Success God's Way

I went on a three day personal retreat and one of the things I gained was a new understanding of prayer.  When I think of prayer, I think of either someone kneeling at the bedside and talking to God, mostly asking for something, or a pastor using beautiful, holy language interceding for someone needy.  I don't have very good discipline when it comes to designated prayer time, because my days are often full, but I do talk to God in my spirit at various times throughout my day.  Sometimes when I have trouble falling sleep, I talk to God or just breathe in saying "Jesus, I want more of you" and breathe out saying, "I give you all my worries."  Those prayers do count!  And God hears all those! so surprising, right?  The Holy Spirit uses groans to pray for us.  So sometimes no words are necessary.

In CR, I worked on about 100 spiritual inventories and one thing that was on all of them was:  "Unrealistic Expectations".  That was my part.  I thought at first that everyone had those expectations, but I was wrong, it was only me.  And it was definitely the key to my unhappy life.  I felt like I give so much to others and those people don't give back anything to me.  To me, it was a perfectly "normal" expectation to expect love when I gave love.  But it wasn't.

I love to laugh.  My dad was very humorous, it was one of his best qualities.  The reality is that I am often very serious, too serious.  Our church is getting rid of some very old books and I found one joke book called "The all new clean joke book" by Bob Phillips. copyright 1990.  So sometimes, at night, I would pick it up and just read it.  Most aren't very funny but surprisingly, I actually laughed at some of them!  Here are some that I actually thought were pretty funny, so I thought I share them so you can laugh too.

We are blessed to have a wonderful landlord and recently we signed a two year lease.  For some reason, it triggered many emotions inside of me.  TWO years.... here in Taiwan.  It seemed so long.  Yet my new life is here.  Sometimes it still feels like I don't know what I am doing here.  But that's normal right?  No one figures out everything ahead before they make the first step.  My old identity as a mom, teacher, hard working employee, gardener, nature lover, cook.... they are all changed and different now.  I live in the city without kids, a yard, or a car and I barely cook because it's cheaper to eat out.  New chapter means letting go of the past and taking new steps in a different direction in life.

I became extremely interested in this topic of how to handle toxic people because of a recent experience.  Toxic people are everywhere in every country.  They are searching for a certain type of personality:  kindhearted, willing to help, talented or resourceful, and most importantly no boundaries and easily manipulated.  Once they find those, they will suck them dry and move on to the next victim.  I have been used, and will continue to come in contact with those people.  

Strangely, the one single skilled that I used most often here in Taiwan is how to have a difficult conversation.  This skill doesn't come naturally to any of us.  It's a learned skill but a very necessary one indeed.  It is part of a healthy relationship.  Asian culture especially doesn't like confront, so it caused many problems because a difficult conversation is needed but not done.  

Some people make it look so easy on stage, but public speaking is still a number one fear for most people, next to death.  If I could have my way, I would hide in the back somewhere doing things no one sees.  My Dad liked the spotlight, but my mom hided in the back.  I have my mom's personality.  I don't like the stage or people's attention or have grown people look at me. For some reason, I don't mind kids that much.  But recently, I am having many opportunities to speak in front of grown-ups. So I have to force myself to learn.

I have been so happy lately.  Busy, but happy.  There are so many plastic surgery clinics here in Taiwan, and women are keeping those clinics in business.  But I believe in the transformation of the heart from Jesus.  That's what I have inside, and the joy comes out from me. I often got comments about looking younger than my age.  Honestly, I use the cheapest face cream possible unless it's a gift.  Many of you know that I am in a program called Celebrate Recovery and still attend after 13 years.  It's a program that helped me work through all my hurts and helped me to forgive.  I was asked to give a short testimony next week, so here I wanted to share it with you. 

If there are two people who have the exact same jobs, one works 7 days a week and the other works 5 days and spends the other two days in recreational activities away from the job location, who do you think is more effective and better at his job?  The second one, because he has better balance between work and play.  He can do his job better because he is rested and fully charged.

You can be by yourself or married or in a crowd and feel lonely.  I had gone through a time when I felt extremely lonely no matter where I went.  It was something I expected to uproot myself and move to another country.  But it is still much more difficult that I expected.  Sadly, there are people around me that live here all their lives and they have not one close friend.

Elizabeth Gilbert defined Creative Living as "having the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you."  (I stumbled upon an interesting book by her called "Big Magic).   Of course, many of us don't live this way because of fear.  We are born with fear in order to keep us alive, so we cannot get rid of fear altogether.   What that means is that we need to make room for fear but not let it control our lives.  Strive to have a healthy relationship with FEAR.

Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.  We often think of losing someone we love when we think of grief.  Sure, that's when grief is most intense.  But there are also different types of grief, losing a job, an opportunity, a business deal, friends, things, familiar surroundings, a dream, an expected outcome, pets....etc.  A healthy person grieves regularly like Jesus, acquainted with grief.  Why is this important?  Because it is much like decluttering, grief makes room for new good things in our hearts.