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.