Archive for October, 2009

Dear Tita Carol,

I hope you don’t mind if I make my first email to you is an open one. I wanted you to see my blog too—and let my readers—at least, the few that I have— know where I have been lately because I haven’t updated my blog for a while now. It’s kinda dusty from lack of use for the past month or so, but if you’ll look at the “What is Godspotting?” page you’ll see that this is all about finding God in the everyday  and in the mundane—the mostly small stuff. And I guess you can say that that’s how I am approaching life right now. It’s taken me a while to get here, but it’s the one thing that keeps me from despairing over the calamities of the tiny universe in my head (where everything defaults to revolving around me, if I don’t watch it) and over the calamities in this world that I share with everyone else. Not that big stuff stopped happening to me and to the people around anymore—they do, but lately I’ve been loving the small things. It comes with age I guess.

Speaking of age…

I’m 29 now. (Next year, I’ll be 30!!!!)

Usually, I have this great Big Think on my birthday, and then a party afterwards. But I kinda missed my 29^th birthday, being on neither side of the world where it happened. It’s rather cool when you think about it, but mostly, I just slept through it (with the help of the awesome business class seats of PAL).  So anyway, I didn’t get to do my Big Think, thank God—but instead, it stretched throughout the next few weeks (hence, I’ve been quiet on the blog until now).

I was just reflecting on that on the way to meeting with Grace for our weekly hanging out (AKA “small group”) that I’m homeless, in terms of church and ministry. Funny to think that even if I have a pastor for a boyfriend and he has his own church, and I have you guys from UCM, plus my church in Imus, Cavite. But things have been shifting and changing, and I don’t know where to place myself. At least, not yet…

As for my job, it’s the first time I’ve actually consistently gone to an office for more than a year. I love my job. Like anything, I get frustratedannoyedexasperated and stressed over it. I think I contemplate changing my career at least once a month, but I love it. And I’m still at it. Jacs,  one of my friends here in the office, and I proposed a magazine idea to the big bosses a few months ago, so we’re praying about that.

So I moved out of my parents’ house and I’m now renting a place in Makati. I love living here, but then the lease on our apartment will be up at the end of the year—I don’t know if we’re keeping it or moving to another place, or I’ll go back to driving again (please God no).

And what next? Please don’t say marriage, or “Get married” or ask, “Why aren’t you married yet?” I get that question in various versions every single day. I only have one answer to that: when it happens, it will be at the perfect moment.

So where is Stef now? I think it’s gone the way of my 29^th birthday—in the middle of somewhere, in between days, in between the morning and the night time. In between everything. Like every other single (as long as you’re not married, you’re still single) young adult, I’m still on the brink of something hopefully great and legendary. I can feel the great expanse waiting for me, just as I am waiting to get there.

And all I have is right now—this moment, these words, this day. My family, my friends, my beloved. My cat and my hamster.  Our flat in Makati. My job, my work, my cubicle, this laptop I drag around with me every day. My clothes, shoes, and bags, makeup. This blog, my facebook, twitter accounts.

I also have this peace. This overwhelming sense of security despite of all that is happening to our country, to our people. I don’t understand it, I don’t think I ever will fully comprehend it, but I’m glad I have it.

And I have my great awesome God, who’s bigger than the biggest problem, yet so near to hear even the tiniest of prayers.

I know He’s here with me in the middle of somewhere. I can see His thumbprint on everything.

So here, by the grace of God, goes Stef, still Godspotting.

p.s. be emailing you more later.