Winning—in God’s Perfect Timing

I haven’t written in 4 months. Save for a few drafts on my phone which remain untouched, I haven’t found the time to sit down, collect my thoughts and write. That, and the fact that everything I wrote just seemed to depress me. Everything sounded like an f-ing lamentation. I told myself I wouldn’t write another self-deprecating entry.

It was late last year when I decided to apply for my Masters—without the intention of actually getting in, but to tell myself I tried anyway. I was preempting failure by convincing myself it was too late, that I was rusty and that I probably wouldn’t make the cut.

And then I did. I got in. I was offered a place on the Masters Program at Guildford.

Everything is happening at warp speed, I can barely keep up.

Opportunities are coming one after the other and I can’t keep track of things nor of time. I’m directing a show for Ateneo Blue Repertory, teaching summer workshops for teens and I’m set to assistant direct for a big musical coming out this June. Of course, The No Filter Book will be launched around July, for which I’m managing editor.

I leave in August and that’s that. I have four months to get everything in order before the big leap. I’m overwhelmed. I can’t seem to absorb and compartmentalize things (at least in my head). I don’t know where to start.

I don’t know how to deal with success. I got so used to trying and failing that this all seems so new to me. 

I guess I got used to a certain pace, a certain slump. For a number of years, I trained myself to accept defeat, to prepare my heart for the worst by expecting nothing. In the course of calibrating my expectations, I forgot to dream, or how to dream. My personal anthem was always about “waiting in the wings”, when it could have or should have been “winning in the wings”.

I hinged my plans on others and constantly looked around me for guidance and approval, forgetting that I had a head above my shoulders, and feet to take me wherever I wanted.

I’m turning 28 and I feel like life is just about to begin. I don’t know what the future has in store but I do know that London will open doors for me. Whether those doors lead back home or somewhere else in the globe, only God knows.

So, that’s where I’m at now. I’m learning to deal with life’s surprises, learning to respond to rainfall (after the long drought). I’m learning to accept success, the way I would with defeat—with grace, humility and gratitude.

We all get a fair share. We’re given moments of drought and all things dismal, and moments of fortune and felicity to balance the equation.

The universe does conspire to give you what you want and need. Plans may fail but things always fall into place.

We may wait, but we can win. In God’s perfect timing.