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pro life

About Me, budgeting, Family Life, Parenting, Pro Life

The surprisingly high cost of #treatyoself (and book winners!)

October 26, 2015

Today is going to be a little scattershot (gosh, I think I just fulfilled a lifelong and previously unconscious desire to use that in a sentence), so I hope you’ll bear with me? It’s Monday, after all.

First up, winners of the giveaway: 3 copies of “Special Children, Blessed Fathers” coming your way, Sarah B, Rebecca, and Melissa – send your mailing info to juebbing at gmail dot com by the end of this week to claim your prize. (Sarah B, I’ve already got your info!)

For all the other lovely commenters from that post, you can buy the book here or here and there is an e-version available for Kindle (or any device – did you know you can download the Kindle app for free? Super cool.) Good Christmas present, just saying.

So we’re on day 26 of October and, subsequently, day 26 of no spend October. How’s it going? Oh, well, pretty good all in all, but there have been a few hiccups.

First I want to highlight a significant personal victory, which was a completely abstinent trip to Super Target to buy fake spiderweb decor for the front porch with the boy’s very own hard-earned monies. (Which their shameless mother paid them for behaving well for their babysitter/aunt, which is pathetic, I realize, but then again, they went right to bed that night, so shame away.)

So I went into Target with 4 kids, and I walked out of Target 35 minutes later with a single bag containing faux spider web and glowing arachnids. No baby socks. No Starbucks in hand. No diapers. No crap from the Dollar Spot.

Nada.

Hashtag cured.

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Just waiting for Real Simple to come shoot our Fall porchscape. Any day now.

 

Well, just about. I have slipped up a couple of times, and both of those time$ may have involved a bottle of wine and at least 3 out of my 4 sisters, so…it’s a process. But for the most part, we’ve been killing it this month in the budgeting department, and I’ve cooked and baked more in the past 3.5 weeks than in the whole of our nearly 6 years of marriage combined. Which tells you either that I’m extremely lazy or that our standards for what constitutes “dinner” are very low. Maybe a combination.

Mostly though, there just isn’t a lot to “do” with kids that doesn’t cost money, at least from 3-5 pm every weekday. Or so I thought. So we bake. And I really, really hate baking.

About 5 loaves of pumpkin bread into October, I was starting to sicken of autumn’s favorite gourd and so I dug deep into my entitled suburban brain and came up with such solid ideas as trips to the mall to have my wedding rings cleaned and re-plated (free with our lifetime service plan!), pilgrimages to the Lego store, (we’d never been, and I still don’t think either boy realized you can, you know, buy stuff there. Winning.) mornings at the library, (previously in rotation, but now without a store-bought coffee in hand) nature walks and aspirational leaf-collecting for instagram fodder, and finally, most ghetto of all, leisurely strolls to our neighborhood King Soopers (maybe Kroger in your neck of the woods?) for a “hey kids, free cookie!” from the bakery department and a ride or two on the penny horse which the friendly manager always keeps stocked with pennies.

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now watch me whip.

And weirdly, it has been enough.

I want to say it’s been more than enough, actually, because I think we’re all more content than we are in the midst of a bloated, out-of-control spending free-for-all kind of month. I know the grownups certainly feel better about things, at any rate. And I can almost guarantee we’re eating 99% better than when Chicfila features heavily on the lunch menu rotation, which is comforting to my mommy heart, even while my prodigious baking has left evidence to the contrary, at least on my hips.

But the kids are a lot happier, too. And it has gotten a lot easier to say no to them. Mostly because they’re not asking for anything to begin with. We simply respond “we’re only spending money on groceries for meals this month” when they ask for anything, and they haven’t actually asked for much at all, come to think of it. Which is pretty great. We’ve got pretty great (and pretty young and malleable, make note, self!) kids. And it would seem I’ve yet to ruin them with entitlement.

Here’s where it gets crazy though. Yes, we’ve been able to save a lot of money this month. Which turned out to be super helpful because while we thought we were putting a good little chunk aside for the “let’s be grown ups and buy a house” fund, we actually ended up dropping more than a grand on car maintenance. In 2 weeks.

And it was no big deal.

I mean it was a bummer to see the number sinking in the house fund, but it sure felt good to be able to cash flow the car situation and not sweat about the other bills and obligations for the month because I hadn’t been, you know, acting like an entitled fool.

Even cooler than that though, we heard through social media of a homeless mom in our area who had some needs for her 7 week old baby girl. I offered her some diapers and a packnplay, but what they really needed were groceries and another night in the hotel they’re living in until their apartment in transitional housing opens up next week. And she was bold enough to ask for it, and we were in a position to be able to respond not only with prayers, but with actual material help. And I don’t know if we would have been able to do it if we hadn’t been living simply this month.

I’m telling this story because it’s powerful. Not because we did something heroic (We didn’t. We did something responsible.), but because God demonstrated to us a direct correlation between self denial and the ability to help someone in need. Because we had “denied” ourselves those date nights and coffees and working lunches and trips to Target, we had money to be able to answer a real, material need. And we still fixed our van.

So the moral of the story is, I guess, sometimes it is just a latte. But I need to be careful, because all of those “just this one times” can really add up. For better or for worse.

leaves

Catholics Do What?, Contraception, Culture of Death, Marriage, NFP, Pro Life, Sex, vasectomies

Risky love and the culture of loneliness

October 6, 2015

This morning was…well, let me back up. We quit preschool yesterday (and that’s a whole other post) and then went on to enjoy a fairly idyllic, sun-dappled pumpkin patch sort of day, so we all know what comes after that.

This morning, after very unwisely staying in bed with the baby while the dropouts watched an hour of SuperWhy, we proceeded to test the acoustics of every living area in the house and then the garage and then reheat the same cup of coffee three times. Which is not the same thing as drinking three cups of coffee, unfortunately.

So we went to the library.

There’s something magical about watching your kids interact with educational, unbroken toys in a somewhat civilized manner and knowing that you, the taxpayer, earned it. And that you won’t be the one cleaning up, because for some reason the public scrutiny makes them more helpful.

I’d settled into the feral children’s corner with my massive stroller after a fruitless search for an outlet to plug in ye olde laptop, whose lifeblood had been siphoned by SuperWhy. Alas, this was to be a non-working trip. (Why no outlets in children’s section, librarians?)

It turned out to be fortuitous, because no sooner had I settled in to nurse Luke then I met a unicorn. Another mom sidled up to me, baby strapped to her chest, and watched as her daughter and Evie exchanged fake fruit and Duplos and magnet tiles. She smiled and asked how old Luke was, and after I told her she asked what number he was.

“He’s my fourth,” I smiled, bracing for the gasp/smile/blink that almost always follows, but instead she smiled and pointed to her little passenger and said “same here!”

See? A unicorn.

(And I know plenty of other families with more than a couple kids, it’s just that I’m either related to them or they go to our parish or are in some way affiliated with the Catholic or Mormon church. So to meet someone totally organically, in a public place? Totally magical.)

We talked for a half an hour, easily, covering everything from naughty toddlers to nursing to not losing weight while nursing (lies, lies I tell you) to homeschooling to letting your dog eat all the crap off the floor under the highchairs to being really, really happy to have all these kids, because it’s totally worth it. They’re totally worth it.

It was pretty great. And I was seriously refreshed to just meet someone and be able to connect with them as a fellow mom and not have to answer a litany of questions about planning and birth control and life goals and sex.

Until right before we parted ways.

Casually, oh-so-casually, almost as a preprogrammed afterthought, she turned and asked me as she was preparing to leave,

“So, are you done?”

Oh, here we go.

“Well, I don’t know. We’re open, so it’s hard to put a definitive cap on family size.”

She smiled, “yeah, I know what you mean. That’s what I say too! But I told my husband, you need to make that appointment or we’re going to have 5 kids. So it’s on him now. I can only control myself, after all.”

Her friend nodded her head in understanding, “we only have two and I have been telling him the same thing! Gotta make that call and get in for your vasectomy, babe. Tick tock.”

They looked back at me expectantly, waiting for me to chime in.

Here’s the thing. I’m pretty good on paper when it comes to articulating what I believe and why, but actual interactions in real life? Those can be tougher. I don’t want to scare someone off, and I’m well aware of the need to “earn the right to be heard” before jumping in deep with someone about delicate topics, however readily they raise them.

But I’m also never not going to be shocked when a perfect stranger starts talking about her husband’s vas deferens. It’s just so weird. No matter how many times it happens, it always, always catches me off guard.

I guess I’m old fashioned like that?

I cleared my throat and volunteered this feeble tidbit, “well, it’s kind of cool that your husband isn’t eager to have it done, most women I hear from say that their husbands are the ones applying the pressure to stop having kids, and they’re usually sad about it.”

She tilted her head to the side thoughtfully and began to nod. “Yeah, I know he would love any kid we had, no matter how many.”

The conversation wound down as she and her friend collected their stuff and started to move toward the exit.

“I’m sure I’ll see you here all the time,” she threw back over her shoulder.

I smiled and told her I hoped so. But we didn’t close the deal. No numbers were exchanged, no phones whipped out to collect names or emails.

My hands were full of baby so I’m telling myself that was the reason, but I couldn’t help but feel a little sad as they walked away. And a little lonely. Not because I don’t have my own village – I do, and it’s thriving – but because I felt acutely the empty weirdness of our culture, the piercing normality of discussing one’s sex life and reproductive choices with strangers. And that the default answer to “are you done?” is, “yes, of course, and here’s when I’m scheduling the surgery to disable that part of my body that will make certain of it.”

How did we get here? And what should I have done differently in my interaction with her, I’m asking myself still, hours later.

She was happy. She had a good marriage, a beautiful family, and a husband who was willing to build that with her. And she still wanted to pursue sterilization. Because it’s what one is “supposed to” do in our coldly civilized world. And because she has been lied to and convinced that it’s best for her marriage, for her future. Too risky to live otherwise.

But wait, I wanted to ask, don’t you want to see what might happen if you continue living this story out the way you have been? And aren’t you nervous that there may be unintentional side effects to severing sex from procreation so permanently? Do you think it will be good for your sex life as a couple? Do you worry that there might be a reason humans weren’t designed for all-you-can-eat-buffet-style sex?

But of course, I didn’t say any of those things. And I wonder if anyone ever will say them in a way she might be willing to hear, might be able to hear.

Because we’ve been told so many times that our marriages can be good in spite of our fertility, that life can be comfortable and happy and manageable even though there are a couple kids hanging around…

But only rarely do we hear, if we hear it at all, that the thing we’re all supposed to be the most afraid of might be a good thing, after all.

That our fertility might actually be a significant reason why our lives are as beautiful and as joy-filled as they are. Messes and bodily destruction aside.

That it’s a gift.

That some couples – more than you might realize – would do almost anything, and often times do, in pursuit of the very thing you’re trying to protect yourselves against.

That’s what I wanted to say, but I lacked the time and the finesse and the relationship to do so.

But I hope somebody does say it to her one day. Before it’s too late.

And I long for an increasing recognition of this reality that our world seems increasingly blind to: that fertility is a gift, that our children are not the obstacle to our happiness and marital harmony, but more often the cause of it, or at least a significant occasion for grace and joy; and that life isn’t merely a series of contingencies and risks to be managed and shut down.

And that it’s okay for the plan to be “there is no plan.” At least not the kind of plan the world expects you to make.

risky love

Bioethics, Catholics Do What?, Culture of Death, Family Life, guest post, motherhood, Pro Life, Sex, Suffering

My Moral Dilemma As A Catholic SMA Mom

August 11, 2015

I know I say this every time, but the woman I’m featuring today really is one of my all-time favorites. I met Kelly at Edel last year and was 1. blown away by her height and model-esque features (the internet has me convinced everyone is as short as I am) and 2. stunned by her mic-dropping rap at karaoke on Saturday night. Girl got flow.

Kelly and her husband Tony have 5 gorgeous kids whom they’re homeschooling within driving diastance of the Jersey Shore, and her two youngest both have Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), a degenerative disease for which there is currently no cure. I don’t remember how long I was reading her blog This Ain’t the Lyceum before I figured that out, because she definitely isn’t a “medical needs” blogger, primarily. Fulton and Teddy’s stories are simply woven into their daily live, as are the stories of her other children. But this month is SMA awareness month, and Kelly has a powerful and unique perspective on navigating motherhood with medically fragile kids. 

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Living life as a devout Catholic, one who feels that everything the Church teaches applies to your everyday life, is hard. At best, we are misunderstood, our decisions considered backward or misguided. At worst, the world can be unaccepting and hostile towards those who choose to make sacrifices and hard decisions based on matters of faith….all in the name of tolerance of course.

After receiving two special needs diagnosis, my faith was struggling, but what I’ve learned since overcoming my initial sadness, anger, depression and hopelessness was that being a mother of two children with Spinal Muscular Atrophy and a faithful Catholic tests my beliefs in ways I never imagined and often leaves me feeling quite alone in the struggle of special needs parenthood.

First, on one hand, we’re so lucky that so much research is happening to cure or effectively treat SMA. Because we know what causes it, drugs and therapies can be accurately targeted to get to the root source.

The Muscular Dystrophy Association, Cure SMA and many other smaller organizations gives tons of money for research grants and drug trials, and there are some really positive things in the pipeline.

But, I don’t know what, if any, research is done using fetal stem cell lines. The Church fully supports the use of adult stem cell lines, but not those from aborted babies. There’s really no way to know without calling up and questioning each and every researcher. There’s no telling terminology I can look for in the medical write ups, and believe me, I’ve asked. All the main SMA charities state that while they understand that some parents objections to using fetal stem lines, they will fund all research.

I want to raise money and help research, but it’s very hard to give in good conscience to organizations who either are already or are willing to support unethical research. And it’s a hard opinion to hold when every month or so I get a magazine with a special memorial section filled with messages about children lost to SMA.

Every SMA parent wants a cure yesterday.

When you are faced with a disease that kills children, how can you say, don’t consider every means necessary to find a cure? But, I do. I don’t think unborn children should be killed and picked apart in the name of science.

What would I do if a cure was found by using fetal stem cell lines?

I don’t know honestly. I don’t think I could deny my boys a cure, but I think I’d be forever haunted by the children who died in the name of research. I would worry about my eternal soul.

We think because we kill our unwanted babies in a sterile white room and use their parts for science that we’re somehow more civilized than the Spartans, who simply left their unwanted newborns to the elements. It was Christians who first introduced the idea of rights for children but I feel that our society is being re-paganized with even other “good Christians” turning a blind eye in the name of science or worse, compassion.

The Catholic idea of suffering is so foreign to this day and age, it’s not surprising that most Catholics themselves don’t understand it. I find bearing my sufferings patiently and offering them up for special intentions is always a struggle, but it is the understanding of the value of suffering, and in what constitutes real suffering, that has played a huge roll in my acceptance of the cross of special needs parenting.

In today’s world, we must avoid and eliminate all suffering. And unfortunately, just having SMA is perceived as a form of suffering. Therefore, there is a prenatal test to determine if your child has SMA. It is not routinely given, though there are many working to make it part of the routine screen, and parents with one SMA child are, I feel, expected to test any subsequent children.

Of course, this means unborn children with SMA are aborted because they have the disease, and we don’t want to bring them into this world to suffer. Yes, they may be one of the sickest children, who unfortunately dies within the first few years. I don’t want to downplay the horror of that reality for anyone. But no screening can accurately predict the life of any child.

Several of the people I featured on Friday require invasive methods to stay alive; feeding tubes, ventilators, etc. But it is presented as a real option to not offer these things to your child, to simply offer palliative care if the parent feels it’s in the child’s best interest, and as to not prolong suffering.

Can you imagine approaching your newborn with a hospice mindset? I cannot fathom the pain the parents of the most seriously afflicted children must go through, and maybe in some cases palliative is really the only way to go, but should it be presented as an option to all parents from the get go?

I understand the very real pain some parents want to save their children from; pressure sores, scary infections, mucus plugs which prevent a person from breathing…but can’t we make a child comfortable and able to enjoy life to the fullest while still minimizing the health hazards? Is shortening a child’s life even further the only way?

We are a society that wants sex, but no babies. Think of all the wonderful children not being born because we only want perfect babies at the perfect time. SMA parents are told to speak with a genetic counselor before planning any more babies so you can learn your “options”.

One of Fulton’s doctors was quite angry to see I’d gotten pregnant without notifying their geneticist and was not planning to test for SMA until after the child was born.

Our contracepting culture cannot handle people who have unplanned babies, especially less than perfect babies. In fact, even many cafeteria Catholics wonder why my husband or I are not yet fixed. “You’re not still using the rhythm method, are you?!”

It is irresponsible in their eyes, and the consensus from some people after Teddy’s diagnosis was “Well, you got what you asked for.”

On the flip side, I hear other Catholics telling me to keep having more children, like they got word from God that I don’t have grave circumstances and I should keep rolling the die because “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.” I can’t be expected to keep practicing NFP forever because that’s too hard on a marriage, just welcome the kids as they come!

People please. Don’t insult me and my situation with clichés or implications of my lack of faith.

The sin in the world’s eyes is having another child with SMA, but there are some in the Church who want to judge me for not having more. I can’t win.

As you can see, I’m often at odds with the very people, charities and support networks set up to help me. Sometimes, I can’t even see eye to eye with other Catholics. It’s the side to SMA parenthood I don’t talk about or share because, most of the time I can’t.

I don’t even know why I feel so compelled to share this post. Maybe so that if you’ve felt alone in your struggles to live your faith recently, you can know that you’re not.

I don’t look at my life and wish I wasn’t a Catholic so I wouldn’t be burdened with all these rules, I know that even when it’s hard, it’s right and my life is the better for it. You will have doubts and struggles but following the truth will never let you down in the long haul. Thanks for letting me vent.

Abortion, About Me, coffee clicks, Evangelization, Pro Life

Coffee clicks {volume 7} Prodromal labor, Trumpsta porters, and Italian adventures

August 7, 2015

You better believe I’m up for little more than cultivating reading lists at this point in the week. But what a list it will be, I promise.

Please tell me y’all watched the GOP debate last night? It was, in sum, a sh%tshow featuring various near-bar fights and some cringe-worthy moments for even such an ego as the Donald’s. Speaking of the man with the hair, a family “Whats app” chat session during the debates last night (my family of origin is rabidly political) quickly devolved into hilarity when “trump supporter” was misread by Siri and reincarnated as “Trumpstaporter,” which was then turned into a meme involving the horrible family dog in short time. Moral of the story? Don’t be a Trumpstaporter.

ringo shame

1. But last night, overall? Great television. I’m tapping Rubio and Paul as the winners of the debate with Carson a close second. I really, really like Ben Carson. But I’m not sure he has the steely nerves and the big, bold personality necessary to stand against the Hillary machine and the media scrutiny. I also think he may just be too good for us, on the whole (and in a rare-ish move, I agree wholeheartedly with Matt Walsh). The average American voter may not be smart or moral enough to appreciate his strength of character or intellect. Or maybe I’m just a jaded Denverite who listens to too much NPR, and people are actually more decent than that.

We’ll see.

2. I really thought this baby was coming last night. Busted out the timing app and everything and for 4 hours they were getting stronger and harder and closer. And then I crawled back in bed “just to rest” a minute before calling Grandma for middle-of-the-night childcare backup, and…I fell asleep. Until 7 am. Womp womp. I blame this, which I’m now realizing may be the reason we’ve false-alarmed every single time so far. So maybe the fact that I didn’t go anywhere except to sleep last night was a huge advancement in my pregnancy skills level. Maybe. At any rate I am making great advancements on my Purgatory pay down plan.

3. I’ve never, ever read a compelling pro abortion argument. Until I read this one. Leave it to Jen Fulwiller to reconcile two adversarial world views. Her brain really is a national treasure (as is her amazing hair).

4. I really love St. John Vianney, maybe because I think Vianney would be an adorable (though not on our current list) girl’s name, or maybe because he spent 18 hours a day in the Confessional and signed a petition his parishioners were circulating to get him kicked out of his own parish, but his self sacrifice and humility and holiness under the most unlikely conditions have forever endeared him to me. One of my dearest friends wrote this piece in honor of his feast day earlier this week.

5. Do you read “Tales of Me and the Husband?” She and her family are on the first leg of a multi-month tour of Italy with kids, and I’m having rose-colored flashbacks and drooling over her beautiful photos. But when the envy gets too hot, I click open my accuweather app and check the temp in Rome and then, poof, I’m utterly charmed once again by American suburbia. (For now, at least. I may have my hopes pinned on an autumn sojourn to La città eterna c/o Dave’s work responsibilities and some frequent flier miles, so this wee bambino/a will be acquiring a passport bright and early upon exiting, just like the rest of our crew has.)

Happy weekend to you and yours, and remember to toss a Rosary heavenward tomorrow in honor of St. Dominic. Pray specifically, if you would, for some baby friends who need massive healing: little unborn Gabriel Thompson and baby Sebastian.

coffeeclicks

Abortion, Bioethics, Culture of Death, pregnancy, Pro Life

I finally felt it

August 4, 2015

“It” being the pain, the punch to the gut, the dissipation of oxygen in the room.

I was at a staff meeting this morning and heard our DC correspondent explain in precise language that to obtain an “intact specimen” an unborn baby would likely need to, in fact, become a born baby in order for his or her parts to be of any use to the medical specimen purchasing agents.

For some reason the thought of babies being forcibly delivered alive and then murdered was just gruesome enough to churn even my steely pregnant stomach, and I looked down at the conference table with bile rising in my throat, willing the just-gulped espresso to stay put.

You see, my unborn baby was moving vigorously, as he or she has been keen to do for hours on end these past few days, interspersing bursts of activity with increasingly uncomfortable (and disappointingly transient) contractions that amount to little more than late night cereal bowls and crocodile tears. But as I felt my baby move and I envisioned a smaller, younger baby than mine, delivered alive and then dispatched by syringe or shears, I felt nauseatingly aware on a visceral level that we were talking murder, and that, thank God, I was at long last having an appropriate emotional response to the annihilation of a child.

When I was in 5th grade a girl from my hometown, who played on the same softball league as I did, was kidnapped from her bedroom window during a slumber party, and she was murdered. I’ve never been able to think of Polly Klaas without feeling a sickening drop in my stomach, imagining her innocence and her security shattered in an instant by a monster at her bedroom window while her mom slept down the hall.

I imagine that the 20-week old baby in the video released today had a similar, if less self-aware, experience of shattered innocence and lost security. Dragged from the dark safety of his mother’s womb and dispatched by monsters, his humanity denied and his body violated and finally, destroyed.

Maybe it’s strange, but I’m glad I felt something. I’m glad I haven’t become so jaded by the constant, sickening stream of horror coming through the internet and across the airwaves that I could still hear something genuinely horrifying and feel the depth of depravity associated with it.

Part of why abortion continues to be socially-accepted is because of the hiddenness of it, the illusion of privacy afforded by the womb and a closed operating room. Aborted babies don’t make headlines. We don’t see their tragic faces on billboards or hear their weeping parents begging for their safe return. Their faces are hidden, known only to God save for perhaps a handful of human witnesses. And their parents weep in private, if they weep at all, their cries dismissed and largely unheard.

That’s what makes this investigation so powerful. That’s what makes these videos so damning. The illusion of privacy is shattered, blown apart by tiny limbs and heads and hearts. Abortion apologists and Planned Parenthood supporters must confront the reality of their business, tearing up little humans, and must offer to the general public some sort of explanation for how this can be right, how this can be, period.

Because the former standard response of “it’s not a baby” is no longer feasible, not in an age of digital film and globally-connected social media.

If it’s not a baby, where did the liver come from?

If it’s not a baby, why am I looking at a tiny hand connected to a tiny arm, bent perfectly at 90 degrees at the elbow, same as mine?

If it’s not a baby, why does my own heart clench and recoil at the sound of phrases like “another boy!” and “intact specimens?”

Polly Klaas was robbed of her innocence, her security, and her very life. And we had the decency to weep for her and to grieve as a community shattered by fear and anger.

Pray God that as a nation, as a world, we can confront these videos – and through them the reality of abortion – with hearts similarly open to and moved by injustice.

Polly’s death, too, was a holocaust to selfishness, her life robbed from her by a heinous choice. Let’s don’t let the rhetoric confuse us that there is some fundamental difference in value between her life and Emmett’s. We’ve been blind and deaf too long.

Unborn baby at 20 weeks.
Abortion, motherhood, pregnancy, Pro Life

Be still, and know

August 3, 2015

I am not a good waiter.

(I was, don’t get me wrong, an excellent food service professional back in the day. But that’s not the kind of waiting we’re talking about here.)

This past week or so of sleepless nights have been as much about my stubborn insistence that this baby was going to come out when I say so as about any actual physical discomforts of late pregnancy. Well, mostly, anyway.

When we originally calculated this bebe’s due date I stubbornly refused to divulge the actual date because “it’s just a number, and I always go early.” I thought that my 2 out of 3 past early deliveries have had as much to do with baby’s readiness as they have with my own efforts to dislodge my little womb mate at the time of my choosing. (Never mind the fact that my middle guy was riiiiight on time/4 days late. I conveniently left that outlier on the outskirts of my statistical reasonings.)

So while I’m just embarking on week 39 here, I feel as if I’ve gone over by a good month in terms of what I expected would happen and what has actually transpired.

And it is, by far, the hardest part of pregnancy for me. And right now? It feels like the hardest of all 4 pregnancies, even though I’m surrounded by supportive and helpful siblings and in-laws and basking in great summer weather and all the big kids are sleeping through the night. I’m so blessed. And yet, I grumble.

Over the past few days I’ve been trying to turn more to God not with accusations or demands but with an openness, asking Him for His timetable, His wisdom.

You know what He keeps telling me?

Be still and know that I am God.

THE. WORST. Amiright?

Anything else Lord. Like, maybe a “gird your loins for battle” or even “the Lord will surely deliver you from your time of anguish” because both those appeal to my warlike nature and desperate desire to do and to accomplish.

But nope. He’s all, nah, I want to see you patient. I want to see you surrender. I want you to be still. And to know that I’m the one calling the shots.

In other words, to behave in ways that are nearly antithetical to my choleric need to control, to dominate, and to conquer.

Every morning I wake up and I can’t fathom that those contractions I was pacing through the night before really did peter out, and that I really do have to face another day of this sweaty, enormous undertaking.

Be still.

Every afternoon around 3:45 pm the kids start their recurrent freak out cycle (the witching hour, some call it. I like to sub the “w” for a “b,” personally) and I can’t fathom that I’ll have the energy or the wits to get us all through till 6 pm. I usually think this from a prone position on the (much cooler) basement floor, where we’ve taken to “camping” while we wait for daddy to get home. Mostly they step on me and we read 3 pages from each of the 37 books that are systematically piled near my head. It sounds exactly as fun as it is, which is to say 100% more fun than real camping. And I lift mine weary eyes from the taupe carpet and make pitiful, soundless motions of supplication with my unkempt brows and occasionally tap into my inner Italian grandma with verbalizations of “Mother of God,” and “Lord, save us” and He’s like:

Know that I am God.

But I don’t want to be still, because it makes the contractions slow to a crawl and then dissipate entirely. And while I intellectually assent that of course Lord, you’re God, I’m still over here doing hourly shots of raspberry leaf tea and galloping across the backyard and sending obnoxious text messages to my support team because THIS IS GOING TO WORK, and this baby is coming out on my terms and in my time.

Fool.

Motherhood has taught me nothing if not a real-world application of the oft-Pinned “We plan, God laughs.”

Want your daughter to walk? Be still and know that I am God.

Want to escape your husband’s foreign assignment and repatriate to the familiar surroundings of home and family? Be still and know that I am God.

Want to get through your 6-month-old’s surgery and recovery period? Be still and know that I am God.

Over and over again He has shown me, through these kids and through my task of mothering them, that I’m little more than a willing participant in His design.

Which should give me, noting my excellent track record for screwing things up on my own, tremendous encouragement that they are going to turn out okay in spite of my best efforts.

But I forget over and over again that I’m not “doing” motherhood, that I’m receiving and responding to a call, not inventing the flipping telephone.

Which is why, I presume, He called me to this particular vocation, where I regularly encounter derailed plans and foiled schedules and days void of any sort of perceptible “proof” of productivity at all. I have no final product at a week’s end to submit for the boss’ approval. I have no measurable achievements (unless I start tallying diapers and time outs) of how effectively implemented my managerial strategies have been for current month.

And right now? I have no newborn to cradle and erase the long, uncomfortable memories of pregnancy and delivery. Just a laundry list of first world complaints and physical aches and pains that should be screaming to me “you’re so blessed, you’re so lucky, you’ve been chosen for something with an eternal weight” and not “oh my God, deliver me from this eternal wait. (And the weight too, while You’re at it.)

So I’m trying. And it’s killing me. And that’s probably the point.

And I promise, at some point, I’m going to write about something else. It’s just that I’m trapped in the moment over here, and my entire universe has narrowed to a tiny point of light marked: “L&D, floor 4” and I can’t, for the life of me, see anything else right now.

be still

 

(Also, and far more importantly, please, please, don’t forget to contact your legislators for today’s #defundPlannedParenthood vote. The momentum is there, but they are so well-covered by the current Administration that I truly believe it is going to take a miracle to accomplish their demise.)

Bioethics, Culture of Death, euthanasia, Pro Life, reality check, Women's Health, Women's Rights

Boiling frogs and silent lambs

July 15, 2015

The last thing I want to write about, now that my belly is proceeding me into every room by approximately 2.3 seconds, is wholesaling baby parts. But dammit if that’s not what’s trending in my newsfeed these past 24 hours.

But you and I both know that Facebook has fundamentally myopic tendencies, meaning it caters to your specific likes/beliefs/interests/sexual preferences/cat food brands/etc., and that you won’t see something you disagree with, most of the time. Because you’ve probably unfriended and distanced yourself from anyone with whom you disagree in real life.

I’ve never personally unfriended anyone for such a thought crime, but I’ve been jettisoned from quite a few former college classmate’s lists myself, so I know how it works. And I know that without their presence in my own little echo chamber, things sound a lot more homogenous.

Which is hardly helpful for the purpose of debate and ongoing discussion. But I guess it reinforces our little bubbles. And I guess it’s part of why I was not at all surprised to see that although every other hashtag in my social networks yesterday was #ppsellsbabyparts, it was nothing but crickets from CNN, MSNBC, ABC and the like (oh, but this gem from Cosmopolitan is rich). I even forced myself to stroll through 30 minutes of Anderson Cooper last night on the treadmill, knowing full well that he wasn’t going to cover the story. But I had to see for myself.

Before I go any further I want to confess this: I’m disgusted, first and foremost, by my own deep apathy for the situation. When the news broke yesterday that Planned Parenthood had fallen victim to yet another undercover investigative journalism sting, this one featuring a high-ranking medical officer in the company discussing selling dead baby parts for profit over a leafy kale salad and red wine lunch, my blood pressure was unchanged.

My first reaction, internally, was something like “well of course they’re selling human organs for profit. Why wouldn’t they?”

Blase. Utterly unsurprised. And the longer I sit with the news, the more disgusted and disturbed I am by my own emotionally-neutral state. For God’s sake, I’m 9 months pregnant. I should be sobbing when I listen to testimony about “carefully crushing above the neck and below the pelvis, to keep abdominal organs intact;” because I can’t even get through most bedtimes without tears, lately.

But there’s nothing.

Sure, I’m disgusted on an intellectual level. But the gut reaction of horror, pain, and revulsion is notably absent.

And I blame myself as much as I blame our violent, twisted, sadistic media – both news and entertainment.

When I was a young teenager, maybe 13 or 14 years old, I saw my first real horror movie: Silence of the Lambs. (I’m almost 100% sure without my parent’s knowledge.) It horrified me on such a deep level that I honestly cannot, to this day, look at Anthony Hopkins in photographs or in any other movies. The evil he so convincingly portrayed in the character of Hannibal Lector was so profound that I was shaken to my very core.

My developing teenage mind was assaulted by the idea that a anyone could eat human beings, that this man could be so intellectually superior to the average person and yet ensnared by such demonic evil as to be able to casually remark about “nice chianti and Fava beans” whilst dabbing traces of his victim’s blood from his lips with a fine linen napkin.

Fast forward 15 years or so and we find ourselves immersed in such a culture of violence, both on the news and in our so-called entertainment, that I doubt Hopkin’s performance would push any envelopes or raise any eyebrows today.

Cannibalism? Yawn. Saw that on CSI last week. Scalping and skinning? Ho-hum, isn’t ISIS doing that in Siberia or somewhere right now?

And that’s why this can happen. That’s why a corporate behemoth like Planned Parenthood can continue to gobble up tax dollars and butcher up babies all while convincing the public of their benevolent generosity towards “underprivileged” women and minorities.

Feminism, my ass.

Turns out it might be closer to cannibalism, of all the possible isms it could resemble. And that even when such a story breaks, the news rolls upon deaf ears and hardened, calloused hearts, worn weary by decades of daily doses of demonic violence and evil emanating from our screens and from our newspapers.

Shame on us. Shame on a world that, when news of the trafficking of tiny human hearts and livers hits 1% of the mainstream news, good men and women don’t take up arms and rush to the defense of the defenseless. Don’t start a revolution.

When I was younger I used to wonder about the German people and why nobody tried to get out ahead of Hitler, how an entire nation could have fallen under his evil spell.

Now I know. Now I see, firsthand, that none of us are immune to the horrors of our day. And that as the temperature rises, the frog slowly cooks, oblivious to his own imminent peril as the mercury creeps ever upward. And that at a certain point the human mind, when confronted with such appalling and obvious wickedness, shuts down or short circuits in cowardice or fear or apathy or, or, or …

I’m still searching for my “or.” I’m still trying to figure out why I’m not physically standing in front of a Planned Parenthood clinic this morning, blocking the doorway with my enormous pregnant belly so that not one more woman, not one more child is destroyed at their hands.

Instead I’m writing this up in a coffee shop, my own unborn collection of human parts rolling around beneath my too-tight skin, kicks visible to the nearest barista even through a layer of fat and muscle and spandex.

And I don’t understand.

frogs and lambs

Abortion, Catholics Do What?, Culture of Death, Evangelization, Pro Life

What ongoing conversion looks like, in spandex

May 13, 2015

Well, that was a little weird…I never imagined the post I’d finally have to disable comments for – after all the crazy, controversial, hard to swallow stuff we’ve discussed here over the years – would be about pet parenthood. Internet, you so crazy.

It’s worth noting, I think, that when something is so controversial, has become so much of an aptly-named cultural sacred cow that you mustn’t dare to question it lest you become the target of vicious ad hominem attacks…you’re probably on to something.

Know what I mean?

(Oh, and just an FYI, if your diatribe is so incoherent/caustic/profane that I wouldn’t let you say it to me in my living room…it’s getting deleted.)

Anywho, I plan to revisit the insanity that is the fur baby phenomenon sometime at a later date, because there’s a whole lot more there to unpack, but for now let’s sail into more civil waters and talk about race relations and climate change.

(Just kidding.)

What I really want to talk about is how I spent the end of the day yesterday publicly debating the death penalty with a 50 year old man at the gym, and how surprising it was for me to find myself arguing not for capital punishment, but against it.

(Gosh, this one’s going to be touchy too, isn’t it? Forging ahead anyway.)

So there I was, stretching out after a vigorous 2.5 mile stroll to the tune of back-to-back episodes of Flip or Flop when the conversation of another gym goer and his personal trainer became so animated I couldn’t help but listen in. I probably could have refrained from commenting if only the gym rat in question hadn’t seen fit to illustrate his enthusiastically pro death penalty position by turning, making a gun out of his thumb and pointer finger, and pretending to shoot me in all my spandex-d pregnant glory while loudly asking his dumbfounded spotter,

“What about now, is it okay if I shoot her and her baby? Now do I deserve to die?”

They probably didn’t count on me joining in on their very public discourse at that juncture, but let me just say, he picked the wrong pregnant woman to mess with, and on the wrong day.

Oh.no.he.didn’t.

I raised a sweaty eyebrow at him from my precarious position on the mat and unleashed the full force of my motherly hormones.

“Excuse me, do you think it’s appropriate what you just did there, using me and my unborn child as a prop in your ridiculous argument?”

Crickets, then hysterical laughter masking the obvious panic in both their eyes. (Especially the gym employee’s, I might add. Don’t worry buddy, I won’t report you. Wink.)

“Furthermore,” I continued, building up steam, “the conversation you’re having? It’s crazy to suggest that shooting up everyone on death row is going to contribute in some way to the healing and rebuilding of our broken culture.” He had been listing off mass murderers and terrorists of recent notoriety, Holmes and Tsarnov being his two final entries.

He chucked at me and guffawed a patronizing “you don’t want to be debating philosophy with me, sweetheart.”

Oh, hell yes I did.

“Is that right?” I returned sweetly, cocking my head. “You probably shouldn’t have invited me into the conversation the way you did, then.”

We went back and forth for a good 10 minutes, trading statistics (he was vvvvvery excited to point out that bullets cost only .$35 cents a piece when I asked him what was the value of a single human life) and concepts of the soul, morality, divine justice and the price of vengeance.

I don’t think I changed his mind, and he certainly didn’t change mine, but the last exchange between us will haunt me forever.

“What about the person whose duty the execution itself will fall to? What about the burden on his or her soul, to force an innocent third party to take a human life at the instruction of the State? What about the cost to their soul?”

“Doesn’t matter,” my trigger happy friend shook his head emphatically, “the animal forfeited his right to life when he did the crime. Now he has to die.”

“But,” I persisted, “there’s a difference between a concealed weapon carrying movie-goer taking him out during the killing spree (dear God I wish that had been the case) and a prison official flipping a switch 3 years after the fact. One is self defense, the other is another murder.”

“Hell no it’s not,” gym guy shouted, “it’s vengeance! Justice is ugly!”

And then I pointed one swollen finger to the ceiling of the gym and shook my head slowly back and forth, “not His justice.”

He laughed and waved me off and I returned my foam roller to the pile and started to walk away. But I stopped and turned to him and left him with one final zinger,

“My dad’s a card-carrying NRA member, just so you know. I know how to shoot a gun, and I wish to God someone with a concealed carry permit had been there in the audience that night, to take down James Holmes when he opened fire in a theater full of innocents. But there wasn’t. Killing him now, 3 years after the fact, and calling it justice? That’s not self defense. And it doesn’t bring any of his victims back to life.”

He waved me off and gave me a thumbs up and said something about the Second Amendment and we parted ways, and I dazedly wove my way through rows of weight training equipment to the exit.

It was a weird ending to an even weirder day, and as I slipped behind the wheel of my mini van to drive home, maneuvering my growing belly as I turned the key, the adrenaline draining from my tired body, I couldn’t believe that I’d said the things I’d said.

One, because public discourse with strangers at the gym isn’t exactly my forte, especially while visibly pregnant. But more than that, I was shocked to discover that the things I’d said to him were truly coming from my heart and not just my brain.

Because, you see, up until a year or two ago, you’d have found us both on the same side of the argument: his.

I thought about how transformed this particular area of my heart had become, even now in my thirties when my opinions and worldview were fairly well-shaped, and how unlikely it was that I’d actually done a complete 180 on the matter.

College Jenny would not have recognized mother-0f-4-Jenny, let’s just say that.

Justice has always been easier for me to swallow than mercy. But the older I get, the more I see how desperately I depend upon the later, even while more naturally identifying with the former.

Most of all I thought about all the conversations I’ve had with friends and strangers alike about the issue of abortion, particularly the “hard cases” involving rape and incest. Their arguments all hinged very much on a warped understanding of justice, a very real – though misdirected – “eye for an eye” mentality.

“If I could be won over to the side of mercy for the most heinous criminals, there’s no pro-abortion apologist who is beyond redemption,” I found myself almost whispering in the silence of the car.

Truly, none of us are beyond hope, not until the very moment of our death.

Such is the wisdom of our Mother the Church who calls us to ongoing, lifelong conversion, both in matters to which we readily give our allegiance and to the harder things, the ones that cause us to wrestle and struggle and catch our breath in frustration. Where there is resistance to the wisdom of the Church, there is room for the Holy Spirit, just so long as we leave the door open.

God, help me leave even the tiniest crack. You’ve done more with less, I can see that plainly now. (And also, at least for the next 3 months? Maybe fewer opportunities like that one, because I don’t know how good it was for my blood pressure. K, thanks.)

ocean mercy

Abortion, Catholic Spirituality, Catholics Do What?, Pro Life

And the Word became a clump of cells

March 25, 2015

And dwelt among us.

As I sit here halfway cooked with this latest addition to our little family, feeling the effects of pregnancy with every fiber of my being, I’m also thinking about Mary.

I’m thinking about how her life changed radically with a message from an angel, a shocking invitation  into something so far beyond her own plans that all she could manage was calm and reasonable “Yes, but how can this be?” – going straight for the logical inquiry over the more obvious “why is there a terrifying angel appearing in my room,” or the more nuanced “God wants to have a baby with me?!” route.

One thing that didn’t seem to have occurred to her?

To question whether or not there was, in fact, a baby involved.

God’s proposal to humanity, sealed in the flesh through Mary’s fiat, was – and is – a Person.

Not a potential person. Not an eventual person.

A real person. From the moment of His conception, miraculous (note: NOT immaculate. Wrong feast day) thought it was, He was both fully divine and fully human, and Mary became fully a mother that day when she gave her consent and conceived by the Holy Spirit.

Which is why the argument against the personhood of the unborn has always struck me as so profoundly stupid in light of the Incarnation.

He was there, from the beginning. His little cousin John the Baptist knew as much, and he leapt in recognition at 12-week-old embryonic Jesus from his own uterine perspective.

Any woman who has ever been pregnant can attest to the incredible other-ness of being with child. From the very earliest days following conception, that baby is there, growing and changing and developing as humans continue to do over their entire lifespan, but undeniably and irreversibly there. You can kill the baby at any point, of course, but you can’t undo what has already been done: the creation of an entirely new human person.

And that’s what makes today so special. That’s why if you count forward in time 9 months from today in the Church calendar you land on the embodiment of the Incarnation: Christmas. He arrives today in a  real sense, tucked safely in the womb of His Mother and ours, and while He remains hidden for another 9 months of growth and development, history is forever altered because He now exists in human flesh.

So happy feast day, Mama Mary, from one gestating mother to another. Thanks for changing the course of salvation history and loosing the bonds of Eve’s disobedience by your generous and unreserved “yes.”

We owe you – quite simply – everything.