Dear God…
(ok, give me a break. my birthday’s nearing it’s mark. so why am I so defensive?? hehehe… just thought this was a good article. I say so. =)
Dear God
MANILA, Philippines — It’s been raining since Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales instructed the Catholic faithful to pray for rains to avert a water crisis. “Oratio Imperata Ad Petendam Pluviam” (Obligatory Prayer to Request for Rain) is what the appeal to heaven is called.
The rains may have brought the usual inconveniences — floods, traffic jams, getting wet. But we asked for rain, didn’t we? Reports said water levels in some dams have risen. The looming water crisis doesn’t sound as terrifying anymore. Ask and you shall receive.
Could there be an “Oratio Imperata” to request for a beloved? A prayer to end the drought in the love lives of single women like me? A prayer as effective as the prayer for rain so that in a matter of days, we would meet single, available, worthy men?
Being single never really bothered me. Until now.
I write this a few days before my 30th birthday. Somehow, the pressure of personal deadlines are more felt: to have a boyfriend, a husband, a child, a family, a home of my own.
A friend, who is also single, asked if I pray to God for “The One.” I told her I do. At Mass. Before I go to bed. When I wake up in the morning. On my way to work. When my sister got married. When I first laid eyes on my nephew.
I even get down to specifics, because some friends have told me I should tell God what I really want. God already knows what one desires, of course, but He also wants to hear it straight from one’s heart. And so, I recite my requirements in my prayers: I want Guy-For-Me to be funny, good-looking, smart, 5’8” to 5’11” tall. Doesn’t matter if he’s dark or fair. I want someone who is God-fearing and God-loving. Someone who’s honest and humble. Someone who has goals, rather than ambition.
Early this year, I actually thought God had answered my prayers. A common friend introduced us, a “set-up” of some sort. He didn’t take my breath away at first sight. He wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, but he had a cute, boyish smile. And a particularly nice voice that had a lilt and timbre that I found comforting.
Then came a few dinners. A couple of movies. An exchange of gifts. Some phone calls and text messages.
He was 5’9”, funny, smart, humble. From our conversations, he seemed to be God-loving and to have a set of concrete, achievable goals in his life. And he wasn’t ambitious.
There were little flirtations here and there. Little hints that he liked me (or so I thought).
I was starting to be comfortable with him. I began entertaining the thought that he could be my first boyfriend. I started dropping hints, too, that I liked him.
But somewhere along the way, in between a chocolate mousse we shared and a movie, I found out that he had met someone and she became his girlfriend.
I reeled. I was confused. I didn’t get it. Didn’t he just ask me out to a movie? Wasn’t it a date?
To him, it wasn’t. To him, it was what friends normally did. He told me he thought I understood that he only wanted to be friends with me.
That was two months ago. I still feel some pain, partly because I felt I had been duped and partly because I was almost in love with him.
On top of meeting nearly all my requirements (he failed the honesty part), there were other little things about him that captured my heart: his sideways glance with a lopsided grin, the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled, the way he smelled of soap with a hint of sun and grass, and his handsome build that I figured could shield me from harm.
After he broke my heart, I considered giving up on finding “The One.”
I thought, maybe I wasn’t meant to be a girlfriend, a wife, a mother. Wasn’t meant to have my own family or my own home.
But inexplicably, I still can’t help looking up to heaven and saying a prayer that one day soon, I will meet someone whom I’ll love. And that he’ll love me back.
Ask and you shall receive.
Maybe I’ll bump into him in the rain.
Nonna Leon, 29, works for a major newspaper.
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