3rd M♥nth

Today we are celebrating our third monthsary. Rolando has sent me this: :)

♥ ♥ ♥

To my dearest Rolando,

I cannot begin to tell you how much I love you so maybe I'll just begin this little love letter by thanking the Author of Love for blessing us with this beautiful love story unfolding day by day before our eyes. Thank you Father. :)

Wow! 3 months! Congratulations for surviving three months worth of mood swings, hang ups and hunger strikes?! Hahaha! :) I bet you miss me and my foolish ways. I miss you too! I long for your warm embrace and your mountain-sized encouragement telling me "we can do this." Well... we did! 3 months!!! Thank you dear for breaking my defenses. I can honestly say I'm a more forgiving person now because of you and your love that gives me the power to change bad habits. You are simply the best! I love you.

With all the love in the world,

Lai

Bleh and Blah Days

I don’t know If I’m just PMS-ing or what. But really, there are days like this. Days when I already feel tired as early as 10:00 AM, already contemplating of cutting my work at 11:00 AM to be at home with my messy but oh-so-comfy bedroom, already dreaming of escaping this country at 12:00 PM to be with bf. :)

I miss writing. I really do. Not because I’m actually good at it. No, I’m not. It’s just really therapeutic for someone like me who has a tendency (or sickness?) to be melancholy. I’m actually writing in between work, not that I don’t have much work to do. There’s plenty of it that I don’t have a single right to breath (So sorry Lord, grace please).

Of late, I’ve been asking God for directions. Not that I’m in a crossroads of opportunities. It’s otherwise. The thing is I feel stuck. I so wanted to be in that state again... but in Christian life they say that there are no accidents. I keep reminding myself that wherever I am is in God’s blueprint. I’m only seeing tidbits of His master plan because I'm so shortsighted, not to mention faithless. But really, there are days that are just bleh, bleh as in uneventful, unmeaningful, irrelevant.

I know that in life, there will be days like this. Maybe it’s just up to me to perk up and to decorate this boring day of mine.

Sunset on My Birthday

I turned another year older (2?) last February 19! I thank God for the gift of life and love. I'm still a work in progress, oh how humbling it is to say. I wasn't too happy about my birthday, there were some things I was expecting that didn't happen. In the middle of some drama, God lovingly revealed to me how horrible my heart really was. I was ungrateful, I was focusing too much on superficialities that I was forgetting the true meaning of birthdays.

Thank You God for this sunset on my birthday, your way of redeeming that day for me, your way of telling me You still love me and You're always willing to splash some colors in my life, If I only let You be God in my life. Thank You dear God for cleaning up my heart.  Thank You, more than anything else, for Your relentless and pursuing love. I am in awe.

Having you is enough

I think we are much stronger after this, hopefully I'm right. Sigh. Conflicts. Pastor Peter says for a relationship to grow, a conflict is inevitable. If you don't want to grow, then go and keep avoiding conflicts. I say every conflict is an opportunity to clean up our hearts and our motives. I guess, this is one of the prices we have to pay for signing up to a long distance relationship: the risk of mis-communication, the risk of just avoiding the conflict and not facing it together despite the time difference, despite the thousand-mile distance. By God's abounding grace, the tide is over now. And I can say still that having you alone is enough. :)

2011 Valentine Project

Happy Valentines Day everyone! ♥ ♥ ♥

This is the second year I'm doing this little project but you may not want to actually view this year's; soooo mushy, it'll kill you! Hahaha! Don't say you weren't warned. :) Last year, I did this project in a hopeless romantic state, boyfriendless but hopeful that this year's would be better. I guessed I got what I wished and prayed for, thanks to the Author of Love. We may not be together physically, but I know time will come that we will be holding hands on a Valentines day, in one time zone, in one place.

So for you single ladies out there, keep wishing but most importantly, keep praying for God's best for you. He honors the desires of our hearts and if that desire of yours is aligned in His will, He will lead that man to you and you'll have nothing to do but be surprised and be in awe as love unfolds right in front of you. In whatever relationship status you are in right now, keep striving for love. 

Loads of love, Lai. :-) 

We Love SG!!!

We Love SG!!!
Originally uploaded by simplylai

At Marina Bay Sands Skypark :)

February 2, 2011 - His last day at work after tendering his resignation. This is also our first day to roam around in SG. We only have 7 days in our itinerary before we say gooddbye again for the second time, after officially being a couple.

First stop: Marina Bay Sands Skypark. :) It had just rained that afternoon, SG was slightly damp. We went up to the Skypark to get view-struck. It was beautiful up there with a 360 degree view of the city. Thank you Singapore for treating him well... and for being a beautiful pitstop in our love story.

Me in probably one of the happiest days of my life. See the glow? ;)

Tourists chillin' out.

Goodbye for Now

I knew this day is inevitable. From day one of my holiday in Singapore, I knew this is going to happen. It's just that we enjoyed our time together, I almost forgot about this day.

At Singapore airport | 8th of February 2011:

I look closely at your boarding pass; it says you're in the 11:59 PM flight bound to Frankfurt. I look at mine; it says I'm in the 12:15 AM flight bound to Manila. We're about to take flights completely going two opposite ways, only minutes but one-calendar day apart.

This is it. Our long distance relationship will soon get longer, farther, harder. From Singapore to Ireland. We'll be in for a time difference now and who knows what other challenges are in store for us. 

"Okay. Can you pray for us now?" I nudge him, realising we should better get on. "Yes," he softly answers. So we pray together in Changi Airport, holding hands, soon to be parted by mere minutes. As we step on the walkalator to my gate, he looks in my eyes and says "Lai, kaya natin to." I can only sniff and sigh trying to hold back tears already welling up my eyes. Yes, I know we can do this, but how? I am trying to be brave with all the strength I can muster in the remaining minutes that we are together, in the remaining time that I can still physically feel him by my side. 

"You have to go now," I say as we reach my gate. We embrace then finally say our last goodbye for this leg, for the Singapore chapter of our lives.

I content myself from watching him walk away. Dear God, please enable us to do this. There are dreams to be chased. There are things to be sacrified for now.  :(

Sunset on a Friday

This week has been too much for me. Thank God for this sunset, His simple way of redeeming my week, of reminding me that He works, of reminding me that He'll reward me someday. I just need to remain faithful wherever I am, professionally speaking. :)

Sunset in Makati City; 5:44 PM

Dementors called Fears

I’ve been visited a lot lately by dementors. Just like Harry Potter’s scar, my scars are excruciatingly painful when these dementors called FEARS come around, uninvited and unwanted. They usually paralyze me for a while. But when they came yesterday, they stayed on much longer and took more time in tormenting me until today. I had no other option but to call in sick in the office and stay home to wobble and cry freely with all my might and soul. I lost all my defenses and positive thoughts. I could talk to bf, but this doesn’t concern him. I need to have a face off with these dementors. This is between me, my FEARS and my GOD.

You see, yesterday, January 25, was my first year anniversary in the second company I joined in. I wouldn’t have remembered till fate joked on me. I received a call from a certain company inviting me for an interview so I decided to open my Jobstreet account because I couldn’t remember applying for anything. I stopped applying when I accepted my current post last year (January 25, 2010). Then it dawned on me that it’s my one year anniversary.

Then came a big sigh. Then came the dementors. Then came the excruciating pain from a broken dream.

The scars I have are not just physical. I have scars from broken dreams, the biggest and most painful of which was when I lost a job opportunity somewhere in Europe. I dreamed of working abroad for years. That was the only good reason I stayed in a very demanding workplace such as an auditing firm for five straight years. The work in Europe was already in the palm of my hand, well almost---I passed the interviews, got accepted, had been offered a salary I could not refuse and had signed my name on a two-year contract ---the only missing piece was the working permit and I was good to go. But the working permit never came.

Already resigned from my first job, I had no Plan B or C to back me up. I was so discomfited that I just prayed for a job, any job. Then came the job offer for a development organization, or much more known as an NGO where I did some consultancy in the past. I never really saw myself working for an NGO, never dreamt of it. But I accepted the job surrendering that maybe, this was God’s will.

I resolved that I wouldn’t stay long. Yup, one year was never in my plan... that I would resume applying for a job abroad. After all, there are also job openings for accountants in the NGO world, only those countries are mostly from the third worlds, even fourth if there’s such a thing.

But an application was never sent, my CV was never updated, my cover letter remained unedited. I became complacent, in fact too complacent in my current job. I became too confident that I could do whatever was needed to do. So I came to office late knowing I can compensate for staying long and because I know that I work fast enought to finish a day’s work. There are days that I spend much more time browsing the internet than doing my work. I know this is not pleasing to God but I keep on doing it.

Needless to say, my current job has become a comfort zone. People in the organization are forgiving and appreciating. I’ve established friendships with my co-workers. The work itself, although, time-consuming at times, is manageable. It allows you to cultivate a life outside work. But it also got to the point that it became boring and I no longer find myself growing, professionally. I know I needed to do something else soon, for my sanity and pocket's sake.

There were times that I opened a jobsite and browsed for a job but never really gotten to the point of restructuring my CV to fit into the NGO world. There were times that I asked God to give me a work abroad. There were times that i asked Him his plans for me. There were times that I had been visited by dementors, yes there were plenty, too. There were times when I would scribble in my notepad: “There’s got to be more to life than this..”

Then again, there are FEARS, which are most dementing since yesterday. I fear hitting that apply button again and get rejected. I fear that I will no longer fulfill the dream of working abroad, of earning bigger to be able to share more with my immediate family. I fear of not being at par with my former colleagues who are now scattered all over the world and seeing the best of it, not to mention earning six or seven times higher than I do.

I fear that I will lose the love of my life because I’m deeply scarred and he doesn’t know about it yet. I fear that I will not live up to him because he is out there already fulfilling his dream. I fear that I will not be able to follow him because I’m stuck, I’m indecisive and a weakling.

I acknowledge God’s goodness in my life. But there are times that FEARS can be too much to handle. Too heavy to bear., too shameful to share.

Lord, I lift these fears to you. Please help me surrender these fears to you completely. Because I know Lord that you want me to live life freely, away from dementors. Lord, I want this visits from dementors to end. I am begging. :'(