Guided by faith
Journalist John Magsaysay, for Senior Party-List Representative Milagros Aquino-Magsaysay
The American essayist Barbara Kingsolver once quipped, “Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.” More than their biological capacity to bear and birth children, it is their resiliency and resolve borne out of unconditional love for their family that makes them defy human limitations in general. Mymother, Milagros, once had a normal and arguably comfortable life as a housewife. My father Raymond, then growing a successful infrastructure contractor business was providing a decent life for his expanding family. In their mutual desire to have a daughter, they ended up having six sons.
When I was one year old, and my youngest brother barely a month old, my dad unfortunately succumbed to cerebral aneurysm, rendering him in a coma for six months. Drowning in medical debt day by day, mymomsaw her comfortable life shifting bit by bit, selling the cars, the house, and everything my dad and her built and invested on. Despite these trying times, she refused to succumb to hopelessness, and, instead, found a revitalized faith brought upon by well-meaning friends and their knowledge of the Bible. She spent these days praying, promising God that if her husband pulls through, she will do everything to raise her family with complete and unwavering faith in Him.
And so my father pulled through, albeit half-paralyzed and incapacitated. My mother was faced with the task of caring for his medical needs daily, not to mention for her six growing boys. She struggled day and night to make ends meet, scraping what little knowledge she had of my father’s profession, and going to extreme lengths to keep her kids studying at private institutions. While growing up, even if we moved from house to house, or even when we faced the dread of monthly bills, she never made us feel inadequately nourished or supported. And because of her faith and her toil, she had seen her sons grow up, each with careers of their own, striving to make their name for the family some of them now have.
And as she faced an empty nest, she would’ve had threw in the towel and call for a welldeserved retirement. But in the last remaining chapters of her life, at age 72, recently widowed, she opted instead to go into public service, as a Congresswoman representing some 8.3 million elderly of the country under Senior Citizens Party-list. With her first-person understanding of the hardships that come with debilitating diseases, she had made affordable healthcare for the elderly as one of her chief legislative agenda.
My mother Milagros could not have a more appropriate name, because her whole life shows what miracles a mother’s love can bring. It can defy odds, it can rewrite destinies. It can cure sicknesses, and rise up from hopelessness and poverty. And it can still be abundant enough to be shared to others whomost need them. So for her, and for the other mothers like her, much love and honor this Mother’s Day!