Moons ago, I was invited to be one of the speakers for the annual summer youth camp of the Light of Jesus Youth Missions called “Camp Calye”, with the theme “Unafraid”. I was momentarily stymied because, for me, when we talk about trials, we talk about pain. And I knew from the get-go that for me to be able to form a material and deliver the talk, I would have to delve into my own history of wounds which I have already kept under lock and key, and let them unfurl for the world to see.

Lest I might get into a huge emotional mess, I was in a tug-of-war with my higher self whether to accept the invitation or not. Spoiler alert: I said “Yes!” (Wow! I just did. For the first time in ages. Hahaha! A’ight, scrap this not-so-well-placed pun.)

Let me first get one thing straight: I was no self-help manuscript come to life. I was just an adrenaline-junkie who prepared for her talk three hours before the schedule—experienced the paralysis by analysis and vied with her pesky self-doubts.

Being tasked to discuss about “Purposes of Trials: Facing the Fear of Getting Hurt”, I zeroed in on the things that I learned in hindsight from my personal trials since forever ago. Including, among others, are as follow:

1. What you think is your problem is not really your problem. Your problem is always the response to your problem.

2. Things that steal our peace:
    a) When circumstances are uncontrollable
    b) When people are unchangeable
    c) When problems are unexplainable
       *Well, I’ve got news for you. You have a series of problems in your life so you got to learn to find peace in the middle of your problems or you are never going to find peace.

3. Instead of asking “Why me, Lord? Why is this happening to me?”, ruminate on “What do you want to teach me, Lord, to this?” because every problem could be a stepping stone to spiritual maturity.

4. God never intended for your life to just be an easy coast because you would never trust Him.

5. Purposes of trials:
  a)   God wants to educate you through problems.
       *Life is a school and problems are the curriculum.
      *God’s ultimate goal for your life on earth is not comfort, but character development.

  b)   God uses problems to draw you closer to Himself.
       *It is during suffering that we learn to pray our most authentic, heartfelt, honest-to-God prayers.
       *You’ll never know that God is all you need until God is all you’ve got.
       *We learn things about God in suffering that we can’t learn any other way.

  c)   God uses problems to direct you, point you in a new direction, and give you a different path.
        *Redirection, not rejection

  d) God allows you to go through trials, tribulations and problems so that you will be able to comfort and help others who go through the same circumstance.
         *Use your wounds to heal others

6. The darkness hides the true size of fears and trials. The truth is they are more shadow than reality, so they seem bigger in the dark. When the light shines into the places where they live inside you, you start to see them for what they are.

7. “When all you can see is your pain, then perhaps you lose sight of me?” – Papa (The Shack)

At this point, I leave you up in the air about how things went from there.

But there’s one thing I have come to realize thereafter: There is no closure without disclosure.