Gratitude Challenge: Day 13

A mother's touch can soothe a thousand aches. She's the world's best guide when your feet are all grown.

Dori says...

I come from a big family, but now as I'm adding more years into my cap, I'm realizing that at the end of the day, it does not matter if you have a dozen kids or just one. I've seen the pattern from my own parents and my siblings as their children leave home in search of that elusive joy of finding themselves and settling on their own.

The thing is we all grow up whether we like it or not, by voluntary decision or forced by neglected circumstances. By then, even without realizing it, change changes us and we grow mature, hopefully. If not, we have to ready ourselves for just a vicious cycle of life lessons slapped on our face until we finally get it.

I know I'm supposed to reflect on three family members or friends for this day's challenge, but nanay is like a 3-in-1 package worth all the acclaim and honoring for a life well lived. I am a privileged witness to how nanay went through tough family challenges and managed to raise 5 uniquely different children the best way she could. She barely finished school, but she dreamt bigger for us and realized that by sending us all to college with her meager income as a dressmaker which she had been doing since she was 16. I'd be so blessed to inherit her faithful resilience, even just half of it.

Nanay now lives independently and I cease not praying that she never feel alone or lonely even if she's left by herself as all of us her children have come to live on our own but never apart from her. She will always be revered as the mother who reflected the Lord's goodness and unfailing love.

Yes, I am 100% mama's girl. :-)

Whenever you reap your harvest in your field and leave some unraked grain there, you must not return to get it; it should go to the resident foreigner, orphan, and widow so that the Lord your God may bless all the work you do. - Deu 24:19

Auj says..

Yes, it is like getting married and raising children. It is as tough as that.

I experienced early on how hard it is to live with some stranger you fell in love with under one roof. Share in one bed. Eat in one table. And all that concept of trying your best to live with people who you never knew as family (but would eventually turn out to be your family) appearing too daunting always made me stop believing in getting married.

It is hard to tie people's differences to have a more peaceful setting to live in everyday. It's hard to keep everyone from balancing well so that our boat would not capsize. Or worse, to keep anyone from jumping off the boat.

I have had my own share of being at both ends. During the days when I was still staying with my family, I was a witness to endless count of people we have welcomed in our home to render them a refreshing start and an all new take on their lives. When I started wandering on my own, I became the stranger seeking a portion of shelter in others' homes. And now, that I have been blessed with a pad that is good enough to give me peace, I now act as the owner of my home.

It is never a bliss to keep up with any of Dori's, Pio's and Balbs' sudden tantrum syndromes. But it is with these people that the Lord has given me this home. And everyday, my joy rises over their human frailties reflecting my own. In reality, all four of us are God's orphans. It is not just Pio. And I rejoice over this fact knowing that God blesses the orphans who have no other person to depend on but God and the works of His Hands upon ours.

Everyday I learn from them without them even knowing it. And by this time, each time they would wonder how the hell do I get to know a lot of things, I hope they would realize it was because of them too -- and that I work hard for them too aside from just making my salary day a fulfilled 'Praxedes Lazaro Day'.

I promised the Lord before He gave me this home that I would treat the people who would live with me with utmost respect, love and patience. That I won't ever be rude and impatient. But instead, I would always fill the home with words that would heal and not hurt. That I will never treat people who would enter my home the distorted ways I was welcomed in numerous other homes I have been in my whole lifetime.

This is the House of the Lord. The Lord treats the people who live in it with extra care. I will too. :)