(Source: melodyhansen, via melodyhansen)
I finally conquered a dream to shoot an editorial outside of the Philippines!
Photography and Make-up: Elisa Aquino
Model: Hannah To
(Source: thunderpopcola)
A part of me has always been ashamed of my emotions. When you grow up with a heart like mine, your expectations of love and understanding of grace limit your actual communion with it. As a young girl, I let my heart do the leading. I allowed my emotions to control my response to situations – hastily and recklessly. I gave without demanding anything in return, I loved without asking for permission, I forgave without hearing an apology. For years, I treated these attributes as a form of shameful weakness – that is until I rediscovered the character(s) of my God.
Jesus wept. (John 11:35)
Christ was emotional. The fierce and inexhaustible force, which holds the world and carries my heart, wept. He felt pain – just like you and me. Yes, pain, the soul-crushing type which keeps me up at night. God, in His splendor and majesty, chose to strip off His divinity to be human. He did not exhibit pride nor apathy to protect Himself from the possibility of rejection, fear, and sadness. He was not beneath it.
He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrow, and acquainted with grief. (Isaiah 53:3)
Living here on earth enabled Him to personally commune with His people. He embraced human emotions to fully understand and empathize with man – yet He did not sin. He is not detached to my recurring reality, and that is infinitely comforting. We serve a God who is tender and compassionate. We serve a relational God who reaches out and does not wait for me to get myself together and face Him with joy. He humbles Himself and shares in my grief because He Himself faced it.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. (Philippians 2:5-7)
The next time you feel that vulnerability is a curse – that it needs to be avoided at all costs – remember the big blessing of emotions: sharing in something bold and beautiful with your Creator. This is to love you, to know you, to be with you. This is the love, which finds you and me, a love fully devoid of selfishness and pride which unfailingly embraces our rebellion. This is love within reach. This is love which waits to be noticed, to be received. This is His love – the emotional kind, the God kind.
By His wounds, we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5)
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“God could, had He pleased, have been incarnate in a man of iron nerves, the Stoic sort who lets no sigh escape Him. Of His great humility He chose to be incarnate in a man of delicate sensibilities who wept at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane. Otherwise we should have missed the great lesson that it is by his will alone that a man is good or bad, and that feelings are not, in themselves, of any importance. We should also have missed that all important help of knowing that He faced all that the weakest of us face, has shared not only the strength of our nature but every weakness of it except sin. If He had been incarnate in a man of immense natural courage, that would have been for many of us almost the same as His not being incarnate at all.”
C.S. Lewis (Letters of the Faith Through the Seasons)
Hey, you. I blog now over at She Makes Him Known. See you there!
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If you were to tell my younger self that at 24, I would still be single with no manliligaw nor a prospect whatsoever, I’d think you’re crazy.
At 19, I thought I was *gasp* ready for a relationship. How difficult would it be? (At 15, I had a manliligaw who called me every day on our red telephone. I thought this was love – the extent, the brevity of it – because it was all I had, it was all I knew.) I was surrounded by wonderful people, growing my craft, active in ministry, seeking the Lord…but completely misunderstood it. Love meant overanalyzing unanswered chat boxes, rereading unsent letters, listening to sad songs, crying myself to sleep, and a lot of waiting. I suffered these delusions, these cheap imitations of love, because I wanted so badly for it to come, to be it. More than that, my praiseworthy behavior was fueled by the idea that if I kept up this performance, I would deserve it – as if love were to be earned, to be won.
I mean, isn’t that it? Wasn’t this all God wanted from me? But I was cheating my all-knowing, omnipotent King. My pursuit of Christ – may it be intentional or not – was desperately tethered to a lesser pursuit of someone else.
For years, shame followed me and made a home in my heart. I put the idea of a relationship so high up in a pedestal that I found it difficult to be alone. My self-worth heavily depended on the presence of a companion and his ability to return my love. At some point, my weary heart gave up, wrapped itself in apathy disguised as courage – when it is anything but that. I even questioned this God-given desire for a healthy and life-giving relationship. I thought I was meant to be single for the rest of my life yet I know I was born to be somebody’s wife.
During those years of steadying my heart and learning my God, I discovered that life does not begin when I find security in another person; humans err and disappoint. I needed to learn how to be alone. I needed to wade in my solitude and learn the mercy of knowing my parts and reveling in both the beautiful and the messy.
“When I get lonely these days, I think: So be lonely. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.”
Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
(Romantic) love is only a part of my life, it is not the entirety. I do not live to be loved nor do I love to start living. There will be days when my loneliness gets too loud – that is what it means to be human – but I need to teach my heart to surrender to something greater than myself (and my passing emotions). My life then becomes an act of worship, of eternal abandon to ways that are greater than my own.
Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4) It is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace. (Hebrews 13:9)
My love will come some day but ’til then, Love moves in and through me – and this is the best kind of love I can ever receive.
(Source: shemakeshimknown.com)
(Source: notnai, via beautyisanillusion)
Anonymous asked: Hi, you just dont know how much your words inspired me. I am a long time follower and I have read almost all of your writings. I remember I was dealing with a deep heartbreak and the only escape I could go to is your blog. Your words are comforting and moving. I'll definitely miss this! I hope, still, on your next blog, you'll continue writing deeply from the heart. I admire you so much! I've said this multiple times already but Im saying it again... you're my local lang leav :)
Hello, dear friend!
What an absolute honor to be part of your life, even only through this simple yet powerful platform. God really can work so faithfully in and through us. It is so important to be kind! We never know if we are the only living testaments somebody sees. Thank you for staying through the years. Hopefully, you’ll be there too on my next chapter (the new blog will be launching in a few weeks.) Prayers, love, and light your way!
I finally conquered a dream to shoot an editorial outside of the Philippines!
Photography and Make-up: Elisa Aquino
Model: Hannah To
(Source: thunderpopcola)