God Spotting

(I have more to say about this, but I’ll finish these things first… In the meantime, a song)

Everything is Yours

When all the world is blossoming
And everything around is bursting into life
And I don’t have to strain to hear the beat of Your heart

When all the world is under fire
When skies are threatening to thunder and rain
And I am overcome by fears that I can’t see

If everything is Yours
Everything is Yours
If everything is Yours
I’m letting it go
No, it was never mine to hold
No, never mine

Who could command the stars to sing
Or hold the raging seas from breaking through the doors?
And tend the fragile roses with the very same hands

If everything is Yours
Everything is Yours
If everything is Yours
I’m letting it go
I am, I’m letting it go, letting go
Yeah, I’m letting it go

‘Cause everything is Yours
Yeah, everything is Yours

If everything is Yours, God
And everything is Yours
If everything is Yours
I’m letting it go, let it go, let it go, let it go

It was never mine, no, no
It was never mine, never mine
[Incomprehensible] no

Credits :
songwriters: assad, audrey; wilson, steve
© meaux mercy;river oaks music company;skyline apartments music

on a day when it’s like i can’t do anything right,
occasions for apologies keep on coming up,
and i just want to hide my face for a while,

i hear the raindrops fall as soon as i am in my car.

It seems that someone up there’s keeping the rain off me.

(i don’t deserve it i know.)

(the eulogy I sobbed through for her memorial service)

I’ve only known Elvie since 2008. And, I have to confess, I only got to talk and know her this year—when all her hair was gone. The church was starting with cell groups and we thought that it would be a lot easier for Elvie if we just had one of the Bible studies at her house, that way her family could join in too.  I didn’t know that Elvie had been praying for a Bible study at their house for a while now, so when I mentioned it to her, she was really excited.

So it’s most likely that you guys know her more, have more stories and adventures with her than I do. It’s likely that nothing I say will be new to you.

So why am I here? I don’t know! I’m just grateful for the opportunity to honor my friend among people who, like me, loved her and witnessed the miracle that is her life—even for a just a little while.

We all know how Elvie was strong and joyful still in the face of having her cancer, but I got to see first hand just how deep it really went at one of our Bible studies when I asked about what we are grateful to God for in our lives. And she replied, “I’m grateful for my cancer.”

And I said, “Really?” more out of surprise. And later on, I would ask if she had any regrets and she said she had none. She took something that one would normally see as a cause to question God’s goodness and plan for her life as an opportunity to know her Father even more intimately. She said she experienced firsthand how it was to truly depend on Him for everything—her health, her strength, for provisions. And for her, she always had enough.

She looked at her cancer—something that is so scary and painful and crippling—and considered it not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us– to her. It was a good exchange for her for a chance to live out her faith, to get to know God beyond what she would, in normal health, have.

And while her relationship with God was something that was so personal and intimate, we—and anybody who got to know her, even for just a little while—bore witness to their wonderful relationship and was blessed by it.

One time, when Elvie needed blood donors, one of my friends volunteered to donate, but he got rejected because he just had surgery that year. So, he just went up to her room in Makati Med to pray for her. He texted me later that it was such a blessing to meet someone who was still so joyful in the Lord in the midst of her sickness. He found it funny because he came up to bless her, and instead he came away blessed. Elvie texted me later to thank me for sending my friend up to pray for her and that he’s cute.

I was reading through her text messages in my phone…  “Ok, blood test ko kanina, platelet 112,000 kasi uminom ako ng katas ng fresh papaya leaves, hemoglobin 9 kasi nagpa-inject ako ng mahal na gamot worth P13,500,  white blood cells 2.38…Sobrang manas na ako, hirap maglakad, left hand ko maga din… But I thank God that He continues to sustain me and gives me strength. He is so good! He is in control!”

Parang Psalms no? At first it’s like a lament, but in the end there’s rejoicing because of God’s goodness despite all that is happening.

I wrote about her in my blog last September, I even got her to read it (I had to zoom the page really close because her eyesight’s bad already). I quoted a line from a book I was reading at a time and I remembered her, “Not all powers are spectacular. Sometimes the hardest power to master is the power of yielding.”(Hestia, The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan)

By yielding to the fact that she could succumb to her sickness at any time, Elvie had her priorities straight. Each day counted. She keept on going so that God’s power and glory could all the more be shown in what was left of her days, and to see the people she had shared the Gospel to grow closer to our Savior. I guess that’s why she fought to stay around longer than her doctors expected her to. That’s why even while she had just checked out of the hospital earlier that day, and already had a hard time walking, and it was raining really hard (so hard, that it kept most of the people from going to the fellowship) on October 1, she still went to church to share her story at the SAM Octoberfeast.

She made every day count.

And I’m not saying that Elvie put on a brave face all the time. She never made it a secret that she was afraid of the pain her cancer would bring, but she had surrendered her sickness to God. She was ready to go whenever God called her home. Her only prayer was to be able to keep on serving until the end. She was no longer afraid of death because it was already welcome any time.  Even then, she was already free from the fear of death. What a glorious victory!

I’m not asking to get cancer like Elvie—but God, how I want what she had with You! But the Stef version (heh). The peace, the joy in adversity, the steadiness against overwhelming odds, and the strength—oh the strength!—until the end.

Praise You, o Lord, for Elvie’s life. That was really something beautiful. Praise you.

Christmas Oratio
by W.H. Auden

Well, so that is that.  Now we must dismantle the tree,

Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes –

Some have got broken — and carrying them up to the attic.

The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,

And the children got ready for school.  There are enough

Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week –

Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,

Stayed up so late, attempted — quite unsuccessfully –

To love all of our relatives, and in general

Grossly overestimated our powers.  Once again

As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed

To do more than entertain it as an agreeable

Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,

Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,

The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.

The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,

And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware

Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought

Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now

Be very far off.  But, for the time being, here we all are,

Back in the moderate Aristotelian city

Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid’s geometry

And Newton’s mechanics would account for our experience,

And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.

It seems to have shrunk during the holidays.  The streets

Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten

The office was as depressing as this.  To those who have seen

The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,

The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.

For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly

Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be

Grew up when it opened.  Now, recollecting that moment

We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;

Remembering the stable where for once in our lives

Everything became a You and nothing was an It.

And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,

We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit

Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose

Would be some great suffering.  So, once we have met the Son,

We are tempted ever after to pray to the Father;

“Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake.”

They will come, all right, don’t worry; probably in a form

That we do not expect, and certainly with a force

More dreadful than we can imagine.  In the meantime

There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,

Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem

From insignificance.  The happy morning is over,

The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:

When the Spirit must practice his scales of rejoicing

Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure

A silence that is neither for nor against her faith

That God’s Will will be done, That, in spite of her prayers,

God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph.

I’ve been thinking about what you said– about how you want things the way they were before between you and God.  And I’m telling you that you can’t get it back anymore, rather, you get something new. I don’t know if I explained myself all that well, but here’s more of what I have to say about that.

In the Bible, God said, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” (Isaiah 43:18-19) And I just love it that we have a God who doesn’t want us to be stuck in a moment–whether it was good or not– but would rather open up new horizons, lay out new roads for us to travel, find nourishment for our souls in unexpected places.

My church, WinMakati, is moving to a new place next year– well, that’s actually in a few days. We’re having our service at Greenbelt 1 Cinema 2 on January 2. Every thing’s all packed up.  A few days ago, I stood there in the midst of all the packing and I found myself staring at the walls and corners where I had very vivid memories of the first time I had been there. It filled my heart with so much strangeness– a mixture of humor, chagrin, sadness in the light of what happened between then and now. I had to literally shake myself and order myself to move on. Give thanks for those times, move on. Soon, those walls would be torn down, those corners no more. The chairs we once sat on will be moved to the next center. There’s literally no going back.

Maybe this is another lesson for us, a literal application of the forward motion God is urging us to take– both as a church and as His children. There’s still so much more to Him than what we have known in the past, and how eager He is to show us more that He doesn’t want us to keep on hanging on to the old stuff!

Isn’t this exciting?!

And so I urge you, my dear old friend (yes, even if I haven’t heard from you for over a decade before you just popped back into existence in my world, I still consider you as my friend) to keep on moving forward. Keep on walking, reaching out for Him. Don’t be afraid to ask, to seek Him. He wants to be found! Call to Him and He will answer you! This desire– this longing that you have is from Him.

God writes a different story for each of us. Do not look and be envious of what I have, or what other people have. You have your own story with Him. Live this one. Don’t give up! It’s not always easy (because that would be boring!), but trust Him, stay with Him, and He’ll take you through a great adventure in His amazing grace.

Keep on going. Consider me as one of your cheerleaders.

Happy New Year.

p.s.

random thought:

January 1, 2011 is just another day, right? But why is it that we always like to think that January 1 is kinda like a reset? We hang on to the last few days of December, putting off what we want to do for January 1 because it seems like the perfect time for a new start.

But just like January 1 is just another day, every day is a perfect day for a new start.

As someone who has spent– and is still spending– a good part of her life in transit, I know all about how it is to be en route to somewhere else. I used to joke that I live on the road, I just go home to sleep. And I often find myself at peace with this state of existence already, existing in the Now, while living for something far greater that is to come.

Ok, now that last sentence didn’t make much sense.

Now What?

These days, for some reason, my friends and I have been going through a period of wondering about where we are right now and where God is taking us, and what is it that we’re waiting for. I’ve been asked about how I measure my life’s progress versus what I’ve accomplished so far. I have been getting a lot of emails from A Slice of Infinity about waiting (like this one, “Hope without answers”); this morning, I listened to Northpoint’s latest sermon of Andy Stanley aptly titled, “The Thrill of Hope,” and last week’s sermon in midweek was basically about waiting as well.

I’ve always said that being a young adult is a period of being on the brink of something. While, everyone is always at a point of waiting for anything, I think it is most palpably felt while you’re a single young adult. That’s why this is the time when we most ask God the Whats, Whens, How and the Who. We’re done with school, we more or less know who we are, we’re earning our own money, our parents have (mostly) relinquished their control over us, and we are answerable to ourselves… now what?

This morning, I was just airing out some probabilities and situations to God. What if this, what if that. I’m not really concerned about the waiting part, I’ve long since surrendered to that fact, but it’s more about what I do while I’m waiting. Can I allow myself some mistakes– on purpose? What if things get too hard, and the questions are too difficult to answer and the I’m unable to quantify the answers? Why do I have to be good all the time? Why must I always do the right thing?! (Yes, I know the answers to these questions already, but feelings are different from what I know most of the time.)

My friends and I recently a discussion pertaining to God’s standards and what actually happens in real life– the “ideal” versus the “reality,” and I was so quick to counter, “So you’re saying God’s not realistic?!”

My friend, flustered, replied, “Of course He is! But…” She holds her hands up in the air. Yes, in the face of everything in this world, waiting just seems so… impractical.

But waiting is just that– you wait.

oh, the thrill of hope!

While once in a while I do get these waiting-themed lessons and teachings in seasons, it’s funny how now it’s happening right before Christmas, during Advent. And what it’s doing is transforming the way I see Christmas. I have gone from my childhood excitement for gifts, to Christmas-is-cantata-season, to Christmas-is-traffic-and-higher-crime rate season, but now, God has introduced me to Christmas as the not-waiting-in-vain season.

Growing up in a church, I was taught that God had already promised Jesus since the fall of man. And that’s way back in the garden of Eden! Since then, all of creation and God’s people had literally been waiting for Christmas for thousands of years! God was even silent in the several hundred years before the virgin birth. People have died while in wait (because they got old already, of course. They didn’t die from waiting!), while others have fallen away. But the thing is, there was an appointed time for Jesus to be born. No matter how long people have waited for what seemed like forever, Christmas still came!

All that waiting was never in vain!

Where were the main players when it came at the appointed time? There were Zacharias and Elizabeth who stayed righteous in the eyes of God (the parents of John the Baptist); Mary, who told Gabriel, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.” and Joseph, who, though he did not understand at first, stayed with her; Simeon and Anna who knew they would see the Messiah before they died, so they waited for Jesus at the temple every day; the wise men who were doing their job watching the stars; the shepherds watching over their sheep. They were all doing where they were supposed to be at that time.

So now, in this season of waiting, the holiday rush, decors, songs, parties and whatnot have taken on a new meaning. It fills me with great anticipation for the things and the answers that are yet to come– in their appointed time. But oh I know, I know that when that happens, it will be the Perfect Moment.

And while it’s still not here, I’ll stay with the program, do the job that’s in front of me, give thanks for the time in between, and be faithful.

by Francesca Battistelli

You were there when your Father said
Let there be light
You obeyed when He whispered
Son, You have to leave tonight
To spend nine months in a mothers womb
Three days in a borrowed tomb

(Chorus One)
But it’s the time in between
That brings me to my knees
Knowing you came for me
And all that I can’t be
I’m amazed, so amazed
And I thank You for the time in between

Don’t take much for this crazy world
To rob me of my peace
And the enemy of my soul
Says You’re holding out on me
So I stand here lifting empty hands
For you to fill me up again

(Chorus Two)
But it’s the time in between
That I fall down to my knees
Waiting on what You’ll bring
And the things that I can’t see
I know my song’s incomplete
Still I’ll sing in the time in between

So many ways
Your love has saved the day
And I’m grateful for them all

(Chorus 3)
But it’s the time in between
The middle of two thieves
That says everything
It’s the reason I believe
I’m amazed, so amazed
And I thank you for the time in between
Oh Lord, I thank you for the time in between

A year ago…

Praying for justice in this life and in the next (although I know that justice will meet them sooner or later), but Lord, please may it prevail here and soon for everyone to see.

For the LORD loves justice, And does not forsake His saints; They are preserved forever, But the descendants of the wicked shall be cut off. (Psalm 37:28)

I found this on my twitter feed (see article below).

This needs some thinking over. Funny how this page has been open on my laptop the whole day I’ve been struggling with letting go of things in my past, and I’ve only read it now.

I’ve often struggled with letting go– you should see my room, I have boxes of notebooks from my writing fevers back in high school that I never read, but I still can’t throw away. I have letters from people I don’t see or talk to anymore, but have a hard time letting go. There’s this box with all the pictures of a certain boy and me that I open once in a while. I buy souvenirs and collect paraphernalia from places I’ve been too, always meaning to write about them later, but I never do. Sometimes I’d forget where and how I got some knick knacks in my room. I always say, half-jokingly, that once I get my room in order, my life would be in order.

Maybe it’s about time.

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14)

________________________________

How to Destroy Past Lives
by Everett Bogue

“The hydrogen atoms in a human body completely refresh every seven years. As we age we are really a river of cosmically old atoms. The carbons in our bodies were produced in the dust of a star. The bulk of matter in our hands, skin, eyes, and hearts was made near the beginning of time, billions of years ago. We are much older than we look.” – Kevin Kelly, from his new book What Technology Wants.

I like the idea that every seven years we’re a totally new person. A whole new set of hydrogen atoms, a whole new reason to reinvent ourselves. Obviously this whole new person is defined somewhat by the grand design of our DNA structure, and the choices we make, but it still is a whole new body at it’s basic structural level.

For example, the me who ate bacon egg and cheeses every morning and while sitting at a desk and eventually developed a 34 inch waist line 3 years ago is very different from the me now — with a 29 inch waist line, who eats mostly fruit, veggies, coffee and the amazing food at The Summit SF, while taking double or triple yoga classes a day.

Frequently we find ourselves dwelling on the past.

We remember the night we said goodbye to the little blond girl in the rain that one night in Manhattan. We remember the time we danced all night until the sun came out in the basement of a school in Brooklyn. We remember the time that we took that first photo of the first day we got dropped off in New York. We remember the time we rode our bike to Lake Michigan at 4am and watched the sun come up over the horizon.

These were all beautiful moments, but they happened in the past. In many ways they happened a lifetime ago.

There’s a reason that so many spiritual and philosophical practices focus on bringing you into the present moment, your breath, your heartbeat. Because these two things can only happen now, not then, not in the future.

Many of the people who contact me about becoming minimalist are struggling with a past that they cannot forgive or forget. So they hold on. They hold onto the rocks they collected in 7th grade. They hold onto the memories of the loves they never really had. They hold onto the art they created five years ago, but never sold. They hold, hold, hold.

And these collections of memories, physical or emotional build up over time. These people become heavier and heavier, until they find no rest. They do this until all of their energy is dedicated towards keeping the past alive.

The reality is that the past is dead. It happened, it shaped who you are, but it’s gone now.

And it’s never coming back.

No matter how many Facebook messages you send to your high school ex-girlfriend/boyfriend when you’re drunk at night, you’re never going to be 17 again. You’re never going to share the connection you had then.

No matter how many times you look at that picture of the perfect halloween, with the displaced tribe of a dozen remarkable individuals, they’ll never be together again in the same way.

And this is okay. The world changes. We evolve into new and better individuals every single day.

The choice though is this: will you continue to build up your energy in order to focus on the person you were back then?

Or can you let it go, to concentrate on the faces around you now?

Can you look up into the eyes of the person across from you at the table at the coffee shop, or on the yoga mat next to you, or on the other side of that email and say:

“I am here with you now.”

Because, you are.

Here are a few actions that I’ve taken to clear the past, maybe they can help you.

1. Destroy your old unpublished work.

In the last few years I’ve adopted an incredibly healthy habit of burning Moleskin notebooks. When I’ve finished one, I take it somewhere like the edge of a body of water or the top of a mountain and a burn it. I like to think this releases the creative energy invested in the work into the universe, so that it can come back to me or others at a later date.

I’ve been writing a non-fiction story, a dialog between a young woman and man who survive the apocalypse and then go on to save the world, in notebooks for the last few years. Every time I finish a notebook, I burn it, then start writing the story again. Every time I write the story again it’s clearer, more focused, more important. Someday maybe I’ll actually write a version that I want to publish, or maybe it’s just an exercise to bring me closer to the creative side of my brain, who knows?

This also means I can’t grab a notebook and flip back to remind myself about how I felt about some girl I was in love with five years ago when I feel down at 3am on a Tuesday night. I can still feel down, but without the physical connection to the memory it’s that much harder to escape to the past.

I’ve been thinking about taking all of the photos/data on my hard drives collected from the dawn of time and destroying them too. I’ll let you know if/when I do how that feels. I never look at this stuff, why keep it?

2. Don’t collect souvenirs.

It might be obvious from the fact that I live with around 50 things that I don’t collect stuff from places. I don’t have any artifacts to remind me of my trip to Vietnam. I didn’t buy a I Heart NY shirt on the day I left NY. I don’t save sea shells.

If I feel like I need to be connected to an awesome experience, I go out into the world and have one.

3. I lose touch with (most) old friends.

There are certain people who I have a cosmic connection with, who I will continue to visit every time I wander through the city that they live in. We’ll go to each others weddings, we’ll say each others eulogies, we’ll make dinner together every time we cross paths.

My friends who are these people know who they are, and I know who they are. We just know, there’s no other way of explaining why.

But most people aren’t those people. Over the last year I’ve met thousands of people, I’ve received tens of thousands of emails. I’ve said ‘until next time’ to hundreds at the end of the night. Most of these people I’ll never actively seek out again, in essence, we’ll lose touch.

This sounds sad, but it isn’t. The fact is that most people aren’t your people. They’re just bodies passing in space and time. They might have something to teach you in the moment, but after that moment they don’t need your help anymore.

So you let them go.

Why we need to destroy our past lives.

The world is speeding up. 100 years ago, you’d probably have the same small group of friends who supported each other for your entire life. You never left the town you were born in. In order to get in touch you had to send a postcard via the, uhm, snail mail? Whatever that is.

In today’s world, it’s not uncommon to live many different lives over the course of your own. You’ll morph, change, your life will transition. You’ll move dozens or hundreds of times as the ever-growing cloud of connected information cares for your survival.

You have a choice, you can either let the pain and joys of the past build up until they’re too heavy a burden. Or, you can let everything go. Burn your notebooks, let the friends go, leave the souvenirs at the shop.

All that really matters is having a connection with the here and now. This breath, this movement, this heart beat.

What can you do to bring yourself here right now?

——–

I’m sick. For the first time since February, I felt unwell and woozy. I’ve been feeling this since Friday, but thank God, I managed to go through my to-do list (two shoots and an interview, plus SAM WinMakati’s First Friday Fellowship) and even got to bond with one of my writers, Yvette Tan.

I’m one of those people who subscribe to the belief that every illness has a deeper meaning other than my body stalling because it’s overworked. And I always think that this is God’s way of making me rest. It turns out to be more than that.

Today is a Sunday and I can’t go to church because my head hurts, I feel my vertigo trying to resurface, and my throat is all scratchy. I should be sleeping, but instead, I chose to listen to a podcast of Northpoint’s last Sunday’s preaching by Jeff Henderson and he talked about God’s thumbprints on us– our gifts. What struck me is that we can actually neglect our gifts, and Paul warned Timothy (and essentially us) that there is a danger of that happening. For some reason, I just started sobbing at that point.

Do not neglect the spiritual gift you received through the prophecy spoken over you when the elders of the church laid their hands on you. Give your complete attention to these matters. Throw yourself into your tasks so that everyone will see your progress. (1 Timothy 4:14-15)

There it is. That’s the reason for this time.

See, I’m a writer, a good one–I’ve been told by a lot of people since fifth grade that I am. (Funny enough, one of my favorite professors also said that while I am a good writer, I’m also a lazy one. And I found out that it’s true, even if I didn’t accept it at that time.) I finished Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines. I started getting paid to write when I was a college freshman.  Now, I make a living by writing, and editing. Throughout all this, I’ve been asking God if this is what I’m supposed to be doing, and while there is no burning bush or a voice from heaven that told me that I’m supposed to be a writer, I guess my life and work so far are answers enough. This is my gift and my calling.

But I think I’ve neglected it along the way.

I used to tell people that I’m a writer, but writing’s the hardest thing in the world for me to do. It wasn’t always like this, but I’ve lost my joy for it somewhere between giving up journalism and graduating from Creative Writing.

I’m burned out.  I look at an empty page with dread now and with the desire to do something else other than write (an impulse I usually obey unless the deadline cannot be ignored anymore).

So I’m still writing.

And oh, how painfully laborious it is for me to finish an article or even a blog post! That’s why I love twitter and facebook status messages– they require so little of my words and time!

The ironic thing is, writing is always at the top of my mind in everything. Whatever I experience, think, hear, read or stumble upon– I want to write it down. It doesn’t mean that I do get to write them down all the time, but that’s what I want to do with everything that goes my way– WRITE ABOUT IT.

The thing is, I love to experience, talk, think, read, listen to so many things that they just pile up, on top of my writing jobs (that I love so very much) that I end up putting them off for the next time I feel writing– which I hardly ever happens until the deadlines start whooshing past.

But when I do write, I feel the rightness of it. And yes, I do feel His delight when I let the words just flow out on the page. And it always feels so good to finish a piece.
So back to this sickly weekend… Last Friday, I made myself an epitaph for our SAM FFF. I already had a design in mind, but suddenly, I changed it. Instead of stars and other pretty things, I just drew a door notice that says, “The Writer is out.” And I just thought that it was weird that I wanted to label myself as a writer even after I’m dead.

I was still thinking about it throughout Saturday because it sounded brash and assuming, and I’m more of an editor now than a writer. And I felt ashamed for all the articles that are piled up with me and are way overdue.

Then I listened to the podcast this morning. And God just hit me with His Word.

I have been talking and looking and being paid for being a writer, but I’ve been neglecting the actual writing part of my gift. And gifts aren’t supposed to be just for me– it’s for other people. It’s for His glory!
By neglecting it, I have been neglecting God’s gift and ultimately, not riding with his plans for my life.

I’m still not feeling so good, my head hurts and my eyes cross even as I am writing this. But I figured that once I get the impetus to write, I should not neglect it. Because this is how God made me to serve Him, and it’s about time I stop putting it off.

I still don’t feel like writing, but I’m going to do it now from obedience, and hopefully soon, the joy will come back. And when it does…. I can’t wait.

p.s. yes, this is also an apology to people I owe articles to. You know who you are. They’re coming!