Recovering Heart

Hey Everyone!  I hope you all enjoyed the first post on this new series. I definitely enjoyed writing it and I hope it led to acknowledging your own need for rest. But it's not enough for us to stop at acknowledgment - change and action are needed.  When I was at my busiest and weakest, I noticed a few things about myself that I didn't like. I looked horrible! I was losing hair, I was breaking out in acne and my eczema would flare up. I didn't have enough sleep and grew designer bags under my eyes. I was not taking care of myself, I looked horrible and I was exhausted. I'm sure a lot of you can relate.  Without rest, we become monsters. We try to cover all these things with make up, drink more coffee, and put on a smile more often just to convince ourselves we still got it. But we all know it's not sustainable. We all know that it's not helping us. It won't grow us.  Even though I am a pastor's kid, I never knew or understood the importance of the Sabbat...

Hey everyone!  It's been a couple of minutes since the last post and I'm back! Super excited to be sharing on rest for the next few weeks and how God was speaking to me in this season.  The title of this new series is called "Intentional Rest". This whole idea sounds very contradictory. How can you do rest intentionally? How do you put effort into resting? Doesn't rest mean doing nothing? Why do I need to do it intentionally?  Like everyone else this year, my summer plans have been cancelled thanks to COVID-19. I was originally going to Australia for an immersion experience and I was really excited for it. I've waited for almost 3 years for this to happen. Honestly, it was one of the reasons why I choose to study English and Education.  I was really looking forward to this trip because I saw it as an opportunity for me to rest and have a little bit of an escape from life in Hong Kong. Over the past year, Hong Kong has gone through hardships and challenges and ...

Hey everyone!  This is the third, and final, chapter of Eat Your Heart Out, at least for now. In this post, I will be talking about body dysmorphia so if this topic does not sit well with you, I would suggest skipping this one and come back when I have new things up! It'll be soon! For those of you deciding to stay, enjoy! If you have been reading all my other posts, especially in this series, you'd know a little about me: 1) I care about my appearance, and 2) I did not have a good relationship with food. Well in this post, I will be sharing more of myself and my struggle with body dysmorphia. It is difficult for me to see myself objectively. The way I actually look in reality and how I see myself are very very different.  I remember telling myself "you won't fit in any of these dresses" when I went shopping for a graduation dress with my friend. I thought for sure that I was bigger than any of the sample sizes they had in the store. I didn't want to try any o...

Hey everyone,  I hope the last post spoke to you and helped you look into yourself, your past and think about how those experiences shaped you and what they can do to help you fulfil your purpose. Thank you for reading the last post and coming back for this one!  If you haven't seen the last post, the gist of it is this: I care about how I look, maybe a little too much. This is useful information haha  Despite having gone through a healing process, my eating disorder hasn't completely disappeared. There has been multiple occasions in the past 6 years when I would think to myself and say, "Oh, I feel awful today, I feel so fat. I'm just going to skip lunch for the next 3 days and I'll be fine." Before I know it, I would go a week without having lunch and I would justify it every single time.  Another contributor to this obsession is a messy incident that happened when I was younger. Long story short, it left me with the impression that I am only valuable when I...

Hi everyone!  This is the first chapter of my first series, Eat Your Heart Out. In this post, I will be talking about disordered eating and bullying so if you are sensitive to these topics, you might want to sit this one out. But otherwise, I hope this story can encourage those of you who have been through, or are going through, similar situations.  Growing up, I've always been classified as a bigger girl. In family gatherings, I would always hear my relatives saying "aww.. you're so cute, you're so chubby." Basically, being chubby and having a little more weight has always been considered a "funny" thing. While I didn't take every word to heart at first, hearing it constantly started to tear me down.  From a young age, I became very self-conscious and I always wanted to look pretty. I remember asking my mom to do my hair, playing dress up and wearing fancy princess clothes at birthday parties. I started comparing my body with other people and thinki...

Hi everyone,  I'm Kardia, a 20-year-old student based in Hong Kong! I'm starting this blog to help myself process and document the things I've been going through while sharing my testimony with my readers!  Recovering Heart was chosen as the title because this blog is a description of my journey in healing and recovering from my past hurts and wounds. I believe that in order for me to deal with them is by getting at its roots, which is my heart. Coincidentally, my name is also the Greek word for Heart (so yay!)  There are a few series/themes that I will be writing around. These series are centred around the healing and recovering journey I'm going on. Here are the three that I will be writing on in the near future:  Eat Your Heart Out: My recovery on disordered eating, body dysmorphia, working out and body image  Intentional Rest:  My journey in recognising the Sabbath as a workaholic Undignified Worship:  My growth as a worship team member and worship...