There are moments when we wonder why we are the person that we are. At some point we wish we could have done something the other way around. But feeling this doesn't necessarily mean we regret things that happened. We just wished we could have done more or less so the situation could have been better. I think we all feel this way sometimes. Though we wish we never did. But we must also understand that there's nothing wrong in feeling that way. There is nothing wrong in feeling anything at all. Feeling is a blessing and a curse. We just got to weigh things right and figure out how the blessing could be heavier.
One evening before going home, we were buying McDonalds to bring home when my Tita realized we needed to pass by the gas station and load up. Along the way, we noticed a man with a baby. We see quite a few homeless people around the city yet this time, what we saw was something different. The father was playing with his baby, the baby with nothing on, and trying to have fun out of the nothingness they have. So we decided to buy them food and it was a good coincidence that my Tita has extra baby clothes in the car too.
What’s the point of my story? It is not to brag about that we did. It is to emphasize what I realized after that very incident. I believe that the greater blessing right there was not poured out onto the homeless man and his baby. I think it was poured on to us. You see, we were on our way home. We were supposed to be passers-by. But God has this amazing way of leading us all into something different. In the short span of time that I was handing over the food to the man, the short few seconds that I was giving him the clothes and asking him to put it on his baby, I was able to feel and saw one of the few most genuine gratitude I ever encountered in my life. You know why? Because this is what he was telling me all the time:
“Ang grasya sa Ginoo, Ma’am. Salamat. Bantayan jud mo sa Ginoo mabuntag, magabii. Salamat sa grasya sa Ginoo.” He said these lines repeatedly with teary eyes.
Brothers and sisters, how many times have we experienced hardships in life? And in those hardships, did we ever see how God was working? Most times we feel betrayed and abandoned. We feel like the Lord stopped caring for us. But the truth is, every single time, God is working in us. It’s amazing how this man was able to see God despite his circumstance. They were homeless, he has a baby with no clothing, they have no food, not even a blanket to warm them during the night. But he was able to see the grace of God moving in the simplest things life has to offer them.
I hope we, too, see the grace of God in everything. That whenever we start complaining about the things we don’t have yet, we remember that there are people who doesn’t have anything at all. When we come to a point where we feel empty, may we be reminded that if we have God, we have more than enough.
At certain times, they very best thing you can do for a friend is to be there. Not to say anything. At certain times, we take the pain instead of passing it on to them because we know it would be easier to feel it for yourself than to hurt them. And at that point, you just want to grab them and hug them so tight.
We all have our own biases in this world. But sometimes, I just hope we would consider looking at a person in a different way, in a different angle. And then maybe we might be able to see that there is more to a person than what we think he/she is. I've learned that.
Playing the good friend part, again.
We all have our own biases in this world. But sometimes, I just hope we would consider looking at a person in a different way, in a different angle. And then maybe we might be able to see that there is more to a person than what we think he/she is. I've learned that.
Playing the good friend part, again.
"Change is inevitable." This is a famous quote by John C. Maxwell. It has been a cliche since then.
Let's see how these two concepts are defined.
In short, one cannot avoid being different from the way it was before.
Personally, I don't really like change. I like things to remain the way it is especially if I am very comfortable with it. I never want to move out of my comfort zone. Yet eventually, we actually have no choice but to embrace changes whether it may be big or small ones.
People change. That's the change I find very hard to accept. It hurts and at the same time, you cannot do anything about it because (1) you don't have any hold on that person's life and (2) you never know that reason for that change.
Friends come and friends go. Some things last and others just fade into memories.
But you know what hurts the most? It's the change of those person that was really once close and dear to you. Those who you consider one of your best friends. And then one day, you just became someone ordinary to them. Someone like every one else around them.
I never understood the occurrence of such change. Why some people just ditch you after everything that you've shared and can even pretend like the idea of you never even existed in the first place. Don't get me wrong. I am not talking about that somebody-that-I-used-to-know kind of person in my life. I'm talking about what we call "friends".
The process of change gradually happened. It happened little by little, one by one.
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