Hey! Happy New Year everyone! 🎉
We're now officially on the very first day of 2018! Wow, how fast the year's gone by. I especially feel like 2017 just flew by so fast and suddenly we're in a new year again. I think a lot of people will agree with me on that, because there were lots and lots of people mentioning the same thing to me. Oh well, before we proceed further into the year, I would like to share with you a few things that I had experienced in 2017.

2017 was one of the toughest year of my life. There were a lot of tears and pains but thankfully it's also the year where I found my rock. Everything started off quite nice, as I was working towards my goals. But somewhere along the road, I just somehow lost it, which led to a lot of disappointment and feeling crushed from within. Definitely not a good feeling to have.

I am the kind of person who wants to get everything done as quickly as I could, but not in this year. 2017 turns out to be a year of growth where I learned a lot about patience and love. It's the year where I discovered more about God's love and mercy. I learned again that my timing is totally different than His timing, and believe me, His timing will be much more perfect than any of our planned timing.

Another lesson that I got is that love costs something. You can hardly love someone without sacrificing something, or else it can't be called love because love isn't a selfish act. I was reminded not to be afraid to love someone just because I have to feel some kind of pain as a cost of it, just like Jesus suffered and died on the cross for His love for all of us.

Honestly, the only one I could really depend on in 2017 was God. I felt like I had so many broken relationships and a lot of miscommunications with the people around me last year. It's just a little bit too much for me to handle by myself and I just got so worn out at the end of the day. Therefore I started to shift my focus to God. I started to practice gratitude towards what God had given me every single day, I started to learn about His Church, I sought for every understanding and knowledge I could possibly get just to feel closer and closer to Him everyday. Surprisingly, it brought me so much peace at the end of the day.

I can say that 2017 was the year of me finally coming back home to Him. Not only because I finally learned and felt a lot closer to Him than ever before, but also because I was finally able to let go of my ego and encountered His grace on the Sacrament of Reconciliation after 6,5 years of thinking that God will just forgive all of my sins and avoiding it so much. It took a lot of courage to step into that confession room and confessed every wrong doings that I could remember. I would describe my experience as a nerve-wrecking-yet-full-of-excitement one.

Now that I'm finally back on track, it doesn't mean that it's getting easier though. In fact, it's getting harder than ever, because evil loves to mess up with the good, as you might have known. I have a goal to stay strong in Him as hard as I can. It's totally not easy, because there will be days when I just won't feel like it, since we're not perfect yet. However I pray that at the end of the day, I will always find my home again.

I might sound quite religious in this post, but I think 2017 was the time when we needed religion the most. I solely believe that religions are the means to get closer to God, no matter what your religion is. 2017 was so full of tragedies and pains and I saw people used religions to create even more pain by blaming, spreading hatred, etc.

Religions have a pure purpose, and when some people with a certain religious view commited sins, it doesn't mean that the religion itself is bad. It's not the religion we should fight, but the corruptions within it. Just remember that evil loves to make something good become bad. Don't be deceived by it and always stay close to God who is so full of love and mercy, which I believe is what your religions teach.

Whether you believe in God or not, in our darkest hour we will always seek for a greater power to help us, just like what Sam Smith sang in one of his song, Pray:
"Everyone prays in the end."
We sure do. We will always look for our home.

Keep on praying, friends, and let's greet 2018 with our improved and better self. 2017 was one hell of a year, but now we can proudly say that we've survived it well. People said, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," right? 😉

Hope you're having an astonishing first day of 2018 and another year full of His grace!
See you on my next posts! 😁
CN.