PLEASE MEET THE REAL ME

Every so often someone in church pulls me aside to be introduced to his guests. Inadvertently, a still and rebellious voice screams inside of me: I am more than that you know. Sometimes, my mind then flies into all the good things that can be said about me and about what I do. I am a school owner...a teacher...an accomplished painter...an astute businesswoman...a good writer...a proud graduate of our state university...a cancer survivor, for heaven's sake.

And then the thought transforms into annoyance about how I am always overshadowed by my husband's good looks, charm and charisma and how I will never conform to one's picture of a demure and lady-like minister's wife. My brain then rants off about society's male chauvinism...the fact that ours is really a matriarchal society and that this country will not progress without the women...the ineptitude of our government in addressing the real issues of our nation. But scrap that thought because I am sure men will say, but our country is being run by a woman.

It's a good thing I know how and when to stop and laugh myself. I then put on my sweetest smile, reach out my hand, as I always do, and say, Welcome to our church.

BACK ON TRACK

When I was twenty-three years old and heavy with our first child, my husband and I were installed as ministers in our old church in Cebu. Suffice it to say that after six years of faithful service, we got caught in the crossfire of church politics and we decided to retreat rather than be annihilated.

If you could have talked to us then, when we were young, aggressive, volatile and hurting, we would have told you that ministry life is hell on earth.

For many years after that traumatic experience, my husband and I vacciliated between religious devotion and compromise. The good thing was we took turns at being depressed and discouraged. We never did it at the same time.

Eventually, after years of running away from people who looked to us as ministers, we found ourselves in a small church called Victory Christian Fellowship in Iloilo. That was in 1999.

We tried to remain as nondescript as possible.

But somehow, one's calling has a way of creeping back into one's life. Other than that, no matter how hard we try to deny it, people who are sensitive to the promptings of the Spirit can see the invisible neon lights flashing on our foreheads: called to minister.

One day, my husband's friend who was our pastor, pulled him aside. Our pastor was being called back to the mother church, he said, and he needs someone to take over his position in our church.

My husband's and my response were loud and clear: over our dead bodies!

I should have known as soon as the words left our lips that we would not be able to sleep that night. Nor the next two or ten nights after.

To cut the long story short, here we are again, after being badly burned and after having to pick ourselves up from the rubble and ravages of church conflict.

It's back to ministry life, so help us God.