Thursday, July 17, 2014

Two years...

"Lord, aalis na ba talaga ako?"

That was my question for the past few days everytime I'm done with my duty.

I'd take a deep breathe, drag my feet down the 'grand' stairs and read the engraved words, "Where you belong".

This is where I've always wanted to be, I thought.

Two years ago, I remember how much I love the work that I am in. Two years after, despite all the struggles that reality has slapped on me, I still love what I do.

I don't know where this new path would lead me. Will it lead me to a new world or back to where I think, I belong?

I entrust everything into God's hands for I know, I may not have any plans right now, He still has that perfect plan for me.

***

Five months.

It wasn't JUST five months. It was five months. And it was one of the best and memorable five months in my GMA life.

At first, I did not expect anything. Hindi ko rin naisip that I would be able to develop this kind of friendship with them.

Looking back, I'm thankful that I tried applying kahit may personal hesitations ako dahil hindi ako familiar sa job. What if hindi ko tinanggap? I would have missed this opportunity pala, buti na lang hindi.

Thank you, SMT Family! For all the simple and complicated things that we went through.

Signature pose ko raw :)
Sa lahat ng kainang kinainan natin, mga pagkaing natikman at nasubukan, sa EK adventure, sa surprises na never pa atang pumalpak, sa mga tawanan at opinyon sa lahat ng bagay... Sa lahat lahat :)

Despedida :)

It was truly a memorable one that sometimes naiisip ko, "What? Five months lang yun?"

Parang ang tagal-tagal na kasi nating magkakakilala.

Nung sinamahan nila akong maglivetweet
sa EK day! :')

***

I will always be a Kapuso. <3


Kapuso mug! <3

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Love letter

I wrote this love letter more than a year ago for a love letter writing competition. Syempre hindi ako nanalo. :) Pero okay na rin, kasi proud akong sabihin na hindi ako in love nung sinulat ko 'to. Salamat sa dalawang romantic movie na pinanood ko para magkaroon ng motivation.

Salamat din sa National Book Development Board na naging daan para maka-experience ako ng mga ganitong bagay. :)

Spread the love! <3

Photo (c): NBDB



Hi J

I was thinking about you today, that’s why I am writing this letter. I was imagining things, hoping that we are together right now. You know, I’ve got a lot of stories to tell, corny jokes to laugh at (in which you are required to laugh, or else…), rants and rages to burst out. It’s really hard (and weird) to do this on my own. I wanted to be with you. I wish you do, too.

You know, life is so different without you. Or maybe, it is going to be more different when you are with me—different in some sort of a good way. I guess difference depends on how we deal with what life has given us, I guess, love is a difference. It has to be one, because it gives us a different feeling of being the most different person, together. I love being different with you.

The thought ‘Time heals’ is a cliché, but on my part, I was hoping that it really is. Every tick of the clock kills me. It kills me that another day will pass without you. That I have to wait for another day, hoping that there you will be, at the doorstep, holding a bunch of white roses, greeting me with ‘hi’, and the day goes, just me and you, staring at each other’s face, as if it was the very first time.

Yes, time for me does not heal. It hurts me even more, yet I’m holding on to the fact that I am not waiting in vain, I am waiting for you.

Maybe love gives us an unexplainable feeling of happiness. I haven’t met you, but the thought of being with you gives me not just butterflies in my stomach, but also birds singing in my head, chirping their songs of love, as if they feel what I feel. Constantly reminding of my very reason of existence—you.

You know what, most of the time, I get lost in my dreams, actually mostly in my nightmares. I don’t know if you are going to accept me for who I am when we meet. Specially when you get to know me.

You see, I’ve been to many distresses in life. I have a nightmare that haunts me to forever. Yet deep inside, despite what happened to me, despite having a little angel tagged along in my life now, I am and is still looking forward for a ‘happy even after’ story.

I am afraid that my nightmare wouldn’t stop. I am afraid that there will be a time that you would make my past to be a reason not to love me. I am afraid to lose you. But I am hoping that you will be my dream catcher—someone who will make my dreams come true, or maybe together we’ll make it.

As early as now, I wanted to say sorry. I wanted to ask for your forgiveness. I am sorry for not waiting for you. I am sorry for falling into someone that I thought was you. Sorry if I wasn’t able to preserve that one thing a woman should give to only one man. I am truly sorry. I hope you would forgive me. I hope that even after that fall, I will still see you, with your eyes full of acceptance.

I wish I could forget those memories and make a fresh start with you. But I guess it has already been a part of my life. I consider it instead as a preparation when I meet you. I love you so much, even though I haven’t felt it at the moment. I know I am going to love you more than all the love combined in the entire world. I love you, and that is all what’s going to matter. I’d love you now, until we meet.

If only I could follow you wherever you are, I’d do. But I don’t even know where you are. They said that the world is sometimes small. But I guess we aren’t talking about space here. Our love isn’t about how far or near. It’s about time—of when and where and how. ‘Cause our love, though it has never met, was longing, was hoping... our hearts—it will find each other, beyond time.

See you in the future my dearest. I’m really excited on how we are going to meet. How are we going to start or will we realize from the very start that it was ‘us’ that we are looking for all these years? Will we meet in the best or the worst moment of our lives? Is it possible that I have seen you before?

I don’t know.

If the time comes that a time machine will be invented, I promise not to peek into our ‘perfect time’. I wanted it to be a surprise. I wanted to be unprepared. I wanted to feel the natural feeling of falling in love.

When that day comes, I hope that it won’t be the end, yet the start of our own forever.

I love you my dear. And I promise to wait. I promise to endure the pain as the time ticks over and over. ‘Cause after all this pain, when I see you, it’s going to be worth it. I know.

I love you, my one and only. When those nightmares are gone, I’d believe that my dream catcher has finally come.

I’d hear the birds sing, I’d feel the butterflies around us. They’ll celebrate our unity, and together, we will fly to forever.

PS.
This letter was written before we meet. I wanted you to know in the future how excited I was to meet you. I love you, my dearest. I will, ‘til our forever meets no end.

PPS.
I chose to write you a letter, because I can no longer find another person whose worth to write for than my future husband. J

PPSS.
I wanted to say more, but I’ll reserve it when we meet. See you then! J

Excited to meet you,

Gazelle Marcaida-(insert surname of my future husband here)


Your future wife J

Monday, July 7, 2014

Oras-oras

Para kang sirang plaka, sa tenga ko'y paulit ulit na naririnig ang tinig mo.

Minsan tinanong ko ang puso ko. Pag-ibig bang maituturing ito? 


Ang sabi'y sa pag-ibig, 'di mo alam ang simula. Pero ngayon, hindi ko na alam kung paano ito hihinto.

Noo'y tinutunaw ko ang pakiramdam na ito, pero ngayo'y tila mga ngiti mo ang tumutunaw sa aking puso.

Kay sarap maramdaman ang pag-ibig na hindi mo alam. Kusa. Walang pagpilit. Walang kapalit. Nagpapaubaya.

Pero walang nagsabing hindi ito makakasakit.

Inoorasan na tayo ng pagkakataon. Nalalapit na paghihiwalay o pagsasama sa habang buhay?

The gift of waiting (repost)





I just wanted to share this wonderful message of waiting. I take no credit for this.

Source: http://wonderandwandering.com/2014/06/26/the-gift-of-waiting/

The gift of waiting


Six years ago I met a boy. I had zero romantic interest in him, but we became the best of friends. We loved all the same things… soccer, live music, pizza + beer… the list could go on but these ones carry most of my memories of friendship with him.
We spent more afternoons at my favorite coffee shop in Jonesboro, Arkansas than I can remember between 2008-2010, sometimes talking and sometimes just sharing a table while I studied and he planned worship sets. We took as many trips to Memphis as we could to see our favorite bands play together. We talked sports and there was never anything more than a high five going on between us every time we left hanging out.
Then 2011 rolled around. He had a girlfriend at the time, and I remember beginning to think that I missed my best friend. Somewhere over those few months of our friendship having boundaries for the first time, I started to wonder if maybe I could like… really like him. Obviously this felt horribly risky, so I decided to just pretend those feelings weren’t there for a while.
I remember talking to some of our friends one night and saying, “Guys, I don’t know what to do. I feel like when I think about the girl he needs to end up with, and I start to describe her in my head… she sounds a lot like me.” There they were, out on the table. My feelings. Exposed. I felt naked and afraid. And I knew it didn’t even matter at the time, because he was dating someone else. Even if I did have real feelings, he certainly didn’t reciprocate them.
I didn’t know what to do. So I fasted. For 21 days I was asking God over and over, “Lord, if these feelings are from you, I trust you’ll take care of me, and if they’re not, I don’t want to feel them ever again.” …well about day 5, he broke up with his girlfriend. My prayer took a slight turn to simply saying, “OK God, I think I want him. Can I have him?”
At the end of those 21 days, there weren’t words written in the sky, there wasn’t a burning bush or angelic visitation… but I remember feeling like God had given me this deep sense of peace, and I remember feeling like I kept hearing the words, “Just keep being. I’ve got you. I have the best for you.”
So for about a month, nothing changed. Besides that I felt like my best friend was back — and that was good. So good. And then one night in March of 2011, he called and said he wanted to come over and talk to me. He told me he was sorry that he had missed a season of my life when he was dating someone. He told me I was his best friend, and he loved spending time with me. He told me he couldn’t really imagine time with anyone else being better than time with me, and that he felt like he was growing feelings for me that were bigger than us being just friends.
Side note: OK, I wouldn’t probably recommend that all relationships go this way, but our years of friendship prior to this conversation made this next part not weird.
So basically we talk all of it out, and decide: (a) I think I want to spend my life with you; (b) we should probably date first; (c) we don’t feel like it’s time for us to date right now.
He told me he knew that with his fairly recent breakup, and him being on staff at our church, and me being in leadership in our college ministry, that it just didn’t feel peaceful to jump right into dating someone else. So we waited. For months I’d been working through these feelings in my own heart, then we finally had the conversation I’d been waiting for, and it ended in knowing we needed to keep waiting.
I remember him telling me, “I don’t know how long it’ll be until we feel like God says it’s time… it could be two months or two years, but I want you to know that you’re worth it, and I am going to wait.”
(Obviously I’m crying at this point.)
And then we went almost three months without really talking or hanging out. (Cried plenty more times during that time period) We just… waited. We knew we shouldn’t toy with the line of friendship/more than friendship, so we just stopped spending time together unless our friends happened to be all hanging out.
It was hard! I had gone through this whole process of believing for something, and then being told I could have it — but not yet. God’s promises are funny like that. Sometimes He shows us what He has for us and then He invites us in to the refining place of waiting and contending — not because we need to earn something but because He wants to stamp us with His image in those places. There’s a piece of His heart to be found in the waiting.
I think in that season the piece of His heart I found was that He’s for me, no matter what. He was stamping on me a belief that His promises are true, and the things He promises are worth fighting for.
Three months later we started dating, and this weekend I get to celebrate two years of being Mrs. Noland Gilmore. As I’m looking back on our second year of marriage, I’m reminded that it’s been marked by the same thing that started it all: waiting.
It’s been a year of the two of us contending for something that we’re not sure if or when it will happen. It’s been a year of learning to carry each other in ways we haven’t had to before. It’s been a year of unfulfilled promises.
But today, I choose to celebrate. Because every day I wake up next to a promise fulfilled. And that makes me want to keep fighting for the ones I’ll see come to life in the future.
Cheers, my love — to all the promises we’ve yet to see fulfilled. What glorious days ahead of us!

Cycle

Full of words.
Words of love.
Love to you.
You and me.
Me to you.
You are full.

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Random thought # 2

Those words. I hugged it. I hoped for it. I longed for it. I read it countless times in a day. I prayed that it is real and started hoping again.