My Mama told me that she had to offer my life to the Holy Infant when I was just about a week old. My parents were a young, struggling couple. I was a very fragile baby. She was asked by the doctor to choose, have me undergo treatment and take a 95% risk of mental retardation or to just let the pain go away and let me go. She declared with conviction that I can have the treatment and I will live a normal life and she'll raise me to be someone who'll make a difference. I survived but spent my early to middle childhood in the hospital. I grew up to be socially withdrawn....and suicidal. I could not play with other kids because the slightest physical activity would send me to a week of stay in the hospital. I had my own world...the ideas and stories I found in my Mama's books. The time came when I became dissatisfied with just understanding stories by pictures. I got curious with what is written in books with no pictures on them at all. I felt the need to learn how to read at 4 years old. I learned under my Mama's instruction. Then I learned from those books that there is more to read than fairy tales. I read about life and meaning...and that of other people's sufferings. I wanted to do something at 5 years old but I was too weak. I felt frustrated and started to become suicidal. Then at six years old I had an accident that had my right hand rehabilitated. I was supposed to stop schooling but refused to, so I had to learn how to write with my left hand...I did. The experience boosted my confidence. I was the only one in our class who could write with both hands. But my memory was affected after I went through general anesthesia with the accident I had with my right arm. Frustration crept into me feeding my depression. The tendency to hurt myself was still there. It was then that I started to get interested in understanding why I was so different. In grade school, my Mama bought a book by a Psychiatrist and Plastic Surgeon, Dr. Maxwell Maltz called, Power Psycho-Cybernetics. That was then that I fell in love with psychology. The struggle against depression and suicide ideation (and attempts) continued. Then I was to take up BS Zoology in college but eventually decided to enroll in Psychology. To cut the story short, I defeated my suicidal attempts and depression when I understood its cause. A spiritual struggle preluded a deeper faith that helped me rise above my tendency. Taking up a field that is not yet so widely accepted and appreciated as a profession in the country entails the possibility of engaging into a much more demanded career, teaching. But never did I dream of teaching...I was simply too shy to be one. I would never be credible I thought (I was a cracked pot), I wasn't ready nor interested. Then I got jobs. Ironically, I taught in a nursery school and enjoyed being surrounded with kids but never really planned to pursue teaching older children, worst young adults. I tried office work but I got bored. Got other job offers but never really jumped into them. Then I felt like I had no other choice but to try teaching. I was blessed to get hired in a University. I love hearing ideas but struggled with the paradigm shift in the instructional approach of the institution I was trained and that of my employer.
While teaching, a student asked when I started to love teaching. I didn't know what to say but said, I still don't. But I love it, I was just not convinced that it is my passion.
Then this morning, the Story of Teddy Stallard and his 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Thompson send me to sobbing in a room filled with fellow teachers from all over Davao Region. Then I recalled what my Mama told me, that she offered my life to God and that she'll raise me to be someone who'll make a difference. I never really felt that I had lived the life that my Mama has intended me to live. I was not a pious student, I got extended in college for insisting on a thesis topic I was discouraged to pursue but still pursued. I often lost track in academic work because of spreading myself too thin in extra- and co-curricular activities. I was suicidal. I doubted God's existence. I questioned authorities. I challenged taboos. I was unconventional. I was not the perfect daughter that I should have been if I were to offer my life to God. I thought of joining the nunnery as a child but realized I might just leave before I spend a year inside. Then I tried to ask my Mama after my graduation in college to let me join the Maryknoll Missioners in Africa but she refused. Then I just found myself before a room filled with young faces waiting for me to speak and tell them what's the day's lesson.
Stallard and Thompson's story moved me and made me realize I am destined to be here. I am meant to touch lives, as many as I can. There might be times when I feel so incompetent but it must never prevent me from fulfilling His will. I have to do my best to do His will. I have been praying for this all my life, to find my passion and God revealed it to me at a very unexpected moment. I was having second thoughts at attending the seminar this morning in fact. I am home...I thirst for knowledge...and teaching is just the perfect way of life for pursuing learning and continuously sharing and partaking everything with everyone.
God is great! He paves the way for our own good! Everything works for good! It feels a lot better to know I am meant to be here, that I made the right choice...and it was never a mistake to be just here instead of being somewhere else.
I am fulfilling my Mama's covenant with God 29 years ago...
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