What do you want to be when you grow up?

I’d always say a doctor because I’d get the smile and the ‘nod.’ Somehow it boosted my self-esteem and I felt like a smart kid with a bright future for that moment. In my heart, I actually loved house work. I loved to cook, clean, sing while pretending to dry clothes. I pretended to have a husband and kids whose home was not a home without their “ama.” I enjoyed taking care of others but it never entered my brain washed brain that this was a job as well. Even when it did, it was unthinkable to tell my parents that I wanted to become, well, a very proper house wife.

Books and music were always around me and my family, especially my father so those became leisure pursuits but never something I’d dip the wand of my future ambitions into. It left a green, gooey, vagrant drifter’s trail behind it.

I finally dabbed into economics and graphic design but never completed the courses because by then, I had become a prisoner to a potion named ‘spirit’ and this; I had never imagined my whole being would land up drowning in. I watched my father go through the struggles of alcoholism all my life but never did I understand the part certain body types played in making it powerful. We simply could not react to alcohol the same way others did and I refused to accept it (this is a fact that should not lift any consequence or responsibility but fellow inmates and their loved ones should know the size of the monster they’re up against).
Becoming a doctor became the biggest joke to me by then. It still makes me cringe but a little less.

Thirty years old and now I can look back, in recovery and say that this struggle was my biggest blessing. It humiliated me to the core, stripped me naked, took me by my hair and submerged me in muck. There was a point in my life when I would not go out without covering my face with a scarf. I was so afraid of being ashamed because I, even I could not look into the mirror without disgust. I’d cry out to God asking him to end my life but He ended my father’s. I wanted a child and my first was a miscarriage. He finally gave me my beautiful daughter but when she was 10 months old, my marriage didn’t work out. I have a mother who’s getting older and its painful dealing with and witnessing this change especially when they’re the ones you love and look up to the most. Many times, I’d get angry with God and demand for change but miraculously, my faith only grew stronger. “In this world you will have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world,” John 16:33, stood firm and involuntarily rehearsed in my heart. The depth of these 17 words – breathtaking.

And so, I’m now living out my childhood fantasy except it’s far less extravagant and a lot more arduous. Being obsessive by nature does not help when your job is to cook, clean and care for a 3 year old and a dynamic but aging, sniper-mouthed mother. It’s dodging bullets all day and I would have preferred to have a much easier, respectable job. To the world, this might seem like quite a bleak situation but to me, I have the most significant and gratifying life because of my relationship with God. I am grateful for every breath I take, for every bout of depression, for the food we eat, for the water we drink, blankets we have, the undeserved blessing of a hilarious daughter and an equally hilarious and stubborn mother because I know that I don’t deserve any of it.

I was a wretch and when I looked into the eyes of God, I started and still am in the process of becoming His initial creation. No worldly wealth, success or admiration could ever come close to this astounding truth and no worldly being; no not even I, can take it away. I can now monitor my thoughts, see the darkness and selfishness in it and strive to change it with vigor because of the God I love. I can hold back from giving when I see that my motive is wrong, keep away from doing if I notice that all I want is for others to approve of me. Wanting the approval of a Holy God is the greatest freedom that I am now able to understand. He defines altruism and so whatever is a smile and ‘nod’ from Him means the molding of my character. There exists no unadulterated a trade as this. And so I leave whoever reads this with a song I sing to my daughter at night when we drift off into the magnificent rest called sleep:
Amazing grace, How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.
’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed!
Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.
The Lord has promised good to me,
His Word my hope secures;
He will my Shield and Portion be,
As long as life endures.
Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.
The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, Who called me here below,
Will be forever mine.
When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’d first begun