Love and Joy found in an answered prayer

CEBU, Philippines - “Where your pleasure is, there is your treasure: where your treasure, there your heart; where your heart, there your happiness.” — Saint Augustine

“To love is to place our happiness in the happiness of another.” This is the kind of love that Brandon has for his girlfriend, Jane. He only wants what makes her happy. He wishes for nothing more than to give her joy. That is the simple desire of his heart and what placed him and his love story on the shortlist of Choi City Seafood Restaurant’s Choi-ciest Proposals of 2013.

Brandon is a night security guard of a hotel in Cebu City. He is currently studying a General Electrician and Building Maintenance course at the Department of Manpower Development and Placement (DMDP). His girlfriend, Jane, is an auditor in office of one of the big department store chains in the city. They have one daughter, whom they both love very much.

The Start  of Their Love Story

Brandon and Jane’s love story started with a prayer. They both turned to a church community belonging to a parish in the city when their hearts were broken by their respective loved ones in the earlier part of 2009. Jane’s fervent prayer was for God to let her find the man she will marry in the future right within the community, while Brandon was asking for a girl whom he can spend the rest of his life with. 

Just in February that year, right before Valentine’s Day, Brandon got his heart broken when his girlfriend with whom he had been living together with for two years chose another guy over him. Although his girlfriend’s boss advised him to talk with his girlfriend about their problem, Brandon decided to let go of their relationship. Despite the love that he had for his girlfriend whom he never had a child with because of standing by his promise that they will never have one out of wedlock, he made the difficult choice to just let things be.

Heartbroken and depressed to the point of suicide, Brandon heeded the counsel of a friend who kept on asking him to join a Catholic charismatic community in a church in the city. He thought this will be a great chance for him to make new friends and forget about his former girlfriend. It was there that he met and got to know Jane.

Jane was just 19 years old then. But, Brandon saw in her a lot of qualities that he liked in a girl. Although she was still young, the then 32-year old guy saw in her the goodness and understanding personality that is not common among girls her age. Not known to him then, Jane was also having problems of her own. She also just recently broke up with her boyfriend and she was praying that she’d find a good guy in church who will love her and stay with her through thick and thin.

One day, when Brandon was crying over his fate while praying, he was approached by Jane. She asked him what was wrong and this started a conversation between them that opened both their hearts to each other. After several more church meetings, Brandon courted Jane and they became a couple when he had his birthday that year.

The Beginning  of Their Life Together

Several days after Brandon and Jane officially became a couple, he got a huge surprise that changed the course of his life forever. Jane knocked on the door of the room he was renting in Mandaue City, bags in hand and crying. It turned out that the girl was thrown out by her mother over a petty matter and was even told not to show her face anymore to the whole family.

Jane was never close with her mother, as she grew up in the house of her grandmother and she never knew her father. To lessen the burden on her family, she applied to become a working student at one of the big universities in the city just so she could study college. But, it seemed like this was not enough for her mother or her family, as she was treated like an outcast who does not belong.

This caused Brandon to feel sorry for Jane. He saw her intelligence and how she was working hard to be able to put herself through school, so he decided to help her out. Their initial problem though was where Jane was to live.

Although they initially asked help from Jane’s relatives, Brandon eventually decided to look for a place where they can both live together. He resolved to help Jane finish her studies and was able to accomplish this, as Jane graduated from her Business Management studies in 2011. In September of the same year, the couple had their daughter. A blessing that Brandon says fills his and Jane’s lives with color and happiness every day.

Giving Love  through Providing Joy

More than four years since they decided to become partners for life, Brandon feels that it is time that he grant his love’s wish of getting married. He said he has been hearing Jane telling him about weddings recently and this made him decide that he will finally ask the girl to marry him. As fate had it, he found a copy of The Freeman, discovered Choi-ciest Proposals competition and sent an entry with hopes that his desire to make his girlfriend happy will be chosen.

In his entry to the competition, where Brandon told his life and love story, the now 36-year-old guy said, “If ever my entry will be chosen as the Choi-ciest Proposal, I would like for my wife to ride in a kalesa decorated with flowers because she has been wanting to do that for so long and she loves flowers. I will give her a bouquet of roses and ask her to marry me while aboard it.”

During a personal interview with Brandon, this writer asked what was in Jane that made him love her. With a smile and an unmistakable glimmer of love in his eyes, he replied, “As a product of a broken family, Jane is very much focused on family. She has so many qualities that set her apart from all my previous girlfriends. I will do anything to make her happy.  As long as I am still alive and breathing, I will do everything for her happiness. That is how much I love her.”

There may have been trials that happened to both Brandon and Jane during the years they have been living together, but these did not undermine the simple yet profound love they found in each other. This could not erase the fact that they are each other’s answered prayer. This could be seen in Brandon’s eyes when he speaks about his wife. It is apparent in his desire to bring joy to her life.