“You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.” – Isaiah 26:3
They say, “When you make plans, the universe laughs.” And honestly? I believe it.
Looking back on my life, I’ve mostly lived in the moment. My friend Asal believed in fate. If we couldn’t decide what to do on a Friday night, she’d flip a coin. Go out or stay in? This bar or that one? Heads we dance, tails we watch movies. We let the universe decide. And most nights, we ended up wherever the coin told us. Not because the coin had some magical power—but because we trusted that no matter where we went, we’d have a good time together.
Flipping a coin seems silly, but maybe it reflects what we do every day. We gamble—on love, on trust, on our own ability to survive hardship. We flip the coin, knowing the outcome might be awful… and hoping it might be beautiful.
Life, like golf, rarely goes how we plan. If you've ever played a round, you know what I mean. There are shots that land you in places you never intended to be—deep rough, tree lines, behind a boulder, or just buried in a sand trap. I like hitting out of trouble. It sounds weird, I know. But there’s something about it that appeals to me.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been in trouble in life too, and somehow always found a way to swing through it.
In golf, you’ve got two choices: the safe shot or the hero shot.
If I take the safe shot, chip it back into the fairway, I’m probably walking away with a bogey or double bogey. It’s fine. Safe. Predictable. But sometimes, when I’m feeling bold—or stubborn—I go for it. That ridiculous shot between branches, over a pond, under pressure. I tell myself, “You’ve got this.”
And sometimes? I make that miraculous shot. And other times? I shank it right into the woods. But that’s life, isn’t it? You do your best, and you take the risk.
Sometimes, I end up with the same score either way. But the shot—the experience—is different. And that’s the point. It’s not always about the scorecard. It’s about the journey.
When I think about those coin flips with Asal, I realize it was never about the destination. It was about the journey we took together.
Even if we ended up at a dive bar with bad music and weird vibes, we laughed, we talked, we shared stories in the car. One night, while I was driving us somewhere, she said to me, “You need to treat me like a carton of eggs. Like a precious package you need to get from one place to another. Because I am. I’m a gift.”
Yes, yes you were, Asal.
To this day, I still think about that when someone is in the passenger seat. It’s those little moments—those comments you don’t expect to remember—that end up shaping how you live.
If I’d made different choices, my life would be very different. If I hadn’t finished college. If I hadn’t left California. If I’d said yes instead of no, or no instead of yes.
People say every experience is meant to prepare you for what’s next, that life is a series of levels we’re trying to move through. My roommate says that’s just a narrative we create to make life feel less meaningless. And maybe she’s right.
But I still believe there’s something to it. Some of it, anyway. There has to be.
I’ve been trying to let go of expectations. Of myself. Of others. If I don’t expect anything, I’m not disappointed. But that’s also a bit of a trap. Because it’s sad to think I expect so little from people.
And yet, expectations can be dangerous. They can lead us to demand things from others that they were never meant to give us. They can lead to resentment. To pain.
So here I am. Trying to live without attachments to outcomes. To people. To “stuff.”
Letting go doesn’t come easy. But no one gets out of this alive. And maybe the only thing we can control is how we move through it.
We are always so quick to move on. From past hurts. From trauma. From pain.
I was on the phone with a friend recently. She kept apologizing for having needs. For being “too much.” For wanting more from people in her life. And I stopped her.
Stop apologizing for having needs.
"These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them." - Rumi
We’ve been conditioned to feel shame when we’re vulnerable. To keep our pain private so no one feels uncomfortable. But pain doesn’t go away just because we ignore it. In fact, it settles into our bodies, into our breath, into our bones.
Unfelt pain becomes disease. Or “dis-ease,” as the self-help gurus say. And it’s real. It builds as cortisol. Stress. Anxiety.
At 50, I’m realizing how much stress I carry—even when I look calm. When I went to the ED with appendicitis, my blood pressure was sky-high, but my heart rate was low. The nurse asked if I was an athlete. I said, “I golf.” I guess after a lifetime of emotional and physical pain, I’ve trained my body to stay calm even in crisis.
But honestly? I don’t want to just be good at managing pain. I want peace.
Peace in my body. Peace in my mind. Peace in the world.
That would be nice. That would bring me joy.
Lenten Reflection: Let Go to Find Peace
Lent reminds us that control is not the goal.
We don’t always get the life we planned. But sometimes, we get something deeper—a story with roots, with scars, with grace.
🔹 What expectations am I clinging to that no longer serve me?
🔹 Who do I need to release to reclaim my peace?
🔹 What pain have I refused to feel—and what might it be trying to teach me?
This season, may we allow ourselves to feel everything—and let it pass through.
May we be bold enough to risk the hero shot. And wise enough to know that sometimes, just being here is more than enough.
📖 Read more at: flanneldiaries.com (link in bio).
“When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed.” – Mother Teresa
Shame is Dangerous.
It ruins lives. It breaks relationships. It destroys families. It kills people.
It took me a long time to process the death of my friend, Asal, and even longer to confront the lies we tell ourselves when someone chooses to take their own life. We comfort ourselves with false narratives—that we couldn’t have done anything, that we didn’t see the signs, that they wouldn’t have accepted our help.
But the truth is, we miss things—because sometimes, we need to miss them. We compartmentalize suffering to avoid disrupting our own comfort. We don’t want our “normal” to be affected. We don’t want other people’s struggles to disrupt our “happy.”
The Normalization of Cruelty.
Nothing is normal right now. But we are trying to normalize cruelty.
We are watching funding for education, healthcare, food assistance, and social safety nets disappear. Watching our government strip resources from the most vulnerable while handing tax breaks to billionaires.
Who are we?
How did we get to a place where half the country is okay with taking food out of children's mouths so the ultra-wealthy can hoard more? How do people not understand that the economy doesn’t function without people, labor, and purchasing power? Not corporations. Not GDP figures. People.
I actually took an economics course. Unlike many with opinions online, I’ve studied the real impact of privatizing public goods.
And let me tell you: it is the worst idea ever.
I come from a country where corruption thrives through the privatization of public resources. Where government officials line their pockets while citizens live in poverty, desperate for basic services. The class divide in the Philippines is staggering. And now, we are watching our own country head in the same direction.
And what happens when it all collapses?
Unlike banks, I don’t believe this administration will be willing to bail out its citizens when the crash comes. Because it will come. That’s what happens when you elect leaders who don’t care about your well-being. Leaders who tell you to blame marginalized communities for your struggles instead of looking at the actual systems that are exploiting all of us. It doesn’t take an advanced degree to see what’s happening. Just life experience.
The Weight of Shame & The Lies We Tell Ourselves:
People blame others for their mistakes because they fear being seen as lacking. We are terrified of being judged. We convince ourselves we are good people who don’t care about status or wealth. But we live in a society that judges poverty as a moral failing. We look at unhoused people and assume their situation is their fault—as if capitalism isn’t a machine built on exploiting labor while paying the bare minimum. Some people simply aren’t built for this system.
Most of us who do keep playing the game are barely surviving it. We’re lucky to have weekends to lie face-down in bed, recovering from exhaustion.
Why do we care so much about how people ended up in poverty? We know how. The better question is: What are we doing to help them? The truth? It doesn’t cost much. In fact, it costs more to criminalize poverty and incarcerate people than it does to provide housing, food, and social services.
And yet, people fight against solutions because they don’t want a few pennies of their tax dollars to go toward helping others.
Christians say they follow Jesus, yet they actively want to harm the least among us. It’s disgusting. It’s hypocritical. And I don’t blame people for running away from religion when the loudest voices in faith communities are the ones using their Bibles as weapons while committing the very sins they preach against.
I don’t have patience for it anymore.
My Rage is Justified.
I am angry.
I have so much rage inside me.
But unlike those who refuse to take accountability, I am willing to own my mistakes. I want to be better. I want to do better—for myself and for those who come after me. Not because of some false performative Christianity. But because it’s what it means to be a decent human being.
If we stripped away capitalism, what would be left?
What would we value if it wasn’t tied to our productivity or our bank accounts?
Because at the end of the day, we all have an expiration date. We can’t take wealth with us. The only thing that remains is the legacy we leave behind.
So the question is: What kind of legacy do we want to leave? One built on hate, greed, and cruelty? Or one built on love, generosity, and justice?
This is your choose-your-own-adventure moment. What path will you take?
Lenten Reflection: A Call to Justice:
Proverbs 31:8-9 – “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.”
Lent is about transformation. It is about letting go of selfishness and leaning into justice.
🔹 Where have I been silent when I should have spoken up?
🔹 What am I willing to sacrifice to make the world better?
🔹 Am I actively living out my values—or just speaking about them?
At the end of it all, what will truly matter?
The answer isn’t wealth. It isn’t status. It’s how we treat one another.
📖 Read my Lenten Reflections: flanneldiaries.com (link in bio).
Philippians 3:13-14 – “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
It’s not just about letting go of the bad stuff. It’s about figuring out what good things should take its place.
Am I just projecting past childhood hurts? Maybe. I love candy—who doesn’t? But I knew I needed to cut back on sugar. So, I made a deal with myself: if I work out for an hour, I get to have dessert. I know that’s not how it works, but isn’t that what we do? We negotiate—allowing bad habits if we balance them with good ones. That’s not really how it works.
Maybe I’m the problem.
I’ve been in a lot of relationships—each significant in its own way. A friend once told me dating is like stepping on rocks to cross a river. But the way she described it stuck with me: imagine that the rocks are the tops of the heads of the women you’ve dated. Each one gets you closer to the other side, to the person you’re meant to be with. At the time, I thought it was a dark but interesting visual.
Jessica, my friend who told me this, was in her early thirties—one of those sporty butches who dated a lot. We played on a women’s softball league together. That’s how we met. I was bartending at Triple Rock, one of the first microbreweries in the Bay Area. The team would come in, order pitchers of beer and plates of nachos. Their captain kept trying to recruit me to play, even though I had a terrible throwing arm. I could hit a ball, but my aim? Garbage.
Eventually, I gave in—mostly because I thought I needed more women friends. I was still with my girlfriend at the time. We broke up while I was still playing on the team.
We started out as the worst team in the league. By my third year on the team, we won our division.
That’s the thing—I believe in teamwork. I believe every person’s role is important. If one person doesn’t do their part, someone else has to pick up the slack. That happens in relationships, too.
I take full responsibility for my part in any breakup. Maybe I wasn’t the reason we broke up, but I know I participated in the downfall. Either I didn’t do enough, or I did too much. Maybe our shitty dynamic was the reason we didn’t work.
Life feels complicated right now. Sometimes, I don’t know how to move through painful emotions. So, I just sit in them. Feel sorry for myself. I regret things. I replay memories and hate how I treated some of my exes—or how they treated me.
People say, “I didn’t see the breakup coming.” But is that really true? Either you had terrible communication, or you were lying to yourself. Because if you’re observant, if you’re honest, there’s always a feeling in your gut.
Most of us ignore it.
For years, I disregarded my gut feelings because I didn’t trust them. Trauma will do that to you. But as I get older, I’m learning to differentiate between fear and intuition. Is this a fear response? Or is my intuition telling me what I already know? I’ve learned to listen to my body. It tells me what’s right, what’s wrong, and what direction I need to go.
Back to the rocks across the river analogy. I think, at this point, I have enough rocks to get across.
Lenten Reflection: Embracing the New
Lent isn’t just about giving things up. It’s about making space for something better.
🔹 What habits or beliefs am I holding onto that no longer serve me?
🔹 What do I need to replace them with?
🔹 How can I trust my own wisdom, experience, and intuition as I move forward?
Lent is a season of reflection, surrender, and renewal.
It’s time to stop stepping on rocks and start walking forward with confidence.
📖 Read my Lenten Reflections: flanneldiaries.com (link in bio).
