Sharing Thoughts, Inspiring People

Look upward when life hits you low - Pastor Jun Vencer ♥ ♥ ♥ The bad days make the good ones better ♥ ♥ ♥ In year 2020, we really have nothing to complain about because we have so much to acknowledge and appreciate. ♥ ♥ ♥ Gratitude is when  memory is stored in the heart, not in the mind - Lionel Hampton ♥ ♥ ♥ The more grateful I am, the more beauty I see - Mary Davis ♥ ♥ ♥ Gratitude turns what we have into enough - Anon ♥ ♥ ♥ Today I choose to live with gratitude for the love that fills my heart, the peace that rests within my spirit, and the voice of hope that says all things are possible - Anon ♥ ♥ ♥ I am thankful for the essentials in my life. What are my essentials? My family, faith (God), time - these are the things that kept me sane, whole and joyful all through the pandemic. These things give me joy in a way that other extra things cannot sustain me.  ♥ ♥ ♥ I thank God for my mom today, for what she had done for me. I will never be here, will never be who I am now if wi...

Some days I felt like purpose is a big responsibility to fill in and I wondered if I ever did fulfill any of it. There were days that I strongly feel that I did. Today is one of those days. It is hard to ponder the cosmic question of what is your life's greater purpose. We all are in search of it but no definite answer was handed down to any one.  But here's the simple truth: our existence on Earth will last for some undetermined period of time. During the entire time of living our life, we do lots of things categorized into two: important, unimportant. It is in the important things that we find happiness, contentment, joy, fulfillment. The unimportant is basically just killing our time. With the time afforded to us, our question is what is the important thing that we can do with it. The answer will boil down to our definition of 'important'. Whatever our definition of important is, it will affect the course of our life. For me, important is something that brings mean...

My alarm went off 5:30AM today but I hit the snooze button and gave myself a 15-minute extension before I finally able to forced myself to get up. Today was the first working day of the year. Back to work. I wanted to prepare myself physically and mentally for the catching up I need to do with work and the back to juggle moments of working from home and managing the household. First order of business was to cook our breakfast and meal prepped our lunch. While I was doing this, I was sipping my coffee. The entire house was still and quiet. Our Christmas Tree is still up so I turned on the light and basked in the mood of sweet, blissful me time. My mornings are very important. This is when I tuned in myself for the day, my time to plan out my priorities. If I mess up my morning, I feel like the rest of my day is out of synched. I’m also on the move from sun up to sun down that is why I love mornings because it is the slowest and the most peaceful time of my day. Without the bustle and no...

As I am ushering the new year in, I can’t help but look back to when everyone was envisioning the 2020 ahead. My Facebook timeline then was full of lines like these: Bring it on 2020, I am ready for you The best is yet to come Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true All of us have sent everyone our well wishes too. But no one, nothing had prepared us to what 2020 had brought us. A coronavirus that was identified in China late of 2019 became the pandemic that hit the globe in 2020. Everyone’s affected, no ones exempted. Rich dying regardless of the money or power they have. Poor people robbed of hope as they lost jobs. It’s been a rough year for everybody. 2020 is definitely not the best year ever. And the coming new year brings new hope but we all know that this pandemic will not magically disappear in January 1st. As we fight this coronavirus, I hope for a slow shift to go back to the ol...

 Children are a gift from the Lord, they are a reward from Him - Psalm 127: 3 ♥ ♥ ♥ I know a little girl who loves unicorns and rainbows and is fascinated by dogs, dolphins and dinosaurs. She just turned six few days ago. She is musically inclined - she has a good singing voice and can pick up the tune pretty fast. She is left handed and have two left feet, she loves and is trying her best to do some dance moves. She is into arts and she enjoyed making crafts a lot. She is ticklish and can easily laugh at the silliest joke one can throw at her. She is bubbly, smart, kind, friendly, inclusive, very loving, thoughtful and understanding.  She knows the situation we are in, the pandemic and all the restrictions that comes with it. She is currently doing her school remotely so she's just staying home all the time. She never complains of not being able to come with me whenever I go out for errands. On her birthday, she wasn't expecting anything and told us she would be happy to get ...

“B eing grateful all the time isn’t easy. But it’s when you feel least thankful  that you are most in need of what gratitude can give you:  perspective .  Gratitude can transform any situation. It alters your vibration, moving you  from negative energy to positive. It’s the quickest, easiest, most powerful  way to effect change in your life—this I know for sure.” - Oprah Winfrey No one really knows what some people are going through. Even the ones that you think are tough and all smiles.  Three years ago, I found myself in a new place surrounded with new faces. It was tough. Settling in a country 7,495 miles away from home and leaving everyone I knew, siblings and family behind is difficult. Even though I countlessly told myself, home is where my family (husband and daughter) is, it was a futile effort of convincing myself. I have to instill it in my heart that my new home is here now with my new relatives-in-law. My mom had just died a year before we ...

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in  all circumstances ; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.  -  1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 Gratitude is a feeling of thankfulness and appreciation. When you search up gratitude using this keywords 'gratitude meaning', vocabulary.com will return the following Gratitude , which rhymes with "attitude," comes from the Latin word  gratus , which means "thankful, pleasing." When you feel gratitude, you're pleased by what someone did for you and also pleased by the results. Feeling. Emotion. Attitude. It is easy for you to feel grateful when life is going well, to celebrate the joys of life and magnify its goodness. But it doesn't come easy when disaster strikes. Losing a job, a loved one, failing at something, having disabilities or when life gets extremely challenging and painful that you wonder if it's possible to find anything to be thankful for. Gratitude is also not easy to cultivate in ou...

Two days for a weekend seems not enough. Before I knew it I was up again for my usual four am routine of boarding a jeep going to a bus terminal that will transport me back to city life and back to the reality. I was on board a jeep pondering thoughts of how quiet and laid back life is in the province - fresh air, green surroundings, less noise, less people, and most of all no rush hour! Such tranquility will drive people like me into deep thoughts.  While doing my silent 'wanderings', I saw onboard a physically well-built man. He was fighting back the to urge to sleep although he was drowsing. By the look on his face, he is probably close to forties but I suppose he is a bit younger than my estimates. His eyes mirror something like grimness, his face shows some wrinkles and I guess, it may be because of all the physical hardships he'd endure in life. In front of him were two large aluminum buckets full of taho. He is a 'magtataho'. That explains for ...