A FEW days ago, I received a blog from my sister in Christ, Dr. Christer Mari Taclobos also known as Doc CM.
Doc CM had been my “student” at the Prayer and Life Workshop. After the 15-day session, we got to see each other at The Feast, the weekly Catholic prayer group.
Then I suffered a stroke last January which sidelined me. I thought that was going to be the end of my writing job. Affecting my brain, I found it hard to think, organize my ideas, and even use my fingers to use my laptop. But I can use my smartphone. I was already willing to give way to a new editor-in-chief, a young medical doctor. It was time for new blood to step in.
Meanwhile, my American friend encouraged me to write and walk again. And I did. I willed my body, my brain and hands to work again.
Then came the lockdown. Everything went on a standstill. The prayer meetings, the Sunday masses, the light groups, the small discipleship groups that used to connect me with other Feast attendees who journey together in faith.
But what to write? And then I got in touch with my “The Feast Bacolod Bulletin (TFBB)” sisters and brothers who I’m sure were also confronting boredom doing nothing. I enlisted them to co-write in my SunStar column. I instructed them that SSB is a different kettle of fish from the articles we featured in TFBB.
Then I read the blogs that detailed stories of courage as Covid-19 frontliners from Doc CM. She is one of my idols. I always love her frankness with her spiritual battles. Here is one of her writeups. Doc CM writes, “No one is perfect. It must have been easier to love someone who gets along with me easily. True love is shown through acceptance of one’s flaws, forgiveness of one’s incapacity, and understanding one’s weakness. And the greatest love is giving up one’s life for love.”
And yes, I do love Doc CM. I love her willingness to lay down her life for strangers as a frontliner. I often ask myself if I can do the same. “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
She adds, “No one can be perfect. Only God is. In His perfectness, can we all show Him the greatest love by dying to our own self?”
That is my biggest challenge of my daily battles as I try to get physically and mentally better. Which can be just hard.