Overwhelming Love

by Pat Pagulayan

“Overwhelming love.”

If anyone would ask me how my birthday was, that phrase is all I could think of.

It was so overwhelming that I wasn’t able to hold my tears back. It was so overwhelming that by the time I went home and was on my own, I couldn’t stop crying tears of joy and awe.

The love was so true, so piercing, as if God’s own finger directly touched a part of my heart that I didn’t even know existed - and healed it.

Since coming here, I’ve always spent my birthday on my own. The first one was by default as I was tucked in a country located hours away from Melbourne and went through my training day in the hospital as I normally would. Last year, I deliberately isolated myself from the world and flew to Uluru, making myself believe that happiness lies in spoiling myself with the “worldly adventure” this life has to offer.

I was wrong.

Because even before I left Uluru, in those nights I was tucked in bed after a busy day of helicopter rides and hikes and riding a Harley through beautiful sceneries, there was something missing. Yes, I was on a high, reminiscing my adventures for the day and looking at the wonderful photos taken - but I was merely sucking the happiness out of finite things. And these will never suffice.

And probably that night (among many other untold nights), there was a cry in my heart, a cry that I wouldn’t even acknowledge, and God heard it.

Two weeks later, I bumped into Jack and got an “unspoken” invite to “come back” to StAY.

This may sound cliché, but since then, my life has never been the same.

The journey was one part of it. The people I journey with is another thing (which I’ll elaborate more some other time).

More than a birthday surprise (or rather, surprises), that day was a reminder - a mere foretaste of the joy of what seeking God can bring.  It was as if God was lovingly telling me:

“Honey, thank you for choosing Me in the past year.”

That day was a reminder to me that as I “seek, ask, and knock” in the past year, it will be “given, found, and opened” (Lk 11:9). It served as a reminder that what I yearn for, the known and the unknown desires of my heart, lies not on finite things, but in the infinite which is God alone. It was a reminder for me that when one “seeks first the kingdom and His righteousness, all these things will be given unto you” (Mt 6:33). 

And on that day, it was overwhelming love.