A Time for Everything

     Learnings - that's what we always want to get out of an experience or even just during a moment in our lives! I always thought that reaching the destination is the ultimate goal but life has taught me that the journey is what counts; that destination is just but part of the journey!

     When I was young, I used to have a time table and goals set for myself! Those are the things that I needed to achieve at every stage of my life: finish school, find a job, work in a foreign land, get married...It was just the normal progression of things.

     It wasn't really that hard to set up all those goals because I have achieved each one of them during or before the deadlines I've set, with flying colors, if I may add. After I was done with college, I figured, I was set for life - that everything else will fall into place the same way they always have.

     Then the inevitable happened, which wasn't included in my time table - the demise of my mother! I was lost for awhile, not knowing what to do. I begged my father not to let me take the boards since I was so sure that I would flunk the exam. I felt that I was so helpless, without anything to lean on to. Why, you ask? My mother was my number one fan! We didn't always see eye to eye but she has always stood by me, and strove hard to provide for everything I needed. I remembered asking her not to come up to the stage when I graduated so she didn't have to suffer from so much shortness of breathing but she told me: "Why are you depriving me of the greatest honor of having to award a medal to my daughter?" True! Who I was to deprive her of that? Little did I know that that was to be the last time she would be able to show to the world of how proud of me she was!

     Anyway, I still took the boards and passed it, ranked #16, nonetheless! So, I was back on track with my time table again!

     The next couple of years were uneventful: I found a job, then eventually, moved on to the greener pasture. Another heartbreak endured when my father died, a mere four months before we got married! Still, we pushed through! We got married (this is a long story in itself - with the courtship lasting 2 years, unheard of by American standards...more on this some other time)! So what's next in my agenda? Ah, yes, having a family!

     I have always believed in God, having been raised in a Roman Catholic family. My father would always pray the rosary - every night, without fail; while my mother would always be saying novenas to St. Vincent Ferrer, the Sacred Heart and all the other saints whose intercessions she invoked for and in behalf of us. Of course, add up the fact that I went to St. Paul College, a Catholic school, with four years of Theology classes. My idea of knowing Jesus that time was perfecting all the tests given by the nuns regarding Him. Intellectual! I knew Jesus, then, with my brain!

     Now back to my time table - having a family! We've been waiting to be blessed with children for a little bit longer than what I have allotted in my time table! We've done everything that we could - those that our faith and our conscience would allow us to do - yet, nothing! It was fine at first but as the months turned to years, I questioned God. I take care of babies whose moms didn't want them. Why is it that I, who long to be blessed with at least one, am denied that gift?

     During this journey, I have learned that it is not my time table that matters but God's! I am continuously being humbled by the experience, resigning to the Will of God. Painful pruning yet maybe this is what I need, right now! There are more difficult times than others yet I was able to learn to appreciate the journey my husband and I have shared so far. Now, I am not as focused as to the destination anymore...for the journey matters just as much! I have learned to be grateful for and share whatever little I have and I think, at least for now, that's all that matters. And the best thing that was borne out of this is: now I know my Lord and my God - with my heart!

Ecclesiastes 3:1 says: There is a time for everything,  and a season for every activity under the heavens!