retracing the past at 36

I seldom show myself on my birthday. It is something I still consider very personal, I usually spend it alone, sometimes with my family, at times by simply retracing my steps. Here is one retracing . . . a reflection on a painful disability which affected my life as a young adult on my 36th birthday.


I will never get used to being treated like this. But just the same I have to get used to this feeling of embarrassment if I have to get on with life. At the very least the consolation is that things like this happen only once a year.

My reflection tonight is an intimate and personal reflection of the gospel. I’ve been holing myself in my room the whole day afraid to face visitors or answer calls and all the while I was just thinking where my life is at the moment and where God might be leading me as I am about to enter the peripheral borders of midlife. That’s the technical way or should I say the politically correct way of saying I’m getting older.

After 36 years, have I gotten a glimpse of who the Father is? Even just a glimpse? After 36 years of living my life with its ups and downs, with the calmness that follows the storms, with the flow that follows the ebb, have I come to know the God whom I came to believe in? Show us the Father, Philip asked, and that would be enough. The same request haunts me today, the same request cries within me longing for an answer. In the verge of having to cross midlife, leaving behind my young adult life, in a transition that makes life exciting and at the same time confusing, I once more beg my God in Jesus to show me the Father and that would be enough. And as if in answer to this prayer I felt myself standing in a plateau after a hard climb and was made to see from whence I came. And there I saw how I came to know God as he is to me now in the experiences of climbing, in the road I once trod, in the travelers I once met, in the dust the now clings to my feet. One journey is over, another journey commences and as it does I am made to look back, to look back on how I got a glimpse of the Father in the humanity of Jesus and in my humanity, so that as I start the next journey I may learn to trust and be open to the surprises which God may show me.
In the journey of my life when I was a young adult I came to know God in my own humanity – a humanity that was besieged by pain, temptations and self-doubts. In the experience of pain I came to know the God in Jesus who suffers with me. Because in those times of helplessness I came to believe in a God who cried with me whenever I cried in my pain. I came to believe in a God who shouted in anger whenever I shout in anger because of my disability. I came to believe in a God who cuddled me to sleep when I was too tired, too sick, too frustrated with my life. I believe in a God who suffered with me, who shared my joys, my pain, my concerns even though how petty they may be. I came to believe in a God who became my crutches and support whenever I stumble and fall, and could no longer bear to walk in discouragement. I came to believe in a God who does not want me to suffer. I came to believe in a God who permitted himself to suffer and die so that I will not suffer and die in the pains of hell. I believe in a God who loves me so much, who accepts me as I am with all my sins, with all my failures, with all my emptiness.
In those span of years questions and self doubts haunted my mind time and again – questions like: Could I still believe in a God who loves me even with this feeling of abandonment, feeling of guilt and sin? Could I love God even in the midst of trials, failures and difficulties? Could I still call God Father when what happened in my life then was an act of a terrible monster? Oftentimes I find these questions too hard to answer – but still God continues to present himself through these questions, because by doing so God wants me to grow in my faith. Faith after all, is not just moving mountains, faith is not just saying to the mountains of our lives – get out of the way. No, faith is also climbing the mountains of life which I could not do away with, and climbing it bravely, bearing it strongly, advancing unceasingly and insistently.
God is not an image of a serene other worldly creature living in peace and tranquility. In that particular age I went through I came to know and believe in a God who was torn between following what was right and wrong, a God who was also struggling in his temptations like me, a God who had to go through the tensions and stresses of life as I did. A God in Jesus who was struggling to serve and do the will of the Father. In that stage of life I caught a glimpse of a struggling God, bearing it with me, carrying it with me, encouraging me still.
That was when I was a young adult. And so as I begin my life anew and entering into another stage I ask the Lord once more, Show me the Father. I have seen one aspect of God, and I have come to believe. I know that I will be shown another in another experience I have no premonitions of.
And so I end this reflection in trust and faith, for as they said, the world is round that we may not see what lies beyond. The invitation is to walk in faith.
A young girl wanted to cross the street. It was a busy street and there were no pedestrian lanes. She attempted several times only to draw back in fear that she may be hit by cars running too fast. Seeing an old lady she turned to her and asked, “Manang how do I cross the street?” The old lady looked at her and said, “close your eyes and walk.” That too is an invitation for us, for me in crossing life’s busy roads. Close your eyes and walk, for in life we walk by faith and not by sight. My humble experience of God, my glimpse of the God who has shown himself to me in Jesus during those wild and turbulent days of my life, assures me that at the end of the tunnel there is light, that all I have to do now is to reach out my hand to him and let him lead the way for I must walk by faith and not by sight.