Grit and Grace

“He made me this way. Why would He make me this way and then say it’s wrong to want what I want?”

That was Karlo’s major faith struggle. He walked away because he couldn’t understand why a ‘loving’ God would let anyone’s life be so miserable. The first time he realized that he liked men, he was mortified. He didn’t want it. He was a teenager at a new school, living in a different country, away from the rest of his family. He wanted to be ‘cool’, to have friends, to fit in, and he thought that being gay would lead to complications that he wasn’t ready to deal with.

Any sort of answer, even hypothetical ones, always led to dead ends. I gave up trying to find answers for him; it was really a conversation between him and God. He knew that because I openly said so. I told him that I wasn’t there to tell him what was right or wrong, that I didn’t have the answers to all the why’s, and that I didn’t have solutions to all his troubles. I was just there to walk with him through that turbulent road, just so that he wouldn’t be alone.

We used to have objective conversations from time to time when we talked as friends, not as husband and wife, and it felt so rewarding to get him to talk to me like he doesn’t have to tiptoe around fragile glass. In one of these conversations, I remember telling him that it seemed like he was living out of boxes, kind of like someone who moves houses so frequently that they don’t even bother unpacking anymore. My heart ached for him. I wanted him to have a home, to have a place where he felt and knew he belonged. During these dialogues, I felt like he unpacked a little bit more – the good, the bad, the ugly. And over time, I learned that I was able to accept him more, even when we didn’t always agree with each other.

I’m not some superhuman angelic being with a high tolerance for everything. I have always been bull-headed and temperamental, or at least I was, before I sincerely pursued my walk of faith with Jesus. With my relationship with Karlo, the one thing that held me together was grace.

I spent some time last night reading about grace before going to bed. It sounds like a plain enough word, like something you say before meals or another term to describe elegant movement. So I Googled it, searching specifically for its use in the context of Christianity. Simply defined, grace is “the freely given, unmerited favor and love of God.” I wrote down other memorable quotes on grace in my (resurrected) journal:

“Grace is love that cares and stoops and rescues.”

“Grace is unconditional love toward a person who does not deserve it.”

“Grace is mercy, not merit.”

“Grace is the opposite of karma, which is getting what you deserve.”

And the source of this grace is God Himself, as shown in the life of Jesus. After witnessing all the crimes and depravity that humans are capable of, Jesus did not recoil in revulsion or distance Himself from the “unclean” ones. Instead, he sat with them, shared meals with them, let them feel that there was Someone who loved them still, and ultimately died on the cross so that we can all have a shot at going to Heaven when we die.  That is pure grace, and that was what I wanted to extend to Karlo, who has been avoiding God and faith and anything spiritual in the past 2 years or so.

I remember praying about it one time, asking God to MAKE him listen, to MAKE him turn his life back around but His answer in my heart was, “He is running away from Me, but he still listens to you.” Seriously, that wasn’t the answer that I was hoping for. I knew it was going to be an intensely challenging and emotionally draining task. It was going to be tough, but I made it my mission of sorts to keep the line of grace open in Karlo’s life.

My obedience to God’s will at that time forced me to grow – I had to reexamine my motives in all my interactions with Karlo and be mindful of my thoughts and words. I had to keep going back to the Bible (mostly 1 Corinthians 13:4-7) to measure my love against the only acceptable standard for me. Not pop culture, not relationship or self-help books, none of those things…I wanted my love for Karlo to replicate God’s love for me, so I knew which standard to choose.

I wanted nothing less than pure, untainted grace.  I wanted Karlo to remember what it felt like to have God’s grace carry him through the deepest valleys and how that same grace can help him soar through triumphs once again. And in order to do that, I had to draw from my own personal experiences of God’s saving grace. I am stubborn by nature, and I’d like to believe that God used my stubbornness as a starting point. Like a potter (Jeremiah 18:1-6) or a silver smith (Malachi 3:2-4), He built on it, reshaped and refined it until it turned into grit.

My grit comes from grace, nothing more, nothing less.

And I will continue to draw from that same grace to fuel my grit — this time, for my daughters and for myself.

Grief to Gratitude

Yesterday was Karlo’s 40^th day. I was reminded of this about a week ago, when the Feast of the Ascension was announced in our community chat group. In the Christian faith, the Ascension is the 40^th day after the Resurrection of Jesus. It was when Jesus had left the physical world, was taken up to heaven to take His seat at the right hand of God the Father. Catholics hold some sort of memorial for the 40^th day after death. I’m not sure what other Christian denominations do, but whatever it is, I feel like the event is more of a traditional thing meant to comfort the bereaved family. I don’t know if I’m supposed to do anything special or something new — I’ve already been praying for Karlo long before we separated, and I still think about him several times a day. What I did do was to kind of check in with myself and see if there were some thoughts or feelings that I’ve been dodging.

I’ve mostly gotten over the Shoulda-Woulda-Coulda’s by now and the grief has somewhat faded. I was honestly taken aback by how hard grief hit me in the first place because I thought I had successfully distanced myself emotionally from Karlo. We were in a neutral yet comfortable territory of co-parenting while reestablishing our friendship post separation. I asked him to stay here with us when we first caught wind of the government’s plans for an Enhanced Community Quarantine, and we were doing okay except that I frequently nagged him to take a shower (not always successful by the way…LOL! Sorry, Karl!). In any case, relationship-wise, we were okay.

What I had come to realize was that the grief that was unleashed was not just from his death, but from the whole experience of loving someone fully, to having to yield and let him go from my life, and THEN *actually* letting him go from this life onto the next. I played it so well and had hidden my scars from the past year, so that he wouldn’t drown in guilt and have a chance at finding his happiness. The finality of death and not having him around to be on the receiving end of my pain gave me the freedom to open Pandora’s box and just let it all out. It’s been cathartic.

I recently reposted something about a ball in a box hitting a pain button as a representation of grief and I would like to add that, at least for me, every time the ball hits the pain button, it loses some energy and shrinks a little. That’s what I’ve been doing in the past couple of weeks – I just let that ball hit that button over and over, as much as it wanted, until it has gotten smaller and smaller and has lost most of its force. So, yeah, I’m doing okay (so far).

The kids are doing even better. They have recovered far quicker that I did, and I sometimes worry that they might be in denial or something. But then I remember that I prayed for that, for God to protect their hearts, so I really shouldn’t be surprised. I’m chalking it up as an answered prayer. Sometimes, I start feeling guilty for going back to my usual routines and having good days, but didn’t I pray for my heart too? Guilt loses its grip when I remember Who is helping me get back on my feet.

Karlo will never be forgotten. He was and always will be a part of me. Like a reflex, I know how he would react to certain situations – how he would laugh at witty memes that we loved to send to each other, which kind of smile would light up his face whenever the kids did anything funny or adorable, how he would tease me when I’m obsessed over a new plant…he has left the physical world but still lives in my mind and in my heart.

My prayers have also evolved in the past weeks from praying for his soul to find peace, to thanking God for bringing him into my life. Like an ostrich getting its head out of the sand, I’m starting to look around, taking stock of the things that I need to get back to. It’s a pretty long list, but I know Jesus is looking over my shoulder at that list, and I trust Him to walk with me as I take baby steps, one day at a time.

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Judges 18:6 (NLT) — “Go in peace,” the priest replied. “For the LORD is watching over your journey.”

Pruning Season

This is the best String of Dolphins specimen that I have. All the others are too…stringy. It’s a trailing succulent that is propagated by cuttings, so most of the time there would be a couple of strands growing separately in a pot. This one has several branches forming a lush and beautiful clump. The interesting thing about this particular plant was that I’ve taken so many cuttings from it, that it ended up looking like a nearly dead stump at some point. Seeing it last night gave me a better insight on the following verses: “’I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” (John 15:1-2). One of the elements of my third tattoo is actually a vine, based on verse 5 further down the same chapter: “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” It’s my last Jesus tat (so far) to remind me to anchor myself to the True Vine.

I sometimes wonder if plants feel anything when they get pruned. Every proverbial pruning I’ve been through was painful beyond belief. But looking back at each of those moments, I do see how *some* good came out of those experiences. I have to admit, I started to rely more and more on God until praying felt more natural, until prayer became the first instinctive response to any situation.

When my Dad passed away, I felt stripped of every sense of security that I had. I couldn’t even begin to figure out what to do! Karlo and I were just starting out with our growing family and were barely scraping by even with our combined income. My 3 sisters were all still in school. Our helpers left a week before Daddy had a stroke, followed by our 2 nannies while I was shuttling between my Dad in the hospital and my kids, who were 2 and 3 years old at the time, in what felt like the other end of the region. ‘Overwhelmed’ is too mild a word to describe my state.

It all somehow worked out — not without difficulties, for sure — but it still worked out. If you ask me how, I would just say “by God’s grace”. The solutions to the individual hurdles at the time are now kind of hazy, but the one thing I remember is this: whenever I felt lost, confused, or desperate, I prayed. I prayed and things worked out in one way or another, at just the perfect time. The Lord stripped away that false sense of security and replaced it with a growing faith in His goodness.

In the aftermath of that event (like it wasn’t bad enough already), my sisters and I faced the possibility of losing our home because of estate concerns on top of our Dad’s hospital bills. Ever since I started working, I have always been careful about money, but no amount of diligence and controlled spending can prepare anyone for this series of financial blows. I prayed for a solution, a clue, a lead on who to reach out to, anything to help us out. I prayed for a miracle but at the same time surrendered our home to God. I tacked Daniel 3:18 at the end of every prayer, as a promise on my end that whatever the outcome, I will continue to trust the Lord.

Day by day, I would stumble on 2 Chronicles 20:15 –  “Thus says the Lord to you: ‘Do not be afraid nor dismayed because of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours, but God’s.’” I encountered it across the different devotional series that I was reading at the time, in my small group chat group, verse of the day mailing lists, etc. It kept popping up everywhere, that it was impossible to ignore!

It took months for the estate proceedings to be completed, and I tried my best to not be anxious about it. I clung to “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10) because being still is NOT my strongest suit. I have always been resourceful and self-sufficient, but the Lord removed those as well and replaced them with a personal testimony of His abundant provision. He allowed us to keep the home that our parents built for us. 🙂 Learning to trust in God’s provision is liberating, to say the least. It’s such a huge relief to know that I don’t have to carry the world on my shoulders!

And so now, it feels like I am in yet another season of pruning. Honestly, I feel like I haven’t had that much breathing room in between, and my spirit is like that ugly stump of what was supposed to be a lovely string of dolphins. But I know that in time, that stump will grow beautiful branches, well-adjusted ones that are healthier than the original string. In the meantime, I will keep hang in there (by tooth and claw!) like David who said, “’I would have lost heart, unless I had believed That I would see the goodness of the Lord In the land of the living.” (Psalm 27:13)

 

PS: I can’t believe I just quoted King David. Karlo and I used to joke that he was so emo, but given my current situation, he’s pretty much my go-to guy right now.

 

 

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.