Wow, my blog has become dusty and full of spider webs for these past 6 months. I'm really sorry for being gone just like that for half of the year, but hopefully you've been enjoying more contents on my Instagram posts and stories ✌🏻

Here we are at another end of the year, and I'm back to share my annual year-end reflection for this awesome year of 2018. I must honestly say that I'm kind of sad of leaving 2018. This year has taught me a lot of things that I never imagined before and surely there were a lot of struggles and pain to help me see these valuable lessons. These lessons are the things that make me fall madly in love with 2018 and I believe it's the greatest year of my life so far.

I'm going to sum up the lessons I got into five points and share with you what I've learned from each of it.
Let's take a flashback to my 2018 together 😉

True Love

These two words just appeared to me randomly at the beginning of 2018. They used to appeared back in 2015 too, just a week before I started dating a friend, and I honestly got so confused for they reappearance in 2018. However, I then chose to just embrace these words and make them my theme for 2018. I even got a bible verse which is related to these words (1 Cor 13:1-7, 13) that I printed and held close to my heart for this whole year.

Little did I know, I was going to learn so much about love this year that I don't even think I can tell you all just within this one post. Many many people have been talking about love through the centuries, so I don't think what I'm about to tell you is something new that you've never heard before. But obviously there's a difference with just knowing and finally truly living it.

I've learned that to love someone is to will the good of the other. Love isn't selfish at all and I double-checked whether I truly loved the people around me, or did I just use the word 'love' to cover my hidden intention of self-fulfillment. Sometimes we just forget and let our ego takes control over our intentions.

I've learned that in order to love others, you need to truly receive and feel the endless love from your Creator, namely God. As a human being, our love is sometimes limited and corrupted, therefore it is important to turn to the unlimited source of love itself which is God. I was really overwhelmed with God's love towards me this year, that I couldn't help but wanting to share that love to myself and my surroundings.

I've learned that God is my ultimate true love. I used to put my happiness into the hands of others, hoping they will always love me and make me happy. But that was selfish and rather impossible for any human beings to accomplish. I found out this year that only God can give me all of that, only God can fill the voids within my heart, for God is truly the love itself. He is indeed my only one true love. Forever grateful that I finally found my 'the one' this year.

Vulnerability

I went through a breakup this year.
Well, it wasn't really a messy and loud one, it was more of a calm and mature kind of breakup. But, it obviously indeed broke every pieces of my heart and I could literally see my dream shattered to pieces. What I did after my breakup you ask? Well, all I did was telling everyone close to me about it, as fast as I could. My intention was to let the words out, so that people would stop asking me about him. Then, right after I was done telling my closest circle, just a week after the breakup, I forced myself to get back up again and not letting this so-called tragedy affected my life ever again.
What's wrong with that? Well, every part of it is obviously sooo wrong.

If someone who just went through a breakup come to me and ask me for an advice now, all I will tell them is to just embrace their feelings. All those sadness, all those sharped piercing pain, all those swollen eyes after crying your eyes out, yup just embrace them all.

I was so used to being strong that I forgot how to be vulnerable. Once I started to embrace the vulnerability and accept all of the overwhelming feelings that I had, I ended up learning more about myself and finding peace with my situation. Towards the end of 2018, I also decided to become vulnerable again and opening up more about my feelings and thoughts to the people whom I trust which also helped me to get closer to these people.

I never thought that being vulnerable could be this freeing. It lifts up all the burdens and essentially gives you strength to continue the journey.

Fortitude

Needless to say this year has brought me so much pain. I'm not saying that my pain is bigger and harder than yours, but pain is still pain. They're still painful no matter at what size they're marching towards you. The virtue that I've learned a lot during these times of trials is the virtue of fortitude which is to find courage in the midst of the pain.

Of course it's so hard to find the light when you're down in the deepest darkest place. However, even though I learned to embrace my situation by being vulnerable, it doesn't mean that I was letting my situation consumed me. I still stood up and believed that my situation at that time was only temporary just like any other thing in this world, and I also believed that there must be reasons why these things were happening to me. The key is in enduring the pain with perseverance to find those hidden reasons, then you'll finally see a shining light at the end of the tunnel, a light called hope.

I know there are times when you just want to give up and give in to the struggles. I was there too, my friend. What I did to fight this temptation to give up was by not letting myself be overwhelmed with self-pity and started focusing on what I should do next, one step at a time.

I know it's easier said than done, and I keep slipping here and there too sometimes. But just learn to keep going and doing what's your heart is telling you to do. And when you get stuck, prayer will always helps, it worked wonders to me.

Self-Love

Now that I think of it, I don't think I was ever in love with myself. I always had those tiny self-critic voices inside my head 24/7 365 (sometimes 366) days a year. I was never able to see, how loving myself could've done anything significantly great for me, until this year.

Do you realize that when you don't love yourself enough, you can let other people taking control over yourself? Because when you don't love yourself, you basically don't have any self-worth, which makes it so hard for you to stand up for yourself. That's what actually happened to me.

I used to have this huge fear of judgements. I often received many judgements from others and all I did was just receiving them and let them got into my head, so they ended up distorting everything about my true identity.

Truly realizing and embracing my identity as the daughter of my loving Father truly helped me to love myself more. I suddenly felt this overwhelming love that's so hard to contain, it basically flooded everywhere, including towards myself. One day I just woke up and find it really hard to hate myself, because He accepted me just the way I am. No matter what others think, in the end it's what He thinks of me that matters the most.

Other than embracing my true identity, I also tried so hard to switch the voices in my head to a much more positive and nicer one. It was very hard at first, but as the time goes you'll gain more confidence in yourself and it'll get easier to find anything nice about yourself. I also made an effort to make myself more lovable to me, by wearing the clothes that I like and comfortable with, having those relaxing manicure night, taking care of my skin, etc. Just list all the things that you would like to do with yourself and do them all without really caring about what others may think and say about you.

I'm glad that I can finally stop caring too much about others' opinion towards me, and letting me just be me.

Living in the present

Last but not least, I've learned a valuable lesson of living in the moment. As you might have recognized, there is a reason why the present moment is called 'present', because it's eventually a gift that you can receive right on every second that's ticking and right on every breath that you take. Life is happening before your own eyes.

I found it really hard to grasp into reality, because daydream and nostalgia were the things that I enjoyed the most. I love creating stories within my head and reliving the past memories that make me smile wayyy too much, can you relate to this? Then there's a possibility that you might be having the same problem that I had earlier this year: having such a high expectation towards the future and having a tendency to cling to those beautiful memories in the past.

I didn't realize that these habits were robbing me from my present, but apparently they made it so hard for me to accept my current situation just the way it was. I always got something to complain about my present, like things were not as good as I thought it would've been, things were not as beautiful as it was before, and so on. They also generated so much worries and fears when I lost control of the stream of my thoughts. It clearly didn't feel good at all.

After working on it, I found out that living in the present could bring so much joy and peace. All I need to think about is how to handle the situation that is currently happening right in front of me, and that's all. I'm not saying that you shouldn't think about your future or relive your past, but it's all about balance. When you're overthinking about it (like I always do), it's obviously not good and you need to start tuning in into your present again.

My advice for those of you who like to worry about your future or your purpose in life is to just stay true to yourself and be who you really are. Even though you might not know what's the specific purpose of your life right now. Just know that God has prepared everything for you, because He has designed and created you specifically for your purpose in this life. So, honestly you have nothing to worry about, because you've already got everything you could possibly need.





Wow, it's surely very very long, isn't it? Applause for you who have finished reading them all without missing any word 👏🏻

Hopefully some of my words can inspire you (and my future self) to embark on this new journey of 2019 that is about to begin within few more hours. I'm wishing you all the very best of luck for this awesome road ahead.

If any of you want to do a revenge by sharing even longer 2018 reflection that you wrote, please feel free to drop them in the comment box below. If it's shorter then it's even better! Just share your thoughts because I'd really love to read them.

That's all for 2018. Looking forward for an exciting 2019 with all of you!
Until next year!
CN.