Reminiscing Truths ⚓

It has been a very meditative week of more devoted prayer and intermittent fasting (or intermittent eating because I fasted more than I ate). A lot has been shoved down my plate lately, and this week started off with another shaking and breaking. And there are many, many, many  lessons and happenings in the span of a week. Additional work load to my ever increasing pile of school duties. Same old issues resurfacing. The old burden and zeal to invest in the lives of other people--and not seeing pleasant results. Same old, but brand new stories of I-don't-like-you's. Of feeling like the girl in between two worlds--never quite in one, never quite part of the other. Many things. I am still trying to process each of these very much tangled, very much interconnected ball of thoughts and feelings. Maybe one day, I get to write about each one ever more clearly. But one of the things that I had (have, still not over) to deal with, is my still very much unsettled feeling and reso

Blessed are those who keep His testimonies,  who seek him with their whole heart,  who also do no wrong  but walk in His ways!                                                                     (Psalm 119:2-3) The psalms, and mostly all of the Bible’s poetry, operate through what is called parallelism . As a literary device, parallelism draws on this idea of connection and similarity. Parallelism is when an author constructs parts of a sentence to be grammatically similar, often repeating a specific word, phrase, or idea. This repetition creates a connection between the ideas discussed. These parallel ideas also become emphasized and become more important for the reader. (Study.com, Parallelism in Poetry) Parallelism, then, is used in the Bible to compare an idea previously mentioned and paint how it should look like in another context.  The 119 th psalm is chiefly characterized with this poetic device. All throughout the psalm, the psalmist would reword what he was desc

But I'm barely breathing. Yep. Going classic The Script here. And I also should've been doing play analysis, and grades, and output checking, yadda yadda. I know. I know. I'm not in my most productive mode. But things have been toppling up so fast lately, and like the back pain I have to get a massage for at least every other week, I need to do a more in-depth processing of every "lemon" of emotions I have, or this would totally swallow me up and paralyze me to complete inaction. As the whole world knows, it was World Teachers' Day yesterday, October 5th. There was a simple program in UMAK HSU yesterday morning, where the teachers were (rather instantaneously) told to prepare a dancing/singing presentation. (And yes, I "danced", if you even call that dancing.) There were also a lot of little things that happened throughout the program--food, raffles, the PTA president subtly campaigning for her government official husband, students coming

I experienced waking up in the middle of the night because while I dreamed about a class activity that wasn’t in my preparation for the next day, I realized my lesson could be not enough. And so I add up on my lessons at 2 AM. I experienced going home so late from school, not because of some late-night school programs, but because of a student who wanted to sit me down and ask for a listening ear, because her parents fought and broke platters again; or because his severe anxiety attacks again; because she feels her family and everyone around her doesn’t really care whatever happens to her; because he is being taken over by depression and contemplates on cutting himself again; because his girlfriend thinks he’s too busy for her; because her boyfriend cheated on her for some new student. I experienced getting a knock in the faculty room to ask if Miss Bekah was there, and when I went out to see the student, she asks, “ Miss, busy ka po? ” And I remembered swallowing my inner cr

Make  brewed,  black,  barako coffee and sit back as the world wonders how you did it.  get right back to work after a quick shower at 2 AM, because you can't afford an extra minute of sleep. Life is pretty tough in teaching. Especially in teaching in a public university. I'm not sure how it goes in other universities. I would like to think that somewhere out there, there is an institution that (1) has the most conducive teacher-student proportion, (2) has all their administrative concerns taken care of by an entirely different set of employees, and (3) has its curriculum and academic activities all properly ironed out all throughout the year, so that all their teachers are left with only the original tasks they are supposed to deal with--teaching a handful of kids, one or two course preps, and focusing on how to be a positive influence to the lives of these souls. But there's never a perfect school in this fallen, crooked world. Every ideal institution has its

Joash Maramara Photography (2018) And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!” (Revelation 14:13) August has, for the second time in a row, proven itself to be a month of grief for me. The last two weeks have subjected my entire church, and more especially the Maramaras, in deep emotional turmoil with regards to Kuya Ryan's falling ill.   Suddenly, our hands were all filled with tasks and things that we could do for this family who has done so much for us. From entertaining Ethan and Mikki throughout the two very long weeks by playing various board games. (And yes, Dix It is the best.) To setting up "camp" for everyone, to keep the insects out and to have a semi-adventurous feels despite everything. To simply just watching the kids. Or, uh, with the kids. We Youngles had our

“Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth! (Psalm 46:10) Everyone in our church has been at the edge of one's seat lately, especially the last twenty-four hours. One of our church members, Kuya Ryan, was discovered earlier this week to have a tumor in his brain larger than an eyeball. He was scheduled for a 6-hour operation yesterday to remove the said obstruction, which is progressive (that is, increasing in size every passing hour). I personally have been holding my breath the whole day yesterday even as I went through my classes and other activities. This morning, at about 2:00 AM, he was readmitted to the operating room to have a  second  operation because there was internal bleeding in the area where the tumor was. About an hour ago he was said to have gotten out of the surgery room already, but they need him to wake up first before finding out if everything is back to normal. Just a few minutes ago, ho

[I presented this testimony earlier this year to the congregation for an evangelistic night. An evangelistic night is a vesper service modified to accommodate the sharing of the gospel to unbelievers, and one part of it is the sharing of the members' testimony of how God saved them. I was one of the first ones to share.] A friend once asked me just a few months ago for my written testimony when I applied for this church. I didn’t think there was any problem, but when I thought more about it, I realized that my testimony I wrote for the church 6 years ago is not something I could share anymore. Not because my salvation story then wasn’t true, but because a lot of God-given, life-changing lessons happened after I was saved. I guess the first thing I realized is that testimonies are always changing because God never stops writing our story. For this afternoon I would like to share who I was before I knew God, what God did to save me, and what God taught me after being saved.

[Hi. I'm Rebekah, and I have decided to use a platform different from my Tales and Rhymes blog for my more personal writings. Originally, I have decided several years ago to just maintain one blog site, which would primarily contain only my literary pieces. I've decided to take a step back from sharing what transpires in my life to the digital platform because of  several reasons. Recently, though, my life had me go through a winding roller coaster ride, and it's just full of shifts and changes. L ife has had me drowning from all the salty waves and stormy winds it throws at me—and I could hardly keep my head above the surface. But these storms teach me priceless lessons and reveal to me invaluable realizations. And so I decided to share these lessons in writing, because who knows who might benefit from them? This letter somewhat summarizes the things I have been dealing with these past few months. There are way more than the things I’ve mentioned, of course, but

    Faithfulness is denotatively defined as the quality of being steadfast in affection or allegiance; to be firm in adherence to promises or in observance of duty; to be true to the facts, to a standard, or to an original. (Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, n.d.) This term nowadays usually has the connotation of simply staying consistent with what one has originally said. Faithfulness, however, is not simply staying true. The word faithfulness is derived from the Hebrew word ‘e-meth— a word contracted from the Hebrew word ‘âman, which means to build up or support; figuratively, to render firm, to be permanent, or quiet.   Being faithful, then, according to its Hebrew origin, is about one’s trustworthiness. To be a faithful person is to have certainty in truth. In the Scripture, the word “faithfulness” appeared 75 times, with “faithful” appearing just about as much—78 times. If one searches for all the occurrences of the word ‘emeth in the original translation, one would see that