Love Story of a Lifetime

Good girl. I’ve rarely been called that in my life, and right now I take pause to wonder why. I’ve never murdered anyone or even been cruel to animals; I didn’t get pregnant or sleep around when everyone else was doing it; I didn’t get addicted to drugs…uh, maybe that’s the only thing I didn’t get addicted to. But anyway. I think people never saw me as a “good girl” because the way I lived my life, although not exactly “evil,” was far from pristine.

Curse like a sailor, smoke like a chimney, drink like a fish – yes, I was Bridget Jones personified, perhaps even worse, because I did not know the meaning of the word “moderation.” Party like there was no tomorrow, seize the moment, be merry for perhaps later tonight we die. And I fully expected to die of lung cancer, or in a drunken car accident, or something of that sort. After which, I would get to heaven, and that would be that.

Neither could I be called a good Catholic girl…except for a couple of years in a private elementary school, I spent 17 years getting my elementary, secondary, tertiary, and graduate education at the University of the Philippines, where religion belonged to the geeks and the losers we used to make jokes behind their backs about. We were having too much fun drinking, smoking, and cutting class to be bothered with faith. Because of this environment, and since my parents at the time were also non-committal Catholics whose only requirement from their children was attendance at Sunday Mass, my faith was virtually non-existent, what more my commitment to the Church. When we got old enough to go to Mass by ourselves, I officially became a non-practicing Catholic. Worse, I became a non-practicing, cafeteria Catholic…picking and choosing what suited me and my lifestyle, and convincing myself that the rest was bureaucratic nonsense. I believed in God, a God who would punish if you did bad, answer prayers if you prayed hard enough, and who loved me anyway, so it didn’t matter what more I did. For me, that was enough.

And yet that same God was reaching out to me all that time – through the girl in 1989 who prayed with me because I was going to get kicked out of Italian class because of excessive absences (otherwise I had a perfect exam record!), through all the people who, over the years, tried to invite me to Christian fellowships and Opus Dei study groups. But my environment, permissive as it was in all imaginable ways (we were usually drunk before 3 p.m. and many of my friends were notorious for being sexually promiscuous, right inside the school facilities!), was hostile to these approaches. It didn’t change much when I began law school (people just dressed better and were a lot more boring), but then, God decided to hit close to home.

One of my best friends at the College of Mass Comm, Kenneth Angliongto – nice guy with a gentle disposition but a terrible tornado of a rare temper, who also went to IS, not UPIS but the other non-Catholic-more-expensive school, and whose darkest depths were revealed in the gory details of his animation, which oftentimes bordered on the Satanic – became a born-again Christian. What persecution he suffered from our group of friends, none of whom was even a regular Sunday Mass goer! But, except for that inner light and his quiet faith, he didn’t change for the “worse” like we thought he would. He didn’t proselytize, he didn’t condemn us for being such pagans; he just went on being Ken – the nice guy who didn’t smoke or drink or do drugs and who would always take you home at the end of the night, always stopping at red lights. One major change though was that his Christmas cards no longer featured bloody machine-gun toting Santas with their guts spilling out. And then, one evening when he was home on vacation from his film studies in the US, he began to talk to me about God.

I’m not sure why he chose to share the Good News with me first, but I think he knew that I would be the one most receptive to the idea. I’d seen how Christ had changed his life: he was no longer in the darkness that once devoured him, he made peace with his family, and he spoke so surely about God’s love. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately in the long run, I was unwilling to accept the idea of leaving the Catholic Church (how ironic, when I wasn’t exactly a model Catholic myself!), particularly since I had to forget about honoring the Blessed Mother. I remember telling him during that dinner that I couldn’t turn my back on something I didn’t know much of yet (one of the reasons he left was because he kept falling asleep at Mass!) – it was like changing your name before fully understanding why you were named that way.

It took me a few more years to open up a little to God. In law school, you inevitably find religion…in desperation, there is no one else to turn to but a Higher Being! Especially around the time of the Bar Exams. I was no different; from never attending Sunday Mass, I suddenly began to go everyday. Even if it had been 14 years since my last confession, forgive me Father for I have sinned…

One weekday Mass, I knew something was terribly wrong when I could not bring myself to offer peace to a girl who uh, brazenly stole something (actually someone, grr) precious away from me. My conscience was screaming so loudly at me that, after the Mass ended, I grabbed one of my sorority sisters and asked her how to make a proper confession. Fourteen years of sin was a lot to account for! I sat in the church, debating whether I should go through with it or not, and in a moment of cowardice, decided to put it off. But God wanted to wash me clean right there and then, because just as I stepped out of the chapel, He suddenly opened up the heavens and unleashed a heavy downpour! I had no choice but to run back inside, summon up my courage, and confess my sins. Bless the good Korean priest’s soul – he was sensitive enough to recognize a long-lost sheep who wanted to return to the fold, comforted me as Jesus would, and gave me a penance that I could scarcely believe. For 14 years of what I thought were the most horrible offenses against the Lord, he asked me to say ONE Our Father, and even offered to help me with the words. It wasn’t just the heavens that poured down that afternoon; for the first time, I felt the healing power of tears washing clean a forgiven soul. God and I had a very intense, romantic “fling” during those Bar months – we had a great connection, but just as He wanted more of a commitment, I slowly broke up with Him and left Him holding the bag of empty promises I’d made after I’d gotten through the tough times solely through His grace. But God is a relentless suitor, and He will woo you in His own special way, tailored to win your heart.

In my particular case, I value trustworthiness in a relationship most of all: proven loyalty and steadfastness through the years. And that is exactly what God set out to show me in the next seven years (it didn’t take another 14, thank Him), even when I myself was at my most unfaithful. I fell back into the world, and hard! My values became more worldly as I advanced in the world’s eyes – in age, in career, and later, in fame and fortune. I did not swim against the tide of destruction – I surfed its very waves! And I thought I was having the time of my life. Young, fairly successful, popular, influential…with a growing legal practice and a writing career that was taking off beautifully. There wasn’t a mass medium that I wasn’t on, and the world was at my feet, literally. I started to explore it while all my dreams were coming true. Travel, name-partnership in a firm of my own complete with black leather armchair and window office, new car, fan mail, parties and parties and parties and press junkets, recognition on the street and in supermarkets…

Just as I was about to fulfill yet another dream – living in Paris while getting an advanced education at one of the finest law schools, and then later on actually continuing around the world – He wanted to resume our long dormant relationship, this time for real. And He did it slowly and steadily, just as I like it, over the course of a year and a half, before making His “move.”

In December of 2000, my “bingoboys” gave me a book that would change my life completely. Not the Bible, but Left Behind by Tim La Haye - the immensely popular book about the rapture and the people who were “left behind” to experience the tribulation that would follow. What upset me so much about it was that I didn’t know if, given my present state of faith, I would be left behind, or not. I was so bothered that I shared this with another group of good friends of mine, one of whom was so concerned about my million-and-one questions that she decided to call in a long-“lost” friend and masteral student in Theology to clear up any confusion. What followed, starting February 2001, was a year of Saturday bible studies – more academic than anything else, given our varying states of religious indifference – that opened up God’s word to us. After we’d celebrated our first year of studying scripture (with a little exchange-gift party that landed me a New Jerusalem Bible, one of my most beloved possessions that I still cherish even if I no longer have a relationship with the person who gave it to me), our group slowly moved on to other interests, namely badminton (which I have never quite taken a fancy to). But God still had me by the collar.

One Saturday, I was getting ready for the bible study session – which means that I was putting on my “face.” In particular, I was engaged in a task that demanded my full and complete attention: I was lining my upper eyelids (mahirap yun). All of a sudden, the Lord moved me in a way I cannot forget; it was as if He physically tugged at the strings of my heart. I wanted to fall on my knees at this theophany that came from out of nowhere, this consolation “without cause” (how could you consider eyeliner an effective “cause”??) that St. Ignatius identified as solely being from God.

Are you willing to give up all this frivolity and serve Me, and only Me?

Where the heck did that come from? Unless my lipstick could suddenly speak, I knew that it was God, and Him alone, who was calling in my heart.

Serve Me.

The promise I had made Him in the summer of 1994 came back to mind. I was only kidding, Lord, You know I wasn’t serious. Three years of missionary work in exchange for surviving (not even passing) the Bar ordeal? You KNOW that I could never make good on that! I’m much too busy now, too many commitments, too many dreams that I’m busy making come true…

Only Me.

What answer can you give that kind of question? Eyeliner now smudged because of my tears – the tears that would later become all-too-familiar as indications of my unworthiness being in His Presence – I said, “Lord, I will give EVERYTHING up, if you want me to.”

EVERYTHING. My car (which is almost like my boyfriend). My clothes, my shoes, my makeup. My long nails. I was ready to go where He was calling me, wherever that was. I told my little group of friends this revelation during that evening’s bible study and you could literally hear the sound of jaws dropping to the floor. These people had known me for many, many years, and they could hardly believe what was coming out of my mouth. Neither could I. All I knew was that God was calling me on a promise long overdue, and it was now all up to me to make good on it.

Our bible study leader, quick to realize the opportunity, led us all to basement parking (there was no functional tape player in the condo!) to listen and pray with VeePee Pinpin’s Out of Roads.

I just ran out of roads again. Don’t know
where to turn. I started counting stars again,
then I lost my way.
I just ran out of time again.
Will I ever learn to stop my chase of hours
again, only learn I’ve lost the day?

The last thing I need is to hear this
whisper in the wind.
The last thing I want is
this voice that rises from within.
I’ll need to go
home soon, I know. But maybe tomorrow, not
now, when the last thing I need here and now
is this lasting need for You.

I’ve been rushing out of rooms again.
Too afraid to stay. I’ve been dreaming of some
rainbow’s end, but the colors melt away.
Should my heart be like an open door, helpless
to the storm? Permit your wind to touch my
soul, only to leave this aching song?

The one thing I need is to hear Your
whisper in the wind.
The one thing I want is
Your voice to go home soon to You. Won’t wait
for tomorrow, right now, for the one thing I
need here and now is this lasting need for You.

And she asked me to go to Bo Sanchez’s Feast for Mass early the next day, which she promised I would never regret.

Charismatic spirituality was something I could not ever see myself having. It was a little too weird and unnatural for me, especially coming from a family that did not even raise hands during the Our Father (this has since changed, in a major way). I went with a friend, Roger, who had plainly and simply wanted to attend a normal, regular Sunday Mass with me. But the Feast was FAR from that. I wept within two minutes upon entering the Mass, just as Father Steve began to lead the Gloria, my spirit desperately longing to join the worship and abandon all self-consciousness, but my worldly self still resistant to any of these strange novelties. I wept and wept and wept all throughout worship, and Bo’s talk, and now I know that it was then that the healing had begun and the path towards Him was being cleared.

It took a few more months for me to encounter the God I’d been putting off from meeting. In the meantime, I attempted to find out where it was He was sending me to “serve” Him: was it in the mountains of Mindoro to teach grade school children for a year through the JVP? Was it in the island of Camiguin where I found myself with a profound desire to help educate the “unenlightened” electorate and free them from the shackles of political oppression? I was floundering about, trying to determine His will.

But He had other things in mind: He set the perfect stage for our major rendezvous by first giving me everything my materialistic heart desired at that particular time. Yet I was empty, listless, disoriented inside...the last column I wrote prior to my renewal came out on May 31; it was about Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, personal legends, and my quest to determine mine. In June of 2002 I was soon going to embark again on a dizzying flurry of major trips all around the country and the world – Cebu, Boracay, Kuala Lumpur, Europe, the US…my ultimate adventure. But still, there was a longing for something more, something – or SomeOne – Who I found on the weekend of June 1 and 2. On a retreat, which was actually an LSS called the “Road to Damascus,” I was unexpectedly struck down by His light and I melted into His arms. The highlight was my acceptance of His unfathomable mercy and forgiveness as He washed me clean with His indescribable love (especially after a confession of seven years’ worth of sins!). I was changed forever.

But not completely. I took off into the world, and into my desert. For many months, away by myself from home and my new community, sin and temptation tormented me, and oftentimes won over. But God just would not let me go. Despite my unfaithfulness and disloyalty to Him, with Whom I had just rekindled a brand new relationship, He held me fast and did not allow me to slide completely into the depths of Hell. I was killing myself with self-imposed misery, but He stuck it out with me.

Finally, I came home. And what I would call the major part of my conversion began. Within a matter of weeks, my world and my heart were shattered beyond – or so I thought – repair. I could not function properly; the pain, which I thought I’d have some amount of control over, as usual, took so very, very long in going away. I had never been at my weakest, or at my most vulnerable, in my entire life. They say that it is only when one is flat on her back that she can look directly into the face of the heavens. And I so totally agree with that. The familiar onslaught of depression - the uncontrollable urge to sleep all the hours of the day away to forget interior aches – was curbed somewhat by something equally unquenchable: a thirst for His word. I could not stop reading scripture; it was the mefenamic acid of my soul. I could not stop calling out to Him; only He could hold my hand when no one, not even those closest to me, could understand what I was going through. Although some people, at the most opportune times, apparently could. This was the time when He also sent me into service and ministry – to praise and worship Him as His servant David did. And this is why I am most thankful for the wide open arms of the sisters and brothers of my first ministry, especially Oman, upon whom I spilled a lot of my heartaches, and who so sagely advised…”Wa na yan! Kalimutan na!” Even though I so wanted to cry, “Yes pa, yes pa yan! Naaalala ko pa!”

It was because of my Lord’s faithfulness through the most trying of times – the faithfulness of a best friend who will stand by and hold you steady through thick and thin, that I surrendered my all to Him. That I began to raise my hands and my heart and my whole being for His glory. That I will forever sing of His goodness and His greatness, because He has healed me from so many pains and ailments and loved me to wellness like no other. Only in my absolute brokenness was He able to put me back together the way He wanted, making out of the pieces and shards something even more beautiful than I could ever imagine possible.

This is only the first part of my story, which is still being written as we speak. Since that day I truly opened myself up to His bidding and decided to follow Him, the road has not been easy. But neither has it been uninteresting.

Sometimes we have a tendency to doubt if there is indeed a God, a Higher Power that holds everything in His sway. As for myself, I only have to look at how my life has been changed – not by myself, for I could never pull myself out of the deathtraps of addiction to the world, to life, and to sin – and acknowledge that indeed, it was not of my own doing that I am finally free. My heart is Spoken For…and may it always remain in His precious safekeeping.

Amen.

Part Two, the conversion to the Church, and to Mission, soon to come.