All Good News

I watched them with a heavy heart as they left until they slowly disappeared. It was such a heart-wrenching sight! While I would be taking a convenient ride home, he would be trudging on foot along the highway, crossing several busy streets and down the rough and muddy road towards home. It would not be an enjoyable strides and a light walk but a difficult and heavy one. He would be pushing papa in his wheelchair along the three- kilometer- length of the J Center Mall, where he just had his daily electrostatic energy therapy, towards our home in Ibabao.

I felt a pang of pain and guilt deep inside where my anger towards him was kept for many years . An anger that was drawn out of my love for him as my only, precious brother.

I was angry because, for almost five years now, he never untangled himself from the intricates of a certain wrong thing.

I was angry because he was too weak and slow to resist it and I felt that he became used to that mistake and probably not doing anything at all to solve it. He must have waited for time's own way of bringing things into better perspectives. Time's perfect ways of healing and forgeting. Time's own ways of coming out into much better solutions.

I was just too afraid that God might call him back to Him through a painful way and I wouldn't be able to accept it.

Just the mere thought of this made me emotionally sick for years. I wanted him to get out of this all at once! We were raised up in a traditional Christian home that did ministry through evangelism at a very young age. We were active in church activities and in youth ministry. We were engaged in activities that invite souls to Jesus' feet. I just couldn't accept how he became an easy prey of the enemy's trap to take him away from Him.

It has always been my longing that when Christ shall come, both of us, together with our whole family, shall meet Him in that clouds of glory. It has always been my longing that in the last days shortly before the return of Jesus, both of us shall become our whole family's strength as we will be fleeing to the mountains and caves. Now, there he is, alienated from the church.

I just miss so much those times we sang together in the pulpit during Sabbath, midweek or vesper meetings. We may still go to church together but no longer in the pulpit.

Trying to hold back my tears and my urge to cry hard, I watched him and his slim figure as he pushed papa on his wheelchair. In every turn of that wheels, it also find myself ever more guilty than him. I had been angry about his weakness yet blinded about my own's failure to understand and forgive as a big sister. I refused to consider that, perhaps, he may have so much difficulty in fighting alone to overcome. I refused to think that he, too, may have wrestled with God many times to plead for His intervention.I refused to open up my mind that he, too, must be so confused and needed acceptance.

I was so legalistic and blinded to see that he, too, is a human with frailties and shortcomings as much as I do! I was engulfed with my self-righteousness that I forgot that God sees the intentions of the heart and forgives an erring child.

While he pushed papa in his wheelchair back and forth everyday with the hope that he can walk again, I was brooding up with my resentment. While he took him to Physical Rehabilitation Center three times a week, I was focused on being legalistic.

I never knew of his difficulties and fatigue as he bathed him everyday, did him passive exercises, put him on his potty, took him to bed and everything that I, myself, should be doing as the nurse of the family. Instead, I blamed him for bringing curse into the family for his stubbornness. I blamed him for the financial difficulties I was suffering for many years because I, falsely, believed that God withdrew His blessings for us because of the open sin in the household. I was just too blind and deaf to see that he was not an evil after all. That he had the character every parents would dream in a child. A child that would take care of them when they get old and sick.

Upon arriving home ahead, I waited for them outside. From afar, I saw him pushed with difficulty due to the gutter's holes that caught up the wheels every now and then. Many times along the way, papa, also, slipped down from his seat because of the road bumps, adding to his burden in pushing. I watched him pulled him back upward. His careful and loving ways of doing it tore away my emotional resistance that soon pulled down my tears one after another. He would be doing this everyday and for the coming many days until such time he hoped papa can walk again.

I walked away ahead. I could not bear the sight anymore. My financial assistance for them that dragged me into difficulties was just not enough to compensate his burden of taking care a half- paralyzed father. The fruit and vegetable juice I, sometimes, make was just a small speck of everything that he does.

I knew in my heart that out of gratitude for having a child that loves and care for him unconditionally, papa prayed for him everyday. I knew in my heart that everytime he got into depression and wished that God would take his life soon, was because he knew my brother was already tired. Though, he never heard him complain. Though everything he heard from him were all encouragement to eat more, pray more and be healthier so he could walk again.

I was not able to sleep well that night. I was so overwhelmed with the fact that it is not him with that sin that God has dealt patiently with, but me and my wicked heart.