Making a Choice: How to Love (Pt.2)

 

 

My vocation is His purpose for creating me…

I really wanted to be able to say that I have discerned and accepted God’s purpose for my life. I started out as if I was on a quest of discovering my vocation! I was excited, and very eager to know God’s will for my life.

I have been in that particular mode for several weeks after the Regional Conference. I wanted to know! I had to know God’s will for me! And I tried finding out (as if I could do it on my own…)

After several weeks, I got tired of trying to find out. Now, I still do not have answers. I still do not know if it is His will for me to be single, get married or become a religious sister.  Not being able to know the answer has crushed my soul a little. I felt as if God was denying me something I really wanted to know! Or did I really?

I did find out several things about myself though. These discoveries has led to more confusion because I did not like what I learned. I have learned that I also wanted to get married and have a family of my own (and the really sad thing about it is I already have someone in mind, someone who will likely never notice me – this led to self-pity, resentment and binge-eating in order to cope with the depressing feelings). I also learned that I really did not want to stay single (and be a spinster, although this is what my family expects me to be and this just feels like the most likely outcome anyway) and since this is almost a given, I decided that I would rather be a religious sister than become a bitter spinster who hates everyone for being happy!

Those discoveries made me unhappy about myself. I once gave up on the idea of marriage for myself. I was content, or so I told myself. I even anticipated spinsterhood. I was determined to glory in it and enjoy the freedom and not be the stereotypical sad and unhappy old maid. I was going to become the cool aunt or at least, the nice and kindly although eccentric teacher.  However, when those convictions were challenged, when I was repeatedly told that God has other plans for us, I felt a surge of resentment and anger well up in me. I wanted to cry and tell them to not give me false hopes. It seems a big part of myself has already given up on the concept that someone other than God can love me for me…. And I did not want to be bothered anymore. I joined SFC because I knew I would be a Single for Christ – maybe forever and I even started inquiring about how to become a Handmaid of the Lord when I reach 40.

I really did not want to open myself to other possibilities!

Then came the frantic desire to be called, be chosen for something really special. I wanted God to show me signs that He wanted me for Himself. I long for Him to let me hear, know and really see that yes, I am called to become a religious sister because if I can only be sure, I would be brave and tell Nanay about it and even if it hurts her, I would follow God's calling. But, I did not ask God to do that because I was really afraid to know… I feel afraid to know what He plans for me…

Silly person that I am… wanting to know but not really wanting to know. I prayed for Him to reveal His will for me in a rather half-hearted manner… because I really am afraid to know about it and God knows it too.God knows I am unready to know His will for me and because He loves me, He is waiting for me to be ready for Him…

***

Wonderful and loving Father, thank You for being so patient with me. Forgive me for being impatient with You and for refusing to really know Your perfect will for my life. Father, grant me the desire to truly know what it is that You plan for me. Prepare my heart for Your plans and ready my life for Your wonders. Create in me the desire to know and the courage to follow You all the days of my life. Amen.

Stars in the Sky

Let me just sing when I can't find the words to say what I feel.

Wanted: Refilling Station

"Find You in the place I'm in
Find You when I'm at my end
Find You when there's
nothing left of me to offer You
except for brokenness"

When there are no words for feelings that swamp you and thoughts that overwhelm you...
When you have been "hollowed out" and there is nothing left at all and there's only a Song to hold on to, a Melody of grace..
When you look up and see no one but your face mocking you...
When there is no one to share those fears with, and no one to tell you to hold on, move on and be strong...
When standing up to those fears, those worries, those concerns become to much...

.... you can always kneel until He finds you and lifts you up from where you've stumbled...

Hollowed Out

 

Blogging is an effort.

I find it difficult to pour not only my thoughts but also my soul on paper.

A famous writer once said that writing  is effortless because you only have to sit before a typewriter and … bleed. Yes. Easy. I can literally see blood gushing out of my pores now.

What you read on this blog has more to it than just the letters strung together to form words to describe an experience, no an encounter that can never be fully explained.

I don’t like revealing this side of me to others. I don’t much like sharing my thoughts and feelings because every time I do, I feel as if a hollowing out is occurring within my soul. I would start to feel empty, as if all I have learned in that arduous experience has disappeared! The same happens when I share/ speak in front of my brothers and sisters in SFC. There is that hollowing out I have grown to dread, thus, making me want to hide when “sharing” time comes.

Everything I have written  or said will be tested the next day. Everything I shared will be experienced again. Everything I have posted will be re-encountered and the learning would begin all over again. It seems in this wonderful walk, you never stop learning.

But I can’t not share. I can’t say no anymore.

Saying no was easy before. Its easy to say no to my household head. ( I can’t say no when it comes to my work!) But now, I can’t say no to Him, not as easily as I used to.

The speaker in one of the workshops I attended during the SFC Regional Conference said  we should not keep our experiences with Christ to ourselves since it is not ours to keep.

I keep a diary. Since high school, I have learned to keep a diary because I had no one to share my secrets with. Keeping a diary kept me sane and really secretive. My diary contained everything I feel and thought of, all my angst, my anger, my irritation. It was only later that I learned I had very negative diary entries. Reading through it revealed how vitriolic I have been and how angry I was. People say I can’t be this solitary and sane. They were right too. My older diaries would attest to how “dark” my heart has become. Outwardly, they see this workaholic girl who is always so accepting, and seems so happy. They see this person who always says yes to what they want. But they do not see the bitter girl inside the diary, so full of resentment and anger…

I have burned a lot of diaries simply because I can’t stomach my own thoughts! When my mother found several of my diaries and read through my entries, she was crushed with what she found there. That was when I realized how hurtful my writing has become. I was writing, and thinking and feeling unforgivable thoughts towards people around me (and they thought I was this sweet, innocent girl who can’t say a bad thing at all).

Realizing that was crushing. Even my blog posts were reflecting my negativity. My posts were “God-less” entries in an already self focused blogosphere. Heavenessence was just one of those dangerous pot holes in an already pain-ridden world.

For the past few  weeks, I have learned this. The hollowing out is good because you are only being emptied to receive new fillings – fresher, healthier for the soul and better with your romance with God.

Lord, hollow me out and fill me with new wine. Refresh me and let me not fear the “emptying” process. Give me the courage to seek the “emptying” time so that I will be ready for the times of “refilling”.

A Sonnet for my One True Love

 

Back in college, there was one Shakespearean sonnet I adored simply because it initially described my idea of what marriage or love should be.

Sonnet 116

by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove,

Oh no, it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempest and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth’s unknown. although his height be taken.

Love’s not Times fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickles compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom,.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ nor no man ever loved.

 

Well, to put it bluntly, this is the sonnet that disappointed me. I never found that kind of love. Around me, marriages were breaking apart, couples were splitting up after passionate weeks or months of being together. What once was so loved became so hated. I never trusted love after personally seeing what it can do to a twenty-year old marriage.

I would smile at heartbreaking break ups and splits and nod my head sagely saying Shakespeare was oh so wrong. I never experienced a break up myself but I considered myself lucky I was spared the trouble. I was one of the joyless club, I thought, but then I think I’d prefer to think I was part of the better-safe-than-sorry group. So I threw away that silly sonnet I carefully wrote on a piece of Cattleya note and lovingly taped on my college clipboard. Shakespeare was a fraud and love is just that, an urban myth.

And then, Love found me. My True Love found me in my most hidden corner, sulking bitterly over the silliness of life. And I learned, it’s not that Shakespeare was wrong.Its just that I have been looking for love in the wrong places. I have been searching and expecting it from other people who never really knew what Love is. I have been scouring every piece of romance novel I could find for my happily ever after and was more surprised I never found it there. True love cannot be found in a mere piece of paper or corruptible flesh. Love is this: that He gave His son, His only begotten Son, for us.

That’s love. That is my One True Love.

P.S. And yes, He proved Shakespeare right, every bit of what is written in Sonnet 116 is true.

 

 

Making a Choice: How to Love (Pt.1)

Love is a verb that requires an object.

That is the one sure thing I have learned about love. Touchy subject.So, how do I live my life in love? Living in love is truly living out your vocation or living according to God’s purpose for you.

I became aware that the Christian vocation may be lived out in any of the three basic ways : the married state, the single state in the world, and the religious state.

I used to think that when you say vocation, you really mean becoming a nun. That to go on a vocational discernment retreat (or something) is to emerge as a nun. But its not like that at all. A vocation is God’s calling for us to carry out a particular role he has designated for us in his plan. And God’s plan is none other than to bring all people in union with Him. (from a booklet by the Daughters of St. Paul)

I am at that point in life where I am seriously thinking about my vocation, something I have not done before.Until that fateful (and a little reluctant, yes, sadly, when it comes to God, I have been a reluctant disciple…) and eventful individual consultation with one of the nuns from the Daughters of St. Paul. (That was during the Singles for Christ’s Western Visayas Regional Conference last September 27-29, 2013 at Ateneo de Iloilo). She told me that the age limit for entering as an aspirant with the Daughters of St. Paul was 28 years old. I have reached that limit. 

If I don’t do something, a door will close for me, a door I am fondly considering. I like what the Daughters of St. Paul is doing. The Daughters of St. Paul is an international religious congregation of women who are called and consecrated to proclaim Jesus Christ and make His WORD alive to the world by witnessing to a life lived through prayer, study, community life and through the apostolate of social communications.

The nun I talked to (I forgot to ask her name!), said I could come and visit them anytime in their place in Iloilo. I could visit their Chapel just to pray and talk to them. The problem with this girl she was talking to is that if it involves taking the initiative, you will just have to wait forever. I never take the first step. I like being dragged around because if things go wrong, I could always blame the one who dragged me around! If Peter was the disciple who denied Jesus, and Judas betrayed Jesus, and Paul persecuted Jesus, and Jonah tried to run away from God, I guess my claim to fame (well, in my own mind) is that I am the reluctant believer! I want to, yes, but I am a coward!You need to force me to do something I actually wanted to do in the first place (but, tell me not to do something and I will set my mind on doing just that!). Besides, I like being sure and certain of things. (And I was told how erroneous this need is, fueled probably by a lack of faith in the One who holds my forever).

So now, I am seriously pondering where God is calling me, where He is leading me. I can recall several  things from the consultation and from the RECON itself.

1. I don’t have much time left until one of the three options is taken away from me forever.

2. I need to pray for the grace of  courage to do what God has called me to do.

3. I should learn to trust God with my future and not secure my future by myself (she told me that. I have the tendency to “ensure” my future and refuse to listen to His loving urgings).

4. Not all are called to serve Him in this way.  It’s a special call.

5. I need to be open to wherever He leads me. I should be open to all three vocations: the married state, single blessedness, and the religious life, while discerning and praying for my vocation, for His call for me. (I guess I clued her into the fact that I want single blessedness over the other two because holy matrimony and the religious life wreaks a lot of havoc in my heart ( I am afraid of both).

6. I need to pray, to listen to Him attentively so that indeed, I would be responding to His will, not mine, not my mother’s, not other peoples’ but His alone (freaking out here, how do I do that?)

I don’t know where this will lead me. I am not even sure if I want to know or if I am ready to know the answer. I don’t know where I will get the courage to tell my mother that, if I am called to the religious life, to be a bride of Christ, that I would be doing what she has called  “my foolishness”. (I used to joke about becoming a nun, just to tease them, just as I joke about getting married when I get irked with them a bit for disregarding me).

During the Provincial Conference last year, I felt that aching call which I set aside because I cannot face it at that time. I was unwilling, a lot unwilling and I told myself that maybe, my vocation was to become a blessing to everyone by staying single, because I could reach more people in the “normal state”.

Then, in this year’s RECON, why is there a discontent? A persistence for something else. Why is there a restlessness, a dissatisfaction in my soul? Why is there a call for more? I am already doing mission work just by being a teacher to my out of school youth and adult learners! I am already so blessed in my present state really. This should be enough. I am happy with my journey but why is it that there seems to be more, that there is something much deeper, richer and fuller somewhere out there?

I don’t want to regret not doing this. I am unsure where to start, but I am sure He will teach me, lead me, and make His will known to me.

I am His Beloved

 

 

Love is something I would have never touched with a two foot pole. Love is something I used to reserve to describe an emotion I would rather read about than experience. Love is something I always thought would eventually just lead to tears and disappointments.

I am familiar with hard work and dedication. I am very intimately connected with words like “obligation” and “responsibility” and “sacrifice”.

But I can’t seem to connect love and myself in one sentence….

I am currently reading “The Story of a Soul” by St. Therese of Lisieux and I feel a little resentful because God did not give me parents like He gave Therese Martin. The “Little Queen” (as her father called her) had a childhood filled with so much love – from her parents and her sisters and from her God. At such a young age, she was already drawn to the divine.

She has so much love to draw from.

I grew up in a household where love is not demonstrated. So, I grew up cold and callous and uncaring, not because I chose to be cold and uncaring but because I did not know how to be anything else. There was just nothing inside my heart. I used to feel nothing at all. I was seldom moved by compassion, seldom moved to tears, seldom touched by scenes that would have made others cry. I felt neither pain nor comfort, neither joy nor sorrow. Everything was gray. I only feel the things that hurt my pride. I was simply existing, moving on from one chapter of my life and stoically smiling over tragedies and triumphs, while inside, there was just this empty hole.

I was incapable of love because I never felt love.

St. Therese said “… I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would lose its springtide beauty, and the fields would no longer be enamelled with lovely hues.” Why can’t I have had parents like St. Therese’s mother and father so that I would have grown up into a loving woman like St. Therese… so that I could have had known and loved God with all of me ever since I was a child?

But then, who am I to question His plan for my life? He gave me my Nanay and Tatay because He had His reasons. My parents are good parents.They are responsible parents and they loved me in ways I had not seen because I was expecting them to love me in a certain way. And now, I can honestly say that I love them… just as I love my brothers and sisters. No, not out of familial obligation and responsibility but out of something inside me that has been growing and breaking free since I felt how much He loves me.

Love is now a wonderful feeling. Love is now this strange and beautiful thing I hold out in the open when I am alone. It is something that I ponder and wonder at in the silence of my solitude. Love is so amazing. Love is everything and if not for my experiences, if not for the lack of love in my life before, if not for that void in my heart, I would not have this kind of appreciation, and sense of wonder before It.

Love is God. God is Love. God is amazing. Love is amazing. God is wonderful. Love is wonderful. Love is all I need. God is all I need… because I am His beloved and He is mine… And I love Him with all that I am….

See how He works? Glory and praise to the King alone.