Does self-concept matter?

We know as Christians, that God loves us infinitely, and regardless of what we choose to do with our lives, he never stops. We also know that God created us in his own perfect image and loves us just as we are. Right? With this knowledge, do we need to trust that God doesn’t make mistakes, therefore we have no right as humans to feel unhappy with the way we are?

We all have different personalities, different idiosyncrasies, different tempers, natures, sensitivities and so forth… and with age, our personalities are moulded and shaped by what we are surrounded with. And God still loves us, to my understanding – regardless…

I don’t like my hair colour, I change it. I don’t like my curls, so I straighten them. I don’t like how I’m too trusting, so I become cynical, etc… Am I still the apple of his eye? I wonder these things because, I think sometimes if I look in the mirror and feel ugly, or if I get down on myself because I may have come across a little too harshly toward someone I love (from a place of love), then am I not trusting in God’s creation? If I wish to be a different way… is that me not believing that God’s way was ‘the right’ way?

A friend of mine is going through some stuff and it really made me sad. Two friends, actually. Who don’t believe that they are beautiful as. they. are. I know sometimes I have my fat days, my days where I feel repulsed by my reflection — as a woman, I think it’s normal – but I don’t ever truly sit and fester some deep seeded feeling of revolt and let myself for one second believe that I am ugly. I know God doesn’t create anything that isn’t beautiful… and I just remind myself of that.My friends aren’t happy with who they are – and I can understand, we’re all works in progress, but … when someone does have that doubt about who they are, or a confidence so low that they truly feel sickened by their image, then it makes me feel bad.

Cos, God doesn’t make anything that isn’t beautiful, and I don’t befriend people who I don’t believe are beautiful.

Anyway, on a much lighter note… it’s amazing to be able to see once again. And when I take my glasses off,  I notice the difference. It’s great. The blurs are gone hehe. And I have almost completely got my independant online store up and running without too much stress. Maybe next I can tackle content management systems. It will not get the best of me.

Here’s me with my new dork goggles.

I can’t see without my glasses

I resolved my financial issue thank goodness, but I will keep praying about it.  It’s not really much of my business to post here publicly, but I’ll keep it brief. My brother’s marriage ended a week and a half ago which has been extremely upsetting for him (and I’m sure for his wife) and it’s been a little emotionally draining. It’s hard because he lives in Sydney. My Dad lives five hours from Sydney by car and we live a good 13 hrs by car. There’s not a lot of family support for him at the moment, so I have been doing my bit from here as best as I can… So, needless to say, I have been keeping them both in prayer (if you could do the same I’d appreciate it.). I am sure there is no solution to this marriage and it won’t recover, so I think praying for peace would be the best thing and for an amicable, peaceful split.

Meanwhile, It seems I need better glasses cos my eyes are crap. So, I went and got glasses frames the other day. It’s amazing how much more clearly you can see things with glasses! I have been walking around looking at blurs for the past 5 yrs.

Today I will be back to beading. My stuff is selling quite well on etsy, so I have to keep creating. Also, I am ready to put up an online store at an independant domain, only… I have to figure out the scripting of the actual online store… that is the tricky part. I almost want to pay someone to do it, only… it’s supposed to be my ‘thing’… I just hate trying to figure it out.

http://divinetreasures.etsy.com

Life and it’s curve balls.

Had some pretty crappy news early this week and things have been a bit strained but it hasn’t been entirely terrible. However, life has thrown yet another curve ball at me and I feel extremely overwhelmed by things that are out of my control and issues that I am surrounded with.

My bank account is about to be severely obliterated. Praying for Divine Providence.

Bleh.

Just a few months back…

Journey of the Cross and Icon was so much fun. It was the beginning of me, really, getting to know my faith a bit better – and also the people in my church. This was about 2 months before World Youth Day, which, for those who know me, will remember was quite a debacale. I attended WYD this year in July, but in all honesty — it was not the greatest choice I ever made. While I had some great moments with 3 friends, I had a lot of greviences with a lot of things and a lot of big issues weren’t properly communicated or catered for, for me…

I got home feeling really bitter about my experience (not with Catholics in general, or with the Church just particular instances that could have been well prevented) which was only cemented by a terrible bout of Pneumonia and Whooping Cough AT THE SAME TIME!!!!! … I only have one lung. It was actual torture… And after I got most of that out of my system and narrowly escaped hospital trip #94243 I got shingles (again) … Super.

Why am I lamenting?  hehe… Well, I suppose despite all of those crappy circumstances – The jerk police officer who made me walk 3948kms further rather than just let me walk thru the gated off area to get to my area (despite my ‘disability pass’), thus exhausting me and my dicky respiratory system further – The transport that was promised to be provided to get me to events when I wasn’t able to walk that wasn’t – The sleeping on freezing cold cement floors in a cattle hall (I’m serious) — it may have been worth it for the way that I have grown spiritually since.

I don’t think WYD really increased my faith in any way except for the Homily our Holy Father gave during the sleep out Mass that I was extremely blessed to hear and see with my own eyes. I left WYD feeling spiritually weakened and very, very aware of my disadvantages in a way that I never had been — but that was possibly a good thing also, a chance for self-acceptance, to accept God’s Will with my life. It also made me very aware of the fact that I have no right to set limits on my health, my body, my capacity — because for a week I walked 3948039kms a day, woke up at a ridiculous time, did things that I didn’t necessarily want to do – spent time with people that I didn’t necessarily want to be around, and jumped completely and utterly out of my comfort zone and in to something that I never possibly dreamed to be involved with.

I have spent the past 12 years of my life succumbing to fear, letting it stop me and allowing me to quit most things that have ever been of any importance, but God really helped me take a leap of Faith with WYD … and since then I have been trying my hardest to continue doing that without shrinking in to the person that I used to be before I found God.

This is why 2 Tim 1:7 is so important to me. I have to think about it daily.

And WYD wasn’t so terrible. I had good friends looking after me, carrying my cross with me

For you I will…

Things are looking up, I think. In the sense of, I feel slightly better than I did three days ago.  I haven’t been very productive, in all honesty, but I have been finding things to keep me busy. Even if it’s just TV and Rosary stuff, it’s better than moping around thinking of how dodgy things seem.

I think the real grace of this period has been that my pray-life has gotten a thousand times more stronger. Prayer is something I have a back-and-forth struggle with, but I make time each day for prayer as soon as I wake up, during the day, and later in the evening. Starting the day with the prayer to St. Michael has been extremely helpful as well as a morning offering which, dummy over here, has never put too much effort in to. Just as importantly, I have received many graces for persistently praying the Divine Mercy and the Prayer of Health to St. Raphael the Archangel… Thinking about praying so often used to make me tired and I’d wonder how I’d even be able to make the time… but … it’s no strain on my time and it was silly for me to ever selfishly think it could be.

I also spend some time journaling (in a physical book) at the end of the night (sometimes) and write prayers down there and special intentions.  I have prayed recently very persistently for God to just give me whatever I need to make the way to where He wants me to be, and I feel like over the past few days, things are finally moving. But… baby steps and in God’s own time, right? Still…

Let me leave you with a photograph of my desk — basically it sums up my day in a nutshell. TV, prayer, food and Rosary-making lol!

Does anyone else watch Heroes? I was in Adelaide almost 2 yrs ago now and my friend made me watch 2 episodes which happened to be the season finale of season 2. And I got in to it, but at that time it wasn’t on DVD yet and I couldn’t be bothered to download the episodes. When I was in Thailand in August I bought season 2 on DVD but thought it would be pointless to watch since I hadn’t seen any episodes of the first and would miss half of the story (even though I enjoyed the 2 ep’s I watched, I was really confused!) … Hmm this story is already way too long and boring…. Eh, so yeah I bought the first season today and my Mum and I have been watching back-to-back episodes.

Hiro Nakamura is soooo adorable! and like in Lost, I like the Korean guy, Ando (I know he’s supposed to be Japanese, but he’s actually Korean.) … very cute.

Meanwhile, I made my first good profit at my Divine Treasures store

God bless you all, friends. Expect something a bit more substantial in a few days when I get my full groove back!

Placed it.

The long and the short of it?

I’m pretty lonely.

A bold statement to make, I’m sure, but one that is an honest conclusion as to the way I have been feeling lately. I’ve been really down recently, as I’m sure it’s been documented, but I haven’t been able to pinpoint exactly why. Thank God my bordem was alleviated today when a good Catholic friend of mine said he was free to catch up. We were walking through a shopping centre and the comment was made that it was hard to meet someone (as in a girlfriend or boyfriend) that you feel comfortable with, that you are on the same level with, who is good for you – etc… I said that I felt the same and I’m at the point where I’ve kind of given up. I was reminded that I was only 25.

I don’t like it when people say that to me. My closest friends are all a fair bit older than me, by ten or more years. I hang out with people in their 40s. Or, on the otherside of the spectrum I have a lot of younger friends who I love to be around because their hearts are starting to evolve in to God-loving ones and it’s amazing to watch.

But at 25, my Mum had two kids and a first home. All of the people around me who I went to school with all have children, marriages… I’m not jealous and I know if God wills it, it shall be done… but– my human heart yearns. I live in a country area, the people my age are … I’m sure, not all there. (I am originally a city girl ), I live 2 hours away from the city. I drive there once a week usually to see aforementioned friend, my friends here are two tradesman handimen kinda guys that are over 45 and I can only relate to them to a certain extent. The people in my church skip a generation and there is no one from my age group around mostly just the elderly. I am not working and even when I was, my place of work was littered by younger people whinging about life, school, not being able to go out, no money cos spent it all on alchol, etc…

It’s just so… lonely. I don’t have anyone out here that I can just go to to see a movie, go for a chat, a coffee, etc. I’m not necessarily looking for a husband this second, but I am looking for a friend, either male or female… who is like-minded. Who I don’t have to keep my guard up around… Eh.

Basically, I need to be out of the country. I should never have nested myself here to begin with. I’ve racked up a few little debts. I guess my best bet is to find a full time job after Christmas, pay out my debts and then sort out a place to live. It’s the only thing I can think of right now… The hard part is finding a job that will be okay for me.

Meanwhile. I need to proactively put together a list of things that need doing.

May I remind you all of this;

http://divinetreasures.wordpress.com
http://divinetreasures.etsy.com
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=33444667419

Or … kindly put the following on your page to link my stuff.

link it to; http://divinetreasures.wordpress.com plz would be a huge help and would give me something to do to get some orders in.

All in all, I’ll be okay. I know I will. I always am.

And it just don’t stop.

I’d like to say that I feel better than I did last week, but it’d be a bold-faced lie. I’m not going to be concerned about it. I know that there is a time for everything and God will administer to me when it’s time for me to get moving… But in the meantime I am looking for things to do to fill my time.  I have praying so hard about everything that’s going on. If nothing else, it has strengthened my prayer-life tenfold. I have been doing a daily 9 hr novena to the Infant of Prague which has brought me some peace (although finding a few minutes every hour is not an easy task) and last night I started a Divine Mercy Novena…

Almost daily my friend has been calling me for 3pm Divine Mercy Chaplet… which has been incredibly helpful and I have my Rosary group on tuesday nights… Plus, on top of all of that is my own personal prayers. It’s been tough… but I have faith and they say that’s all you need?

Novena to the Infant of Prague

(This Novena is to be said at the same time every hour for Nine consecutive hours in just one day).

O Jesus, Who hast said, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you, through the intercession of Mary, Thy Most Holy Mother, I knock, I seek, I ask that my prayer be granted.

(Make your request)

O Jesus, Who hast said, all that you ask of the Father in My Name, He will grant you. Through the intercession of Mary, Thy most Holy Mother, I humbly and urgently ask Thy Father in Thy Name that my prayer be granted.

(Make your request)

O Jesus, Who hast said, “Heaven and earth shall pass away but My word shall not pass”, through the intercession of Mary, Thy Most Holy Mother, I feel confident that my prayer will be granted.

(Make your request)

If you don’t like murder don’t commit one…

People are always so profoundly intelligent, aren’t they? I mean, they are always coming up with extremely witty quips in which make me want to change my mind and submerge myself within their never-ending pool of wisdom.

What brings me to such conclusion, I hear you all ask? Well, friends, like the rest of my generation (and apparently every other generation at the moment!) I am a facebook mogul. That is to say, I enjoy spending, nay, wasting valuable and precious time on writing on people’s walls (ooh, how rebellious of me!) and posting pictures of nothing of any great consequence from my precious iPhone (yep, I’m one of people those cool kids). So while on facebook the other afternoon I happened to be meandering through a list of ‘groups’ on the site. If you are a facebook user, you’d understand that there is a group for just about every thing you can think of. Only on facebook would you expect to find a man offering to name his son Batman if 50,000 people joined. Only on facebook would you expect to find a fan club for yours truly. (Hehe) and Only on facebook would you expect to see clever and astute statements as group names such as;

“Against gay marriages? Well then don’t get one and shut the f*ck up“

Mmmhm. I see.

After pondering this group name for a few short moments, my sudden stance on gay marriage did a one eighty and suddenly I realised how wrong I was for having a vague opinion on the sanctity of marriage. How dare I have been so … what’s the word, oh right… hateful. I suddenly felt foolish with this obvious common-sense statement hitting me in the face hard like the carcass of Bambi. I realised oh, how I must apply this principle to the rest of my life because surely it would make a lot of clever sense and thank goodness facebook was there to help me out.

I’m against drowning small but extremely cute little puppy dogs, so I should not drown them and shut the f*ck up. And if someone else wants to do so, that’s alright.

Thanks facebook, you really stopped me from meddling in other people’s business.

I’m surprisingly against walking up to people that I don’t like and kneeing them in the general groin area, so I won’t do that and if I see someone else do it, I should mind my own business.

Whoa, good advice.

Also, I’m mostly against the bashing, pillaging, raping and murdering of innocent people but yet if my mates support it then I should probably just shut the f*ck up, right facebook?

Gee, thank goodness you served me with that piece of advice, cos I really could have landed myself in hotwater!

I’m so glad that this advice was right here on the internet at my very disposal or else I could have committed a major social faux pas and could have been extremely hateful toward rapists, murders, bashers, pillagers, vigilante’s, gays, animal torturers, abortionists and so on…

You can see how having an opinion can only ever get us in to trouble. Keeping my mouth shut for whatever I believe in is clearly a much better option, goodness knows what kind of a world we may live in when people start speaking out and telling people they don’t agree with something.

… Oh yeah, I was being sarcastic.

Having an opinion that opposes gay marriage isn’t hateful. And it irritates me when people say that it is. I hate it when people accuse such opinions as being homophobic because for the most part it isn’t true (if I was a 56 yr old truck driver named Bubba, it might well be but thankfully I am not.). Opposing gay marriage just means that my opinion on the sanctity of marriage is different. It is a bible-based belief. Gay marriage conflicts with my belief of what God’s vocation is for all of us. (To go forth and multiply and share in the communion that He has created thru the Holy Trinity – See Theology of The Body). With my beliefs I don’t wish to upset anyone, incite hatred, judge or take away any civil rights — it is just that marriage was intended from the start times as a God-given sacrament between man and woman in union with Him, overseen by Him. And to me it’s like a kick of dirt to the eyes of God to see that His Holy intention for man and woman is being changed to suit current society.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

P.S (Why is everyone’s blogs so dead??? Are they still recoiling in horror about Obama’s victory??? lol!)

Divine Treasures

Finally, I opened my little Catholic treasures store. If you are interested in anything please just ask me or email me at the address that I have provided on the other site. Also, I have started a facebook club for it as well as a club on xt3.com. I have a small request, if you own a blog, could you add the link http://divinetreasures.wordpress.com or the image to the left (linked to the blog url just mentioned) to help me out? If you are not linked to my blogs already, let me know and I will happily link you up real nice.

I have had some chest pain today, this worries me a bit. Generally I’m a bit of a hypochondriac, but not without good reason. I have heart complications, but fortunately,  I think this is just muscular and due to the fact that I have been hunched over my coffee table for the past three days doing nothing but beading and watching movies.  I am praying for the intercession of St. Raphael the Archangel. St. Raphael is amazing. I felt a real pull toward him during my recent trip to Thailand… I prayed daily for his intercession and it brought me great comfort and great trust in God.

I am trying to discern whether or not to go back to “real” work. I despise using that expression because it indicates that I’m being a bum, but I’m not. There are a lot of reasons why I don’t do a regular 9-5pm job, but I don’t want to justify myself. Whatever path I choose to take seems to get blockroaded by something and I pray to get through it but usually it’s something really unfixable. I have tried many different avenues, but the areas in which I am qualified are no longer really safe for me to work in. I am qualified to work with children, but unfortunately each time I work with them, I end up sick — this is normal for childcare workers, but because of my respiratory problems, I end up with dire illness rather than someone elses colds. I miss the kids so much — but I don’t know how worth it the money and the company is.

Money isn’t an issue — well not really. I earn enough money through what I’ve been doing (data entry, web design here and there) to live on a week to week basis, but after I pay bills and living expenses, there is no money to save which is a problem if I ever have a plan to get anywhere with my life. I’m 25 and feel like I’ve done absolutely nothing. Perhaps I’m being really hard on myself, but it’s so hard to feel like this. I’m not so worried about what other people think, but i can’t say my whole situation doesn’t feel anything short of lame. I don’t want to be 30 and still living with my Mum and her husband.

I just want the wheels to turn – I want to be earning enough money to sort things out. I want to be able to get rid of debt, take on as much work as I can, be successful and remember God each day… I don’t even know where to begin and I have been praying about this for so long, but I just fear that it’s all self-inflicted. I don’t know… Just really tired of feeling so bad about things.

Anyway. I will finish writing my testimony tomorrow…

Are the details in the fabric? Are the things that make you panic? Is it mother natures sewing machine? Are the things that make you blow… Hell, no reason, go on and scream. If you’re shocked it’s just the fault of faulty manufacturing.

Changing it up.

Tonight I’m struggling with guilt despite my earlier post. I am trying to put all of my faith in to God. I am asking for the guidance of The Holy Spirit to guide me where I need to be.  I don’t want to be lazy, I want to be doing great things. I am struggling with discernment at the current moment. I am struggling with my love life (or lack of) and I am struggling with a bit of sadness.

Tomorrow I am going to write down my goals, my plans… get moving on them, start taking pot shots at them one by one.

Until then, I am calling upon the intercession of St. Michael the Archangel since I struggle to know what is God pulling at my conscience for good purpose, or what is darkness overshadowing God’s desire for me to shine.

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil; May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; And do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, By the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits Who wander through the world For the ruin of souls.

Amen.