I Lost Both Parents in 9 Months. God Met Me in the Wreckage.

It’s 10:30 on a Tuesday morning and the house is already losing.

Eevee is mid-tantrum on the kitchen floor because she dropped her food and our dog Snoopy is about to eat it already. Emman is in the carrier strapped to my chest, fussing because his nap got cut short by his sister’s screaming. The breakfast dishes and milk bottles are still on the counter. There’s a pile of laundry that I need to get started with so I can fold it later this afternoon. Peter won’t be home until after 4pm.

Before, I would have called Mama.

My phone would be on speaker, propped up against the spice jars while I wash the dishes with Eevee in her playpen. She would usually be beside Papa, eager to crack some jokes, and that alone would put a smile on my face and make my whole morning feel less heavy.

Mama would tell me random updates about our relatives or about the characters in her current teleseryes. When she can’t think of a new topic to talk about, she would just want to see Eevee, watch what she was doing, then tell me a story about how I was when I was a baby. Hearing her describe how I was when I was younger, even if she’d emphasize I was so difficult to take care of, was just the kind of stories I would love to listen to.

It was like being tuned in to a podcast made just for me.. My brain would stop hating motherhood for an hour while she talked. The chores would still be hard. The toddler would still be loud. But I had a voice in my ear that loved me unconditionally, and that was enough.

Now I dial and nobody picks up.

In this season, the only Person I can call on is God. His Word is what calms my mind when the morning is loud and the kids are loud and my grief is loudest of all.

But it wasn’t like this before.

For 20 years I did not pick up the phone for God either.

I was a Christian. I just wasn’t really one.

Growing up in a Catholic family in Baguio City, I go to mass on Sundays with my family. I recite prayers that we know by heart. We knew about the Bible stories and sang hymns of praise. Faith was the air I grew up breathing, but somewhere along the way I stopped noticing it was there.

When I left Baguio to work in Manila, then lived in Japan for a while, then eventually stayed for good in the US, my faith quietly stayed behind. I still believed in God. I prayed when I needed something. When there were blessings, I said thank you and moved on. When it didn’t, I felt quietly betrayed and stopped asking for a while.

That was my relationship with God for 20 years. I came to Him the way you call someone only when your car breaks down. Just transactional. Just because I needed help. And the truth is, He was always there when I needed Him. It was just me who was not able to sit down and spend time with Him because I was busy living my life.

“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out of my mouth.” a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.”

Revelation 3:15-16

Jesus said this to a church that was comfortable — one that had everything it needed and coasted on it. He compares them to lukewarm water, not useful to anyone nor worth drinking. That image always bothered me when I finally read it, because I recognized myself in it so quickly.

That was my faith. Comfortable. Convenient. Coasting.

It took losing both parents before I went looking for something real.

Friend, before you keep reading, I want you to know: I have told the chronological story of how I lost both parents in A Christian Mother’s Testimony of Grief, Faith and Healing. This is a different post. This is the story of what it did to me on the inside — what losing both parents did to my faith, my mothering, and my heart. I’m writing this for the mom who has already read the testimony and wants to know what came after.

The first crack: losing Mama

The morning Mama’s heart stopped, I was on FaceTime with my sister Miks in Maryland. We had been so hopeful. Mama had woken up from her open heart surgery the day before and even given Papa a thumbs up. We thought she was through the worst of it.

Then my brother called from the Philippines. The hospital had just called him. Mama’s heart had stopped. They were trying to revive her.

Miks and I started praying right there on FaceTime. I used the rosary Mama got for me, holding onto every bead desperately as I tried to calm myself, mumbling prayers, tears falling faster than I could stop them. I was begging God to save Mama.

God, if You save her, I promise. I will be a better daughter. I will not talk back. No more sinning. I will read my Bible every day and go to church every Sunday. I will be the daughter she deserved. This I promise: I will serve You, Lord God. Just please do something, Lord. Save her.

The next thing, both Papa and my brother were listening to the doctor while we were on the other line. I could hear the panic in his voice, his hand pounding his own chest, saying “Hindi ko alam ang gagawin ko” over and over. I don’t know what I’m going to do. None of us did.

There are no words to describe the pain of being 7,000 miles away and I could not do anything but cry. I wish I could at least hold her hand and lean down to her ear to tell her “Ma, andito kami sa tabi mo. Mahal na mahal ka namin. Laban tayo.” Ma, we are here beside you. We love you so much. Let’s win this fight.

I still wonder sometimes if it would have changed anything. If she could have heard my voice. If somewhere underneath the medication and the failing heart and the doctors working over her, she would have known I was there, and decided to stay one more breath.

I will not know the answer to that this side of heaven.

What I know is that motherhood made losing her worse. I was 10 months into being Eevee’s mom when Mama died. I had only just started understanding my mom from the perspective of being her daughter and now a mother as well. The sacrifices she made, starting with giving up her career to stay at home and take care of me. The humbling effect of doing whatever it takes to provide a better life for us even if it was uncomfortable for her and for my Papa. The way she trained us to be independent and street smart so we’d be prepared to face this imperfect world. I was beginning to see what it had cost her to raise us.

And the moment I started seeing it, she was gone.

“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”

Psalm 34:18

David wrote this psalm hiding in a cave, running for his life, pretending to be insane so a king would not kill him. The Hebrew word for “brokenhearted” comes from shabar — to shatter, like pottery dropped on stone. God does not promise in this verse to put the pieces back together. He promises to come close to them.

God came close to my pieces. He sat down on the kitchen floor with me in the wreckage.

The second crack: losing Papa

When I lost both parents, the second loss hit differently than the first. I did not cry as much when Papa died.

For a long time I felt guilty about that. Like maybe it meant I had loved him less. Like maybe something inside me had calcified.

The truth was, my heart was still numb from Mama. There was no more soft tissue left to bruise. The grief just landed on grief.

And with Papa there was no waiting. No reviving. No 50-50 odds and prayers over speakerphone. My brother walked into the house and Papa looked like he was just sleeping but he was already cold.

There was nothing to bargain for this time. It was finished before any of us could pray.

What hurt was that we thought he was okay. That’s what he kept telling us. “Okay lang ako.” I’m okay. I asked him about his health, if he’s getting good sleep, or if he’s eating well. Same answer. “Okay lang ako.”

But Papa had just lost his wife of 30 years. I think Papa was heartbroken in a way he could not hold and still be the man we needed him to be. So he told us he was okay until his body decided otherwise.

The last thing he said to Eevee was over Messenger video on a Friday night. She blew him a kiss. He waved and said “Bye Eevee. Matutulog muna si Lolo.” Bye, Eevee. Lolo is just going to sleep for now.

He did not wake up.

I was pregnant with Emman when we lost Papa. So I carried our second baby in my belly and our first baby on my hip and flew home to bury my last living parent. Mama never met Emman. Papa never met him either. My son will only ever know his grandparents through photos, stories, and the way his mama cries sometimes when she does not think anyone is watching. I had lost both parents before he ever took his first breath.

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.”

2 Corinthians 4:7-9

Jars of clay in Paul’s time were cheap, everyday pottery. Thin-walled. Breakable. Not meant to last. He says that is what we are — and that the treasure inside us is visible precisely because the jar is fragile. The cracks are where the light gets out.

For months after Papa died, I felt like one of those jars after it hit the floor. Cracked open. Spilling everywhere. I did not know yet that the cracks were where God was finally going to be visible in my life.

What broke open in me

Imagine two Bibles gifted to me when I graduated top of my class. Both of them just sat on a shelf, untouched.

What’s even more ironic is that I love to read books and I like studying. I have finished reading a lot engineering and chemistry textbooks, sales manuals, parenting books and even fiction. I’ve even read tons of business, personal development and self-help books more than once, but to be honest, I have not read the Bible from cover to cover, or even half of it.

II never realized that the one Book that contains the wisdom I was searching for is the Bible.

Then a few weeks after we came home from Papa’s funeral, I had the urge to read the Bible again.

I’d read from the Bible app every now and then, but in that moment, I craved to read an actual, tangible Bible. The one that was kept away, with the date written inside the cover. March 23, 2006.

So I started reading. Messily. Out of order. Some mornings I read for 10 minutes while the kids were still sleeping. Most days I could only read a few verses because I’d get too agitated to start with the chores. And there are mornings I cried on the page and could not read at all, and just sat with it open on my lap.

That was when something began to shift. Slowly. Quietly. Like watching the sky lighten at dawn before you can see the sun.

“It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.”

Psalm 119:71

The word translated “afflicted” in Hebrew means to be bowed low. Pressed down by something heavier than yourself. The psalmist is not thanking God for the pain. He is saying the pain is what finally made him still enough to listen.

Here’s a hard truth I need to admit – I would not have opened that Bible if I had not lost both parents. Or if everything in my life were doing great.

I would have kept calling Mama in the mornings. Going to church when it was convenient. Praying when I wanted something. Reading other books instead of His.

Grief is not a gift. I would never call it that. But it’s what bowed me low enough to finally pay attention.

Friend, if you have lost someone and you have not been able to pick up your Bible yet, please hear me. It does not have to be impressive. You do not have to read it in order. You do not have to understand it the first time. You just have to open it. If it would help to have a soft place to start, I made a free Daily Prayer Journal with simple, scripture-anchored prompts. It is the journal I wish someone had handed me in October 2024.

How God brought me back

I thought coming back to God would feel like a hug.

It did not feel like that. Not most days. Not for a long time.

What it felt like was being in the hospital room where I labored to bring Emman into the world — the fear, the pain, and still finding the strength to welcome a beautiful, healthy baby boy. It was waking up to my newborn’s crying at 3am and having the strength to get out of bed even though I had been up every 2 hours all night. What it felt like was finding small, quiet pockets of peace in ordinary mornings I did not feel I deserved.

God met me inside the grief every single day with just enough grace for that day.

His mercies really are new every morning. I used to think that was a poetic line in a hymn. Now I think it is a practical promise. Today’s grace is for today. Tomorrow’s grace will come tomorrow, and it will be enough for whatever tomorrow holds.

He also gave me Emman. A whole new little life in the middle of the worst season of my life. A son my parents never met, but who has the temperament of my Papa and the curiosity of my mother. New mercies. New blessings. Proof that God was still building something while I was burying things.

And He gave me a quieter kind of peace I cannot fully explain. When I think about Mama and Papa now, I do not only feel the ache. There is also a strange, steady joy underneath it. They are with the Lord, not in any hospital room waiting for a heart to start beating again. They are home.

“Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.”

james 4:8

James was the half brother of Jesus. He grew up in the same house, ate at the same table, and for most of his life did not believe who Jesus was. It took the resurrection before he moved. So when he writes about drawing near to God, he is writing as someone who spent years in the same room as the truth and looked the other way. He knows what it costs to finally turn around. And he knows what happens when you do.

The moment I did one small move – opening my Bible and being vulnerable in front of God saying, God, I do not know what I am doing, but I am here. That’s when I felt God move toward me.

This is the promise that holds my parents now too. They drew near to Him in their own lives. When their hearts stopped, He was already close. One day I will see them again. I believe this with the part of my faith that is no longer lukewarm. With the same steady, practical certainty as knowing my husband, Peter, will walk through the door at 4pm.

We will be reunited. A real one. And the same God who held my parents through their deaths will hold all of us through that morning.

For the mom reading this at 11 pm

I do not know who you have lost or what your house looks like in the morning when nobody answers your phone calls anymore.

If you have lost both parents, or even just one, I want you to know something first.

I know you are tired.

I know you are mothering somebody small while you are still somebody’s missing daughter, and I know that is a specific weight that other people will not always understand. The cousins who have both their parents. The friends who still call their moms every Sunday. The neighbor who casually mentions her mother coming over to help. You smile or maybe nod. Then you go home and you sit in the car for a minute before you go inside.

Grief is a wound. I will not lie to you about that. But God can be found inside the wound. He was for me. He will be for you.

If we were sitting at my kitchen table tonight, and you texted me at 11pm, I would not send you a five-step plan or a screenshot of a verse. I would tell you to do one small thing.

Open your Bible. Even to a random page and even if you only read a few verses and close it again. Even if you just feel like crying on the page.

“Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.”

Hosea 6:1

Hosea was a prophet whose entire life was a living parable. God told him to marry a woman named Gomer, who kept leaving him for other men. Every time she left, Hosea was supposed to go find her and bring her home. His marriage was a picture of God’s heart toward people who walk away and come back and walk away again.

This verse comes after one of those wanderings. The people are tired. They are torn. They are ready to come home. And Hosea opens the door with the gentlest line in all of scripture.

Come. Let us return.

He does not pretend the tearing did not happen. He just opens the door.

That door is still open. For the woman who buried her mother and has been lukewarm for 20 years. For the woman who is both of those at once.

I am the woman who kept her Bible on a shelf in Baguio for 20 years and never opened it — not until I lost both my parents. Now I open it every morning at my kitchen table in California. Some mornings that’s 10 minutes before the kids wake up. Some mornings it’s one verse before Eevee starts screaming. It counts.

I would not trade who I am becoming for the life I had before.

I lost both parents. I was pregnant. I was 7,000 miles from home. And that is what God did with the wreckage.

You are not alone in your kitchen tonight.

And the One I called on this morning when my house was loud and my arms were full and my parents were gone? He is right there with you too.

If you want to walk this slow road with me, I send a quiet letter on Tuesdays. Just me, writing to one mom at a time. You can join us here and I will meet you in your inbox.