you are dearly loved

Guess what folks? I am back.

I hope that you all had an amazing Christmas and that you all have had a safe and happy festive season. I haven’t had access to a computer really since around the time that I left to go to Queensland which was on December 13. I feel like I have been missing for ages, and I have wanted so badly to be able to write a proper update on how things have been panning out for me over the past month… so here goes, sit back and enjoy.

I haven’t been to Mass since Dec 14. I am not at all happy about that. Unfortunately for me, in Sydney I have no car and I am staying nowhere near public transport or in the direct line of a close by church. The people that I am staying with arent usually awake by the time morning mass begins so I am not able to ask for a lift. I know that it’s a mortal sin to not attend mass every week, and I have not missed a week of Mass for months prior to this except when too sick, but… I do feel pretty disappointed, but I know that it’s out of my hands. I can’t wait to be back home and back in to the swing of things.

Fortunately the lack of Mass hasn’t affected my prayer-life greatly, and I have been finding myself growing stronger prayer-wise and able to extend my Catholic knowledge to family members and friends who are asking questions. It’s pretty exciting.

I had an awesome time at my Aunty’s house and at my friend Sarah’s house– I feel like God really called me to my Aunt’s for a reason… and He did. While I was at Sarah’s I bought a new bible and had a spare one in my bag. And after a week of talking to my aunty about God, and finding out about her background and thoughts and feelings about God, I was able to give her this spare bible and she was really grateful and put it away in her bedside drawer and promised me that she would read it. I really believe that as she grows older, she is finding a more spiritual side and expressed an interest in RCIA and getting baptised and confirmed. I am going to stay on it with prayer and communication. Praise the Lord for such an opportunity!

My little cousins were so gorgeous and so sweet, we all had such a good time. My two older cousins were so much fun. We played Nintendo wii (where I pulled a muscle in my back!), went swimming, spent a lot of time chatting, visited my grandma and took her out… and also, I went out with my cousin to a club and had a pretty good time without alcohol or any disgusting behavior… We danced our butts off and had a really good time.

My Christmas was good. My Mum was fairly sick with some kind of bug which had us wondering if we’d have to take her to hospital on Christmas Eve. Thankfully we found a 24hr doctor who was able to give her a shot and she was okay the next morning… well enough to enjoy the Christmas day, thankfully. You might say it was a Christmas miracle as the night before she was nonstop vomiting, moaning, groaning and had a temperature… I got a lot of nice things, praise God. I got some beautiful new charms for my Pandora bracelet (a cross with blue stones, an angel, a lion and a cute little (Holy) ghost), lots of money, the worlds biggest coffee mug (it’s the best!) and my beautiful wonderful friend made me the coolest ginger bread cake in the world made with white sugar icing and a 3d Rosary draped over it. Seriously, it was so beautiful, I could have cried…. so creative. I will of course post some photos when I get home.  I also got this really cute little Jesus statue for my car or desk. I love it… and a book on Catholicism … a kind of Q&As kind of thing which my friend said she thought was a sign because I had explained how people always are asking the same questions and sometimes I struggle to explain the answers properly, even if I do know the educated answer…. (verbal communication has never been my strong point!) It will be really handy!

I am worried about my bestfriend as usual. She is doing some things that obviously I am not happy with and as a friend, I am greatly concerned for her — but … I just need to saturate her with specific and persistent prayer and if everyone else could help me with that, I would be really grateful. Obviously, I’d never post what it is that she is doing, because it’s private for her and not news for the internet, but blah… it’s really hurtful to watch someone do something that you know is going to hurt them deeply in the long run.

In other news, I finally bought my mac! I am very excited about this purchase. With all the money I made from my beaded rosaries and bracelets, I was able to save around $600 and plus all my Christmas and birthday money combined, I had enough for my new beautiful mac (That I am bringing this blog to you from!) and a wireless prepaid modem… I couldnt be happier. I wish I was home so I could go and pick up the photoshop and dreamweaver software for my designing purposes from my friend… The other awesome thing is, is that my Mum wants to buy a mac desktop and at the moment, I have my pc desktop on ebay for sale… so we decided that with my desktop pc money and half of her money we’d also buy a desktop mac for my design purposes and her projects (we both have our own laptops) … we live in a creative household, lol… we are both very excited about it.

I have around 13 new orders for my jewelery store on etsy … and things are going strong, just waiting for me to get home. I had an idea too, I found that my favourite rosary broke in my bag, so I was able to repair it. I was thinking that maybe I could extend myself to do Rosary repairs also… I might try to take out a little add in my church newspaper.

Anyway, I am going to spend new years with a good friend that I haven’t seen since my birthday — I had originally planned to boycott new years because no one invited me to anything and everyone had individual plans, but .. I got the invite today — so I am gonna head along and celebrate it with my friend’s family. It should be really nice and also I think I am going to go to Mass this sunday as well. Praise God. 

I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe new year and I will blog again in a few days and I am so excited to catch up on everyone else’s blogs Thank god for my family, my friends, all the wonderful opportunities that I have been presented with this current year and all the amazing blessings that I have received – the enlightenment of Christ, the spiritual growth and the comprehension of the truth. I am just praising the Lord granting me so much peace at heart…

I think I have finally become a woman this year.

Tis the season…

I am sitting before my friend’s pc in Sunny Queensland in the Sunshine Coast.  The weather is insanely hot, and it actually takes me back to my time in Thailand back in August where I got sunburned every day and felt like I was melting all day long.

I love the heat, though, so I welcome this feeling. We went to the beach this morning and I got really burned, but I don’t mind… I needed a bit of colour (although, probably should be way more responsible in the sun) … We went to check out a Christian bookstore for awhile and I came home here and had a nap. Tonight we are going out to dinner with our lovely friend Megan … to Sizzler, anyone remember that place? Apparently it only really exists in Queensland now!

Faithwise, things have been pretty great.  I read a whole faithbook in one night… and I am feeling quite uplifted. Still of course, going through daily motions, feelings of guilt now and then, but I feel great in spirit. 

I had some stuff I wanted to write about the other nigt before I left to come to queensland, but a lot of it is about self-worth and self confidence, and about the way the ‘old’ me used to feel really worthless and really quite socially inept… Even rewind back to a few months ago… But actually, I think it’s something I want to write about supported by scriptures and things, so… I will probably come back to it over the next few days after I write it out physically first.

I am going to spend some time with family at the end of the week and will probably post some photos and things within time.  Right now, I want to wish you all love and peace.

God bless,
Jess

I’m a wretch

Seriously, I came to a good place where a friend of mine and I agreed that it was useless to beat ourselves up and feel angry with ourselves for falling short or turning away – even if it’s just brief- from God’s grace. We decided rather than getting so consumed with guilt and moving away even further, we’d simply get off our butts go to confession and start afresh and take comfort that the sacrament is a Holy gift that will assist us in our bids to sin less in the future.

Only, today I slipped up… and as much as God pulled on my conscience, I slipped up anyway. And I feel terrible.  And I don’t know when I’m gonna get the chance to go to reconciliation next. I am kinda stupid.

Meanwhile, I have been MIA cos I’ve had a busy weekend and an even bigger week coming up. I am a little bit excited, but also a lot freaking out. I have so much to do.  I am going to try to be organised by tomorrow night and figure out what needs doing.

The other thing I wanted to write about was … expectations with people.

Is it fair to have an expectation of someone? My friend refuses to acknowledge that she holds expectations of people – but I think that’s only true to a certain extent. And as humans, we all have expectations – it’s in our nature. It isn’t always necessarily fair, but it’s there.  Most of us love very few people unconditionally, we expect things in return and we can often feel upset by something another has said to us (or failed to say to us.) This friend says that she has never had any expectation from me in terms of our friendship – but I can point out many times where she has been disappointed in me for something — which only leads to the conclusion that she must have had an expectation about how I should / would react, respond and so on.

Why? Because we do have expectations of people. It’s not entirely unfair.

If my bestfriend let me come to Sydney and made absolutely no attempt to see me, I would be greatly disappointed though I do love her unconditionally. I would expect her to come and see me because we are close and I have already done the right thing and faciliatated the visit by traveling more than half way to help her.

If my Mum was heard to be saying some upsetting things about me to another person, I would be gutted and extremely devastated. Why? Cos you don’t ever expect to hear your mother bad mouthing you. (Just an example, my Mum wouldnt do that)

And it goes on. Just like I don’t expect my friends to embarrass me in front of people that I care about… and when it happens, I feel really quite sad. And should I just accept that behavior? No. Why? Because I expect better from people that I love.

Bah…

Anyway, I am back in the land of blogging.  I will be catching up with all of my favourite blogs before I leave. And meanwhile, why on earth am I up so late…

Sick

So finally my wordpress iphone application is coming to good use. I am lying in bed with an awful headcold and a hideous sinus infection. Praise God, it has only lasted me 3 days and I think that I am going to be alright tomorrow cos I have felt significantly better since late this afternoon.

I am having a big weekend this weekend. I am having a friend come to
Melbourne on Friday and we are going to a concert on Friday night and staying in a fancy hotel overlooking the city. It will be great cos this friend of mine is one of my closest Sydney pals and we hardly get to see eachother much anymore. On Saturday night I will take her back to the airport and I’ll probably come home or something. I can’t wait, but til then I am praying for good health cos I really want to enjoy this weekend.

Also I booked a flight to Queensland to spend some time with my best buddy Sarah who was down here with me just a month or so ago. Also my grandmother and two aunties live there so I am hoping to spend some time with them also. It should be a heap of fun! I get to fly there with a good friend which is an upper cos I’m a hopeless wreck while flying especially when I’m on my own. I will take heaps of photographs. Queensland is a beautiful state. And it’s also the warmest. Bring on summer!

Straight from there I will be off to Sydney for Christmas and New Year and will catch up with more friends and family including my daddy and brother who I am happy to say is doing a bit better,praise God.

Anyway it’s kinds hard to type on this screen for too long while lying down, but I just wanted to give an update. I will be making more use of this application when I am away obviously, but I’m still around for another two weeks. Yay.

God bless everyone. Xoxo
Jessy