The Moments Before

Our present life is built from countless “moments before”. Every event and choice we make in the past holds a story — some of which are so messy, so bizarre, that even the bravest of souls might hesitate to put them in an exhibit. Trust me. I’ve got a gross experience that would probably freak out the most seasoned curators.

But there’s also a pivotal period in my life that stands out, carved by grief, faith, and the search for meaning. After experiencing a profound loss, what began as an ordinary life of a young boy quickly spiraled into a quest for answers. Life, death, hope — these questions didn’t just knock on my door; they barged in uninvited, ate all my snacks, and left me with more questions than I could handle. Turning to the Bible, I may not gain immediate answers, but I got a whisper of presence and comfort that gradually grew into faith.

I learn how life-changing moments often happen quietly, in the “moment before” — those unseen seconds or decisions that quietly shape who we become. Through grief, I learn to face pain, embrace vulnerability, and recognize that faith is a daily, imperfect choice rather than a destination.

Ultimately, our “moments before” creates our story foundation and we shall lean into those moments with courage, honesty, and hope. 

Ordinary Days

Before everything changed, I was just a little ten year-old boy—unremarkable in every measurable sense. I wasn’t one of those kids who could solve complex puzzles before breakfast or win a race by a landslide. I was the type who tripped over his own shoelaces while trying to walk and talk at the same time and the one with heavy shoes running before a water buffalo. My greatest accomplishment at that point in life was probably winning an argument about Captain Barbell being real, even though there’s no evidence of his existence.

Life moved along at a steady, predictable pace. School, playhouse (bahay-bahayán), avoiding chores like it was a hide-and-seek or eeny-meeny-miny-moe game, and trying to make sense of adults—those strange creatures who always seemed stressed about things like bills, due dates, and commodity prices. I existed in a comfortable bubble of mediocrity, where the biggest decision I had to make was whether I’ll play with Meeroy or not.

My family was in a close relationship—emotionally and geographically. We lived within arm’s reach of each other, sometimes quite literally. If you opened the front door of our house, you were in immediate danger of being greeted by three cousins, two aunts, and someone’s dog (who came after our house after deciding we had better snacks).

There was always noise in our home. Not the annoying kind, but the sort that told you life was happening—laughter from the upper room, the sizzling sound of dinner being cooked, the hum of someone humming out of tune while holding a ladle, and sometimes, the loud of a rifle-tongued mother retelling her morning spoken poetry. You could hear life breathing in that house.

And in the midst of it all was someone who never demanded the spotlight but somehow held everything together—my grandfather, Itong. He wasn’t the toughest. He wasn’t the loudest neither. And yet he had a way of making silence feel safe. He was the kind of person who could sit next to you without saying a word, and yet you’d feel comforted, understood, and strangely motivated to be better—if not immediately, then eventually.

Then he died.

I say that bluntly not because I lack emotion, but because death tends to arrive that way—suddenly and unapologetically. One day, he’s here. The next, he’s a memory with no expiration date.

I remember the moment I found out. The world didn’t stop, though it felt like it should have. They kept moving, people kept walking and too busy, and somewhere someone was arguing over his turn in the Tong-its. But inside me, something shifted. A question formed, not in words, but in weight.

Why?

Such a very small word, isn’t it? Just three letters. But it held the weight of my entire universe. Too bitter, and not sugarcoated.

My heart is double-dead, no, suffered a threefold death. That day, I was in the wake of my Tatay Atring, the father of my mother. Only three days of playing Pusoy and Pares-pares in their place in Villaflores, and kaboom, the message has come. My Amang Itong in Loob had to wait and call my name every single day, but a day is twenty-four hours—too long for his deteriorating body. His story was ended there, and his Lakasa’s future was then decided.

I didn’t know what to do with the grief. There’s no manual or any Youtube tutorial for that sort of thing. I kept waiting for someone to hand me a pamphlet titled “So You’ve Lost Someone: A Beginner’s Guide to Not Falling Apart Completely.” But it never came. Instead, I got condolences wrapped in clichés—“They’re in a better place now,” “Time heals all wounds,” “At least they’re not suffering.” I wanted to scream, But I’m suffering! Does that count for anything?

It wasn’t just the sadness—it was the confusion, particularly because the same pain was felt again after thirty-nine days when my uncle Abbet also left us. What did it all mean? Where did they go? Did any of this make sense? Was there some cosmic plan or was it just random and perfect coincidence? I felt like I had been dropped into the middle of a novel with no plot and no way to skip to the last chapter.

And that’s when I started asking questions—not out loud at first. Just little whispers in my own mind. I didn’t know who I was asking. The ceiling? The sky? Myself?

But the questions kept growing:
Is there more to life than this?
What happens when we die?
What is the purpose of life? To be born and then die?
Is God real?
If He is, why does He let this happen?
Can grief break you even if you never say it out loud?

At first, I tried distracting myself. I buried my emotions in playing, eating, and pretending to be fine. That last one was my favorite hobby for a while. I became an expert at faking smiles and changing subjects. But at night, when the house quieted and the noise of life dimmed, the silence got loud again.

Eventually, two preachers found me. I see this as chance to examine why they look happy despite of terrible life. I step in. I make a choice. Then I whisper, “Ma, please tell them. I want to study.” Then in that moment I sat in front of them. They gave me an old book with a thick black cover while telling me that the summary was in a green brochure that they then handed me next. I found myself looking at this chance—and I figured if anyone had answers, that old book with so many pages might. And those people could help me dig in.

It wasn’t an instant revelation. Lightning didn’t strike, and I didn’t start floating three feet off the ground while reciting the Psalms. I just read. Slowly. Awkwardly. Like someone trying to learn a new language.

And surprisingly… it didn’t feel like reading a rule book. It felt like opening someone’s journal. Someone who had lived, laughed, lost, and wrestled with the same questions I was asking. It felt… human.

I didn’t understand everything. Actually, I understood very little at first. But there was something in those pages—a whisper that felt familiar, a kind of truth that didn’t yell but sat quietly beside my grief and said, I’m here.

The Weight of Questions

It’s a strange thing, how questions can be heavier than answers. You’d think answers would be the ones carrying the entire burden—those complex, profound, life-altering revelations. But no. It’s the questions that sit on your chest at 3 a.m., the ones that don’t come with instruction manuals or pop-up explanations.

And my questions were multiplying like laundry in a teenager’s room—messy, overwhelming, and somehow always just out of control. They didn’t even have the decency to line up and take turns. No, they ambushed me in waves.

If there’s a God, why would He take someone so good?

What kind of love allows for that kind of pain?

What if we’re all just pretending that there’s more to life, because the alternative is too depressing?

I didn’t share these questions with anyone. I wasn’t sure how. When you’re young, grief can make you feel like you’ve entered an adults-only conversation without permission. The adults in my life were grieving too, but they carried their sorrow differently—like professionals in a field I hadn’t trained for. They cried at appropriate times, whispered in low voices, wore black rectangular pins in their dresses, had a white band in their head, and nodded solemnly. Meanwhile, I was mentally screaming, “Can someone please tell me what is going on?”

There were moments I tried to pray, even though I didn’t know how. I wasn’t raised in a hyper-religious environment. Attending meetings was more like an occasional social obligation than a spiritual necessity. But in those late nights, when the walls echoed with everything I didn’t know how to say, I’d close my eyes and whisper into the void, “If You’re real, now would be a great time to show up.”

For the record, I didn’t expect a voice from heaven or a flaming bush or any extraordinary to happen. Honestly, I would’ve settled for a semi-coherent dream. But what I got, instead, was a nudge. Not a physical one—more like a thought, soft and persistent: “Start with what you know.”

Well, I knew pain. I knew silence. I knew absence. So I began to wonder if maybe those were the places where God would speak, if He spoke at all.

I returned to the Bible with a little more intent. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for exactly. Maybe some poetic verse that would explain death to a kid who still got confused by taxes. I skimmed through Genesis and thought, Okay, people keep messing things up. Relatable. I got to Psalms and found David crying out like a man whose soul had been steamrolled. Also relatable.

I found comfort in the fact that the Bible wasn’t sugarcoated. It didn’t pretend that life was always beautiful. It didn’t hand out motivational quotes and smiley face emojis. Instead, it offered raw stories. People who wrestled with God. People who doubted, failed, grieved, and still believed—or tried to.

That tension fascinated me. The idea that faith wasn’t the absolute absence of doubt, but a choice to look beyond it. That belief didn’t require all the answers—just the guts to keep asking the questions.

Still, I wasn’t transformed overnight. If anything, I was becoming more aware of how little I knew. But something had shifted. I started to see my questions not as roadblocks, but as invitations. They weren’t signs that I was failing. They were proof that I was paying attention.

And honestly, the humor in it all wasn’t lost on me. There I was—a lanky, awkward kid who still couldn’t fold a fitted sheet, trying to solve the mysteries of the universe from my bedroom floor, surrounded by snack wrappers and scattered thoughts. I half expected God to peek through the clouds and say, “Really? You?”

But maybe that’s the point.

The First Yes

There’s a moment in every journey that doesn’t feel like a milestone at the time. It’s quiet, almost forgettable. But later, you look back and realize that everything changed in that moment—even if no one else noticed.

For me, it was the night I said, “Okay, I’ll keep studying.”

That was it. No extraordinary calls. Just a barely audible yes whispered into the stillness. Not even a yes to God, necessarily. Just a yes to continuing the search. An effort to continue studying with those weird properly dressed people.  A yes to showing up again, to turning one more page, one more chapter.

I wasn’t sure what I believed. I wasn’t even sure what belief meant. But I knew this: I didn’t want to stop searching. I want to study more. There was something in the words—some uncomfortable, inconvenient, undeniable something—that kept tugging at me.

It felt a little like entering a conversation already in progress. The Bible wasn’t trying to sell me a perfect life or offer quick-fix answers. It was messier than that. It spoke about betrayal, loss, fear, failure—and somehow, hope kept showing up. Not flashy hope, but bruised-and-still-breathing hope. The kind that limps into the room and says, “I’m still here.”

And I think I needed that kind of hope.

I didn’t become a theologian overnight. I still had more questions than answers.

But something about that little yes gave me a kind of grounding. I wasn’t floating in grief anymore—I was walking through it, slowly, hesitantly, but with purpose. That yes gave me permission to wrestle, to question, and still keep going.

I started to see small shifts in how I viewed the world. My days looked the same on the outside—school, chores, procrastinating like it was an art form—but internally, I was more alert. Conversations hit differently. Music hit differently. Even the sky seemed bigger somehow. Maybe it was always that big, and I’d just never thought to look up.

And here’s the thing they don’t tell you when you start digging into life’s big questions: it’s not just about finding answers. It’s about being found.

It’s about realizing that you’re not the first person to cry out in the dark. That somewhere across time and space, others have stood where you’re standing—barefoot in the mystery, whispering their own version of “why?”

There’s something strangely comforting about that. Knowing you’re not alone in your wondering. That questioning doesn’t disqualify you from faith. That curiosity isn’t rebellion—it’s the first breath of belief.

I started jotting things down. Random thoughts. Verses that hit me sideways. Questions I wasn’t ready to ask out loud. I had no idea that those scribbles would later become pieces of my story. At the time, they were just survival notes.

Humor helped too. I mean, there’s something undeniably funny about a teenager trying to understand concepts like “eternal life” while also trying to figure out how to talk to his crush without sounding like a malfunctioning robot.

But maybe the biggest lesson I learned in that season—the real moment before—was this: saying yes to the search is sometimes more important than finding immediate answers.

And that first yes? It’s never really the last one. It’s just the one that opens the door. 

The Silent Room

There’s a room that everyone enters eventually. It’s not always a physical space. Often, it’s internal—a mental and emotional place that echoes with everything you don’t want to face. I call it the Silent Room.

Mine appeared not long after that first yes.

Outwardly, nothing dramatic had shifted. Life, in all its ordinary demands, continued as it always had. School assignments, awkward family dinners, the occasional existential crisis over breakfast pandesal—it was all still there. But inside, I had stepped into the Silent Room.

It was the place where grief met introspection. A strange intersection where the sadness didn’t scream anymore—it just sat quietly in the corner, waiting for me to notice it.

The thing about silence is that it’s not as peaceful as movies make it look. Not at first. Silence can be loud. Deafening, even. Especially when you’ve built your whole life around distraction. You don’t realize how many noise-makers you carry—TV, social media, music, sarcastic jokes, busyness—until you set them down and suddenly there’s nothing between you and your thoughts.

It was in that room I started asking different questions. Not just Why did they die? or Where is God? but deeper, more personal ones:

Who am I without them?
Do I even know who I am at all?
What if I’m not enough to face life without someone to guide me?

The scary part? I didn’t have the answers.

The scarier part? I had to be okay with that.

I remember one night in particular—just me, a dim lamp, and the Bible lying on my desk like a stubborn friend who refused to leave. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Comfort, maybe. Clarity, ideally. What I got was a verse from the book of Ecclesiastes, which basically said, “For everything, there is an appointed time… a time for birth and a time to die…”

Helpful. Thanks, Solomon.

But I kept reading.

“A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to wail and a time to skip about.”

And that hit me.

It was okay to weep. It was okay to mourn. I didn’t need to rush through my grief to prove anything. I didn’t have to “be strong” in the way people sometimes say when they don’t know what else to say. The Bible didn’t deny pain—it gave it a name and a time.

That changed something for me.

I started to view the Silent Room differently—not as a punishment, but as a place of preparation. Not a prison, but a pause.

It was in the silence that my heart started to soften. Not in a dramatic, cue the violins kind of way. More like clay that had been dry and cracked for a while, finally meeting a little water.

I learned to sit with myself. To ask questions and not panic when no immediate answer came. To let Scripture speak slowly, not as a textbook, but as a mirror.

There were moments when the silence felt unbearable—like when I wanted to hear my loved one’s voice again. Or when I caught myself reaching for the room of my Amang to tell him something, only to remember there was no one there. Those moments stung like paper cuts on your soul.

But there were also sacred moments. Moments where I’d be sitting alone, and a memory would rise—something they said, or the way they laughed—and instead of breaking me, it would make me smile. Those were healing drops, little gifts.

And humor? Still there. Even in the Silent Room. Like when I tried to “fast and pray” for the first time and accidentally fasted for all of 23 minutes before caving to the seductive whisper of a half-eaten cupcake.

The journey was slow. Awkward. Incomplete. But real.

And in that room, I started to realize that the person I was becoming wasn’t an accident. He was being shaped—moment by moment, question by question, choices by choices. Not despite the silence, but because of it.

The Whisper that Stayed

It wasn’t a thunderclap that changed me. No blinding epiphany. No life-altering miracle moment where the sky cracked open and all the mysteries of the universe spilled out like confetti. Instead, it was a whisper. A whisper that stayed.

Whispers are sneaky like that. They don’t barge in. They don’t demand attention. They just linger, repeating themselves softly until you’re forced to listen—not because you have to, but because they’ve become familiar.

The whisper started with a question, the kind that grew from soil watered by silence and Scripture:
What if God’s been here the whole time?

At first, I rolled my eyes at it. It felt like one of those answers that people say because they don’t know what else to say. “God is always with you.” Great. But where was He when I cried myself to sleep? Where was He when I begged for just one more day with the person I lost?

But the whisper didn’t argue. It didn’t give explanations. It just stayed.

It showed up when I opened the Bible and saw how broken the people were—David, Job, Habakkuk—and how God still moved toward them.

It stayed when I sat outside at sunset and, for a brief second, felt something like peace.

It showed up in the words of a song I didn’t know I needed, lyrics that echoed thoughts I hadn’t said out loud.

And slowly, I stopped resisting the whisper. I didn’t fully understand it. I couldn’t explain it to anyone. But I started to trust that maybe it wasn’t my imagination. Maybe God really was there, not in the way I expected—but in the way I needed.

Faith, I learned, doesn’t always feel like certainty. It is an assured expectations of the things hoped for, and seeing the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld. Sometimes it feels like sitting quietly in the dark, holding a candle you’re not sure will stay lit, but choosing to protect it anyway.

That whisper began to change how I saw things.

Like how I started noticing people more. Really noticing. Pain behind their smiles. Exhaustion behind their jokes. And instead of just observing them like characters in a movie, I felt drawn to them—compelled to care. I think that’s what grief does sometimes. It breaks your heart open wide enough for other people to fit inside.

It also changed how I prayed. At first, my prayers were formal and stilted, like awkward emails to a cosmic boss. But over time, they became more honest.

“God, I’m still suffering.”
“God, I’m tired.”
“God, I feel weird talking to You, but I’m still here.”

And that was enough. I didn’t feel judged for my confusion. I felt heard.

The whisper also made me realize something uncomfortable: I was going to have to make choices. Real ones. Not just about whether to keep studying and meditating the Bible, but about how I was going to live with what I learned. How I’d respond to people. What I’d chase. What I’d leave behind.

I wish I could say I always chose well. I didn’t. I still don’t. But I began to feel the weight of choice—and the grace of it too.

One day, I came across a line in the Gospel of John where Jesus asked a question that knocked the wind out of me:
“Do you want to become sound in health?”

Not “Do you want to feel better?”
Not “Do you want to avoid pain?”
But “Do you want to be made well?”

I sat with that question for days.

Because sometimes, we don’t really want to be healed—we just want the pain to be less inconvenient. But true healing means change. And change is scary.

Still, I felt the whisper asking me that same question. Not accusingly. Gently. Like an invitation.

And I found myself answering again with that same small word I’d said before: yes.

Not because I had everything figured out. But because I didn’t.

Because maybe faith didn’t require perfect understanding—it just needed a willing heart.

And maybe healing wasn’t a destination—it was a daily decision. To choose hope. To keep searching. To believe that the whisper wasn’t just in my head… it was the voice of Someone who had never left. For the first time I acknowledge: through all those years, it is Jehovah alone who whispers.

The Road Behind, The Road Ahead

There’s a strange moment that happens when you stop running from your past—not because you’ve conquered it, but because you’ve finally turned around and faced it.

You look at all the pieces. The shattered memories. The unanswered questions. The versions of yourself you’d rather forget. And then, slowly, you begin to see a pattern—not a perfect one, but a real one. Something that whispers: This meant something.

Grief was no longer the villain in my story. It had become a companion and a trainer. Not a pleasant one, mind you—like a roommate who never pays rent and eats all your snacks—but one who taught me things no textbook ever could.

It taught me that pain doesn’t erase love; it proves it.

It taught me that asking why isn’t weak—it’s sacred.

It taught me that every choice I make echoes far beyond the moment.

By then, I had walked a bit of the road. Not all of it. Not even close. But far enough to turn around and look back. And what I saw was humbling.

I saw a kid who had no idea how to grieve, fumbling his way through loss and faith with nothing but a humble Bible, a stubborn heart, and a couple of peanut butter sandwiches.

I saw how each question, each silent night, each whisper, was not a detour—but the road itself.

I began to understand something that still shakes me: the life I was living now was being built by the choices I made in the moment before.

Before I chose to ask for help.

Before I opened the Bible out of desperation.

Before I made sacrifices to study the Bible out of curiosity and determination to seek comforts.

Before I said that quiet yes in the dark.

Before I decided to face the grief, instead of pretending it wasn’t there.

The moment before is invisible to everyone else. But it’s where our lives pivot.

It’s the last inhale before we speak.
The last doubt before we believe.
The last hesitation before we love.
The last breath before the goodbye we didn’t want to say.
And the first breath after we realize we’re still here anyway.

I started to see that faith wasn’t about arriving at certainty—it was about staying on the road with assured expectations of things hoped for and seeing for the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld. Showing up. Choosing again and again to walk, even if your steps are slow, even if you trip along the way.

And humor? Still my traveling companion. Because, really, what’s life without laughing at yourself every now and then?

Like the time I tried to give someone spiritual advice and completely misquoted a verse—turns out “God helps those who help themselves” isn’t actually in the Bible. (My bad. I think I confused it with my grandma’s advice about chores.)

Or when I got excited and tried to memorize an entire chapter of Psalms in one day, only to forget it 30 minutes later when my friend asked what I learned. I mumbled something about “sheep and still waters.” Nailed it.

But beneath the humor was something serious—something strong. A foundation being laid in real-time. Made of grief, doubt, faith, awkward prayers, and yes—choices.

I wasn’t finished becoming who I was meant to be. I’m still not.

But I had learned to treasure the moment before—that sacred, unseen place where everything shifts. Where decisions are born. Where silence becomes sacred. Where faith, raw and trembling, takes its first breath.

And maybe that’s what I want people to remember:
The moment before matters.

The moment before you forgive.
The moment before you confess.
The moment before you fall, or rise, or reach out your hand.
The moment before you make a choice that changes everything.

Because life doesn’t just happen in the big moments.

It happens in the quiet ones, the invisible ones, the ones where we don’t even realize we’re deciding who we are.

And if you’re in your own “moment before” right now—facing something you can’t name, waiting in silence, whispering a shaky yes—then hear me when I say this:

You’re not alone.

The road ahead may be long, but you are not walking it blind. The steps you take today will shape the ground you walk on tomorrow.

So take them. Slowly, awkwardly, faithfully.

Because every beautiful chapter begins with a moment that almost went unnoticed.