From the monthly archives: October 2009
So that wasn’t so bad.
To those who don’t know, another typhoon hit the Philippines yesterday — the fourth one that came inside the Philippine Area of Responsibility in the span of four/five weeks. Just today, five weeks ago, our house got flooded, and in a way I find it funny that another typhoon just left the country. And I hear there’s more?
But anyway. I have been enjoying good weather for the past few days. Every time I wake up with the sun shining through the window, I feel a huge sense of relief. When news hit that another typhoon was coming in, I couldn’t sit still. I try, but at the back of my mind, I feel so restless, so powerless, and all I could do was just pray.
Okay, maybe not powerless exactly. I just can’t rely on my own power.
Yesterday was kind of funny. I woke up and I heard that there was already a Public Storm Warning Signal # 2 in Metro Manila. And the sun was shining through my window.
For the rest of the day, everyone was confused at the storm signal. By seven in the evening, the storm signal was raised to #3…and there was still no sight of rain or wind. It only started raining around eight in the evening. My mom and brother and I were already planning stuff in case we needed to evacuate again. I stacked my books up my shelf, and then started fixing things in case we have to leave.
In the end, we decided not to leave. We prayed the rosary, and I read myself to sleep, trying to hear if the rain would pour down harder, and to see if we need to go.
But we didn’t. I slept through the winds, woke up with no power and saw later that the sun is shining through the window.
There. That really wasn’t so bad. :)
I want to say that I’m over the trauma of the flood…I pray I am. But I feel victorious over what happened today. Like I’ve passed a major hurdle, and that I’ll be able to face anything else that comes for me after this. Like I’m stronger somehow.
But of course, all by God’s grace. :) Always, always.
Right now life is almost back to normal after yesterday. I’m just waiting for cable to be back, but I can actually live without that. Now I’m back to preparing for NaNoWriMo (which starts tomorrow!!!), and for our first chat tonight (using some kind of live chat software — or not. Hello IRC!). I might even drop by our street’s Halloween Party tonight.
Thank You Lord, for always being faithful. Blessed be Your Name. :)
So, after Ondoy and everything else that happened, I realized one thing (out of the many things).
I care.
I talked about my being apathetic a couple of months ago, when things are still…well, normal. This is sort of the post that is a follow up on that, and I honestly still don’t know how to write it down correctly…but let me try.
Ever since Former President Cory Aquino passed away, I’ve felt a bit disturbed. Not disturbed because of her death, but disturbed at how I’ve been acting for the past 23 years of my life. Like I said, I’m never the one to make a stand or care about what happens around me, unless it affected me directly. I rarely care about politics, or elections and all those stuff. I used to say it’s because I don’t believe in anything anymore and it’s my right not to care, but now as I look back, I realized that it’s just plain laziness to care about these things.
So when Cory passed away, I felt that I owed her something. Here’s a woman who did everything in her power so I will be born in a freer country. Here’s someone who held onto her ideals and cared about the country and her fellowmen, even if it feels like its hopeless. I never knew her personally, but I felt like I have to respond to that, to rise up to some kind of challenge and somehow say that what she did way back and up to her death wasn’t wasted.
So by August, I finally shook a bit of my apathetic self — the one who said she’d never vote — and went to our municipal hall to register.
Now, registering is another story in itself, so let’s skip that. When I first got that piece of paper that signifies I am now a registered voter, it didn’t feel like it was a big deal first. Until a couple of days later, I realized how much power that little piece of paper has. It meant I had a voice. I had a say in what happens in the country. It gave me a reason to care, because I realized how important my vote would be in 2010. It may be just one vote, but sometimes it takes only one vote to make a whole lot of difference.
I was determined to make sure that my vote would count and I’d vote for someone who would have the country’s best interests at heart. I thought that that determination was enough…but God had to bring another circumstance in my life to make me think more.
I guess we can say God literally used waters to wake me up even more. It’s one thing to be a volunteer to help the victims of a calamity. Being a victim changes everything. As a volunteer you want to try to help relieve other people even if it’s only temporary. As a victim, your main concern becomes finding a permanent solution to prevent what has happened. A lot of the permanent solution may lie with the victim/survivor itself — like move out from an area that always gets flooded and into someplace safer, like Tucson apartments — but there’s a lot more that the government can do given their resources.
And I want someone who can help give a permanent solution. Not just a band-aid, but an actual fix.
It’s highly idealistic, I know, but that’s really not my point. The point is, because of the flood, I’ve learned to care even more. I am determined to make my vote count, and to make sure I use my power to do my best to help put the right person in the positions in 2010.
Not only that, but I’ll be doing what I can do help to make things better. I will start taking a stand, even if it means I’ll be shot down at some point. It’s because I care. And if every single one of us would care about something, well, I’m pretty sure a lot of amazing things will happen. We just have to choose to care.
I remember one line that I got from a YFC conference years ago that struck me: If you don’t stand for anything, you will fall for everything.
I don’t want to fall for everything anymore.
Because of the flood, I will start caring.
Did you feel it yesterday? And this morning? The air. It’s cold. Not rainy cold, but Christmas cold.
That definitely made my week. :)
It’s been a month today. I’m staying at our house now, and even if I don’t have a bed (or a desk) and my room still needs to be sorted out (as well as all the other clothes), I’m good. I’m starting to get back to the groove of the old things, and I’m learning to let go and trust more now. At least, I think so. :) I think I have found a new devotion to the Rosary, though. How many times have I found that praying the rosary helps me focus on the One bigger than all of this? I’d like to believe that God answered our prayers by sparing the country from Ramil. So thank You.
I still mean to post more thoughts on everything I learned, but right now my mind is being consumed by three things: work, work out and NaNoWriMo. How about that. This is probably why I end up having dark circles under my eyes, because I can’t sleep with everything I’m thinking about! I promise to post about them though. :D
But all is good. :D That Christmas air just assured me that everything will be all right.
So did you feel it?
Hi friends. I’m still alive. *waves*
Exactly three weeks ago, my life changed.
I never thought I’d say that line above in all seriousness. I mean, I’ve had life-changing experiences but it was never of this gravity. Sometimes I still feel like it’s so surreal, but little reminders get to me every now and then. Every time I go home, I see how everything was turned upside down to clean the house. Every time I go “home” to the condo, I remember the reason why I’m there. Whenever I see tweets, read messages or hear news about how relief operations are going, or God forbid, another storm is coming, I remember what happened that Saturday, when the flood came.
It sounds so dramatic and all, but I believe everyone’s lives were changed by the flood. Even if they didn’t experience it firsthand, it’s really something that took us all by surprise and threw everything out of whack. Every time I try to remember something before three weeks ago, I feel like it’s such a faraway memory, that I’m not even sure of the exact details anymore.
Yes, my life changed that night. And I’m thankful.
I wanted to make a long post about the things I learned from this entire thing, but I’ve got some stuff to do for now. The past weeks have been terribly busy with work, NaNoWriMo preparations, cleaning up and moving from one place to another (no need for cross country movers, thank goodness), that sometimes I forget to breathe and I feel like I’m all rushed. But that’s life, gotta deal with it. I promise to post about all this, though, once I can breathe easily, and maybe, maybe at that time, I can finally look back at the entire experience without any bitter or sad or scared feeling.
I’ll be okay. We’ll all be okay. God will definitely lead us through this, and I believe in it with my whole heart.
So just checking in. :)
And on a final note…RAMIL, GOD IS STILL BIGGER THAN YOU. :)
Stay safe, everyone.
Almighty Father, we raise our hearts to You in gratitude for the wonders of creation of which we are part, for Your providence in sustaining us in our needs, and for Your wisdom that guides the course of the universe.
We acknowledge our sins against You and the rest of creation.
We have not been good stewards of Nature.
We have confused Your command to subdue the earth.
The environment is made to suffer our wrongdoing, and now we reap the harvest of our abuse and indifference.
Global warming is upon us. Typhoons, floods, volcanic eruption, and other natural calamities occur in increasing number and intensity.
We turn to You, our loving Father, and beg forgiveness for our sins.
We ask that we, our loved ones and our hard earned possessions be spared from the threat of calamities, natural and man-made.
We beseech You to inspire us all to grow into responsible stewards of Your creation, and generous neighbors to those in need.
Amen.
Source: inquirer.net
It’s been five days since that day that I saw our house submerged in the flood, and sometimes I still wonder if everything that happened was just a dream.
I never thought I'd see our house like this.
But every time I go back home and see the mess that we have to clean up, the furniture that we have to bring out of the house, the mattresses that needed to be washed out and dried…and the fact that my dad is leaving so soon, I am brought back to reality and I can feel despair creeping into my heart again.
Yesterday I said that I will stop being a victim and start being a survivor. However, the moment I got home and learned that there was no water that we could use to clean up, I started feeling down again. When my brother dropped me off at the condo, I took some time at Galleria to get some wifi and look around (yes, I tried looking for the bag. Failed). As I checked Twitter and Facebook, I read a lot of updates about Pepeng and I felt full-fledged fear. The kind of fear that I only used to feel when I was thinking about my thesis back in college, and yet not quite because this time it’s not just the grades I am worrying about but our own lives.
It was enough to make me teary-eyed…but I didn’t cry just yet. It wasn’t until I got to the condo, with my first nutritious dinner in four days that I found myself bawling after almost slipping on the growing pool of water under the refrigerator that was there because my dad defrosted the freezer.
I know it’s something no one should ever cry about, but I was tired. I felt beaten. I was despairing, I was afraid. All I could think of was, “Lord, please stop hitting me while I’m still down. Please, please, let me recover first before bringing me anything else.”
It was the first time I’ve cried like that for the longest time. It was the type of crying that had actual sobs, not the kind of crying I usually do with laughter in between. I almost just wanted to sit there and just cry because I felt like my heart couldn’t take it anymore. Lord, I’m not strong enough. Lord, I can’t do this anymore, I can’t deal with it. Lord, I’m sorry I can’t be stronger.
I thought I was okay…but I wasn’t. I don’t think I’ll be really, really okay yet. Yesterday while I was cleaning up, I started wondering what I would have been doing at that moment if the flood didn’t happen. I probably would’ve been at work. My brother would be somewhere, working on a project, probably. My parents would be buying stuff for my dad’s return to Saipan. I would’ve gone to Body Jam earlier today before heading to work. I would’ve been making plans for NaNoWriMo 2009. I would’ve been buried in CSS codes at work. I would’ve been planning something to do for the weekend…I would have. I would have. But I’m not.
I miss a lot of things back before the flood. Work. My normal everyday routine. I know things will go back to normal eventually, but I know the flood has changed me. There will always be the “before the flood” and “after the flood”. I will always remember September 26 as the day that the seemingly impossible happened to us, and changed all our lives.
* * *
There’s Pepeng news all around, and right now I just don’t want to listen to it. I’m scared, because we haven’t fully recovered yet and here comes another possible big blow. And it’s not over yet because I hear there’s another one coming soon. But there’s nothing else I can do (other than get ready) but pray. And believe that God is faithful. Because He is. And when my strength is not enough, I’m sure His is.
PEPENG, MY GOD IS BIGGER THAN YOU.
No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it. (1 Corinthians 10:13 – The Message)
