ယွၤလဲလိာ်ကွံာ်ယတၢ်နံၤကမှံအလီအပျီၢ် ဆူတၢ်နံၤကမှံအနီၢ်ကီၢ်ဒီးဃံလၤ ~ God Turned My Fake Smiles into Real and Beautiful Smiles

အနွံ ၄၇

ယွၤလဲလိာ်ကွံာ်ယတၢ်နံၤကမှံအလီအပျီၢ် ဆူတၢ်နံၤကမှံအနီၢ်ကီၢ်ဒီးဃံလၤ

မးသဲ ၁၁:၂၈-၃၀ – ‘‘ပှၤလၢတၢ်ဘှံးအသး, ဒီးဝံတၢ်ယိးတၢ်ဃၢခဲလၢာ်သ့ၣ်သုဧၢ, ဟဲဆူယအိၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဒီးယကဒုးအိၣ်ဘှံး သုလီၤ. ဟံးထီၣ်ယနီၣ်ယိးဘိလၢသုလိၤ, ဒီးမၤလိတၢ်လၢယၤတက့ၢ်. အဂ့ၢ်ဒ်အံၤ, ယသးစူၤ, ဒီးယသးဆီၣ်လီၤယသးလီၤ. ဒီးသုကထံၣ်န့ၢ်တၢ်အိၣ်ဘှံးလၢသုအဂီၢ်လီၤ. အဂ့ၢ်ဒ်အံၤ, ယနီၣ်ယိးဘိမ့ၢ်အညီ, ဒီး ယတၢ်ဝံတၢ်ယိးမ့ၢ်အဖှံလီၤ.’’                              

တၢ်လဲၤထီၣ် ‘တၢ်မုၢ်လၢ်အတၢ်လဲၤကျဲ’ တၢ်မၤလိဒီးတၢ်မၤသီက့ၤသး မ့ၢ်တၢ်လဲၤခီဖျိလၢအဆီတလဲယတၢ်အိၣ်မူန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယလဲၤတၢ်တဘျီအံၤ ယတၢ်မုၢ်လၢ်တအိၣ်အါအါဘၣ်. သနာ်က့, ဖဲယဟဲက့ၤအခါ ယအိၣ်ပှဲၤဒီးတၢ်သးခုလီၤ. ယမံၤမ့ၢ် ထူကိၢ်လိၣ် ဒီး ယသးအိၣ် ၁၅နံၣ်လီၤ. ယထီၣ်တီၤထီကၠိအဆိကတၢၢ်တနံၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲယအိၣ်လၢတီၤခၢၣ်သးကၠိအခါ, တၢ်ကီခဲ ဝဲယဂီၢ်ဒိၣ်မးလီၤ. ယအိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်ကိၢ်တၢ်ဂီၤ, တၢ်သူၣ်ဟးဂီၤသးဟးဂီၤ, တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်တၢ်အါတလၢ, ဒီး တၢ်သးဘၣ်တံာ်တာ် န့ၣ်လီၤ. ယစးထီၣ်အိၣ်လီၤဖးလၢယတံၤသကိး, ယတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်, ဒီး ယဟံၣ်ဖိဃီဖိဒၣ်လဲာ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ယသ့ၣ်နီၣ်လၢကိးမုၢ်နၤ ယနုာ်လီၤဆူလီၢ်မံပှဲၤဒီး မဲာ်ထံမဲာ်နိလီၤ. ယဟီၣ်တုၤလၢယမံဘၣ်ယသးလီၤ. လၢခံတနံၤ, တၢ်လၢယကဘၣ်မၤန့ၣ်ယမၤယဲ ဒီး မၤဖျါယသးဒ်တၢ်မုာ်တၢ်ခုၣ်ဒီးယၤလီၤ. ယတတဲပှၤနီၤတဂၤလၢယတၢ်တူၢ်ဘၣ်ဘၣ်. မ့ၢ်လၢယပျံၤလၢပှၤကစံၣ်ညီၣ်ယၤ, ကကွၢ် တလီၤယၤ, အဆိကမိၣ်ယပျုၢ် န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲယတုၤဆူတီၤထီကၠိန့ၣ်, တၢ်ဟဲနးထီၣ်လီၤ. ယကျဲးစၢးလဲၤခီဖျိတနံၤဘၣ်တနံၤ ဒီးယပာ်တၢ်ခဲလၢာ်လၢယသးပူၤလီၤ.  

ယတံၤသကိးအါဂၤဆဲးလီၤအမံၤလၢကလဲၤဆူ camp လီၤ. ယတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်ခိၣ်နၢ်, သရၣ်သမါ, ဘူးတံၢ်, ဒီးတံၤသကိးတဖၣ် ကွဲယၤလီၤ. ယဆိကမိၣ်ဝံၤဆိၣ်ကမိၣ်က့ၤအဘျီဘျီဝံ, လၢခံကတၢၢ်ယဆဲးလီၤယမံၤလီၤ. ဖဲပလဲၤတုၤဆူ camp န့ၣ် ပမၤဘၣ် တၢ်အါမံၤလီၤ. ပလိာ်ကွဲဘၣ် zipline, ဖျၢၣ်စံၣ်ပိလိ, ဖျၢၣ်ပှီၢ်, ဖျၢၣ်ထူ, ဒီး တၢ်အဂၤတဖၣ်လီၤ. ပကိးပသူသးဝံၣ်စံးထီၣ်ပတြၢၤ ယွၤ, ပကနၣ်တၢ်ကစီၣ်တဖၣ်, ဒီး ပထုကဖၣ်ဒ်သိးသိးလီၤ. မ့ၢ်ဝဲနွံကတၢၢ်အနံၤတဖၣ်လၢအမုာ်ဒိၣ်မးလၢယဂီၢ်လီၤ. ပမၤလိဘၣ် လၢခရံာ်အဲၣ်ဒိးကူစါမၤဘျါပှၤခဲလၢာ်ဒီးအဲၣ်ဒိးဟ့ၣ်ဝဲတၢ်သူၣ်မုာ်သးမုာ်လီၤ. ယကမၢကမၣ်လၢယွၤထိၣ်ဟူးထိၣ်ဂဲၤယသး ဖဲ တၢ်ဘါထုကဖၣ်အဆၢကတီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ခိၣ်နၢ်မၢပှၤလၢပကဟံးန့ၢ်လံာ်က့ဖိတဖၣ်အိၣ်ဒီးသးအက့ၢ်အဂီၤ ဒီးပကကွဲးလီၤပတၢ်တူၢ် ဘၣ်တဖၣ်လီၤ. အဝဲတဲလၢအါစုအါဘျီပဖျါဂ့ၤလၢအချၢသနာ်က့ လၢပသးအပူၤန့ၣ်တၢ်ဘၣ်ဒိဘၣ်ထံးဒီးတၢ်အိၣ်ကအိသးန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယပလၢၢ်ဘၣ်လၢအဝဲတဲယဂ့ၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ယပျံၤလၢယကဘၣ်ကွဲးလီၤ ယတၢ်ကိၢ်တၢ်ဂီၤ, တၢ်သူၣ်ဟးဂီၤသးဟးဂီၤ, တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ် တၢ်အါတလၢ, ဒီး တၢ်သးဘၣ်တံာ်တာ်သနာ်က့သးစီဆှံအတၢ်မၤစၢၤယၤအဃိယကွဲးလီၤခဲလၢာ်ဒီးပဘါထုကဖၣ်သကိးလီၤ. လီၢ် ခံကတၢၢ်တနၤဖဲ camp န့ၣ်ယဘၣ်တၢ်မၤဘျါယၤလၢကစၢ်ခရံာ်အတၢ်အဲၣ်လီၤ. ပအိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်ထံဘါထုကဖၣ်တၢ်အဆၢ ကတီၢ်လၢပနဲဖိတဖၣ်လီၤ. ခိၣ်နၢ်ကွဲမုာ်ပှၤလၢပကဘံၣ်လီၤအမဲာ်ချံဒီးထံၣ်မှံလၢပဒိးဘၢးစ်လၢအဆှၢပှၤဆူယွၤအအိၣ်လီၤ. ယပ လၢၢ်ဘၣ်လၢယထံၣ်ဘၣ်ယွၤမဲာ်သကိးမဲာ်ဒီးယအိၣ်လၢအဂီၤထံးလီၤ. ခိၣ်နၢ်သဆၣ်ထီၣ်ပခံလၢပကလဲၤစိာ် ပတၢ်တူၢ်ဘၣ်, ပတၢ် ဝံဃၢ ဒီး ပတၢ်ကိၢ်တၢ်ဂီၤဆူယွၤအအိၣ်လီၤ. ယနၢ်ဟူယဲကစၢ်ယွၤကတိၤတၢ်ဒီးယၤကသွံဒံ, ‘‘နတၢ်ကိၢ်တၢ်ဂီၤ, တၢ်သူၣ်ဟးဂီၤ သးဟးဂီၤ, တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်တၢ်အါတလၢ, ဒီး တၢ်သးဘၣ်တံာ်တာ်တဖၣ်ဟါမၢ်လၢာ်လံ.’’ ယကနၣ်ယွၤအကလုၢ်ဒီးယမဲာ်ထံယွၤလီၤ ဝဲလီၤ. ယကမၢကမၣ်လၢယွၤအဂီၤထံးန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယပလၢၢ်ဘၣ်လၢတၢ်မၤဘျါယၤခဲလၢာ်ခဲဆ့လီၤ. ယတအိၣ်ဒီး တၢ်ကိၢ်တၢ်ဂီၤ, တၢ်သူၣ်ဟးဂီၤသးဟးဂီၤ, တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်တၢ်အါတလၢ, ဒီး တၢ်သးဘၣ်တံာ်တာ်တဖၣ်လၢၤဘၣ်. ယတလၢတပှဲၤသနာ်က့, အခဲ အံၤယဟ့ၣ်နီၤလီၤယတၢ်နံၤကမှံဖိလၢတၢ်သးခုဒီးတၢ်သးမုာ်လၢယသးပူၤလီၤ. လၢညါန့ၣ်ယလီနံၤကမှံယဲလီၤ. အခဲအံၤ, ယနံၤ ကမှံနီၢ်ကီၢ်လၢတၢ်သ့ၣ်ညါလၢယွၤအဲၣ်ယၤဒီးမၤဘျါယၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယဟ့ၣ်ခီဟ့ၣ်နီၤဘၣ်ယတၢ်အုၣ်သးအံၤလၢယတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်ပူၤ စ့ၢ်ကီးန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယွၤမၤဘျါယၤလီၤ. ယွၤမၤဘျါ နတၢ်တူၢ်ဘၣ်, နတၢ်ဝံဃၢ, ဒီး တၢ်ဟဲဆီၣ်သနံးနၤတဖၣ်သ့လီၤ. ပယွၤပကစၢ် မ့ၢ်ယွၤလၢအအဲၣ်ပှၤဒီးအသူၣ်အိၣ်သးအိၣ်ပှၤလီၤ. အဝဲအဲၣ်ဒိးမၤဘျါနၤဒီးဟ့ၣ်နၤသးအတၢ်မုာ်လီၤ. ယိၤဘး ၂၂:၂၁ စံး, ‘‘ရ့လိာ်နသးဒီးယွၤတက့ၢ်, ဒီးနကအိၣ်မုာ်လီၤ. အန့ၣ်သတးဒီးတၢ်ဂ့ၤကဘၣ်နၤလီၤ.’’

နီၢ်ထူကိၢ်လိၣ်
ဖံးန့းက်စ်, အရံၣ်စိနါကီၢ်စဲၣ်

တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်ထံမၤဘၣ်ထွဲက့ၤတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါလၢပတၢ်အိၣ်မူ

ပဖးဘၣ်ထူကိၢ်လိၣ်ဖိအဂ့ၢ်ဒီးပသ့ၣ်ညါဘၣ်လၢအဝဲတူၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ထဲတဂၤအလါတဖၣ်အလါလီၤ. အါစုအါဘျီ ပဆိကမိၣ် လၢပဖိတဖၣ်တကြၢးသးဘၣ်တံာ်တာ် သးဟးဂီၤမ့ၢ်လၢအဝဲသ့ၣ်တလဲၤခီဖျိဘၣ်တၢ်ဒ်ပလဲၤခီဖျိတ့ၢ်အဃိလီၤ. ပဆိကမိၣ်စ့ၢ်ကီးလၢ တၢ်အိၣ်မူလၢကီၢ်အမဲရကၤန့ၣ်ဂ့ၤဒိၣ်အဃိ ပဖိသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်တကြၢးပလၢၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ဆီၣ်သနံးအီၤဘၣ်. တၢ်မ့ၢ်တၢ်တီတခီမ့ၢ်ဝဲ ပှၤခဲလၢာ်ပလၢၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ဆီၣ်သနံးလၢအတၢ်အိၣ်မူအပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ပမ့ၢ်ထံၣ်ဆံးထံၣ်စှၤပဖိတဖၣ် အတၢ်တူၢ်ဘၣ်အဃိ တၢ်ခွဲးတၢ်ယာ်လၢ ပကအဲၣ်ဘၣ်အီၤ, ပကမၤစၢၤဘၣ်အီၤ, ဒီး ပကပာ်ဖျါဘၣ်ခရံာ်အတၢ်အဲၣ် လဲၤပူၤကွံာ်ပှၤသ့န့ၣ်လီၤ.  

တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်တဖၣ် အဲၣ်အါထီၣ် မၤစၢၤအါထီၣ် ပဖိသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်ကသ့ဒ်လဲၣ်.
ပဖိတဖၣ်မ့ၢ်ခါဆူညါတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်ဧါ. ပဖိတဖၣ်မ့ၢ်တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်အခဲအံၤဧါ.

တၢ်ထုကဖၣ်လၢပှၤဖးတၢ်ဖိအဂီၢ်

ယွၤဧၢ, ဝံသးစူၤဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤဘၣ်နဖိတဂၤအံၤလၢအဖးဝဲတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါအံၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဝံသးစူၤသူအီၤဒ်သိးကမ့ၢ်ဝဲ နတၢ်ပီးတၢ် လီလၢအရၤလီၤနတၢ်အဲၣ်တၢ်သးကညီၤဆူပှၤသးစၢ်ဖိသၣ်တဖၣ်အအိၣ်န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဖဲစိၤတစိၤဒီးတစိၤအတၢ်လီၤဟိအလီၢ်န့ၣ် မ်အဝဲကပာ်ဖျါနတၢ်သးကညီၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဖဲ ကျိာ်အတၢ်လီၤဆီလိာ်သးအိၣ်အလီၢ်န့ၣ် မ်အဝဲကကတိၤနတၢ်အဲၣ်အတၢ်ကတိၤ န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဝံသးစူၤဟ့ၣ်ဘၣ်လီၤတၢ်ကူၣ်သ့ကူၣ်ဖး ဒီး တၢ်ဒိသူၣ်ဒိသး ဒ်သိးကဘျးစဲအသးဒီးပှၤသးစၢ်သ့ၣ်တဖၣ် လၢတၢ်အဲၣ် ဒီးတၢ်မ့ၢ်တၢ်တီအပူၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဝံသးစူၤပၢၤနဖိသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်အသးဒီးအတၢ်ဆိကမိၣ် လၢမုၣ်ကီၤလံၢ်အတၢ်ဒိၣ်ဘၢအီၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်.  မၤစၢၤပှၤဒ်သိးပကသ့ၣ်ညါနၢ်ပၢၢ်လၢ ပဖိတဖၣ်မ့ၢ် တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ် အခဲအံၤ, ဒီးတမ့ၢ်ထဲ ခါဆူညါတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်အစုဒုၣ်စုတီၤဘၣ်န့ၣ် တက့ၢ်. လၢခရံာ်အမံၤ ယဃ့နၤလီၤ. အၤမ့ၣ်.

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Week 47

GOD TURNED MY FAKE SMILES INTO REAL AND BEAUTIFUL SMILES

Matthew 11:28-30 – “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (WEB)

Going to the Journey of Hope Retreat in July 2021 was life-changing for me. I went there without expecting much, but came home as a new person filled with joy. My name is Htoo Ko Lo and I am 15 years old. I am a freshman in high school. When I was in middle school, life was very hard for me. I had anxiety, depression, overthinking and a lot of worries. I started to isolate myself from friends, my church, and even my family members. I remember going to bed every night with tears. I cried until I fell asleep.  The next day I would do what I was supposed to do pretending to look fine. I did not share my pain with anyone because I was afraid people might judge me or look down on me or think I was crazy. Those days were long and those nights were dark for me. After I got promoted to high school, things got even harder. I tried to do my best to get by every day and kept everything to myself.

A lot of my friends signed up to go to the retreat. My church leaders, pastors, relatives and friends invited me. After a lot of debating, I finally signed up. At the camp, we got to do a lot, such as zipline, bubble balls, volleyball, soccer, and many other activities. We sang praises, listened to  speakers, and prayed together. It was one of the best weekends for me. We learned about Jesus willing to heal anyone and give them peace. I was amazed how God moved me during the prayer time. The leader asked us to grab a few heart-shaped papers and write down our feelings and pain. They talked about how many times we looked good outside but the inside was broken and empty. I felt like they were talking about me. I was nervous and scared to write down all my anxiety, depression, overthinking and emotions. But, something made me do it. I truly believe that was the Holy Spirit. I wrote down everything on the paper and we prayed about it together. The last night of camp was the night I was healed by the love of Jesus Christ. We had a meditation and prayer time with candlelight. The leader invited us to close our eyes and imagine going on a bus that would take us to God. I felt I saw God face to face, being in the presence of God. The leader urged us to take all our pain, burdens and worries to God. I heard God’s voice telling me, “All your worries, depression, anxiety, and overthinking are gone.” My tears started to flush down as I was listening to God’s voice. I felt amazed in the presence of God.  I felt healed completely. I did not have anxiety, depression and overthinking anymore. Even though I am not perfect, I am now able to share my beautiful smiles with everyone with joy and peace in my heart. I used to fake my smiles, but I am now able to smile for real knowing I am loved and healed by the love of Christ. Jesus turned my fake smiles to real and beautiful smiles. I even get to share my testimony in our church. God healed me and God can heal your pain, your burdens and all your stresses too. Our God is a loving God Who cares for you. He is willing to heal you and give you peace. Job 22:21 says, “Submit to God, and you will have peace; then things will go well for you.”

Naw Htoo Ko Lo
Phoenix, Arizona

REFLECT

We read that Htoo Ko Lo suffered alone for many months. We often think that our children should not have stress because they have not gone through adversity that we experienced. 
We also assume life in America is better and therefore our children should not be stressed.  
The truth is everyone experiences stress, including children. If we underestimate the suffering of our children, we will miss out on the opportunity to love them, support them, and show Christ’s love to them.  
How can our churches better love and support our children?
Are the children the future of our church? Or are they the church today?

PRAYER FOR THE READER 

Dear God, please bless Your children reading this devotional journal. Please use them to be your vessel that spreads Your love and compassion to young people. Where there is a generation gap, may they practice Your compassion. Where there are language barriers, may they speak Your love. Please give them wisdom and empathy to connect with the youth in love and truth. Please guard the hearts and the minds of our children from the influences of the devil. Please help us to understand that they are the church, and not just the future of the church.  In Jesus’ Name, I pray. Amen.