Someone's Birthday

Today is her birthday.

It seems it’s only yesterday when I saw her for the very first time. That was already thirteen years ago. I was in 2nd year high school and she was in first year. Oh, it’s been a long time now…she was only 13 then… I could still remember her face, her dress, her long straight black hair, her simplicity, her sweet smile, her friendliness and everything associated with her. I could still remember today how I felt about her… I think I could even write a novel about her, really.

December 1999 was a momentous time of the year and I marked that day as memorable event of life. First, because it was the last time that I have spoken with her though very briefly. And secondly, it was when she introduced me to her husband. She told me she got married in June that year. I firmly shook the hands of her husband. I just realised today – never did I have had the chance to hold even just the tip of her finger. For me she was sacred.
I want to remember her today in my prayers and thank her for I would not be what I am today had I not meet her thirteen years ago.

This is a short journal I wrote in June 2001:

When I was in high school I fell in love for the very first time with a beautiful young girl. I kept this strange feeling for many years until she went to live overseas. I underwent a mixture of feelings of joy and pain in loving her. An experience of joy because love made all things new to myself, in the same way, it created empty spaces in my heart. I suffered incompleteness and disordered emotions because I did not receive any love in return. My spiritual director prayerfully advised me to ask Jesus to let him fill up all the emptiness and heal the pain in my heart for he himself is the greatest of all love.

In my reflection, when people feel unloved and rejected, I believe this can be an opportunity to identify with the Incarnate God who loves us boundlessly but was often rejected. I believe my human imperfections have caused myself to be rejected. But in terms of God’s love there is no reason for his love to be rejected for he created us and gave up his life for us, and through this we have been placed twice in his debt.

I thank God in prayer for the affliction, bitterness and joy as a consequence of loving someone because I learned how to unveil my vulnerability as he did when he became human like us. Most of all, I thank God for his wondrous love for me: for the gift of life, for the gift of vocation, and for the gift of the Church and of the whole human family. May God grant me more blessing and grace so I can love him more than my own efforts of loving him.”