“No matter how close we are to another person, few human relationships are as free from strife, disagreement, and frustration as is the relationship you have with a good dog. Few human beings give of themselves to another as a dog gives of itself. I also suspect that we cherish dogs because their unblemished souls make us wish – consciously or unconsciously – that we were as innocent as they are, and make us yearn for a place where innocence is universal and where the meanness, the betrayals, and the cruelties of this world are unknown.” ~ Dean Koontz, A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog
I always miss my dogs, but late last year, I thought of them one day and I found myself uncontrollably sobbing, feeling the weight of the loss of them. It has been over ten years, but on that day, I missed them as though I had just lost them.
I frantically looked for pictures of them, wanting to see their picture as I knew it was the closest I could ever be with them again. Because they lived pre-cell phone camera days, all my pictures of them are from “real” cameras. I found a scanned picture of them on my computer and immediately ordered a framed picture of them.
Now their picture sits on top of my desk. I look at it every day and remember how beautiful life was when they were with me. I miss: petting their soft fur, how they would rub their wet noses on my skin, taking long walks with them, how they would both sleep on the bed with me at night with one part of their body always touching mine, how they always knew whenever I needed them. It was pure love. God, I miss them.
“Strange, I thought, how you can be living your dreams and your nightmares at the very same time.” ~ Ransom Riggs, Hollow
So many good things have been happening in my life. I am overwhelmed with all the blessings I have received lately. I am beyond grateful to God.
But I am not able to enjoy any of it because a dark cloud hangs over me constantly. The dark cloud follows me wherever I go, even in my sleep.
A few weeks ago, I woke up to the white light of the television set coming from the living room. My telly had somehow turned on by itself in the middle of the night. I am not sure how as the remote was nowhere near my bed. I was frightened, but I got up to turn it off. I checked the door to make sure no one had broken in, but the door was still securely locked. I went to the living room and turned off the television.
I went back to bed and started thinking about my daughter – about how she never sleeps at home anymore, how she never tells me where she goes, who she sees, and what she does. On the off chance that she does tell me something, oftentimes she is not being truthful.
I try every day, to reach her, to connect with her somehow. But she does not let me in. She is secretive and mysterious. I pray to God all the time to guide her and to guide me. We had a good run so far this year, but the tides turned again the last month, and when she is lost, I feel even more lost.
I would give up all the other good things happening in my life if only I could connect with her.
As I laid in bed thinking of her and feeling frustrated, I suddenly lost my breath and I felt myself gasping for air. I felt my body temperature rise and I suddenly became paralyzed. My heart and mind were racing, but my body was motionless and I could not breathe. I suddenly feared that I was going to die right then and there and I worried for the poor doormen who would have to break into my apartment to remove my smelly rotting corpse weeks after I had passed.
I am not sure how long I had been gasping for air, but it felt like an eternity. I felt myself losing consciousness as the lack of oxygen had started to make me dizzy and I felt even more panicked. But then I suddenly was flooded with a sense of relief at the thought of oncoming death, and as I had started to say my final prayers to God, I finally found my breath again, and I gulped up some air and I started to cough.
A part of me felt relieved that I did not die, but a part of me also wished that I had… died. I realized then that I was feeling exhausted and incapable of handling this situation with her, such that I was actually hoping for death just to be released from this torturous situation. I feel as though of all things that I done right in life, she was not one of them, that somehow I could never do right by her and that I could never do or be enough for her.
“I thank the universe for taking everything it has taken and giving to me everything it is giving. Balance.” ~ Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey
I have had a series of good fortune lately.
So accustomed to rejection, disappointment, and losing, I cannot help but wonder if all the good things that I have been experiencing lately have been because I have been going to church every Sunday and praying to God regularly.
Is God finally answering my prayers? In my heart, I know it is. I feel it in the very essence of my soul.
Miracle No. 1: My friend went into cardiac arrest last June. Her heart stopped for four minutes. The doctors were able to revive her heart, but she fell into a coma. She was “asleep” for weeks. The doctors told her parents to expect that she would likely be brain dead or severely brain damaged due to the lack of oxygen to her brain while her heart had stopped, if she even was able to wake up. They were prepared for the worst. After a few weeks, the doctors asked her parents if they would consider taking her off life support. They said no – absolutely not.
We all prayed, day and night, for a miracle.
After what seemed like an eternity, she woke up. Not only did she wake up, but her full brain functionality was intact. Her recovery will be long, but she is able to talk and think and write. She has a hole in her neck from where the respirator was for the weeks she was in a coma, but she is home now. Her case is a true miracle that has stunned all the doctors. Only God could have saved her, and He did.
Miracle No. 2: Everyone knows that the real estate rental market here in NYC is brutally expensive. During the pandemic, I was fortunate enough to secure a deal in a luxury apartment building with sweeping views of the East River. My lease was due to run out this summer, a busy and expensive time for any rental market. Many of my friends in the building have already moved out due to the egregioius increase in the rent. We are not in a rent stabilized building, so rent increases are not capped. Some have said their renewal offers were as high as $800.00 a month increase.
I had been bracing myself for a potential move. I prayed to God that the renewal terms would be for an amount that I could afford. Since my lease is due to expire at the end of July, I knew that my renewal offer was coming soon. I received the email yesterday.
I palmed my chest as I opened the email, as if to protect my heart from the bad news I was expecting. As I read through the email outlining the renewal terms, I was shocked to discover that not only did they offer a lower rent amount, they offered me a two year renewal term.
How is this even possible? This kind of renewal offer is unheard of in New York, and especially now when the market has reached historic highs. I am still reeling at my good fortune. I told a few close friends, and they are in disbelief. “Through Him all things are possible.”
I told another close friend that I felt as though God had finally heard and granted my prayers. She knows that I have been going to church regularly and of how I have come a long way with my relationship with God. So it hurt when her response was, “It’s not God, it’s something else, but it’s not God.”
Her husband passed away from cancer nearly three years ago, so I understand why she is angry with God. I was angry with God myself when my sister passed away from cancer, but I never tried to diminish someone else’s belief towards God. Last summer, I saw that she was wearing a crucifix around her neck, and I had commented that I was glad she was returning to God. She said she was not and that she was wearing it simply for fashion purposes. I was a bit angry at that, but did not say anything. I was angry that she was making light of Jesus’ sacrifice and of the faith and devotion of those who believe.
I know that everyone’s personal relationship with God is personal, and I respect her beliefs (or lack thereof), but I felt that her comment to me yesterday about my recent good fortune not being attributable to God was unsupportive of my belief, and out of line.
In the meantime, my heart is filled with extreme gratitude to God and no one can persuade me to feel otherwise.
I know that it looks as though I failed in my goal to express gratitude daily. However, I did express gratitude, but due to certain circumstances, I was not able to get online and post on a daily basis. However, I keep a book journal, and so I was able to pen my gratitude the old-fashioned way.
It was difficult to find the time to post as I was in the Philippines for over a month. I left on February 24 and came back on March 25. It was a low-key “working vacation” and I kept NYC hours (Philippines was thirteen hours ahead, but then changed to twelve hours when Daylight Savings Time came into effect while I was overseas) and I slept in three-four hour increments while I juggled staying awake at night to work and managing to spend time with my family during the day.
We stayed local and enjoyed nearby towns, sampled food specialties from different provinces, enjoyed the luscious terrains, and caught breathtaking sunsets.
We came back to New York, just in time to catch the cherry blossoms. Our neighborhood is one of the few places in the city where we have front row seats to their magnificence.
I have often felt deprived in certain parts of my life: in love, in wealth, and general good fortune. The one constant blessing and gift that I have had is the fact that I indisputably have the best of friends.
Day 5: I have been, am now, and forever will be, grateful for my circle of friends. The circle is eclectic and diverse, filled with strong ass women and the most gentle and protective of men.
Most of my friendships have withstood the tests of time, distance, and circumstances. And the newer friendships I have made, I have been fortunate to have met people who genuinely have good hearts, people who have shown me that true friendship does not require a history, and they have shown that people can truly care about you even after knowing you for a short period of time.
Last year G was cutting herself. The skin on her arms had become red and raised from the constant trauma she inflicted on her own flesh. It hurt me to look at them because it was a blatant indication of how much she was suffering inside. I had asked her why she cut herself and she said it was to dull the internal pain she was feeling. The physical pain of the flesh made it easier to bear the pain of her mind and soul.
Day 4: I am grateful for the healing process G is experiencing, both inside and out. The skin on her arms is no longer raw. The scars are still clearly there, but her skin has smoothed out. At the beginning of her healing journey, she wore a lot of long-sleeved shirts. She said she felt embarrassed of her arms since the scars were so telling of how they came to exist. She now wears regular shirts and even tank tops. She does not flash her scars, but she does not go to lengths to hide them either. She says that the scars are now a part of who she is, and she has expressed a few times of how she feels proud of what she has overcome.
I am not naive, however, and am fully aware of the steps forward and the steps backward in the healing process. Some days are better than others, but the bad days remarkably have become less and less.
“Sometimes the most remarkable things seem commonplace. I mean when you think about it jet travel is pretty freaking remarkable. You get in a plane it defies the gravity of a entire planet by exploiting a loophole with air pressure and it flies across distances that would take months or years to cross by any means of travel that has been significant for more than a century or three. You hurtle above the earth at enough speed to kill you instantly should you bump into something and you can only breathe because someone built you a really good tin can that seems tight enough to hold in a decent amount of air. Hundreds of millions of man-hours of work and struggle and research blood sweat tears and lives have gone into the history of air travel and it has totally revolutionized the face of our planet and societies.
But get on any flight in the country and I absolutely promise you that you will find someone who in the face of all that incredible achievement will be willing to complain about the drinks.” ~ Jim Butcher, Summer Knight
Day 3: I am grateful that air travel was invented. I am able to travel at least twice a year to see my family in the Philippines. I am grateful that I can fly to nearly everywhere on Earth. I am grateful for all the air travel that I have been privileged to take, and I look forward to discovering more places in the future.
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.
It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.” ~ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Day 2: I am grateful for a newly acquired skill of being able to keep plants alive. A former certified plant-killer, I am reformed and have now successfully kept four plants alive for nearly a year. For those with green thumbs, this probably makes you laugh, but for me, this is a major accomplishment. Every day, I wake up and check on my plant babies. I turn their pots around daily so that a different part of their leaves gets sunlight.
“The season of Lent is the time for us to take a journey; an inward journey. The season of Lent is as the prophet Joel writes, “a time for us to rend our hearts and not our clothing.” It is a time for self-examination; a time to get to know ourselves a little better. Often times for Lent people will give up a favorite food, or some other form of self-sacrifice. These things are all well and good IF they come from the heart, IF they are a true attempt to re-connect with the Spirit inside us. Otherwise, we are simply “rending” our clothes.” ~ Rev. R.J. Hronek, 47 Days: A Lenten Devotional and Journaling Guide
This year I decided that I am not going to give up anything, but rather, I am going to attempt to do something challenging, something enduring, for forty days.
My challenge this Lent Season is to write down one thing each day for which I am grateful.
Day 1: Today, I am grateful for my job. I had my annual review earlier today, and I found out today that I am valued by my firm. It felt lovely to be praised and acknowledged by the people with whom I spend so many days of my life.
I am too old now to waste time on trivial matters. I am too old to say “yes” when I really mean “no.” I am too old to be in one-sided relationships, whether it be with friends, family, or co-workers. I am too old to be using my feelings of guilt to be the catalyst of whether I do something or not do something. I am too old to compromise parts of myself just to make others happy.
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