Finally, my white blouse (which I happened to be wearing) is in Meg Magazine! And DJ (our beloved hundred year old oven) is in it, too!  When I posted the preview photo last month of the fun photoshoot at the shop, friends were drawn to… the blouse! Heehee.

The Meg team is a great, hardworking, inspiring team. But their day got stretched from the domino effect of traffic plus earlier appointments so the interview portion was compressed, the writer had to rush right after.  It’s my fault I talked too much. Too many words to sift through.

So to clarify… my sister, Joy, shared her love for baking with me not when I was in college but when I was a child.

Today, in seeking to be hands on as a small-scale entrepreneur in a restaurant setting, there are sometimes simultaneous, important, urgent goals to be addressed: employ good business practices, seek profitability, aim for highest quality, see to staff, develop and improve systems and standards, implement controls, get customer feedback, innovate, be creative; don’t be princessy but dig in to work. There are daily changes, checks, contracts, complaints and evolving concerns… Whew! Nakaka-swangit ang stress!  But I’m kikay pa! Though parachefing makes me smell like onions, I don’t want to look like onions. 😃 So while I strive for excellence in what I do, I need to breathe and be intentional about finding my center in God through my quiet time with Him daily, recharge on my rest day, and make sure I don’t wear myself out to get rich because God grants sleep to those He loves.  An underlying hierarchy of priorities runs through my mind:  God, husband, children, work, ministries, social.  That’s the guide I imperfectly seek to follow daily.

[During the Meg interview, the bold part got edited out due to space constraints but it puts the proper context:]

Every day, I try to seek that victory to do what God wants me to do.  Where am I? 60%? God knows exactly where I am... 

Eugene Peterson, in his translation of the above verse:

Focused on the Goal
12-14 I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.

This is what I want to say:

I fall short of God’s standard daily.

I see… my natural inclination to be candidly…foolish

… the moments when I should just stamp “Palpak (Failure)” on my forehead

…my need for wisdom and direction

… my glaring need for God.

I haven’t attained that victory but it is my aspiration.

I have the default tendency to go ahead of God, gravitating towards what’s foolish and selfish, then make messes along the way.  So as a slow work-in-progress, whenever I can, I stop and ask God to override me, help me, teach me, guide me.  It doesn’t mean I’m there.  I know for a fact that I’m not.  I still have a long way to go.  But like the apostle Paul, I am trusting that God will complete the good work He began in me, that day by day He makes me new in Christ. His Spirit who knows everything, can do everything is available and with my submission to Him, He is able to use an imperfect, broken person like me because it is precisely through the cracks that His light can shine.