Jesus praying at the garden of Gethsemane
Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to the disciples, “Sit here while I go and pray over there.”
And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me.”
He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”
Then He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “What! Could you not watch with Me one hour? Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Again, a second time, He went away and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done.”
And He came and found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy. So He left them, went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words.
- Matthew 26:36-44
Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
- Matthew 6:10
April 30, 2025
10:22 A.M.
For the longest time, the Garden of Gethsemane has been one of the places in the Bible that has sparked my interest. The Bible tells us that this is the place where Jesus went to pray before His arrest and crucifixion. It bears witness to Christ's humanity as He pours out to His heavenly Father the intense inner struggle that He was going through, hours before His impending death on the cross.
Gethsemane comes from the Aramaic word gat shemanim which means "oil press". This garden is located at the foot of the Mount of Olives, and as its name implies, there must have been a number of oil presses there for the pressing of the olives which were abundant in the place.
The symbolism of the place where Jesus chose to spend His last hours on earth is not lost on me. It was here in Gethsemane where Jesus experienced the weight of unbearable sorrow, just like olives are pressed under a great weight to release their valuable oil.
An olive press
December 15, 2025
4:08 A.M.
I began this post eight months ago. All this time it has remained a draft, waiting to be finished.
What the past eight months has been like for me can never be put into words. And as we only know too well, life's like that, isn't it? We have it all planned out, but there's never any guarantee that those plans will be realized.
Somewhere along my journey, I have made peace with that.
I know that Someone infinitely wiser is holding the pen and writing the script.
I know that when things don't go as expected, God is preparing something better.
But still, there's no denying the profound pain that intersected Chapter 2025 of my life story.
Finally today, sitting here before dawn in front of my laptop, hoping to sort out my myriad thoughts, I make yet another attempt to complete this post.
Flashback:
Many years ago, during a very difficult season in my life, a dear lady walked into my office at the Christian Academy where I was serving as the principal. I cannot recall who she was; all I remember was what she spoke. She had no idea what I was going through, which makes what she said even more significant. Her words: "Lidj, your heavenly Father wants you to live each day with an expectation of good things happening."
I was never really a pessimistic person. No, I didn't go through life with an Eeyore mentality that always expected the worst of everything.
But that was a difficult season for me, and I had no idea just how soon, if ever, God was going to answer my prayers for a turn of events. So to hear those words spoken to me by someone who didn't even know my circumstances felt like a soothing gentle breeze in the arid valley I was in.
Holding on to those words throughout the dry seasons of my life, they gave me a ray of hope:
... when in the midst of uncertainty in 2004, I sensed God's cloud moving, and I was to follow that cloud, not knowing where it would lead
... when my husband Ernie suffered a heart attack in 2006 (which he miraculously survived)
... when Ernie underwent an angioplasty in 2007 to have six stents inserted into his blocked arteries
... when Ernie and I spent a memorable year (2007-2008) in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where he served as a consultant at the Mae Jo University
... when we returned to the Philippines in 2008 after his contract ended
... when Ernie suffered a second heart attack only six weeks after we arrived, and never recovered
... when I learned first-hand what being a widow was like
... when ten years later in 2018, First born son and his wife God-given lost their third child, a baby girl, only two weeks after she was born
... when my best friend Melanie, my friend of all friends, passed away also in 2018.
Then the pandemic in 2020. The lockdowns. The quarantines. The restricted travel.
More deaths. All of them unexpected.
Don't get me wrong. Life wasn't always such a gloomy picture.
There were also many happy moments.
Second son gets married.
Four more grandchildren are born.
The intensity of grief lessens as time goes by.
I learn to rebuild a life around the loss.
Events to celebrate.
Ministry breakthroughs.
Meaningful God-moments.
Friends who care.
Family who loves.
Sons and daughters who honor me.
I look back at the past and realize much of it is mostly a blur by now.
Yet one distinct thread stands out: hope from those words spoken to me by that lady, "Your heavenly Father wants you to live each day with an expectation of good things happening."
Hope.
It is indeed an expectation of good things happening.
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For the past twelve years or so, our women's group in church has met up for two days in December to reflect on the significance of the year that is to come. We study the meaning of the year, based on the corresponding letters in the Hebrew alphabet which they call the
alef-bet.
During one such year-end retreat in December 2024, we looked at the meaning of the year 5785 in the Hebrew calendar. The new year that began on the Jewish feast of Rosh Hashanah corresponds to the year 2025 in our Gregorian calendar.
The year 5785 is called Pey Hei (80 and 5), focusing on the number 5, which is the fifth character hei in the alef-bet.
Hei is the picture of an open window. "5" is also the number of grace. Grace can be described as a wide open space of glorious possibilities, release from confinement and limitation, and a crossing over from bondage to freedom.
This Scripture passage stirred our hearts as we applied its meaning to the circumstances we were in:
He brought me out into a spacious place;
He rescued me because He delighted in me.
2 Samuel 22:20
In the year Pey Hei in God's prophetic calendar, the Lord was bringing us into a season of promotion and expansion. The phrase spacious place was highlighted, speaking of so much hope and promise.
I welcomed 2025 as a year of grace, a year of breakthrough, and a year of stepping into my spacious place.
Many specific passages in the Bible refer to this spacious place:
The Lord said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt... So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey. (Exodus 3:7-8)
You have not handed me over to the enemy but have set my feet in a spacious place. (Psalm 31:8)
You enlarged my path under me, So my feet did not slip. (Psalm 18:36)
But the passage that encouraged me the most was from Genesis 26:22 -
And he [Isaac] moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name Rehoboth, because he said, “For now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.”
Rehoboth was the Well of More Than Enough. The men had been in contention and strife over the wells that Isaac dug. After digging the well Rehoboth, the fighting finally came to an end.
I left that two-day retreat embracing the message of a spacious place.
The previous year 2023, my seventieth birthyear, God had set me free from many troubled years of uncertainty. I entered the year 2024 still basking in that new-found freedom.
As the year was about to end, I had so much to look forward to. The new year 2025 held the promise of a spacious place, a Rehoboth year of more than enough.
Those beautiful words from the past found their way to the surface of my heart: Live each day with an expectation of good things happening.
I welcomed the year 2025 with expectation and hope. Daughter Obedient One had arrived the early morning of December 31, the last day of 2024, fresh from a three-week tour of Norway, Finland, Belgium, Estonia, and the Netherlands. She and I spent New Year's eve with second son Worshiper and his family who lived two hours away from Bacolod City.
On January 1, the message for me was clear:
You enlarged my path under me, So my feet did not slip.
- Psalm 18:36
There it was again, that spacious place reminder. There were 365 days ahead of me, each day waiting to be lived out.
No one really knows what's in store, I remind myself. But my heart was full. The promise was sure.
I was standing before an open window. Pey Hei, a year of glorious possibilities, beckoned me to step out in faith and receive what was promised. Abba Father has enlarged my path under me, my feet will not slip.
Sometime in mid February, my sister who resides in the USA sent me a Viber message. She had just gotten a diagnosis from her doctor. The respiratory ailment that was earlier thought to be pneumonia turned out to be lung cancer after a CT Scan was done.
I could not believe the words.
Stage 4.
Metastatic.
She was scheduled for an MRI.
The results came out on March 8: the cancer had already spread to her liver, pancreas, hip bones, spine, and possibly, her brain.
It was terminal.
No curative treatment was offered. Only palliative care.
I was numb with disbelief. There had been no symptoms, only an annoying cough that began in late January.
Put your affairs in order, I advised my sister.
Yes, I have begun doing that, she said. But we will believe for a miracle.
And that was when I entered my Gethsemane.
Offering all the prayers I knew. All the healing Scriptures. All the appropriate worship songs. Daily Holy Communion. Declaring prayers. Commanding prayers. Pleading, believing, hoping, expecting.
I am in my spacious place, Lord.
Round the clock Gethsemane prayers. Not my will, Lord, but Yours be done.
Regular phone chats with my sister. Praying together. Pleading together for a miracle.
Believing.
Hoping.
April came. This time, my sister urged me to stop praying for healing.
He's not going to heal me, Ate. Please pray for God to take me home. I am ready. I am looking forward to seeing Him face to face.
On May 9, 2025... in the year of the spacious place... my sister's wish was granted. She saw her Redeemer and Lord face to face.
The path under her feet was enlarged.
Her feet did not slip.
One week after she passed, May 16, my daughter and I arrived at my sister's home in the US. Her cremation was scheduled for May 18 and we wanted to be there with her husband and only son.
Two weeks is all that remains of 2025. I still can't believe she's gone.
This year was supposed to be the year of my spacious place. I realize the promise was mainly for her. Not really for me.
This year I entered Gethsemane, pleading with God to let this cup pass... let there be a miracle for my sister.
In truth, the prayer was answered: Not my will, but Yours be done.
I am feeling a bit emotional as I write. It's been eight months since she left us. I thought 2025 was my year of the spacious place. Instead it became my year of irrecoverable loss.
My sister and I were best friends, having been born only one year and seven months apart. We grew up like twins. Our Mama loved to dress us alike. We had opposite attributes - she was vivacious and outgoing, I was mostly an introvert and preferred to keep to myself. But our love for each other and family kept our bond so tightly knit.
Her diagnosis was released on March 8. On May 9 she breathed her last. Just two months. Everything happened so fast.
I can't say I was devastated for I know I will see her again. She loved Jesus and her faith in Him was strong. But still, the earthly loss is very real. Much too real. We lost our parents years ago, but at least we still had each other. Though she lived on the other side of the globe, we kept contact almost daily. She loved me with a selfless love.
And just like that, she's gone.
She had requested for everything to be kept private, and we honored her wishes. Now it's time to come out in the open.
I miss her terribly. And as I look at the numerous gifts she has sent me through the years, a constant reminder of our sisterhood, I still can't believe she's gone.
My only comfort is in knowing the separation isn't forever. We will be together in eternity where she is right now, in the loving presence of the Lord and Savior whom she loved.
The process of relinquishing my demand to understand is what freed me. I read those lines somewhere.
So true. The process of grieving is made easier by relinquishing my demand to understand.
John Piper writes that grief brings with it bitter nutrients that will nourish our souls in the weeks, months, and years to come.
Coming to terms with so great a loss is my way of digesting grief's bitter nutrients.
Once again, another year is about to end. Another year is coming.
In the midst of my seeming irrecoverable loss, I know, albeit only intellectually, I have walked the way of the spacious place promised. I just haven't felt it.
One thing I am sure of, God has met me in my Gethsemane moment.
When there's pain in the offering, and I travel the road marked with suffering, blessed be the name of the Lord.
my sister and me
October 2013
Peaks of Otter Lodge, Virginia, USA
