You Really Love Me, Don't You?

I have lived a good 17 years of my life in a town where storm rages like hell. In one year we can have as many as 20 typhoons, four of them would be super typhoons of 120-160 kph wind velocity. I have seen whole houses uprooted from the ground, roofs flown several meters away and floods reaching up to 8 ft. in height. There were times when we celebrated the whole Christmas season when our houses were submerged in water. Only makeshift wooden bridges connected our home from our neighbor's and out into the municipal road.

How did we survive? By sheer imagination.

We learned how to fish in the flood water. My father devised a way how to trap huge shrimps (they are almost prawn-like) from the canal that ran parallel to our house. He sold many of them and gave away some to the delight of our neighbors. They never learned where he got them.

Washing clothes proved a great problem to my mother but her domestic ingenuity triumphed. We still had fresh clothes on our backs despite the balmy season of rain and flood. Cooking and washing dishes were the same as when we still had land to step on. Except during those times, we had to conserve water, the most precious commodity, next to air.

We went to school as usual. We sometimes took a dip into the flood water. That was where I got amoebiasis, I think. But we survived, anyhow. By sheer imagination.

But something stronger than the storms kept us sane. It was the firm belief that God is stronger than all the forces of nature. He is more powerful than the most fearsome and fiercest
destruction we see all around. God Himself is our refuge. He never leaves us, in the most difficult times in our lives.

I look back at my life and see thousands of storms that hit me, directly and indirectly. Somehow, after twenty seven years of being buffeted by wind and water, I'm still standing. Yes, by sheer imagination. By luck. But most of all, by the love of God, who strengthens me.