Joyful. Grateful. Beholden

Three words that will describe my lenten experience are: Joyful. Grateful. Beholden.

Joyful. I entered the silent retreat as a spiritual companion asking for the grace to be able to experience the joy of resurrection.  It may sound so contradictory to dispose oneself to the grace of resurrection knowing that from Holy Thursday to Black Saturday, we would all be remembering the passion and death of Jesus Christ.  I also thought hard on asking this grace but I felt like I have already genuinely entered the experience of the passion and death of Jesus Christ and it is time to take the opportunity of being in silence to be able to enter the experience of resurrection.  I also knew that this was what I was being invited to.

I know where there is joy, there is God.  Thus, the moment I felt joy in my heart, I knew right there and then that God is there.  There is joy in being able to cry your heart out, to pour out everything to God.  I’ve been waiting for this retreat for a year because I’ve been keeping all my grief, my sentiments inside and I know that it is only in this sacred space, in my sacred space that I would be able to let everything out.  There is joy in being able to release everything inside.  To empty myself of all griefs, sadness, loneliness, anxieties, fears I am feeling before my God.  There is joy in being reassured by God that I am important to him and that he loves me very much.  There is joy in remembering the previous years I was there in that sacred place. To remember what God and I have been talking about all these years.  To recall the promises, the encounters, the memories of time spent together.

That Thursday night, before the blessed sacrament, God made a promise to me.  A promise that he wants to see me happy, at all cost!  I never experienced a very persistent, enforcing (in a good way) God until that night.  He challenged me to see myself as he sees me.  To be not afraid to ask for the deepest desires of my heart.  To not settle.  To just ask, beg even for it.  To keep that desire and nurture that desire in my heart.  And never give up.  The homily that night became so real for me — “love does not give up”, “love will find a way to hope, to trust, to give…”  Yes, love will find a way for me.  God has plans for me.  God has planned everything out for me. And he only has the best in mind for me.

The best! I could not grasp before what this word meant until I came face to face with it. God presented a promise so beautiful, so wonderful, so amazing, so irresistible.  I know in my heart that it (or he) is something (or someone) who would really make me so happy.  I also know that I am someone who can make him happy as well.  And yet, I found myself not being able to ask for it.  I could not ask for it even if I really wanted to.  I felt like “it is too good for me.”  Then God asked me, “are you not worth it?”  I realized only then that I still have some issues on my own personal worth.  I felt like I don’t deserve something beautiful as that. So God said, “tuklasin mo ang kagandahan mo.”  Only when you discover your true beauty that you would be able to love yourself more truthfully.  So it hit me, yes, I don’t know how to love myself.  “Paano ko nga ba pahalagahan ang sarili ko?”  It is a question I do not know how to answer.

Grateful.  But I am grateful because God had been so patient with me.  My retreatants were such a blessing.  Their experience of God’s love and of God himself have also allowed me to appreciate how God is working through me, and working in my life.  Both retreatants had an experience of God being a Father.  And yes, my experience of God during this retreat had been that of a loving father who only wants the best for his daughter.  I am indeed my father’s daughter.  I am grateful that during this retreat I was also able to enter the experience of being with my daddy.  It was the first time in a long time that I was able to talk to him, and told him how much he is missed.  That experience, that longing for my daddy had made me realize that the way I wanted to be loved is how my daddy had loved me: unconditional, without expectations, not out of obligation, not because of what I have.  He loves me because of who I am: I am my father’s daughter.  I am his.  Like with God, I then understood that this is how God is loving me.  He loves me not because of what I do for him, not because of how I pleased him but because I am his.  I am the Father’s daughter and I am the Father’s joy.

Beholden.  Having reclaimed my value, that is of being my father’s daughter and my father’s joy, I felt beholden by God.  I found favor in God.  It is not hard to believe that he only wants what’s best or who’s best for me.  It is not hard to trust that he will keep his promise.  And this is what I am afraid of, I know God will give it if I ask for it but I still have to settle my issues on my own self-worth.  Patiently, lovingly God continues to affirm me that I am worth it.  I am beautiful in his eyes and that I just have to see myself in his eyes, see myself in my daddy’s eyes.  In the end, I finally gave in.  I courageously ask for that which I know and I feel will make me happy.  I know God was glad that I have finally taken that step.

His final words for me was: My love is like a raging storm (to prepare me for the “bumpy” road ahead).  Yet his assurance were:  Do not let go, “Wag kang bibitaw.”  “Kumapit ka lang ng mahigpit.” Thereafter, I felt being carried on the wings of God.

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