28 Life Lessons

I have just completed 28 years of my life journey and starting my 29th. So I thought I’d try to come with 28 life lessons, because I’d hope to have at least learned that many thus far. I know I’ll want to change some as soon as I publish, but here goes, in no particular order other than what came up in my mind at that moment:

1. Don’t save the Best for Last
The best is for now. If you keep saving the best for last, you may never get to it.

2. Own the Moment
Every moment is special, because its temporary. Living in the moment might be the key to an awesome life, no matter what you have or don’t.

3. Go Reversal on the Bucket List
Turn your bucket list into a do it now list. Go backwards on the bucket and try to get everything done sooner rather than later.

4. Read, a lot
Especially scripture, particularly Psalms and the gospels. Fantasy, sci-fi, the classics, self-help, thrillers, horror, children’s books and the others. But not poetry.

5. There is a Season for Everything
Accept the seasons. Go with the flow, ride the wave. A really good wave is coming.

6. Never put addictions before People
It hurts when people you love think your addiction is more important than them.

7. Talk to God
I have found that are no circumstances that I am facing where prayer cannot affect me.

8. Don’t get too Comfortable
The easy road is usually boring. Discomfort promotes growth, difficulty builds character. Push the envelope, expand your tolerance for pain and suffering. Then watch yourself grow and mature.

9. View your life as a Story
We all like good stories. We all like interesting characters in stories. Go for both in real life.

10. Put a Premium on Courage
Living life scared of everything, or many things is boring. Courage makes things happen, and we all like stories where things happen.

11. Do Secret Things
Good things of course. When we stock up on secret good deeds, we lose the need to impress people and build confidence without showing off. Try it.

12. Admit you are a Fool, Often
Holding yourself to unreasonable standards produces unreasonable disappointment in yourself. Laugh at yourself often, and let others join.

13. Accept other’s Faults
Holding others to unreasonable standards produce unreasonable disappointment in them.

14. Appreciate Children
Hang out with children. Playing, singing, dancing and especially talking. The innocence of children is a precious gift and one to be adored.

15. Travel Light
In your luggage and heart. Hold on loosely to things.

16. Make a lot Mistakes
Mistakes are just steps towards discovery and success. Being afraid of mistakes cause us to miss many opportunities.

17. Make Money your Slave
Or we become the slave. Master it by controlling selfishness, greed and consumerism. What to find where your heart is? Follow the money.

18. Talk to your Siblings
Especially sisters. Sisters are usually better at talking than brothers.

19. Leave
Don’t get stuck. Say goodbye, drop your nets, follow with abandonment. You know there is something in your life you need to leave right now.

20. Be Intentional about Community
Community life takes effort. The rewards are worth it.

21. We all Die
Love now. You or they won’t be around forever.

22. Know Yourself
Learn about what makes you tick. Figure out why you do what you do. What makes you happiest and most fulfilled. Then create or chase a job description that fits who you are.

23. Learn from Elders
They are smarter than you. Sometimes hard to accept their rebuke or correction, but you’ll get smarter.

24. Love Simple Things
When your tastes get so complicated that you can no longer be pleased, life becomes bland.

25. Be Thankful
The saddest thing when something great (or just good) happens is when you have no one to thank. Giving thanks completes the experience of receiving something.

26. Drop the Excuses
Usually, its only you holding yourself back.

27. Learn by Doing
You can only really learn by action.

28. Every great Quest starts with a Question
What is that burning question that keeps you awake at night? What is that “what if I …” question that seems too unrealistic to pursue? Follow you curiosity and start your great journey.

Choosing a Positive Attitude

Do you believe that you have the ability to choose your attitude? If your day is going very bad and things are falling apart and your cat just got run over by a Jeepney and all your callers are angry, do you think that you would still be able to maintain a positive attitude?

A man named Viktor Frankl thinks so. Dr. Frankl was an Austrian-Jewish neurologist and psychiatrist and founded logotherapy. He was also put into a Nazi concentration camp during WWII, along with his parents, wife and daughter. Only he survived. In the midst of the horrors of the concentration camps (much worse than our regular day-day I’d say), he had some very important insights on the meaning of life and finding purpose in suffering. He said this:

“Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Dr. Frankl was able to find purpose in his absurd loss and trial, and proved he could choose a positive attitude in difficult circumstances. You can too. No matter what you are going through, how bad your day is or how much you’ve lost, you have the choice to despair, or to stay positive.

Staying positive fights against stress, despair, depression, anger, bitterness, sickness, and even disease. Being more positive helps us have more happiness, peace, job-satisfaction, better relationships, mental and physical health. Want to be a more positive person and choose a positive attitude more often? Here are some ways to do so.

1. Think Positively

Philippians 4:8 is a good place to start with this. When we think positive thoughts, read positive things, watch positive programs, listen to positive music and surround ourselves with positivity, we open our minds to see more and more good things around us. Negativity acts in the opposite way. When we filled our minds with negativity we create tunnel-vision of problems and after a while all we can see around us is negative. Positive thinking destroys the tunnel, gives us expansive vision and improves our attitude.

2. Behave Positively

Mostly, we behave according to our mood. But what if can behave a certain way by choice, then allow our mood to follow. I have often not been in the mood for people, places or things at certain times, but I went ahead and behaved in a positive way. After a while, my politeness, friendliness, and positive acts cause my mood and attitude to follow. By the end of it I could barely remember why I was in such a bad mood beforehand.

3. Practice Gratitude

Maybe the most important part of choosing a positive attitude. When we count our blessings we remind ourselves of all the good in our lives, and when we become good at it, it will counterbalance the bad. We are then remind us that a positive attitude is the right attitude. This helps us avoid jealousy, self-pity and selfishness. But it does take work, and practice is the key. Right now, name some things that you are thankful for, even the smallest of them.

4. Live with Purpose

When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, he prayed that his Father in Heaven would pass the cup of suffering from him. You see, Jesus was about to betrayed by one of his closest companions, abandoned by his disciples, go through a sham of a trial, get beaten, spat upon, mocked, whipped and hung on a cross naked and humiliated. So we can see how he would like to avoid these circumstances. But after he asks, he say “but your will, not mine.” Jesus lived for a higher purpose. Because he did, he was able to face his trials with a positive, defiant and determined attitude. What are you living for?

Quietly Incredible

I had this post idea tucked away in my brain files for months, and now too many things are reminding me about it that I take it as a supernatural signal to write. Or something like that. The idea of being quietly incredible came to me from a blog, and I thought it was a really cool thought. Then I met someone that has been working in a ministry to prostituted persons for over 20 years. As far as I know she doesn’t write a blog, send email updates, or post her deeds on facebook. I wonder how many amazing stories of hers have never been told. I don’t think too many people know her. She is quiet, kind, humble, and incredible.

 

Today I just finished a book by Os Guinness, The Call, and one of the last few chapters was on excellence when no one else can see. We need to show up everyday whether something big or small is happening, and strive with all our might even though no one else would notice.Yesterday I was having tea with Kevin and talking about discipleship stuff, most of the time. We were talking about getting bread so you can push someone else to the bread, but if you don’t have bread then you will only be looking and not pushing. It would make sense if you were there cause I made a fancy diagram.

 

Anyway, it got to serving others and we talked about how serving others is so often done with motives to let others know about it. Not gonna pretend, I’ve done things and the thought, “awesome, this is something to blog about” has come through my head. Or, “how can I describe this in 140 characters?” or “how can I show off while simultaneously bring myself down so I can appear humble?“

 

Sometimes, the lack of authenticity is so obvious I want to gag a bit when I listen to testimonies, read humblebrag tweets or see on my social news feeds obvious attempts to impress others by broadcasting good deeds. And yes, I make myself gag on a regular basis.

 

I am not saying that letting others know your good deeds is always wrong. We know some of Jesus’ good deeds and those of the Apostles. We need to set examples for each other and inform each other of how Jesus’ love is spreading. I am usually encouraged when I hear stories of heroic good deeds from frontline ministries and missionaries.

 

But Jesus says,

 

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,  so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

 

Do it when no one is around, so that only your heavenly Father sees.  Keep some Jesus adventures between yourselves like inside jokes. Do good and don’t tell anyone. Only care about what God thinks. Seek only the reward He gives. Be quietly incredible.

The Art of Thanksgiving

Our minds are naturally bent on focusing on the negative. For good reason of course. When there is negativity in our lives we wish to eliminate it, and so think and problem-solve until the negativity is eliminated.

However, the dilemma we run into is that we can never fully eliminate all negativity in our lives. As long as we live in this sinful and fallen world, we will have problems. No amount of money, fun, busyness or affection can get rid of all negativity all the time. And if one follows Christ, engaging the world and striving to affect it for the good, sin and struggle is assured. So it seems we must learn to live with our problems and causes of negativity.

The dilemma deepens when we feel stuck in our problems and negativity surrounds us. We lose our joy. We become pessimistic and bitter. We fail to take on challenges and meaningful relationships. We refuse to engage the world for Jesus.

So how do we combat negativity? We become thankful. Let me tell you a story. In Bible school, we had a guest speaker for one of our lectures in a class called “Children at Risk”. He was a missionary from Africa that worked in an orphanage. He told his story and the story of his orphanage. He told us that everyday they must reject children because there is not enough room or food for them. He knows that some they send away will not last the night.

After more stories of starvation, struggles and suffering, he talked about his Church. Most in his Church had HIV/AIDS. He said that they were joyful and loved the Lord. That in the midst of all their negativity, they were thankful.

How to be a more thankful person:

1. Count your blessings. A simple exercise. Just think about them, and verbally thank the Lord for the things that you are thankful for. Think hard because if you are like me, you are missing a lot of things. Name them, and contemplate the joy they bring you. When you do this, you train your mind to become less bent on focusing on problems. And at some point, you will get so good at it, it will overwhelm you and you will feel silly when you feel sorry for yourself.

2. Live in grace. We usually feel negative because something has gone wrong or we feel like we are missing out on something. But why do we think we deserve these things anyway? there is much to be said about this, but I’ll just try this little exercise: take a deep breath. Did it? Good. Now ask yourself what you did to deserve that breath. Did you create oxygen? Do you control the atmosphere or oxygenic photosynthesis (had to look that up of course)? Did you consciously form your lungs in the womb? Its all a gift, all grace. When we understand that everything is a gift and that we don’t deserve it, it becomes easy to be thankful.

3. Spread your blessings. As said above, are minds are bent to focus on our problems. But when we strive to bless others, we train our minds to open, and so reverse being overly obsessed with our causes of negativity. Instead of thinking of ourselves (especially our problems), we think of others and how we can help them. Then when we do help others, we become thankful that the Lord has used us in such a way. Our problems then don’t seem so big and our reasons for thanksgiving increases as we share in the joy of others.

4. Remember the Cross. That’s it. Ponder upon what Jesus did for you. Like really believe and dwell on it. If you do, there is no possible way that you will not be thankful. None whatsoever. Zero chance. Remember the Cross.

Second Life

My sister just had open heart surgery to replace a valve and repair a ruptured aorta. She wrote something important. You can read it here, or go the original blog. Blessings.

 

So I went in for a pretty standard valve replacement surgery with possible repairs to my aorta, due to some thinning along the wall. When I came out of surgery, I found that they had replaced my aortic valve as planned but upon investigation of my aorta, the surgeon had found scar tissue. Now that was not standard. What that means is that the reason why my aorta looked dilated or thinned out is because at some point in the last few months, my aortic vessel had ruptured and then healed itself. What that essentially means is that at some point in the last few months, I was alive when I could have been dead.

All of my life I have felt useless and purposeless. Church and Bible Studies always taught us that God had a plan for us. We were here for a reason. I never found that reason or even got close to it. I have no special talents or gifts, I’m not beautiful or wealthy or intelligent. I’m not business savvy nor am I a people person. I have nothing special to put on the table. If anyone ever said otherwise, I would say, “it’s a facade, a lie, you were lucky to catch a glimpse of an error in my otherwise unremarkable life.” I’m not saying my life is terrible, not by any means. It’s just plain.

But when God spares your life without you even knowing it and then He strengthens it and makes it stronger than ever, you would be a blimey fool to deny that you have a divine purpose. Obviously, my time is not up. Obviously, I haven’t reached the goal He has set out for me yet. Obviously, He is in control and I am not!

When my rupture healed on it’s own, He gave me a second chance and said, “I’m not done with you yet”. When He replaced the broken parts of my heart and sealed me back up again, He stamped me and branded me and claimed my second life. My surgeon and his team are Amazing and I am ever grateful to them but this scar on my chest is my proclamation to the world that if God cared enough to give such an unworthy creature as myself a second chance at life, He can do the same for anyone. Broken, ashamed, riddled with sin. He loves you all! Even if you don’t believe it, He still loves you and you can’t stop Him! So you should just accept it….

I still don’t know what “my purpose” is but I know now, without a doubt, that there is one. I wasn’t created by mistake or for fun. God knew me before I was born and has my life set out before me. And I will spend this second life living the best that I can, walking in His presence, so that His purpose can come into fruition.

Tunnel Vision

Today, a colleague of mine was terminated from work. The sick part of this was that it seemed like she was given false hopes: they said she had two weeks – she was fired after two days. We were shocked as a team, to say the least. The least we could do for her was offer encouraging words and an email containing potential employers. She is, by the way, a single mom with a young’un to feed.

But in the corporate world, it’s the numbers that matter. It’s the thing that brings in the money, not your life story.

The only thing she holds on to, the only thing that makes sure that milk reaches her baby’s tummy, gone in a blink of an eye. Why? For a string of events that weren’t “lived up to the company’s standards”, maybe.

Yet she wasn’t the only one affected. My teammates may not be vocal about it, but it changed the way we move, the way we see work now. The fear of losing our jobs is too much to bear that we wouldn’t dare to talk about it. How does one deal with this, exactly? Like everything is not so secure anymore, that anytime the rug can be pulled out of our feet, then we fall facedown first. I would like to think that I am next. Not like, but I tend to think that it will be me who’ll get fired next.

That’s the struggle that I face right now: the fear that cripples. The enemy disguises in that voice that tells the lie, and yet I listen. The first one to say you can’t do it, that you’re not good enough, that you’re not deserving. And I know that my colleague is probably going through the same thing as well.

I realized that this is not just my battle: she and I are sharing a battle that is for God and most importantly, a struggle that is of Christ. It is hard, especially for her, but everything that is worth doing is not easy. The same thing applies in following Christ. Grace is a choice: we can restlessly look for another job, pressure ourselves to get our hands to the first opportunity that comes our way. Or we can proactively and productively wait upon His answer.

A few words of encouragement I shared to her, hoping that she will see beyond this situation the goodness of God. She and I have this thing, a common fetish for vision boards. I reminded her that her dreams doesn’t stop here, that all her dreams will come to fruition and Lilypie will grow up as a beautiful child. I texted in: Jeremiah 29:11. Romans 8:28. Oh, how it helped that I have them in my mind. It’s times like these that His words come to life. The plans we had for ourselves, gone, making room for the best ones, I believe. I do not know who else around me is thinking this way or who else has been agitated by the thought of loss. Much like when you get inside a tunnel, you don’t block out the small dot of light at the end of it. You follow it because you believed in it. Because you believed there’s more to the darkness.

In a sucky situation called unemployment such as this, I am faithful that He will be glorified.

- O D R

Get Out Reach

As I was standing with a sign saying “Got Stress? Free Quick PRAYER!” one of the security guards approached me and asked in a serious tone “do you guys have permit?”

The night before, I was up late printing our signs, name tags and flyers for the Open Table. The plan is go sit outside one of the coffee shops, Coffee Bean of course, and offer people prayer and give them our flyer directing them to our Bible Study on Saturday mornings. However, no one got back to me to let me know if they would join the outreach. So as I am awaiting for responses via twitter, facebook, email and text, and the hours slip away, I begin to imagine what it would like if I did it all by my lonesome.

“I’ll look crazy” I tell myself. A lone nut that no one else wanted to join. But I tell myself in twenty different ways that it will be OK. Or that others will send me a message by dawn. Dawn comes and no messages. I kick myself out the door just after 6am, laughing at myself but thinking that at least I’ll be a “fool for Christ,” and that I should be joyful.

I cross the footbridge to Technohub and mosey over to Coffee Bean then plant myself at a patio table. Not open yet and I need coffee bad. I see call center workers walking around, just getting out of work. I start making mental plans as to how I’m going to approach people and then I see them, Olga and Keng! They work at Technohub. They didn’t reply to my messages but planned all along to come. I am relieved. Now, we can look crazy together.

We pray together first, then put the signs up. The first person that sees the signs is a security guard. He walks past us slowly, then goes inside Coffee Bean. Keng tells me that he talking to the workers inside. I run in after him and explain to the workers at Coffee Bean that I was going to ask permission, but they weren’t open yet. Then I ask permission. They say yes.  I’m sure they said yes because they know us from Saturdays. The one lady already knows my Saturday morning breakfast by memory. I order us some coffees.

For about 15 minutes we sit waiting for someone, anyone to come take us up on our offer to pray. Everyone looks, and we smile at them and point at the sign, but no one comes. Plan “B”. Two of us start handing out the flyers.

So something interesting. Many people didn’t even acknowledge I was talking to them. I wasn’t offended, much, but I did find it strange that some didn’t even hint that they knew I existed. I asked Keng about it and she told me that that’s the norm. Got it. I’d say the flyer things went well.

Another guard came and asked for a flyer. I was sure he was going to report us to the management of the complex. As he read it walking away, he looked back and gave us a thumbs up. He came back a little later and asked if we had a permit. I said we didn’t and he said it would be great if got one. He explained that he is a believer and likes what we are doing. Awesome.

I look back at our table and Olga and Keng are praying for a lady. Sweet. A few minutes later, they are praying with another one. Cool. One of the Coffee Bean baristas comes out to talk to them and told them that she wants to pray with us. Fantastic. Unfortunately she gets super busy and can’t take time to pray, but we get her contacts. We also see her there often.

We run out of our almost hundred flyers and call it a day. A good day it was. We planned to do it every week, and if we can get more teams, more than once a week. We debrief then pray for each other. Then we leave feeling like we started something good. Really good.