You're Not Made For Sadness

Melancholy can be beautiful, and it is easily associated to poetry. With so much drama, tears, and brokenness... the beautiful words happen. Even if we admit it or not, most of us have this great pull towards sadness. Sometimes, we just have to feel our heart pierced for us to feel the life in us. That's understandable, I am always like that. It even had me falling for a guy who has this certain quality of sadness. Other people's sadness attracts us--it makes us feel like we're superheroes who can redeem someone from their pain, or if not a superhero, a compatible soul--another lonely heart.

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After a long time, I have realized that there's something wrong with how I deal with pain. Pain is absolutely paradoxically lovely. It squeezes all the rains and the gloomy seasons from us, but it is not a state to be stuck in or to live in. It is true that it is an event in someone's life but it isn't true that we can live there forever.

I am a Christian and I believe that God has bought me with a very precious price--the blood of Jesus, but I have to admit that I have a lot of unresolved things in my heart that need to be addressed. I indulge in the lies of bitterness, sorrow, anger, and false hopes. And then, I realized it's tiring. Where could this get me? Aside from the fact that it pulls me away from the greater plans God has built for me, all these black feelings shove me away from genuine joy--a gift I have always had.

Hugot has been ubiquitous in my life for the past months. Certain words, phrases, events remind me of things that I shouldn't think of. As a Psychology student, I tried to study this phenomenon once--the idea of certain words or happenings opening certain folders in the memory, therefore eliciting emotions into action. From this, I have learned that what matters most to us easily gets retrieved from the memory files (I honestly can't remember if I have learned this from someone else or if it's a personal hypothesis). Then, if I easily retrieve memory files that cause me grief it means that what's on the surface of my core is bitterness and the spirit of the inability to move on.

I realized I don't want sadness anymore. It's time I step out of it and bid my farewell to it. I am more than the past that keeps me buckled into it. Because of these things, I can hardly move forward, I can hardly get anywhere. Everyday, I walk the earth as I remain in that stuck phase where I am in.

God didn't forbid anyone to experience sorrow though; in fact, He understands us. What we have left to do is to entrust the Lord with our healing. The pain is not ours alone.

Psalm 147:3 says, "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds."

The Lord is in the business of healing us from moment to moment. It is not our job to bandage ourselves. We can do all these steps to move forward and away from sadness, but God has mightier hands than those that we have.

From all these things, I have resolved to seek and see the beauty of God, and be inspired and driven by His love more than by anything else at all. If I bask before the beauty of the Most Wonderful, it would be lighter to walk the realm of this life. From these, I conclude that I was not made for loneliness. I was made for joy, worship, and true and unfailing hope.

A March Monday

I woke up to the sound of footsteps and busy conversations about. I tried to sleep another few hours away, but my dozy and hazy imagination brought me to the days and weeks ahead... there's so much needed to be done. I grabbed my phone from my brother's table--recently, I've been camping in my brother's room since he's too busy studying to even sleep--and saw that it's almost 9 in the morning. I sighed, I want more sleep. And then, I realized I've been slacking the past hours away because I was sick yesterday. I felt that I'm much better, and so I need to recover from the laziness my sickness caused me.

Exciting weeks are about to come! YAY. I have to get this day moving or I'm gonna be stuck during the time when I'm supposed to be having another set of adventures in my life (I'm talking about the first few days of April because it's gonna be really "yaaay"). I posted something on Twitter on how the weeks are gonna be real long and exciting and greeted the people a good Monday morning. 

I pulled myself up and went down and greeted my mom a very jolly morning. I realized the house was in grrrreat chaos, I started to place some stuff into order. My mom asked me to go buy something from the sari-sari store, and I reluctantly obeyed. 

While I was in the store, I overheard old women selling vegetables nearby talk. 

"Mahal na araw, umuulan."

"Oo nga eh, sabi ko nga... umuulan eh mahal na araw. Kakaiba. Abnormal." (short pause) "Parang mga tao ngayon, abnormal."

I wanted to take a shot of those women talking and caption it, "Old Women in Tondo During a Monday Morning". But I didn't have a device with me. 

I turned my way home, and I saw other people going on their own businesses. The scene is like any other morning: children playing, basketballs bouncing, old and young men talking, old and young women talking, people yelling, a little rain pouring... another morning in Tondo. 

I contemplated my life a little, I hoped I could pause and do some small talk with the neighbors (something I've never done in the entirety of my life in this place), I hoped I could run the way I used to during summers. I hoped I could just continue on letting the hours pass by, and just watch the rain confuse women. 

But I know that even if I were given the chance to do so, I cannot indulge myself to the slow and stationary living I dream of. My heart has been wired for action and displacement, that I cannot be still. And so, I went home and prepared for the day, listed down all the things I need to accomplish, and blogged these thoughts out. Now, in a little while, I'll be on the road again.

Song For You

I really appreciate this song by Alexi Murdoch. It's like comforting someone that someone is by his/her side, and that he/she is understood. I actually want to send it as a correspondence to someone, you know, just a brief way of saying that I know you are not feeling well, that your heart is stocked with so much insecurity and thoughts that no one understands. I sort of want to tell that person, "I see you... and maybe have been seeing you for quite a while now." Sometimes, I think it is too ambitious for me to think I can actually care for that person and help wash all his sadness away. In reality, I can only just utter a prayer and a wish that his heart is being caressed by greater and bigger hands. And maybe just sing this song unheard.

Inevitable

It is inevitable to continue on hoping and to have faith in the things which cannot ever be. It is inevitable to place your belief in something identified as  impossible. It is inevitable to look at the days to come, and to just hope.

I continue on believing, and in belief I've come across with despair. Nothing beats the melancholy caused by the are and are not. And still, if there's anything I've kept with all my strength here within me, it is the hope that cradles my love. I trust in the somedays and I depend in the tomorrows. I live with so much hope--that which I can't measure the scope. It causes me sadness to think that this hope is irreplaceable, and that it can only be filled. Hope, as I've always believed, is a funny thing, sometimes you hear it laughing at you, showing you opportunities that will never be yours. I look at the pictures in my head and it's difficult for me to see what's in the now, all I see are the yesterdays which had never been, and the tomorrows that I hope will be.

But the beautiful thing with hope is that it doesn't leave me deprived. I am alone and yet, I have ropes pulling me up. I have fallen and yet, I can stand up. There's always an end to every single thing, and there's always an opportunity for a beginning. Hope is beautiful, and it tells you that tomorrow will be different, as it should be. It may not be as what you've expected, but what's beautiful with this belief is that you see things which surpass your expectations. You experience something unimaginable.

In love, I have failed and have hurt and have been hurt. But my heart is living surrounded by the beautiful things each new morning offers. I live in hope, I live hoping. In this, I have confidence.

I hope in the Loveliest, because I know, and it will be...

StoryRunners

"Almost 7, 000 languages exist in the world today. More than 1, 800 have no Bible, New Testament, or any portion of the Scripture. StoryRunners exists to help these unreached people groups hear the gospel in a format they understand: oral storytelling."

Last February 25, we had a Gospel-sharing/storytelling seminar entitled StoryRunners in the Philippine Campus Crusade for Christ office. This was done with the heart to equip students from different colleges and universities in sharing the Gospel with the use of different Bible stories.

It was studied that 2/3 of the people all over the world learn better through auditory techniques, and most people are more engaged to listen to stories, so with the knowledge of these, StoryRunners ministry sought to seize this opportunity to share Jesus in a way that can accommodate to the learning style of most people. It is also a way to reach out to different tribes!!

The way the ministry works is that coaches tell the stories to a person from a group/tribe, and eventually this person will translate the stories into their own tongue. By faith, these people who first heard the Gospel would be able to share it with others from their group, who would share this to others also.

For the Metro Manila training, we've had 102 delegates who attended the seminar. We learned how to use stories and dramas. It was only a day of training so we weren't able to learn other techniques, but this ministry also teaches how to use songs and other literary techniques to share Bible stories, and a full course-training lasts for 3-4 days (if I remember it right).

I have learned from this seminar the importance of being creative in sharing the Gospel, in that, if we really would want to win people (and all kinds of peoples for that), we could think of and use different ways to share the Word. This is still in obedience to Jesus's command for us to "Go and make disciples of all nations..." (Matthew 28:19-20). Ain't it an exciting adventure to just share God's love to all the nations?!

The awesome delegates!

Want to learn more about StoryRunners? Visit this cool website: http://storyrunners.org/

Blog Renovation!

Hello Lovely,

I just fell in love with writing even more than I ever have before. Experiences and heartbreaks proved me that there is no better way of salvaging shattered pieces than to express it with ardour and honesty through words. For this reason, I want to take it to a higher level with the purpose of being a window before the people who take the time to drop by in this little cave of mine. And I want to be something/someone who could leave a legacy with words. 

So I've been getting blog traffic! Thank you to those people (who I don't think ever come back after their first visit). I don't know how they came across this little page, but I am delighted to see that someone /maybe/ took interest in my mumbles. From this, I have realized that every little thing (just like this blog of mine, and this amateur writing career) can be an avenue to shed light and inspire different kinds of people. As it has always been my dream to be connected to people, in a way that our lives will be intertwined through stories/poems/thoughts/etc, I am going to take this desire into action--I mean writing. 

I have not much of a high hope that my life is very much interesting or that I am very much agreeable, but I am going to give this one a shot. That is why, I am going to be even more faithful to my blog-writing--promising to talk about love, faith, beauty, truths, passion, adventures, skies and everything as the hue of the morning daylight. 

May my heartbeats tug your heartstrings. Follow me as I get to my next adventures (after this post).

(Yep, I just advertised my blog. Thank you!)

Living a life of Love-driven passion, 

Skate Penny

PS,

How to follow Skate's adventures? Get a Bloglovin' account (so you can follow other lovely pages, too) and hit the follow button right there at the right (?) side of this page. Thank you! (Or just do it manually. I may be posting once every week.)