A Hagar in My House

These past two weeks haven’t been easy. It’s as though heaven rejoices over my stress that’s why more is added onto the load on my shoulders. It seems that I don’t know how to choose my battles. I really get affected.

I’ve not had much sleep since Tuesday night. It was confirmed that Gema, our helper, is pregnant. I was hurt because she lied to us. But more than that I ache for her life, her future, her unborn child. Last night I just had to go out for a walk. It was already late at night but I just needed to get some air. Mang offered to accompany me but I didn’t let him. I just couldn’t connect with him. He always seems to be in a hurry. He always had an answer to everything. But somehow it’s not answers I need. Good thing Sol was still awake. I asked her to meet me on the street. We walked a bit. I had a good cry.

While praying last night, I think I did some picturing. Again, God was distant. I told him He was unfair. He’s unfair because despite my sincere attempts to help people (like Gema) I ended up being lied to, hurt, fooled. Then other scenes in my life—moments when I felt life and God were unfair to me—came flashing through my mind. I just wept and kept saying, “God you’re unfair!” In the end I felt helpless. No one was there to pick me up. God was distant. Standing at a distance. Then I thought I heard Him say, “Remember the story of Hagar?” I just wept. I remembered the story. I’ve always felt for Hagar more than for Sarah or Abraham. I felt that Hagar was a victim. She was used and was unjustly treated. Then I asked myself, “Am I a Sarah to Gema?” (Of course Mang isn’t the father of her child, thank God!) I was asking myself whether I should send her away and let her suffer alone. Again, I felt God was unfair for giving me this enormous responsibility for another person. “Can’t you give me an easier life?” I had to ask God. Was God actually telling me to minister to Gema and girls like her whose yearning for love led to a series of mistakes and irreversible consequences?

I hardly slept. I woke up with swollen eyes. I must have cried myself to sleep last night or I must have wept in my dreams. Gema admitted to me this morning that she used up all her savings because she and her boyfriend went to a hilot (someone who massages the abdomen to induce miscarriage) and tried to have an abortion. It failed. She’s still pregnant and now she is determined to keep the baby. I couldn’t help but think of how the prostitutes or the street youth ended up where they are now. I fear for Gema. At seventeen—without education, rejected by her boyfriend, afraid to go home—she has nowhere to go. What if she ends up in the street, selling herself, in order to raise her child? I wrestled within me and with God. We are here because we want to be agents of God’s transformation. Will I be that for Gema or will I be an added source of destruction for her? By the end of the day, I was asking God, “What do you want me to do? What do you want me to learn?”

Yesterday, Mang and I talked and we decided to give Gema another chance and allow her to stay with us. We asked Gema to decide whether she wants to stay or go. She asked us if she could stay.

I read Hagar’s story again a while ago. What struck me was the phrase “The One who Sees”. I had to trust that God sees. God sees Gema. God sees the unborn baby. God sees me and my family.

I am helpless. I want to help Gema as much as I could. But I couldn’t. I don’t have the capacity right now. But the One who sees does. Certainly, He would give her a drink of living water.

I am lost. But the One who sees knows the way. Certainly, He would show what step to take and where to go.

I am apprehensive. But the One who sees is stable. If He wants to reach out to the Hagars out there with me as an instrument, then He would give me that capacity, the stamina, the compassion, the grace, and pretty much all it takes to let these girls know that there is One who sees.