This One Is Really My Own.........

At Chrurch of Incarnation in Glendale today for the Christmas Eve Celebration.  And while the mass was about to start,  so many scenes way back were coming to my mind.  My mom was the only person I knew inside the church...And in my mind came the thought of shutting off everyone as the culture of insecurity was on its regular routine.  But this time who I was in college came dawning again....Four years of freedom to be me....to just be wantonly me.  Four years of pursuing my own thoughts.  I was the success drive and success oriented.  I was then excellence seeker and a proud achiever.  Academically I was doing good but I was in my little social corner, created a giant of myself courtesy of my thoughts for excellence.  In that little nook, I witnessed so many miracles happened through sheer singular desire to suceed.  In my own way, I know I was a big factor that had inspired others to be leaders and fired their desires to achieve their own successes in their own fields.  That was an incrudulous year.  That was our year whre the leaders of the school the following year came from the same group where I thought I put my own heart and soul.  BEDSCA then was the venue where I was me.....

But I was grudgingly cowed to return to Asingan, my hometown.   There my spirit did not ceased but found a new way to express its essence.  The Choir.  The St. Louis Bertrand Choir was then fired up with kids coming from Rizal Academy with the generous help of Julie Rillera who became a friend.  In the same manner of trying to achieve excellence, we did dare to create a relationship farther and wider than just a choir.  The choir was a means to fire up the spirits of the kids to achieve their own greatness.  It was good until it lasts.

Then the bigger venue came in with the Lions Club.  The organization rose from obscurity to one of the most active clubs entire the Philippines with the Leo Club as my vehicle to share and achieve again my social dreams.

Together with this fire and passion to succeed is the eqaul challenge of ignonimy.  My own quest for personal achievement of expressing who I am was overshadowed and tempered by crippling challenges that made me let go.  I have accepted defeat and avoided severe consequences and left for the US.

The start of life in California was like a child birth.  Finding my own way.  Believing that i can create a new world.  America is a land of opportunities so with whatever resources I have, I accepted the challenge to rise up from the ruins.  I will take anything that comes my way.  Make everyday an opportunity to earn back whatever I thought lost.  I lived an obsure life of anonymity throwing away who I thought I was and accepted the challenges day in and day out.  I was a janitor until I gave up on my abusive employer.  It's almost impossible then to swallow being a former employer to a now lowliest employee and subjected to abuse.  Treated just like those ignoramuses when I have more education than my boss.  I went to work in a restaurant where I tried to be on a very low profile.  I became a cashier and counter cleaner and everything of which I have no idea how far is my responsibility.  I was expected to be creative in work, spotless and full of initiative to almost like the owner.  Few setbacks but again my spirit was being fired up to achieve excellence and be the best in the field.

I became a waiter and gave my best yet for some reason I can not beat the odds.  Was it because of my age?  Nevertheless, I made good and felt great.  I am getting my groove but still sheltering from the reality.  Still I was hiding a wide swath of my life and the fight with depression did become clinical and for a while but i was able to lick it off.

Again I can sayI excelled.  I wanted to be give my best in every field i tried to get into.  There were setbacks but were non negoyiable.  I can't take defeat

ANd rthe story went the same with the floral designing business.  Now I am a business owner coming full circle.

So what is that energy thata lingered and made me struggle all the time....The culture of fear. The culture of doubt.  I was fulk of pride, I was hurting, defensive reactive and resenting....The culture of poverty, the culture of sin and in other words it's total ignorance.  I got no system and I don't know the basis of my philosophy.  I was grappling in the dark and I have no idea of what is a relationship with God is.  I was like a dead wood floating around and finding a somewhere to anchor on.  I was so wrong and was so arrogant and so ignorant.

Until slowly, the memories start coming back why I was in the US in the first place.  I was rebuilding myself.  I am seeking the Lord.  I am seeking fro answers.  It was at least the only thing left to me.  It is hope.  The hope kept the faith.  The faith kept the trust.  The trust allowed me to seek, knock and ask.  Until I came to undertsand that I don't really know what I am looking for.  I am looking for the Lord then.  I was not understanding my faith.  My religion is not helping me much.  Until Eileen had started to poke my mind to open new doors in finding God.  MY brother had always been prodding me and then came my sister Edna and then those conversations with my mom.  The books of Donald Neale Walsch (Conversations with God  123) Rhonda Bynes (The Secret), Napoleon Hill (Think Big and Grow Rich), Eckart Tolle(A New Earth), Rick Warren, TBN, Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar, Joseph Prince and finally the Bible.  Barnes and Noble is a monumnetal factor that had allowed me to go paradigm shifts a couple of times because of the availability of resources for free.

Now i realized I had been putting myself aside and let my twin do the thinking under the influence of the culture of fear, culture of sin, the culture of doubt.....................NO!! I am taking back my life..  The Edgardo that always aspires and achieves excellence because that is me.   ever since I can remember I have always been achieving.  My pursuit for personal glory is always ccoupled with debilitating defeats.  But now NOI....I am taking all my achievements, fortune and fame...I am taking back my great name given to me by my parents and annointed by heavens.  For they are mine and this time I share it in the name of Jesus to give the greatest honor and glory to the Father whose spirit will catapult me to greatest heights of excellence, achievements of dreams and life of plenty and abundance.  I am taking my birthright and I am claiming it fast tracked in Jesus name.  It's mine now and mine to honor the Fther!!!!