peace therapy stuffs

Be at peace with yourself. Even as God calls you to growth and progress, God loves you as you are. You have worth beyond measure, for you are a child of God.

Don’t make war with parts of yourself that you can’t change. Accept your shadow side, your brokenness, your weaknesses, as well as your strengths. Inner peace unifies the parts into wholeness.

Ground yourself in values that you’ve chosen with intent and deliberation. Then determine where your own attitudes and actions are at war with those values. Only you can end the conflict.

Recognize if you’ve made resentment, distrust, hostility your armor against a world that has hurt you in the past. Commit yourself to remove this armor, piece by piece.

When there’s someone with whom you have conflicts, begin to make peace with in your imagination. Picture yours elf at peace. Slowly enlarge the image to include the other person. Put that picture in your mind’s pocket and look at it with love now and then.

Work through your anger. Those who hurt you do so out of their own insecurity, ignorance, and weakness; not strength. Be strong and move beyond your anger toward forgiveness.

Accept responsibility for the times when you’ve hurt others because you lacked inner peace. Make amends to them when you can.

Peace sees similarities among people, not threatening differences that form barriers. Identify a difference, a value, an attitude, a choice- that threatens you. Don’t judge that difference, but seek to understand it.

Measure your words of judgment. People seldom benefit from harsh criticism of their character or actions. Choose words of praise and acceptance, words that builds peace.

Be at peace with your circumstances. Allow what you have no power over to just be as it is. Where you do have power and something needs changing, do what you can and then let go. You don’t have to fix everything.

Declare a personal buffer zone. Make one corner of your home a haven, a sanctuary. When you feel your temper fraying and hear your voice rising, take time out there- perhaps with a book, a poster, or an object that whispers peace to your heart.

Treasure the peace of your past. Remember the times and places you have known peace, and return there in reality or in your heart. Bring the feeling, the grace of those moments to today’s challenges.

Let your heart be untroubled. Even though you can’t see the end of a difficult time, soothe your heart with confidence in a Power beyond yourself.

Passive acceptance of injustice is not peace; it is a threat to peace. Recognize the threat and work of justice. But take care to avoid methods that are as unpeaceful and unjust as what you’re trying to eliminate.

Peace is not simply a bouquet you can hand to a friend. You can, however, be a bouquet yourself. And the fragrance may entice others to transplant tiny seedlings of peace in their own hearts.

You don’t have to make peace yourself, but simply allow the peace of God- already present- to flow through you to others. If you block its gentle current, you force it to chart a course around you. Be a channel of peace.

Choose your own peace theme- a favorite song or hymn or poem or prayer. Hum, sing, or say it when you feel under siege.

missing my girlfriend, the final exams, and the past week's events...

Being away from your loved ones is a hard thing. I believe that. A short experience of that came when I had my retreat last Wednesday. Since its three days, I would not be able to communicate to anyone back at home for three days.

Yes, indeed, I missed my family. That’s given. But that one who I really missed was my girlfriend. I remember that I called her before our retreat started and said that I would not be able to communicate with her for the rest of the retreat. I was really relieved when I heard her say that she understands. She told me that she’ll be praying for me, and told me to enjoy the retreat.

Honestly, I was thinking about her the whole retreat. Since the retreat module was fitted to our batch, some of its contents centered on relationships, especially on the boyfriend-girlfriend relationships. With those, I began to think of the many experiences that I had with her; from the moment I started to court her, until now. I asked myself a lot of questions, and even subjected myself to criticism on how I handled my relationship with her. I kept these questions and asked it to her when I came back. Relief and intense happiness was the feeling that I felt when she assured me that though things do not go our way, I still got her.

I have to admit, since this is my first relationship, it was hard at first, due to some problems that we have to encounter. But the burden is not only carried by one; but by both of us. It makes things lighter for us. We quarrel at times; but we try to settle everything immediately. We are trying to help each other out. Corny as it may seem, I do not let the day pass until I let her know and feel that I love her so much.

We will be celebrating our 5^th month together sometime soon. It’s still fresh and new, I know. But strong and long-lasting relationships start from scratch, right? We’re trying to make our relationship work; and we can see that it is working.

We may not have the perfect relationship, but we believe that it’s the right one.

For my girlfriend: I love you so much, and I will always be, not only here, but with you.

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This week will be Final Examinations Week for most of us. For me and my girlfriend, we have this as our “hell week”. Weeks before, even until the present, we are trying to start studying and we’re actually progressing (haha!)

I’ll be having my exams only from Tuesday to Thursday, since tomorrow’s our review day and Friday’s a holiday. Good thing that I don’t have exams scheduled on Friday.

Right now, I need to focus. Study. Understand. And I guess this also goes to everyone who will be having their exams this week.

May I quote: “We study not for the grades, but for life”. Take your studies seriously, or the future won’t be serious with you.

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These past few days, I had been quite busy and I can just imagine how the last week of the semester would turn out to be. Finals week is coming, and its coming real fast. But a little time given to self erases that tendency to freak out and lose control, right? And that is just what I am doing right now.

For the past weeks after two of my professors arrived, we have been constantly jamming our heads with the lessons needed to be finished by final examinations. I just had my finals in Philosophical Latin last Tuesday, and I have a 1.75 already as my final grade. Since I don’t have much time at home to do my stuffs, I usually do them at school.

Then came Wednesday. Though my batch is going to a retreat in the afternoon, we still had to attend class. So, I managed to come to 4 hours of class, from 8:30-12:30 in the morning, 2 hours for Theodicy and the rest of the two for Modern Philosophy; though somehow at the back of my head, I feel like I already want to go away and take some time off from stuffs.

We left the school at around 2:30 in the afternoon, bound for Tagaytay (Don Bosco Batulao). However, after all were inside the bus, Fr. Noel announced to us that instead of Tagaytay, we would go to Lucban at the Kamay ni Hesus Pilgrimage Site for our retreat. It was a breather for most of us, since it’s a new place for us (we had our batch retreat in Batulao last year). Details of the retreat would come later; but for now, all I can say is that I’m an emotional person, and I kept on crying most of the time in our retreat.

Friday came, and the retreat that was supposed to have ended at around 1, ended at some minutes after 3 in the afternoon. We left Lucban at around 4 and arrived back at school nearing 7 in the evening, thanks (sarcastically) to the slow movement of traffic along the way. Not even 10 minutes at school, I decided to go home, hoping I would catch up with my girlfriend whose having a class until 8:30 in the evening (supposedly). But she texted me and said that they’ll end their class an hour earlier. I said, Damn! I won’t be in time. I just asked her what she wants me to bring to her, and at some minutes before 9, after being soaked in the rain and held up in slow traffic again, I arrived at their house. An hour later, tired and sleepy, I went home.