Saturday Afternoons, Red Gloves and Tears

 

Still reading Unafraid, and was only able to finish Gideon’s Gift and Maggie’s Miracle from the Red Gloves collection, but these are stories that would change a readers life, if you only open your heart and head to it.

I was morose that whole week, wondering what I wanted from life and wondering why I feel so unfulfilled, and a little resentful about my lot in life.

That short, quick, unexpected Saturday afternoon talk with Nong Gil was certainly an eye-opener.

I wanted to write. I just don’t know why I can’t anymore.

I like teaching. I am just not sure why I feel so restless with what I am doing.

Reading, after God and family, is my one (well, three actually), Great Love. So, why do I keep flipping from book to book, cover to cover, author after another author, without really reading anything?

What could be so wrong?

I guess, I have learned to separate the heart from the brain that what the brain can comprehend, the heart can’t express and what the heart can feel, the brain cannot realize. Not really unusual. I may look like one whole big person but deep inside, I really am just one huge compartment with a lot of little compartments subdividing the rest of my life.

And that afternoon, I understand why I have to get hurt while reading a book and that it’s okay to cry (just not where my mother and siblings could see me). And that by so doing, I am letting my heart and brain connect with each other again.

I can’t write while I am not whole. I can’t be myself without the freedom of using what He has given me all along. I don’t know what I am capable of yet because I have always been too afraid to try.Still am though.

But this week, I found my way back into the arms of my most favorite activity, with all of me, this time. And while lying on a hammock, I absorbed one great story with both my head and my heart, taking in a series of stories involving a Red Glove and Christmas time.

After crying a river (Karen Kingsbury, seriously, knows how to make a person cry), and after engaging the whole of me in the exercise, I felt better afterward. This has always been the ultimate reading experience for me – taking in all my senses, delighting the intellect and stimulating the heart – and feeling good afterward.

Romance novels have dulled my heart after many years of gobbling them (they are just like the junk food of books). But, the kind of fiction that Francine Rivers and Karen Kingsbury create makes me feel and think and appreciate life. They make me feel more alive and closer to Him. They make me feel a part of Him, His creation. They make me think of Him and they make me cry because He makes me cry often. (And only He can do that – and reading too, and yeah, my mother as well).

And maybe, someday, I would be able to write something like what Rivers and Kingsbury have written and maybe, that would make me feel ever more alive, and fulfilled and much closer to Him too.

I Want to Write

 

Right now, I feel something literally screaming my name – the front cover of a book, several books, books meant to be written.

I have always wanted to become a writer, a novelist…

I chose to become an English teacher because I thought I would be able to become a writer and be practical at the same time. I thought I could do it.

When I became a teacher 7 year ago, I thought I only needed a laptop. When I had my laptop five or six years ago, I thought I needed time. I decided to become a Mobile Teacher because I thought I would be able to have the “time” to become a writer. And I never really did – finish anything that is.

I finished several unpublished poems that fell short of whatever literary criteria the world has. I was able to plot several young adult fiction that never came into fruition. I managed to blog about things that matter and don’t matter to me… I was able to finish a script which they intend to publish as material for our sessions, and with colleagues, we were able to finalize a modified big book and a brochure on responsible parenting.

Now, the call is so loud and so deafening that I could not think. I could not return to our fellowship with SFC because everything is so unclear to me right now. I want to write. I want to write. I want to write. I can feel this thudding in my blood. When the crowd goes away for the day, and I find the time to be alone, the same mantra begins to play in my heart.

But, I can no longer write romance novels I have effortlessly plotted when I was in High School. They seem too froufrou, like a mockery of the life I have seen so far. I can no longer write poems forthey seem to deep and too artificial a venue to express the slice of existence I have tasted in the past three years. I cannot seem to write short stories. I never knew how, anyway.

I want to write. I crave it with all of me. But why is it that the words refuse to flow, the plot refuses to shape itself, the inspiration fails to come?

I want to write. So why can’t I?

Grateful

Yesterday, I was reminded of how good life has been to me.

I have a family who would spend several hours preparing for a small, family-only celebration of my 28th year here on earth. I have a community who made me feel how good it is to have real friends and sisters in Christ. I have a rewarding work that does not only satisfy the pocket but the needs of the soul too.

All in all, I have a good life.

It was a bittersweet journey, one of confusion and joy and delight and pain and sadness. I was silenced, I guess. I could not write yesterday.

I was seeing things with eyes that are clouded with tears and a mind that could tell pain and joy apart. So, my heart was confused with all the mixed signals it was getting. I know, I have a good life.

God has been so good to me. But I have not really been good to Him, have I.

Wonderful Savior, You know what is in my heart. You know what I am going through right now. I leave everything to You, today. Do what You will. And open my eyes that I may see You clearly.

Between You and God

Everything is always between me and God and no one else.

For years, I have been trying to live up to the expectations of people around me. My life has become a constant blur in an effort to pursue their ideal.

I have never really stood up for something that I want and I have allowed people's dreams to litter my own landscape every day and every night. I wanted to please everyone - a total and complete opposite of who I was back in my school days when I never really cared about anyone's opinion.

Both extremes are difficult for a person. The heart becomes weary and unhappy. Being unfettered to your desires and that of others is no way to live.

But, failing to meet expectations was a good thing for me. It freed me to see something significant and more important in my life. Actually failing to meet expectations made me realize that I don't have to live up to the expectations of other people.

This is the first time in years that I felt unburdened and untroubled. Why? Because I saw that in the end, everything comes down to this: Everything is always between you and God.

Is what I am doing what God wants me to do? Is this His will for me? How do I know it is His will for me... Walk closely with Him, abide in Him, talk to Him every moment of everyday and He will tell you.

I may have hurt a lot of people in my solitary and sometimes confusing walk in this world. It's not easy to be me with all the confusions and doubts and fears... but, if others fail to understand me, it will still be okay for me. God always knows and understands and His opinion of me is all that matters. And, I know, He will make me understand others too...

Broken Generations

 

The world has coined various labels for its varied and many generations of people. Lumped together to be perfectly categorized into neat boxes, these generations have been born, existed, survived, and died. Some of its members left indelible marks in the annals of history, some faded like mere bubbles, fragments of an imagination that littered the world for a while with people.

But there is one thing common in all humankind… whether referred to as Generation X, Y, Z or whatever pretentious label man comes up with, all of man’s generations have always been broken.

Broken by the stings of an aimless, meaningless existence, stung by the poisons of inexplicable family dynamics, bitten by varied neuroses… Man tried to cope by rationalizing his brokenness. He tried to make excuses for his behavior by blaming others for it. No one was willing to take responsibility of choices that went wrong, decisions that lead only to more pain and hurt. There was always someone or something to blame. A broken man finds it easy to expose the chink in a fellows armor than deal with his own broken shield.

We are a broken generation. We are a broken people. And we try to heal our brokenness by covering it up with more broken armors and fragments of the self we could have been.

What glues us together are the very same things that broke us apart. The tiny pieces of ourselves have been cast away or were lost, and we believe that we can no longer find those pieces anymore.

But we don’t need those pieces. We do not need to hang on to the tattered rags we are wearing.

Someone out there sees our brokenness for what it is.But, since He crafted us in the first place, He knows that these broken chunks need to be broken, so that the beautiful masterpieces would come out.

We are a broken generation with scraped elbows, and bruised knees and we can turn to the Great Physician to heal our brokenness.

We are a broken people who can be mended by a great God.

Loving Thy Neighbor

 

I was asked to talk about this particular topic in an SFC Christian Life Program in a neighboring chapter. My first thought, to be honest, was Why Me? and then Okay… and then, I decided to set it aside.

However, now that the talk is drawing quite near, I started wondering why I was asked to give the said talk because hey, I do not know what that topic really means. Really. My college school mates once accused me of not knowing how to relate to other people because I read too much. You do not read people in the same way that you read books.And my own mother once remarked that she already pities my future husband (if I ever get married) because I was so cold-blooded and aloof. Even an acquaintance once remarked how distant I really am with them – that I am surrounded by brick walls, all over… brick walls that are 12 feet high, and 10 feet thick. It was a joke, but I guess jokes are often half-truths.

And deep inside, beneath the façade, is really this dead person walking – because if this dead person could feel, she would be crying, and groaning day and night… but since I only started crying after I joined the SFC, I guess I am not used to letting my guard down.

I do know that the 10 commandments can be summarized into two : Love the Lord your God with all your strength, with all your mind and with all your heart and love your neighbors as you love yourself.

Whew. Simple words and reminders for every Christian but… I haven’t even gotten close to loving God with all my strength, heart and mind and now, I am being asked to answer to the 2nd command Jesus left His disciples.

I always thought that a Christian’s curriculum is somewhat similar to that of the formal school but I guess Christ’s operates in a similar manner as the alternative learning system – He meets the learner’s needs first. (Well, that is indeed another way of putting it)

Oremus pro invicem (Let Us Pray for one Another)

 

C.S. Lewis often ends his letters to his friends in this manner… (don’t ask me for details, I have not yet finished the book edited by Paul F. Ford, Yours, Jack : Spiritual Direction from C.S. Lewis.

And I would never have understood what that meant' if I was not brought into the CFC-Singles for Christ. Prayer is a tricky matter to me. God blessed me with the gift of writing. The English language is a wonderful tool of expression for me. But when it comes to prayer, I am often at a loss, out of words.

Of course I know the prayers taught during or Catechesis in school but I never seriously considered a different aspect of prayer… prayer is talking to God… prayer is being with our Father… Even until now, prayer is a challenge for me.

I never really prayer for others. I did not know how. And then, when I pray, I often wonder if my sincere in my prayers, if my heart is in it.

But somehow, I was blessed with a new view of prayer – praying for others. I used to wonder why we are urged to “pray for one another” and what’s the use. Only later did I learn what praying for one another means. You can only pray for others when others have opened themselves up so that you can pray for them. You can only pray for others when you feel that stirring of the Spirit, that desire to comfort and offer comfort and you know, that you can only help by praying for that other person. Your own struggles are set aside and you pray for peace and comfort for this other person. You see God’s grace at work in another’s life and you are filled with so much hope that He does the same for you.

Sometimes, we are just too closed to our own realities that we cannot see God’s hands in everything we do. But, by opening up to my sisters in the SFC during our household meetings, I have learned to be vulnerable, I have learned to lay down my worries and ask them to pray for me and I let them lay down their worries so that I can pray for them as well.

Praying for one another is very important and I often wonder how God has designed everything in our live’s that makes communion with other believers a very life-altering experience for someone who never really went out of her shell.