Year End Inventory of My Missions

My first unforgettable mission happened in 2003 in Davao City, and it was an accomplished mission. At the same time, it gave me the opportunity to celebrate my golden birthday at Pearl Farm Resort. After that, I've considered some common missions part of my own missions too. Here's an inventory of those missions:

1. To spread the message of God to mankind, a message relayed by God through a task I was doing in 2001: This was the main reason why I started blogging, but sad to say, only 76 has read this message from the time I started to blog until yesterday.

2. To disseminate information about health and wellness: I have been accomplishing this as needed during conversations, through this blog, my "Amusing Tips" blog, my Facebook account, and my special child's Facebook account which serves as a journal of her therapies.

3. To be an advocate in bridging the gap between Western Medicine and Alternative Medicine: This seemed impossible at the start but just after a year, this was made possible by a non-stock non-profit organization called Philippine National Association of Acupoint Practitioners or PNAAP, and I believe that the organizers like Dra. Josie Ponciano and Edward Lee will be successful in their missions and visions for the organization. I cannot join them yet at this point in time, but I will be their advocate in any way I can, in continuing this very challenging mission.

4. To encourage people to be always positive and avoid negative thoughts, to start with myself: This is a recent mission that has just started and through Facebook, I have started with myself. It will surely be very hard and challenging to enlighten people who have posted negative comments in Facebook, but maybe through inspiring resources, that can be achieved.

May the year 2013 bring true peace and happiness to everyone!

An Awesome Mission

I've just changed the title of this post, replacing the word "difficult" to "awesome", simply because the former sounded negative contradicting the objective of the mission,which is to encourage people to be always positive and get rid of negative thoughts. Of course I have to start with myself, and so far so good.

This mission was inspired by the science of bio-electricity, where most of the gadgets I use for therapy have this principle. I had to research about bio-electricity and I found the book "Wonders of Human Bio-electricity" which became a source of my inspiration. Immediately following this, I have quoted two paragraphs from this book, which I also quoted in my "Amusing Tips" blog.

"One benefits by thinking good. Similarly, one suffers the consequences of bad thoughts. Persons habituated to destructive thinking should know that they are inviting similar thoughts from space which would one day overwhelm their life with misfortune and misery.

An evil or negative thought always produces an adverse reaction in other persons. It contributes to the pollution in the universal thought-bank. Hence one should remain ever vigilant about an unethical thought trying to sneak in mind. The moment an unholy thought crops up in mind, it should be immediately converted and pushed out by more intense constructive thought. Indeed, the most remarkable service of mankind is to always think positively and about welfare of other persons, endeavor accordingly and spread similar thought waves."

I'm sure getting rid of negative thoughts will help me in my current task of performing a massage on my special child for spine alignment, and will also make my current IT research work easier.

I'm thinking of encouraging people through a group in Facebook which was inspired by the book also, and maybe post follow-ups in this blog, so let's see. But first, I guess I need to have an inventory of my previous missions first, check their status and publish that in my next post, so I can start the year with clear objectives and directions for the missions worth pursuing.

Low Profile

I was supposed to follow a Feng Shui advise to maintain a low profile this month. I should keep myself away from issues, or in other words just keep quiet. At first I thought that was easy, but I think it is my nature to immediately react or give my opinion about issues and then retract when I feel I have no right to comment about the issue, or I don't have enough information to conclude about an issue.

So to maintain a low profile, in case I wasn't able to control myself from immediately reacting to issues or situations then I just retract whatever I've said. Sometimes though, it is hard to keep a low profile when you know you have something to share that will help improve a situation, and you shouldn't postpone it while the information, or the problems and matching solutions are still fresh in your mind . Maybe if you have pure intentions to help and you directly approached the right person instead of announcing about your plans to help, then that is still maintaining a low profile. I guess that is much better than being passive about situations.

"God works in mysterious ways"

I've always wondered how can God work on a situation that only He can solve, and how mysterious can be His ways? His message to mankind through the number of stones that I have counted was surely one of His mysterious ways, and just this morning, I had another taste of how mysterious is mysterious.

Our family choir was singing in a Sunday mass this morning and when my son gave the pitch of our second communion song, I felt it was too low and thought it could be for "altos", so I thought I can decipher the soprano counterpart which was my voice. It was a new song, I forgot the song starts in unison, so I was wrong to conclude what I heard was for "altos". My mistake led me to lead the other choir members to the wrong pitch and of course I was sorry. But the incident opened my thoughts to another issue that doesn't concern the choir at all but that I'd been silent about, resulting to my being vocal about the issue for a while after the mass.

The past days, I was asking myself if I should be silent about the issue and said to myself, perhaps if ever I should do something about it, God will do something to make me do that. I didn't expect that could be through a mistake in getting a pitch, a mistake I almost never commit in my lifetime. The "not related issue" I was talking about was opened to the people concerned, but that was not my intention though I was hoping that I can soon talk about it. No need to do that now unless they ask me to. Indeed, God works in mysterious ways, through very simple situations nobody would ever imagine.

Mindful of Feng Shui

Some people would say maybe I was a Chinese in my past life because I am so conscious of Feng Shui and its effects in my life, even others' lives.

They would be surprised with my answer to that, and perhaps wouldn't believe me, because I would say that's because of my strong faith in God.

In describing myself, I've said in my blogs, "My career had been in Information Technology, programming being my first job". I was a computer programmer and a systems analyst, I knew nothing is impossible when finding solutions to problems. You just have to search for the right resources. There are times the right resources couldn't be found, but they will exist when the right time comes.

For me, the best programmer is God. He can bless people with all the resources that could be found in the globe, and that includes Feng Shui. Not to dampen one's faith in Him, but to appreciate his creations and understand that there are positive and negative cycles involved, for the benefit of mankind.

Yet God loves us so much, because he wouldn't allow us to be afflicted too much with the negative occurrences of the cycles. That is why He allows people to practice universal rules governing the environment, and one of them is Feng Shui.

God loves us so much, that even in the midst of inventions of man that ruined the environment, He would allow evolution to take place in the human body so that mankind is still benefited.

My Feng Shui charts for this year advised me not to be too stressed with work or opportunities since I will be preparing for events anyway. There will be big events, someone can get married and there can be big celebrations.

One big accomplishment I'm considering for this year was finally enrolling my special child in school last June. We had a simple celebration of her birthday in school last July, the first kind of celebration I've attended because all the children in the event were blind. This month of August, my eldest daughter got married in church and it was also one-of-a-kind. The next event will be this coming month of October for the induction of officers of PNAAP, which I consider a dream association for the well being of mankind, promoting health and wellness through needleless acupuncture or acupoint therapy. I can be one of the speakers in its 4-day training this month of September, by the way.

The 60th birthday should always be celebrated but we don't have enough financial resources to make my husband's 60th birthday celebration a big one this coming December, but it can still be another one-of-a-kind celebration if well thought of. Or maybe leave it to God like what happened to my special child's celebration in Resources for the Blind, but it should involve efforts from us his family members, even for a totally different plan.

So where is the negative part in my Feng Shui chart? They really did happen, I will be free from it this month of September but I'm scared of October, though the solution or "cure" is easy 'cause all I have to do is sleep in another room just for one month. Our bedroom is in the Southeast part of the house where the 5-yellow star is situated this year, and projected to double its effect in October, possibly afflicting the sign of Snake whose location is also Southeast. Don't get me wrong, I know God will always be there to protect me, but at least I've shown some efforts aside from praying. Feng Shui is only 20% of the total prevention for afflictions, by the way, so prayers are much needed.

Here we go again

Trials and challenges come and go and my last biggest trial was during that time I wrote my previous post titled "Stretch to the max". I haven't published a post in this blog since then because of the several small challenges that occupied my time.

Perhaps one of those "small" challenges I mentioned is not really a small one because it took time before it made me confident that I was on the right track. I was trying to discover how to lessen the seizures of my special child as well as the "side effects" of the medicines that would lessen the seizures. I had to bother about the side effects because she has started to go to school and I noticed the side effects were affecting her moods while in school. I was sure they were side effects because one day I tried to give her very minimal dosage of just one medicine and she performed in school normally. But after her class, her seizures could be noticed though I've completed her medicines during break time, which was 30 minutes before the class finished.

Until one day, I've read about the close relationship between migraine and seizures. I had migraine for 3 weeks and was able to tolerate the pain because of a TIENS comb gadget but the pain was persistent and I was advised to take TIENS Beneficial, a supplement tested for oxygen uptake, and I was cured instantly! I am now giving the same supplement to my special child and all the more I use the comb gadget and a needleless acupuncture gadget or Tong Bao now that I'm aware that one side effect of one of her medicines is also migraine. I can see improvements, but this small challenge is still ongoing.

Maybe the reason why I can now call them small challenges was because I was already stretched to a point. But after you are stretched, another trial will come your way and in my case it's here again! My son was admitted to a hospital in a province where he was given an assignment and he left only yesterday. He had his usual GERD early this morning. The province is too far from us so all I can do is pray hard that he'll get well and maybe look for people in that province who can see how he is doing. He was confined in St. Paul's hospital in Tacloban City, which is in the province of Leyte in Philippines.

Stretch to the max

When we go to an eat-all-you-can restaurant, we don't really taste everything, For viands we knew we haven't tried yet, we still choose what we'd like to taste. If only problems or trials are like that, we couldn't blame anybody but ourselves because we chose them.

Perhaps the biggest challenge or trial a person could have encountered, especially a mother, was when all her children were sick at the same time. All my three children got sick almost at the same time and it was truly very stressful, but I am aware that the right thing to do is simply to "stretch to the max", without snapping. I reminded myself that was what God wanted us to do, to stretch because he wanted our potentials to be maximized. God always knew up to what point can we stretch, so my exposure to such trial lasted for a short period of time only. After that, what is important is that we were stretched to a point, ready to tackle more trials and challenges.

In the midst of a trial, there is always a blessing in disguise that we have to recognize. In my case, that happened while my first child was sick and a day before my second child got sick. We had the eyes of our third child (a multi-handicapped special child), checked by a well-known ophthalmologist because the school for the visually impaired where we wanted to enroll her wanted to know the status of her blindness. "There is blood flowing to her eyes now, at her age of almost 10, if blood should stop flowing to her eyes it should have happened a long time ago." Though the doctor also said it cannot be assured up to when that condition will be sustained, that is a real good news that helped me not to worry too much about my first child. But right after the check-up with the eye doctor was the check-up with the neurologist and the doctor's remark caused me to worry about this special child because she is underweight. And then almost that same day, though it was past midnight already, our second child decided to be admitted to the hospital because of acid reflux he thought will no longer recur. Thank God the pain did not persist and he was discharged from the hospital after one day.

That was not the end of the trial because our special child started sneezing the night her brother was admitted to the hospital. So when I was sure my son will already be discharged, I stayed at home to monitor this third child and performed preventive therapies. That was only for one day because the next day, we brought our special child to the school for the visually impaired for our orientation and finalization of details required for enrollment.

I've heard it when we first went to that school and I heard it again that day from a special child's guardian that it should be the parent who should go to the special education school and learn with her special child. She was just sharing her dilemma because she is the grandmother of the child she brought. I was again somehow affected by this comment because it took years for me to personally attend to my special child full time and bring her to a school. I was trying to look for the best reasons why it should happen that way and the best I found was the trainings I had undergone on health and wellness, especially learning to perform the therapies that could help my loved ones prevent illnesses or recover fast from illnesses.

Only God knows what could be the real reasons, perhaps He allowed me to stretch to the max first before pursuing this new challenge of educating a special child which is a totally unfamiliar area to me.

"Naligo ka ba?" (Did you take a bath?)

Almost every Sunday in the past, after I bathe my special child, I would bathe too so I would ask my helper to have the child dressed for church. After that, she was usually brought to the neighboring house which is a duplex of ours, while I get myself dressed too. I could always hear the helper of our neighbor telling my child that she still has that "hardened debris" or "muta" on her teargland so though it was obvious the child has taken a bath, she would ask her "naligo ka ba?" People who were present would laugh and since our bedroom was just adjacent to where they were, I could hear everything. That could be funny, but for a mother like me who took as much time as possible to bathe her child, in my case, I never miss the area between her toes, especially the areas on the main body where excretion takes place, it hurts to hear other people laugh over that omitted area, the comment coming from a helper. Perhaps that "hardened debris" wasn't noticeable at first but when I washed the child's face, the debris had swollen. Well, the helper used to be under me and took care of my child before she was transferred to the neighbor because her expertise in handling old people was needed there.

The old person who was my neighbor was my mother-in-law. When I learned she had dementia, I sacrificed practically anything for her welfare, making up for my past misconceptions before the doctor's diagnosis. Now that she had passed on, it is no longer necessary for me to sacrifice and tolerate any hurting comment, especially comments that put people down. What a great opportunity for a helper to put down her employer or previous employer to uplift herself, to get that feeling that she is indeed better than her employer, especially when one or more persons could hear her comment!

The "skillful" helper was still under me on New Year's Day and was with us when we celebrated the New Year countdown in a mall. We brought our special child and while waiting for the countdown, we stayed outside Starbucks. I positioned the child's stroller so that the child could be near lying position to be able to take a nap. We were at the vicinity of the mall during the countdown but after that big event, we couldn't leave because of the congested traffic in the area. We stayed inside the building where we could see the cars approaching so we could easily get ready when our car arrives. I repositioned the stroller again so my child could sleep while the helper and another companion were fanning hard at the child though it wasn't really too hot. My child vomited and the helper cruelly blamed me because I changed the position of the stroller. But my child did not vomit when that was done when we were at Starbucks so I tried to control myself by just saying "All of us did something wrong so let's stop blaming each other!" I wanted to blame their hard fanning but the other companion who was also fanning at the child was close to me so I couldn't do that.

Those are just two stories of a helper putting down her employer who was unfortunately myself, and there are more similar stories involving the same helper and myself. All I could say now is "Wow! How could I have tolerated that?". I am not a spiteful person, I love people because my mother and grandmother have been very good examples of very loving people. So I'm sure I could still tolerate such misgiving by a helper or anybody, but not anymore by the same helper or person, because she also needs to learn some lessons.

These are real stories, not a detail was made up. Perhaps the best reason why I should state "the helper" is for people to understand why she needs an "uplifting" so please don't judge me on maligning this occupation. In fact if you'll hear all my stories I was the one being maligned in all those stories. I may not be a perfect person who never maligned a helper but more than once is too much so it would be better for me to find her a better employer if I commit that more than once. I loved the people who had served in my household, in fact my special child was the biological child of one of them.

Google's New Blogger

The new Blogger of Google is just awesome! It has new features, including statistics, and a blogger could see the posts that had the most pageviews in graph form based on daily, weekly, monthly or all time statistics. I have 3 blogs, and I was surprised to learn that my newest blog, "Amusing Tips" had the most pageviews. I was also surprised to learn that "The Five Elements", a TCM or Traditional Chinese Medicine principle, was the most read post, and most of the readers of this blog were in U.S.A., I guess those are very valuable information.

I was also saddened though, that there were only a few pageviews for my post in this blog, "I Don’t Want To Retire", about "God’s Message", a post about my real experience of conversing with God and His message addressed to mankind. When I saw that this post had only about 60 pageviews, I doubted if the statistics are really correct. It was "God’s Message" that convinced me to start blogging. Looking at the total pageviews of this blog, more than 2,000 came from the Philippines while U.S.A. is second with over 1,800 pageviews. Since my "Amusing Tips" blog has more readers with almost 4,000 pageviews from U.S.A., more than 900 from U.K. and more than 700 from Philippines so far, perhaps a good strategy is to include "God’s Message" in a post of "Amusing Tips" or even in its blog introduction.

How I wish these features of Blogger were included from the time I started blogging, but perhaps this is the best time to analyze those statistics. I’m glad I was able to sustain all my blogs using Blogger!

Embracing Life

I first thought of the title "Embracing Death" for this post. This is supposed to describe my mother-in-law before she died yesterday morning maybe at past 1 A.M. But what I've seen in her was what life should be all about, not what death is.

My mom-in-law whom I call "Mang" or "Mama" started to show signs of dementia months ago. At first it was difficult for us who see her everyday, but we've learned to adjust to her condition. Obviously she has suffered from her dementia which caused her confusion most of the time. She would always complain she has not eaten yet though she really has. Whenever she was corrected she would be hurt, would say in the vernacular she's not dumb.

What was scary was her claims that her mother who died several years ago, was inside her house and seemed to be always there. She would also dream of dead relatives, including her husband, my father-in-law. I've heard of similar stories experienced by dying people but Mama was strong inspite of her dementia, so her claims were weird.

Until just a week ago, I've seen a big change in her. She opened our swinging kitchen door while almost laughingly saying she doesn't know where she lives anymore. When I asked if she has already eaten, she said she doesn't know if she has eaten or not, and she was happy while saying that. She has finally accepted her condition without fear or confusion.

In the past, she would usually wonder why I shouldn't add rice to my special child's food or give her sweets, and I would always explain this special child needs to burn fats not sugar. But last Sunday, when I fed my child with cake but avoiding the sweet topping, she would still remind me not to feed her with too much sweets, and I was surprised.

What I've seen in my mom-in-law's last moments was a person embracing life because she has accepted reality. She didn't care if she looked dumb because she was not. It was just her body going through dementia, not her soul. It was myocardial infarction that took her life, manifesting as pain in her stomach. During her last breaths, no sign of fear could be felt in her because she would answer casually when my husband would check her condition by calling her name, while we were busy attending to her and performing whatever we know that might help. When I felt she seems to be better, I casually said "Mama" and she looked at me with her eyes half closed.

When she was transferred to a chair to prepare her to go to the hospital, I was holding her head. I thought she was alright because I heard her breathe and she even expelled air. I did not know that could be her last breath.

Answered Prayers

In the past, I had wanted a child to help me forget my frustrations in life so I asked God for a child. It was a conditional prayer because I didn’t want the child to come from my adult offspring believing they were still young to settle down. Neither could I bear a child because my uterus was removed by operation. I realized it was an impossible prayer so I considered it a joke. "Just a joke, I told God".

I was surprised that God still answered my conditional prayer after a year, by giving me a child circumstances dictated me not to refuse. Weighing only one pound at birth, she was not expected to be a normal child, she wasn’t even expected to live for one day. But she fought and is continuously fighting to live so she will be ten years old, four months from now.

I fought with this child and God taught me how. God led me to learn what I thought was impossible for me to assimilate: the principles of acupuncture. The time was also right because electronic or needleless gadgets based on the principles of acupuncture were already available.

After learning enough about the principles of acupuncture and other information about health and wellness, I prayed for an integrative medicine barely a year ago, meaning integrating Oriental medicine with Western Medicine, but I really meant Traditional Chinese Medicine with Western Medicine. The former for prevention and maintenance while the latter for emergency cases and maintenance of chronic cases. I knew the integration wasn’t impossible, all it needs are guidelines but I was surrounded by people who had negative thoughts about it.

I couldn’t believe I am now involved in an Integrative Medicine project of the government. Circumstances led me to be involved in an organization promoting part of my country’s cultural arts in the field of health and wellness. "Hilot Pinoy Association of the Philippines" is a non-government non-profit organization which aims to revive the traditional Philippine healing modality better known as "hilot", and the organization is willing to upgrade this traditional "touch therapy" by integrating holistic modalities accredited by the Philippine government like Traditional Chinese Medicine. The organization painstakingly did everything possible to uplift "Hilot" and later enable our country’s Western medicine doctors to supervise "Hilot" practitioners. A well organized and documented "Hilot" modality can be the best vehicle of all modalities to be integrated in my own beloved country. I am proud that our traditional Philippine healing modality will live and can exist forever in our country through Integrative Medicine, and vice versa.

Amazing Powers!

The Power of Truth

I am a spiritual being
I am a child of the Eternal Power, God

The Power of Pure Intention

Holding on to my highest intention for myself and hold the same for others, I'll stay in the true nature of my own goodness. We are one family belonging to one God.

The Power of Godly Love

Creating a constant relationship of love with God fills me with all the powers and virtues that I need to fill life with victory. Through meditation, I allow myself to be filled with God's love.