COMING HOME

 I used to think of staying home as the better alternative this season of celebrations and calamities. But due to an unpronounced love pact I made with my husband, I have to brave through the rowdy weather to go to the Western part of the Visayan region every Christmas. This year has been my nth time. But this particular season is the most turbulent not only plane-ride wise, but even with my spiritual and family relationship as well. And yet going away from the “mundane-ness” of the usual domestic clutter could actually mean something more than going away. Bu leaving our physical home, I actually have come home closer to my husband and kiddo.

I only stayed practically 18 hours in what could be the most remote town in Iloilo where the beach is but a stone-throw away, where the nipa-clad house of my in-laws are void of any basic gadgets like a radio or TV. Those 18 hours proved to have cleared my perspective of family and home. I have never seen my husband that happy and refreshed seeing his humble parents and siblings overjoyed by his homecoming. Each year every homecoming is like the first time.My husband could be aptly describe as one tot proudly brandishing our 4-year-old daughter to her grammy and grappy. I thought, my, this is home I have never been before. I have never seen and felt so much love by a family which I thought as entirely of different culture and language. I looked at my husband during our separate dinner for two somewhere away from the city and I saw in his face once again the reasons why I fell in love with him the first time and still will for the second time. All these years, I have always been drawn to a pure love that emanates from a home that brews unconditional love continuously even during stormy seasons.

If someone asked me one more time why travel away from home, I’d say so I could come home to what used to be “us” once again.

                                                                                                   

MY DAUGHTER'S ANTENNA

I wish I was not a teacher.

It all came  like cold water pouring on me on a seething hot day. I thought all was all right until I had to help Kiny practice her writing letters A and E the night before her big examination day. Maybe just maybe, it is unfortunately inherent for teachers like I am to pound on students what is ideal and what is required or at least what is expected. But for a three-year-old like my daughter, whose hand control is yet to be developed, doing those slanting lines and vertical lines that consist in what appear to be letter As and Es to me in her small doodled paper is calvary. Worse, her self-appointed tutor,  that's me, whose brows remained twitched at a letter E that looks like an antenna of a television, had to sometimes raise my voice just to tell her that a letter E has but 3 horizontal lines and not 4 which would virtually make her E a TV antenna not to mention the lines that could never stick to blue and red lines. Of course, in all these things, I was aware that her psychomotor skills are yet to be developed. But there's just something in me that drives me to go for more even if I noticed that she has gone far too stretched already.

Then I noticed tears welling up in her eyes looking up at me as though pleading for the insensible torture to stop. It was then, after my head swirled in ache after finding ways to have her hold her pencil  THE RIGHT WAY that I needed to rest my teacher-stature and come back to being a mother.

The next day after feeling guilty for being too hard on my tiny tot I bought her favorite crayon set. And what met me when I was about to brandish the crayon set was a shrieking, "Look, Mommy, I'm making nice As and Es. It's not antenna anymore, right?" She stood looking at me waiting to celebrate my approval. Needless to say, my heart sank. I had to hug her. I did not wait for a second to go by to give her the confirmation that she needed from her mom.

 As early as now, I don't want my daughter to go through what I went through as a kid. I was an achiever all right, but I was only achieving because the approval that I wish to get from my mom took a long time in coming. It did come, all right. But I wished it came just when I badly needed it.

Being a teacher and getting all the techniques, strategies, and approaches right in the classroom do not necessarily manage a family well. But I intend to be good at these two tough acts to my wonderful little girl.

T A K I G

Bugnaw ang akong mga lutahan

Dugay nang wa mag-alindasay

Sa matag hagsa sa

Ritmo sa garay-garay.

 

Kung mahimo pa lang

Gitukmod ko na palayo

Ang kabugnaw nga galiyok-liyok sa

Nangamig nakong alimpu.

 

Kanus-a pa kaha

Mupuli ang dilaab

Sa gakuray na  nakong mga laray

Aron unya,

 

Sa pagkabanhaw,

Mudagayday na usab

Ang dugay nang nabagtok nga

Salimuang?

OUR FATHER, MY BROTHER, OUR PASTOR

It's amazing how God can make all things grow--even men.


I remember him when I was 9. Three decades have allowed me to see his growing pains including mine under his tutelage, under his ministry. 


In those years, somewhere there, I thought I snapped; I thought our friendship and "sibling bond" have snapped. I thought one more shove, and things will graduate from brittle to broken. But the great Omnipotence, the healer of all sores is good and perfect in using time to blur what used to be excruciating.


Now I see him preaching tonight in our midweek service. He stands there like no one has ever stood before preaching about Jonah and the guy's lack of humility in the forefront of God's order to go to a place of people whom Jonah thought are abominable, now considered forgiven, loved again by his own God, by his own commander.


But in his sermon, I'm seeing a lot of things so differently. Now I see the man preaching clearly without even trying. I hear the sermon because finally the man I'm seeing now is my brother again. The minister I'm seeing now has become a real father to me, a real pastor of an often-time confused sheep like I am. 


For the first time, my eyes are welling up--too overwhelmed of so much respect--respect for this man who could equally say with me, "God is not finished with me yet." He might be under construction before and he might still be now. But I am amazed at how much wisdom and God's blessing have made him grow to be a man whom I can call father.

Boy, am I so glad Pastor Nats came to Banawa Church in 1995 when we needed a father. Most of all I am so glad he never gave up on the church! Not on me, not on us!

Coming home to my Man

I used to hear clamors from married women that men are silly and childish. As to how men can be that preposterous despite their swagger and relentless pride just escaped me until I married one of them.

I am not in the position to hammer this on any man, much more on my man, so to speak. Yes, men and women are created totally different from each other in strengths and weaknesses. What my women friends say about men may have sprung from what they presume as proper for a man.And as to how men behave in crucial moments of decision or indecision compared to how we, women react may be less impressive as I myself have witnessed one of them dealing his own crisis as well.

I think of how my husband often reduces himself to a helpless sheepish pesky child each time he's at my mercy. As to what case does this normally occur, I couldn't let slip for now. But in moments like this, instead of berating him, deep inside I pity him. Initially, I get exasperated. I would think men are too self-absorbed not considering a woman's day's predicament. Then I would think he needs me to understand his needs and needs me to be there as I need him to understand my need as well. But I tried to forgo necessary remedial actions! I would say "later," I'll fix that one.

Then he texted me one morning while I was in the mix of things in a national seminar. He said he misses what  I used to be to him before. This summer vacation I have been absent. He has been alone in his emotions when he needed me.

Right there, I was jolted. I knew even before then that I was quite of a slack as a woman, more so as a wife. I might have been an A++ as a mommy but not as a wifey. And unexpectedly, in his unpredictable quiet way, my husband has beaten the crap out of me.

Time to go home.

I DON'T KNOW

Author Willingham's thoughts in his book Crumbs for the Would-be Christlike Christians were staggering. They struck a chord that drives my appetite for reading crazy. 


He said,"I try as much as possible to steer away from talking or from preaching heavy doctrines" like that one where the Armenians and the Calvinists differ.  I got a little bit flabbergasted when he wrote that confession, coming from a Nazarene veteran professor, writer, and preacher himself.


 I admit I kind of found a home in what he said. Contrary to what younger generations expect from us theology graduates and literature teachers, we have some things that we remain uncertain about.  And I'm not in any way embarrassed to say "I don't know" at times. For what we call knowledge here on this   planet of seemingly all-knowing guys are nothing but dung to him, the Wise of the wise. Paul, one of the most learned Jews in the New Testament time, has spoken in 1 Corinthians 13:12:

                    Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face 
                    to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully 
                    known.

What we have at hand is but a portion of that vast reality we are not privileged to know as of yet. How true of Paul when he thought he knew everything that was moral and upright and then he met the Lord who changed his outlook of what he thought he already knew!

Just as I am tempted to gather my wits and forget my regular sleeping hours to research on stuff I am expected to be good at, here's this almost-a-century-old guy who brandished a new thought to me."It is okay to say I don't know about a lot of things. He went on to say, "This one thing I know. It is not wisdom that saves me. It's faith!" Faith even in the middle of stark uncertainty.

The dark almost always scares children. The unknown is like a faceless monster to us that prefer treading familiar pavements. Hence, we prepare for the uncertainties ahead. We study. We train. We search for answers. Unfortunately not all answers are visible. Hence, the fear. But faith says, "I believe." And it's not blind faith as some would tend to label this passion to trust in the God that is seemingly unseen and detached. It's faith in the heart of the Father that I always come home to at the end of the day.

POUR IT ALL, SUMMER

There's not much air to breathe right now. I'm awed, that's what! Awed at how little we know of the depth and breadth of God's possibilities for each one of us. Maybe all this is because I really am a worm.

At a worm's vantage, he can only see a portion of God's universe. In the same manner, he doesn't see what goes on in the heart of his creator that causes every force, friction, and motion in his world. It remains the same heart that stoops to every worm as I am and in his tenderness pulls us to where his sun and provision are. He secures us to where safety resides.

This summer, which I fervently hope (summoning all the positive powers of his possibilities) not to end soon. For while the restless summer beach waters sleep, I'm seeing God so big in the littlest details of my life, quite far better from what I have hoped for.

So, summer, drag me to your endless glorious heat!