From Fear-Based to Love-Based Living

My prayer in life is to bless you with much love! <3 Drawing of Sophia - Spirit of Wisdom

The more I rest in God (for me), in love within, the more I live life with such freedom, joy and contentment.

​I had lived my life full of fear, in fact, my life was from a place of fear all the time. Often my choice and decision came from a place of fear instead of love. Including eating healthily. I became very judgemental myself because I judged and criticised myself so harshly and beat myself up.  That I was never good enough. I'm grateful even though the fear was overpowering my life, deep within lies love - the little voice of my soul, nudging me gently, patiently, compassionately, gradually towards love.

Now I'm healed and free of the critical judgemental voice.  I still get it and have it but I embrace it with a more compassionate loving way towards that part of me, loving myself even more.  I choose to love myself unconditionally and healed myself over the many years.  Even in 2018 I met with challenges, I see it as life and soul lessons in my life, to remind me, teach me, empower me to return to a place of love, not just love self but unconditional love for self.   The feeling of constant tormenting voice in me has been embraced with love.  How the soft gentle compassionate love, God in me, soothes, calms, comforts and eases me when I was too much in my head, to remind me to rest.

From Day 1, when I embraced God, I experienced the outpouring of God's infinite unconditional love for me, for each human being.  Each of us is inherently good in us.  We are born as such. 

God's love was so overwhelming that I ran away from God after baptism.  Like one of Nita's retreatants wrote in her journey in her own silent retreat.  I relate very much.  To receive and to be loved by God was so strange and weird.  Why would God love me?  It has been a journey of love for me.  To be loved, to be hugged, to be seen as a beautiful soul, to be seen as the apple of God's eye was so tough, so hard until I learnt to love myself unconditionally and not judging myself.  I pinched my own skin - is this real? Yes it is!  I just love resting in God's love. Because a lot of us have not experienced unconditional love, so when someone loves us unconditional, we can reject it and feel strange to receive it, even it is God.   Though my parents love me, it was often from a place of tough love (punitive approach or conditioned love) but it does not mean I have not experienced pure unconditional love from them.  I thank God my mother was loved unconditionally by her foster mother (my grandmother whom I truly experienced unconditional love as a little girl until she died when I was 11 years old.)  When life was so stressful,  hectic and full of problems, they too were pressured to survive and forgot what was unconditional love. If they never love themselves unconditionally, how are they to love their children unconditionally too? And if the environment is full of punitive approach in general, how do we know what is unconditional love?  The environment always influenced our ways of being and the way we love.  If we had been in a tough love environment most of our life, tough love naturally took over and became our way of being.  Make sense?  The tough love overpowered the unconditional love therefore I failed to recognise the unconditional love then but only later in my life.  The tough love approach moulded me until I peeled and healed myself.  If I had not experienced both ends, I would not been able to share it.

​There are so many people I'm much grateful for.  Though I've written it before, I will say it again. My heart is flowed with deep gratitude and love.  Not going to wait till the person is gone to say my gratitude. Why wait? Take each moment, each precious day to give thanks when we have the chance to, to the living person alive.  Write the tribute when the person is alive not when the person is gone. Treasure each moment of our life with them.  When we are overflow with love and gratitude, we naturally want to share it with others. That is the benign effect of love! 

​First of all, God is the first I'm thankful for and for the friend who brought me to God when I went through a roller coaster downturn in my life from a boy-girl relationship. I was very depressed and could not move on and get on with my life. It was a long term emotional torment of 2 - 3 years.  I never met this friend again as she has moved to another country and lost touch.  Her role in life was to bring me to God during that period of time when God let her cross my path.  A friend I'm deeply grateful for her enrolling me into RCIA and never did I turn back from God. I was introduced to Christianity much earlier but I never found my place in the community.

​Over the last few years, my spirituality has become a much wider diversified way of being with the integration of Buddhism and Christianity. My understanding of other traditions in other religions too - a deep respect for the many traditions the wise men and women had left behind - the wisdom of love, God, Divine.  We are all interconnected to the universe, Divine and God (in your own terms you want to call it).

​Other than being grateful to God, I'm thankful for a soulmate in my life, my husband.  He truly has been a great source of support, pillar and anchor in my life, as he is for me and I am to him. We grow and mature as husband and wife, as my best friend, partnership with each other in our walk in life.  The day I prayed about him, peace set in and I knew this man was the one God had 'match made' me with.  We went through ups and downs. Nevertheless, we are so much being our true self in each other's presence.  I am so at ease with Jeroen and he sees my truest self, the highest expression of who I am. He never judges me and love me as who I am.

​The other person I want to thank and God given gift is a soulful friend, Nita.  She is a very loving and compassionate friend I ever have who never judges while journeying with me.  She has led me to my true self, in coming home to God, deeply in union with.  A soul friend and co-partner whom I collaborate and enjoy each other's presence and working together.  I won't even call it work.  I love and enjoy it so much that it is effortless and with lots of fun and joy!  She trusts me fully and let my creativity emerge. To have a co-partner who has full trust in each other is such a rare gift as we trust in each other's gifts and let our gifts shine for each other and with others.  Full trust and love in the collaboration. I'm thankful for her gift - her loving and compassionate heart, soul and being.  We come from a place of love where we want the best for each other and we love collaboration.  I use the word love not like. 

​What's more do I ask for and be grateful and thankful for when my life turns from living from a place of fear to love and being gifted with 2 wonderful souls - a soulmate, a soulful friend and God in me! 

​How about you? What are you grateful for in life?