my thoughts random genuine

july two thousand and nineteen

Visiting my kids or rather, meeting them, can be risky business. The business of you remaining a relevant part of their lives and not some despot telling them what to do all the time, is paramount. Giving money, financial and moral support, is a part of it, and a father like me must not find parting with hard earned cash a difficult chore, a burden, rather, a joy to be mastered and wielded like a wand and a charm. I saw them the other day, my two charming sons, and felt a heavy, warm hug from them. I love the feeling but I could not put a finger to it, what it really was.

The joy of giving is a grace and office of parents, seeing how the giving sustains and nourishes, gives hope and joy, importance, that they matter to you, that you remember them and value them enough to sacrifice a part of you for their well-being.

I rationalized a million times the separation, painful yet necessary. I can still see the pain in the kids' eyes, how I want to comfort their hearts now that I am contemplating that past. I don't know. I acknowledge my ignorance, my shortcomings, my follies, my poverty. I thought I was full of love, and that would suffice for all the storms and intrigues thrown at me. That it would insulate me. Not at all. It was a house of cards built over shifting sand.

I blamed my mother for not harboring my fledgling family. I blamed my siblings for fence-sitting the whole time I floundered through life. I blamed my in-laws for being so possessive,  clannish, religiously fanatical, and apathetic, callous enough to let me under their roof as proof that I was a nobody. I blamed the economy even. I blamed religion.

I never blamed myself. The era was as nebulous as my memory and nutrition at the time. I believe I suffered from hormonal imbalance due to malnutrition, poverty, and domestic verbal abuse. Hence, the stupid decisions, one on top of the other, till the boys arrived. I never had the chance to name them, my in-laws did, I believe my ex-wife acquiesced to it.

That's enough backstory for now. But, no worries, I still feel that me and the boys are doing just fine. Long distance relationship indeed. I just love hugging and smelling them every time we meet. My kids. The best feeling in the world.

I even told them I'm going to get me a housing loan so that I could get a house for them in the future. They looked happy to hear it. I wanted an apartment with several units so we can live next to each other. I asked them to pray for me so I can amass a lot of money for their benefit. We can only promise so much.

My eldest daughter hasn't talked to me for months. She's probably very busy with her certified public accountant job. My eldest daughter, growing up in my absence, with her aunt who I view as a cattle hustler. She'd always say if it weren't for her I wouldn't have grown up, looking after me when I was kid, but she won't mention the times she imperiled my health with her smoking, nor her neglect that got me hospitalized several times. It was a family too much of problem creation rather than of solution accomplishment. She'd say it was her who convinced my aunt Jannina to bring me to Bikol to pay for my studies at the University. It would be to her advantage because my two older sisters won't have to worry about shelling money out for my schooling and have their earnings for their own luxuries. My own mother rejected my request for a temporary lodging for my wife and kids, twice, enrolled me to an expensive private school then letting me drop out because she says she can't afford it anymore, when there were a lot of cheap schools out there. Playing with kids lives with stupidity and sheer lack of reflection. Forgive them, for they know not what they were doing.

That doesn't mean it is still necessary to talk to these sharks for relatives.

My daughter deserves the benefit of the doubt. I will still welcome her in my arms are her father should she need me or my advice. For now, I pray, God be her Guide.

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It is essential to love God to fully understand God in such a way that no manner of unfortunate events or tragedies would diminish our adoration and devotion to the Creator.

Loving a person is almost as similar an undertaking. We go through the honeymoon stage, all rosy and smiling, then we don our hard hats and get down to the business of surviving as a couple and to avoid problems and complications as much as we can, then put up with the irritations or inherent issues as humanly as possible. No amount of screaming matches or booze binges can take the problems away except dealing with it soberly from day to day till you get strengthened rather than weakened by them. We can attempt to explain and understand through analogies and continue loving God and hoping to bring up the nagging questions when we are allowed into the august presence.

We never get the chance to ask God the rhyme and reason for the tragedies of the world if we damn ourselves for hating and becoming hopeless nihilists and atheists.

However, we need to feel blessed and glorify God once we get our blessings or witness them in other people, not to mention how cosmic forces somehow maintain our revolution around our the sun, God's sun.

Never give up on God and Jesus will never give up on you.

Have we prayed for inner peace and understanding today?