But what do I want?

"Did I want what I wanted, or did I want what He wanted, no matter what it might cost?"

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"How would we learn to submit to the authority of Christ if we had nothing to submit?"

Elisabeth Elliot, Passion & Purity

Of Sleeping Beauty and Compatibility

I woke up feverish, with my body aching all over. I felt like I spent the previous night in a boxing ring, as one of the featherweight contenders, and lost the fight. And what does a losing boxer do? Rest. And so I rest—text my boss about missing work, stay in the small space I call room and challenge myself to outsleep Sleeping Beauty. This time, I think I had a fighting chance.

Later in the day, a friend broke through my mid-afternoon slumber with an issue so pressing she had to text me: "Question: How will one know if she has found the right person? Is it OK to just go for compatibility instead of love?”

It took me several minutes to text back. Am I a reliable source of wisdom, being unattached myself? But my self-doubt didn’t stop me from diving into deep thinking. And so, with the knowledge lent to me by Elisabeth Elliot, Joshua Harris, James Dobson, Norman Wright and other writers whose books I’ve read, I text back:

“Risk will always be involved in making choices. We could minimize the risk if we get all the facts and think about the pros and cons. What makes two people compatible? I think it’s important that they have similar life goals. Could their two separate lives be woven into one? Do they connect and communicate? Love can be learned. Hopefully, she learns before they marry.”

Reading my text before sending it, I’m convinced that yes, in 320 characters, I’ve encapsulated what I believe in. Five minutes later she texts back: “So you think love could be learned? Wouldn’t that be hard? Wouldn’t that be unfair to the other person because you’re just compatible and you don’t really love him?”

I imagine where she is coming from. My instinct tells me that my friend might be framing the question in the third person but it is actually about her. I confirm it to her later but first, her follow-up question needed an answer:

“Now we are able to choose who to marry but in the past, it has been arranged marriages. And we have proof that they work. Personally, I can’t say that I will marry without love. But...I will choose to learn (last line edited).”

After a couple more texts, I offer that we meet sometime to talk about the love vs. compatibility issue more lengthily. I promise to think about her and pray for her concern as it percolates in her mind and heart.

Several hours ago I woke up feeling like a defeated boxer but this time around I stayed awake feeling like a trusted counselor. But with my temperature still up, I quit the mental calisthenics and instead indulge my aching body yearning for more rest.

Love vs. compatibility? Hmmm. Ho-hum...
But I still have to outsleep Sleeping Beauty*.

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*I could have won over Sleeping Beauty but if I slept a little bit longer I would look like Kerokeropi (remember the cute frog with bulging eyes?). So I rise and do a few productive things my feverish body allows me. Like write this post.

Ice Cream Day

Yesterday was a record-breaking day for me: Ate four flavors of ice cream in three separate occasions. Two cones of Arce’s Chunky Chocolate ice cream traipsed by my lips immediately after lunch, a treat from a teammate who celebrated her first year at work. To my delight, two hours later, two other flavors, Selecta’s Coffee Crunch and Double Dutch waltzed into my afternoon, ushered by an officemate who leaped from probationary to regular employment. Magnolia's Mango ice cream on top of a crepe, meanwhile, swayed and sashayed its way into my night at Café Breton, shared with another officemate who recently turned a year lovelier.

No one can possibly be sad while eating ice cream. Or one who was initially depressed will turn less somber while the cold creamy drop of heaven melts in his mouth, forcing his cheek muscles to spread into a smile. Ice cream invokes feelings of happiness, signals a celebration, and breaks down defenses. For who can stay angry with someone who feeds him ice cream? I say, take out the scoops and let the whole planet enjoy ice cream. And have marshmallows, chocolate sprinkles, nuts and world peace as toppings.

Ice cream, anyone?

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Incidentally, I'm currently reading Billy Sprague's Ice Cream as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe. Here's a quote:

Life is a journey toward eternal delight. It is a bittersweet recipe for a delicious future that first requires crushing, sacrifice and dying. At all levels, atomic to cosmic, the universe is spinning. We are being turned and blended, prepared for eternity with The Maker in whose presence is a fountain of endless pleasures.

Here, for now, we may taste the diluted hint of the paradise frost that awaits us. There, we will savor fully even as we are fully savored. And in that place, you will taste the ice cream and the ice cream will set you free.

At a Wedding

I check the text which reminds me of the time of the wedding: June 11, Saturday, at 2 p.m. It is already past 12 noon and I am still in Alabang. As I am waiting for Jenny, an adventurous soul who agrees to go to National Arts Center in Mount Makiling with me, I am scanning the buses for the sign that reads UPLB. No luck. When Jenny arrives, we take the only aircon bus on its way to Laguna, not minding that it would only take us to as far as Pansol/Calamba Crossing.
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1:39 p.m.
Oh no. I don’t think we’ll make it to the UPLB Admin in time to catch the transpo arranged by the couple.

I text Nanie and ask where we could take a jeep going up the National Arts Center yet silently wish he’d offer us a ride. Heaven hears my quiet plea and Nanie tells me he’ll be waiting for us at the PCARRD stop. Can’t wait to see his wife Elvie and their two kids, Gabby and Ian. I wonder how big the two boys have grown.

Five minutes later, we get off the jeep we took from Calamba and walk to the parked car. As I take the middle backseat of the car, I unexpectedly see a once too-familiar face. I don’t know who is more taken by surprise—him or me. After an awkward pause—the five seconds my brain went overdrive reminding me who this man is, or more accurately, was— I smile at him and start small talk. He likewise quickly recovers from the shock and even manages to crack a joke. He has lost some weight, I notice, and I verbalize it. He doesn’t confirm my observation but I couldn’t blame him. After all, it’s been eight long years since we last saw each other.

At the wedding, our small talk turns to serious talk. He initiates a conversation and relates to me his turbulent and life-altering journey of faith. He feels he owes this to me. With the privilege I felt I had as one who once had access to his heart, I ask him a few hard questions. He doesn’t even flinch and answers them all. I listen.

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It’s strange, in a mind-boggling sort of way, what eight years can do to a person. How almost 3,000 days could radically transform how we think, feel, what we believe in. How in eight years, we become so different from the persons we once were. How we can find ourselves walking in a spiritual path away from where our feet once tread.

Yet changes, whatever forms they take, validate our humanness. For we are not mere robots made of steel and bolts—machines which, with occasional tune-ups, will stay the same. We are, after all, made in the image of our God. Given the gift of choice, with free wills built into our souls. Given the freedom to respond to Him and to His costly yet free gift of grace.

And in the final analysis, only God can tell if we have chosen well.
Oh, that He would keep our hearts restless until we have chosen well.

The Land of What-Could-Have-Beens

A writer whose hands are handcuffed to her job while her heart pulls her to the mission field. An architect whose dream to serve God in a different capacity is higher than the skyscrapers he could build. A man whose uncertain future painfully prompts him to let go of the woman he loves.

My heart goes out to each of them—and to every person whose longings are still unspoken and unheeded. For tell me, what could be more excruciating than having a dream and not being able to follow it? What could be more heartbreaking than having a love for somebody and not being able to express it?

Why my sympathy?

I backtrack a bit and inspect the many calendar pages, yellowed by time, I’ve already torn. How many of those days have regrets penciled on them? How many of my feelings have I left untranslated into words? How many times have I traveled to the land of what-could-have-beens only to find myself crawling my way back to my home of hope?

If you haven’t been to the land of what-could-have-beens, then don’t plan to visit. The fare is costly—paid in the currency of tears and sighs. A dreadful place to be, it is where the sun is always on its way to sleep, where relentless rains forbid rainbows to appear, where the only sounds you’d hear are echoes of the words, “If only I . . . ”

How I wish I wouldn’t have to make another trip to this land again. And neither do I wish this trip for the writer, the architect, the man with an uncertain future, and for every man and woman whose feet and hearts compel them to follow a dream and pursue a love.