A Life Willingly Surrendered
I got my Starbucks 2006 Planner on January 24, 2006, after three weeks of waiting. Immediately after I got it, I wrote the following:
“… new year, new life, new priorities
the journey is yet to begin
from the port which leaves with fondness
memoirs of a life surrendered.”
I got married on December 4, 2005 to the man I love and I can’t live without. It was a wedding I have always envisioned, simple, emotional and intimate. The simplicity that I envisioned and saw was grand and expensive to others. I may concede that it was an expensive wedding since the total cost was beyond what we originally projected. Nevertheless, it was a magical day driving out sentimental emotions from those who we gladly invited to witness our wedding. To this day, we hear that those who were with us that day made our wedding the gauge of weddings they have attended, are attending and will still be attending. I know that it was not the cost, which made its mark on our guests. More than the cost, it was the spontaneity of emotions, which overflowed that day, a product of our eight long year foundation.
Almost six months after our wedding, I am a four-month expectant first-time mother always expecting my husband in time for dinner in our company-provided apartment here in Seoul, South Korea. I am out of law school and out of my job from the number one telecommunications company in the Philippines. Before feminists promptly take up their cudgels to fight for women’s equality rights based on my current circumstance, I would like to gladly draw attention to the fact that my words are neither complaints nor sentiments of an unfulfilled wife. On the contrary, I take joy that I am being the wind beneath my husband’s wings as he ventures into his new life as an expatriate here in Seoul. I take comfort that we can afford a relaxed lifestyle for me while we are eagerly anticipating the birth of our first baby. I take pride that I carry with me a solid definition of who I am and what I am capable of doing. Despite the occasional mocking from in-laws and friends of my newfound occupation as a homemaker, I am happy to note that I still stand on solid ground. I have a firm belief that with my wisdom and intellect, my market value and competence will not diminish. I will only be harnessing my skills and world-view while I am slowly taking hold of my new responsibilities to my husband, our baby and to our family. When the time comes for me to fly my own wings again, I will even be better because by then motherhood has shaped me in ways no position in the corporate world will have taught me.
Bill Clinton, in his book “My Life”, said “Your life is shaped by the opportunities you turn down as well as by those you seize”. I turned my back from the challenges of law school, albeit for a while, and my job to seize the opportunity to shape my family life with the man I have chosen to be with for the rest of my life. On our wedding day, I pledged to him that I would love him for the rest of his life and for the rest of mine. From that day, I knew that my life would be shaped by that vow I made with God and our guests as our witnesses. If at the end of this life, I don’t get to have power lunches and the title Attorney attached to my name, who is to say that I lived my life less? With an unbowed head, I would surely be able to say that I did not live my life in fear and uncertainty. I am definitely living it now with the confidence that I am enriching my life, my husband’s, and our baby’s by the assurance that I am capable of giving out love larger than my whole being.
