I Chose to Begin Again

I would always feel a strange combination of thrill and excitement each time I relive often in my mind the passage of the years which I have had in this place. I remember everything as clearly as if it were all still unfolding before my very eyes. I remember the most wonderful moment of my life. It is now almost six years later, and I can still remember everything from that day when Someone found me. I may be older and wiser than yesterday; I may have lived another life since then; but I know that when my time eventually comes, the memories of that day will be the final images that float through my mind. I still love Him. In all these years my heart would still beat of the only desire to do so.

Though the environment has changed, paradigms are shifting, horizon are lifting, and I have changed, the One who loves me faithfully and the desire to love Him back has not. It's still the air of my journey; the air of my last year. I smile through, looking toward the sky, knowing there's one thing I still haven't told you: I have always believe, by the way, that the greatest miracle can every happen to a person is “change”.

Changes. Changes full of beauty and a deeper love than I could imagine. Terrifying changes. Changes that drive me to Jesus in utter dependency and a fresh realization that there is nowhere safer and secure and unconditionally loved to be than in Him.

What people do not know is that in my life there have been circumstances which tricked me into believing about myself that “I haven’t change or either I can’t or I will never will” when it must not stay that way. There had been encounters of never-mending events and there are voices arrogantly  insisting always to stay. And if I didn’t need to be alive for Whom I was born for and what I was purposed for, I would have long been dead.

Just three months ago, I entered a whole new season of life. Well, my last year in Iligan has already been so marked by release, purpose and presence and I want to share about it. I am writing because honestly, to leave all things behind, never to wish anymore of rolling back the clock just for the benefit of “It might not”, and just pressing to what lies ahead. I only have six months left to be exact, so far. Basically, regardless of circumstances, my God is faithful. I am His… and better is one day in His presence which is fullness of joy and hope. Desperation. Hope. Terror. Thrill. Excitement. Desperate hope. You could see my story written all over my face. Yes, because God has a beautiful plan when He began scripting my life and He who began a good work in me will bring it into completion. And the proof that He knows what He’s doing? It’s inescapable.

I am not the kind of person who hoards herself in a great misery of life that always look upon consequences. Always consequences. That's very odd, I know. But how about life again? Graciously, I have had wonderful breakthroughs from great miseries which have been extraordinarily suffice for me to believe that I may be off to a slow start but the best years are still ahead of me. I was, for some time in year 2015, prayer-walking-moving in the city where He first found me and listening for where I was to move. Then I've been given fresh vision for purpose after the future I’d envisioned with was stripped away— by His mercy and perfect wisdom's plan I now see again. Of all the promise I saw written on the book of truth of "loving", of “commitment”, and simply believing that, whatever came, there is a decision worth the risk…

I chose to begin again.

I have hurt far too many people in this lifetime, yes. I have done so much wrong that it would be impossible to believe that I’m still alive, writing this down even as my eyes are about to close. But God must think I have so much more to life for, though, because I’m still here, and I’ve been blessed with so much more than I did not deserve that I am left in awe with how much He thinks I’m still worth it and that I am more than consequences. I am not perfect, and I have never claimed to be. But with all my heart, within every battle and every struggle, I am pleased to live the abundant life He has given me— no matter what. I refuse to give misery nor any adversary the satisfaction of my “downfall”.

Shaken, but not destroyed. My mistakes are a part of the story, but I don’t have to be confined to every single one of them and carry them on my back for the rest of my life because Christ already carried them through the cross. His genuine and patient love enables to restore a person who once fall even at just the blink of an eye. As always there's a season of mourning, nevertheless, moving forward for brief moment of time would never become so much of a strange thing because it has been eclipsed by an unexplainable extreme pleasure in the Presence of His love— the evidence of the God who is more than enough. And know that I am fixed to Whom I believe in. He who do not see you backwards but always sees you anew each day. He who is not distant or awkward around the person who wronged Him. He who unconditionally loves the unlovable and complex. The One who knows me, inside and out, and has plans for me and has fought my battles as I come still. By all "rights" I should be miserable or depressed or riddled with anxiety, but I'm a child of God and so by all heaven's rights I'm secure and satisfied and whole. I'm supremely satisfied to “Come out like a gazelle; leap like a wild stag.”

The only one I had for intimacy in all my valleys and dark abyss was the One who always reveal Himself to me so personally. Month by month, season by season, I walked forward with my Shepherd and let him Father me, let Him love me. It wasn't about questions being answered or about circumstances being favourable or people being faithful or the place where we should be, I was finding all I needed in the security and the hope and the steadfastness of Him. I was finding all I needed in the One whose I am— forever. God is faithful and works everything to my good and won't ever leave me as He promised. Security that depends on anything other than Him leaves us hanging but security in Him leaves us soaring. I would remain to be as passionate as before, even more passionate as I am before, about His presence. Perfect peace, an abounding joy, and supernatural strength are what I'm walking around in today and every single day.


Sigh. I haven't had a release to write about any of this as it unfolded the past months but the time has come. As I begin again to testify of all that the Lord is saying and doing for and through me these days. I always feel strange of “something” but I always see that God is really up to something this year; things which are too wonderful for me to know. The best is yet come— always!

Shalom!