I had mentioned, vaguely, in the previous email about some personal quirks of ex-roomie Keven's that just basically exasperated me. I just thought to make a disclaimer, lest people think that I am a hypocrite; plastic, to put it differently.
The women in my life are people that I love intensely. In my book, I have no middle ground: either I love the person intensely or I just don't care at all. When I lose friends, it's much like a miscarriage to me. When I lost my best friend (Graviton girls, you know who this is) a couple of years ago because of a misplaced, exasperated text message, I never totally got over the pain. It's still there, like a thorn in my heart that had been covered by the growth of gangrened flesh. When I lost Vida (UPLB People I believe you know her) before my (former?) best friend, it was as painful, even more so, perhaps.
(Vida and I are kind of repairing our friendship now, thankfully)
99.99% of the time, the reason why I lose these people is that I drop a word carelessly.
James says:
3:5-6
Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.
OUCH.
When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise. (Proverbs 10:19)
Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.(Proverbs 12:18)
I am so chastised by now. I had blamed everything on my penchant for verbal diarrhea (I think it's fitting to call it verbal cholera now).
My parents had been complimented about how adorable I was as a child, and with those compliments always came the comment about how talkative I was.
*amused*
Back then, that was sooo cute. But today, after so many broken friendships, spiritual abortions and what-not, I...
...Am sorry I could not withhold my tongue 99% of the time. I would like to erase parts of my previous rant, especially the part about being exasperated about ex-roomie Keven, but I would feel like a hypocrite to myself because then I would feel like I were just covering up my blemishes.
What for? To look "perfect"? The thought of covering up my imperfections reminds me of this pressed powder that was aggressively campaigned for in the 90s... It could purportedly cover all of a woman's facial blemishes. Do you remember the brand? I could only recall that it was in red packaging and may be from Splash, the Philippine cosmetics company..
Anyway, that is not the point. What I am trying to say is, besides making a disclaimer about my verbal diarrhea, that we women seem to want everything to be perfect. We want the world to believe that our lives are unruffled and just beautiful. We won't be able to relate to Bree Van de Kamp (now Bree Hodge) of Desperate Housewives, if we didn't have that streak of perfectionism in us. We hide underneath layers of foundation, makeup and whatever else, just to look like porcelain beauties. We hide layers of our lives under secrets, because it's either we don't think God or society would be able to accept our radical/unacceptable thoughts. We hide because we hate conflict. We hide... Because we feel unworthy of being seen. I think, that so many of us have become cowards.
I used to take pride in not being afraid to be tactless. Now I am horrified that I hide from the friends I cherish because I do not want to offend.
Yes, my tongue was damaging, but is hiding any better?
How do you strike a balance between loving confrontation and staying silent so as not to hurt?
I have only one answer to both:
PRAYER.
It is something I do not do often enough. Until today, though I realize this intellectually, I still opt to batter the women I love with my sharp words, exasperated that some of them went (or are going) the way that I was back, shaken and shattered and just recovering, from. Clearly, the issue here is that I do not trust God enough to complete the work He is doing in them. (I am tempted to curse myself for my faithlessness, but I won't cooperate with Satan right now.)
As for my tongue, that's the same thing. I have to trust God more to cleanse it. No wonder Isaiah had exclaimed:
"Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty." (Isaiah 6:5)
I can wholly empathize with him, because I realize how unclean my lips are: they had been given over to gossip and grumbling and complaints.
With gossip, I had been increasingly losing taste for that, so hurray, Glory to God's victory over that!
Grumbling and complaints, it's something God and I are working with. It's not easy being pruned and disciplined, and when life gets hard, I feel like I had been dealt a great injustice. But if I stop today, how would that glorify God? If I give up, I just let the enemy of my soul gain a massive victory. One soldier down would definitely impact much. Unlike in other battles or organizational hierarchies, God needs all the hands He can get. While He surely can raise the stones and turn them into Sons of Abraham, He chose to die for you and me, then to commission you and me for the work He has cut out for us. But I digress again.
To the women I love, I admit that there are moments when I am exasperated with you. Most of the time, I have these moments of exasperation because I recognize these same exasperating traits in myself. In the other times that I believe those aren't traits I own, it's either I am lying to myself or they just bring out the worst in myself: which God paradoxically uses to bring out the best in me.
I am sorry if I had said that I lose patience with you. The more apt term is that I lose patience with the way that I react to you. You and God have your own walk to live out. I was just, well, tapped, to help you on. If you don't do as I say, if you want your own way, I should not be too bothered, right? But the heart of the matter is, when I am too bothered, I am just scared you will fall into the ditch I fell into just moments before. When you say, with all bravado, that you can manage it, I am all the more bothered, because that was what I declared too.
Should I care less, then? Or should I let go? Stay more silent? Purse my mouth like a good mother should do when her child strays and let the kid feel the entire consequence when stuff happens, but keep my arms open for when she is ready to come back, and just silently give a hug?
I think some people would find it audacious that I see these women as my own children. When on earth did that start to happen? Months ago.. Weeks ago, I cared 95% for myself. Though people still accuse me of being self-centered, I wonder whom I care about more?
I wonder if they see that actually, it is man's nature to be self-centered ("rational self-interest," according to Economics)? I wonder if they actually have the insight that sometimes, they too, are self-centered indeed.
I thank God that the women who mother me were "self-centered" enough to spend more time with God in order to nourish me and the other women on their hands.
I guess that is what I should do: take walks, take dates with God more. Long more for Him, and less for people and things.
I sure wish that heartaches would be less. But in this battle that we call Life, these are part and parcel of that.
So I put on my armor, helmet, shoes, take up my sword and shield, and make sure that Jesus is a seal upon my heart, and fight on.
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