A Macho Man, Lover, Bestfriend, and Child of God (1)

Without Jesus, I would have been swallowed by the chaos of this world. There was a period of time when my soul was thirsty of something that I did not even know what. I tirelessly tried to fill it with many types of water, clean or unclean, with no avail. The cup was still empty. I never realized there was a hole underneath my cup and there was no way it would ever be full as long as the hole was there. Now I know it was only God who could patch that leak and fill my cup with the true living water which is Jesus Himself (Jn 4:14).



I was baptized when I was eight following my parents who got baptized a year earlier. I am sure God has been always been with me since conception, but my heart was deaf eventhough I had been going to Catholic schools since kindergarten. The first time I had a real experience of God was at 9th grade at a mandatory school retreat. Being a 15 year old, my initial motivation was girls :-) but God sure had another plan. There was a repentance during the last night of the retreat. I, one of the students who usually started the chaos around, was silent and shedding my tears. I said to myself, “What? How can I cry during a religious event like this, it is so NOT cool. I thought I am a “macho” man?” But hey, now I know that male superiority (wink wink...) is never measured by a cry or shedding tears. Jesus cried when He was on Earth, and He was probably the macho-est man ever :-) Toughness is measured by how far we want to follow Jesus. Our Lord showed the true toughness born our of Love by carrying the cross all the way to Golgotha’s peak. And now He is calling us (especially those macho men out there . . . heheh) to follow His steps to achieve the ultimate victory, the Cross. By dying with Him, we will also be risen up with Him (1 Cor 6:14).

During my high school years, because of his job, my dad usually came home only on weekends. Man oh man, I was in constant quarrel and fight with my mom as a way to unleash my puberty. Sigh, yes, I was a teenager once with those kind of hormones :-) The atmosphere at home was suffocating.

December 1992, when I was in 12th grade, I joined a family retreat. It was a big dread for me to go there. Sunday Masses were already too heavy for me, so I thought a religious retreat would be even harder on my teen image then. The only reason I went was because I was scared of my mom. I just wanted to get over with it. I swallowed my pride for three days.

When I got there I knew nobody. The scary thing that I noticed also was the people there were carrying their bible around. I screamed silently, “What kind of retreat is this, are they gonna force me to become a priest or something? “ No offense to our precious priests out there, God loves and bless you all. I was just a teenager with a twisted pride then.

To be continued on the next post . . . click here to go there.