The Face in the Pool

 

The title has everything to do with today’s post and not because I found myself looking at some pool (I wish I did). I just found myself encoding a Reading Comprehension Test with that title… and English Reading Comprehension Test…for my ALS learners.

Twelve years ago, I entered the gates of West Visayas State University to start my preparation for a lifetime career as an English teacher. I love English as a language. I love learning about its nuances, its forms, its structures… I especially love all the literatures we studied. It was in the midst of English teachers and those aspiring to become English teachers that my philosophy of education has been formed. The entire learning experience shaped a lot of my beliefs, my ideals, my strange easy acceptance of the world.

I left WVSU as a proficient graduate and future English teacher (yes, I am that confident).

Then, five years ago, I found myself (sometime around this month or so too) rolling all over our floor, crying, thinking and pondering deeply. I was already a secondary school English teacher for three years back then, contracted with the Local School Board of our Local Government Unit and assigned to teach in my Alma Mater – Passi National High School. However, it was not a national item and for a teacher, teaching in a public school is a must, a necessity to safeguard not only one’s future but that of her family’s.

An offer I could not resist was placed before me. There was an item for an ALS Mobile Teacher. Back then, I was also working under contract with the ALS service provider in our division as an Instructional Manager, teaching out of school youth and adults. It took me months to ponder that decision. I told myself that when I make this leap, there would be no going back. I told myself that it would still be “teaching” and teaching is really the one I love… it does not matter what I teach as long as I am teaching. I still cried, because it also meant I would be giving up something I love too. It’s like loving marriage but getting married to a person you do not love and expecting that you will just learn to love him in the end.

On January 4, 2010, I became an ALS Mobile Teacher.

And now, honestly, I am hurting. It took a reading exercise in a Grade 6 book to open the wound that I have kept bandaged for four years. I feel so hurt now, so disappointed with what I have become. I feel so sad and I keep thinking about what I told myself five years ago. I told myself that whatever decision I made, I would never regret it.

And here I am, wondering if I am actually regretting the decision I made.

Love and Other Drugs (Pt.2)

 

I read too much.

I have tried starting my blog several times with that. Reading is my chosen drug. My guilty little pleasure, along with food.

I read too much. Not a lot, but too much. I don’t read to enlighten the mind. I don’t read for literary entertainment. I do not read to know or be aware. I read to escape.

I do not have much of a life if I compare my life with that of people my age. I don’t go to parties. I never went on any night-outs. I never drink (except for red wine). I never shopped except for essential stuff (meaning books). I never leave home on weekends except for school and lately, church or SFC activities. I never went places except for work-related seminars and trainings (and I never ventured out of the venue, not in Baguio, certainly not in Tagaytay or in Manila (except for that expensive dinner with our City’s first lady) although several concerned souls dragged me around Cebu twice or thrice).

I guess when you don’t have much experience, you compensate somewhere. I compensate by reading a lot. If I can say vicarious living is experience, I would say I have been through a lot of scandalous reading material to offer me one lifetime of experience over people my age. I know stuff I am not supposed to know and I am aware of things women my age and my background and upbringing should not know about.

My teachers used to warn Nanay about the reading materials I pore over during school breaks. I hated them for ruining my enjoyment of a spicy historical romance novel and because of their reaction, I would often raise up my books covered with scantily dressed couples cavorting on lush, verdant, forest-like backgrounds, just to irritate them.

But my teachers were right. I have become addicted to these books. Whenever I am upset, I read. Whenever I am worried, scared, troubled, I read. If I do not read, I eat. Sometimes,I wish Nanay carefully monitored what I was reading all those years ago. (If I get married and have a daughter, my daughter will be reading books on my lap!).

Reading is so much easier than praying.

Reading does not bring your problems and your helplessness to mind. Reading let’s you cover up your scars, and your fears. It let’s you forget the troubles you have. It let’s you escape.

Praying reminds you of your helplessness, your powerlessness, your lack of control and your ignorance. It points out how little control you have over everything. It reminds you how human you are… how much dependent your are on God.

Reading takes away that sense of dependence. It makes you feel a false sense of being powerful and in control because you can read anytime you please. You can even skip to the back portion and know the story before hand.

But reading just makes you feel more confused, more unhappy. It binds you in its endless, utter hopeless spiral of reading and reading more to numb you from everything else.

Praying is freeing. After a long, open-hearted and honest moment of prayer, you would feel refreshed, comforted, assured. You can leave all your worries in His hands because You have been assured that He cares, He loves, and He is involved in your life and that He wants what is best for you.

Reading leaves you hopeless, more desperate and bound by the need to read more books. But prayer let’s you live. Truly live.

I know I don’t treat reading in it’s proper context and I don’t resort to prayer when I am so upset and troubled that I can barely think. I can pray when everything is okay but when sorrow, fear, pain and disappointment drowns my heart, I resort to reading.

Reading has brought me a lot of trouble. Sometimes, I wish I don’t know that much or that I can erase certain stuff, images and scenes I have stored in my head. But I can’t.

I should remember however that the love of reading is God’s gift too. But if I abuse it, it would be the devil’s tool.

Lord, teach me to use reading in good, helpful and Godly ways. Remind me that in every book I read, You are always looking over my shoulders. Lead me to good books that would nourish my soul and my heart and not just titillate my senses.

A quote from Macrina Wiederkehr, OSB comes to mind:

God is the sustaining presence that is our inheritance, our greatest good, our refuge in times of trouble. When we court other gods, the troubles in our lives tend to increase.

Regrets

Need I say more?

Broken Before God

 

 

Psalm 51 is a heavy psalm. I don’t know where I read this from, or if I did read it somewhere but this Psalm somehow echoes that feeling David may have felt after he learned how sinful he has become and how he has refused to even see it.

What is a broken spirit like? How broken can you be before you can say your are broken before God? Can you mend that brokenness?

A part of me is aching right now. I am broken. I can see the shattered pieces of myself all around me but I try to hide the pieces from Him and from myself. It’s frightening, the evil I sense and sometimes feel in me. I just want to be pure and clean and whole before Him. I need to feel that.

But the depth of loneliness and sadness  I feel right now, as I hide from Him, is killing me.  Is this what it means to be broken?

All the Time in the World

 

When I heard from our household head that our area coordinator in the lower north sector of the CFC-SFC is leaving for abroad, the only words that crossed my mind was “I thought I had more time.”

I thought I had more time. I did not realize how much I would regret taking a rain check for a sleepover with the two of them last December. I never expected that I would regret clamming up whenever she asked me questions because I thought we were in a rather public setting. I never thought I would regret holding back questions I would have popped up just because I was afraid what those questions would reflect about me, and who I am or how people see me. If only I were more forthcoming, more open, more accepting, more courageous…

Sayang. So many wasted opportunities. So many chances of getting to know a woman who is so spirit-filled and so blessed as Sis Tess is. I could have talked to her. I could have shared, really shared with her.

What held me back? Fear?Trepidation? The usual social- distance- rule engraved upon me from my rather dry and sterile background? Being too shy? Insecure?

Cold creature comforts tonight – as I think of the overflowing blessings and graces I received just by listening to her address us in general. I listened to her and I was comforted, affirmed, strengthened, reminded, loved…

She has allowed God to love others through her. And I thought I had all the time in the world to really, really share in her life.

But all the time in the world ended today…..

A Morning in A Church

 

What will you do if, one morning, while in Church, you find a woman weeping?

You don’t know her. She was probably someone from another town who just happened to require some space from her own thoughts.

She blindly entered your church, sat at the back row. Tears were streaming down her face and she bows down as she tries to hide them with her unkempt shoulder length hair. I wonder, sister, what would you have done?

Would you have gone to her to comfort her? Ask her what’s wrong? Would you have prayed for her, the least and the best thing that you could have done?

Maybe you will just stare at her curiously, wondering who she is, wondering if she will start bawling in church. You may even ask yourself if you should alert the authorities. I mean, who knows, she just might cause havoc in your quiet and peaceful and clean little church.

Or maybe, you might have ignored her, just like them, sitting and chattering about things that don’t really matter… who knows. But if they did just the opposite, they might have saved a flickering candle from completely dying out.

The State of the Fallen

Dark. It is very dark where I am today.

There is no visible light.

I wanted to reach out but I am afraid of what I might touch in the darkness.

I wanted to call out, but I am afraid that I would lead them to my corner of this darkness.

So I lay still, shivering, huddled in one corner...

Waiting...
Just waiting....

Unfaithful in the Silence

I could not hear You in the silence. I was disappointed. I sought You in the darkness, but hit a thick and tall wall, I was hurt.

It took me a day and I gave up on You when You waited for me for a lifetime. When I could not be comforted, I turned away, and like a scorned bride, looked for comfort elsewhere.

I thought I was mature. But I guess I was really too young in the faith to ever carry off the faith in the silence.

I know now I should have kept praying, because even if I cannot feel or hear You, You still here me. I know now I should have kept reading, because even if the words do not mean a thing today, they will mean something tomorrow.

I should not have thought it was all a waste of time, knowing now that I am on Your time. I am sorry for being unfaithful. I know now that I should have kept the faith, even in the silence.