The Promise After the Roller-Coaster Ride
Only a few minutes remained before the quarterfinals of America’s Favorite Couple came to an end.
I was sitting alone at our dining table. Edita was still at work. In front of me was my phone, opened to the voting page. Two words stared back at me:
Currently 6th.
Our position had remained unchanged for the last three days, despite our final campaign push. The top three couples continued to shuffle places, moving up and down as votes came in. But we remained in sixth.
Until that moment, a small part of me had continued hoping for a last-minute surprise. Perhaps our supporters would rally once more. Perhaps the numbers would suddenly move. We had risen before—from 68th place to sixth, then third, and eventually first during earlier rounds. Why not one more comeback?
But as the final minutes disappeared, hope gave way to reality. I knew we would finish in sixth place.
Then every number on the countdown clock turned to zero.
Our fate was sealed.
I am usually a very animated person. My family and friends know that I express what I feel. But at that moment, I did not speak. I did not move. I sat completely still—motionless and soundless—staring at the screen.
We had not made it to the semifinals.
I felt disappointed and crushed. For weeks, this competition had consumed so much of my time and energy. I had campaigned, sent messages, created posts, appealed for votes, and stayed awake late into the night to communicate with supporters in the Philippines. Midnight in America was already noon there. Our campaign seemed to follow the clock around the world.
Yet even as disappointment settled over me, my resilient self was searching for a silver lining.
There was also relief.
No more chasing votes. No more pleading for help. No more watching the rankings rise and fall. No more staying awake late at night trying to reach people on the other side of the world.
It was finally over.
But then another thought entered my mind: How would our supporters feel?
They had taken this journey seriously—so seriously that many of them prayed for us. That touched me deeply. This was only a competition, yet people brought our names before God because they cared about us and believed in our story.
Others did more than cast their free daily votes. They regularly spent their own money to give us additional votes.
The Torres family from our church—Freddie, Emma, Yhana, and Cedrick—supported us with free as well as cash donation votes. Carla, Nina and Josie voted regularly as well. Edita’s coworker Vivian regularly voted and made cash donations. Our children, Gilda, Gilson, and Gilary, quietly purchased votes without seeking recognition. My sister-in-law Sarrie, living in the Philippines, became our prayer warrior. The president of the Wesleyan Bible College whose building project we support rallied others behind us.
Annette, Dimi, Babbeth, Theresa, Martha and many more watched the clock so they could cast their free votes as soon as they became available. I knew because they sent me messages afterward.
For them, voting for us had become a daily appointment.
What would I tell all these people? Had their prayers, money, time, and efforts been wasted?
While these thoughts filled my mind, the front door opened.
My Tandem partner was home.
“I was so busy at work, I didn’t have time to vote!” Edita said as she entered.
I looked at her and quietly said, “Sweetheart, it’s game over. We finished in sixth place.”
She understood immediately.
Edita, my love, knows what I am feeling even when I cannot put it into words. She knew that I was disappointed, sad, and crushed. I could also see that she was disappointed. But she knew how to console me, help me feel better, and lead me toward the silver lining I had been struggling to find.
We hugged tightly without saying another word.
Then, leaning against my shoulder with her hand resting over my chest—almost exactly as we had posed in our competition photograph—she gently whispered, “Sweetheart, we know how far we have gone in this competition. Just reaching the quarterfinals means we are already winners.”
Her words shifted something inside me.
I had been looking at the one place we had failed to reach. Edita reminded me to look back at the extraordinary distance we had already traveled.
We had entered among thousands of couples. We had begun at 68th place, climbed through several elimination rounds, reached first place more than once, and advanced all the way to the quarterfinals. Our forty-three-year love story had been seen by people across nations, cultures, churches, families, and generations.
Perhaps sixth place was not the end of a dream. Perhaps it was an invitation to understand victory differently.
After the results became final, I made sure our supporters were properly informed. I wanted them to hear directly from us. I thanked our family, friends, church brethren, and social-media followers for their wholehearted support.
Then the responses began arriving.
They were overwhelming.
What surprised me most was that the messages did not read like condolences to a couple who had lost. They read like a victory celebration.
“Congratulations!”
“You are still the winners!”
“Not everyone has the opportunity to reach the quarterfinals.”
One message came from Helen, who had known us since our years in Oman. She said that she had witnessed our relationship through the years and had seen us continue to grow and bloom beautifully with the Lord. She encouraged us to keep blooming wherever we were planted for God’s glory.
As Edita and I read those messages, we felt like winners.
Before the competition, I had imagined writing a book if we became America’s Favorite Couple. I thought winning the title would qualify us to tell our story. The title would give us the platform and the credibility.
But we discovered that winning was not the only door.
In a surprising way, the door opened even wider when we lost.
The congratulatory messages showed us that people were not moved merely by our ranking. They were moved by our journey. They saw something in our marriage, faith, struggles, persistence, and new beginnings that encouraged them.
We entered the competition hoping to win a title. We left carrying a testimony—and a responsibility to share it.
Our supporters’ efforts were not in vain. Their prayers, votes, donations, messages, and encouragement gave us the courage to open our lives more fully to the world. They helped us recognize that our stories of struggle, challenge, disappointment, sickness, poverty, failure, and brokenness could be transformed into something beautiful and good.
This book will not present the story of two people who succeeded at everything. It will tell about the places where we were uprooted, the seasons when we were pruned, the times when we nearly gave up, and the ways God allowed us to take root again.
It will also tell about the blooming.
Jesus said in John 10:10, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
A life that blooms is not a life without suffering. It is a life lived with the presence and guidance of God—a life in which even our wounds, failures, and disappointments can become soil for new growth.
The contest ended when the countdown clock reached zero.
But something else began.
A new undertaking was born: to share our experiences with the community that supported and believed in us—and, we pray, with the world at large.
That undertaking is this book:
Bloom Wherever Planted.
myJOURNEY 