I'm sharing my personal essay which was published in the book, Finding God: True Stories of Spiritual Encounters
(Anvil 2009), edited by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard & Marily Orosa. The book won the prestigious Gintong Aklat Award for 2010.
The book is available from Anvil.com - http://www.anvilpublishing.com/shop/fiction-literature/finding-god/
Finding
God through Mary
Cecilia
Manguerra Brainard
I
am not sure when exactly I strayed from God because I had always turned to Him
even when I was a child. I remember how, after my father’s death I tried to
understand that I’d never see my father again, that he was now in heaven. My
concept of heaven then was fluffy clouds and a bearded old man as God, but I
had a difficult time seeing my father in that setting. Even though I didn’t know
where he went, I believed in the afterlife and hatched the idea of writing to
him to update him of my life.
His
death left my life in chaos: my mother, frantic about how to take care of her
four children; my siblings taking off to other countries to study. I turned to
the nuns in my school and to the Catholicism they taught me. The nuns’ rules
and Church’s rules helped give my life a framework. I did well in school; I
went to Mass and prayed. The prayers were childish: give me this, give me that,
a constant focus on I, me, and myself, not realizing I was a pinprick in the
universe.
