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2 Major Lessons of 2021

Hello! Happy 2022, everyone!

It's been a pretty wild start of the year, thanks to Omicron. Parang pina-party lang tayo ng Pasko at New Year, haha! Then after the last firework fired up, almost everyone was nursing a fever, cough, or colds.

Our family wasn't exempted. It was Sophia who first caught the colds and cough, then one of her nieces, then it was my turn, then Dennis', then the last one was his younger niece. The virus pretty much just circulated around our home for 2 weeks, but praise God we are all okay now. No symptoms anymore! Cleared!

So this is me hoping that everyone is recovering well and that you're in better spirits.

I know this is a bit late, but since my last post was last September, I figured I'd do a wrap-up for 2021. It's never too late to look back and reflect on the lessons in the past, right? So I am catching up just to make sure I don't forget whatever lessons were actually under the bittersweet moments of last year.


1. Good days can coexist with bad days.

Our families - Dennis and mine- both faced big challenges last year. We lost our second baby and I had Covid during the first half of the year. Then something also happened to his side of the family which got all of them reeling. Then my dad's cancer came back last quarter of the year.

By the time I found out about my dad's cancer recurrence, I was already at that point of just accepting whatever comes my way. I knew that nothing was in my control and while at first that brought me to the point of tears, there came a point when I was just numbed already. 

I felt like Jennifer Love in the movie, "I still know what you did last summer" when it was pouring hard and the murderer was out to get her and she was just tired of running away from him already. So she raised her hands up in surrender and shouted "What do you want from me?!" with frustrated tears and rain streaming down her face. 

That is what I felt like, except of course the cinematic feels of rain pouring down in the forest and the shouting. 

It was a trip to Boracay that gave me the space to think and reflect. Dennis and I stayed on the island for  6 days there and there would be moments when we would just sit by the shore and talk. I actually enjoyed the trip even though it was days before when we found out about my dad's cancer coming back. So while the waves were crashing in front of us on our first night on the island, coconut trees swaying in line just several meters before the waters touched the shore, and Dennis and I sat on one of those logs -- I remember just enjoying the moment and realizing that you can still find joy despite the bad--in the midst of the less than ideal world we were living in that day.

That's when it hit me what I already knew, good moments are here and there are more to come for one who is willing to take a step back, breathe and revel in God's goodness.


2. It's not all on you, and that's perfectly okay.

When we had our miscarriage, there were times when I asked myself whether there was something that I did or maybe I failed to do that's why we lost our baby. To tell you honestly, we weren't planning on getting pregnant last year so the pregnancy test results took us by surprise. So I wasn't taking any prenatal vitamins, and I wasn't eating very healthy food at that time. Then I remember looking at the monitor with no heartbeat, blinking back tears, and wondering whether it was my lack of faith that got us to that point.

Meron ba kong nagawa sana para masave yung baby ko?

Baka kung mas may faith sana ako baka buhay pa siya ngayon...

But it was those moments that made me see how finite I was as a human being and how there are a lot of things not within my control, but God is completely in control. Some things just happened not because of anything that I did, but because the world is broken in the same way that my body is also broken...

And when I don't know why or how I can trust that He is working things for the good and nothing will go to waste.

So 2 lang pala yung lesson na naisip ko hahahahha! So ayun! I am actually finishing this in March, hopefully I get to write more in the coming weeks!

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