He’s Got Your Back

Yesterday was my husband’s death anniversary. It’s been 35 years. How did I survive especially those years as a very young widow? (Warning: computing my age causes split ends to your eyelashes. ;) And I did say very young.)

It was because my father always had my back – both my earthly and divine fathers.

“The most vivid image I have of my support system was when my boys were toddlers. We got home from a whole-day outing, and they had fallen asleep in the car. When I was going to carry one of them inside the house, the other woke up and cried, not wanting to be left behind. He wanted me, not my dad to carry him. The one I was carrying woke up too and wanted the same thing. “Only Mommy will carry.” So, I had to carry both of them, one on each arm. As I was mounting the stairs to our room, Papa walked behind me with his hands propping my back so I wouldn’t topple over. He is the perfect example of a solo parent’s navigational aid – a physical support and emotional guide.”  (From Chapter 11 of my book The Happy Solo Kit: Tools and Supplies You Need to Survive Solo Parenting without Losing Your Marbles)

Worry is a solo parent’s constant companion, a pesky one who will not leave you alone. Childhood illnesses. Budget that barely reaches the next payday. House maintenance like part of our roof flying off in a storm. Car problems I couldn’t figure out. And a thousand and one other things a solo mom faces alone.

Over the course of 35 years, God has dulled my worry meter by showing me He is always there when I call. Of course, I never fail to remind Him it wouldn’t be so hard if He had not taken Dodo away. I’m bratty that way. It’s a good thing He has a sense of humor and ever ready with His saving graces. Healing. Financial windfalls in the nick of time. Sending people who will help with the house and the car and the thousand and one things that plagued this solo mom.

One of the things that helped me to transform from that clueless young widow to a HIP (Hero Independent Parent as we call our Solo Parents Ministry at the Feast Alabang) is the knowledge that my Father God takes care of my tomorrows.

Happy Father’s Day to both of you!

Good Friday Through the Eyes of a Solo Parent

 

Mary has many titles. Mother of God. Queen of Heaven. Mediatrix of all Grace. Our Lady of Sorrows. Solo Parent.

Knowing that she was also a solo parent when Good Friday rolled around, I feel her pain doubled. To see her only and most precious son suffer is already untold grief for any mother. But to go through His Passion without Joseph to share her grief must have been unbearable.

At the Presentation of Jesus in the temple, when Simeon foretold a sword will pierce her soul, Joseph was there. He was there to protect her and her son on the journey to Egypt. He was there with her to look for Him when He was lost in Jerusalem. He was there as Jesus grew into a man. But Joseph was no longer there when she met her son on his way to Calvary. The sword must have pierced deeper.

It cuts a mother deep when her child suffers even just a bit. I remember I couldn’t bear the sight of my son getting his ingrown toenail extracted. I had to avert my eyes during the procedure. And that was just a toenail. It would have been better if his dad was there to hold one of my hands as I held his small hand with the other.

Imagine Mary seeing her son scourged, crowned with thorns, driven through the streets carrying a heavy cross, then crucified. As a solo mom, I stand beneath the cross and weep with her.

Even when He was suffering on the cross Jesus still had Mary’s “solo-ness” in mind. It prodded Him to entrust her to John. “Woman, behold your son. Behold your mother.”

God did that to me too and keeps doing it to this day by entrusting me to people who will care for me and my children. He gave me my parents, other family members, friends, and my prayer warriors in my community. So, I continue to trust Jesus in my Good Fridays because the crucified Christ loves us with the cross. That trust is needed from us because…

 “God who created you without you will not save you without you.” – St. Augustine

Pre-Prayer-ing the Heart for Lent

 

Two weeks into the season and I’m still struggling to make a meaningful preparation for Lent. Two days ago, we were supposed to hold our Light Group (small prayer group for The Feast) meeting. These were the reflection questions:

1.   1. How are you observing the Lenten season?

2.   2. How do you plan to apply prayer, fasting/sacrifice, and almsgiving/charity in a more practical way?

I was stumped. I don’t know why, but it seems harder for me this year to think of my Lenten acts than in previous years. I’ve thought of what to do but am finding it so hard to stick to it. While reflecting on the questions, I came across the term “Pre-Prayer-ing” which was part of the title of a book*. It captivated me as I felt it encapsulated the essence of what my preparation should be – Prepare my Heart with Prayer. But I still had to seek God to ask how.

PRAYER

Praying is a daily habit for me already but how do I deepen it? God answered this indirectly through a writing assignment I was given for Secret Shares**. Not to preempt the episode because that story is so rich in content anyway, I’d just like to share this “teaser” because it reminded me how I should pray.

In her youth, our interviewee asked, “How do I pray?” While searching for that answer, she developed a way of praying that was child-like, open and candid. Her prayer attitude towards God reminded me of a photo of St. Joseph I found on the internet. I was looking for visuals for my novena to him as today, March 19, is his feast day. The photo showed the child Jesus looking up at St. Joseph with so much love and trust for a parent and St. Joseph looking back at Him with loving indulgence.

Loving earthly father & divine Child - ctto

This was what I pictured when our interviewee described the way she prays. It was with this father-child dynamics that God talked her through the break-up of her month-old marriage, that God led and blessed her as she migrated to a far-off place and that God told her she would be healed of a dreaded disease.

As my way of Pre-Prayer-ing for Lent, I will make the effort to deepen my conversations with God like she did. To be more open and child-like and candid. Lately I have fallen into formulaic prayers. I need to sit my inner child in front of God again. I was like that before. Even if at times I had bratty prayers, I think God enjoyed it more because of the honesty.

FASTING and SACRIFICE

Aside from the usual no-meat Fridays, I thought of giving up social media specifically Twitter for Lent because it wastes so much of my time and keeps me up very, very late. But I keep backsliding mainly because I want to keep abreast of happenings in the political scene. I guess I just have to trust that God too wants what’s best for our country. He can monitor the situation better where He is and can even do something about it. All I can do is report and block trolls. Besides, I learned from one of the sermons that fasting is not just sacrificing what we like for this period. Its higher goal is to discipline us into a lifestyle pleasing to God. It should carry over into our life after Lent.

CHARITY

Ash Wednesday was special for me because it was the first time after two years I was able to hear mass in church. But it became more special because of the homily that day. The priest said, “Don’t simply give up what you like to eat, instead give to charity the money you would have spent. You will not only feed your soul, but you will also feed a hungry person.”

Charity is not just giving materially. It can also be a giving of time and patience. For me, it would be pressing “Skip Ad” for my 91-year-old Papa who can’t get the hang of it even if it has popped up a thousand times while he’s watching his FPJ movies on YouTube.

P.S.

When I tweaked our Secret Shares interviewee’s question to God: “How do I Pre-Prayer for Lent?” I was led to read what Jesus said to St. Faustina in their Divine Mercy conversations: “Talk to me simply, as a friend to a friend.”

*Pre-Prayer-ing the Way - a how-to book on prayer created for the outreach teams of Saddleback Church, Dr. Rick Warren, Pastor

**Secret Shares airs live on Tuesdays at 8:00 pm on Facebook

Morning Glory: A God-incidence

*When it is guided by God, it is no longer a coincidence but a God-incidence. 

Today is the Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes. I feel particularly privileged I was assigned to write today’s reflection for Didache. As I was preparing my FB post to share it, I wanted to make an e-poster out of one of my flower paintings to highlight the message. I picked a blue flower I painted for one of my friends as a Christmas gift. After I made the post, I was led to write this longer blog to include the one I wrote when we were in Lourdes as part of our Marian Pilgrimage. 

Out of curiosity, I googled the name of the flower that I used as a model for my watercolor. I was awed by the God-incidence (a God-guided coincidence). The name of the blue flower is Dwarf Morning Glory. “Morning Glory” is also part of the title of a book for consecration to Mama Mary which I treasure because it helped me to know Christ more through His mother. 

As explained by the author: “I chose this part of the title because I think it best captures what Marian consecration is all about: A new way of life in Christ. The act of consecrating oneself to Jesus through Mary marks the beginning of a gloriously new day, a new dawn, a brand-new morning in one’s spiritual journey.” – Michael E. Gaitley, MIC, author of 33 Days to Morning Glory

It's another God-incidence that my Didache reflection (which we are required to submit a year prior to publication) dealt with the topic of making yourself better with each new day. Another morning glory!

To mark this special day, I’m sharing my Morning Glory painting, 

the e-poster, 

 my Didache reflection 

and this Facebook blog which I wrote on Nov. 4, 2019, the day I was blessed to visit the Sanctuaires Notre Dame de Lourdes (Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes) or the Domain in France. 

Feeling Bernadette 

#SeekingMary Marian Pilgrimage Day 7 

 “The Blessed Virgin used me like a broom. What do you do with a broom when you have finished sweeping? You put it back in its place, behind the door!” - St. Bernadette Soubirous 

She did not feel like a star even if she had the distinct privilege of seeing the vision of Mary. In the movie Song of Bernadette, when asked why she was chosen she, said, “I don’t know. I am just a poor girl. Who am I? I am a nobody.” (non-verbatim) 

Gazing up at Mama Mary’s statue in the same grotto in Massabielle, Lourdes, touching the water trickling down the smooth stones, I felt both humbled and privileged. Who am I that I should be so blessed to kneel where Bernadette knelt? I can only praise and thank God who decided to delight me with this pilgrimage. As I prayed for my petitions and for my family, friends and relatives who sent their petitions, I felt my tears well up like the water from the spring. I prayed not just for physical healing but more of a spiritual one. It was one of the most heartfelt conversations I’ve had with Mama Mary. 

 Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, pray for us.

Our Lady of Lourdes Sanctuary

 

Get Busy Being Born

 “…he not busy being born is busy dying.” – from It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) by Bob Dylan

Every time I post one of my paintings, I cringe when I think of what my friends who are talented artists will think of it. And I have quite a number of these talented friends: an art professor, a former jewelry designer who can whip up a portrait of my babies without breaking a sweat, and several others who majored in Fine Arts or Design in college. You get my drift. Of course, they have been nothing but kind to this amateur. God bless them 😊

But why do I keep practicing how to paint and learning other new things at this stage in my life? It’s because I want to keep growing and improving. In today’s homily, Fr. Dave Concepcion affirmed this mindset. He gave 4 Prime Principles for Lifetime Growth. The first principle hit the bullseye! (The other 3 I may talk about in later blogs.)

He said: “The first principle is ‘Make your future bigger than your past’. Have the courage to do something new. If I keep doing what I have been doing, then I will only get what I had been getting. Pag wala ka nang ginagawang bago hindi ka na umuunlad. You are not growing anymore. Growing old is not a reason to stop pursuing something better.” And he quoted the above lyrics by Bob Dylan.

So, friends, don’t simply grow old, get busy being born.

With that in mind, I’m bravely sharing my latest artwork – Heliconia: Life in Contrast. 

Watercolor painting of Heliconia: Life in Contrast

When I was practicing flower photography with my macro lens, I wasn’t happy with the run-of-the-mill shots I was getting until I changed the angle and took a shot from the back of the flower arrangement. I captured this beautiful contrast between the fresh blooms and the wilting leaves.  

Flower photography - the model

It’s a depiction of what we go through in life: young and old, happy and sad, fresh and dried up. Always remember that there is still beauty even in the downsides of life. With old age comes wisdom. With sadness comes compassion. And even something dried up can exhibit delicate beauty when you look at it from the right angle. 

A Heart Like His Own

 

“Generosity is not about how much you have given, but about how little you have kept for yourself.” – Fr. Dave Concepcion

Yesterday, I was looking for a beautiful quote to go with the watercolor painting I just finished to make an inspirational e-poster. And right away, God sent the inspiration this morning. At mass, during the celebration of the Feast of Sta. Maria Goretti, Fr. Dave repeated the above quotation which had struck me when he said it during his homily a few days ago.

My blog today will not be about deep reflections and thoughts or life-changing events in my life. It will simply be a gratitude post for God’s generosities to this Happy Solo Mom:

“Thank you, Lord for sustaining my sanity in this pandemic through my spiritual family in the The Feast and the new spiritual home I found in Sta. Maria Goretti. Thank you for showing me, through them, that generosity still abounds in this world.

Thank you for my children Jaffy and Julian (Buddy) whom You have gifted me with right around this time many seasons ago and the generous nature You have nurtured in them.”

Generosity is not just about giving material things. It is about having “a heart like His (God’s) own” (A Generous Heart from Sovereign Grace Music).

My heart still swells with pride and joy when I remember New Year’s Day 2019, the last day of our family’s Scandinavian trip. We were in an emergency clinic in Helsinki because Jaffy had a run-in with the hotel’s cabinet door handle and needed some stitches on his head. I saw Buddy helping a man unpack his luggage, repack them and assist him around. I think the man was also a tourist, has cerebral palsy and had no one with him. I was so moved by my son’s generosity to a stranger. Generosity is kindness shown.

Generosity is also about sharing your talents and experiences to help others be better.

Let me share a message I posted in our Hero Independent Parents group telling them about Jaffy’s new YouTube Kids channel, The Curious Monster Lab: “…By the way, he’s the one who wrote the epilogue in my book about growing up in a solo parent family. It just goes to show that by God’s grace, solo parents can still raise good children.” Jaffy’s mission in setting up that channel is not only to educate children, but to help the next generation grow up to be kind, considerate and good people. He always ends his videos with this line: “Be brave, be kind, stay curious.”

One way we solo parents (and all parents in general) can teach our children about generosity is to be models for them, to show them how we can ease the burdens of others by sharing our time, talent, and treasures. But the best way is to constantly remind them that our solo parent family has survived difficult times because God has been generous to us all throughout our journey.

Still…Waiting for THE Vaccine

 

On Thursday, our yoga chat group was abuzz with news from friends getting vaccinated. I asked what brand they were given and was appalled to learn it was Sinovac, one of those that my family and I have decided against. Only one friend in that group shared my apprehensions. Later, another friend from my LG (my caring group) posted she too had gotten her vaccine. She received a text message just that day about her schedule. I got worried. What will I do if I get my notification? I don’t want that brand, but the situation is terrifying.

We were about to end our family rosary last night when my phone text alert went off. It was a message from eZConsult informing me I was scheduled to receive my COVID 19 vaccine. My immediate reaction was, “Oh my God!” I was torn!

Why torn?

First, I had been praying daily for the best protection from this dreaded virus for myself, my family, my relatives and friends, family and friends of family and friends, for my countrymen and for the whole world.

Second, my sister-in-law, a doctor, had just posted an article in our family chat group there are vaccines that will be accepted for travel to Europe, and it specifically mentioned Sinovac was NOT among those.

Third was the timing. It came while we were praying. Was this low efficacy vaccine the best answer to my prayer?

Fourth, we don’t know when the acceptable brands will be coming in. Do I take the risk of losing my slot?

I consulted by best friend/cousin Belle. She was leaning on my side of not getting it but wouldn’t give me that definite push as she said it was my decision. Myrna and Emy from my LG, on the other hand, gave valid points on why we should not pass up this chance. Torn was a mild term to describe my feelings. Finally, I asked my son Jaffy who gave a flat NO! We will wait for a more acceptable brand. That settled it. After that, I felt calm.

But when I woke up this morning, there was this niggling doubt again. Then, I realized I had considered everybody’s opinion but did not seek the counsel of the one being who knows everything and is in control, my God. Although I pray to Him many times every day, I did not really “sit and talk” with Him about this. I begged Him to show me clearly what I had to do and let me know if I was making the right decision. I also asked Him to be as clear as He was during our conversation when Papa was in the ER. I quieted my mind as best I could so I could hear Him, but He was like the wind. I only got wafts of thoughts that I wasn’t sure came from Him…

…Every person has a different faith journey. What was given to my friends may not be the same for me.

…The timing of the notification is sort of a test. Is this what I really want?

What I was assured of clearly though was His protection. As I was praying, I was led to the worship song Still. The lyrics “Hide me now under your wings” were an affirmation of His promise in Psalm 91: “He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.” I was reminded that despite the heavy exposure to COVID patients for 5 days while Papa was in the ER last year, our whole family was spared.

During mass, God finally set my mind at peace. Fr. Dave’s homily answered the remaining doubts and confirmed the wafts of thoughts I had been given:

·        “God will satisfy you, grant you abundance ACCORDING to your needs, not your wants.”

Myrna had lost a brother-in-law to COVID and her niece and her family are currently suffering from it. Emy has comorbidities. Both need the assurance of protection from any vaccine.

I need another brand that will be accepted in Europe. Why?

Because my son works there, and I would like to be able to visit him.

Because before the pandemic struck, I had agreed to join Belle in We Fly, her travel business. We were all set to rent an office and launch our website, but our plans were delayed. We claim that we will be organizing pilgrimages to Europe among other places once the world opens.

Because I have included 2 more places in my bucket list that I read about while preparing for my consecration to St. Joseph: Loreto, where angels have transported, or rather translated, the house of the Holy Family from Nazareth, and Perugia, where the Santo Anello or the “holy ring” that St. Joseph gave to Mary on their wedding is kept in a cathedral there. Both are in Italy, in Europe of course.

·        “Before you are put to the test, God already knows the answer.”

So, the timing was really a test. If the notification had come at another time, I would have easily dismissed it as I already knew I wanted another brand. But the timing made me run to God to delve deeper into what He wants for me.

And so, I will be still while I wait, for I know He is God.