TOPAZ HORIZON

Since Mama always began and ended her day by praying for everyone in her world (and I guess, she prayed for the entire world, too), I feel a little unsafe and unprotected now that she's gone. Her prayer of love and protection always made me feel safe. Sometimes I call her up and ask, "Mama, did you pray for me today? I'm not having a good day!" Yeah, I can be so rude. And she'd assure me that she did but so that I'd feel better, we'd pray over the phone anyway. Then I truly would feel better.

Well, now no one's praying for me so I'm doing the praying. It's hard if it isn't part of your habit to pray for people. I usually pray for just me and Vince. This morning as I was praying in our bedroom, I was mixing up names and forgetting names and just basically getting confused. Maybe because I never start my day with a prayer so I'm not used to concentrating so hard first thing. I'll have to list names down!

The other day, Kate dragged me with her to Baclaran church. I'm not Catholic but it's still a place of worship so I prayed with her. At the back of the church is a large room filled with candles. In here, people light as many candles as they wish to pray. I got five candles and prayed for these:
(1) for my marriage to be strong and be a shining example of true commitment and love,
(2) that my family be truly reconciled and finally be a beacon of love and Christ's victory to others,
(3) for God to bless the friends and family who have been such a comfort to me and my family in these dark days,
(4) I thanked God for our jobs which helped pay for Mama's sudden passing, and I asked that we will always be wise and compassionate managers to our staff and be good examples of leadership,
(5) and then I prayed for everyone in that room of candles because I saw that they desperately needed Him, perhaps even more than I did at that moment.

I found that candles can be very calming. And since there's a flame I can focus on, I prayed better. I'll be buying candles this weekend. Till then, believe it or not, I found this nice website that helped me pray. It's called Light a Candle. I thought it would be cheesy but it proved to be very calming. And then as I clicked on the other candles, I realized I'm not the only one who needs help. Millions of people around the world are in worse situations. And so my list of names just got longer.

I do always remember this scene from Dawson's Creek (yeah, all my life is so pop culture). Jen's grandfather was dying and her grandmother was praying really hard. Jen got angry and told her grandma, "How can you have so much faith in prayer? Just because you pray doesn't mean you can change God." And grandma replied, "Prayer doesn't change God; it changes me."

Mama's death is still very painful and of course it is useless to pray for her to come back or for me to have another chance to show her my love. But I trust in God's perfect plan. He wanted Mama home but He will not leave us alone. He will be there for me and my family and He is already working in our lives because Mama's death was for a reason. I just need to pray that we will be patient enough and strong enough and wise enough to see His plan moving powerfully in us.

*image from FreeFoto.com

Part of my job as a magazine editor is to go promote the title. So we had huge billboards made along the Luzon expressways...


... and another electronic one plastered downtown...


... some posters were sent to some little towns and I don't understand why these boys are so enamored with a gossip rag...


... maybe, they wanted to see if we featured stars like Victoria Beckham, who, by the way, talks about her favorite editor here...


... finally, Vogue couldn't resist making me their cover girl!


Oh, but I can be infamous, too! Some paranoid people have been putting up these posters and they are seriously damaging my rep!


Hahahahaha! I'm super loving PhotoFunia. The effects are amazing! Thanks to Colors Changing Hue for the link. I had so much fun. It's like the wigs again since I get to play. Mama would've had a big giggle over the pics =D

UPDATE: Guys, these photos are a joke. I got more than a few text messages on both phones asking where exactly on the expressways those billboards are. Please click on the PhotoFunia link above so you, too, can have some fun. I repeat: The photos are FAKE!

Okay, back to regular programming!

I promised myself I was going to spend more time with my family. So just this Sunday, when my sister Jacqui had to go to Divisoria to buy some props and costumes for her thesis play (she's taking Theater Arts), I tagged along. We girls figured there's nothing like shopping to distract us from our despondent mood. Plus, Mama loved to shop second-hand and inexpensive places so we felt like shopping would be like being with her. I also know about Divisoria's incredibly cheap prices but I've never actually been there (just once , and it was very very briefly). Well, let me just say everything was absolutely dirt cheap and everything was cheap and dirty! Sigh...

Anyway, part of Jacqui's costume included eyeglasses. If you remember my post on the funny yearbook photos (scroll way down for a giggle), I said that cat's eye frames look good on me and made me think about resting my eyes from my contacts and just wearing glasses again. And I found a really cute pair of eyeglasses there. It cost me PHP 150 or a mere USD 3.20! Well, the cheap frames were a bargain and I love how they make me look very severe and serious! However, everyone I told about my find warned me that as soon as I bring it to the optometrist for the prescription lenses, the plastic frames are sure to break. Hmmm...

So I turned to my online shopping obsession--the solution for my can't-find-anything-here dilemma. My search led me to Zenni Optical, a website that sells really cool eyeglasses. I also checked if they can be trusted and according to Fox News and consumer advocate program Clark Howard Show, Zenni's pretty okay! They have a wide variety of frames and these are my favorites:





Best thing is they're all just USD 8 each. So still very inexpensive but the durability is guaranteed. Sigh, with all the economic troubles these days, we really have to be more careful with what we buy!

"Man's mortality remains a gift which goes to the very heart of his being and points his will in the right direction... From a Christian perspective, the 'ultimate blessing' of the gift of death was not the extinction of life but, paradoxically, the fullness of life... Life, like death, demands the surrender of all."

Mama was buried yesterday. It was a happy send off! The past few days have been filled with singing and laughter. Tears, too, of course. It feels so strange to have her gone. But as Christians, we firmly believe that she is now in heaven with her Lord Jesus, so there is a happiness we feel for her soul and a sadness only because we miss her so.

About a thousand people paid their last respects to Mama. That's a rough estimate. People kept pouring into the chapel throughout all hours of the day. Each one had a lovely story to tell about Mama. There was even a woman that Mama just met two weeks ago (Mama asked to share a table at a restaurant) and she came because she said she wanted to tell us how absolutely blessed she was when she met Mama. Strangers kept telling me that they met Mama briefly at a mall or a lobby somewhere and how her smile was unforgettable and how Mama cheered them up, telling them, "I'll pray for you." I am so flabbergasted at how Mama affected people!

We were overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Because my Mama loved music, people got up to sing, play musical instruments, and dance! It was amazing. It was like a four-day concert of the very best musical talents. A choir filled the room with their voices. My younger brother wrote her a song, which got everyone crying. Papa's own song for Mama had everyone in tears, too (yeah, that just killed everybody). But Mama would not have wanted us to be sad so the tears had to be wiped away and everyone was encouraged to sing and sing. It was such a celebration of Mama's life. She would have been absolutely thrilled!

She also looked fantastic. I kid you not. Someone said, "She's the best looking dead person I've ever seen!" Even my makeup-artist friend took one look at her and said, "She looks flawless!" People who saw her kept exclaiming, "She is so beautiful!" I know it sounds disrespectful but it's true--Mama looked so lovely, it was unsettling. She looked like she was just sleeping and having a very good dream, too. We all kept staring at her in disbelief. In fact, my little niece kept knocking on the glass to wake her up. Poor thing... Indeed, we all are convinced she died happy and at peace and she must've seen God just before she died because her face was so radiant in death.

The past few days have been a blessing truly. We feel a sadness of course but we also feel peaceful and filled with joy. The love people have shown Mama and our family overwhelms us so. She gave her life fully to Christ, her family, her friends, even to complete strangers. She surrendered her all. She never held back! And now, in death, life rewarded her just as passionately. May we all live our lives as fully as she did.