Dear Important, Beautiful Person who is reading this:

You’ve got a sweet promise spilling out of your heart. The whole world stopped when you were born. There is no one in the history of the past or future who can move the present the way you do. You are a necessary light and you are a cause for fireworks.

You think you’re just one out of 8 billion but, honey, you’re wrong. You’re one in 8 billion. There is no one like you. You are not just a name nor a face. You are not just a number, a statistic. You are not something simply taking up space. You are a beautiful person and your beautiful story matters.

You are a possibility, a solution, and because of you, the world is better and is still getting better. Your story is going to change people. It’s going to lead them to goodness, to walk in the light of redemption. Your story is the pinprick of courage that is going to help someone get by. Because of you, someone will do something that will catalyze a revolution. Because of you, someone will understand love better or learn that it’s okay to chase after a dream or become a better person. Because of you there is hope for this generation.

Your presence has magnitude. By simply existing, you are opening up an entire reality of grand promises. Please stop denigrating your point in the world. You are someone’s best friend/employee/sibling/child/teacher/hope/inspiration and if you didn’t step into these roles, the world would be horribly crippled.

And when you look at the vastness of this planet, remember that you are not tiny. Because the Creator of this planet you think is too big for you, well, He has big plans for you. Bigger than the mountains and the skyscrapers and people who convince you that you have no worth.

You are someone’s answered prayer. You are Someone’s masterpiece. And if you believe it, more beautiful things will happen. No matter how many circumstances state otherwise, this promise will always remain true: you matter.

Believe it. Now.

Dear You,

Just so you know, and of course you know, this is by far the most emotionally draining letter I’ve ever written. 

I am aware that you’ve already received countless of love letters from other girls claiming that you are the love of their lives. And instead of challenging them all into pointless catfights, I will contently draw myself at the back of the line with the assurance that you love me as much as the fabulous girls at the front. 

The thing is, I would gladly be a part of your harem. Because even if I am, I still wouldn’t be settling for less than I deserve. In fact, it would still be more than what I deserve, sharing your love with many other girls. Just knowing that you love me is more than I could handle not to act all giddy like a schoolgirl again.

What can I do? You are hard not to fangirl on. You are so effortless, more glamorous and attractive than all the James Bonds combined, I just can’t imagine you farting or picking your nose. And sure, sometimes I get intimidated by your perfection against my human-ness that I can’t even look you straight in the eyes. But you hold my chin up every time so I wouldn’t have any choice not to and it is during those moments when I get to see your beautiful eyes that I get a glimpse of that heroic thing you did for me, the mockery and humiliation you endured in contrast to your flawlessness, because of a love that defies all logic. 

Through those beautiful eyes poured out streams of tears, not because of pain from your purple bruises and bloodied wounds, but because you were thinking of me. Of me. Of me. Actually, can I say that one more time?—of me. Of me, who spent years of my childhood hiding inside my room because I was not pretty enough. Of me, who was always seeking for validation from all the wrong princes who turned out to be just toads. Of me, who never really thought of the idea that I was utterly, to-die-for loved.    

But there you are now, supernaturally free of the wounds and standing perfectly beautiful (in an Armani suit, perhaps?) outside my house, carrying a boombox, as you serenade a sweet song of your love.

What has a quiet fangirl like me ever done to deserve the hero of all her fangirling love her like this?

I have no idea. But I let you inside my house. And I am now in a permanent state of bliss. 

In an instant, you have become more than just a vague dream. You are now my reality.  I can see you as the one I can grow old with. I can see you at the other end of the aisle during the day when I finally get to wear the white gown I have sketched when I was just nine years old. I can see you looking after my future children, my grandchildren, my great grandchildren. I can see you taking care of the house bills, I can see you dictating all that shall be put on the red basket at the grocery store, I can see you spoiling me with picnics under a tree in the middle of a rice field, I can see you crying your heartbreaking cry during the last seconds of my life.

Everything that I felt was important suddenly seem incomparable to living a life with you. A life of laughing with you over the most mundane things. A life of debating with you even when I know I’ll never be at par with your intelligence. A life in which I can finally have total submission without holding back from fear that I’d end up messed up if I do. A life in which I wouldn’t for a second hesitate if you want to have your name tattooed right in the middle of my forehead. 

No matter what I am going through right now, or what I am yet to go through, I am sure I will no longer fall for the pits of worries. Because my reason to be happy will now always outweigh all the reasons to give up. And as you have already figured out, you are the definitive one giving me a reason to be happy. And you are always enough.

You are enough because, oh my God, you are so beautiful. And you are both vast and tiny. Vast to be everywhere in the world and tiny to live inside my heart. You are home and you are foreign. You are celebration and you are mourning. You are words and their antonyms in a thesaurus. I don’t know how all of that could be true about you, but they are in one way or another, and that’s what makes you even more beautiful.

You are exactly the one my dad told me I should be happy with. You are the only one deserving to be associated with the most beautiful love songs and stories ever created. You are the grand designer of things I particularly appreciate about this world. You will satisfy all of my otherwise superficial longings . You are greater than a man riding a white horse. You are the Ultimate Romantic. You are Love.

Which reminds me. No, I am not vigorously in love. I am vigorously in Love—I am in you. And you are in me.

And I’m at ease because I have more than just trivial thoughts for you now. Every day, I am getting to know things about you that can never be Googled up. I know that this is really getting somewhere, that we are heading towards the Pretty Serious route. And you know what? Take me far away, make me do things I never thought I could do; I don’t care. I am ready to give up everything—my dreams, my insecurities, my Hopeless Romantic reputation—for you.  

With too much unruly feelings, I should be quite embarrassed already. But I don’t think so. Because you never were, when despite my let-me-just-fold-myself-into-a-paper-origami-ness, you picked me in the middle of a crowd full of confident girls, and said, “here is someone I love.” 

Thank you for making me the heroine of this story. Thank you for being my leading man (with or without a harem).

Thank you for opening my eyes to the right kind of vigorous Love. 

I really love you, okay? With all my fangirl and other human capabilities of loving you, I love you.  

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

-Galatians 2:20

This year’s V-Day (Virda Day HAHAHA) theme is all about Unfair Love. Unfair Love means I get the love I have not earned. This kind of love took me in even though it shouldn’t have. It desired me, believed in me, and stuck around from everlasting to everlasting.

It is so overwhelmingly wonderful, it surpasses all of my feeble expectations. It doesn’t measure my worth by wit or by looking cute in a well-edited photograph or by an ability to wash the dishes. This love doesn’t just call my name when there’s no one else to talk to. This love, to the world, is too good to be true that not even the greatest pop songs and romantic movies could ever get close to depicting it.  

It’s unfair for someone like me to have it but I receive it anyway, every single day. Because the truth is, the only love we were made for in this lifetime, really, is the kind of love we don’t deserve. A love that will look past the concept of deserving because its concern is something that is beyond human logic.

Unfair Love is why I’m here and I’m alive. I know now. I’m sure of it now.    

And yes, Unfair Love in all its glorious beauty only comes from God.   

nikkimerle: Hi Jeahan! May you have a faith-filled 2013! God bless you and your family more and more! (Sidenote: Pretty blog you have, hihi!) Much love! ♥Nikki

Hello, Nikki! THANK YOOOU. And hooray for another year to let God shine in all aspects of our lives! Blessings for you and your family too! <3 

The Closing Ceremony

From afar.

I am a rag doll and they are Barbie and Ken.

Christmas shopping together.

Like they’ve been married 25 years with 25 children. 

Of all places. Of all the times to be here. Why here, why now. 

But they look so happy. He looks so happy.

And painfully cute too.

But this was supposed to happen. This was planned. This is the Closing Ceremony.

This is closure, thirteen years overdue. 

Goodbye, goodbye.

Childhood Dream. 

let it go-the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise-let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go-the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers-you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go-the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things-let all go
dear
so comes love

-ee cummings

Where the Sidewalk Ends

It’s been more than a month since then.

I just feel like I need to re-post this. To remind me of why I now do the things that I do. Please see the original post here. 

…

A little girl playing hopscotch by herself on the traces left of the rectangles her brother, who is currently in a coma after a car accident, had made for her just four days ago. A single mother carrying all her unfinished work papers and the grocery bags, struggling to find the house keys quickly because it’s past 6pm and she hasn’t cooked dinner yet for her son who’s never at home. An elderly couple strolling from their monthly physical check-up, the man tearing up because his wife had just been diagnosed of colon cancer. You know these people and their stories because you’ve always been there watching their lives pass you by. You, spending almost your whole life sitting on the pavement just a few inches away from the gutter, at the sidewalk.

It is impressive how much you know about them. But have you ever taken the time to know your own story? Do you know why you despise counting and calculating? Do you know why you still find it difficult to look at the mirror after all these years? How about why you believe in white horses and romantic mixtapes and a rice field filled with dragonflies? Why you were just sitting there on the sidewalk, almost as if waiting for something, whatever that was?

And then you were surprised to realize you don’t have any answers at all.

Your day would start with a breakfast, and then you make do of a system called employment which you grew up to believe was the only way to a closet full of designer handbags, then for a while you talk to your friends and impress them about how much answers you think you know about their man problems and their problems in general, then you worry for a bit about how to stop yourself from buying another hard bound book when your brother needs another canvas for his latest project, and towards sunset you go back to your room and daydream for a while of conversing with someone in French on top of the Eiffel tower.

Yet, you still feel vacant. So you climb out of your bedroom window and head back to your usual spot at the sidewalk. Waiting for people to come home. For people to pass you by, pass you by, pass you by.

Oh, you were an empty soul. And you couldn’t even admit it to yourself.  

There was a reason why you kept on going back to that same spot, though. And it wasn’t because you had nowhere else to go. Someone put the longing in your heart to scrutinize the usual people who passed by. That longing is budding to be a strong desire to reach out to them. You, you were given a heart that reaches out.  

But how will you use that heart when you can’t even reach out to yourself?

And then you realized, no, you can’t reach out to yourself. No one can. It takes an intervention that is beyond worldly standards for you to become victorious in filling up your empty soul.

In desperation, you remembered the only One you know could help you. You began to call out the name of Someone you’ve not thought of for a long time. And He was glad. Quite instantly He showed up from the back of the huge Mango tree located just beside your usual spot. He didn’t even ask for an explanation on your disregarding of Him. He immediately got to work and filled up your empty—dying—soul.

Had You been hiding at the back of that tree all these years? You ask.

Yes, I was just there, watching you watch all those people. He says.

Why didn’t You say anything?

I was waiting for You to call out My Name.

You break into tears.

He breaks into more revelations: While you spent your time at the sidewalk, He was the wind that you felt when it was humid, the cover that you had when it was raining, the voice that told people who had malicious intentions for you to stay away.    

And then He says, I think you’re ready now.

Still with a swollen face, you ask, ready for what?

To see the end of this sidewalk, He says.

Oh yeah, it has an end. You think to yourself.

Yes, it has an end. He declares. You were so scared to leave your usual spot that you didn’t bother exploring where this sidewalk will take you if you keep walking.  

He takes your hand and finally, you are able to go forward. You don’t have to be afraid now, child. Cast away all your worries. I have a marvelous plan for you and you are now ready to make it happen.   

He says you’re not supposed to look back. You’re supposed to keep going forward. You’re no longer empty. You’ve been refilled and you are overflowing. And a lot of people are waiting to respond to your heart that is in zealous need to reach out. A lot of people are waiting to partake of that overflow in you.   

This is it.

This is where the sidewalk ends.

Are you ready to take the highway now?

And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it. It shall belong to those who walk on the way; even if they are fools, they shall not go astray. (Isaiah 35:8)