I’m a fallen human who was destined to die until an afternoon in August of 1991 when my boss at KISS FM, Al Torres, asked me two questions that changed my life forever:

If you were to die today, where do you think you would go?

If you died and faced God, and He were to ask you why He should let you into His heaven, what would you tell Him?

My feeble attempts at logical answers revolved around me being a good person and not a murderer or thief, and that at best, being a practicing Roman Catholic, I’d end up in purgatory and hopefully would get prayed up to heaven with each rosary, mass, or prayer said on my behalf.

I learned that day what God actually thought about me — a sinner through and through — and that because He loved me so much and didn’t want me to spend eternity away from Him, He sent His son, Jesus Christ, to take my place and die the death I should have so that I could have eternal life.

Four hours later after being asked those two questions, I asked for God’s forgiveness and received Jesus as my Lord and Savior.

It’s been a tough 18 years since then. I will not lie. Tough during the many times I doubted God’s love over the many “light and momentary troubles” life threw our way — getting left by a husband for another woman, losing a surviving parent, seasons of being penniless and homeless.

But through it all, Jesus has been my Constant. “Faithful when we are faithless”.

These last two years of transitioning back to life as an adult in America as a single parent with a child on the verge of adulthood and leaving the nest, have been filled with completely unexpected twists and turns, and familiar spots. The most telling of which has been the lack of money.

Yet Jesus always pulls us through, and in His faithfulness, even makes us dig deep in our faith in this new terrain where friendships from Manila have grown cold and virtually non-existent; where building relationships has been a huge cultural difference from the open-armed Filipino tendencies to adopt you as family right after “hello”.

Here, we have had to learn again and again, where we have had nothing and no one at times, that He is more than enough.

Jesus gives us air to breathe every day.

And ramen noodles when money is tight.

And a kind colleague who buys lunch occasionally.

And work that we love.

And rare friends who treat us like family.

And the cuddles of puppies when we are happy, or sad.

And each other for the time being.

Jesus is my Treasure and I cannot thank Him enough for all He’s done and does in our lives.