step back. Worse, it's taken the same person to remind me of these bad habits I have. I'm really starting to wonder if I'll be able to

When I go through my blog, I notice a very big difference in terms of where I stand and what my views on things are. I go from one end to the other end very fast. It's just a roller coaster of emotions and me wanting to hold on to the truth the world has given me. Unwilling to let go of that, I fail to see the better good in front of me. My surroundings was the biggest distraction I faced in terms of me being away from God for a while now. Now that it's semester break, it definitely have given me plenty of alone time with Him to think, ponder, reflect and act differently from what I was previously doing which was close to nothing in regards to my prayer life. I don't know how or when my previous efforts stopped but I know for sure that without keeping a close eye and maintaining this sort of mindset and goal, it's easy to fall back into the place I was in, so easy to just let go and agree with the ideas of the world. Speaking for camp is definitely a huge step up

So it has been a little less than a year since I've had realization of my attractions. Looking back, it definitely wasn't an easy ride. I think right now, I'm past the point of stage one: denial and stage two: acceptance . I'm probably at stage three: discovering  now and that kinda scares me a bit because all of a sudden, what seemed like a taboo now seemed so acceptable to me, things I thought I would never do a year ago now makes me wanting more of it. And no, I'm not talking about sex if anyone's wondering cause just being able to meet someone who likes me back would be nothing less than a miracle. See, I don't believe that I'll ever be with someone because I don't think I'll ever be granted that because it's just not the order of things. I don't see it as a punishment by God, I just don't think He would grant me that special someone when I know He's calling me to Him instead. Perhaps it's where I'm at right now but I

I think that validating how I feel is important. But I also think validating how others feel is equally as important. So I recently spoke to my parents about it a week or two ago. I needed them to know because I needed that support and validation of still being their daughter, still being loved by them no matter what. Sure it wasn't easy for them. Still isn't but I feel much more at ease knowing that they have some sort of an idea of what I go through. It's not as easy as people make it seem, those that throw everything out the window just to be happy (i.e. family and religion) despite not having the support of their loved ones. I don't think happiness like that lasts forever because for me personally, I don't think I could ever survive without the presence of my family in my life. Just thinking about losing one of them scares the heck out of me. Previously, I could never muster enough courage to tell them because I was so afraid of not receiving the acceptance

(Joshua Harris, I Kissed Dating Goodbye ) I think this is a very powerful article in which Harris says that it's up to us (our choice) to feed the imagination and let our minds wander, create lustful thoughts even and misusing someone emotionally . It definitely doesn't help to continuously think about the person we're attracted to and constantly talk about this person because what we're doing is just building this image of this person and it almost seems like he/she is all there is, that he/she is perfect. I think this is really apt in my case. I personally experience most of what is said above in the article. Having been attracted to a co-worker on the first day of work is definitely something that is based on looks or rather, something very shallow because there is no other plausible cause in liking someone without talking to this person, let alone getting to know this person. And the more I thought about it, I realize that yes, I have made this person into this

It's been a week since I entered Leo Burnett for my internship. Grateful for the few familiar faces and the other friendly interns too. During the first day, my supervisor, the creative team head, invited me to join in and listen to one of their creative ideation pitch. While it was interesting to see how great ideas are formed and improved, I was fairly distracted by one of my team member. She caught my eye almost immediately, from her looks to her tattoos to everything. I honestly don't know if I've ever been attracted by someone I've just met before so this is a new feeling/experience for me. She intrigues me. However, for that one week, we barely spoke except for the casual exchanges of 'hi's' and 'bye's'. Heck, I barely spoke to anyone in the team. I felt lost and uncomfortable being the new person there. Everyone was busy with their work yet I had nothing to do.  So I did what I do best. I started stalking. Although I only knew a