So I started all this feeling bad, then transitioning, then feeling better, I guess. I hope it all comes together full circle. I just didn’t want to keep on going without posting here. And really, since we are starting a new year, I suppose I will be forcing myself to write here more. Quantity over quality, in the name of learning and development.
I was supposed to drive into December with the mindset that my 2019 already began. Obviously, that didn’t go very well. I only ended up depressed, and the stench of it lingered even in the light of all that was awesome during the beginning and mid-parts of 2018.
So with that said, I suppose I will be joining the rest of the world in pursuing New Year’s Resolutions for 2019.
One such resolution would be to consider pulling back what I intended to do this year, to a couple months earlier. Tax-wise, it is possible to start 2020 way earlier than expected, as an Auntie (of Baguio) told me I could go to her and pay on November 15.
The point here is to get everything for the next year done as early as possible, to join the rest of the world in winding down and ending the year in December, with just a little extra chill knowing that everything for the next year was already settled before the Holidays. The way I see it, December is much more for family and friends than the rest of the year.
So here we are, in the season of ending and beginning. 2018, out. Thank you, next. Can’t avoid realizing it, I’m 34. In thinking of this, I realize, especially after recent events, that damn it, do it I have a lot to learn. And I definitely have a lot of growing up to do.
The order still stands: leave Baguio. Leave your comfort zone. But as of now, I don’t seem to have a reason to go, beyond just wanting to get the hell out of here.
I spoke to my brother about all this, and it brought me to thinking: Maybe I’m already grown up. God isn’t encouraging me to grow up – He is telling me that I am already a man… Or rather, that Christ is being the man through me. It’s less about not feeling that I am a man according to the standards of this world, and more of just living life knowing that I already am one.
Not that I pretend, but that I learn how Christ has been the man for me, and as such, I could be the man Christ has me to be for this world, and this reality.
The lesson I see in all of this is that we ought to remember who we are, versus what we have yet to learn, or where we have yet to go. These things are different from each other, and I’m thinking that as we continue to let Christ live and move in us, with us, and through us, we’re able to clarify, we’re able to specify which is which.
As always, we will make mistakes. As we are in this reality, we will continue to stumble. But in spite of the deepest-rooted despair, and in the face of the most intimidating of challenges, we can take heart, knowing, as always, that Christ is who He is, and what He has done is a finished work, with the promises of God, guaranteed.
These promises are not necessarily a better and more comfortable life according to how the world defines it, but a practice of inhuman, i.e. extraordinary and supernatural peace no matter what.
I’d like to close with something I found in my notebook. Just when I was thinking I was totally entering 2019 with blanks, this pops up on my radar.
I live for others, for myself. My life is for me, for others. Life abundant in the sense that I am perpetually diminishing, yet perpetually increasing at the same time.
For such is life with Christ, and I cannot have it any other way. My desire is for all to know Him, that they may know peace, and that they may know love, and that they may know exactly what their heart desires, in who desires for them more than anything, or anyone else – none other than the Son of the Living God, Jesus Christ.
This is my evil plan for world domination. This is the singular directive of my life – that every second, every breath that I take, every beat of my heart is expressed out of God’s everlasting love for me, that all would see Christ as more and more aspects of my being are being renewed and reconciled; That the world and this entire reality as we as a race would perceive would see Christ in me, with me and through me, transforming me by the renewing of my mind, taking me and all of me from glory to glory.
This is my adventure. This adventure is my life and Christ’s life as mine, me in Christ and Christ in me. Yet not for me as much as it is for everyone else to be encouraged to find their best lives in Christ, themselves. To Him be all the glory, honor, power and praise, both now and forever.
Amen!
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This was written last August. Apparently, I was thinking of 2019 as early as back then. How about that.
JB's Personal Brain Defragmenter 
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