Live Your Dreams

” A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing grow there”

The one who cannot step out of their comfort zone, living a life without dream and passion which is called mentally dead, which is even more terrible than the one who is physically dead. Some of them always do not believe that they can change their destiny with a lot of different reasons, and surprisingly they can sit here for an hour and list out all the reasons why they cannot take challenge and change.

“Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning” 

People always believe that they will be failed before they even get started, it is like before you run the race, you think that you will lose and you don’t get it started.  Even though you run slow, if you start your first step, you will run to the finishing point one day. However, if you never start your first step, no matter how many years later, you are only still standing at the starting point but the people around you are already steps ahead you. Sometimes you do not know what will happen ahead after you step out your first step, but these experiences can help us to build a better self and we can learn from it. If you always stand on your original spot, you can never gain any experience or understand more about yourself. The fear inside you soul, the hesitation to try will hinder you from being successful.

“As soon as you start to pursue a dream, your life wakes up and everything has meaning”

It is also very interesting to see people believe strongly that they are going to fail before they actually get started. If they have faith in believing that they are not gonna succeed, why can’t they put faith in believing that they are going to succeed? It is also stated in a research that people are generally taking negative comments than positive ones because of insecurity. When you use the time on questioning yourself to make things happen, you are gonna be successful very soon. Successful is not as far as you imagine when you are determined to start. If you are determined to step out of your comfort zone, you are many steps closer to the goal of success.

“Follow the dreams, they know the way”

Lately, after I get in touch with a lot of people, I realized that for people who are looking for change and chance, they will open their ears to anything that can make them better. However, some of them want to try a new route, but their partners, friends and family just discourage them from trying. They cannot stand firm on their belief and easily being discouraged by negative comments, which lead them back off from the try. After seeing all the successful person in the history and the one around me, I realized that in order to success, you have great determination on what you belief and just go for your dreams. disney park is built after Walt Disney died, someone said it is so pathetic that he cannot witness his dream to be built. But Walt Disney said “I can already see Disney Park in my mind” when he was still alive. It is difficult to explain your dream to others, because they are not gonna agree with you or cannot see what they see. But always bare in mind that, it is important for us to see what we dream in our mind, and that is what it matters. It is because when you can see your dreams in your head, the people around you who have dreams will be influenced by you, so never stop dreaming.

 

 

Motivation needs a spark

 

“The strongest enemy in your life that hinder you from change is you”

How many times we are so passionate in making a change in our mind, but little chance that we have brought that into action. We have fantasy picture in our mind, thinking that if I have done this, I would have blah blah blah.However, in all these time, we are in lack of a spark to bring our thoughts into action. It is because the strongest enemy in your life that hinder you from changes is you, if you can step out of your comfort zone, you can start to change.

“The greatest hold up to your healing of your hang up is you”

We always have a lot of things that we are planned to do, for example, learn something new, expand our social circle, pick up a new habit. We know that these things are good to ourselves and we “want ” to make a change. However, take these thoughts into action require a spark, which provides you enough determination and strength to make a difference. I have been thinking to start a fitness-Instagram page for months, because being fit becomes my passion and I want to motivate people around me to stay healthy and fit. During these months, I cannot take this thought into actions because maintaining a page is sort of tiring, and requires you a lot of energy. Until this week, I realized that my befit journey actually can influence people around me to pick up their fitness journey, and some of my friends message me and asked where can I gym, how can I lose weight. Even more, one of the studio re-posted my workout photo in their Instagram page, and at that moment, I felt like what I am doing is worth it and actually can make a difference to myself and to others. Although I am not qualified to say that I am a professional trainer, I feel so satisfied about my gradual change physically and mentally. You do not have to compete with others about how far you go, because you are the only one you should be responsible for, not others. Until yesterday, I summoned up my courage, I opened a fitness Instagram for myself. I do not know if I can be successful in maintaining the page, but I know that if I do not try, I can never succeed. No matter what the result is, at least I tried and paid effort, I will not feel regret in the future of not doing that.

“No amount of darkness can hide a spark of light”

Sometimes, a spark in the darkness can light up the sky and give you direction about where you should go because with a tiny spark may burst a mighty flame. Whenever you get the spark and hold on to it, it is easier for you to follow the sign of light of your journey. The beginning is the hardest part because you have no idea about where to start. Bu when you have started, the rest become easy as you know the direction of where to go. But before that, find your spark, find the passion in your life that can keep you growing and glowing. A spark can come from the people around you , the places that you have been to or the message that you have read. The more you get in touch with various things, there are more sources of spark that you can explore. Trust yourself, and trust our Father will guide us the way that we want to go, he can give us strength and faith if we put our trust on him. John 8:12-  Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.”

 

 

Surrender

 

The world is a battleground, there are a lot of temptations which leads to taking mistakes and walk a wrong path. We realize that what we do are wrong, but most of us tend to diminish the fault which makes us feel better. Little of us will come to surrender to God, admitting all the faults and pathetic past that we had suffered.

Yet, we surrender is a painful process. We have to dig out all of our unwanted past, revealing every single details in your life that you want to hand them into God, as we human being have no strength in dealing them by ourselves. Those unwanted past consist of some emotion that we cannot corporate with, some pathetic unchanged memories which cause us pain and the act that we have done to hurt somebody which makes us feel guilt. Tackling any of them takes time and strength to do it, and most of us will give up in the mid-way of the process because direct facing those scars made us devastated and the wounds are still there. After a month since broke up, I felt like I had gone out of the past, I could finally forget the past that I had and can move on to my new life. However, I never thought that I was not actually fully recovered. Whenever there is a trigger, I actually will get emotional breakdown easily. My sister K in church told me, the scar is still here, just the wound now is recovered in the surface, but inside is still bleeding. What I need to do is to clear the deeply rooted dirt inside the wound in order to get myself recovered. The process is painful as we need to dig into the root of the problem first, bleed first, then the wound can heal. “Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”-Matthew 16:24-25 No matter how hard it is, I know that God will stay here with me if I can give myself completely to him.

In this period, I try so hard to change myself, through mindset to behavior. Until a point, I seem to lose a balance between creating the new path with new habits and the old one. The past is not always bad, the memories are not always torturing,  and when we are so focus on creating the future, we may have chance losing the people whom we care in the past, forgetting the good memories and experiences that we had. In order to keep getting better, I have to learn how to balance every parts of my life (my faith, my hobbies, my family, my work, my friends). If we can maintain good balance of life, we would never fall down again because all parts of my ME will inter-balance each other to make me in balance.  ^“13 Surrender your heart to God, turn to him in prayer,¹⁴ and give up your sins—even those you do in secret.¹⁵ Then you won’t be ashamed;you will be confident and fearless. “- Job 11:13-15

 

P.S. To my sister E, I want to apologize for the irresponsible action that I have made and I understand how bad it sounds like. You are one of the the important people in my life who helped me walk through the painful year, and I would never forget this in my life. With all the heartbreaking moment that I can have your accompany, and I feel so blessed that you are always here for me. You are in a place where nobody can replace, I know action speaks louder than words, and I will get better and better and better me! Love you forever 

Is the glass half empty or half full?

The expression “Is the glass half-full or half-empty?..” has for many years highlighted the tendency for two people to see the same situation in different ways. Which way you see the water level reach reflects what is your attitude towards things. Yet, for most of us, we see things in permissive way, we only see the cup is 1/2 empty instead of it is 1/2 full.

Imagine the cup is our energy, when you feel like you cup is 1/2 empty that your energy is halved in this case, you will feel yourself so tired to do anything because you are focus at the consumption of energy and you are diminishing. In contrary, when you feel like the cup is 1/2 full, you see the space to be filled with energy. In such case, you can see that yourself is getting better and growing stronger. The way of thinking actually affect what action we take. After I just broke up, it really seemed like the end of world for me and I was so reluctant to do anything. I just wanted to stay alone and lock myself in my own world and crying till the end of world and felt like I lost half of myself. However, this thought was not making me feel better, it just made me keep consuming remaining energy level until the cup is empty.

Since then, I realized I cannot be like that forever, I have to move on to my new page instead of being hauled by the past. After separated with my ex bf, I found that I have a lot of rooms for improvement to get myself become better. By change, I received god strength in helping me to fill in my energy cup. He provides me a lot of loving accountable partners in helping me get out of the shadow past, gives me strength in trying out new things, allows me to be a brand new ME. “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”-Isaiah 41:10 When your faith is strengthening, the way you see this world and the things around you is gonna change. When you see deadend, I see opportunities; when you feel hurt, I see recovery; when you feel defeated, I see improvement. No matter under what circumstances, see things in 1/2 full cup, and you will be motivated and know yourself is improving and heading to a positive way.

Influential Power

We, human being, are easily being affected by things happened around us, no matter it is good or bad. If we can make use of the influential power in a group, the positive energy in the group will power up; instead, if one of the people start spreading permissive message, the negative energy will also be spread around the group and causing the group spirit drops exponentially.

“Who you are with defines who you are” 

That is why our parents are so worried about the people who are around us, when you are with people who possess bad habits,  we have high chance in getting that bad habit too. Who you are with define who you are, it may not be true all the time, but it is a factual statement in most cases. When your friend circle is filled with people who like partying, having complicated relationship and crazy drinking habits, there is higher possibility for you to get into these habits. First, you have higher chance in knowing the existence of these habits, and in order to blend into the circle, you will try your first step in those activities. Sooner or later, the more you go to those activities, the easier you will get used to it and the less likely that you can get rid of those bad habits.

“Surround yourself with quality people can make you stronger”

Especially when you are choosing spouse, it is pretty important to observe his surrounding people, as like attracts each other, in order to be in the same circle, they must have basic common grounds to keep them together in the same circle. Also, when you observe his friend’s circle, you can better analyze what type of person he is in accordance to his criteria in choosing friends.This is an important factor which I have overlooked in my past relationship. Sometimes people can use words to cover their inner broken self, but action speaks louder than words, and it simply reflects what you think in your heart. In my past relationship, my ex bf friend circle is filled with party guys with complicated relationships, they always went crazy drinking and flirted with different girls. Even though he was not doing this, but his value would be easily being affected by his friend circle. One time he told me “I am already so good to you, I spend time with you every week. My friends always went partying and hooking up with few girls at a time, I think I am so good already”. I was like, isn’t it just basic commitment in a relationship, why you even put that on the table? The quality (especially mental quality) of the surrounding people is so important, in a a way that they will lift you up or pull you down.

When people of the same group are moving in the same direction, having the same goal, encouraging each other, it gonna pull everyone in the group up. Even if one of them is feeling permissive, he/she can be influenced by this positive energy and react positively. Instead, if some of the people in the group are easily give up and spread out negative message, these can affect the energy in the group and discourage the other people to react positively. A good accountable group can double up the power, whereas a bad accountable group can halve things down.

Tell your heart to beat again

How long have you not felt your heart beating vigorously on someone or something? Can you still remember how great it is when you feel passionate on something, your whole body is filled with energy and satisfaction? Or have you shut your heart down after you get hurt? (I did) And after we shut the door of our heart, we prevent any emotion from walk into our heart, because it is better to feel no emotion than feeling painful in the heart.

There must be a moment when you feel like you are shattered, and your heart is broken into thousands of pieces and you feel so strengthless to pick up all the pieces back to one. Few weeks ago, my heart was in broken pieces, I felt so painful that I cannot even function normally. To make myself feel a little bit better, I stopped my heart from beating, to avoid it to get hurt again. I began to lost interest in many things, lose passion in my work and lose connection with the world. Everyday after work, I rushed back home immediately, shut myself in the room and cried for whole night. I could cry when I took bus back home, I could cry when I was watching comedy, I could cry when I was having dinner. Your tears just came out automatically from your eyes, they are like the blood from the shattered heart. Honestly, it made me feel even worse, because I felt like my whole world was collapsed and I could never go back to be the “happy” me again, I could never love someone and being loved again. But somehow, sadness has an addiction, you just cannot stop yourself from torturing yourself mentally like this and it made you feel like it is the end of the world.

“Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the LORD” – Psalm 31:24 

By coincidence, I went to a church group on a Monday night and I still remembered the topic that night was “healing night”. At that moment, I realised that I need to be “healed” because my heart was so broken. And I made my prayer again lead by sister J after leaving, I felt my heart is connected when J touched my hand and pray. My heart felt so peaceful and at that time being, I knew that I should not stuck in the past anymore and all I need is to move on a new life, and be a better me. Since then, I start opening my door of heart bit by bit, my heart starts to beat again. When blood is gonna circulate through my body again, I have energy and motive in my life again. I start to put everything pack to pieces again, even better, I want to make it a stronger heart than before. I give my heart to our Father God, let him guide me through my healing process and allow him to live in my heart to give me courage and faith to overcome all the obstacles ahead. Whenever I feel strengthless, I pray that he can give me strength to keep going. He always gives us hope when we feel hopeless, give us courage when we feel weak and embrace us with his love when we feel lonely.

This is my favourite song these days, to anyone whose heart are broken before or now and get your heart BEAT again!

 

“Tell Your Heart To Beat Again”

You’re shattered
Like you’ve never been before
The life you knew
In a thousand pieces on the floor
And words fall short in times like these
When this world drives you to your knees
You think you’re never gonna get back
To the you that used to beTell your heart to beat again
Close your eyes and breathe it in
Let the shadows fall away
Step into the light of grace
Yesterday’s a closing door
You don’t live there anymore
Say goodbye to where you’ve been
And tell your heart to beat again

Beginning
Just let that word wash over you
It’s alright now
Love’s healing hands have pulled you through
So get back up, take step one
Leave the darkness, feel the sun
Cause your story’s far from over
And your journey’s just begun

Tell your heart to beat again
Close your eyes and breathe it in
Let the shadows fall away
Step into the light of grace
Yesterday’s a closing door
You don’t live there anymore
Say goodbye to where you’ve been
And tell your heart to beat again

Let every heartbreak
And every scar
Be a picture that reminds you
Who has carried you this far
‘Cause love sees farther than you ever could
In this moment heaven’s working
Everything for your good

Tell your heart to beat again
Close your eyes and breathe it in
Let the shadows fall away
Step into the light of grace
Yesterday’s a closing door
You don’t live there anymore
Say goodbye to where you’ve been
And tell your heart to beat again
Your heart to beat again
Beat again

Oh, so tell your heart to beat again

Healthy in mind, Healthy in body

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” – Romans 8:18

When time goes by, you will feel like health, both mentally and physically, is so important in our life. Our mental health will reflect in our physical condition, how healthy you are mentally, how strong you feel physically. We ‘burn’ with anger, ‘tremble’ with fear, feel ‘choked up’ with sadness; our ‘stomachs turn’ with revulsion. Everyone tends to experience unpleasant emotions as unpleasant bodily symptoms and thus to feel physically distressed when emotionally distressed.” That’s why, in order to keep us physically good, we have to deal with our mental health first.

Mental health is often being neglected by most of the people because they always relate mental health to negative things like emotional disorder, depression … However, mental health helps to strengthen our faith in our mind, and drive our physical action. Good mental health can be reflected in positive thinking, self control, strong determination and stress-less feel. When your mind starts to think positively, your body will react by doing constructive action , say exercises, healthy diet, get rid of bad habit because you realize that these things are harmful to your mental health. Of course, these physical action takes a lot of determination and self control, and these control are basically come from your mind. When your mental stage is healthy enough, you can identify good from bad, positive from negative.

‘Do not fear, for I am with you; Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’  – Isaiah 41:10

 

When your mental stage is unstable, you are putting yourself in danger and continue to dwell in into a stage which all things seem so negative to you. This thinking will reflect in your physical action. Two months ago, when my relationship nearly walked till the end, I felt so strengthless and always so stressful in my mind, I put so much burden in my mind and blame his fault and my fault in the relationship. I started to lose appetite (resulted in losing 2.5kg in two weeks), feel so tired (gave up exercise after work), bad quality of sleep (always had nightmare). My family doctor even suspected me having depressing and worried about my underweight problem will lead to disease. The more you think negatively, the deeper we dwell into a black hole of emotional disorder. I started to lose interest in things happened in my daily life, that I just want to lock myself up and did not want to hang out with people because I felt so tired in doing that. The less people I interacted with, the worse I was becoming because I felt so lonely. I felt so lonely that my ex-bf was not caring about me, people around me are not caring about me and everything just seem so dull and without color.

“I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” – Philippians 4:13

Until to a moment when God appears in my life, his glory shined in my heart. I still remember after my first night to Alpha, my heart was so peaceful and calm, which was actually the most peaceful moment that I have ever experienced in the past years. I felt like someone is taking my burden in my mind away, sharing all my bitterness that I experienced. I had a strong feeling in my mind that I should STOP hurting myself like that, everything is not worth it. Since then, I started to pick up regular exercises, writing this blog, reading more books, trying things that I have never tried before and I have good appetite (gain back 2.5kg in 2 weeks!!!) and sleep well now! When my mind starts to think positively, positive changes are happening in my body as well. However, to be honest, during the first week of changing, it is tough because it is the easiest moment for you to give up, and go back to where you were. That is why health mental strength is important that it gives you strength and perseverance to carry out all kinds of physical actions.

How To Have a Healthy Mind?

1. Being active

   Exercising makes you feel good and can help your mental health. It will also help you sleep better, and get the rest you need.

2.  
   

   Lower your alcohol intake

   Over use of alcohol can increase feelings of depression.

   Try not to dwell on past mistakes or negative things that have happened to you. We all make mistakes and stewing on things or worrying to excess will not change anything. Learn from the experience and be willing to move on.

   Be with people you enjoy being with and who make you happy.

3.  
   

   Connecting with friends and family

   Keep communicating and interacting, and tell those you trust how you are feeling if you’re going through tough times. Talking to others and seeking help early can be very helpful in reducing depression, anxiety and distress.

4. Keep learning

   To keep your mind both healthy and active learn a new sport, language, learn to play an instrument, read books and take an active interest in feeding your brain with positive information.

 

 

 

 

Hiding is never a solution

 

In the past, we often did a lot of wrong doings, that we felt so guilty about doing it but we have never confronted all the faults that we have done to ourselves. We always sneaked in a corner and turned ourselves away from all those problems, in the way that we do not have to deal with the problem anymore. However, as long as the problem is still there, we can never escape.

“Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters.” – Romans 14:1

Running away from the problem makes us feel better, because we can prevent ourselves from getting hurt when we have to confront the problem. I have been having some conflicts with my family since secondary school, but then when I moved to hall in university, I avoided direct conflict with them because I could always escape back to hall where I could hide all the problem which actually happened. But things just didnt get better because the problem has been there for years, and then the conflict is just kept rolling bigger. Whenever something irritate me in the relationship, I would get so emotionally unstable and this wound keep affecting me. The reason for that is I always felt like if I escape from all the problems, things might get better. However, the more we hide, the less courage we could have to deal with it. Frankly speaking, it is not a problem which can be fixed in a day or two, it requires me so many energy and faith in doing that.

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” – Galatians 2:20

When you are failed in one relationship, it actually has impact on another.It is because when you cannot deal good with one side of your emotion, you have high possibility in bring that thought or twisted mind into another relationship, which in turns hurting that relationship too. Change requires a lot of energy that it is not easily being done by one man, we have to give all of ourselves to god and he will guide us the way in making things back to right tract. For all the thing we need to do is to put our faith upon him.God always has his plan, for his people to put their faith on him and let Holy Spirit lives inside everyone of us.

 

Be Responsible For Every Decision

“People tend to wait to see if there is better alternative”

Through creating an event in facebook, people can choose to “go”,”not go” or “maybe” to an event. And it is quite surprising that the box “maybe” is being chosen the most among the others. What do you mean by “maybe” going ? It is like something you want to do it but it is not yet at your first priority, you want to wait to see if there is any other better choices later.

It is easy for us to find that when people are asking for gathering in many whatsapp groups , people’s responses are always like “not sure”, “may be okay” or “dont count me first, maybe available later”… and other excuses. However, when we really want to make ourselves to a gathering, we will try our best to arrange the time to go instead of giving uncertain answer or even ditch the group. One of the reason is people do not place the gathering/meet up in their first priority at that moment, and they want to see if there is any other alternatives which are better than the gathering, and then they will ditch the group meet up. Actually, if you really do not want to attend, we can simply tell your friends that you will not attend, and then your friends will not be disappointed.

“Your image is built on your action”

This delayed decision making affect our daily life and relationship with people around us too. There were a period of time, I tend to date different friends for gathering or agree to attend different events. I often promised to be there but didn’t really look into my calendar first or think of if I really want to be there. It turns out many of them are actually time-clashed, which means I have to forgive some of them that I have made my promise to go before. I felt sorry about rescheduling my friend’s date because I had to attend another which I think it was more important, this act was actually a terrible one. Not only my friend feel unhappy for the changed plan, but also make myself an irresponsible image.

“You are what you behave”

After knowing more about God, I realised that when we are responsible for the decision we made, then we can be more responsible to ourselves. Sometimes we ditched friend’s gathering because of many reasons like “I am so tired today”, “I forgot I had company event”. True, it is super easy for us to not doing something than keeping our own promises because keeping our own promise needs faith and strength. “You are what you behave”, your personal image is reflected by the action we took in our daily life. When you understand that your irresponsible action will actually result in bringing negative impact (disappointment) to others, that we won’t easily change our plan thereafter. When we can live up to what we said /promised, not only can we be responsible for others, bus also YOURSELF.

“Think before you promise”

When you promised something, please do it no matter how difficult it is. When we know that what we promised is far more than we can do it, next time you will make a wise choice or think more before you come to a decision. “But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” – 1 Timothy 5:8. Therefore, think twice before you come to make a decision and be responsible to every decision you made, as this is the way that you are responsible for yourself.

 

ForGIVE to forGET

“I forgive what you did”, it may be hardest sentence to be said in the world. Forgiveness is easy to say but hard to do, and it is not just a word to be spoken out, but an act to be felt in your heart. In most of the time, unforgiving a person makes us even feel more tragic because this feeling is gonna hinges on you mentally.

Try to look at the these two words again in this perspective, “for-GIVE” and “for-GET”,

for-Give: Give a chance for your enemies to be forgiven

for-Get: Get a new life and new heart after forgiving someone

First step in giving chance for forgiveness is heart, it requires a lot of mental strength and determination to do so. When someone did so much things to break you down, it is very hard for us to give them the chance to be forgiven.

WHY we are so reluctant to forgive someone?

Because sometimes we wrongly interpret the meaning of “forgiveness”. Many of us, me included, believe that forgiving someone means that we agree with their values and kind of encouraging them to do the wrong things on us again. Since we know that their values are wrong and what they did on us are terrible, we would not give them a chance to be forgiven. However, forgiveness is way more than that. We forgive someone for all the bad things they did on us do not mean that we agree with their behaviour, but learning how to love someone unconditionally.

“To be a christian means to forgive the inexcusable because GOD has forgiven the inexcusable YOU” 

Definitely, it is easier to say it than to work it out. It takes a very strong heart with a good mental strength to truly forgive someone from your heart, not from your mouth. First two weeks after I broke up, I felt so angry and I swore I would never forgive what he did on me. This extreme thinking actually causes much trouble on my mental health, I put so much energy in hating this guy, digging out all his bad doings to me and eventually put myself in a very dangerous situation – emotional breakdown.

“Forgive others not only because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve PEACE”

In recent two weeks, I am getting closer with GOD and receiving more wisdom taught by him. I understand that forgiveness is a powerful act, it can bring your heart to a very peaceful state. “You must make allowance for each other’s faults and forgive the person who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.”            – Col. 3:13. When we have the ability to forgive someone from your heart who bring wounds to us, we are getting to know how to really LOVE yourself in a good way. And after that, all the negative emotions will vanish and good things can enter into our heart eventually. he Lord says, “Forget what happened before and do not think about the past. I am going to do something new… I will make rivers on dry land.” Isaiah 43:18-19 (GW)