PARADOXICAL

The faith chronicles

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

 

How much more rain?

I can’t forget these past few days. I’ve never been so attacked in life as these days of heavy raining.

As if feeling alone (I am not closing my door on the probability of romance and settling down) and unaccomplished at my age isn’t enough of a cross, I’m now in danger of being jobless, after the Australian project I’ve been working on abruptly ended due to changes in the client’s plan. God knows I’ve been wishing it to end because I had found the work more and more enervating in its repetitiveness, but I didn’t expect it to end in such a rude manner, which left me feeling helpless and humiliated.

As though this was not enough, I’ve been battling with health issues for more than a year now – hypertension and signs of ageing, withdrawal symptoms, side effects from the medicine I’ve been taking, including a possible interaction with the herbal supplement. This has brought me dizziness, weakness, tiredness, anxiety, palpitations, and sometimes depression. This particular hardship makes me feel like I could go anytime, so I live life from day to day. But this scares me, for I don’t think I am ready to pack my bags. The sad irony is that I just came from a deep psychological recovery, which has made me feel that my life has just begun. I have been anticipating a restart at 40, so I have welcomed this new decade as a new chapter with much excitement. Instead, I feel like I am punched in the face, to quote someone. It’s an awful reality that is sometimes best left denied than accepted. ...Until real life reminds it in my face, that is, in moments when I desire to dash to the mall for some items and I couldn’t anymore.

It doesn’t help that friends laugh at me, for being like a hypochondriac elderly, while here I am feeling like it’s the end of my days. It’s quite insulting, if I did not stretch my understanding.

My arrears in my rent are piling up too, while the apartment is crumbling before my eyes with the passing of the extreme seasons (literally blowing hot and cold). I feel quite guilty and humiliated whenever I am reminded of my cousin (who owns the place) from whom I owe so much money. The least I could do is spend for the repair of the house, but I couldn’t do even that due to lack of funds. I am not sure how I can stretch what I have, given that I have stretched it to the limit. How much more should I give up?

I have a sister who’s going through so much in her marital life. She says there’s a third party, so of course it bothers me how she’s coping and how the three kids, whom I love dearly, would think and feel.

I am also deeply affected each time a little niece or nephew gets sick. Two of them did, one after the other; the first a case of fever, flu, and diarrhea, and the second a case of mysterious rashes. I didn’t foresee that blessings like children could also be sources of great worry, when I’m not even their father. I guess the bigger problem is me, or my excessive engagement with my family, as the savior.

Just last month, a younger brother’s wife, whose sudden pregnancy and civil wedding brought me resentful feelings, suddenly gave birth prematurely. The stress from the thought of where to find some cash to help them out, plus the anxiety over the fragility of the newborn, added up to my worries.

In a way, I had anticipated all these attacks. After all, I’ve been very active lately in service in the fields of the Lord, as though to make up for lost time, the years I spent soul-searching outside the confines of my community. I’ve been active in the prolife advocacy, including anti-LGBT matters, evangelization of some young professionals in Ayala plus a youth group in Bulacan, plus my usual tasks/duties in community: choir member, fixing assembly materials after the gathering, the self-imposed note-taking I do, and attendance in assemblies and activities. I am very certain the enemy is not very happy with me.

But then, I noticed that some of my friends also go through the wringer like I do, even though they are not really active in service. One is even an avowed atheist, and yet he is not spared of suffering. He has reported being rushed to the ER because of phlegm, which left him unable to breath, delayed salary in the school he’s teaching at, and father issues. Another friend reported about his place being flooded, damaging his car, and meanwhile his mother is confined at the Heart Center for a serious ailment. I wouldn’t know what to do if I were in their place.

“Life is like that,” the latter friend told me. The reaction is consoling, I have to admit. I feel relieved to know that I’m probably not being punished for my past sins all the while I was giving my all, my 101%, to God. I know I should be consoled by the fact that no one is spared of suffering while going through this life.

What was I expecting anyway? I must have thought that, since I was serving full-blast, I’d be favored by God with peace, happiness, and loads of material goods. Maybe I have been unconsciously bribing God, paying him with good works and sacrifices, to manipulate him into loving me, or at least preventing him from letting me be tormented with simultaneous moments of suffering. Maybe I’m afraid of God, and now that he allowed what scared me the most (facing squarely the possibility of sudden, even painful, death), I can’t help but feel angry.

These days of trial, however, have brought me to the end of my spiritual rope, enough to learn to pray: Lord, help me love you right because I just can’t, on my own. You know that I can’t. Help me learn to follow you not because of fear but out of love. Help me to love you and believe you even through so much hardship, or as that song about (ironically illicit) love says, "through the limit, through the wall." Don’t give up on me even when I feel like giving up on you.

This is really not the first time I’ve been in this place – I’ve been here several times enough to be able to complain as cheekily as Teresa of Avila did (“That’s why you have very few friends.”) -- but this seems the worst thus far. In moments like this, I keep near me the scrapbooks of blessings (of the obvious and happy sort) that I’ve compiled through the years to remind me how much I’ve been favored in various unexpected ways. In a way, this act is sad because I know that each time I hit my archive of marvelous memories, I know I’m in the bottom of the barrel again.

What I really earnestly wish for is not for the sweet memories of the past long gone to suddenly resurrect, but for this heavy rain to just stop. If God wills it, I want my life back. While I’m grateful for the breakthroughs (my niece and nephew getting well, for one), I will be even more grateful if God intervened so as not to prolong the agony. How much more hurdles can I jump over? How much more heavy downpour to survive the ensuing flood? I’m afraid not much.

So dear God: You know I am not a saint, so please bear with me.

Comments: Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]





<< Home

Archives

01/01/2004 - 02/01/2004   02/01/2004 - 03/01/2004   03/01/2004 - 04/01/2004   04/01/2004 - 05/01/2004   05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004   06/01/2004 - 07/01/2004   07/01/2004 - 08/01/2004   08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004   09/01/2004 - 10/01/2004   10/01/2004 - 11/01/2004   11/01/2004 - 12/01/2004   12/01/2004 - 01/01/2005   01/01/2005 - 02/01/2005   02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005   03/01/2005 - 04/01/2005   04/01/2005 - 05/01/2005   05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005   06/01/2005 - 07/01/2005   07/01/2005 - 08/01/2005   08/01/2005 - 09/01/2005   09/01/2005 - 10/01/2005   10/01/2005 - 11/01/2005   11/01/2005 - 12/01/2005   12/01/2005 - 01/01/2006   02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006   03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006   04/01/2006 - 05/01/2006   05/01/2006 - 06/01/2006   06/01/2006 - 07/01/2006   07/01/2006 - 08/01/2006   08/01/2006 - 09/01/2006   09/01/2006 - 10/01/2006   10/01/2006 - 11/01/2006   11/01/2006 - 12/01/2006   12/01/2006 - 01/01/2007   01/01/2007 - 02/01/2007   02/01/2007 - 03/01/2007   03/01/2007 - 04/01/2007   04/01/2007 - 05/01/2007   05/01/2007 - 06/01/2007   06/01/2007 - 07/01/2007   07/01/2007 - 08/01/2007   08/01/2007 - 09/01/2007   09/01/2007 - 10/01/2007   10/01/2007 - 11/01/2007   11/01/2007 - 12/01/2007   12/01/2007 - 01/01/2008   01/01/2008 - 02/01/2008   02/01/2008 - 03/01/2008   03/01/2008 - 04/01/2008   04/01/2008 - 05/01/2008   05/01/2008 - 06/01/2008   06/01/2008 - 07/01/2008   07/01/2008 - 08/01/2008   08/01/2008 - 09/01/2008   09/01/2008 - 10/01/2008   10/01/2008 - 11/01/2008   11/01/2008 - 12/01/2008   12/01/2008 - 01/01/2009   01/01/2009 - 02/01/2009   04/01/2009 - 05/01/2009   05/01/2009 - 06/01/2009   06/01/2009 - 07/01/2009   07/01/2009 - 08/01/2009   08/01/2009 - 09/01/2009   09/01/2009 - 10/01/2009   10/01/2009 - 11/01/2009   11/01/2009 - 12/01/2009   01/01/2010 - 02/01/2010   02/01/2010 - 03/01/2010   03/01/2010 - 04/01/2010   04/01/2010 - 05/01/2010   05/01/2010 - 06/01/2010   06/01/2010 - 07/01/2010   07/01/2010 - 08/01/2010   08/01/2010 - 09/01/2010   09/01/2010 - 10/01/2010   11/01/2010 - 12/01/2010   01/01/2011 - 02/01/2011   02/01/2011 - 03/01/2011   03/01/2011 - 04/01/2011   04/01/2011 - 05/01/2011   05/01/2011 - 06/01/2011   06/01/2011 - 07/01/2011   07/01/2011 - 08/01/2011   08/01/2011 - 09/01/2011   09/01/2011 - 10/01/2011   10/01/2011 - 11/01/2011   11/01/2011 - 12/01/2011   12/01/2011 - 01/01/2012   02/01/2012 - 03/01/2012   03/01/2012 - 04/01/2012   04/01/2012 - 05/01/2012   05/01/2012 - 06/01/2012   06/01/2012 - 07/01/2012   07/01/2012 - 08/01/2012   08/01/2012 - 09/01/2012   09/01/2012 - 10/01/2012   10/01/2012 - 11/01/2012   11/01/2012 - 12/01/2012   12/01/2012 - 01/01/2013   01/01/2013 - 02/01/2013   02/01/2013 - 03/01/2013   03/01/2013 - 04/01/2013   04/01/2013 - 05/01/2013   05/01/2013 - 06/01/2013   06/01/2013 - 07/01/2013   07/01/2013 - 08/01/2013   08/01/2013 - 09/01/2013   09/01/2013 - 10/01/2013   10/01/2013 - 11/01/2013   11/01/2013 - 12/01/2013   12/01/2013 - 01/01/2014   01/01/2014 - 02/01/2014   02/01/2014 - 03/01/2014   03/01/2014 - 04/01/2014   04/01/2014 - 05/01/2014   05/01/2014 - 06/01/2014   06/01/2014 - 07/01/2014   07/01/2014 - 08/01/2014   10/01/2014 - 11/01/2014   11/01/2014 - 12/01/2014   01/01/2015 - 02/01/2015   03/01/2015 - 04/01/2015   04/01/2015 - 05/01/2015   05/01/2016 - 06/01/2016   07/01/2016 - 08/01/2016   08/01/2016 - 09/01/2016   02/01/2018 - 03/01/2018   03/01/2018 - 04/01/2018   07/01/2018 - 08/01/2018   04/01/2019 - 05/01/2019   05/01/2019 - 06/01/2019   09/01/2019 - 10/01/2019   02/01/2020 - 03/01/2020   04/01/2020 - 05/01/2020   05/01/2020 - 06/01/2020   06/01/2020 - 07/01/2020   07/01/2020 - 08/01/2020   08/01/2020 - 09/01/2020   09/01/2020 - 10/01/2020   01/01/2021 - 02/01/2021   10/01/2021 - 11/01/2021   11/01/2021 - 12/01/2021   12/01/2021 - 01/01/2022   05/01/2022 - 06/01/2022   06/01/2022 - 07/01/2022   08/01/2022 - 09/01/2022   10/01/2022 - 11/01/2022   02/01/2023 - 03/01/2023   08/01/2023 - 09/01/2023   10/01/2023 - 11/01/2023   12/01/2023 - 01/01/2024   01/01/2024 - 02/01/2024   02/01/2024 - 03/01/2024  

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Subscribe to Posts [Atom]