i write to believe.

The nap was 2 hours.  The sun is slowly setting.  I'm letting my mind drown in songs of worship because I'd like to worship my way into the New Year.  And there's this word from a song that my heart's beating to this moment. Restoration.   For this moment it feels like a declaration rising from the very depths of all that has been messed up, lost and broken.  So I let it rise.  This pulse climbing out of the noisy clutter and I let it embrace me.  It's on repeat and the cry is loud, desperate, aching and victorious. Restoration.   Before the fireworks sound its trumpets blaring onwards to midnight, I make my own ascent and blow my own horn. You bring Restoration. The year was long and tiring.  The ride was an unending rollercoaster.  There were pockets of graces were potholes of despair made me stumble. And I haven't really done much to overcome anything because I am spent and weary. ...

It plays on the background. The interview for Ann Voskamp's book over at {In} Courage. I love the chatter of their thoughts going over what she has written about life and sorrow and the grace in the middle of it all.  Listening to these moments shared by women give me the courage to listen to myself this morning. I'm back in the city and today is the last day of 2012.  It's a cloudy morning and I just spent the past 2 hours talking to my bestfriend Adi.  I've missed our conversations (and our letters which we wrote in heaps of email strings back in the day).  But it's always great to catch up and I'm glad I have time to do that today.  I'm thinking that one of the first resolutions I'd make is to really make time.  I've been troubled by so many things this year and felt that I've lost so many things because I didn't have the time.  I didn't have a lot of time to read and discover.  I didn't have a lot of time to converse and con...

The smell of old books and old furniture wakes me up this morning.  It's a day before Christmas and things are slowly starting to sink in.  This season of gifts. And the best gift will always be the remembrance of home.  It is when I remember where I came from that everything uncertain becomes an appreciated mystery of faith. Breakfast was filled with musings of family history.  My grandmother's scrambled eggs recipe.  The dining chairs where they used to sit.  The living room filled with photographs of aunts and uncles.  The wall of college diplomas.  Thoughtful chatter of the night before. Christmas is always that moment of honoring and remembering the gift woven by ties of family.  The wrinkled and crooked. The smooth and entwined. There is nothing like coming back to the old home town where the most early memories of joyful play never fails to warm the heart.   The first childhood friends.  The first set of stories...

It's a few days before Christmas and here I am trying to ponder if I can even understand how to celebrate it this year.  So many changes.  So many things unfolding.   And the only thing I can be right now is vulnerable.  For it is the only way I'll be able to understand the purpose of the season.   When you yield a part of your life to God, it doesn't automatically become smooth sailing as you thought it would be.  A large part of it will continue to be a huge interior debate whether or not you did the right thing.  Another part of it will be testing the limits of what you know to be your self-worth.  Some of the people around you will affirm you and some will frown upon your decisions.  These reactions from other people shake the ground you walk on and unending barrage of questions ensue.  Peace becomes elusive and the only way to keep it is to let your gaze be upon the cross of the Savior who promises that nothing will s...

I don't know why I seem to always have time to write on a Thursday where the day always starts the quietest compared to the rest of the days in the week.   It has been an eventful week for me.  I have finally taken the big leap of deciding to leave my current job and open up myself to receive a new one.  So many things flash back before me  in the past few days.  I've also received forlorn messages from people who I've worked with saying that they will miss me.  I've seen tears in their eyes when they heard the news.  It's affirming to know that I've managed to make an impact on some people here and I will always treasure it for keeps.  I'm moving on  into a new chapter of my life where I begin again and hopefully restore all that was lost in the way.  This Christmas season will be spent reflecting on the past year's events and drawing from these experiences the wealth of wisdom for their passing by my life. I'll be ...

This Sunday the dusk comes cloudy.  I'm listening to All Sons & Daughters' album "Brokenness Aside" through a Youtube playlist.  The cello undertones give their music just the right cloak of warm melancholy. I am wistful for a lot of things this afternoon.  The lives of the Sandy Hook teachers & children that are lost.  The slow waning of meaningfulness in the work place.  The struggles of the young inconsistent hearts in youth ministry.   And while I sit here on my desk preparing to go to the 3rd Advent mass this season I fall silent to to the words of Angie Smith .   And when the sun burns my eyes and the wind whips me into a place of doubt, I have committed to return to a place of worship.  A place where it is too dark to see anything but Him.  A place too quiet to hear anything other than the sound of my own praise. "Nevertheless I will look again towards Your holy temple, Lord." And like the bird that can o...

Today this blog lights a candle for Sandy Hook.  The horrible tragedy of lives lost.  The senselessness of such an event  may haunt us for days but my prayer is that God's grace abounds even stronger now.  Father, bless the little ones whose souls are now in your hands.  Bless those adults who were with them.  Death is always incomprehensible especially when its traumatic.  Only you can know and understand this endless mystery.  Open the heart of the world that we may beat in mourning for these families who have lost their loved ones so close before Christmas.  Let us learn to treasure the meaning of our lives even more deeply so that their deaths will not be in vain. Bring us your peace that surpasses all understanding.  Amen. Linking up other prayers and reflections that you can lean on here: Emily Wieringa's prayers The Velveteen Rabbit: God let me cry on your shoulder Lamentations by Empire Remixed Ann Voskamp'...