Truly Rich and Blessed

5 Words That Can Help You Have a Better Week Ahead (With Free Wallpaper!)

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new week motivation

It’s the beginning of a brand new week. Anything can happen. The days ahead are ripe with opportunities, full of chances to begin anew.

A new week — for most of us, at least — means new beginnings, especially since we’ve just started a new year (hopefully, in a meaningful way so far.)

But what if a new week also means new problems, new fears, new doubts, new hurts, new negatives for us?

What if, instead of facing the week ahead with hope and joy, we’re wallowing in self-pity, anger, frustration… and that’s just the “tip of the iceberg”?

Well, dear friend, if the aforementioned is what you’re facing right now, I want to share these 5 simple words that — when put together — can potentially change your week (and maybe even your life!). Consider these words your “new week motivation” (well, actually, motivation for any time!)

Here they are:

With God, nothing is impossible.

In case you missed those 5 important words, here they are again, in a graphic (which is also available in desktop wallpaper format that you can download for free here):

new week motivation

If you have a few minutes to spare today, watch this video. Make it part of your special time with God. 🙂 Ask Him to help you bear all your burdens, and claim that He is already making the impossible possible.

Remember, there is no problem too big that God cannot solve it. There is no mountain too tall that He cannot move it. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is impossible with God. (And that is something you can claim any moment of any day, whether or not you’re facing a new week ahead!)

Do you believe that God can make the impossible possible? If yes, please feel free to share this post with others! And if not, what’s hindering you from doing so? Would you like us in the Truly Rich and Blessed community to pray for you? Feel free to leave a comment below, or connect with us via !

One Word, One Verse and One Saint for 2016

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I was supposed to write a year-ender post last December 31, as a way of counting all our blessings, and encouraging you all to do the same. It was supposed to be a “fitting way” to end the year… for me, at least. 😉 But, as fate would have it, the Internet didn’t cooperate with me, so I ended up posting this on and instead:

After almost 2 hours of attempting to write a last-minute

After almost 2 hours of attempting to write a last-minute “2015 wrap-up” blog post (inspired by my dear friend and chief #Blissmaker Martine’s {of Make it Blissful} last post of the year) and FAILING to finish it due to Internet connection problems, I decided to quit altogether and just focus on spending time with my loved ones during the last hour of this year. ???? It’s just so apt that my supposed post was titled, “Looking Back and Looking Forward: With Gratitude, Always.” ☺ It was meant to encourage us to focus on all the past blessings of this year, MORE than all the trials, challenges, failures and disappointments… Just like the blessings my family and I have received, a (very) few of which are symbolized in this photo collage. ❤ There is so, so, SO much to be grateful for, friends. Let’s continue to count our blessings as we usher in 2016! ☺ May we discover all the reasons why we can call ourselves #trulyrichandblessed! ????
#keepingitreal #TRBReflections #newyearpreparations #countyourblessings #gratitudeisamagnet #welcome2016 #makeitblissful

So, I may not have been able to write that post but I believe every day is an opportunity to count our blessings. Right? Right! 🙂

Also, even if it’s already the sixth day of the new calendar year, I believe it’s never too late to make plans and dream dreams and manifest how we want this year to be like. One way to do this is to prayerfully choose our “One Word” for the year. I’ve been doing this since 2013 and it has really helped guide me every year in living more intentionally.

OneWord2013_InCourage

In 2014, I started choosing “One Verse” and “One Saint” to go with my “One Word,” which was “Health” for that year.

OneWord2014tina.png

Last year, my “One Word” was “Less,” and the verse God led me to was John 3:30. My “patron saint” for 2015 was Saint Maria Goretti.

LESS.-1

For this year, this is what God led me to choose:

ONE WORD. ONE VERSE. ONE SAINT 2016

Having “One Word,” “One Verse” and “One Saint” these past years have really helped me in manifesting all the feelings, dreams and goals I’ve had each year, so I encourage YOU to do the same. Here are a few tips on how you can do so:

1. Pray about your intentions, dreams and goals for the year.

2. Think of words that can help you focus on those intentions, dreams and goals.

3. Among those words, choose one that seems to suit you the most; one that “fits” all that you hope to realize this year.

4. Once you’ve chosen your “One Word,” look for Bible verses that are more or less aligned to it.

5. Pray and meditate upon each verse, then choose one that best reflects your “One Word.”

6. For choosing your “One Saint,” you can try the Saint’s Name Generator that Jennifer Fulwiler created.

May God bless and guide all of us as we strive to do His will this year! 🙂

If you’re going to choose your “One Word, “One Verse” and “One Saint” for this year, please do let me know! 🙂 I’d love to pray for and with you throughout the process! Or you can just let me know what you’ve been led to choose on ! 🙂 

What to Do When Your Advent (and Life in General) Doesn’t Go as Planned

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So it’s been almost a month since I said my temporary goodbyes here on the blog. I didn’t think that the “renovation” process here would take so long but — as it says in the title of this post — sometimes life doesn’t go the way we planned it. (And yes, we’re still not done with the process, as you can see!)

This Advent season has not been going the way I planned it either. Admittedly, with this pregnancy slowing me down (just a teeny, tiny bit!) and with all the other things on my plate, I didn’t have “grand” plans for Advent this year. This was the most I could do actually:

advent

  • Set up our Nativity set (one of a few; the others are still in storage! Ha!)
  • Buy a ready-made Advent Wreath (FINALLY! After years of wanting to do so!)
  • Buy an Advent Wreath / Christmas Prayers Devotional Booklet (Also after years of looking for a nice one!)
  • Look for our “The Story of Christmas” Advent Calendar and Storybook Set
  • Look for our copy of “Jotham’s Journey”
  • Set up our Jesse Tree
  • Set up our image of Baby Jesus (and hide Jesus so the kids can look for him on Christmas Day!)

I did all of this the night before Advent began! 🙂 Talk about photo-finish preparations! I’m grateful to God that I was able to do so though.

Admittedly, we haven’t been able to do our Jesse Tree and Advent Wreath devotions consistently… we missed a few nights for different reasons. But instead of hanging on to feelings of guilt over it (which I would normally do on any given day), I have chosen to just.let.it.go.

Which brings me to the point of this post. 😉

When your Advent — or, like I said, life in general — doesn’t go the way you planned it to, that’s what you should do:

Let it go.

Let go and let God take over.

So many good things can happen if you do. Just as it says in this quote:

advent

Photo Credit: Flickr by deeplifequotes

(Yeah, I should remind myself of this, because I haven’t been letting go and letting Him move lately — which means I have been SO stressed out over so many things!)

So there… my two cents’ worth for all of us this Fourth Sunday of Advent. Christmas is just DAYS away, and instead of beating myself up for all the things I haven’t been able to do, I think I will just do my best to savor these moments. Like I said in the , I don’t want to forget “the better part”:

advent

Let’s ask God to make our hearts His home this Christmas… and beyond! Praying you and your loved ones have a truly rich and blessed, truly bright and beautiful Christmas season ahead! 🙂

When Terrible Things Happen: #PrayforParis, #PrayfortheWorld

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I’m supposed to be working on some articles now (yes, this is the WAHM life for you! Working on a Saturday!). But I couldn’t help sneaking in this blog post, if only to try to put some sense into what I’m feeling right now. I’m sure most, if not all, of you have seen the images and news articles all over the Internet by now — with the hashtag — about the most recent terrorist attacks in Paris, France.

But it’s not just Paris that needs our prayers right now. I saw this on Instagram (on ) and immediately reposted it on :

paris terrorist attacks

In other places around the world, terrible, terrible things have happened… and are still happening as I type out these words. We don’t even need to look further than our own country actually, with all the bad news that we’ve been reading and watching about.

It’s enough to make you think, “Why is all this happening? Where is God in all this? Why is He letting this happen?”

It’s so hard to find answers to these questions at times… especially when it’s our children who ask them.

“Where is God when bad things happen?” we may ask. Jesus Himself assures us in Matthew 28:20:

paris terrorist attacks

He is ALWAYS with us. He will NEVER leave us.

But why is He letting these terrible things happen? Why the Paris terrorist attacks? Why the bombings? The earthquakes? And other natural and man-made disasters and calamities and tragedies?

Why?

To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t think we’ll ever have all the answers to these questions. Not until we see God face to face anyway (that’s if we, well, you know, ever get to Heaven). Just as it’s written in this article from Catholic News Agency:

Fully to understand why God permits anything, good or bad, we’d need to know the whole of His providential plan. But that is something we can’t know until we see God face to face in heaven. Then, presumably, it will become clear how everything fits together in the final fulfillment of God’s will. For now, we can only guess.

I do know though that many, many times, bad things happen because it’s people who do bad things. Like it says in this article, God created us to have free will:

…in order for us to experience love, God bestowed on us free will. But unfortunately, we humans have abused our free will by rejecting God and walking away from Him. And that has resulted in the introduction of two kinds of evil into the world: moral evil and natural evil. 

(Read the rest of the article by clicking on the link above; it’s a good read on why God allows tragedy and suffering. This article from Catholic Stand is another good read: “Why Does God Let Bad Things Happen?“)

It is a terrible tragedy when we use our free will for bad or evil, and not for good. I still can’t fathom how people can become so full of hate, and commit terrible deeds especially in the name of God and their faith. It’s sickening and heartbreaking and just plain wrong. 

So I really don’t know what I can do here on this side of the world to help ease the suffering of the victims of these terrible tragedies — except pray. Let us pray. And let us trust in God’s Word:

paris terrorist attacks

And further on in Romans 8, we read:

What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written:

“For your sake we are being slain all the day;

we are looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

Yes, let’s trust in God’s word. In His love. In His power. Because if we don’t do so, it will be so much harder to face the world… the broken, hurting world that we live in.

To end, I want to share with you these beautiful words from my fellow CatholicMom.com contributor, Lori Hadorn-Disselkamp, who wrote an insightful piece titled, “Why Does God Allow Bad Things to Happen?“, earlier this year:

I guess we just have to trust that God is with us through it all — the good, the bad and the evil. We must also believe that love will always win out in the end. If we let love rule our thoughts and attitudes then evil will not be able to penetrate our souls and will never truly take over. We will overcome with God on our side.

We must let love rule our thoughts and attitudes. I must remember this, especially as a wife, mom and self-proclaimed “media missionary.” I may not be able to change the hearts of terrorists or even the people around me, but I can do all things with love… especially the things that will help shape my children’s thoughts and actions.

Love will always win out in the end, as long as we let love — TRUE love that comes only from God — rule our hearts, minds, spirits and bodies.

paris terrorist attacks

Let’s keep praying and loving… We’re all in this together!

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