Testimonies

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NEW DIRECTION

‘At age 27, I will be happily married with four beautiful children and a successful career.’ This was me when I was sixteen. Why 27? The reason was simple. In the country where I am from (Philippines), we get nine years of primary schooling, four years of secondary schooling, and another four years in college. No intermediate school. Ideally, a typical Filipino already gets a complete education by the time he reaches the age of 21. That excludes post-graduate degrees. Anyway, I had thought that six years after graduating is already an ample time to get a good job and save to fulfill the above-spoken dream.

Now, I am 27, single with no stable job, yet I consider myself successful. I am not married but I have a boyfriend for almost three years now who loves me and takes good care of me. I have my family to whom I owe so much of who I am today. I have my old friends who remain supportive, true and faithful to me right from the start. I have no steady job but I get part-time jobs every now and then. Finally, I got a good education, with the help of my parents of course, and they continue to support me even until now with Law school.

I believe that rather than being successful, the more proper term should be blessed. I have always known God, I have been praying to Him and I have always believed in Him, ever since I can remember. What changed really is that I now begin to understand how God works in my life. I see Him and feel Him more than I ever did in my life. He is more tangible now, more real. I do not know how, why or when exactly it all began. But I am certain of what I did – I recognized and accepted God and His love for me. I am just glad that this happened to me. I realized that for years, I had been lost and felt incomplete. Now, I have become very familiar with the feeling of contentment. This is not to say that I do not get angry anymore, or sad, or hurt, or dejected. I do. I am still human, after all. But such feelings are not as terrible as they were before, as I know now that God will comfort me, ease my pain, heal me, love me and make me feel better.

What they say about God not answering some of our prayers either because the thing is not for us or He has something better planned for us, or we are not ready to have it yet, are actually true. Sometimes we pray so hard and so desperately to have the things we want that we forget the things that we actually need. Let us take me for example. I was supposed to graduate in Law school last March but I did not. I wanted so bad to finish already and to take the Bar Examinations so that when I would already become a lawyer, I would be able to earn money and help my family financially. Plus, the expenses of law school are already taking their toll on my family. I felt so bad but later on, God comforted me by making me realize that even if I graduated, still, I would not be psychologically, mentally, emotionally and financially prepared to go through with the Bar Examinations. By the way, my boyfriend will be taking the Bar Examinations in September and I believe God wanted for us to take it one after the other so that we could assist each other in preparing for the exams. Moreover, God might have noticed that law school has taken so much of my time already away from my family, my friends and even myself that He thought it best to give me a pause. I would not have realized that I need all of these right now more than I wanted to graduate and even without me asking or knowing for that matter, God gave them to me.

Given these reasons, I am now convinced that I should just take things slowly but surely. I lost so much time being in a frequent hurry that I missed out so many important details in my life as well as my loved ones’. These moments we really could not take back anymore which is why we should take every opportunity left to make the rest of our life meaningful. I still want to get married with four beautiful children (may be more) and to be a flourishing lawyer, of course. All at the age of 30? Maybe. 35? Perhaps.

Someday… in His time.

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