“A father is someone you look up to no matter how tall you grow.”
Filed under Father's Day
The fathers in my family are affectionately referred to as Dad, Daddy, Pops, and Papi. Newsflash: None are perfect! But each one signifies love, courage, provision, and strength. Their eyes glow with purpose. Their smiles melt hearts. Their chest swells with pride. Their callous hands protect. They stand tall with dignity. And their embraces offer comfort and assurance. Yes, they are the pillars of our households.
It’s said that every man is trying to live up to his father’s expectations. Alternatively, he is trying to make up for his father’s mistakes. I’m not sure if that’s true. I only know that each man represented in my family strives to be the very best possible. Each holds a mantle and carries a torch for the next generation. Each dad represented in my family lays a solid foundation, even those who have crossed over to the other side. I can’t help but think about my own grandfathers. They were strong, respected, dedicated men with a constant presence. They left behind a legacy. When the tough got going, they didn’t cave under pressure. They persevered with Puerto Rican pride in every fiber of their being.
To the men in my family who are dads: I love each of you. I admire each of you. To my dear husband, who married me with four children, I share this quote. “It takes a strong man to accept somebody else’s children. It takes strength to step up to the plate, another man left on the table.” I salute you.
I salute you all. Remember: Any man can be a father. But it takes a special person to be a dad.
And to the newest dad in our family, my handsome grandson,
now with his precious
little girl. I am one proud great-grandma!
Filed under Tribute to Fathers
“To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes,
the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
that they might be called trees of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.” Isaiah 61:3
How do you find beauty in difficult times?
My devotion today is found in Isaiah 61:3. This passage of scripture brings me comfort. Yet, I wondered…
How can there be a smidgen of beauty among the rubble? Wreckage? Or ashes?
How is this even possible?
How do we see beauty amid suffering, hopelessness, or despair?
When I saw my baby sister lying in her small white coffin, I sure didn’t see any beauty in that.
As a child, I noticed my mama with bruises on her body. I failed to see them as beauty marks.
My former husband was known for his strength, vigor, and sure-footedness. After one drink of alcohol, he morphed into a sloppy drunk, miles away from anything charming.
To watch my grandpa become a prisoner in his own body was disheartening. His barrel-chested physique became sunken and scrawny. It was a far cry from what I considered alluring.
My grandma was once so robust and plump. When my eyes caressed her features, I saw her turning thin and frail due to illness. It wasn’t lovely to behold.
The day I saw my former husband turn his back on me was not a picturesque scene. He had pulled the rug from under my feet. He left me in the dust while I choked in my sobs and called out his name in vain.
My tiny 29-day-old granddaughter, swollen from fluids in a medically induced coma after her open-heart surgery, wasn’t eye-appealing.
Recently, saying goodbye to Mama was anything but a pleasant and beautiful moment.
Scars tell a story, but they are not beautiful. Neither are the hidden bruises on the body nor the scab on the heart.
Death is not cute; the grieving of loved ones taken from you is never delightful. Hunger is not charming. Loneliness is not attractive.
Repossession isn’t grand. Foreclosure is far from good.
So, how can there be beauty for ashes?
I believe it is found in hope. Hope against hope. Hope that the imperfect will become perfect. Hope that the pain will cease. Hope that there will be a day of reckoning. Hope that the scattered pieces will rebuild. Hope for healing and relief. Hope that the light will dawn and a new day will come. Hope that this too shall come to pass. Hope in heaven. Hope that the best is yet to come. And most importantly, we believe in the Blessed Hope. One day, we shall see our loved ones again who have crossed over.
I can now yell it from the mountaintop. Thank you, Lord! You have turned my life’s ugliness into a thing of beauty!
Out of sadness and hurt will come strength and victory.
AT 19 YEARS OLD, MY MIND REELING, I tossed and turned and kicked off the covers. I struggled to get out of bed; for the fifth time that night, I floundered toward the bathroom.
“Where are you going now?” Donny demanded.
I turned the bathroom light on. “Need to go again, Donny.”
“Didn’t you just go?”
“I’m feeling a lot of pressure in my bladder.” How I wished to erase the sneer from his face. “Didn’t mean to wake . . . ”
He responded by sucking air through his teeth and then flipped over, turning his back to me.
Unable to get proper rest, I had started cramping at 3:30 that morning. Around midday, the cramps grew stronger. By 3 p.m., the pain had become agonizing, but still irregular, followed by spotting. The instant Donny walked in from work, I said, “It’s time.”
We arrived at Rosewood General. An attendant assisted me into a wheelchair. When I sat down, my water broke, so much for dignity.
Once I was in my room, the nurse examined me. She discovered I was already dilated to six. This meant I was in the second stage of labor. Glancing down at my belly, I found the shape oddly lopsided, oval, no longer round. Much to my dismay, after the nurse’s probing, she mentioned in a concerned voice that she felt a foot.
The doctor ordered an emergency X-ray. Apparently, at the last moment, my baby had turned and remained in a breech position. The X-ray also revealed that the umbilical cord had wrapped around the neck. The medical staff prepped me and gave me an epidural. They then confirmed that I needed to have a Cesarean. This time, Donny remained in the waiting room.
During the birthing process, even though I was awake, I felt nothing from the waist down. I concentrated on trying to relax and comprehend what the doctors and nurses were discussing. A large blue drape blocked my view of the entire birthing process.
I couldn’t keep my upper body from shaking. Even my teeth chattered, and the uncontrollable tremors caused my shoulders to ache, as if ready to fall off. Petrifying thoughts raced through my mind. I feared something was terribly wrong. When I heard someone say, “Here she comes,” the “she” rang loud in my mind: another girl.
But why won’t she cry?
Time stopped. I prayed. Felt like forever.
At last, wails from strong lungs pierced the room. My doctor smiled and held my six- pound- four-ounce baby. “It’s a girl.”
I reached out for her, anxious to see if she was all right. She looks so small, red, and wrinkled, unlike Anna Marie when she was born. And she had one purple arm!
An excerpt from “Running in Heels: A Memoir of Grit and Grace”
Life sometimes will throw you a curve. Ever experienced the feeling of being out of control? How about the fear of the unknown and the what-ifs? Although this was my second child, the entire process was different than with the birth of my firstborn. I was not prepared. I lacked the moral support of my former husband. All my family members lived out of state. Most of the time, I felt alone and inept in my role. But I learned to be an overcomer. And if I can make it, so can you! Want to know more about my journey? You can read all about it in my memoir,
"Running in Heels: A Memoir of Grit and Grace".
Filed under Birth & Motherhood, Memoir Excerpts
At a friend’s suggestion, my husband and I went to see a live performance of The Shadow Box. We were unfamiliar with this Pulitzer Prize-winning 1977 play by Michael Cristofer.
In a compelling, 24-hour dramatic triptych, three terminally cancer patients dwell in separate hospice cottages on a hospital’s grounds. They focus on raw emotional struggles in the face of mortality and family dynamics.
We found each actor believable and captivating as they delivered their lines. Watching the performance, deep emotions rose, but for us, void of the ‘warm and fuzzy’ feeling kind. Everyone has a cross to bear. That’s a fact. But I want to share my sentiments after we watched the play.
SPOILER ALERT:
The middle-aged married couple clearly lacks honest communication with one another. They hadn’t seen each other in six months due to expenses. The wife is in denial about her husband’s impending death. Their teenage son doesn’t even know that his father is dying. The couple reflects on the life they could have had. The husband feels that owning your home symbolizes life, now out of reach.
Another patient feels that everyone must live life on their own terms. He is a dreamer, a writer juggling between his unwelcome alcoholic, promiscuous ex-wife and his boyfriend/caretaker with benefits. The boyfriend is full of complaints and disgusted by the ex. Both lash out in anger.
“How is he?”
“Dying. How are you?”
“Well, I think we’ve got that all straight now. He’s dying. I’m drunk. And you’re pissed off.”
They continuously talked about their conquests and victories, which are not worth repeating. Trying to find common ground, they danced.
Finally, another is a blind and elderly senile patient. She is in pain. But she refuses to die before she gets a visit from her daughter. Yet, her daughter has been dead for years. She seems to ignore her living daughter, her caretaker, who remains by her side. The ‘unseen’ weary but devoted daughter does her best in caring for her dying mother. But she is giving her mother false hope. She attempts to appease her mother by writing and reading fictional letters to her. The letters come from a daughter who is long dead.
Later, her mama naps in the wheelchair, head tilted to one side. Although asleep, the daughter continues speaking to her. “Mama, if I told you the truth, would you listen? If I told you the truth now, would you think I was lying? I don’t remember the good times anymore. I used to think we had something to go back to, but I don’t remember what it is. All I can remember is this: pushing … and pulling … and hurting – this is all I can remember. It all went wrong! What happened, Mama? There must have been a time when you loved me. Oh, Mama, if I told you the truth now, would it matter?”
As I listened to the daughter’s palpable agony, I caught a snippet of my own life with my mama. We didn’t always have the best communication skills. But I loved her. Deep down, I knew she loved me. Still, her affections went toward her youngest child, her golden boy, whom she had given birth to later in life. For five years, we cared for Mama in our home. Then she developed cancer in her stomach and needed surgery. Afterwards, not wanting to do the work in rehab that required both physical and occupational therapy, Mama never fully recovered. It gave us some time, seven months to be exact. She remained bedridden, and her muscles became atrophied. In many ways, I felt helpless in knowing what to do for her. I had asked God to help me make the right decisions and be strong for her.
My heart ached while watching the play, hearing the wife tell her husband how she wanted him home.
“I want you to come home. I want you to go out four nights a week bowling. Then come home so I can yell and not talk to you. I want to fight so that you’ll take me to a movie. And by the time I finally get you to take me, I am so upset. I can’t even enjoy the picture. I want to wake up too early. And I’ll let you know about it, too. You wake me up too early to make you breakfast because you never want to eat it. You wake me up too early to keep you company and talk to you. And it’s cold, and my back aches, and we’ve got nothing to say to each other. And we never talk; and it’s 6:30 in the morning—every morning—even Sunday morning. And it’s alright! It’s alright! Because I want to be there, you need me to be there. Because I want you to be there, because I want you to come home!”
But of course, he can’t go home … because he’s dying.
In conclusion, one of the characters said, and I agree, “You always think you have more time. And you don’t.”
Although each character in this production dealt with terminal illness, my husband and I left feeling empty, exhausted, and sad. Other than the understanding that no one will live forever, there were no moral conclusions. Each character focused on their past, reminiscing about their lives before illness. Not much hope for what was to come. No preparation.
As a Christian, whether I live or die, my hope is in the Lord. “To be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.” II Corinthians 5:8.
“Death to the Christian is the funeral of all his sorrows and evils, and the resurrection of all his joys.” ~James H. Aughey
Your turn. How do you wrestle with the reality of mortality and faith?
Filed under The Shadow Box
Creative Director – Charlie Duggar
featuring artists: Evan Craft, Danny Gokey, Redimi2 – “Be Alright”
Tercer Cielo – “Yo Te Extrañare”
Boyz II Men – “A Song for Mama”
Elvis Presley – “Take My Hand, Precious Lord”
Josh Groban – “You Raise Me Up”
Mercy Me – “I Can Only Imagine”
Filed under Mama, Mother's Day
We all wrestle with struggles—some visible, some hidden. But can they serve a greater purpose?
Recently, I had the opportunity to fly to Miami and visit with loved ones. We helped celebrate my sister’s birthday. I met up with my daddy, step-mother, and sister, and stayed with them at a hotel. We enjoyed an excellent meal at a popular Cuban restaurant. The next day, we planned a fun outing. We met up with one of my brothers, his lovely girlfriend, and my beautiful nieces. While driving there, we heard a thumping noise that didn’t sound good coming from under the minivan. We stopped, got out, and discovered that we had a flat. We weren’t going anywhere. Locating the spare tire was frustrating, and unlocking it took even longer. Then we searched for the closest tire repair shop, wasting more time sitting there. We finally arrived two to three hours later, hot, cranky, already tired, and hungry.
At the fairgrounds, we walked around and got snacks. Then we stopped to watch a show. A man and his dog were performing tricks with a frisbee. We decided to climb the bleachers for a better view. Using the bleachers as stairs, I tripped and fell on bleacher number one, landing on my knees. I got up and fell again on bleacher number two. Ouch! Lord, have mercy on me! My brother ran to help and steadied me to finally sit and watch the rest of the show. When we left and reached our vehicle, I yanked on the car door latch to open it. I quickly found the door was still locked. I injured my finger while pulling on the handle! I still can’t bend my middle finger a month later— you can imagine how that looks!
1 Corinthians 12:7
On Sunday morning, we visited my brother’s church. Instantly, I was drawn by the pastor’s message when I heard him speak on having a thorn in the flesh. The pastor said that thorns drive us to humility. Yeah, I certainly was all that. I had fallen and landed on my knees in front of everyone.
A thorn in the flesh can derive from various situations for different people. It can mean a piercing and troubling situation, person, or task. And I’m here to tell you that thorns don’t feel so good. They prick. And they hurt! But can they show us that in our weaknesses, God becomes strong?
The pastor also mentioned that God uses brokenness in our lives. We indeed throw broken things away. But I was reminded that God will use broken pieces and broken people. Broken people know how much they need God! Our thorns in the flesh remind us of our need for God’s strength, and not on our own strength.
After the service, I determined to focus on the positives of my mini-vacation. I got the chance to get away for the weekend. I rekindled precious memories with siblings. I also spent some quality time with Daddy, who will soon turn 92 years old, God willing. His health may be declining, but he was still active and engaging with me. We ate our meals together and shared stories. One night, I brought him his favorite café con leche to the room from a restaurant nearby. He was so happy. I mentioned how he had been really eating well. He looked at me with that endearing twinkle in his eyes, leaned close, and said, “I did it for you.”
It’s always been difficult to say goodbye whenever it’s time to leave my family in Florida. This time was no exception. My stepmother cried. My sister cried. I cried. Thank goodness Daddy and I spoke earlier, and he was asleep already!
My brother dropped me off at the airport. I checked in my luggage and went through customs. I sat alone in the cold lobby, reminiscing on all that had occurred over the weekend. It wasn’t long before the airline announced several delays. These delays put my flight three hours behind. Then, the dreaded word ‘canceled’ blared over the loudspeaker. Although the airport was freezing, at that moment, the tension rose. Tempers flared with heated words from passengers and staff. Four hours later, I paid an extra airfare to fly home on another airline. I had to get off and switch flights before arriving home the next morning. The trip cost more than I had budgeted, not to mention missing an entire day of work. At that moment, I felt weary, defeated, and broken.
The pastor that morning illustrated that we are living in this flesh. Yet, as Christians, we also have the Holy Spirit. So it’s up to us to starve one and feed the other. The one who starves tends to lose; the one we feed tends to win. Let’s learn to rely more on the Holy Spirit so that we feed our inner man. Through this, we gain power in our weaknesses.
In retrospect, I had experienced a few unpleasant thorns. Yet, I realize that God desires to shape me for something greater. Thorns cause frustration, but I believe it will lead me back to the realization that God’s grace sustains me.
Lord, I know you’re trying to teach me something here. My flesh says: Can you hurry up the process so I can learn it and move on?
My spirit says: Help me in my weakness, Lord. May I rely more on you and be reminded that I am complete in you. I thank you, God, for your grace.
Filed under Faith and Spirituality, Personal Stories
February 23, 1982
My consciousness slowly swam up through the wooziness of the anesthesia.
“Wake up. You have a healthy, bouncing boy.”
Oh boy! A son. His hair was fine—golden brown—eyelashes long, lips full, and he had a slight dimple in his chin. Yep, he definitely was all boy. One look at his privates confirmed the obvious. After having three girls, I didn’t know what “he” was supposed to feel like. But once his solid bulk cradled in my arms, I knew. And I knew what to name him; surprisingly Donny didn’t object.
I kissed my son and whispered, “Hello, Daniel Michael. I’m your Mommy.”
I shuddered at the thought that months earlier, I might have gone through an abortion. That day God had given me the strength to make the fateful decision not to abort my baby.
This pregnancy was my last, the caboose. I had signed the forms to have my tubes tied. Because I had my babies so close together, the doctor warned me that my uterus might tear in the process. Thank the Lord there weren’t complications.
“You did good, honey,” Donny crooned, patting my hand. “Thank you for my son.”
“Why don’t you thank God?” I retorted.
Later, in my hospital room, the nurse came for Daniel. Donny soon left for the night. Alone, I thought about my household and did the math. Anna Marie, the eldest, was five. Diana and Angela were barely fourteen months apart. My husband was thirty-eight, and I, a frazzled twenty-two-year-old had baby number four.
I contemplated the future. My marriage had been a journey on a long, difficult, and bumpy road. Without the prayers, love, and encouragement from others, we wouldn’t have lasted. I remained hopeful, but rough waters were still ahead . . .
* * *
I was lost in my thoughts one evening. As I put baby Daniel to bed, I wondered what manner of young man he’d become. Will I spoil him? Cater to his every whim? Or allow him to learn from his mistakes? Will I be able to look him in the eye? Show him right from wrong? Will he become responsible? Loving? Respectable? Will I be able to love him enough to let go?
I silently prayed for wisdom and pushed a strand of golden-brown hair from Daniel’s forehead. I loved the different shades of light brown in his curly coif. They were so different compared to the black hair of his parents and sisters.
“His hair . . .” Donny warned, interrupting my thoughts, invading my heart, “had better turn dark.”
A small excerpt from Chapter 33, “Running in Heels: A Memoir of Grit & Grace“
Filed under Memoir
Exciting News! We Have a Winner!
I am thrilled to announce the winner of our holiday giveaway for “Running in Heels: A Memoir of Grit and Grace.”
🏆 Congratulations to Andy Valadez! 🏆
Andy has read many wonderful books, and I’m honored that my memoir is part of his collection. Check out this fantastic picture of Andy with his stack of books, including “Running in Heels”!
A huge thank you to everyone who participated and showed their support. Your enthusiasm and love mean the world to me. For those who didn’t win this time, stay tuned—there will be more exciting opportunities and giveaways in the future.
Wishing you all a happy and prosperous New Year!
With gratitude, Mary A. Pérez
Filed under Announcements, Author Updates, Book News, giveaways, Winners
From Heart to Heritage
NEW! Book Club Edition
Reflexiones del Corazón
I just want to thank Mandy for making me a hero in her garden. I was deeply touch and wanted to share my appreciation by adding her link on my sidebar. Click the picture below to view her blog. . .
Reflections From the Heart 