In Full Bloom

This is how I can describe the status of my career at present.

Another unexpected blessing came my way this afternoon. I accidentally cancelled the call because I was busy browsing my mobile. It was an unregistered number but I still decided to ring back as a courtesy to the caller.

To make the long conversation short I was given another opportunity to handle a class for two and a half weeks! I'll blog more on this later.

But aside from these opportunities, the comments and praises I have been receiving are just heart warming and inspiring.

Teachers who have planned absences actually request for me to handle their class! There was even one teacher who had an unplanned absence but still mentioned to the coordinator that she requested for me. Di ba nakakataba ng puso? I must be doing something right, right?

It is in times like these that I am affirmed that I chose to respond to the right vocation. That yes, I may not still be very well versed with the conversational language as an everyday thing, but inside the classroom I know I'm good. I know I'm good at what I do. I know that I teach well because of the talents and skills He has equipped me with. I know that this indeed is my calling. True enough, when you love what you do, it will reflect on the quality of your work.

I can only be thankful and grateful.

Waiting for A Miracle

It has been 25 days now since a good friend of mine got into a Coma state, 6 hours after giving birth to her second child (thru normal delivery). Everything went well after her delivery and then it happened. She had a post-delivery complication -- a stroke.

I really can't describe what our barkada feels right now. We have been together since 1995. A few of us are already based abroad so most of the updates are just thru FB/e-mail. All of us have been praying for her, expecting and waiting for a miracle.

Everytime I check my e-mail, I am hoping to receive good news. Yes there are days when I get them, but the past few days, I have been receieving not-so-good news, especially the one I got last night.

Hubby can sense my sadness everytime I open my mail and get updates. He sees me crying it out silently, wishing and praying that my friend will get better already.

I may look and sound ok, but everytime my friend crosses my mind, I can't help but be sad. So I try to busy myself so I won't think about her all the time. I try to repress it.

True to what others say, the concept of death or losing someone you love becomes so real if it happens to someone very dear to you. My friend is still fighting for her life and with this battle comes a blessing for me.

If there is one good thing that resulted from this, it is the fact that I and hubby are spending more time with my family. I hold my hubby's hand more. I hug all of them more. I say "I Love You" to them more. I try to overlook their shortcomings more and focus on the fact that they are still with me. I know hubby can sense it and I can sense that hubby is doing the same. Just the thought of losing someone so quickly became so real and it both scared us.

Life is short. Anything can happen. We don't know if we are still here the next second, the next minute, the next hour, the next day, or the next year. We are making the most of our time, we are seizing the day, grabbing every opportunity to be together and show our love for one another while we still can.

I am still praying and hoping for a miracle.

If you can just now say a silent prayer for my friend too, I would gladly appreciate it.

Inspiring Video on Special Kids

Special kids will always have a soft spot in my heart. I may not practice my Sepcial Education degree but everything that I have learned through my interactions and experiences with them will never be forgotten.

Here is one video which is very inspiring. It is worth watching and sharing.

It gives hope. It shows unconditional love. Simply amazing. Be inspired!

Just click "video" and it will direct you to Youtube.

If You Had The Choice

Death is not something we can escape from. One way or another, we will reach the end of the road. But as they say, God only knows when and how.

The husband of our wedding godmother is presently battling Stage 2 Colon Cancer. Of course, I was saddened with this news. When I think what the family, espcieally what our ninang has to go through, I find them lucky. Of course we are still praying for the complete healing of Tito Nick, but then again, if it goes the other way, I find it consoling that at least they had the chance to spend more time together --QUALITY time together. I know that things change especially when something drastic, like sickness, happens to our loved ones. There is a radical change that happens not only with the sick person, but the people around him as well. I believe that if it happens to me (knock on wood) I will make sure that I will make the most of the time left. Make sure that each day is special not only for me but for my loved ones. Wounds can be healed, love deepened, faith strengthened. I always pray that if ever God takes me, I would not want it abruptly -- sudden. I just can't imagine the grief and the pain of those whom I will be leaving behind. But, does that mean, I want to experience the physical suffering of people who are sick, if it means I can spend more time with my family, my kids? Maybe. I don't know.

"At least he didn't have a hard time", is what they usually say when someone passes so suddenly -- not wanting their loved one to experience the pain and all. But if you were the one to leave, what would you choose? All I know is that at this point in my life, I'd still prefer to experience the pain and spend more time with my loved ones than to leave them unprepared.

Harmless Friendships?

Last week, while waiting for my turn on my usual pre-natal check-up, I chanced upon something interesting in the book I was reading. I was reading "Committed" by Elizabeth Gilbert (also of Eat.Pray.Love). I wanted to share it with Alvin right away but I had to wait until yesterday for me to read it to him. We were having a lazy Sunday afternoon and I really enjoyed our conversation, and our exchange of insights on the topic that I have just read to him.

So I'm posting that part of the book and hopefully, married people like us, can be more cautious when we form new friendships or continue to enrich "harmless friendships."

"But Glass, in her research, discovered that if you dig a little deeper into people's infidelities, you can almost always see how the affair started long before the first stolen kiss. Most affairs, begin, Glass wrote, when a husband or a wife makes a new friend, and an apparently harmless intimacy is born. You don't sense the danger as it's happening, because what is wrong with friendship? Why can't we have friends of the opposite sex -- or of the same sex, for that matter -- even if we are married?

The answer,as Dr. Glass explained, is that, nothing is wrong with a married person launching a friendship outside matrimony -- so as long as the "walls and windows" of the relationship remain in the correct places. It was Glass's theory that every healthy marriage is composed of walls and windows. The windows are the aspects of your relationship that are open to the world -- that is, the necessary gaps through which you interact with family and friends; the walls are the barriers of trust which you guard the most intimate secrets of your marriage.

What often happens, though, during so-called harmless friendships, is that you begin sharing intimacies with your new friend that belong hidden in your marriage. You reveal secrets about yourself -- your deepest yearnings and frustrations-- and it feels good to be so exposed. You throw open a window where there really ought to be a solid, weight-bearing wall, and soon you find yourself spilling out your secret heart with this new person. Not wanting your spouse to feel jealous, you keep the details of your new friendship hidden. In so doing, you have now created a problem: You have just built a wall between you and your spouse, where there ought to be free circulation of air and light. The entire architecture of your matrimonal intimacy has therefore been re-arranged. Every old wall is now a giant picture window; every old window is now boarded up like a crack house. You have just established the perfect blueprint for infidelity without even noticing."

"And it's true. You didn't see it coming. But you did build it and you could have stopped it if you'd acted faster. The moment you found yourself sharing secrets with a new friend that really ought to have belonged to your spouse, there was, according to Dr. Glass, a much smarter and more honest oath to be taken."

--from Committed, by Elizabeth Gilbert (Bloomsbury Publishing, Copyright 2010)

Now, what am I driving at? Well many thoughts came into my mind, the piece does not only refer to the hubbys (although, personally, I think that men, are more prone to having affairs within a marriage), wives can very much commit the mistake or fall into the trap as well (especially in cases where the wife discovers shortly after marriage that she really doesn't know the person she got married to...or in cases where the "truth" finally is discovered and the wife becomes disillusioned). Maybe, unlike with the males, the females are more "discreet" about what they feel towards a new male friend, afraid of what society might "label" them. Aside from this, divorce or separations are not as popular in our culture so even if the wife or hubby does feel something for the new friend, most of the time, they probabaly just keep it to themselves or they stick it out with the person they married until the end.

So does this mean we should all be paranoid with the old and new formed friendships with the opposite sex? I don't think so. Does this mean, we have to be on guard of our spouses (and ourselves at that) on the old and new friendships they (and we) have with the opposite sex? Probably. It was just actually a good read for me. It was one of the things Liz Gilbert and Felipe discussed first before they plunged into marriage, and I think, it's a good one. Well, if you are married or planning to get married, I also think, it's not yet too late to have a good discussion on each other's insights regarding this matter. I am no love guru but I think the point of all these is not only about love but more so of trust and how you can continue to protect the "walls and windows" of your marriage despite the so many temptations around us. Marriage, after all, is HARDWORK.