Your emotions are valid

Let’s accept it. We are not always okay. There are some days we just feel like quitting. More often than not, problems in the family, challenges in school, and conflicts with friends take a toll on us. We strive hard to be happy, to overcome, and to achieve, but we just can’t. We lose hope and we just choose to surrender.

But here’s the good news: What you feel is valid. Your happiness, your sadness, your fears, and your worries are all valid. Your emotions are one of the aspects of being human. God loves us so much that when He created us, He gave us free will.

He made us unique,
each with our own personalities, abilities, and emotions.

Jesus, when He was on earth, had emotional struggles too. He knew what it meant to feel pain — He wept when He learned of His friend’s death (Jn 11:35). He got angry when He saw people disrespecting God’s temple. He felt sorrow and was worried for His people so He continuously prayed for them. Jesus knows what we are going through. In fact, He is so concerned about us that what bothers us bothers Him as well (Mt 9:36).

Read:

2 Cor 4:8-9, Mt 21:12-13, Mt. 9:36

Regret, sorrow, grief, pain, worry, fear. It is normal to feel all these because we are human. It is not a sign of weakness or of impending sin. It is only a natural human response. But when can these emotions be considered sin?

That will be discussed on Week 3 of our devotional plan.

Suggested Music

Your identity is in Christ.

Week 1: Acknowledge that your identity is in Christ.

This is not fake news.

Your identity is in Jesus Christ. That’s a fact. It is not in your dreadful roots or your shameless past. It is not in what you look like nor what you can do and what you cannot do. Not your achievements nor your failures, not the choices you’ve made nor the gossip you’ve started at work, not your performance grades nor your boss’s comments, heck, not even the Tiktok challenges you choose to engage in define you.

The world does not define your worth. If you have accepted Jesus and have made Him Lord and Savior of your life, your identity is in Him. You belong to Christ — and no one can change that.

If you have accepted Jesus and have made Him Lord and Savior of your life, your identity is in Him. You belong to Christ — and no one can change that.

Imagine you lost a 1,000-peso bill. You looked for it everywhere you’ve been to, but you just couldn’t find it. Weeks and months passed but you still couldn’t find the bill. Then one day, after months of living without that 1,000-peso bill, you found it neatly tucked in one of your textbooks. After all those months, did the bill lose its value? Did the value become 300 or 500 pesos lower because it had been lost for a long time? The answer is NO. Even if the bill has been covered in dust or has been stepped on a hundred times over, the value is still P1,000.00.

What once was lost never lost its worth. The same applies to you as a child of God. You may have been lost, but your worth is found in Jesus alone.

Read:

Luke 15:3-7, 11-24; Ephesians 1:3-14

Ephesians 1 gives a brief summary of how God sees you.

You have been…

blessed with every spiritual blessing,
made pure and blameless
chosen,
adopted,
redeemed,
forgiven,
united with Christ
lavished with grace, and
unconditionally loved and accepted

Too often we fail not because of our incapability, but because of our mindset. The Bible says that you are God’s workmanship — His masterpiece!

God does not make mistakes, and He did not make any mistake when He created you.

When we are stressed, worried, or afraid, we tend to succumb to all the negativities and let them get the best out of us. This leaves us with only one end route — defeat. This is when we should be reminded that with God, the reward comes before the behavior. God chose to give His life for us (the reward, which is belongingness to God) even while we were still sinners (good behavior). God redeemed us so that we could belong to Him even before we could ask for forgiveness or change our behavior. Belongingness before behavior — that is God’s formula, and it’s ours for the taking.

Additional Readings:

Ephesians 1:3-14; Ephesians 2:1-10; Luke 1:8-10

Suggested Music

God Cares about Your Mental Health

It’s okay not to be okay.

You may have read or heard this line one too many times. It is the title of one of the highest-rated Korean dramas of 2020 which demonstrated the lives of the main characters, Moon Gang-Tae, Ko Mun-Yeong, and Moon Sang-Tae, and the mental health issues they each had to deal with. The drama ended on a happy note with the main characters, played by Kim Soo-Hyun, Seo Yea-Ji, and Oh Jung-Se, eventually resolving both their inner struggles and relational conflicts. It is fiction after all, and anything can happen. But is it really okay not to be okay?

Some of us might think, “Why isn’t anything going well for me? What have I done wrong?” while others might even say, “I’ve been good my whole life. I don’t deserve this!” Those who have decided to trust Jesus and make Him in charge of their lives even think it’s a VIP ticket to a seemingly perfect and blissful life.

But it’s not always sunshine and roses for everybody.

In the Bible, even people of God were not always okay. King David is a good example. He was considered as a man after God’s own heart, but there were many times that his mental health failed him and in turn, he failed the Lord. You can see a record of his cries and laments to the Lord in the book of Psalms.

God knows what’s bothering you and what keeps you up at night. He cares about your fears and your irrational thoughts. Even the littlest worry and anxious thought will not escape His eyes.

You see, God doesn’t promise a perfect life for His children, but He promises that as you go about your daily life, facing tough challenges and trying to overcome battles, He will be there for you and with you every step of the way.

Do you feel like your life is going in circles and there isn’t any hope for you? Do you struggle with excessive worry and self-defeating thoughts that it is hard for you to sleep at night and function normally in the day?

This series might be for you. It is my hope that this devotional and journaling guide will help you in your mental wellness journey and in recognizing God’s hand at work in your circumstances, because the Bible says that His plans for you are always for “your well-being, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11 CSB).

The devotional and journaling guide will be spread out into 7 weeks with one blog post per week to give ample time for reflection and journaling.

Devotion Tips

Allot an hour each day to go over the devotional guide, read the Bible text, and journal your reflections and insights.
There are suggested readings at the end of the guide to further support your study of the word of God.
Some days you might be getting links to songs or videos related to the theme. Please visit them because they are meant to further emphasize the message each week.

Of Gifts and Hobbies

My DIY planner -- an old Usana binder covered with cloth and inserts I printed (both self-made and from online craftees).

I love notebooks! Journals, diaries, organizers, planners, notepads and colorful pens make me super happy — the same happiness and kilig ice cream gives me! I guess whatever we want to receive on our special days all comes down to one thing – our hobbies.

I am so awed at people who have hobbies that are totally incongruent with their jobs or their academic capabilities. An example is a friend from college. He was one of the smartest people I knew; he was also one of the weirdest. He loved reading books on psychology and philosophy, yet Playboy and FHM magazines were also part of his library. He had the most objective opinions and ideals. He drank; he smoked; he even smoked marijuana, but his fancy for little kids was so endearing one would think he’s already a father. 🙂

So back to what I was saying. We usually classify people according to their looks, their brains, and even their upbringings, but we can’t judge them for what they do in their secret times and places. For me, hobbies define the heart of a person – the inner personality only he/she and God know, and whatever gift we always look forward to on our birthday and at Christmas only reflects our values and belief system – who we are when no one’s looking and how we view ourselves in relation to the world and life itself.

Since forever I’ve thought of myself as a poet, a playwright, a female Shakespeare clothed in thick adipose tissue. If I had to express myself, I would gladly do so in writing — in poetry more often. I couldn’t imagine my life without words written by my calloused fingers.

The funny thing, though, is when I receive a journal or a notebook that I actually terribly like, I don’t use it just yet. I keep it on display until I grow tired of poring over it and admiring its pages. Until a new and fancier one arrives, I wouldn’t be using my beloved journal for just any writing. It should contain my best works, my best poems or stories. This was the case until September 30, 2011. I didn’t have spare money to buy a new devotional journal, but I had all those cute diaries from Korea and Taiwan that I didn’t want to use for JUST any writing. I had them for display!

Then came the voice of thunder. Yeah, God spoke to me about my pretty journals.

I came to realize that daily devotions are NOT just any writing. It’s God’s voice in a horrid and unpleasant situation. It’s His comforting embrace amidst a dark and repulsive state of mind. It’s passionate, unconditional love pouring out on a seemingly hopeless life. Why couldn’t I dedicate even one of my favorite notebooks to the One who gave His one and only, of course, favorite Son for my salvation? *bangs head on the table*

God gave His best for me. What is a notebook compared to Jesus? I know – a speck of dust in a palace of pure, untarnished gold. I doubt if it has any purpose at all. If I don’t give my best and all the best gifts I have received to God, do I have a right to claim the perfect Gift of all as my own? Not a chance.

So yeah, I like all these stuff for writing, but over the years, I learned not to buy the prettiest. Looks might mislead me to a different purpose, and I wouldn’t want that. ✌

Winning, for What?

I have issues with winning.

As a student, I wasn’t one who participated in a lot of contests. I remember playing in an inter-school Scrabble competition in freshman year and joining the speech choir and sabayang pagbigkas in grade school and high school.

I wasn’t very competitive then, though. I never wished that I’d score higher than my best friends. I never thought of being top of the class. I just wanted to be appreciated, to be recognized — but winning doesn’t always promise appreciation and recognition.

Over the years, as I learned more about myself, I found out that I was actually competitive, that I liked beating others, if not being the best. However, in Filipino culture, competitiveness is almost synonymous to pride and boastfulness. With this mindset arose my love-hate relationship with winning.

A lot of times I feel guilty for wanting to win in competitions, especially the ones I’ve put so much effort into.

Just recently, I coached a group of kids in journalism, and I wanted them to enter the regionals badly. I didn’t actually know where that desire came from — if it was pure selfish ambition, I wasn’t sure. Some friends challenged me with this question: “Why did you join the contest? Is it for them to win, or for them to learn?”

I pondered on the question for quite a while. True, it must have been selfish — I did consider the possibility. But what if winning wasn’t actually bad? What if victory was actually ingrained in my and my students’ DNAs? What a lovely thought!

I was about to give up on my desire for victory when I remembered the verse God impressed on me the first time I accepted the task of handling the students:

“Do not be afraid, Abram.
I am your shield,
your very great reward.” — Genesis 15:1

Right then I knew, and God assured me. I wasn’t being selfish — I wanted my students to experience Him as their shield, their very great reward. I earnestly desired for them to win because that would mean their victory was first and foremost a product of God’s unconditional grace and promise.

Hoping to win takes a lot of trust, but expecting to win? That requires a great deal of faith.

That night, during the awarding ceremony, I’m just so glad I’ve got too much faith when my student was losing hope. I waited for the result no matter how late the announcement was, and God didn’t fail me.

We may not have bagged awards for all 15 of them, but we sure experienced how winning is not only about how we perform, but much more about how much faith we have on the one who holds the victory.

I think my issues with winning will appear from time to time, especially since I’ve got 2 competitions waiting for me this school year, but hey, I’ve got someone to remind me and keep me company every time. 🙂

This post was supposed to be a response to The Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge, Victory, but my writing just went awry and didn’t fit the photo I was about to post.

Meanwhile, since we’re on the topic, I’d like to look back on this victory with my grade school kids two years ago.