Ateneo Dream Comes True 15 Years Later

The 16 year old dreamer, and the 31 year old achiever

The person who made things happen until I could make things happen myself.

The one who believed in me.

The one who stood by me. (also my dream 'atenista boypren')

Telenovela worthy love story

Chapter 1: Hijacked celebratory dinner. Drama at my favorite restaurant. Shouted at infront of other people. Parents demanded to postpone marriage til 6 years.

Chapter 2: Rude receiving in the house. 

Chapter 3: Boy gets suddenly sent to Visayas by the company boss for no reason. Coincidence? I think not.

Chapter 4: Parents refused to sign documents needed for marriage. Drama lasted for weeks. Couple informs parents to publish publicly. Parents fear humiliation, and signed. 

Chapter 5:  Girl goes to the US to ‘heal’ and spend time with family

Chapter 6: Boy resigns and gets a job without the ‘famlee connekshuns’ 

Chapter 7: Parents forbade marriage, as the mourning period was ‘extended.’ Demanded to extend marriage for 4 years. 

Chapter 8: Boy moves out of the family home, moves in to the apartment. Parents lashed out. 

Chapter 9: Girl comes home. Started wedding preparations. 

Chapter 10: the calm

Chapter 11: 1 month before the wedding. Parents strongly asked to postpone til February 2023. 

Chapter 12: Heart to heart talk of Boy and mother. Peace flowed, excepting Girl’s way. 

Chapter 13: Mother insulted simple wedding reception. Boy and Girl cried. Girl’s creativity is enhanced, made an even simpler wedding with the theme Pista sa Nayon. 

Chapter 14: Boy is invited by an aunt to meet. Asked him to sign prenuptial agreement to ‘protect her assets’. Girl broke down and cried out of extreme anger for deception. 

Chapter 15: Girl and boy fought. Girl contemplated of breaking up. Couple confronts Mother. Mother is aware of the plan. Girl fought back. Mother called girl disrespectful. Girl hangs up the phone. 

Chapter 16: Girl realizes that she can be happy in life even without the boy. Finds consolation in God. 

Chapter 17: Boy fights for girl. 

Chapter 18: Girl finds out Mother went to the Parish to contest the Banns. Parish Priest shuts down Mother’s interference. 

Chapter 19: Boy confronts parents. Sets boundaries that they cannot come to the wedding if they will only come for Boy. If they come, they should respect the union. Parents raged. Boy is calm. 

Chapter 20: peace. Overflowing peace. Wedding preps went smoothly. 

Chapter 21: The wedding is perfect. Parents came, obviously sad, but is decent enough to stay at the back. Mother hugged both the Girl and the Boy tenderly. Girl healed a little. 

Chapter 22: Girl found out Mother tried to get to Girl’s relatives to stop the wedding. Girl unaffected due to failures of the Mother in the past. 

Chapter 23: Boy and Girl became Groom and Bride. Peace. Just peace and love. Occasional chaos comes their way, but blocks off negative energy effectively. 

Would not recommend, but would go through it again. It only made us stronger. 

 

Well what do you know?

 

Nalulumbay

There are more days now that I go to bed, thinking how lonely I am. How longing I am for the nights I will be able to hug him in our rest. I think of how another day has passed without him with me. How can I ask for more when he has given me so much? He needs more time. I feel I am running out of time. What should I do? 

I want to be with him, but he is not ready for me. His path towards this relationship is much harder than mine. He is on the verge of losing his family. They currently stand turbulent grounds already, what more if he takes it further with me? He has been clear about wanting to gain proper footing  He wants to focus on himself, on his growth.

How can I feel guilty and selfish at the same time of wanting to be with him, when I know that the stakes are higher for him? Do I put him first, or do I face the reality that I am lonely and so something about it? 

 Somehow, I am not sure what the Lord is telling me. What is the more loving decision? To let him go of the pressure of having to seemingly choose between me and his family? Will waiting for the family's acceptance and C's financial readiness be a loving decision towards myself? 

I will admit that it still hurts to think about the broken dreams I used to have, because I have chosen to wait for Curt for 3 years now. Is it still the loving decision to keep on choosing him? Or should I listen to the loneliness and discontentment I feel about this relationship's slow pace? 

Lord, you know that I love you, but I do not know what your will is. Please help me discover your will for me. Open my heart and my eyes to your truth. Grant me the grace of courage to see what I choose not to see due to my pride and stubbornness. Help me love like you. 

A biological imbalance and several life imbalances

 

With luck, I stumbled across this video. It was phenomenal. Just when I was starting to see depression and anxiety from a biological perspective, I was again invited to look at it holistically. I was reminded that depression and anxiety are possible signals that alert me when I have needs that are not met. 

It is not exactly easy to know right away what those needs are, since it's almost always complex. However, I can try to slowly digest and figure out my deeper needs as I continue doing what I am doing now:

1. Living healthily through daily routines, eating well, being with nature, and sleeping on time.

2. Anchoring my decisions and activities on values that meet my spiritual and moral needs. 

3. Deepen my connection with others through engaging of daily meager conversations with friends, or deep conversations with my spiritual group, director, and family. Anything that keeps me truly connected. 

4. Spending time to pray, and the other half to process my thoughts, and experiences, even if it sometimes poses me to feel anxious and depressed. 

I still experience the pain even if I anchor myself on these strategies, but I can honestly say that I feel the pain much less when I fully commit to these solutions. I will admit they require physical efforts and commitments that in most days, I do not feel like doing, but with a little nudging from my support system, I get up, do them, and I have no regrets.

Number 2 on the list is really important too, especially that we live in a society that feeds us wrong values. Watch the video to understand what I mean. Perhaps I can talk about this in the future. 

As I try to meet the needs that are unknown to me yet. Whenever I feel the pain, I will start asking myself, "What do you need, Joi?" and perhaps I can try evaluating my life to see if there is something I can do to solve it. 

If not,

the video recommended social prescription as a nonchemical antidepressant. To be with others who are experiencing the same things, and do something together, like trying to attain a goal together. Hmm.. Perhaps, the reason I started feeling depressed again this year was that I was disconnected from society because of COVID. Don't get me wrong, I am grateful for the connections offered by the technology, but they are in no way at par with real connections. 

While I am still surrounded by the uncontrollable factors that affect my access to meeting my psychological needs, I will make the most with what I have. I will continue to try to live each day grateful even for the little things like, oh I dont know, surviving the day? Greeting at least 2 people? Brushing my teeth? Get kissed by my cat? The little things. 

So, what is it that you need right now? 

 

Of Diagnosis and Spiritual Consolation

 Last night, i experienced consolation from the Lord. I went down for a walk around our compound. I was all alone and for 5 seconds, I felt an intense peace and just an overall feeling of flying. My right hand was warm and i thought to myself, maybe the lord is holding my hand right now as I fly. I closed my eyes and I immediately saw that I was flying over the clouds, slowly and calmly.

There was no music, nothing  much to see (since it was dark) but that happened to me. It only lasted a short time, so when I ask God, "can you do it again?" I think he said  no and laughed. hahaha we proceeded to talk afterwards and I think I had received something new from him.

Our convo went like this: 

Me: Do you love me, even if I doubt your will for me?

Jesus: When did I ever not love you?

Me: My life will change because of cyclothymia.. 

Jesus: When did I ever leave your side through the changes?

Me: I will get hurt. a LOT.

Jesus: When did you ever get hurt without my healing? 

Me: You know that I love you, but you make loving you very hard for me, Lord. 

Jesus: Have you considered that this may be a gift? You see it as a life sentence, a curse, but with this, I actually get to keep you closer to me, forever.

Jesus: Its not an accident that your healing comes through your spirituality. You seek me, and I keep you close to me. You have always responded so lovingly to my calling, and you have received my blessing always. 

Me: But I want to achieve more, ______ will limit me.. I want to do more for you, you know that. 

Jesus: But I do want you to do more, more than what the society's measure of "more"

Jesus: I give you the gift of being forever conscious of balancing your life with me. The gift to have a strong reason always to seek me, and my love. You may think of it as a curse, because I am sometimes not the center of your life. But I know your heart. and I hope you recognize your heart, the way I recognize it, Kat.

So i'll keep in my heart 2 things from this prayer: 

1. that the Lord is always with me, even during the downies of this conditon. 

2. getting diagnosed with cyclothymia is a curse and a blessing. Curse because it will hurt me a lot, I cant be too down, or too high. However it is a blessing because it will be my reason to prioritize balancing my life, with God. I have a stronger anchor, kahit ung anchor na yon, e pain ko. haha

Part 3: Letting God

 Holy Saturday. What I appreciated about this Jesuit-run retreat is the fact that Fr. Johnny was not attached to his original plan. He willingly changed today's retreat to address questions from the audience about yesterday's topic. Many questions went around Judas and is he predestined to betray Jesus? No, he was not. God is holy and believes in our free will. Jesus would still have gone through his passion even if Judas did not betray him. (He had lots of enemies after all) When I was younger, I was convinced that people exist for the sole purpose of teaching me a lesson. I used to see criminals this way too. I realized that I was selective back then, specially when good things happen due to people committing something terrible. 

Today's retreat made me ponder about the metaphor of God being a gardener. Yes he sustains us, but through Jesus, he also showed us the right way to Him. In a way, Jesus is the good seed that we all want to become. The good seed of Jesus is scattered around us, despite our brokenness, despite our 'weeds' and unfavorable soil, he thrives to live with us. The question is, 'will I let God through me, to influence my seed, specially in times I am overpowered by sadness? or even with Joy?' 

I guess my training for this year will be focused on seeing the world as oversaturated with God's love. I know, I know, its really difficult given what is happening around us. I still want to do it for myself though. I want to train myself to remember God's love and its abundance around me. I tend to blame him a lot and question his presence. While that is normal to be felt, I want to be better in trusting in him. 

Lenten Retreat Part 2: Letting Evil

 Why on earth am I praying about letting evil this Lent? It can be intimidating at first, but let me explain. 

In my previous post, I pondered on the concept of 'open system' where in God can be seen as a gardener, instead of a scientist. In the open system, there is no one cause as there are various variables interacting at the same time for a long period of time. To contextualize this, let's talk about a popular question being thrown around today: Why did God allow Covid19, and its horrible consequences on our lives to happen?

At some points, I would also find myself asking"why did God create Covid?" but I know that this did not come from God. How can someone who is all goodness produce something evil? So no. It did not come from God, but he allows it to happen. My mental capacities will probably never encapsulate the answer to why God allows bad things to happen, but I am certain that amidst the evil around us, God's goodness prevails. In the God as a gardener metaphor, we remember that gardeners would allow weeds to grow with the seedlings, to prevent the risk of hurting the seedlings in the process of weeding out. 

I continued my reflection through the imaginative prayer with the scriptures. Jesus, during the questioning, torture, carrying of the cross, and death on the cross. Being in the center of all those, obviously, I dont think the Lord feels happiness. Was he angry though? Fr. Johnny said that he may be. Afterall, he is human, and it is a human tendency to feel anger. What sets Jesus apart is how he responded to the evil that was befalling on him. Isnt it that when we are faced with evil, whether contexual evil or moral evil, we are stirred with anger inside and most of the time, we respond with evil as well? We curse the person in our heads, we lose hope in the country and its leaders, we think ill. Sometimes we would even act in an ill manner. Jesus on the other hand, is deep in his commitment to finish what he has started, and part of that is responding to evil, with defiance. He stayed on his path to the cross when he could have walked a different path instead, without anybody stopping him. 

In my own experience, I have lost count of the number of times I responded to evil by turning to my original sin. "Its too hard, and besides, everyone is doing it this way, so it cant be so bad, right?"  Fr. Johnny compared our original sin to a path in the woods. Because people have walked on that path before, people follow and as more and more people walk on that path, the clearer that path becomes. In the case of Jesus, he did not respond by following the human tendency to 'walk on the commonly used path of sinfulness.' Instead, he remained on his trail.

I cannot make evil disappear, whether it is contextual evil like calamities and diseases, nor can I stop the moral evil of the people around me. However, I can let evil happen without falling into evil. Jesus did it actively. he was not passive during his passion. 

With the efforts of defying evil, we get wounded like Jesus. I pray for healing and forgiveness. When I do not have the will nor the power to forgive, 

Lord, grant me the grace to want to forgive, and the will to heal. When I have lost hope to defy evil, be patient with me and keep me in your arms always. 

Lenten Retreat Part 1: Letting the Good

 It's Black Saturday and I just finished the Triduum retreat given by Fr. Johnny Go. You see, the temptation to 'skip lent' is severe, after all, it feels like I have been living in Lent the whole year! So I picked up a thing or two from my prayer experiences and prayed for the grace to practice 'Agere Contra'. With God's abundant grace, my Lent was salvaged, all thanks to the retreat mentioned. 

The essential questions for this year's Lenten season are, "In relation to our context now, why did Jesus do what he did the way he did it? How can I respond to see Him more clearly, that I may love Him more dearly, so I may follow Him more nearly?" 

Maundy Thursday focused on "Letting the good" and the emotion of FEAR. 

I prayed over the metaphor of God as a gardener. He, who plants, nurtures and takes care. He, who allows us to interact with other variables in the open system of life. He who wills the best for his plants, but allows the consequences of our interaction with the open system (whether intended or unintended) to befall on us.  Nahiya ako kay Lord, kasi ang tingin ko pala sa kanya noon, 'vending machine'. I put a coin, then I expect something from Him. 

"Lord, I was faithful to you, why did you let this happen?" 

"Lord, I strived to be pleasing to your eyes, why did you forsake me?" 

"Lord, I deserve a better service than this. I want a refund. I'd like to speak to your manager." JK. haha

This lead me to put myself in the shoes (or sandals, since you know, ancient) of Jesus. Jesus, who also asked, "Father, why have you forsaken me?" Sounds resentful, sounds afraid. I would be too. In the retreat, I entered into a contemplation of the passage that started it all. 

Remember how Jesus asked his friends to keep watch while He prays in the Gethsemane? Notice how He would keep on returning to his disciples, only to find them asleep? Jesus. He probably have 100% prayer concentration, yet he kept on stopping his prayers to go to his friends. I dont know about you, but as for me, when I do this, I'm stalling. Was Jesus stalling? In my prayer imagination, he certainly was. He was afraid to say 'Your will be done." He knew what was to happen, he even verbalized it (Take this cup away from me, not by my will but yours).  Jesus, who was the favorite of God (well, because God repeatedly performed awesomeness publicly to establish Jesus' status: his birth with the singing angels, the booming voice during baptism, the VIP guests during transfiguration)  is now calling out his father, but he was silent. His friends let him down, and he was publicly hated. I imagine him to be very heartbroken. 

Was Jesus faithless for feeling this fearful? Absolutely not. His fear did not invalidate his faith in the Lord. You know, I often get told that I have weak faith because I fear a lot because of anxiety. Today, I am consoled that like Jesus, I can be faithful when I am fearful. During the retreat, I came to understand that faith is not seen in the absence of fear, but it can be operationalized in three ways: 

Faith, when operationalized, means:

1. Trust - I believe in God's goodness amidst all odds (the most common understanding of faith)

2. Commitment - No turning back after saying 'God, your will be done' (commonly understood in the context of faithfulness in marriage)

3. Discernment - surprise! haha yes faith can be practiced through the 'Discernment of Spirits.' I'd like to talk more about this. In my spiritual guidance, I learned that only God can touch our hearts (consolation without previous cause). Both the good and the evil spirits may only influence my thoughts, and my thoughts are the gateway to my heart. (very C.B.T., which is a new science, but mind you, St. Ignatius conceptualized this centuries ago Going back to my point, through discernment, I may show my faith in the Lord by guarding my thoughts that leads to my heart. 

Did I make sense? Don't worry, half of the time, I don't understand it too, and I have been practicing this exercise for 2 years now. :P I am patient though, I am consoled that God reveals Himself to me in his own way. 

There is goodness in everything. Discern that there is good in everyone. In my imagination, Jesus finally said 'Your will be done' amidst his fear, not because he was washed with courage, but because he was faithful to God.  He was probably also faithful to us (through discernment that there is a good in us worth dying for) that moved him to keep on loving us to the Cross. 

Dearest Father, 

Grant me the grace to have faith in my trust, in my commitment, and in my discernment. Help me see that in the open system of life, your original goodness abounds. Amen.

Covid

I was tested for covid today. It has been 12 days that I have been in quarantine with Mami since I got exposed to C, who turned out to be covid positive. He had mild symptoms and I on the other hand had none. I remember the day we found out he was positive, I entered into a serene prayer, and begged God in all the calmness I could muster, to spare me from the symptoms, should I have the virus. The bigger miracle was to be spared altogether, which is very unlikely due to the momol I had with the covid positive. 

Why did I ask to be spared? Who wouldnt? afterall, covid was not just a health issue, but an economical concern as well. Covid-related hospitalizations cost about 200k a week. Finances are quite unstable in my family right now. We cannot afford to pay for Covid. Hence, I asked for the miracle to be spared from all that. With the surge in infection that's going on right now, I can imagine how terrible the coming days can be. Surprisingly, I am at peace in my heart. I know that God is with me and walks with me through this unknown chapter in my life. I dont know when, or how, all I know is that everything will be alright in time.