Arwen/Elizabeth

Outdone

About six months before Camilla was born, Bryan and I calculated that if we wanted to have children fewer than three years apart, and given the two-and-a-half years it had taken to conceive Camilla, we needed to start trying pretty much immediately. Ridiculous, of course, since I was pregnant at the time, but we were in a goofy mood that day so we decided we would officially go on record - between ourselves, anyway - as "trying" for baby number two. We thought we were pretty cute.

What we didn't think was that it would actually work.

Two weeks ago at Mass I had a particularly fruitful meditation time after communion. I'd been realizing that I needed to store up some emotional reserves for the upcoming birth of my sister's baby; as much as I've been doing well with being nothing but happy about her pregnancy, I knew that the appearance of an actual infant could make me struggle a little to hold on to the peace I've been enjoying over the past months. As I knelt there and looked up at the crucifix I prayed the prayer I've prayed so many times before: for the grace to let His will be mine. And I was renewed, as I've been so many times before, in the assurance that whatever that will is, I can come up with no better path for my life.

The funny thing was that I also realized during that meditation that there is a part of me that sees more years of childlessness as the lighter burden. I'd been feeling a little unwell recently, had been tired and nauseated, I assumed because of some bug, and it had reminded me that pregnancy, although certainly a blessing, can sometimes take the form of a cross as well. The hardness of daily life as a mother - and watching my sister prepare to bring home a newborn all over again - had reminded me that motherhood itself can be a path to sanctity through suffering. And although I know through personal experience that motherhood also brings more joy than infertility, there was a tiny part of me, in that moment, that was slightly relieved at the idea that I might draw the physically-easier (although spiritually more challenging, for me anyway) card and spend the next years being sanctified in my wait for a child rather than in bearing more of them.

Really, if I'd been writing a story I don't think I could have written it better. Foreshadowing, plot twists, and the charming heroine oblivious to the whole drama. Very, very clever.

It was (I thought) cycle day twenty-four and so I had no suspicions about my daily-increasing exhaustion and nausea. But that day, Sunday, after a depressing afternoon of I-just-want-a-nap and I'm-hungry-but-all-food-sounds-disgusting, I finally agreed that it might be a good idea if Bryan ran out and bought a pregnancy test. Not, of course, because it could possibly be positive. But just so I could rule it out and get on with my life as the victim of an icky virus.

I cannot overemphasize how sure I was that the test would be negative. It was cycle day 24, in the evening, way too early to possibly be having pregnancy symptoms, and anyway I'd thought I hadn't even ovulated that month. I was so certain that the news would be nothing that I took the test when Bryan was in the bedroom putting Camilla to sleep for the night. When the second blue line showed up, clear as day, I was shocked, and actually grabbed for the instructions to make sure I wasn't supposed to be looking for a cross instead of two lines, looking for something, anything, that would explain this insanity. No, there it was. The test was definitely telling me that I was pregnant.

I stared at the crazy little thing for a while. I then found a calendar and puzzled for a long time over when this could possibly have happened so that I'd already be having symptoms and getting a strong positive pregnancy test on the evening of cycle day twenty-four. (It's taken me two weeks to come to this conclusion, but I've finally decided that my last period must have been not a period at all but misleadingly-timed implantation spotting.) I must have shaken my head a hundred times, I was so bewildered by the whole thing.

Just before my head started to ache from all the shaking, and an interminable twenty minutes after the pregnancy test had dried, Bryan came out of the bedroom. So trusting was he of my earlier assurances that it would be negative that he was completely unsuspecting, and I had to remind him that I'd been going to take a test before I showed it to him and blew his socks off. Then he stared at the wall for a long, long while.

I left him and drove to the store to buy Unisom which was one of my reliable nausea-reducers during my last pregnancy, and when I came home I had been listening to Fernando Ortega in the car and my face was covered with happy tears and Bryan and I sat together on the couch, holding hands, meditating on things to come and God's amazing goodness to us.

And still, and always, it remains true that the things He brings to us are far greater than anything we could imagine ourselves.

Leaving Town

Tomorrow we're driving up north, and we'll be there until Tuesday.

Which reminds me, did I ever tell you about my epiphany regarding why I dread car trips so much now? I've never loved them but since having Billa I've come to really really hate them, and I didn't quite understand why. I just felt sort of like a failure: I don't like to travel with my kid. This is me.

But then, after, oh gosh, months of this, I suddenly realized: I get carsick! Not emergency stop-the-car carsick, just mildly nauseated, but mildly nauseated can be pretty darn misery-making all on its own. I'm fine if I sit in the front seat and stare straight ahead, but having a baby in the car precludes that. To keep her entertained I've got to be turning around all the time, or I've got to sit in the backseat, and both those things are awful. Alternatively, I can drive and let Bryan deal with the baby (which is what I usually do) but that makes him grumpy because he actually enjoys highway driving, and it makes me tired because I don't really enjoy it.

And this whole time I'd been feeling guilty because I have all this anxiety and dread every time we have to take Milla on a long drive in the car, but it turns out I have an excuse! I'd gotten so used to the carsickness that I had begun to assume it was an obstacle everyone dealt with, but no. I am special. Boo to the family road trips, I say, and I won't feel bad about it.

Anyway, our drive up to Bryan's parents' place in northern Michigan is about four-and-a-half hours, which is not so bad. Also we will have friends with us to help entertain the toddler and meet all of her many loudly-voiced needs, so that will make it better. And the weather up there is supposed to be nice and cool: high 60s and lower 70s. So all is sunshine and roses and happy little puppies in my head today.

I really look forward to our trips up north, I have to say. There's something wonderful about being in a place where the biggest decision you have to make on any given day is whether you want to go for a walk in the woods or stroll through the charming little town or hike on the beach or just stay where you are and nap and read all afternoon. It's bliss.

Also, if you want, you can play in the dirt.

Camazon

This morning my brother sent me this picture with the comment "look how fat your child was":

And now she looks like this:

Camilla was solidly in the 75th percentile for weight and the 90th percentile for height all throughout her first year. She wasn't an insanely huge baby like I was, but she was a decent little chubster. I loved her rolls and her squeezable cheeks and the chunkiness of her.

But slowly, every day as I dressed and cuddled and held and nursed that little body, it changed. I probably wouldn't have noticed it, but we had Daniel around for comparison; he slimmed down first - a "trim little guy" we called him - but then Camilla's arms and legs and belly got thinner and eventually, strange as it was, she looked skinnier than he was. And at her 18-month check-up she was down to the 50th percentile for weight, and, at 34.75 inches tall, way up above the curve for height.

I honestly couldn't care less about the weight thing as long as my kid is healthy, and actually I'm kind of touched that it looks like she's inherited the string-bean build I had as a child, because she seems to have gotten all her other physical characteristics from her father. But I am a little freaked out about the height thing. I am 5'9", which is tall but not insanely so. I've got little hang-ups about it - for instance, I feel like an Amazon around any woman shorter than 5'3" - but for the most part - and despite being married to a man who is a scant half-inch taller than I am - I've made peace with my height.

However, were I a couple inches taller I think the making-peace would have been a lot harder. And although the parents'-height formula for calculating a kid's adult height predicts Camilla will be only 5'7", the other formula I've heard about entails doubling the child's height at, variously, 18 months or 2 years. (The article I just linked to says 3 years, but that just seems crazy to me, since the CDC says 50th percentile for a three-year-old girl is 37.5 inches tall, and that doubled is 6'3". I know the new generation is going to be taller, but sheesh.) If we double Milla's height now, that will make her 5'9.5", just a little taller than I am. If we double what I expect her two-year-old height will be, she'll be six feet tall or taller. Um, yeah. I just hope for her sake that the parents'-height formula turns out to be the reliable one.

She's taller than Daniel now, by the way. And she knows how to show him who is in charge.

Poor guy.

Ducks Are Not Lame

So, what does it say about my parenting style that Camilla now goes around saying "laaame" all the time? I like to think it means I'm edgy-slash-carefree, but I have a sinking feeling it actually means I'm bucking for a call from Milla's kindergarten teacher three-and-a-half years from now when she goes around inadvertently stomping all over her classmates' self-esteem. Hmm.

Other than the endless sleep issues, which I have decided are God's ways of giving Bryan and me a chance to work off some purgatory time, being a parent of twenty-month-old Camilla is pretty much the best thing ever. I love twenty months. LOVE it. They're like little sponges at this age, and it thrills me to watch Milla discovering the world around her. It seems like a miracle that she can absorb things so quickly, that I can teach her a new word in a matter of minutes, that I can show her how to work one of her toys and she'll remember how to do it twenty-four hours later. I mean, I can learn things pretty quickly, but I've been able to do it for a while now. A year ago Camilla didn't even know how to crawl or make any sort of coherent noises, and now she practically has better retention than I do!

Even more than the sponge thing, though, I love twenty months because of the joy Camilla brings to every aspect of her life. Tonight at the grocery store Bryan found a set of little ducks with flashing lights inside them, and bought them for Camilla. She was thrilled, of course, and her delight did not diminish during the entire hour she had to play before bedtime. She carried all three ducks in hands barely big enough to contain them, squeaking, "Duck! Duck! Duck!" excitedly and constantly.

It would take, at minimum, a surprise beach vacation or one of my siblings getting engaged to give me reason to sustain that much enthusiasm. For Milla, all it took was a few dollars worth of LED-lit plastic. An attitude like that can't fail to be contagious. And that is why I love twenty months, and why I'm having more fun than ever.

Why we're having more fun than ever, I should say.

What My Parents Did Right

SteveG's comment on last week's post about discipline put me on a mental train of thought that has clarified and contextualized a whole bunch of ideas that have been stewing in my brain for a while now. In the interest of this whole blogging-more-often thing I'm trying, I thought I'd share.

My parents are excellent parents. Not perfect, of course - a perfect parent is an impossibility because a perfect person is an impossibility - but pretty darn awesome. I attribute to them many, many good things that I have learned and become over the years. Most importantly, they can be credited for teaching me to love God, others, and myself in an ordered way. This is an ability by which the quality of human existence is measured, most vitally at the end of every person's life. If, by the grace of God, I reach heaven some day, much of the credit for it must go to my parents.

And the reason they could do what they did so well is, I've finally realized, largely due to the way they approached the task of being parents to us children: not as a job at which they might fail or excel, but as a relationship. It was important to them not that they *achieve* in any outwardly visible way, but that they *love* to the best of their ability. The quality of their parenting would ultimately be self-measured not by the impressiveness of anything we children did or became, but by the quality of our relationships with God and those around us, which would be a reflection of and a reflection upon our relationships with our parents themselves.

They made what are, culturally, some fairly unorthodox choices, not least of which was the decision to be open to as many children as they had. With today's high-pressure attitude toward parenting, it seems like a lot of people understandably feel overwhelmed by the idea of more than a couple of kids. The array of things to "get right" is dizzying. To make the exactly correct combination of research-endorsed parenting choices with one or two children is daunting; to make it six or eight times over seems impossible. But my parents, by being able to see past the societally standard idea of parenting, were able to embrace the idea of a big family without fear, and thus to provide us with one of the best advantages of our childhood, the fact that there were so many of us. The necessary decrease of material goods and opportunities was a small price to pay for the way that my parents loved us better by welcoming all of us. Having my siblings to love is one of the best blessings of my life, and it didn't hurt that growing up as part of a passel of children provided daily object lessons in the importance of selflessness and the truth that love is not finite.

Mom and Dad did some other unusual things besides just having a bunch of us. For instance, throughout all the years I lived at home, I never had a curfew. This was not because my parents didn't care where I was or what I'd be doing. We talked about those things, and occasionally the discussion would include a mention of when I should be home (although they never once stayed up to check that I was home on time) but in general, I was in charge of my own nights, and did not have a curfew on weekends or in summer. Some of my friends thought this was crazy, and I'm sure some of their parents did too, but to me - and to my parents as well, I think - it wasn't about the rule or the lack thereof. Giving me the authority to make my own decisions about when to come home at night was the natural continuation of a relationship we'd spent a decade and a half building. They trusted me to make good decisions, just as I trusted them to support me and love me no matter what. I did make good decisions, too. My parents might have been surprised if they had known just how late I sometimes chose to come home (or maybe not - I've been surprised in retrospect to learn just how much they knew) but they wouldn't have been at all surprised or displeased by the things I was doing. It was important to me that I not disappoint them, even when I was doing things they'd never find out about. They must have known this, and so the lack of curfew was not an act of irresponsibility but an act of trust on my parents' part, and one that had a net positive on our relationship and the development of my character.

So my parents did some stuff that is not normally considered award-winning parenting, yet it was! (Well, they haven't won any awards yet as far as I know, but look how well I turned out! Shouldn't that count for something?) But my point, in case it's gotten obscured here, is not that good parents make the choices my parents made. No, my point in using those two examples of unorthodox choices that turned out to be good is this: being a good parent is not about the choices. It's about the relationship. I'm not making a banner that says "No Curfews for All! Kids Will Turn Out GREAT!" But for me personally, forgoing the curfew was an excellent choice, and my parents didn't care about whether it would make them look irresponsible. They were willing to buck a cultural norm (although if you knew my parents, you'd know that bucking cultural norms is more a way of life for them than it is an act of bravery) for the sake of their relationship with me, not to make me like them but to show me that they trusted me and expected me to be responsible for living up to the standards they'd set for my life. And it worked really, really well.

I think I've mentioned before that the only piece of parenting advice my father has ever given me was "trust yourself." I took it to heart, figuring that advice from Dad would help me to be the kind of parent he is, and his words have been my talisman through the past twenty months. They're my best weapon against doubt and against feeling overwhelmed.

But the funny thing is, I've just realized that I might not have fully understood the truth of what my dad was trying to tell me. I took "trust yourself" to mean that I should make confident choices, that knowing myself to be competent, I should be able to relax in the knowledge that I could do this job well.

While my dad would probably agree with that statement, I don't think it's what he really meant. He wasn't intending that I should take comfort in the fact that I could *do* parenting well; he was intending that I should take comfort in the fact that I could *be* a parent well. Because - the strangeness of its various requisite tasks notwithstanding - being a parent is not something radically new. I've spent my whole life learning to love those around me, learning that what is important is not how I act upon them but how I respond to them, learning to be a bigger, better person through relationships. Being a parent is merely a continuation of that. In some ways it is radically new, most notably in the shock of the huge, overwhelming love I have for Camilla and in the enormity of the fact that I am responsible for her. But those things don't change the truth: before she came along, I already knew how to do this. I knew how to be needed, I knew how to have a conversation, I knew how to love and be loved.

Trusting myself means resting secure in that knowledge, and letting all the minutiae of parenthood fall into place in light of the love we have for our daughter and the love she has for us, and our real dedication to putting that love first and growing it in an ordered way.

And that's why, as my father himself (hope it's okay that I outed you, Dad!) puts it so eloquently, debating the minutiae is conducting the discussion on the wrong axis. That's not to say that information can't be useful, but ultimately, *what* decisions we make as parents will never be as important as *why* we make them, because it's the foundation of our relationships with our children that makes all the difference. To me, anyway, that's a remarkably freeing realization.

Things That Have Made Me Groan or Smile Recently

Groan: Camilla learning to take off her own diapers.
Smile: Camilla learning to say, "Maaaaaan!"

Groan: Finding out that some good friends, for reasons far out of their control, will not be able to join us on a long-planned trip up north at the end of June.
Smile: Finding out that some other good friends are going to be able to come instead.

Groan: My sister's OB's prediction at her 33-week appointment that she'd go into labor way too early if she didn't start taking it easy.
Smile: The fact that she's 35 weeks today, and so far no labor in sight.

Groan: Camilla's incessant demands that I use the nearest writing implement to inscribe her cousin's name on the nearest sheet of paper. ("Nan-o? Name? Nan-o? Name?")
Smile: Camilla's shrieks of delight when she sees her beloved cousin.

Groan: The weather in Duluth, Minnesota over Memorial Day weekend.
Smile: Getting to see my brother there.

Groan: The filling of my fresh blueberry pie slopping out as liquid when I cut the first piece.
Smile: The fact that the pie still tasted delicious.

Groan: Little Miss Insurance Company's (we call her that because her first answer is always "no") constant use of the negative.
Smile: The fact that said Miss IC now has the verbal skills to ask for pretty much anything she wants.

Groan: Temperatures in the 90s.
Smile: The sprinkler and sun tea.

Groan: Bryan's last-minute business trip over Tuesday night of this week.
Smile: Getting to stay home this weekend, a rare treat this time of year.

I'll Wait Until She's Grown to Collect My Award

A year and a half ago when I spent hours of every day pacing the floor trying to get infant Camilla to stop screaming when all I wanted was to sit down for a few minutes for the love of all that is holy, I thought about how happy I would be when the challenges of parenting became mostly mental and emotional rather than exclusively physical. I'm a cerebral person and I do well with mental and emotional challenges.

I was envisioning helping a preschooler learn to make friends, or a grade-schooler deal with homework frustration. I failed to consider the mental/emotional challenge that would come much sooner, and which is currently the biggest pain-in-my-neck part of parenting:

Discipline.

My parents were pretty awesome at the discipline game. For instance, every single time they took our family out for dinner, at least one fellow diner would remark on how well-behaved we children were. And yes, probably people had mentally lowered their standards when they saw the passel of us coming into the restaurant and were surprised that we behaved even passably, but still. We were well-behaved, and it can be credited to Mom and Dad.

In my mind, the thing that is most to my parents' credit is the fact that they made it clear to us that they disciplined us for our own good. I've known more than a few people whose parents communicated to them the message that it was important for them, the kids, to behave well publicly so that they, the parents, would look good. My parents were not like this. Yes, they wanted us to behave well in public because they wanted us to behave well everywhere, but disrespect and disobedience at home received the same response as disrespect and disobedience in public.

Like any kid, I was furious with my parents on many occasions for the penalties they enacted or the privileges they rescinded in response to my actions, but deep in my heart I always realized that they were right. More than that, I realized that I wouldn't really have wanted them to act differently, because without the motivation of their discipline I would have had the responsibility of molding my own character. As a mere kid, I was unsuited to do that. Stepping up and making sure it happened was one of the most loving things my parents ever did for me.

As a parent now myself, I really want to follow their example.

But what I didn't think about - I knew it, but hadn't consciously considered it - was the fact that discipline would have to start so early, before my child was rational or even functionally verbal. Camilla was only thirteen or fourteen months old when she started hitting us, dozens of times a day. We instituted a gentle response of holding her arms and counting to ten that managed to mostly eradicate the hitting fairly quickly, but during those days I was surprised at how exhausting it was to have to respond the same way every single time, so that she'd learn that the action always garnered the same reaction.

When I used to think about discipline I thought about discussing moral implications with my children, helping them to understand the meanings of their actions and become better, more loving people. But a toddler has no concept of those things. With a 20-month-old, laying the foundations of discipline involves the basic task of showing her that we mean what we say. And oh, is it ever exhausting. This morning we were playing outside and, moments after I'd told Milla that she HAD to wear her sun hat, she took it off and threw it across the lawn. I didn't want to put down my book and get up from my chair in the shade; I wanted to ignore what had happened. And for a moment I just sat there, but the inconsistency between what I'd said and what I was doing was dissonance shrieking in my head, so I heaved my lazy behind out of my chair and enforced my words. (Surprisingly, and unusually, Camilla did not respond by shrieking.)

I was kinda proud of myself afterward. That chair was comfortable, and the sprinkler had been watering my feet. Am I Super-Mom or what?

In all seriousness, I sometimes wonder if I'll actually enjoy parenting more as the physical challenges decrease (my. child. will. someday. sleep. through. the. night. repeat.) and the mental/emotional ones increase. Showing consistency with a pre-rational person is exhausting, to say the least. On the other hand, an older child will have more and better weapons for fighting back than our daughter's current technique of squealing and running in the other direction, a method that is far more amusing than effective.

This is all idle conjecture of course, and actually I find parenting in general to be far more fun and rewarding than it is difficult. I do, however, often take the easy way out: right now I'm waiting to see if Milla will eat the crackers she dumped on the floor behind my chair (what? as far as she knows, I haven't seen them) so that I can avoid the task of making her clean them up. Like I said, Super-Mom, that's me.

Still Here

Whenever it's been more than a week since I last posted here, I get all weird and nervous about it. I feel like I can't just come back and write something lame; I should to blow you away to make up for my long absence.

Dude, do I need to get over myself or what? I have to let go of my perfectionism and be okay with just getting something on the page, whether it's potentially award-winning (ha!) or not. I was like that during November when I was doing NaBloPoMo, and I've never enjoyed blogging as much as I did that month.

So I'm gonna try that approach again.

Of course, this brings us to the real question: how many pictures of a toddler can you stand to see before it starts to get old?

Crafty child that she is, she'll test your limits.

We are loving summer right now. It's been mighty hot, and I was going to do a quick rant to the weather gods about how temperatures in the 70s and 80s are much preferable to the 90s, but then I read about Maggie and her Juneary and realized how good I've got it. I'll take Summer In Overdrive over Extended Early Spring any day. Plus the current temp here - after several days of super-heat - is only 76, so how can I complain?

I remember the summers of my youth as magical times: lazy days filled with water-balloon fights and bike rides and hours lying in the hammock or perched in my favorite tree with my book and my iced sun tea. (It was a big tree, and I climbed it regularly while carrying both a novel and a plastic lidded cup of tea. I'm sure I could not do this now, but at age ten, I had talents.) Then I got older and summer meant a summer job. The nights could still be magical but the days had lost their power; the heat of the summer sun connoted toil in the same way the crispness of fall meant new school supplies. I figured I'd never love summer again the way I had as a carefree kid. That is probably true, but I'm finding that having a kid who's old enough to enjoy summer herself is giving the season some of its magic back. There's nothing like watching a child wearing only a swim diaper and a pair of garden clogs cavorting in a sprinkler to make me feel young again. Sure, it's not the same as being a kid myself - I'm the one who's in charge of sunblock and of making sure that 700 tiny pieces of grass and leaves don't get carried into the house, and I'm the one who has to keep an eye on my watch and get inside in time to fix dinner - but summer still feels pretty darn easy and fun to me right now.

How do you feel about the season? Happy or just annoyed about the weather?

Being Found Where I Am

I am not afraid, although I am a little ashamed, to admit that I am not always as proud as I should be to tell people what I do.  I am convinced wholeheartedly that the work I do is noble and necessary, that it makes good use of my talents, and that in doing it I am an asset to my family.  I do not believe that to be valuable, a person must be employed outside the home.  I know that power and status and fiscal usefulness do not equal value, and I am proud (if being proud of such a thing is not a logical contradiction) to have such a humble vocation.

Unfortunately, in moments of weakness I sometimes forget my convictions, and blush a little as I mumble that I am a stay-at-home mother, mentally adding an "only" before the words.  This is in spite of the fact that I would be devastated if a force outside my control ever forced that circumstance to change.  I'm not proud of it, of course not, but in honesty I must admit that I am sometimes affected by the ideas that saturate the society around me, and wish that I had something more impressive to offer when, inevitably, a person asks me what I do.

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I didn't realize it until afterward, but one of the gifts that our 30-month wait for Camilla gave me was a previously unparalleled fruitfulness in my spiritual life.  Reflected in my prayer journal from that period is a long, deep conversation with God, in which I learned much about Him and about myself.  I did my share of railing, certainly, but as I read my journal from that time I can remember the way I heard His voice so clearly, how close I felt to Him, how much grace I received from that years-long conversation between us.

The advent of Camilla changed that.  It wasn't so much that I didn't have time for prayer - I've learned prayer is something for which I must make time, since the right time for it never presents itself easily - as that I didn't have the emotional energy to throw myself into my meditations the way I had.  Besides which, I didn't have any struggles through which to fight.  I still needed a steady stream of grace to guide me in my day-to-day life, but I was no longer dealing with the fear and despair which had dogged me pre-motherhood, and didn't need to ask anymore for the extra jolts of grace which had saved me from them so many times.

In the early months of Camilla's life I sometimes felt disappointed in myself.  Motherhood was a beautiful thing; I was so happy; shouldn't my spiritual life be feeling more vibrant than ever?  I still loved my Lord the same as ever, still felt the assurance of His hand guiding me every day, but the tears of fervency that had previously been my regular companion during Mass visited me only infrequently, and I felt that something was missing.  Or rather, in the absence of the level of passion I'd sustained pre-Milla, I felt like I should feel that something was missing.

I did, slowly, rededicate myself to my spiritual life.  Some of it came naturally: I sang praise songs in the rocking chair, I said Memorares as I nursed Camilla to sleep.  Some of it was harder: it took some serious self-discipline to establish near-daily Morning Prayer as a part of my routine, and Bryan and I had to make Evening Prayer a part of the family bedtime ritual in order to assure we'd say it every day.

And even after all that was incorporated, I still felt like I should feel something was missing.  Shouldn't a spiritual life be serious, cerebral, full of passion and discovery?  Shouldn't it be dramatic?  And I knew that I was not praying nearly as much - nor as attentively, prayer with a baby in the room being what it is - as I had been before I became a mother.  It just seemed... not enough, somehow.

The funny thing was that even as I continued to be dissatisfied with my spiritual life, I was seeing the grace of God at every turn.  He had never been clearer to me, and never more clearly good.  I was not troubled, not afraid, not doubting.  I had never been so sure of His presence.

I also continued to move forward in my understanding of God's will for me.  Before Milla, the revelatory peace I talked about in my last post would have been hard-won, achieved only after spending hours in the chapel and writing pages and pages in my prayer journal.  Not so this time: it came easily, settling into my mind and heart during a period of days that were bustling as usual, full of meal prep and dishes and laundry and diaper-changing and Go, Dog. Go!  It seemed a mystery to me, that the kind of grace I had found previously only in the discipline of quiet could find me in the distracted busy-ness of my daily life.

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About a month ago, my sister and I were preparing food for a cook-out our husbands would be hosting for a friend's bachelor party.  We love to cook together, and enjoyed doing it, which was good, because with our toddlers encumbering us the preparation took two full days.  When Rosie came over on the second morning, she remarked that she'd been feeling overwhelmed at the thought of another long day, but then realized: that in cooking out of love for our husbands, we were exactly fulfilling our vocations.  And therefore, though the cooking seemed like such a little thing, it was really something far greater.

I nodded and was indeed glad in that moment to be doing the work, but the implications of her words have taken me weeks to process.  The truth of what she said has turned out to be the key to my bewilderment over the state of my spiritual life.

I'd forgotten something I knew: that humble work can be holy.  That God calls most of us to spend the majority of our hours not in front of the tabernacle but out in the world, completing the tasks to which he calls us, our vocations.

And therein is the answer to the mystery, strange as it may seem: my tussle with the laundry, if I approach it in grace, has the power to sanctify me just as sitting down with my Bible and prayer journal does.  Prayer and meditation are vitally important, of course, but just as important for the state of my soul is the proper discharge of the duties of my vocation.  This is why my spiritual revelation of a few weeks ago could find me in the bustle of my daily life: even if the external environment is not quiet, serving as He intends me to serve can create a quietness and openness of the soul, where God can reach me just as He did in my more frequent, more focused quiet times of old.

In the future when I am tempted to be ashamed of what I do, I hope I can remember that living well does not mean impressing others, but doing exactly what God has called me to do, to the best of my ability.  Knowing where He has called me and doing the job well, with His grace, takes me further along the path to sanctity, which is happiness, which is the only true goal of life itself.  Remembering that, how can I think of my vocation as anything but enormously, vitally, eternally important?

Forward Call

Once upon a time, I planned to have eight children.  Growing up as the oldest of six had been fun, but I figured a couple more kids would only increase the fun.  With eight I could have equal numbers of boys and girls and still have them in pairs so each would have a special sibling friend.  I even plotted the order: two boys, two girls, two boys, then two more girls to round out the octave.

Bryan was all for it.  Of course, we knew that we would welcome as many kids as God chose to send us, and not limit it to eight, but we figured we had a pretty good chance of making it to eight at least, starting as we were at the tender ages of 22 and 20.  We warned his parents that we expected our family to be big - they even bought a larger ski condo than originally planned so that it could lodge all our potential children - and my parents needed no warning, having planned themselves to try for at least eight kids before my mom's age (she was almost 42 when my youngest brother was born) brought them up short at six.

As you well know if you read here, I don't expect to have eight children anymore.  I would still be thrilled by it, and with God anything is possible.  But in the cause of sanity I've let go of planning on it.  There's dreaming big, and then there's plain nuttiness.

The only part of my original plan onto which I still hold tightly is that part that, as it turns out, is the only part that matters: welcoming as many children as God chooses to send us.  And if "as many as" turns out to mean "as few as" in our case, well, so be it.

Since I wrote the MfBW2 (Manifesto for Baby Wait #2), I've been praying and meditating regularly on the topic of future children: if/when.  I need no extraordinary dose of self-awareness to realize that I would be happy to have more children; my instinctive awareness of motherhood as my primary vocation is part of what made BW1 so difficult for me.  At the same time, waiting for and finally receiving Camilla has made me acutely aware that even one child is a free, miraculous gift.  In one child, I have already received blessings far beyond what I deserve.

When we were childless I sometimes begged God for a child.  There is certainly no shame in doing so; it is a long and proud tradition.  But when I listened most carefully I felt God calling me, personally, to make a more difficult prayer: that He might have his perfect will in this area of my life.  I was not always able to find the courage to pray this prayer, but by grace sometimes I did.

I've mentioned before that, the first time around, I never felt an assurance that I would eventually have a biological child, but did have a sense that God was promising me that the fulfillment of my vocation would come someday.  It was just not up to me to decide when or how.  Then I got pregnant and was overwhelmed by gratitude and joy.

The gratitude and joy continue, but as my beloved daughter grows into a toddler I realize how wonderful it would be to have another baby to kiss and snuggle and love.  I think ahead to the coming decades and hope that our house will be crowded, that we will not be able to count our grandchildren on two hands, that we will have so many children that parenting them will take up all the empty corners of our hearts and minds and lives.

I have no idea if this will happen.  In the past I would sometimes be afraid of childlessness, but when I thought about it prayerfully and quietly I would somehow *know* that I need not be afraid of that.  I do not have fear of Camilla being our only child - a blessing this is, since I know from whence fear comes - but neither do I have any assurance that she will not be.  I feel that I am being called not to beg for another child, but to embrace completely that prayer that I accepted so imperfectly the first time around: Thy Will Be Done.

Fortunately, a prayer for more grace is a prayer that is always answered, and by the beauty of that truth I stand where I do today: shockingly, blessedly peaceful in my circumstances.  I could find myself pregnant at the end of this very month; I could accompany an only child to her high school graduation sixteen years from now.  It matters little what happens.  What matters is that God's plan is always better than anything I could have designed myself.  The deeper I enter into my realization of this truth, the more I become the person He intends to me to be.  It is hardly ever easy but what I have learned and continue to learn - by grace, through joy, and by my own failings, through sorrow - is that it is, always and forever, far, far better than the alternative.