Gratitude & growing up journal 感恩成长记
In the early hours of 20240904, I listened to https://insighttimer.com/shaunashapiro/guided-meditations/restorative-mindfulness-practice Let’s approach our thoughts with acceptance, curiosity and kindness.
Li Bai 李白 by 意公子 : 痛快 as a way of living. 痛快 = happy, straightforward.
痛 = painful.
快 = fast.
Life can be painful and perish fast yet we can choose to be happy! Sing with the moon, dance with my reflection. To humanize the universe & To universe the humans.
I am kind and patient with my healing process.
I support myself no matter what.
I deserve to be loved.
I see my struggles as opportunities to learn and grow.
In the mornings, I also enjoy listening to the below.
https://insighttimer.com/sez/guided-meditations/morning-empowerment-for-sensitive-souls since 20240923
https://insighttimer.com/vajralee/guided-meditations/morning-affirmation-practice-for-self-love-and-support 20240810 20250404 I love it!
I see my struggles as opportunities to learn & grow in patience & perseverance.
我把我的挣扎视为学习和成长的机会，让我更加有耐心和毅力。
I am at peace with all that has happened in my life.
我对生活中发生的一切感到平静。
I trust that my life journey is unfolding exactly as it should.
我相信我的人生旅程正按它应该的方式展开。
I recognize the abundance and blessings in my life.
Saya menyadari betapa berlimpah nya hidup saya dengan berkah2 karunia-Nya
I allow joy and love to flow through me freely.
我让快乐和爱自由地流过我。
https://insighttimer.com/heididickinson/guided-meditations/morning-affirmation-meditation_2 20240903
Dearest my children & myself,
Remember to breathe, praise the Lord,
pray often, anytime & anywhere,
using movements (dance), songs (e.g. Jesus Loves me),
visuals or words (Bible verses),
& say Thank You!
20250120 Dear Our Father in Heaven, I lift up to You my plans & goals for my life & family, please help us to put them all into realities 🙏
20250209 20220209 May we be faithful & spiritually healthy amid secularism, materialism, individualism & relativism, never be discouraged. 愿我们在世俗主义、物质主义、个人主义和相对主义中保持忠诚和精神健康，永不气馁。Jesus, please bless us & give us the strength of will to obey Your words, so that You will bring forth abundance & transform us to be fruitful.
20241218 Wed
Dear Our Father in Heaven,
We are thankful that Your love for us nourishes our hearts,
gives purposes to our souls,
heals our pains,
calms all our worries (through calmed people e.g. Banyu’s ‘sister’) &
transforms us from a worrier into a warrior.
Please help my dreams come true.
Please bless our family, big families in Christ, school & neighbourhood communities, friends, relatives with good health, healing of emotions, abundance, peace & harmony in our relationships.
In the name of Jesus, Amen 🙏
20241216 Mon after the Gaudete Sunday:
Dear Lord Jesus,
Please help us to be more attentive to the countless ways that You speak to us & come to us each & every day.
In this Advent week of Joy,
please fill us with joy, as we discover You & Your holy word.
Please help us to dance APTly, bring Your LOVE & MERCY to those who are most in need.
Please help my children & I to walk & work with You.
Please help us to be a good disciple with high discipline & focus,
to do right things & things right,
things that mattter,
in God’s time.
Amen.
20241203
God please help us to believe that You will turn every hardship into a benefit. 逢凶化吉
May we have a faith like that of the Centurion.
Faith in Jesus is what makes it possible to climb the Lord’s mountain.
Advent is meant to be a time of reaching new heights in spiritual growth.
To climb the Lord’s mountain and reach the top requires actively seeking the greatest peace and the fullest joy for our lives today, which only Christ can provide.
20241202 prayer
Dear Jesus,
Thank you for allowing my children and me to stand on Your shoulder on Thanksgiving Thursday 20241128.
Please lead us to always walk towards the path of healing, courage & the actualisation of our dreams. Amen.
20241110 Dear Jesus & Mama Mary,
please help me to care for & nourish myself with love & joy.
Please help me to allow others the freedom to be who they are.
Regardless of what happens (20241103 threat, 20241109 attack @ St Joseph’s Bukit Timah), please help me to believe that We are all safe & free, while being alert & careful. Help us to be wise to (either temporarily / permanently) stay away from angry people as anger is often danger, if not well regulated.
20241026 prayer that was inspired by Psalm 119:130 goes:
Dear Our Father in Heaven,
Please help me to understand the depths of Your Words so I can build, create, grow & produce meaningful things.
I pray that you open my spiritual eyes + ears + heart to know & understand who You are & Your teachings,
so that my life would be filled with Your light.
May I truly walk in the freedom I have through Jesus Christ.
Dear Mother Mary, my late Godmother & Papa, please intercede.
Amen.
20241001
Dear Mother Mary, as we started the month of Rosary, please intercede for my children to grow up healthily & safely as respectful & responsible God’s children.
St Christopher, Patron saint of travelers, please protect my loved ones & me when we travel on the road, by water or in the sky. Please keep us safe.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux, whose Feast Day is today, please intercede for my daughter to do all things she must do with a good, loving attitude.
2024 reflection of 20190928: I saw a parallel between the parables of the bleeding woman (路加福音 Luke 8:43-48) & the Persistent Widow (Luke 18:1-8):
a model for discipleship
effective prayers need
faithfulness 忠诚
Grit 毅力 (perseverance 坚持不懈 / tenacity)
Never give up 永不放弃, amid “disappointments, discouragements, delays.”
20240721 20240903 God, please renew us in body, mind and spirit for the arduous work of discipleship. Please help us to rest in the Lord.
20240921 Dear Our Father in Heaven, I entrust to You:
my loved ones, especially my children & mama,
all that I am (my past, thoughts, feelings, brokenness, challenges / problems & future).
Please lead us to be the kind of children of God whom You wanted us to become: authentic, beautiful, courageous, mindful, optimistic, peaceful.
Dearest Sacred Heart of Jesus,
ENLIGHTen what’s dark in me.
STRENGTHen what’s weak in me.
MEND what’s broken in me.
BIND What’s bruised in me.
HEAL what’s unwell in me.
REVIVE whatever peace & love in me!
20240920 Dear Mother Mary, please intercede for Christ’s power to rest on my son [2 Cor 12:9] and let him rest, recover fully & speedily, embrace respite (intervals of rest) in a world of chaos.
2 Corinthians 12:9
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
20240904 Thank you that my children & I could attend a mass at Novena Church. God, please replace envy & jealousy in our hearts with gratitude & motivation to better ourselves & do our best in tasks You have given us.
20240902 May God bless my children & I with a deeper understanding of ourselves, a positive mindset & a hopeful heart 🙏
20240903 God, please bless my children’s efforts in learning and securing a full scholarship for an overseas university education & a pre-U one if You will! Psalm 37:23
20240910
Dear Our Father in Heaven,
Please transform my children’s heart to be humble
to listen to & internalize good advices
from their Mama & the wise who sincerely love them.
Please help us to be always attentive to the direction & voice
of Holy Spirit dwelling in
our body, mind, heart & soul.
We pray in the name of Jesus.
Amen.
20240820 Dear Our Father in Heaven,
Thank you for encouraging me to keep going in my journey,
assuring me that my life is worth living in spite of challenges, pains & trials.
Jesus, please help my children & I to grow in faith and hope through Your grace and love for us.
Please help my daughter to respect everyone, especially herself & her mama, by talking gently & kindly.
Jesus, please help me to live with purposes & clear direction.
Please bless my family & loved ones.
In Jesus Name.
Amen.
20240817
Dear Our Father in Heaven,
Thank you for this lovely Saturday.
Thank you for always welcoming me and listening to my prayers.
Thank you for Mother Mary’s interceding this morning that I could kick start a bibliotherapy project for healing not only myself but also others.
God, please help me to know when to read slowly & speedily.
Please encourage me when I feel anxious and worried about our health, safety, career, finance & life-long companionship.
In the name of Jesus, I pray.
Amen.
20240814 Dear Jesus, Prince of Peace,
Please bestow me unshakeable inner peace to overcome the inner critics & the striver’s curse. Thank you for John 14:27.
Thank you for the reminder of Jesus guiding us to live filled with peace, hope and love, from a material used for volunteering tomorrow.
Thank you for today’s prayer mentioning God’s gift of hope can help me to believe that there is purpose in all things and that the best days of my life are still ahead. Thank you also for sending Dr Sue to guide me to be more optimistic since last night. Amen.
20240715 Dear Our Father In Heaven,
Today, I pray for strong faith, trust & hope in Your presence in my life.
May my heart be filled with the light of faith that I may always see & feel Your faithfulness towards me in spite of my woundedness.
Bless my heart with hope that I may always be filled with a positive mindset, a patient disposition & a persevering attitude.
Heal me physically, mentally, emotionally & spiritually please!
Keep my loved ones & me all safe & free from harm.
Amen
Father, I need You always in my life. I need Your encouragement & strong support. By Your grace, help me not to merely exist in this world, but to fully live this life You have entrusted me. 20240628
[13:22, 6/24/2024] 🙏: Psalm 121:7-8 “The Lord will keep you from all harm …”
[22:23, 6/26/2024] 🙏: “When Jesus returned to Heaven after his resurrection, He promised that the Holy Spirit will come to be our guide till the end of time.”
20240710 Dear Our Father in Heaven, may my son & I be filled with Your healing grace. Please help us to be patient & understanding with ourselves & our family members. Help us also please to remember that Your grace can turn bad situations for a good purpose.
20240716 Dear Jesus, please accompany my son everyday and today, especially as he is solving math problems in the afternoon. Please help him to excel in the gifts that God has given to him, nurture and use them to bring goodness not only to himself but also others. Thank you for the moments of studying together at different places, for the past few weeks and months. We believe that no effort is wasted, each helps us to grow. Amen.
20240723 Dear Father, thank you for my life. Thank you for reminding me that tomorrow will be better for me and my loved ones. I have reached this far in my journey because of Your constant care & love for me. Thank you for welcoming me back after I lost my way due to anger, anxiety, envy, lack of faith & low self-esteem. Father, please strengthen me in my faith, hope and love for You, to do Your will (as Psalm 40:8 reminded me). Father, please help me as well to believe in my value & worth as a person because I came from You & You love me unconditionally. I surrender to you my fear, my children & my dreams. Help me to be a warrior, not a worrier. Amen.
20240725 Dear Father, thank you for reminding me that all the best things in my life are still ahead of me. Please help me to patiently wait for miracles on the way. Bless me with a strong body & mind, to help me carry out Your plans for me. Please help me to be a better version of myself.
20240726 Dear Father, thank you for giving me opportunities to live & learn. Help me appreciate myself & see that my life is worth living despite my wounded past, my present pains, & the uncertainties of my future. Jesus, hold me tight.Thank you for loving me unconditionally. Please continue supply my life with the gifts of Your light*, peace, healing, strength and hope. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
*as I told my daughter to attend mass and be light to others this morning while waiting for the school bus.
[11:55, 7/18/2024] 🙏: Let’s trust God. Everything will work out in the right way, at the right time.
20240719 Responsorial Psalm. You saved my life, O Lord; I shall not die.
Dear God,
Thank you for the health results (no structural abnormalities in my upper digestive tracts) that I received on 20240729,
and sending healing hands that helped removed a non-good thing on 20240719 (the day my son served in a mass where the story of Hezeki’ah inspired me as told in Isaiah 38).
Please help me to learn to find beauty in mundane things,
including bland food that I need to eat more often.
Jesus, I welcome you to the home of my soul & within my family.
Please befriend my children & me, so we feel together instead of lonely.
Please gently correct us, especially my daughter whom I find increasingly challenging to guide since mid 2024, when needed.
Please help us to be open & receptive to positive changes,
to do our best according to Your plans for our lives.
Amen.
20240731 Dear God,
Please help me to grow deeper
planted in the house of the Lord (Psalm 92:13-14)
Help me please to be fruitful (make me a blessing for others) as I grow older
while retaining the heart of a child
full of hope
Amen.
20241023 Psalm 13:6 The Lord has dealt bountifully with me. Thank you God! May all of us, especially our little and young ones, be safe anytime & anywhere, financially, mentally, physically & spiritually!
20250226 Psalm 50/51 & 192/130 @ Reconciliation Chapel
20250227
Our Father in Heaven,
I praise & thank You for Your mercy & faithfulness to us & our family.
Please feed our hearts with deeper faith & purpose, guard & save us from the danger of body & soul,
Please keep us always in peace & harmony.
I surrender everything in Your merciful love.
In Jesus’ Name.
Amen
20220720 Dear our Father in Heaven, In Your mercy, we pray for You to provide opportunities for learning so that through education, my children find the hope and skills for a better future. Please help my children to develop a real love of learning. Keep them safe + healthy and help them to thrive.
20250120 Dear Jesus, Please help my children to be respectful (to themselves & others, especially their maternal family members) & responsible.
20250210: St Scholastica, please pray for us, that we may discover friends, deeply united in spiritual friendship, who assist us on our learning journeys & that each of us may be such a friend to others.
20250211
Dear God, please bless my children to be motivated & proactive to put enough efforts so that they deserve at least a full scholarship for education at top overseas universities. While on the preparation & learning journey with big dreams, may they grow in virtues (diligence, gratitude, grit, patience, perseverance, etc) that can help them to bring goodness not only to themselves, but also others. St Scholastica, please pray for us.
Being knowledgeable & multilingual can help, like it did for Yifu Lin!
20241009
Dear God,
Please guide my daughter to learn languages, especially Chinese Mandarin, with an attitude of calmness, compassion & curiosity.
Please help her to be like the Paulo Coelho’s pencil that is open to be rubbed out to correct her mistakes.
Holy Spirit, please intercede as You have filled the disciples of Jesus to be multilingual.
Amen 🙏
20241021 Dear our father in heaven, I pray for my daughter to be humble enough to correct her mistakes, instead of resisting and insisting on the wrong answers. May her transform her stubbornness into tenacity for good things that matter for God to bring goodness to her and others.
On 20230504, from p50 of Bittersweet by Susan Cain, I learned a Yiddish word kvelling. It means “bursting with pride and joy for someone you love especially a child.” I know that my late papa felt this way, especially in his 60s. However, I could not feel so but feel worried instead for my son.
In the morning of 20240326, though I felt that my children’s attitude to prepare for contests in numeracy (math olympiad) and literacy (storytelling in mother tongue) have not met my expectations, I pray that God bless their cumulative efforts and performance in those limited time of an hour and three minutes, respectively.
More importantly, I pray that my children learn the lessons that I have learned from participating and failing multiple competitions and contests (thankfully, I won those that matter and did transform my life). Even the Chinese Saint of Poet, Du Fu 杜甫, failed exams thrice, yet he still continued creating till the end of his age.
One of my most successful mentors did candidly share that he received multiple applications weekly from people all around the world, to work for/with him and he had to say No to them, but I managed to squeeze into his team. Why? My subsequent collaborations were enabled by good results from participating in earlier competitions. Con(test)-enabled collaborations have allowed me to learn from the best, stand on the shoulder of giants and make contributions.
I live in a relatively safe & successful country because the past leaders have motivated our seniors to be competitive. Sometimes, I wonder if an early childhood that’s too comfortable is actually harming a person. Does creative work necessitate one to suffer (challenges, hardships, grievances, failures, misfortunes, separations, and the list goes on) and has experienced the full range of human emotions?
20240710 Dear Jesus, please help my son to recover completely & speedily. Please help him to be able to digest well.
20250210 I agree with St Rita for praying that “God would preserve her sons from the mortal sin of murder, but not “even if it meant taking their lives” before they could carry out their revenge plan! Only when one can continue living, one can have more opportunities to turn hatred into love. Perhaps, she could pray that her sons get opportunities to live long lives (so more time to do good deeds as penance) & spiritually grow in far away land, so less triggers to revenge. We must pray for things that are lifeward for ourselves & our children, even for (potential) perpetrators.
20240917
Dear Our Father in Heaven,
Please help my daughter to be more responsible,
to happily complete her homework before
reading comics at school and at home.
Please also guide her to talk kinder &
more encouragingly to herself with a growth mindset.
Jesus, please accompany her to courageously seek help,
especially when she faced a problem (in her homework & life)
that she could not solve yet.
Please help her thinking brain to rule over her feeling brain.
Amen.
20240909
Dear Our Father in Heaven,
Please bless my family members,
especially my children,
with a deeper understanding & compassion for one another.
Dear Mother Mary & my late father (my children’s maternal grandfather), please also pray for us.
Amen
20250217
Dear God,
Thank you for a daughter that You entrusted to me to nurture.
Thank you for consoling me through the distinct POVs of Qu Yuan & Zhuang Zhou.
Please help my daughter to wake up fast with a good attitude as an expression of gratitude of another day of life.
Please help her to speak with gentleness & respect to everyone, especially herself & her mother.
Please help her to listen to good advice that You sent via her mother and people who genuinely care for her.
Please help her to use her mouth to say kind words, ask curious questions that can drive creativity that Mihaly described, instead of arguing on useless things or shouting rudely and hurting the heart who loves her most.
Most importantly, please transform her stubbornness into acceptance & obedience, like how Jesus is obedient to You & as a child, to St Joseph.
Please touch her heart to be respectful & responsible to herself, so she can be respectful to others.
Holy Spirit & Guardian Angel of my daughter, please guide her.
Amen.
20241002
Dear God,
Please help my children, especially my daughter, to choose to have a growth mindset.
Please help her to stop saying “I am dumb!” repetitively.
Please help her to understand that we can become smarter with prayers & practice.
Please help her to be respectful & responsible.
Mother Mary, my late Papa & Godmother, please pray for them to develop deep love for learning.
St Teresa of Ávila, St Teresa of Calcutta, St Thérèse of Lisieux,
please also intercede for my children.
Amen.
*20241002_dojo* : may God bless my son’s effort to learn & may he love to learn more & deeply 愿上帝保佑他努力学习，愿他热爱学习更多、更深 🙏
Please find below the list of mathematics topics that I encourage my ambitious eldest child to revise for his 20220403 mock test & the more important 20220817 test (& hopefully the subsequent ones).
For easy referencing, we added dates and/or URLs when he revised the topic.
See also 20220404_learn_mathematics_systematically.txt
Dear son,
please pray more to God to bless you with humility and grit to learn.
May you believe that you can achieve your dream!
May you feel the calmness you experience when doing the tests & the joy when you receive the good news.
You can do it!
On 20250223, in an attempt to make myself more focused to finish an assignment due in less than 10 hours, I wore a corset. It’s actually a post-Cesarean recovery belt, yet it made my waist looked much slimmer like a violin!
The way the corset shapes the body and enhances certain physical features (the smaller waist makes the boobs look bigger, like round rock melons) can contribute to feelings of confidence or allure.
However, after a pomodoro of 25 minutes, I felt breathless.
Wearing polka dots is said to bring good luck in the Philippines. Filipinos believe that spherical items bring good luck. The pattern is believed to bring in wealth & prosperity, according to https://www.yahoo.com/news/polka-dots-open-windows-crisp-180025064.html
To me, circles remind me of children (especially cute babies with their round faces), coins ($, yes money!), fruits (apple, blueberry, grape, orange Mandarin, melon, watermelon), math (circle is a shape that has no angles in the traditional sense like polygons do, yet perhaps circles can be defined with as a polygon with infinite sides & hence infinite angles), realisation of dreams that came true or about to come true (圆万个梦), reunion / togetherness (团圆), time (including 24h/day, 4 seasons & travel the world, especially fascinating places on our spherical mother earth).
I am thankful that my children / I could wear polka dots on the following days: 20151003 (navy blue dress) + 20220125 (pink Frozen swimswuit with white circles at the back) + 20240127 (magenta) + 20240209 (white cheongsam dress with purple, orange, cyan, black medium circles) + 20240421 (blue) + 20241005 (blue) + 20241013 (her white dress with pink & light green circles) + …
Responsibility = response + ability (God’s given ability). To be responsible means to respond with God’s given abilities like what Esther did, instead of blaming God, others or situations. [20240423]
While we strive to be responsible, we cannot expect others to be as responsible as we are, as my daughter learned on 20241227!
“To be the light means in times of darkness you offer hope, encouragement, kindness and compassion. In times where others are struggling you offer a way to help them to regain their glow and to shine. To see the good and the beautiful” as reminded via https://www.thegrenchusfoundation.org/spirituality-1/2019/4/16/what-does-it-mean-to-be-the-light
“Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.” ~ Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (book 3)
20241229, I pray to God to help me to be the light to people, including myself, our children & little ones.
On boxing day 20241226, 20 years after the most powerful tsunami in Asia on 20041226, I thought a lot about each of our unique life, when we look back and forward.
I have wanted to reflect more about work backwards since doing a math worksheet on 20241109 & an inspiring dinner on 20241118 at The Dragon Chamber, a restaurant hidden behind a fridge. A Dad of twins shared about his dream to visit Patagonia for the first time, with his children, in spite of having visited Latin America previously. It reminded me of my dream to not only leave my footprints at LatAm as a tourist, but also to experience living there to study or work or ideally both.
Then, in the morning of 20241226, I managed to encourage a boy who would turned a decade old at 8 pm at our current timezone (his birth city is 4 hours ahead), to do ~ 3 questions (including Q4 that he answered correctly: 260 books!) from the Chapter 3 [working backwards] of Math Olympiad (blue) book for Beginner by Terry Chew. It’s the 3rd book of the same title that I had ever bought. It’s for a child who has dreamed to study at NYC, United States of America. The child who did the 1st copy got into the GEP programme.
How can we read 260 books? After browsing the TOC, I like to start listening to the last few chapters of books that have inspired me in 2024. Perhaps, this strategy works for me because I prefer reading non-fictions, whereas my daughter enjoys reading fictions / teen novels that need reading from the front to the back.
To plan for our lives, we need to work backwards. One of the classic strategies that I would recommend, starting from childhood, is to read a biography for multiple versions by different authors) of people who have inspired us. We can refer them as our role models. Think of a jedi! When we can learn from others’ experiences, absorb the virtues of multiple people and integrate them into our unique characters & personalities, we are definitely becoming our better versions.
In mathematics, some problems are easier to be solved by working backwards, especially if we start we something that we do not know, the end answer is given to us and the problem will go through a series of operations. In an analogy, if we know what we aspire to be before we leave our mother earth, we can work backwards to plan & prepare. Thank you to my sister for encouraging me to make my vision board.
On 20241227, I gained a new observation on working backwards on planning & preparing for careers from the less popular profession that allowed two boys earning their highest income among all the Kidzania jobs that they had taken.
Sometimes, we cannot know precisely what major life events / operations are awaiting us. One may meet with disasters, diseases, divorces (a relative just gave birth today on 20241226 after a divorce & marrying her 2nd husband, 1 at a time), endure failures (again & again), suffer losses, etc but may we always be graceful when we are low & be grateful when we are high.
Never lose hope & never give up are among the most important reminders we need as we strive to thrive. In brief, be optimistic & persevere!
On 20241216, I came to a realisation not to 100% survey results because only those who do not suffer from time famine, are able to complete surveys.
I have shunned as many surveys as possible (though I have not set an email filter to immediately junk them!), but I did fill in few meaningful ones, for example that was to assist Economy & Environment Partnership for Southeast Asia (EEPSEA).
If we were to garner feedback to improve, what can we do? Do it ASAP before the program ends.
Regardless of our age, let’s be a student! Be a good student who apply what we have studied to the betterment of human lives!
Today (20241208), I’m a full-time student, entrusting my beloved children to an onboarding senior professional! I just feed my body & mind, while trying to produce a pitch deck by 2359!
I thought of 2 Assistant Professors of mathematics who had helped caring for Little Prince, at different time, when I had to attend a meeting at a short notice. Thus, I have been increasingly selective of what meetings / meetups / talks to attend. I prefer small groups, but a min of 3 people.
Tips 123 from Charlie: read!
Andy also advised the same, no substitute.
Albert’s Mom, as I learned yesterday, also read a lot for her boys!
On 20241121, a sharing from my best friend who experienced pleasure, led me to an idea to transform our stress and pressure into simulation & excitement, in addition to the formula of P = F/A that I shared over the 20241114 dinner to encourage a lady who felt peer pressure after not being employed but have travelled around for the past 2 years. If one increases the area, then the pressure will decrease, so I recommended her to travel even to wider regions! Well, I paused adding to my “been there” map in 2019, I’m ready to fly again after half a decade of being grounded!
What I did not have a chance to share was that besides increasing the geographical areas of places visited, we could also increase our area of influences in terms of disciplines/domains/industries!
20241119 Thankful that I could sleep for almost 7 hours & wake up to receive a gentle reminder to seek Jesus more than compensations in terms of constant achievements to compensate for my shortcomings.
It also explains why:
I had been a competitive student (because Dad’s remark during my childhood, I used 2 decades to prove him wrong).
I like tall people (because I’m the shortest in my siblings) & am worried that my son would not grow as tall as his Daddy, so I pray daily that my son grows in love, wisdom & physical height, surpassing his Dad so my son could carry his Dad in the old age, if necessary. Perhaps, my son is a late bloomer just like when he was a bun in the oven, only to accelerate during the last 2 weeks to emerge as an almost 4kg baby!
When I think of Jesus, I think of
agape love (self-sacrifice / service),
faith,
hope for spiritual + emotional + physical restoration,
God’s presence (Emmanuel),
God’s guidance for our purposes & facing challenges.
To survive & thrive, we need to wisely choose our influencers. I hope Jia & Luc embrace Jesus as their top influencer, who is million (10^6), billion (10^9), trillion (10^12) times better than social media influencers.
Thus, on 20241116, I created a WhatsApp group to share about positive influencers whom I wish we look up to, learn what opportunities, strategies & effort-built talents that have brought them to where they are now. Who are our influencers? The list may be evolving, but there are ways to identify our true influencers.
For me, I prefer to be a follower because if everyone is a leader, who are the followers? However, a follower can also quietly influence his/her leaders.
3GanJi