Tinola Thoughts at 29

(Mga Aral na Napagnilayan ko Habang Sinasangkutsa ang Manok or Top 10 Realizations of a Newbie Housewife)

 

1. Having the time and being able to take care of loved ones has become an elusive 'luxury' in today's culture of "hell busy schedules", but it remains to be one of life's greatest (yet simplest) joys.

[This could well be just a euphemism for my prolonging unemployment, but I really do take it as an incidental blessing. How many of us get the chance to really stop and smell the flowers? :-)]

2. Fairytales aren’t real, but happy-ever-afters are! It is the only kind of ending God designed for us to have. Getting there, however, is up to us.  

Or I'm probably just watching too much Once Upon a Time! 
(Photo from Poptower.com)

 

3. Whoever said “Marriage is not a walk in the park” is dead wrong. On the contrary, it is what marriage exactly is – a walk in the park – not witnessing extravagant fireworks display all the time but being steadily content just the same. 


 

4. So far, the best perk of being married is having someone to ask “May muta ba ako?” or being told “May nakalawit na buhok sa ilong mo,” without actually feeling embarrassed. Also, it's just too cool to have someone scrub the hard-to-reach areas of your back with Eskinol papaya! Haha! :-) (Okay, I admit this one I sottocopied from the hubbyt. Too bad for him I’m writing this list first!) 

5. There are mornings when, as I watch the hubbyt maneuver his bike to the lift after thanking me for breakfast and kissing me goodbye, I wonder whether I’m a wife sending her husband to work or a mother sending her kid to school. Well, boys will be boys and so, I am probably both. :-)

6. If some issues cannot be resolved by sitting down and talking it out, try sitting down and shooting it out on Ghost Recon. :-)

7. “It’s not we who come into the world, but the world that comes to us. To be born is the same as to be given the whole world as a gift.” After quite a while, I’ve picked up a Gaarder novel again. I've almost forgotten how brilliant a writer he is.  

8. In order to enjoy the things in life that come for free, one should first quit measuring his/her self-worth against the material things he/she (or others) own. For the best things in life can only come from the genuine relationships we have and pursue.

9. I have yet to learn this by experience but perhaps knowing it in principle is a good head start. Just like what Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote while in prison: Staying truly, madly, deeply in love doesn’t keep a husband and wife together. The sacred covenant of marriage itself does. God didn’t pattern it after Christ’s covenant relationship to the church for nothing. Marriage is unbreakable in His sight. 

10. “Every year, we’re getting closer to who we’re gonna be.”- a line from a Corrine May song is the best thing about celebrating birthdays in the late 20s. Every year we age, we get closer to who we are destined to become. I think of this today with great joy! :-)