A New and Glorious Morn

Arise, shine;
For your light has come!
And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.

-Isaiah 60:1

Ernie and I have made it a point to have a family picture taken at Christmas every year. Shown below is our Christmas 2008 family picture.

Worshiper, Obedient One, me, Baby Matthew, God-Given and First Born
on Christmas Eve 2008

As always, we began the celebration with the Christmas Eve service at our church. The Bamboo Cathedral of the Ikthus Equipping Center was packed. I really felt the presence of the Holy Spirit come down as we began singing Joy to the World.

Christmas Eve service at our church
(my son Worshiper is the one on the right doing the keyboards)

Pastor Joe's Christmas message was on the faith and obedience of Mary that paved the way for the Messiah to be born through her.


Listening to this message struck a familiar chord in my heart. Mary has always been one of my favorite characters in the Bible. Indeed her life has been one marked by faith and obedience, the very kind of life I seek.

This was a different kind of Christmas season for me. In Manila two weeks ago, my close friends Tina, Charo, Pris, and Gina and I got together in Greenbelt in Makati City. We had a great bonding time together. But in the midst of the glittering Christmas lights and decors in that lovely city, I felt nothing of the usual joy that this season lights up in my heart.

In the past, just riding the MRT train and going to the chain of Makati City malls would be something I would enjoy and look forward to. This time around, I had a rather strange feeling. I suddenly felt like I didn't belong in this place and even found myself asking this question: "What am I doing here?"

The people appeared to me like shadows walking, and the crowded train stopping at every station to pick up more passengers seemed more like a train ride to nowhere. When I reached the Ayala station, while getting off the train I felt like a robot simply going along with the crowd.

Then a thought struck me: Where Ernie is, there is peace, there is purpose, there is joy. He doesn't belong in this earthly realm anymore.

And somehow, that thought brought me so much comfort.

I can't really explain it. Right there, caught in hustle and the bustle of the countless Christmas shoppers around me, I found myself quietly rejoicing that my husband was done with his earthly existence where rust and moth consume and where thieves break in and steal; where there is sickness, pain, disappointment, noise, traffic jams, and all kinds of pollution....

I was rejoicing that he was now together with many others in that eternal place where

they shall neither hunger anymore
nor thirst anymore;
the sun shall not strike them,
nor any heat;
for the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne
will shepherd them and lead them
to living fountains of waters.
And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
(Revelation 7:16-17)

And I actually found myself thanking God that my husband is now safe and secure in His presence.

A smile crossed my lips as I began to experience what Luke meant when he wrote that "Mary treasured and pondered all these things in her heart."

No one will ever understand what I've been going through these past weeks. Only God knows.

Besides, some of these feelings are just too precious to even share with anyone. For now, I prefer to keep my grief to myself, to treasure and ponder these things in my heart, just as Mary did. Maybe when the dark clouds of grief begin to part and the sunshine breaks through again, I will be able to open up a little more, just as C.S. Lewis does in his book A Grief Observed, written after his wife died, or Nicholas Wolterstorff who shares his experience of grief in Lament for a Son.

Feeling this way doesn't mean that Christmas had no meaning for me this year. Probably it was even more meaningful, compared to the previous years.

Christmas really means that Jesus came into this world...to die, in our place.

In the midst of all the rejoicing, the gift-giving, the feasting, and the cash registers ringing, Christmas is really all about the own son of God dying. He can certainly relate to the pain I feel at losing someone so very dear to me.

-----

Our family would always spend Christmas eve and other special occasions with Ernie's sister Suzette and her family. But somehow, this Christmas, because of the grief that we are all going through as a family, there was a special warmth and deeper bond that I felt with them.

Here are some family pictures taken this Christmas:

Suzette and me and baby Matthew


Obedient One and Hannah, Tisha's daughter

This is Vince, Suzette's eldest son, and his wife Rhea

At the dinner table with Lyndon and Ann on my right
and Jeffrey on my left

Obedient One and me

Joash, Vincent's son, reading the Christmas story from Matthew's gospel


Hannah, Tisha's daughter, reading the Christmas story from Luke's gospel


Rhea: "I thank God for family..."


Sue: "I thank God for restored relationships..."
Vito: "I thank God for changing my heart..."

Joash: "I thank God for my dad..."
Jeff: "I thank God for the ability to make good choices..."


Hannah: "I thank God for Grand-uncle Ernie's life
and the beautiful memories he left behind..."


God-given: "I thank God for my baby, and my husband,
and for giving me a godly family..."


Christmas 2008


Our two families together



Obedient One and me on Christmas Day, at the fish farm


Worshiper and me taken on December 26


Matthew, our family's bundle of joy, taken on December 26

This Christmas, and as the year is about to end, I am asking the Lord to help me have a servant heart like Mary's -- full of faith, always willing to obey, though the road ahead may be full of painful and difficult choices. I want my life to be a vessel that is ready to birth the purposes of God in my life.

"Dear Father, You hold my life in Your hands. You know what is best. Deposit your kingdom secrets in my heart Lord, where I will treasure them, and ponder upon them continually. May it be done unto me according to Your word."