Blessings in uncertainty

• Rivers of blessing are being poured out onto me and my family. I think the most significant one is that we got to spend time with family who are usually far away. A cousin and his family from the US are visiting... I met a cute niece I've never seen before apart from FB photos. My brother came home for a week-long vacation. We spent time with both clans from the maternal and paternal side. What a great birth month. Thank you, Lord. 

• My parents will be going on a trip to the Holy Land. Wow! Thank you, Lord, for the gift of life, for my parents and for their love. Please continue blessing and protecting them, and all their companions on this pilgrimage. We entrust them into Your most loving hands.
  
• College friends treated me to watch Sound of Music at Resorts World. We had a lovely dinner at Red Crab. And lots of yummy cake from Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. Happy birthday to me! Thank you, Lord!

What prompted me to write today, however, was how someone I love dearly reacted negatively to a blessing when I had just received it and was feeling joy.

In my studying theology, I will be working as a staff member of the library and receiving a small amount. I think of myself as a working student assistant. Actually, I felt very happy when my priest-professor was telling me about it. But my sister, ever practical and concerned about me, was belittling the amount, criticizing how poor a negotiator I am, etc. Boy, was it taking the joyful air out of my balloon.

Reflecting on it now, I realize that I am a people pleaser and the source of my anguish is trying to please those I love when, in my following God, all I face is uncertainty. I have accepted the darkness of uncertainty as part of my journey but I have not accepted that there will be voices speaking against such uncertainty apart from my own. I have to listen to God and be faithful despite how these voices echo my own fear. I am on a journey of uncertainty. 

Lord, grant me ears to hear Your voice above all others and to trust that as I take one step at a time into darkness, You are always by my side. Even if I don't know where this is all going, You have a plan. I trust You even when those around me echo my own fears. I trust You.

Waiting open-endedly

Wow... just time traveled via journal entries. Wrote quotes that struck me from reading "The Path of Waiting" by Henri J.M. Nouwen. I jotted it down 14 years ago but reading it recently struck me again. In the spiraling upward in search of God, I guess I'm somewhere similar to where I was 14 years ago. But even if it feels like a circle, I know better. I spiraled upward. Now I'm waiting again... sana with stronger faith and hope because I've seen God work in my life in the past 14 years. I know He who began a good work in me will be faithful to complete it. Thank you, Lord!

Quotes in journal, undated (est 1997):

"what they are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing... The secret of waiting is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun. Active waiting means to be present fully to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present to it."

"... patience... willingness to stay where we are and live... situation out to the full... (until?) something hidden there will manifest itself to us."

"Much of our waiting is full of wishes... our waiting easily gets entangled in those wishes... We want the future to go in a very specific direction, and if this does not happen we are disappointed and can even slip into despair."

"But Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Simeon, and Anna were not filled with wishes. They were filled with hope. Hope is something very different. Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the promises and not just according to our wishes. Therefore, hope is always open-ended."

"Mary... was saying 'I don't know what this all means, but I trust that good things will happen.' She trusted so deeply that her waiting was open to all possibilities."

Notes to self: Wait open-endedly, give up control of our future, let God define our life. God molds us according to His perfect love, not according to our fear.

New direction has come into my life. I will be taking up further studies in theology at the Divine Word Seminary in Tagaytay. 

From the liturgy of the hours: Wisdom of God, be with me, always at work in me.

Lord, I dedicate my studies to You. Grant me Your wisdom and knowledge that these further studies might be a pleasing offering to You. Grant me a deep hunger for You. Grant me the grace to love You with all my mind. But most of all make me a doer of Your Word, to love You in thought, word and action, and to love those around me as I love myself. May this not be a purely intellectual exercise but I beg You, make me a better follower of You. May I be Yours to do with as You please. This I ask in Jesus' name. Amen.