FRIENDS HAVE OFTEN asked me how I got myself immersed in spiritual renewal. And I would always be met with a quizzical stare when I tell them that a jackfruit – yes, the real pimply kind – made me realize what I have been missing all my life.
A jackfruit tree stood at the front of the house which my young family rented then. As fruit-bearing season came, my landlord would choose which fruits would be worth ripening and covered them with rice sacks. Covering the fruit was meant to maintain a certain temperature to let it grow well. But the sacks were securely tied to the branches to discourage theft.
After sometime, the fruits would emit a sweet fragrance. With a bunch of them, your entire front yard would smell like an open candy store. But, a fruit expert would tell you that there is always a proper time to harvest based on a kind of smell that came out.
After my landlord harvested the batch for the season, he left a slightly big one for our family’s dessert, hanging all by its lonesome. It already smelled nicely, but he said it would take a few more days before we could take it down.
But my landlord’s estimate was not as accurate. As I slowly loosened the strings holding the sack, I was greeted by the sight of a big rotten portion of the fruit. It was unsalvageable as the rotten part had crept its way to the core. Well, my family is not exactly a fan of jackfruits, so off went the jackfruit to the trash bin.
So, how did I go into this spiritual renewal again? Well, I realized I was no better than that jackfruit rotting on the branch. On the outside, I smelled sweet and clean. In the eyes of people around us, I was probably an epitome of goodness and upright living. But as my life was slowly unraveled by an unseen all-powerful hand, I realized the rottenness lurking deep in my soul, the putrid stench that was building from within.
In my earlier state of life, I would tell people I do not need God or I do not need to pray or I do not need to go to Church or I do not need religion because I haven’t hurt anyone, or that in general, I lived cleanly and righteously. I loved my family so much that I would accept any work and worked on it well just to give them a better life; and that made me a good father and husband. I respected my friends and colleagues at work, and never made enemies. And while I worked in government, I never allowed myself to be induced to go the way of the grafters and the corrupt.
There was pride in the way I said these things and how I justified what I was. And it is that same pride, a close cousin of arrogance, that continually blinded me from looking at myself in a larger plan which only God could have created.
Three years before that, my wife and I survived the difficulty of having our first-born. My wife suffered from UTI on her second trimester that my daughter was forcing her way out on the sixth month. Our daughter prematurely came to this world at 2.4 pounds; she had to be incubated for more than month and was only released to us when she made it to 3.5 pounds. She was so tiny when we finally took her home, the yaya my father brought from the province already wanted to leave when she saw her.
I never saw God’s hand in that miracle. I remember saying that good things do happen to good people. My wife and I are not exactly saints, church goers, or even believers, but we are good people in that we are law-abiding citizens, and we respect the people around us and especially the people who matter most to us – our family and our loved ones. Hence, by the karmic laws of nature, we deserve to earn the rewards of our good relations; after all, we reap what we sow.
My wife gave birth in one of the “bigger and better” hospitals around. Even if we had to stay at the ward, being there for almost a month before and after her birth affected our resources. Did God figure in resolving our financial crises? I couldn’t tell, and it was the farthest from my mind. As far as I knew, we survived the ordeal because I had my parents to call on. It did help too that our daughter’s pediatrician, one of the better known specialists on neonates, cut her professional fee by half and we were allowed to pay her within a year, much to the surprise of the hospital staff because this has not happened before.
Indeed, if there was one reason that my life was rotting without my knowing it, it was a despicable failure on my part to acknowledge God in all those things that happened in my life.
What I terribly lacked was a genuine humility to accept that all that I was, all that I had, and all that I wanted for myself and my family solely depended on what God wanted it to be. I did not have the humility to put my life and those of my loved ones in His hands. I did not have the humility to tell him how grateful I was for all that He has done for me.
But God, in His goodness, made me realize all my shortcomings in the most humane manner he could, by showing me his presence not in the shadows of a tragedy where I would call out his name in despair, but in the glow of life in my newborn where I could bask in deep and profound gratitude for a gift only a divine will would have given someone as seemingly insignificant and unworthy as I am.
God allowed my daughter to live. Despite our meager resources, God sent my daughter the best doctor to take care of her when she was fighting to survive. He gave us a good hospital and the medicines that were just right for my daughter to make it through. He gave us parents to help us in every which way we needed support. He gave us consolation through loved ones and friends who were always there at every instance that we found our selves alone and sad. Indeed, in all those moments, He never left my wife and me.
As I look at my daughter who’s now in her freshman year at the State University
God moves in very mysterious ways, this I truly know. Yet somehow, I couldn’t stifle a smile when I remember how he allowed a rotting jackfruit to transform my life.
(nscatura)
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