A new place

So... I've stumbled and familiarized myself with WordPress and decided to shift my online publishing platform from here to there.

(Yes, it is happening!)

Nope, I am not going to lift my previous posts here, but from now on, that's where I'll be updating and blogging. :)

See you in my new site, dear readers!

https://christandelle.wordpress.com/

(And I've already posted something new there. Click here to check it out!)

My happiness then and my happiness now

"Right now is the oldest that I've ever been and the youngest that I'll ever be."

That line wasn't conceived by me. I read it somewhere a few months back, and I find it very fitting for the word present. It's true and there's no arguing about it. I was younger the moment that I started typing this sentence and now that I'm ending it, I'm definitely older.

As I grew up, the things that I want constantly changes. Of course, upon learning new things, my mind sails to new frontiers. And now that I'm in my early twenties--an era that I've only imagined years ago--I'm wanting more different things.

Before I met Jesus, or say, before I truly met Him, I just wanted to be happy. I didn't have a clear career choice and I sure didn't have clear life decisions, too. I just went with the flow. When an opportunity rises--like in academics, relationships, and just about everything in life--I grab it if it makes me happy. I didn't even consider back then if I'm hurting other people, even my family. My mindset was, "this is my life, my happiness." Why should I worry about someone else's?

But then again, He just cannot bear seeing me tear my young life apart like that. Tossing it aimlessly at things that didn't matter and won't matter in the long run, that was what I thought what it means to live in the moment. Needless to say, though I was happy from time to time, I was never truly happy back then. So, He came and stopped my madness.

This is not a blog on how God transformed and renewed my life. That might require me to write a whole book so I can explicitly share it, doing only little justice on how awesomely He did it. This is a post about what I realized today:

My happiness doesn't lie in me anymore. It now lies on what makes Him happy.

Well, just as a disclaimer, I am not perfect, okay? I am not claiming to be one and I'll never be one. Anyway, my point is, I just realized that whatever I conceive in my mind now somehow has to answer this question before they're formed into actions:

Will it make Him happy?

If the answer is 'no', I'll feel pain and be discouraged to act on it. But if the answer is 'yes', I'll feel delighted and excited. And so, the latter's what I'll do. Of course there are times that my feeble mind cannot do this process before I say or do things, and that hurts Him tenfold. And I feel that. I'll feel awful and guilty afterwards, and I'd never want to do it again (even though it might have felt pretty good the moment I did it).

This cycle goes on in my head. And that's how I learn. Learn how to act, learn how to speak, and learn how to live. And as a part of this learning process, I still often fail. But with His grace, I am continuously learning.

It is my prayer, as I continue to live and learn, that His wisdom take over me and not my own intellect. I pray for the stubbornness of my heart to melt away and for the pride of my heart to shatter. I want to make Him happy because it is only Him who genuinely makes me happy even if I deserve the exact opposite.

Just the other day I was told (in a conference), only dead fishes go with the flow. I certainly was a dead fish, but not anymore. He gave me a new life.

After all these years, I can now finally say that I'm doing what I really want and what I'm created to do. These are so many things, but all boils down to this: I want to make Him happy.

This is living NOW.

The Ocean

My family and I spent two days and one night in beach cove up north. It was our first time doing so, vacationing by camping and with no means of external communications and electricity. We had the beach almost to ourselves though it was quite large and there were a handful of local people who lived there. It was that remote, and it's the most tranquil and beautiful place that I've been into so far.

As I took a dip in the beach on our first day, I walked a little far away from the shore (with the waters up to my chest) and tried to stay perfectly still while standing so I can have a view of the whole cove itself. But of course, the waves are there. They weren't alarming, but they never let me stay in place. I was always pushed a little here and there. And as I was being rocked softly by the waves, a realization hit me: God is like the ocean. He is like the waters because:

• if you are in His presence (in the waters), He won't let you be still. He's constantly moving you, pushing you. He can't bear to see you stay where you are right now, and He does it so lovingly;
• He's pushing you towards what's best for you--the greatest things He has in store for you! (I was there to marvel at the cove, but little did I know that I have my back towards a more majestic view: the warm and magnificent sunset. But He didn't let me miss that; He turned me a hundred and eighty degrees so I can marvel at His majestic craft.);
• and His greatness is just overwhelming. And His grace, overflowing. (When I looked at the ocean towards where my eyes can reach no more, I was reminded that somehow, that's a visual representation of His love, compassion, and grace for me. And that's what all that surrounds me.)

I had such a wonderful time basking in His presence and being consumed with thoughts of Him as He points me to look at the things that He prepared me to see and look at. Every turn of my head, I know, aren't random. All were carefully planned by Him with painstaking detail so that I'd come to know Him and feel Him more!

I can never be grateful enough for everything. :]

For the earth will be filled
    with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea. (Habakkuk 2:14)