when people are people

I tried hitting the ground running this new year, but I kinda stumbled over myself and spent the first few days metaphorically on my butt, dazed on the ground with metaphorical scrapes on my chin and elbows, and the taste of dirt in my mouth. On hindsight, I didn’t end last year all that well, mainly for the fact that I was just glad to make it to the end alive.

To be honest, I don’t know what to do right now. I’m trying not to succumb to all the helpful words from well-meaning individuals who tell me, “Napag-iwanan ka na. (You got left behind.)” Because my youngest sister is getting married next weekend. I’ve got all these snappy comebacks ready, but I do get tired of hearing them and forcing a fake smile on my face whenever I do. My family tells me to just let it go out of the other ear, but it’s getting to the point where I wonder if I’m just kidding myself whenever I think that I’m quite happy with my status right now. (Sometimes I get scared that I’m too content, because while being single at this age is pretty good, I do would like to move on from this level.)

But what if– what if I did miss the boat, the flight, or whatever it is they’re equivalent to in life, and I’m stuck here–to be always in the midst of transition, in the period of adjustment, a plan that’s always in the works? To exist in limbo.

(Oh, God.)

My greatest fear is being a permanent potential, having a great promise that is never fulfilled. Much like a lot of my essays and stories that are never finished or routines started that just never caught on.

But.

Of course there’s a but. I grew up knowing my Creator is a God who finishes His creation. He sees everything through, from beginning until the end. And even while I don’t feel it right now, He has set my life on forward motion. To where exactly, and how– I don’t know. But I do know that I’d be even more lost without Him.

To be even more honest (I’m trying to be more honest this year too), as I am slowly sifting through my life to get rid of the clutter (sometimes it’s like my life is built around the clutter), I’m feeling less and less sure about myself. It’s an odd feeling for me to not know of what to do or what I can do, and I’m getting acquainted with this feeling more and more these days.

I wish I could just fast forward to the day when all lessons have been learned and I’m done adjusting, and I’ve finally arrived at the place where I’m supposed to be. Sometimes I would actually pray that (worth the shot). But God always says the same thing,

“My grace is enough for your weakness. Today.”

And by this same grace I’m finding out just how enough it is.

Beautiful wisdom from a Nike ad many years ago:

You were born a daughter.
You looked up to your mother.
You looked up to your father.
You looked up at everyone.
You wanted to be a princess.
You thought you were a princess.
You wanted to own a horse.
You wanted to be a horse.
You wanted your brother to be a horse.
You wanted to wear pink.
You never wanted to wear pink.
You wanted to be a Veterinarian.
You wanted to be President.
You wanted to be the President’s Veterinarian.
You were picked last for the team.
You were the best one on the team.
You refused to be on the team.
You wanted to be good in algebra.
You hid during algebra.
You wanted the boys to notice you.
You were afraid the boys would notice you.

You started to get acne.
You started to get breasts.
You started to get acne that was bigger than your breasts.
You wouldn’t wear a bra.
You couldn’t wait to wear a bra.
You couldn’t fit into a bra.
You didn’t like the way you looked.
You didn’t like the way your parents looked.
You didn’t want to grow up.
You had your first best friend.
You had your first date.
You had your second best friend.
You had your second first date.
You spent hours on the telephone.
You got kissed.
You got to kiss back.
You went to the prom.
You didn’t go to the prom.
You went to the prom with the wrong person.
You spent hours on the telephone.
You fell in love.
You fell in love.
You fell in love.
You lost your best friend.
You lost your other best friend.
You really fell in love.
You became a steady girlfriend.
You became a significant other.

YOU BECAME SIGNIFICANT TO YOURSELF.

Sooner or later, you start taking yourself seriously. You know when you need a break. You know when you need a rest. You know what to get worked up about and what to get rid of. And you know when it’s time to take care of yourself, for yourself. To do something that makes you stronger, faster, more complete. Because you know it’s never too late to have a life. And never too late to change one.
JUST DO IT.

on a day when it’s like i can’t do anything right,
occasions for apologies keep on coming up,
and i just want to hide my face for a while,

i hear the raindrops fall as soon as i am in my car.

It seems that someone up there’s keeping the rain off me.

(i don’t deserve it i know.)

(the eulogy I sobbed through for her memorial service)

I’ve only known Elvie since 2008. And, I have to confess, I only got to talk and know her this year—when all her hair was gone. The church was starting with cell groups and we thought that it would be a lot easier for Elvie if we just had one of the Bible studies at her house, that way her family could join in too.  I didn’t know that Elvie had been praying for a Bible study at their house for a while now, so when I mentioned it to her, she was really excited.

So it’s most likely that you guys know her more, have more stories and adventures with her than I do. It’s likely that nothing I say will be new to you.

So why am I here? I don’t know! I’m just grateful for the opportunity to honor my friend among people who, like me, loved her and witnessed the miracle that is her life—even for a just a little while.

We all know how Elvie was strong and joyful still in the face of having her cancer, but I got to see first hand just how deep it really went at one of our Bible studies when I asked about what we are grateful to God for in our lives. And she replied, “I’m grateful for my cancer.”

And I said, “Really?” more out of surprise. And later on, I would ask if she had any regrets and she said she had none. She took something that one would normally see as a cause to question God’s goodness and plan for her life as an opportunity to know her Father even more intimately. She said she experienced firsthand how it was to truly depend on Him for everything—her health, her strength, for provisions. And for her, she always had enough.

She looked at her cancer—something that is so scary and painful and crippling—and considered it not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us– to her. It was a good exchange for her for a chance to live out her faith, to get to know God beyond what she would, in normal health, have.

And while her relationship with God was something that was so personal and intimate, we—and anybody who got to know her, even for just a little while—bore witness to their wonderful relationship and was blessed by it.

One time, when Elvie needed blood donors, one of my friends volunteered to donate, but he got rejected because he just had surgery that year. So, he just went up to her room in Makati Med to pray for her. He texted me later that it was such a blessing to meet someone who was still so joyful in the Lord in the midst of her sickness. He found it funny because he came up to bless her, and instead he came away blessed. Elvie texted me later to thank me for sending my friend up to pray for her and that he’s cute.

I was reading through her text messages in my phone…  “Ok, blood test ko kanina, platelet 112,000 kasi uminom ako ng katas ng fresh papaya leaves, hemoglobin 9 kasi nagpa-inject ako ng mahal na gamot worth P13,500,  white blood cells 2.38…Sobrang manas na ako, hirap maglakad, left hand ko maga din… But I thank God that He continues to sustain me and gives me strength. He is so good! He is in control!”

Parang Psalms no? At first it’s like a lament, but in the end there’s rejoicing because of God’s goodness despite all that is happening.

I wrote about her in my blog last September, I even got her to read it (I had to zoom the page really close because her eyesight’s bad already). I quoted a line from a book I was reading at a time and I remembered her, “Not all powers are spectacular. Sometimes the hardest power to master is the power of yielding.”(Hestia, The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan)

By yielding to the fact that she could succumb to her sickness at any time, Elvie had her priorities straight. Each day counted. She keept on going so that God’s power and glory could all the more be shown in what was left of her days, and to see the people she had shared the Gospel to grow closer to our Savior. I guess that’s why she fought to stay around longer than her doctors expected her to. That’s why even while she had just checked out of the hospital earlier that day, and already had a hard time walking, and it was raining really hard (so hard, that it kept most of the people from going to the fellowship) on October 1, she still went to church to share her story at the SAM Octoberfeast.

She made every day count.

And I’m not saying that Elvie put on a brave face all the time. She never made it a secret that she was afraid of the pain her cancer would bring, but she had surrendered her sickness to God. She was ready to go whenever God called her home. Her only prayer was to be able to keep on serving until the end. She was no longer afraid of death because it was already welcome any time.  Even then, she was already free from the fear of death. What a glorious victory!

I’m not asking to get cancer like Elvie—but God, how I want what she had with You! But the Stef version (heh). The peace, the joy in adversity, the steadiness against overwhelming odds, and the strength—oh the strength!—until the end.

Praise You, o Lord, for Elvie’s life. That was really something beautiful. Praise you.

“Not all powers are spectacular. Sometimes the hardest power to master is the power of yielding.”
(Hestia, The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan)

Control. Over emotions, circumstances, crises, people– most of us have this automatic response to try to be on top of them. I know I do. But we can’t always be in control of everything.

Duh. Of course you know that already. I know that too. Every time I mess up or witness something or someone fall apart within an arm’s reach, but unable to do anything about it, I am reminded keenly that there are just too many things that are beyond my help or control. But, oh, God help me, I still try. I fight until I get to the end of my strength and even my sanity. Yielding is the final option, but I hardly even think that far.

Which brings me to Elvie. People  who follow my facebook and twitter statuses would probably have heard about her because I got to donate blood to her recently and have been looking for more donors. I met her in 2008, but I got to know her better just this year, when I got to work with her in the Single Adults Ministry (SAM) at church, and recently, when we started a Bible Study at her house.

Elvie is dying of cancer. Invasive ductal carcinoma, histologic grade 3.  She’s at stage 4 already and the cancer has spread to the spine, bone marrow and liver since it was detected in 2005.In the past few weeks, she’s been in and out of the hospital. She stopped her chemo routine because it wasn’t working anymore, and now she’s trying a new one.  There is a tube plugged through her stomach to drain it of fluids regularly. She has lost all her hair. She is so thin now that I’m scared I might break her whenever I give her a hug.

She is only in her 40s, still too young to die. Sometimes, I don’t even want to acknowledge it because, really, what can you say? Last Friday, she texted me, telling the facts of her situation flat out– “Alam mo, sis, pwedeng matigok ako anytime…” Her hemoglobin and platelet count is dangerously low that if it gets even a little lower, she could die if she doesn’t make it to the hospital in time and immediately get and injection and a blood transfusion of blood type A+.

But you know, she’s one of the most optimistic, joyful and positive people I hang out with right now. She still shows up at church and the SAM activities when she can. She still goes to the office! She even told me that, even as she is scared of the pain, she’s grateful for her cancer, because if she hadn’t gotten sick, she wouldn’t have experienced this full-on dependence in God, and seen just how much He could take care of her. It may sound cliche and trite, or even crazy, but coming from her, her gratitude is so real that it’s sometimes baffling.

That’s Godspotting for you.

By yielding to the fact that she could succumb to her sickness at any time, Elvie has her priorities straight. Each day counts. She keeps on going so that God’s power and glory can all the more be shown in what’s left of her days, and to see the people she has shared the Gospel to grow closer to our Savior. But she has surrendered her sickness to God. She is ready to go whenever God calls her home. Her only prayer is to be able to keep on serving until the end. She is no longer afraid of death because it is already welcome any time.  She is free.

See her victory?

“The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
(Exodus 14:14)

(I’ve listened to Jars of Clay’s “Who we are instead” album several times already, but on this particular afternoon yesterday, while stuck in traffic, this song made me keep on playing it over and over again. I read the lyrics and sang the song over and over again. For some reason, I think, God chose this time for me to pay attention to the message and not just merely enjoy the melody.)

I built another temple to a stranger
I gave away my heart to the rushing wind
I set my course to run right into danger
I sought the company of fools instead of friends

You know I’ve been unfaithful
With lovers in lines
While you’re turning over tables
With the rage of a jealous kind

I chose the gallows to the aisle
Thought that love would never find
Hanging ropes will never keep you
And your love of a jealous kind
Love of a jealous kind

Tryin’ to jump away from rock that keeps on spreading
Solace in the shift of the sinking sand
I’d rather feel the pain all too familiar
Than be broken by a lover I don’t understand
‘Cause I don’t understand

Have I been unfaithful to You, Lord? Every time I put something or somebody else at the center of my heart and affections, bypassing You, I know I have cheated on You.

I remember praying not too long ago (even as I was so scared to pray it), that I want You to be at front and center in my life. I was so in love with a boy that thoughts of him saturated everything I do and everywhere I went. And I couldn’t help it, I had given my heart to him. But I knew that my heart was Yours first, and I was worried that I had taken it back and given it to the boy instead. Because You’re invisible! He’s flesh and blood. When he held my hand, I could feel the warmth and the strength of his bones and sinews, I felt his heartbeat when he held me in his embrace. I know You’re there, but I couldn’t feel Your hug, I never see Your smile with my own eyes! You didn’t joke around with my friends like he did. I tried rationalizing that we give glory and honor to You through my love for him, but I knew that this wasn’t the case.

I guess it was at that point when I realized that even while I was happy back then with the boy, it couldn’t be complete because I had You trade places with him. I could only be happy with You first. And when the boy started failing– when we were both failing each other– it was bound to happen, though I still wish it had turned out differently.

You have every right to be jealous, because my heart was, and will always be, Yours. And when I, fallen and broken, turned to You, You scooped me up in Your arms and held me together. You were my safety when I wanted to cry. You showed me how it is to be loved and pampered, and still not be left all empty and spent. You restored my joy, gave me peace and kept me whole when everything should be broken. And while it still hurts, You never let me feel that I should be over it by now. But You gently prod me to keep on moving forward.

When I look back to my other relationships, I’ve always meant for them to please You first. But it never turns out that way. My emotions, my lust, my needs, I get in the way. A case of loving none to wisely, but too well. But O, Lord… Let it be different next time. You take over. You come first before him.

One hundred other lovers, more, one hundred other altars
If I should slow my pace and finally subject me to grace
And love that shames the wise, betrays the heart’s deceit and lies
And breaks the back of foolish pride…

Love of a jealous kind…

(A Jealous Kind, Jars of Clay)

I’m reposting an email that my friend sent me today. While this is exactly what I’m trying to do, it’s always great for my resolve to be reinforced by other people. Who knows, this might help some of you too.

Closing Cycles
by Paolo Coelho

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through.

Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters – whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished. Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents’ house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden? You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won’t take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.

None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back.

Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts–and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place. Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them.

Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else. Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the “ideal moment.”

Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person–nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.

Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
(Psalm73:26)

This day was hard, emotion-wise. Everything may have gone smoothly and on schedule, but my heart was stuck on the breakup once again. It felt fresh again, and for once, I was glad for the traffic jam that let me have a lot of time to cry and pour out my heart to God.

I complained and whined. I asked God why do I have to be the strong girl– a complaint that I’ve had most of my life. Why can’t I just be the regular girl who can cry and be weak and heartbroken? Then I was interrupted with the thought, “Who say’s you’re the one who’s strong anyway?” And who says I don’t cry and I’m not weak? Ok, so I may not be heartbroken, but why do I keep on acting like I am? And that shut me up for a beat. I stopped complaining for a while and took out my Bible (yes, the traffic jam was that bad). Turns out, Psalm 73:26 was part of my Bible reading that day. Touche, God. Well, of course I knew all along that it’s not really my strength, but God, I’m so tired.

I wonder if Moses ever thought of making his friends put his arms down because they were already asleep during the battle of Rephidim.

Thinking about it now, that day was a like a battle for me. And God sent unlikely (well, not really that unlikely) friends to hold me up. M, my unofficial cheerleader, just kept on assuring me that I was awesome– and if he weren’t gay, he would totally hit on me (haha!). And J, my chocolate bear– who knew what it’s like to feel one thing despite knowing what is right, and has lived with that struggle all his life with no end in sight– just kept on telling me to hang on and move forward in faith and hope. For what else can we do, when things are beyond our control?

At the end of the day, I found myself talking to another friend in her room while she struggled to hold herself together under the pressure of everything that she had to finish at work and at church. We shared our struggles and gave each other encouragement. And I prayed for her– something we both needed. She needed it because she was so stressed and lonely, and I needed to get out of my head and share the strength that I had been given to help out a sister.

Thank God for friends, Christian or not, God uses them just the same to comfort and to teach lessons that should have been learned several times before.

For some reason, I really thought that life would get easier during the 60-60 Experiment but then again, if my desire is to grow even closer to God and go farther with Him in our journey, that’s not exactly going to happen all the time, right? If I want to see His strength, He would have to expose my weaknesses. If I want to be healed, I have to show Him all my wounds. If I want to minister, I would do it with all transparency, because I’m a person saved and sustained by grace too. Kinda scary, right? But onward we go!

I was reading this yesterday from A Slice of Infinity and thought that this would be a good share for today.

Where was God in all this darkness and blood and suffering? He was right there… even in the darkest of events in history, He brings us out to the other side, to be a testimony of the power of forgiveness over retribution.

Dead People Walking

In war-torn relationships of Northern Uganda, forgiveness is complicated.  Betty was a teenager when her village was raided by the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel army known for its brutal tactics and widespread human rights violations.  She was kidnapped as a sex slave for a commander and ordered to commit callous acts of violence as a child soldier, until gradually she was broken and became an active member of the LRA.

After six years of bloodshed, however, Betty managed to escape, running across the country to freedom.  But coming home would not be a simple matter of returning.  She had committed violence against the very people she hoped to rejoin.  Her own guilt and shame was as palpable as the mistrust and anger of her village.  In her absence, two of her own brothers had been killed by the same army Betty fought alongside.

In the midst of such loss, with so many permanent scars, forgiveness might seem hopeful, but perhaps naïve at best.  Is reconciliation even to be desired when brokenness is irreversible?  Does forgiveness cease to be hopeful when neither party can ever be the same again?

The people of Uganda believe it is.  For hundreds and hundreds of children like Betty, terrorized by crimes they were forced to commit and returning home to terrorized villages, tribal elders have adapted a ceremony to make it possible for both.  In a ceremony that includes the act of breaking and stepping on an egg and an opobo branch, the returnee is cleansed from the things he or she has done while away.  The egg symbolizes innocent life, and by breaking and placing themselves in its broken substance, returnees declare before their village their desire to be restored to the way they used to be.  In a final step over a pole, the returnees step into new life.  In many cases, women returnees come home with babies who were born in the bush, usually a result of rape.  When they arrive at the broken egg, the child’s foot is placed in the substance, too.  The spirit of reconciliation, like warfare, must touch everyone.

In a single weekend, Christians have just remembered the crucifixion of Jesus, his burial on Good Friday, the silence of Holy Saturday, and the terror and amazement of Easter Sunday.  In a weekend, we were reminded how the disciples failed him miserably, falling asleep when he needed them most in prayer, denying ever knowing him as he was convicted for being himself, watching him die alone from a distance.  In a weekend, Christians moved from recognizing ourselves in this list of failures to sensing the hopeful confusion of the disciples, the overwhelm of Thomas, and the timid longing of the women at the tomb.  In a single weekend, we moved from complete despair to shocking hope, total darkness to surprising light, the finality of death to the last word of resurrection, from broken and sinful to restored and forgiven.

In this solitary weekend, Christians remember a story that should make the bold and touching forgiveness of war-torn Ugandans seem natural, expected, and necessary, however shocking or complicated or slow-coming it might be.  After the egg-breaking ceremony, Betty went from rebel to ex-rebel, shamed to restored.  “I feel cleansed,” she said of the ceremony.  After a day of being welcomed and celebrated, she adds, “Some of the bad things in my heart: they are gone.”(1)  Alex Boraine, deputy chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, notes of such radical forgiveness: “[With its] uncomfortable commitment to bringing the perpetrator back into the family, Africa has something to say to the world.”(2)

Indeed, so does Christ Jesus.  In one eventful weekend, we remember the ugly depths of our sin and stare into the deep scars of the servant who bore it away.  This utter shift in our condition is as overwhelming as Good Friday, as dumbfounding as Holy Saturday, and as inconceivable as Easter Sunday.  But it is our ceremony.  Christ is broken, we are covered in his blood, and we emerge as dead men and women walking.  How beyond our knowing, that in the Father’s inexplicable mercy and loving-kindness, to redeem a slave, He gave a Son.  Yet because God did, in a weekend, we can claim again the mystery; we can claim the power of reconciliation; we can claim Christ, who moves us from perpetrator to family.
Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Abe McLaughlin, “Africa After War: Paths To Forgiveness—Ugandans Welcome ‘Terrorists’ Back” International Center for Transitional Justice, October 23, 2006.
(2) Ibid.

Back to work! It’s so funny how the line to the parking lot here in ABS-CBN is a whole block long when I got in! Normally, there’s still no lines at this time (9am). I guess, after Holy Week, everyone felt the work and deadlines piling up already. But I don’t want to leave Holy Week just yet for today’s reflection. After all, I was in camp for Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Black Saturday.

So let me tell you about camp– we called it Re-Creation. Not just because it was at Caliraya Re-creation center, hehe. But we focused on the transformative power of Salvation. These kids are mostly church-grown and have been going to Sunday School, only a few of them know what it’s like not to be a Christian. Their age range is from 12-16, with the college volunteers (that I handled) are 18-24. In our small groups, I was surprised how most of them aren’t even sure if they’re saved or not. And despite the lecture sessions (we had four- rebirth, regeneration, refocus, re-creation), some of them still have the wrong idea about how they could be saved. I was rather concerned when my college volunteer small group leader confessed to her group that she’s “not saved yet, but in the process of being saved.”

I wonder if some of us still think of our salvation is like that.

Anyway, that was my cue to swoop in and clarify that we get saved when we repent from our sins and accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, the moment we do that– that’s when we receive salvation, then the sanctification process follows. (Of course, I didn’t use the technical terms.) Salvation is not a process of years, like a college course, where if we fail, we won’t get a diploma.

But ultimately, who am I to say who is saved or not? It’s between the person’s heart and God, right? But shouldn’t it be seen in our lives if Jesus is in it or not? What’s the use of a relationship with the God of the Universe if we’re going to keep it private or just scheduled on Sundays?!

So what do you think?