Arwen/Elizabeth

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.

Can I Get an Amen?

I had my first troll this weekend.  I've had unsavory comments before: some unnecessarily vehement disagreement with my positions on issues, as well as a personal attack by a former boss who had the mistaken impression that he could achieve anonymity on the Internet.  But I don't really consider those trolls.  I know I play hardball when I express controversial opinions here, and people who are arguing about issues rather than attacking me personally can't be considered trolls, no matter how fierce they get.  As for the boss thing - which did unsettle me, but ultimately was a good lesson in relying on my instincts when I sense people are untrustworthy -  I don't think he could be considered a troll because I knew him in real life.

But this troll was a true troll.  She came; she squatted under my bridge where I couldn't see her face; she grumbled several nasty, pejorative things; she left.  Her entire purpose in visiting here was to spread meanness.  I imagine she left feeling better about herself, but she certainly didn't enrich her life or her soul in any way.

I deleted the comments when I found them.  I'm all for reasoned discourse and criticism, but I'm not interested in preserving nastiness for its own sake.  And honestly, although I certainly wasn't happy about the whole thing, I wasn't shedding tears over it either.  Her comments bugged me the way it might bug me if I found a rotten spot on an apple I was eating, the way any disorder in my world bugs me.  But they didn't reach me, didn't affect me on a deeper level.  It took me a while to figure out why, but I finally did.

I go to confession on a regular basis.  It's an excellent source of grace, it's humbling, and - most importantly in this case - it does a great job of keeping me in touch with my weak points.  I know where I fail on a day-to-day basis, and if the troll had known to attack me there, she could have done some damage.  If she'd known to call me out for being impatient, for having a sharp tongue, for the fact that my laundry is never done and my bathrooms are rarely clean, that would have hurt.  Instead, she called me a bad mother.

I have many, many failings.  But I am a darn good mother.  And this is not a case of my protesting too much because I have secret doubts.  Deep down, at the very core of my being, I am sure that I am a good mother.

I actually feel that knowing this is part of what makes me good at it.  I go with my instincts.  I don't doubt myself.  I trust Bryan as a father and believe wholeheartedly that the two of us together are the best possible parents for this beautiful little girl we're raising.

I credit my own parents for the confidence.  They themselves were natural, instinctive, confident parents who taught me that parenting is not a set of skills or a job in which one's performance is judged by the standards of "experts," but a relationship.  They taught me that being a good parent does not mean conforming to those "expert"-determined standards for feeding and clothing and teaching my child; it means putting my child before myself, understanding her, responding to her, loving her.

I'm a good parent because I do that every day.  Sometimes I consult data, and it influences me to do things like breastfeed and put my daughter in flexible-soled shoes and regulate her sugar intake, but doing those things does not make me a good parent.  I could do all those things perfectly and still be a horrible parent.  I'm a good parent because I love Camilla and do my honest-to-God best for her, day in and day out, and I know it's working because she is happy and thriving and loves me back.

Like I said, I'm fully aware of this, which is why the troll couldn't really hurt me.  But I still feel bugged by her and what her comment represents.

Mothers have this awful tendency - especially on the Internet, I've noticed - to tear other mothers down.  I think it's a product of our own insecurities.  We're convinced we don't measure up, so it makes us feel better to think that some other people, at least, are even worse than we are.  The whole thing makes mothers as a group incredibly vulnerable.  It makes us vulnerable to each other, and it makes us vulnerable to people like my troll, who came across my site, saw I had a child, and decided immediately that "you're a crappy mother" should be an effective way to pounce.

This is bad.  Now sure, it's human nature to be competitive and antagonistic (although a part of human nature that we should attempt to civilize, in my opinion), and certainly mothers have been criticizing each other through out all of human history.  But today's parenting culture makes attacking each other so. darn. easy.

There is a huge industry based on the practice of implying that parents are doing it wrong, then selling them something so they can do it right.  You can buy  a dizzying array of products designed to make your child healthier, safer, smarter, and happier than all the other children on the block.  Many of these products are valuable in themselves.  But the marketing behind them - the idea that your child has a God-given right to an organic diet and the safest car seat on the market and a collection of educational toys that will have him reading by age three - stinks. 

A child has a God-given right to his parents' unconditional love.  If that is present, then the parents truly have the child's best interests in mind and (assuming basic knowledge of safety and nutrition) can be trusted to make the series of decisions and compromises that constitute life in a world with limited resources.  A time-saving fast-food lunch, a budget-saving lower-end car seat, or a sanity-saving video do not a bad parent make.  It is the relationship between child and parent that matters.

But that is not what we hear in our culture.  What we hear is that the experts know what's best, and that we should toe the line. 

Setting aside the not-insignificant fact that much of the "expert" parenting information given over just the past hundred years has turned out to be wrong, the expert-driven approach is hugely problematic.  It impoverishes the relationship of parent and child by reducing parenting to a set of tasks to be performed, subject to external standards.  It has parents doubting ourselves to a truly unnatural degree, wondering whether we're doing it "right."  It has the potential to rob us of much of the joy of building a relationship of love with our children.  And it turns us into insecure people who are relieved to be able to point at the parenting "mistakes" of others, so we'll feel just a little bit better about ourselves.

I'm guilty of it too, absolutely.  It is true that I feel confident in my relationship with my daughter, but I am not without my moments of self-doubt.  More than one time I have looked at another mother and felt relieved that she was not measuring up in some way, because it took the (self-inflicted) pressure off me.  Many more times I have failed to compliment other mothers because... well, because it feels like a race, and how can I win if I'm taking time out to compliment the competition?

It's ridiculous.  It is so ridiculous that it deserves to be called many words that I will not use here, this being a family-friendly website and all.  But I will say this: I am opting out of the race, starting now.  Those few times I have let my better self win and have told another mother she's doing a wonderful job, I've seen the flash of gratitude in her eyes and known that she needs to hear those words just as much as I do.  I'm going to start fighting to let that better self win more often, actively fighting to become the person I want to be.  We parents are in this "expert"-driven parenting culture together, and the absolute best thing we can do for ourselves and for our children is to band together against it and keep on loving them in spite of it.  I think we can have a great time along the way.