The music in my mind

On October 31, 2018, five-year-old Asher Dean Lubofsky from his hospital bed told his dad he wanted to go with his brother to Disneyland, then closed his eyes for the last time on this earth. I have cried often for David, his father. These past six years, I have thought often of Asher. Sometimes I wonder how he would have grown into this world.

Sometimes I think about Asher and remember the five-year-old boy I was, and the hero and protector my dad was to me. And sometimes, when I look back at my life, I can’t help but think that God saved that precious little boy from this world and all the evil in it. But I don’t think that was it for Asher’s purpose in this life.

Asher lived for a far greater purpose, one Christ spoke of 2,000 years ago.

***

Before I knew anything of the distraction and devastation wrought by sex, drugs, and alcohol, I was a 12-year-old boy from a lower middle class, loving Tamuning family. I had big dreams. I did well in school. My dad spoiled me. I loved Mariah Carey’s ballads (you know, the ones she belted out before she bought new breasts) and I had this recurring daydream that I’d sing on a Broadway stage after falling in love with the musicals Miss Saigon and Phantom of the Opera. Yes, I do realize how gay all of that sounds. But all this was before I knew a thing about sex. I digress.

Mariah’s “Dreamlover” and “Hero” transitioned me from virgin to innocence stolen by a rapist teacher at St. Anthony Catholic School.

There wasn’t much music after that. At least I don’t remember any songs from that time and for a few years. It wouldn’t be until late in high school, when I became close with some classmates, came out of the closet, talked more freely about the rapes, and came out of my shell. These were the days of NSYNC’s “God Must Have Spent,” and Third Eye Blind’s “How’s It Gonna Be,” and Sublime’s “Santeria.”

Over the next decade as I started using drugs and working, my taste in music didn’t change much. I liked rock songs and rap about sex. Halfway through my 20s I started using ecstasy on the weekends, and that’s when my worldly desires expanded beyond my previous inhibitions.

“I’ll Fly With You” by Gigi D’Agostino became my anthem and anything Tiesto thumped in those hotel rooms where I engaged in deplorable and shameful conduct. At the time I saw my behavior as an emergence of self confidence, and a spreading of love and a personal religion of non-judgment.

Years later Miley Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop” explained better than I could at the time my attitude about my drug abuse, sexual appetite, and degeneration.

This was around the middle of my tumultuous relationship with the guy I had been with the longest. I had this dream that we’d get married at sunset at the then-new Dusit Thani’s floor to ceiling window-surrounded Aqua restaurant and that we’d walk together down the aisle to the song “Stay” by Rihanna.

That was the relationship that nearly broke me. Toward the end – and I only noticed this in retrospect – I was driven by liberation. I found myself using meth a whole lot more. Flying to Manila for orgies. Hanging out with friends until 4 in the morning because I didn’t want to go home to him. I’d blast Tiesto’s “Red Lights” and Afrojack’s “Ten Feet Tall” and daydream about a pain-free life, where I was the mean one. A life where I didn’t care about how my actions affected the people I love.

That relationship ended and I jumped immediately into another. As a condition of this relationship I stopped using drugs. But as soon as I started to feel some way, I went right back to the needle to bury my feelings and to stop the endless aggression of thoughts in that pit that my mind can be.

I had Swedish House Mafia to accompany my numbness.  And Imagine Dragons’ “Demons” pierced my soul as I ended that relationship and went full force with my addiction. I no longer worked at the governor’s office, so I thought I was unencumbered. My excuse was that I was hurting. Rather than deal with the tremendous pain of nearly three decades of crushing grief that began with the rapes, I blackened my soul with poison.

At some point during those last days of my meth abuse, I felt the emptiness for the first time. I was surrounded by drugs and people on drugs, but I had never felt lonelier. Around this time I met my current boyfriend and my taste in music changed again; reverted back to the ballad genre I loved before the rapes started.

I would break down in my room or while driving alone to Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball” and “Adore You,” and I knew I had to stop poisoning myself. And so the day finally came when I ditched the needle. I don’t mean to diminish the feat that is quitting meth and staying off it when I say this, but even quitting drugs did not do much to fill the void inside me. After my arrest, I thought vengeance would give me purpose. Halsey’s “Without Me” was on repeat during this time. My flirtation with revenge did nothing to heal what apparently was a very complicated, very broken me.

And then I started going to church.

And then I remembered the little boy I once was before all the mistakes and before the rapes. I remembered that boy because of the church songs. Week after week and eventually day after day I couldn’t explain to you how at the time, but my mind became stronger. The emotions that once dominated my decision making process made way for reason. How I viewed the world became less and less dependent on how I would benefit from that view and more about how I could contribute to the lives of others.

The suffering I desperately drowned for decades with poison I would come to understand is a gift from Jesus Christ, who shares His Cross with me.

The music in my mind shifted from songs about me and the sex and drugs I wanted to songs about Christ and His Mother.

• Abe Nanan Yu’us
• Here I Am Lord
• How Beautiful Is the Body of Christ
• Dimuye
• Maria Lao
• We Come to Your Feast
• Make Me a Channel of Your Peace
• All of the Chamorro Christmas songs
• All of the Tagalog Christmas Station ID songs from ABS-CBN from 2009 forward

This is the music that speaks to my soul and fills me with purpose. This is the music that has helped to change me from the worldly life that Satan trapped me in my youth, to a life that can’t stop appreciating Christ’s constant search for me.

I’m not trying to reclaim my innocence. That ship has sailed. I am trying to be in communion with He who calls me and searches for me. That means reconciling my sinful self to Him; confessing my sins and receiving His Grace of absolution often, because the temptations are many and my sinfulness endures by my very nature. By our very nature.

And to what end should I remain faithful to interrupting my cycle of sin constantly through Confession? This is where the music in my mind has changed. The lyrics, the melody, the harmony, and now the tears. Having spent most of my adult life without purpose, whatever “goals” I thought I had were nothing but shallow desires anchored by my vanity, gluttony, and pride. The songs I enjoyed were like the triggers of my mind’s algorithm, taking me further and further into the deep recesses of my ego. To an emptiness I didn’t realize until I found true purpose.

I spent all my life self-purposed, pathless, and empty until I started to hear the Lord’s call. It was not an overnight transformation, and it certainly is a journey and a change that continues. My purpose (and I firmly believe this is the purpose God means for us all) is to be a disciple and apostle of the Good News. My goal is singular: to stand before St. Peter’s Gate on the day of my judgment and to be welcomed into the Heavenly Kingdom.

From what I understand, at the very least this means that when I die, I must be in a state of Grace. That means I must be absolved of my mortal sins. As I have progressed in my Christian journey, my fear of Hell and my overwhelming desire to live in Heaven has more and more replaced my desires for sex, drugs, vengeance, and the idolatry of wealth and fame.

I’m not so empty anymore. I’m far more careful and discerning against falling to my temptations. What started as a decision one Sunday to accept my friend’s invitation to Holy Mass has blossomed into more faithful discipleship and even apostolic fidelity. The angels and the saints dress me in the armor of faith and apostolic fellowship so that I can be a Christian warrior who does on this earth what Jesus Christ commanded us to do for others.

I have a long way to go, but the choir of angels and saints grows louder each day, and especially when I fall to sin. The music is different. What I like has changed. It is Providence and Grace, but a change made possible by my cooperation with Grace.

***

Death comes for us all, but unfortunately eternal life will not be for everyone. And while death is not a choice, eternal life is, except for the most blessed of us all: the babies and the children whose lives on this earth ended while they remained innocent. Asher Dean Lubofsky was only five years old when he left this life. His father mourns for him every moment of every day.

But Asher, like all the other children who died, is the one touched by God’s Grace. That little boy is a saint in Heaven praying for his father so that on the day of judgment, he gets to hold his dad in Paradise.

God sent saints like Asher to live among us for only a short time to help sinners like me to understand that despite our waywardness and all the evil we have done, we can come back to Him. We can become children again, as Christ taught us. And the Lord knew we needed to be reminded of this. That’s why He sent Asher to us. That’s why his father’s daily tears fall for us all to see.

You know how we can honor Asher? We can live as he did: joyfully, in abstinence of the temptations of our flesh, and with complete dependence on Our Father.

And if we live as Asher did, I have every confidence we’ll get to see his bright smile again as he takes our hands and walks us through Heaven’s gates to meet our Savior.

Put i sinat i Santos Kilu’us, na’ fan libre ham nu i enimigonmame. Yu’us Sainan-mami. Gi na’an i Tata, yan i Lahi-na yan i Espiritu Santo. Amen.