This is how we both remember it. It was during our family friend’s party back in ‘97. Rlan had just came from the Philippines and he and his sister were just sitting with their family in the basement. I, for many reasons, just kept walking up and down the stairs, wondering who they were. I asked my friend, and her response “Why you like him?” Honestly? That’s what you think when I ask who these people are? I mean just because I can remember his shaved head, baggy pants, and that really big green jacket… and nothing about what his sister was wearing… does NOT mean that I liked him. I just wanted to know who they were. Of course, even when we asked them to go hang out with us, they still just sat there. I guess they were still shy.
My sister still claims we first saw them at a picnic in July ‘98, but I thought that was the second time around, she is right that that’s when we started hanging out with them… But I do remember seeing them at PBA before that picnic, at the bleachers of Bishop Foley. Shaking my head, I was so embarrassed tripping off the bleachers (I’m kind of awkward to begin with… esp when there’s this guy staring at me).
I remember a late night conversation with Ate Kathryn and Faith where my Ate kept saying “Alam mo ba… alam mo ba since the beginning of the world… alam mo ba since the he first saw you, he liked you?” It took me more family friend parties (or as we call them “Elite” parties), every other weekend at Metro Beach or Kensington Park, a random phone call, emails with hidden messages all the way at the bottom, and late night MSN conversations for feelings to really start. And I wont lie, I thought it was hot when he played the guitar (Though he only could play the intros of the songs :P).
The drift apart…
To cut a long story short. Rlan liked me a lot (torpe as he was… it was really obvious) and it started scaring me. I wasn’t ready for a relationship… I just wanted to live in my fairy tale world. Though, I did see forever in his eyes — and boy can I remember his “goodbye” eyes — and I knew he would wait until after college to ask me out if I asked him to, it was just too much for me. I didn’t think anyone would ever like me, especially not to the extent that he liked me… I wasn’t planning on going to prom, but if he has asked I would have gone. But he never asked… things happened, life goes on… and we drifted apart.
Six years later….
Time passed… and in ‘08 the day after Christmas, my heart was broken and it was my last straw… I heard God telling me it was time to LET GO! And so I did. It was during that Lenten season that I totally fell in love with God. He kept giving me messages of hope and where I received what I like to call my “Philemon promise”.
"Maybe we are separated for now, so that both of us can become better people, so that if we do find ourselves together again… it’ll be forever" - Philemon 12-16.
I really had no idea what it meant, but I just know that when I read it, the words lept off the page and was reaching out to me! I just had to "Be still and know He is God" - Pslam 46:10 — which btw also had no clue what that meant the first how many times it was said to me! I just kept hearing the messages over and over again, I knew it was God speaking to me, so I just had to let go and let God work… somehow I had an inkling that the guy, was going to be at the next SE retreat - that the guy would be the one that God was talking about.
Little did I know, that God was paving a path to bring Rlan back into my life… And it was the weekend of June 13, 2009 at St. John’s Retreat Center in Plymouth during the BLD Singles Encounter #5 Weekend that I God did send Rlan back into my life. There were only two guys there, my god brother and Rlan - so of course I thought what I heard was just wishful thinking and pushed it off to the side. But it wasn’t just wishful thinking, God truly made ways of bringing us together after that retreat… regardless of how busy we might have been.
So that’s the basic gist of how God wrote… the first part, at least, of our love story…
- See more at: http://rklovestory.tumblr.com/lovestory#sthash.bAybmzU9.dpuf
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