The Empty Jar: The Dream That Followed Me From Childhood
A personal Christian testimony about childhood, faith, spiritual experiences, and finding purpose
I don't remember exactly when I first saw the empty jar.
I only remember that I was young.
Very young.
And I remember the feeling it gave me.
It wasn't frightening.
It actually made me feel strangely energized.
But at the same time, I knew there was something about it that I didn't understand.
It was an old clay jar sitting on a table.
It wasn't beautiful in the way people usually describe beautiful things. It looked old and simple. It had an ear-like handle on one side.
And it was completely empty.
For many years, I wondered why I kept seeing it.
I had no idea that the same jar would follow me through some of the most difficult years of my life.
I had no idea that one day I would look back and wonder if the jar had been telling me something about my entire life.
And I certainly didn't know that I would eventually become a doctor, experience things I could not easily explain, and build a Christian spiritual guidance website called Watchmen Chat.
But before any of that happened, I was just a child growing up in a simple home.
We Were Poor, But I Remember Being Happy
Our house was a typical Filipino bungalow.
There was no ceiling.
You could look up and see the roof above you.
Our kitchen was a small nipa hut.
It wasn't the kind of house that would impress anybody.
But I remember being happy there.
Life was simple.
We didn't have much, but I didn't spend my childhood thinking about what we didn't have.
I remember the ordinary things.
The house.
The kitchen.
My siblings.
My father.
The food.
And my mother.
Until she left.
My Mother Left When I Was Six
I was six years old when my mother left to work overseas as an OFW.
She had to leave because our family needed money.
My father was in the military, but his salary wasn't enough for everything we needed. Private school wasn't something we could simply afford.
I was too young to understand all of that.
I only understood that my mother was leaving.
I remember that day because it was raining.
For some reason, the rain became connected to that memory for me.
Even years later, rain could bring back a strange feeling of sadness and anxiety.
One night, at around three in the morning, I ran outside the house.
I think some part of me was still hoping.
Hoping that she might come back.
And then reality hit me.
She wasn't coming back.
Not tomorrow.
Not next week.
It would be years.
Many, many years.
I was six.
I didn't know then that I would eventually be twenty-five before my mother would come back to be with us again.
That is a very long time for a child to grow up without his mother.
My Father Was a Gentle Man
My father was in the military, but he wasn't the strict military father people might imagine.
He was a gentle soul.
He wasn't harsh with us.
He worked and did what he could for our family.
But military life also meant that there were times he could be deployed somewhere else.
As my siblings grew older, they eventually went to college and became busy with their own lives.
There were times when the house became very quiet.
And there were times when I was alone.
I learned very early how to take care of myself.
I Was a Strange Child
Even before I understood anything about spiritual gifts, I knew I was different.
I played alone.
I talked to people who weren't visible to everyone else.
I had experiences I couldn't explain.
I didn't have words like prophetic dream, spiritual sensitivity, or discernment when I was a child.
I was just a kid.
So I didn't analyze it.
It was simply part of my world.
Looking back as an adult, I can interpret those experiences differently.
But I also try to be careful.
I don't believe every childhood experience automatically has a supernatural explanation.
What I know is what I experienced.
And I remember how real those experiences felt to me.
I Learned to Cook Because I Loved Watching Cooking Shows
When I was growing up, I loved watching cooking shows.
And eventually I started cooking myself.
I learned to make adobo.
Pinakbet.
Stir-fried vegetables.
Different viands.
I actually enjoyed it.
Cooking became something I could do for myself and for the family.
After school, my routine was very ordinary.
I would come home.
Clean the house.
Wash the dishes.
Cook.
Study.
Then do it all again the next day.
I didn't think of myself as unusually independent.
I was simply doing what needed to be done.
Looking back now, I realize how young I actually was.
Then There Was the Bullying
School was another story.
I was bullied.
People called me things like "fat," "smelly," and "cheater."
Sometimes there wasn't even proof of what they were accusing me of.
But when you hear those words repeatedly as a child, eventually they begin to get inside your head.
I was already different.
I didn't always look as clean or well-groomed as other children because I had so many responsibilities at home.
I wasn't living the life of a child who simply came home and had everything done for him.
I had to take care of things.
And children don't always understand why someone is different.
They just notice that he is different.
And sometimes they hurt him because of it.
Then I Saw the Jar
It was during one of those difficult periods that I began seeing the empty jar.
It was a vision.
I would see the old clay jar sitting on a table.
It had that unusual ear-like handle.
And it was empty.
But every time I saw it, something inside me became energized.
That is the strange part.
It wasn't a frightening image.
It felt important.
I just couldn't understand why.
I remember thinking:
Maybe there is treasure inside it.
Maybe there was gold buried somewhere in our house.
Maybe the jar was connected to something valuable.
Maybe I was supposed to find something.
I was a child.
That was the kind of explanation my mind could understand.
But there was always another feeling underneath it.
A feeling that the jar meant something.
I just didn't know what.
I Became Independent at Twelve
By about twelve years old, I had become very independent.
My siblings were growing up.
My father could be away because of his military duties.
And sometimes there was nobody around to do the things that needed to be done.
So I did them.
I cooked.
I cleaned.
I washed dishes.
I took care of the house.
I repaired my own clothes.
And I studied.
For a while, I was even an honor student.
It sounds strange when I say it now.
A child who was cooking and cleaning at home could also be sitting in school receiving honors.
But that was my life.
I simply kept going.
High School Was When Things Started Falling Apart
Eventually, I couldn't maintain everything.
I became absent from school.
My grades suffered.
And I made a decision that I regret.
I cheated.
I wasn't proud of it.
I was struggling, and instead of dealing with the problem properly, I took the wrong way out.
Eventually, I was kicked out of school because of cheating.
That was one of the lowest points of my life.
I also went through a period of deep sadness and depression.
There were moments when I didn't know what I was doing with my life.
I felt like I had failed.
And yet, somehow, the jar kept appearing.
The same clay jar.
The same table.
The same emptiness.
It appeared when I was at my lowest.
I still didn't understand it.
There Was Another Story About My Beginning
As I grew older, I also learned something about the circumstances surrounding my own birth.
My mother told me that when she was pregnant with me, life was extremely difficult.
She had already had children.
Money was a problem.
And when she was about one month pregnant with me, she considered having an abortion.
It was a plan at that point.
She wasn't visibly pregnant.
Then, according to my mother's story, a woman who did not know her came to her.
This woman apparently knew nothing about our situation.
Yet she confronted my mother about her plan.
She told her to repent.
She described the unborn child as an angel.
Then she told my mother to imagine carrying a cross.
My mother couldn't carry it.
The woman told her that the heaviness represented the burden of her sins, even the burden of planning to end the life of her unborn child.
She told my mother to seek forgiveness through confession and to pray a novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, particularly on the first Fridays of the month.
My mother did.
And I was born.
I cannot prove everything that happened that day.
I wasn't there.
I only know the story my mother eventually told me.
But it became part of how I understood my own life.
I sometimes wondered:
Why was I still here?
Mary Became My Mother Figure
My mother didn't come home to live with us again until I was around twenty-five.
Think about that.
I had spent almost my entire childhood and young adulthood without having my mother beside me.
That absence affected me.
Maybe it is one reason I became so close to the Virgin Mary.
For me, Mary became more than an image of faith.
She became a mother figure.
When I didn't have my own mother physically beside me, I had somewhere to bring my prayers.
I could talk to Mary.
I could ask for help.
I could cry.
I could simply sit quietly.
I don't think I understood all of that as a child.
But now, looking back, I can see how deeply that relationship became part of my faith.
Then I Found Christian Groups
College gave me something I hadn't had before.
Community.
I became active in Christian groups.
I began opening up.
And eventually, I talked about the strange experiences I had carried since childhood.
Including the jar.
I remember finally telling people about it.
For years, I had kept this image inside me.
An empty clay jar.
Sitting on a table.
Appearing at strange moments.
Especially when life became difficult.
And then someone said something that made me think about the entire thing differently.
Maybe I had a purpose.
Maybe the empty jar wasn't about treasure hidden somewhere.
Maybe it was about something being made out of nothing.
That thought stayed with me.
The Biblical Story of the Empty Vessels
Much later, I understood why the image of an empty vessel could have such a profound meaning in my Christian faith.
In 2 Kings 4, a widow is facing desperate circumstances.
The prophet Elisha tells her to gather empty jars.
She has only a small amount of oil.
Yet when she begins pouring, the oil continues to flow until there are no more empty vessels.
I read that story differently after everything I had experienced.
The jars were empty.
But they weren't useless.
They were vessels.
They had room to receive.
And I began to wonder whether my own life had been like that.
Maybe all those years of emptiness weren't proof that I had no purpose.
Maybe they had created room.
Room for faith.
Room for compassion.
Room for understanding other people's pain.
Room for God.
I Eventually Became a Doctor
The child who had struggled in school eventually became a medical doctor.
Sometimes even I find that difficult to believe.
When I think about the boy who cooked his own meals, cleaned the house, was bullied at school, struggled academically, cheated, was expelled, and went through some very dark periods, becoming a doctor doesn't look like the obvious ending.
But life rarely follows the obvious ending.
I continued studying.
I continued moving forward.
And I eventually became a doctor.
At the same time, I remained deeply sensitive to spiritual experiences.
I couldn't simply erase that part of myself.
Medicine taught me to observe carefully.
To question.
To look for evidence.
To recognize uncertainty.
My Christian faith taught me something else:
To pray.
To discern.
To remain humble about what I don't understand.
Those two parts of my life have always existed together.
The Jar Came Back When I Was Building Watchmen
Years later, I decided to build Watchmen Chat.
I wanted to create a place where people could talk about spiritual questions and difficult parts of their lives in a Christian context.
But building a website is not as romantic as it sounds.
There was money involved.
Time.
Technology.
Problems.
Expenses.
Long hours.
There were moments when I wondered if I was wasting my resources.
I became exhausted.
And then I went through a particularly difficult period.
For weeks, I had been crying.
I was depressed.
I felt like giving up.
One night, I prayed deeply.
Not a polished prayer.
Not the kind of prayer you say because you know exactly what words you're supposed to use.
I simply prayed.
I let go.
I surrendered what I had been carrying.
And then, on an ordinary night, after that prayer, I saw it.
The Jar
The same jar.
The old clay jar.
Sitting on a table.
The same ear-like handle.
Empty.
For a moment, I just looked at it.
And then I started crying.
Not because I was afraid.
Because suddenly I understood something I had been carrying since childhood.
I had spent my whole life trying to understand that jar.
As a child, I thought perhaps it contained treasure.
As a teenager, I saw it during my lowest moments.
As a young Christian, I wondered whether it represented a purpose.
And now, as an adult, while I was exhausted and wondering whether I should even continue building Watchmen, the jar appeared again.
But this time I didn't ask what it meant.
I smiled.
And I cried.
Because maybe the jar had been a testimony all along.
Jesus Had Been Molding Me Like Clay
I thought about the fact that the jar was made of clay.
Clay is ordinary.
It begins as something that doesn't look particularly special.
It has to be shaped.
Pressed.
Worked.
Changed.
Fired.
And eventually it becomes a vessel.
I suddenly thought about my own life.
Maybe I had spent years asking why certain things happened to me.
Why my mother had to leave.
Why I had to grow up so quickly.
Why I was bullied.
Why I became so independent.
Why I failed.
Why I experienced depression.
Why I had strange spiritual experiences.
Why I had to struggle so much.
But perhaps I had been looking at the pieces separately.
Maybe God had been shaping me.
Not because the suffering itself was good.
Not because every painful thing that happened was somehow meant to happen.
But because God can take what happens in a broken life and still work through it.
The child.
The teenager.
The failures.
The loneliness.
The faith.
The medicine.
The spiritual experiences.
And finally, Watchmen.
All of it had become part of the vessel.
I Finished the Website
After seeing the jar that night, something changed in me.
I didn't suddenly have all the answers.
The bills didn't disappear.
The technical problems didn't disappear.
The work didn't disappear.
But I had peace.
A strange peace.
I looked at that image and thought:
I've seen you before.
You were there when I was a child.
You were there when I was bullied.
You were there when I was alone.
You were there when I was struggling.
And now you're here again.
Maybe this is what the story was about.
Maybe the empty jar wasn't a prediction of an easy life.
Maybe it was a reminder that God can work through an ordinary person.
An imperfect person.
A person who fails.
A person who cries.
A person who sometimes feels empty.
A person who keeps going anyway.
So I finished the website.
I Still Don't Know Everything About the Jar
I want to be honest about something.
I don't claim that every dream is a message from God.
I don't claim that every vision has a supernatural explanation.
I don't believe people should surrender their judgment or become dependent on spiritual readings.
My own experiences have taught me to be cautious.
They have taught me that discernment matters.
Prayer matters.
Scripture matters.
Wisdom matters.
And sometimes, the most faithful thing we can say is:
I don't know.
But I know what the jar has meant to me.
It has become a symbol of my Christian journey.
A symbol of the years when I felt empty.
And a reminder that being empty isn't necessarily the same thing as being useless.
The Child I Remember
Sometimes I think about that little boy.
The boy in the simple bungalow.
The boy who watched cooking shows and learned to make adobo and pinakbet.
The boy who cleaned the house after school.
The boy who washed dishes.
The boy who fixed his own clothes.
The boy who played alone.
The boy who talked to people nobody else could see.
The boy who was called fat.
Smelly.
A cheater.
The boy who eventually became a cheater and had to face the consequences.
The boy who cried.
The boy who felt abandoned.
The boy who wondered why his mother had left.
The boy who saw an old clay jar sitting on a table.
That boy had no idea what was coming.
He didn't know he would become a doctor.
He didn't know he would spend years trying to understand spiritual experiences.
He didn't know his mother would eventually return when he was twenty-five.
He didn't know that Mary would become such an important mother figure in his faith.
He didn't know that one day he would build Watchmen.
And he certainly didn't know that, decades later, he would see the same jar again and finally understand why it had always felt important.
Maybe the Jar Wasn't Showing Me a Treasure
Maybe I was right about one thing as a child.
Maybe there really was treasure inside the jar.
I was just looking for the wrong kind of treasure.
I was looking for gold.
I was looking for something buried inside the house.
Something I could find.
Something I could hold.
But perhaps the treasure was never inside the jar.
Perhaps the treasure was what the jar itself would become.
A vessel.
A life.
A testimony.
A purpose.
And perhaps the greatest thing that could have happened to an empty jar was simply to be available.
This Is Only the First Story
I called this story The Empty Jar because that is where my story begins.
But it is not where it ends.
There are other experiences I have never written about.
There were other moments when I questioned my faith.
Other spiritual experiences.
Other failures.
Other moments when I felt that I was being guided.
Other times when I was completely wrong.
And other times when something happened that I still cannot explain.
I will tell those stories one at a time.
But if there is one thing I want someone reading this to take away, it is not that I have some special ability.
It is much simpler than that.
I know what it feels like to be empty.
And I know what it feels like to wonder whether your life has a purpose.
I have been that child.
I have been that teenager.
I have been that adult.
And I am still learning.
But after all these years, whenever I think about that old clay jar, I no longer see an empty vessel.
I see a life that was slowly being shaped.
And I think of Jesus.
The ordinary clay.
The hands that shape it.
The years of pressure.
The cracks.
The rebuilding.
And finally, a vessel.
Not perfect.
Not extraordinary.
Just willing to be filled.
Maybe that's what the empty jar was trying to tell me all along.
God doesn't always begin with something impressive.
Sometimes He begins with an empty jar.
And sometimes, He spends a lifetime teaching the person inside it why.
This is my story. And this is only the beginning.
Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of our readers.