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.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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.

Looking Forward

People have started asking us if we plan to have more children.  The first person to ask me the question seriously startled me.  I glanced around to make sure she wasn't talking to someone else, because me?  I still have a little tiny baby!  Look at her, she's an infant!  Not possibly old enough to have a younger sibling!

Reality check.  The "infant" is closing in on one year old, is dedicating herself full-time to the important tasks of learning to walk and talk, and at 22 pounds weighs more now than her 15-month-old cousin.  It's not ridiculous for other people to wonder if want to have more kids.

The short and absolutely true answer is that of course we want to have more kids.  We're open to the idea of as many as God chooses to send us, and we'd be thrilled if another baby came along in the not-insanely-distant future.  This is what we generally tell people when they ask if we're trying for number two.

The details of the situation are more complex, as details tend to be.  For starters, ecological breastfeeding is doing its job with a vengeance around here.  In my current cycle-less state, we could be "trying" until the cows come home and there'd be about as much chance of my becoming pregnant as there is of Camilla sleeping through the night before her birthday.  (Snort.) 

But even after my cycle comes back, we don't have an Ideal Plan for More Children, When and How Many.  Considering that according to our original Ideal Plan our first child would be about three years old right now, we've decided that Plans are useless to us in this area.  We have no illusion of control over how new members of our family are created, since Creation is decidedly not our domain.

I find myself thinking and speaking of our next child in terms of "if" rather than "when."  I've got no picture in my mind of whether, let alone at what time, our next child might come along.  Some people might call this pessimism, or being shy of hope, but I don't think that's it.  I think it's a result of an important lesson that waiting for Camilla taught me: that God's got a plan in mind for us and that it's best if He decides what the components of that plan are.

I earnestly hope for more children and I pray for them every day, of course.  But right now I feel okay with the fact that whether we have more children is not up to me.   My stubborn refusal to let go of my idea that what I needed and what I wanted were one and the same, along with my mistaken conviction that I deserved the thing I wanted, made finding peace a lot harder than it could have been the first time around.  I'd like to avoid that in the future.  I've found that the lifelong journey toward holiness is greatly impeded by the act of digging in one's heels in rebellion against the One from whom all holiness comes.

Besides that, there's the fact that we do have Camilla.  Although I bore her I did not make her; He did, and He gave her to us to have and to raise and to love.  This is entirely miraculous, and nothing short of mind-blowing.  Expecting to have another baby as a matter of course feels rather like expecting lightning to strike the same place two days running.

Being childless was a trial.  Being second-child-less would no doubt make me sad, but if we ultimately have no more children will I stand there on judgment day and say, "Lord, you cheated us"?

I think not.

Crosses and Graces

I believe that suffering has meaning.  But it's one thing to believe something, and quite another to integrate that belief into your understanding and practice of your faith in your daily life.

During the thirty cycles we waited for Camilla's conception, I was forced to confront the truth about suffering in a way I'd never done before.  I hashed it out with God on a near-daily basis, and I was blessed in the hashing: He gave me, over and over again, the peace for which I was searching.  And while in the waiting I never gained a concrete understanding of the purpose for the wait, I somehow received the assurance that - whether I ever became a mother in this lifetime - there was a purpose for what I was going through, and I would understand it some day.  It was quite a blessing, that assurance.

Then came a new blessing.  The "Why me, God?" filled with bewilderment and tears of pain became a "Why me?" filled with wonder and tears of joy.  I'd been bringing my whys to the altar on a regular basis, but with the advent of Camilla's existence I had nothing to mourn, nothing to wrestle with, for the first time in a long time.  My near-constant meditation on the meaning of suffering all but ceased.

But this is Holy Week.  What better time to revisit the theme of suffering?

For a couple years now Bryan and I have had a practice of reading the account of the Passion from a different Gospel each night during Holy Week.  It's a good way for us to meditate on the sorrowful mysteries (we begin at the agony in the garden and read until Jesus is laid in the tomb), and a good way to mentally prepare for the Triduum.  Last year during Holy Week the joy of my pregnancy was too new for me to be able to find much sorrow in the readings, but this year the sorrow is sinking in again.  Every night we read, it hits me a little more strongly.

During our wait the agony in the garden was a powerful meditation for me.  "Not my will but thine be done" - I felt called to make those words my own.  It was a call to unite myself to Christ weeping in the garden, to realize that surrendering my will to my Father's was not just virtuous, but absolutely crucial. 

I worked to achieve that surrender in regard to our wait for a child, and failed more often than I succeeded.  God granted my prayer anyway.  Jesus in his human will worked to achieve surrender to the divine will, and succeeded perfectly because he was the Son of God.   The next day he was crucified and died as punishment for sins past, present, and future, none of which he had committed. 

By our ideas of justice this is ludicrous.  But it happened, and in the light of Easter we know that the incredible tragedy of Christ's violent death is the greatest blessing ever given to mankind.  And it challenges every common assumption about what it means to live, to live well, to live gloriously.

He said, "Take up your CROSS and follow me."  So I put on my necklace with the tiny gold cross, I hang a crucifix on my wall, and I make the sign of the cross before praying.  His cross was huge and back-breaking; mine are unobtrusive and never painful, but the difference is incidental, right?  I've got the cross; I've marked myself as a Christian; I'm doing what he asked.

Or maybe I'm reading that sentence with the wrong emphasis.  Perhaps it should be "Take up YOUR cross and follow me."  My cross isn't a couple of heavy, splintery beams, neither is it anything in the shape of two intersecting lines.  It's daily opportunities to swallow my pride, work on my patience, and serve those around me.  It's a baby fussing at 4am, a sink full of dirty dishes, a pile of laundry on the basement floor.  And for two-and-a-half years it was discovering once again, month by month, that things hoped-for had not come to fruition.

During those two-and-a-half years I prayed more often for relief than for understanding, but I knew that someday I would understand.  I imagined this day would be far in the future, probably after my life on earth was over.  Yet during this Holy Week, when I confront once again the awful glory of what happened to that Jewish carpenter all those years ago - and what it meant for the rest of us - I see the value of every one of those monthly disappointments.  And, wonder of wonders, I thank God for them.  While they were going on I was barely able to imagine ever doing so, and the weaker parts of me know that this thankfulness comes much more easily because the answer to my disappointments is currently chewing her fists in my lap.  Fortunately, the unworthiness of a recipient of grace does not make the grace itself any less stunning; in fact, I think the opposite is true.  (Neither do the flaws of a meditation make its subject any less worthy, although sadly I don't think the opposite is true there.)

Whether your own current crosses are heavy or light, I wish you all a blessed and fruitful Triduum.

Gaudeo

My parish is particularly well-suited for parents of small children, with a cry room, a nursery, and two rooms marked "Quiet Place for Nursing Mothers."  Yesterday at Mass Camilla expressed her hunger before we even made it to the Kyrie, so I booked it to my favorite of the two nursing rooms.  I was glad to see that it was dark, but when I pushed the door open, I discovered a woman sitting alone inside, crying.  I started backing out, but she insisted that I come in, so I did.

As I sat down and prepared to nurse Camilla, I attempted to emanate gentle concern without seeming curious about why the woman was crying, but it was unnecessary, since she told me right away.  She was crying for her son.  Who died a month ago.  At 39 weeks gestation.

We talked as the Muffin ate, and she told me more about her son, who passed away before birth unexpectedly and inexplicably.  She told me about his funeral, and about her other six children.  I offered to let her hold Camilla, and as she cuddled my daughter, she told me how holding babies makes her feel better.  My heart was aching for her, and later, after she'd handed the baby back to me and I made my way into the sanctuary, I kept thinking about her. 

Our priest preaches every Gaudete Sunday about the command to rejoice, reminding us that joy is not an optional part of the Christian life.  I missed most of his homily yesterday, but I remember him saying specifically that we are not called to rejoice because of our circumstances, but in spite of them.  Joy is most necessary when it is the hardest to summon.

I thought about how difficult it has been for me, so many times in the past, to rejoice in spite of my circumstances.  I thought about the times when I did find joy, and about how it was invariably the gift of grace that enabled me to do so.  I prayed for grace for the woman I met, the woman who will not get to see her son again until heaven, that she might find joy in spite of this awful circumstance.

Most of all I thanked God that this year I need not seek joy in spite of my circumstances.  And all afternoon, I hugged my daughter a little tighter and held her a little longer, for I do not want to forget how blessed I am that she is here.

RIP, AMC

Not far from here there's a college campus.  It's unobtrusive, occupying about half a city block, and consisting entirely of buildings that have served other purposes in the past – an elementary school, several private homes, a couple apartment buildings, even an old dance studio – and were converted to act as housing and classrooms for a few hundred college students. You could easily pass it without even realizing it was there.

I've made the drive from home to that tiny campus countless times – for class, for Mass, for study groups, for special events, for hanging out with friends – and for me, as for many others, that block is not just a random city block. It's the home of Ave Maria College, my alma mater, a place that has left an indelible mark on me.  I am better, stronger, wiser person because of the time I spent there.

It saddens me enormously to know that very soon that little campus will not be there anymore.  I'll still be able to drive past that block, but it will be an ordinary block. If I stop there, I won't meet anyone I know, and the people who walk those sidewalks and live in those buildings might have no idea that the space they're occupying was once the home of something important, something vital, something which many of us will mourn for the rest of our lives.

It's one of the realities of this world that sometimes, in the temporal realm, evil does triumph.  That those on the side of goodness and justice can fight valiantly and lose. That money and political power have more influence than they should.

It's especially tragic when that money and power are wielded against us by people we thought we could trust, by people who claim the same righteous goals, the same high allegiances.  There are few things more disillusioning than watching someone wreak destruction while claiming himself a builder of the kingdom of God, than seeing people deal in lies while preaching truth, than learning that a facade of goodness and light might sometimes be no more than that – a facade, a fake front.

I'm not going to hash out the details of the Ave Maria College controversies here, partly because I don't need to do that to my blood pressure and partly because everything I could possibly say has already been said better than I could say it. (If you really want to know, Google should be able to help you out.)

But I will say this: that when Ave Maria College closes its doors this month, something will be lost which should never have been lost.  I have watched the battle firsthand, from the inside, and though I live to be a hundred, nothing will ever convince me that it has been a victory for Justice and Truth.  It is not the angels who are celebrating now.

When I started at Ave Maria College (AMC) in January 2003, I anticipated nothing of the sad future of my little school.  I'd heard rumors that the college – originally intended to have a permanent campus a few miles from its current one – was going to be moved to Florida instead, but the admissions counselor had assured me that this would not affect my career there. He was correct only in the very strictest of senses.  I did have the opportunity to graduate from Ave Maria in Michigan, but the school which gave me my diploma in May 2005 was very different from the school in which I enrolled.

Actually, I'm glad that I didn't know about the struggles AMC was facing when I started there, because if I had known I might have decided to go elsewhere, and then I would have missed something incredible, something irreplaceable.

I've only attended two colleges in my life, counting AMC and the huge, faceless state university where I enrolled after graduating from high school in 2000, but I still think I'm qualified to say that my alma mater was a unique place.  I've never heard of another school quite like it.

I was drawn there by the opportunity to receive a classical liberal arts education, something which is hard to find in today's college-as-job-training environment.  I don't know many students my age who got the chance to spend so much time and energy on learning for its own sake, and to delve into such a broad range of subjects and be exposed to so much culture.  I wasn't a literature major, but I got to read (sometimes it felt like had to read, but I'm grateful for it now) Homer and Virgil, Dante and Chaucer.  I didn't major in history but I learned it anyway, from the ancient civilizations right up to modern times.  I didn't choose philosophy as my major but I still studied Plato and Aristotle and critiqued Hume and Kant; I know what metaphysics is and am ready for a discussion of ethics anytime, anywhere.  And since I did major in theology, I'm proud to say you'll be hard-pressed to name a prominent theologian, a core doctrine, or a pervasive heresy I haven't studied, and my copies of the Scriptures and the Catechism are dog-eared.  I am intellectually far richer because I got the chance to attend Ave Maria College.

AMC was important, too, because it was a Catholic school of the kind that few Catholic schools are nowadays.  I had a high school friend who went to Yale, and during my first semester at Ave she asked me scornfully how valuable the education I was getting there could possibly be, since it was so obviously skewed toward a particular religious tradition.  I wish I'd been able then to give her the answer I'd give her now: that education means much more than mere assimilation of bare facts.  (I have rather a low opinion of the objectivity of the "facts" that she was served at Yale, but there would be no need to mention that.)  Education means the pursuit of truth, and as Catholics we believe that Truth is not a mere abstraction but is a Person, that all Truth comes from God.  For a Catholic learning must always be understood in the context of the higher purpose of living: as we gain knowledge we gain wisdom, as we gain wisdom we become more fully the people we are intended to be.  My education was not impoverished by its focus on faith; rather, it was greatly enriched by that focus.  As I understood that my study of different subjects was integrated into the higher purpose of the pursuit of truth, I was enabled to integrate the knowledge I gained into my own life, and I possess it much more fully today because of that.

However, a classical liberal arts education within a faithful Catholic tradition is obtainable elsewhere - if not very many places elsewhere - so it is not that which gave AMC its particular distinction.  From what I can gather, in the beginning it was the newness of the school that made the difference.  Those involved with the fledgling endeavor (the school was founded in 1998) made sacrifices for the school's sake.  They believed in its value.  Faculty moved across the country, staff worked long hours, students put up with countless deprivations, and ultimately it bonded them together.  Ave Maria College was their school; they had suffered for it.  I noticed from my earliest days on campus a particular character among the members of the college, a loyalty that I haven't observed seen among students of established colleges and universities.  Perhaps it was the fact that the school was so young that it, like so many youthful things, seemed to need special protection.

As it turned out, it did need special protection; unfortunately, that protection was something that AMC's students, faculty, and staff, despite our devotion, were ultimately unable to give.  When we learned that there was a plan to close our school by 2007 (it ended up closing a year early) it was upsetting; when some brave people made attempts to negotiate a different plan and found that the intent to close AMC was non-negotiable, it was devastating, to me and to many others.  I was one of the lucky ones who had a chance to graduate before the school closed, but as I said before, the school which gave me my diploma was not the same school it had been three years before.  Being part of AMC while it was dying was, at many times and in many ways, one of the hardest and saddest things I have ever had to do. 

At the same time, the fact that the school was doomed made its last years that much more valuable.  The students who were willing to lash their academic futures to this sinking ship of a college were its loyallest and most devoted, and that loyalty drew the student body together.  It seemed to me that class discussions, extracurricular activities, and social gatherings had an added measure of vibrancy because we knew their days were numbered.  Of course the school did not become perfect because it was being destroyed - it had its fair share of problems - but I think there was something intangibly priceless in the character of the Ave Maria College community during the school's last years.  Something that would not have been there if we'd had the easy security of knowing our school would still be around for decades in the future.

And oddly enough, despite the real pain of the experience of losing something so valuable, I think that those of us who stuck around were strengthened by that experience.  I can't speak for my fellow students, but I know that I, while slightly more cynical than I was before, am also more dedicated to truth and justice because I have seen that they do not always prevail.  I hope that as my life goes on, the things I saw at AMC will make me more likely to fight for the sake of the poor and forgotten ones, for the sake of all that is good and true, for the sake of Love Himself.  I hope that it is true for my fellow students as well. 

Kate points out with her usual verve that Ave Maria College is dead, and she is right. It is mere wishful thinking to imagine that the school can live on as it did before, no matter how valiant our efforts to be faithful to it. But I don't think that means that we who loved AMC are powerless.  I consider it a mission to be, as an AMC alumna, a better citizen of the kingdom of God because of the time I spent there.  The school is gone, and I can't change that, but maybe I can help make it so that the college will not have lived in vain.  We may have lost the battle but we have not lost the war, and all that.  I'm going to give it a try, anyway.

Meanwhile, a cliche rings true for once.  It is better to have loved and lost in this case, because the pain of watching AMC die has not in any way negated the blessings of the semesters I spent on that tiny campus.  Someday I'll take my children on the short drive and show them where my school used to be.  I'm hoping that by then, my sadness will have been replaced by something better, something I already have now in rare moments of clarity: the feeling of having been incredibly lucky to have been in the right place at the right time.  As indeed I was.

Reflectively

I will offer thanks for what has been and what's to come... -Nichole Nordeman

It's been hard for me, in these past weeks since finding out I was pregnant, to write about much besides the physical realities of my life.  I could give a thousand reasons for this – being ill makes me less coherent and less inclined to write; my mind is occupied with the details of this new thing; joy is much more difficult to encapsulate than sorrow – but none of them is sufficient, although the last comes closest to the deep truth.

I feel a need to step carefully in areas which had been familiar ground.  So many of you still long for this blessing which has suddenly become mine; how do I write about it so that you understand my joy but know that I have not forgotten your pain?  In this space I have quite often explored the theme of suffering but now I wonder if I am entitled to write about it any longer.  Statements that were not objectionable when written by someone walking her own via dolorosa might become so when put forward by someone on the Easter side of that particular journey.

Perhaps you can see why I have writer's block?

But I must write about some things that have been on my mind for months, since I first announced my pregnancy here.  I may not be able to write about them eloquently, but at any rate I must write about them.

When I posted that pregnancy announcement, not a few people told me, “Your faith has been rewarded!”  I also found a couple of posts by other bloggers about me, writing that they had been frustrated by my refusal to seek testing and treatment, but now wondered about their own decisions since I had been vindicated by becoming pregnant with no intervention.

My reaction to the above responses is that oh, good heavens, it is so much more complicated than that.

I was as surprised by my pregnancy as all of you were, if not more so.  When that second line appeared I felt raw gratitude, but no sense that I had finally gotten what I deserved.  I continue to believe, as I wrote here, that every blessing comes more swiftly than we deserve it.  And although in moments of petulance I have sometimes thought that I deserved motherhood, the reality of carrying this tiny beloved one makes me utterly sure that I do not.  It is, like Christ Himself, pure gift.

The fact that I do not believe I deserve this is part of the reason I do not believe this pregnancy is a reward for my faith.  Another part is that I have a much more realistic idea of how much faith I have (or, more accurately, do not have) than many of you appear to.  You flatter me far, far too much.

The third part of the reason is not exactly quantifiable.  In word form, it comes out something like this: It's just not like that.

Through two-and-a-half years of waiting, I prayed a lot, and listened a lot, and on numerous occasions received much solace from doing so. However, I never received any assurance that I would eventually become pregnant.  (Friends and family members saying “I know it will happen to you” does not count.)   I don't believe it is impossible to receive that kind of assurance, and in fact I think I did receive some assurance that Bryan and I would eventually have children of our own.  (By which I mean children to parent, not biological children.)  But I never had a moment where I knew that I would get pregnant.  Even when I was arguing with God about the no-testing thing, I never got a “don't worry, you will get pregnant anyway” from Him.  It was always simply “Wait.”

So through those two-and-a-half years, although I prayed every day that God would send us a baby, I never knew which way he would answer my prayer.  I only knew he would answer, for God does not say “wait” for no reason. The fact that he answered with a pregnancy is incidental, I think, in comparison to the truth that He Answered.  I have no doubt that if I were holding an adopted child in my arms right now, I would feel just as much joy in that truth.

Do I think that just waiting, not seeking medical intervention, is the path God has marked out for every couple struggling with fertility issues? Emphatically, no.  It just happened to be the path he had marked for us.  It is up to every couple to discern which of many (morally licit) paths God has marked out for them.  This one happened to be ours, and as such I am grateful for it because it brought us exactly what we needed, which has been in times past and will be in times to come countless things, many of which we could never imagine for ourselves.  Many of those things have been (and hopefully, will continue to be) documented here.

Do we deserve this, the gift of the little one whose ten tiny fingers we saw waving at us on the ultrasound screen this afternoon, whose profile I already find heartbreakingly beautiful?  Of course not.  But I think the gift is all the more valuable because of that.

A new season

First of all, you all overwhelm me, with the good wishes and the prayers and the joy. Reading through the comments has added an extra measure of goodness to this already amazing experience.

Second of all, my hit count has gone up exponentially over the past two days, and while I’d love to think it’s new readers coming in swarms, I’m guessing it’s really just a lot of you hitting “Refresh” over and over because you want details.

Ahhh, details.

You know, if I wasn’t pregnant you would have had details long ago, because it is pregnancy that is totally kicking my butt and making it nearly impossible for me to sit upright for more than twenty minutes at a time. On the other hand, if I wasn’t pregnant you wouldn’t need details, because there would be no details. Hopefully you’re just glad that there are details instead of being mad that the details have taken so darn long.

(To those who are easily bored, or those with a Y chromosome: these details are actually not very interesting. I have tried but there is no way to make them so. Consider yourselves warned.)

So, it’s the night before Valentine’s Day. Cycle day 33 for me, and I’ve never seen a cycle day 33, so that in itself is an achievement (although of course the whole time I’m thinking “my cycles are finally going wonky; I’m probably developing PCOS or some such”). I’ve had two days of cramps (cycle days 28 and 29) and started spotting immediately afterward, but no new cycle has emerged, so I’m starting to think something is up. My plan is to wait until Bryan gets back from DC, which will be cycle day 35, and then tell him and maybe test on day 36 if I’m still holding steady.

But we’re sitting there at dinner and I suddenly realize there’s no way I can wait two more days; I’m going crazy. So I tell him that I suspect something, and he suggests testing, and we pick up some tests on the way home. Now, I know that evening is not the best time to test, and I drank four glasses of water with dinner, so I’m kind of expecting that I’ll get a negative either way.

Bryan’s waiting nervously on the bed when I come out of the bathroom. The test is negative, but I’ve been peering at it and I think that I can see a very faint line from certain angles. So I have him peer at it too, and he admits, probably because he wants me to stop tugging on his arm, that there might be a line there.

So now we’re in possible-positive-pregnancy-test limbo, which is, as those of you who have been here can attest, nearly as much fun as oral surgery. And there is not a thing we can do except wait, and test again. It’s Monday evening now, and we decide I’ll wait until Wednesday morning to test again. Very sensible (also very ridiculous, but everything seems more reasonable when I’m talking about it with Bryan).

Tuesday morning he leaves at zero-dark-thirty to catch a flight to DC. I pull myself out of bed to make our eight o’clock Adoration slot.  And all I can say is, thank GOD (literally) that I had Adoration that morning, because I don’t know how I would have gotten through the day otherwise. I just sat there for an hour, repeating over and over again “God, I trust you; God, I trust you.”

Then I go home and try to distract myself for an entire day. I am fairly successful; I think there are at least a couple fifteen-second intervals during which I don’t think at all about the possibility of being pregnant.

That evening I talk to Bryan on the phone, still determined to wait until the next morning to test. I hang up and get on the Consumer Reports website to find the best pregnancy tests (they recommend First Response, in case you’re wondering), then I go to the store and put them in the cart along with grapes, bananas, and those Cheerios with dried strawberries, because I really need to eat and none of the food in the house looks good to me.

I get home and realize the pack of pregnancy tests has a bonus test. Three instead of two. Which gives me exactly the excuse I need to test right. that. minute: I won’t be wasting a test! I’ll take it and there will still be two in the box, and it’ll be like I never tested at all.

Bingo.

I call Bryan’s cell phone, which he has turned off for the night, and leave a jubilant message, and he calls me back very early the next morning. We spout gibberish in our joy, and when Bryan gets home that evening he holds me at arm’s length to see if I look any different. (I don’t look different, just tired, as tired I am now and forever shall be, world without end.)

Slowly, over the next days, we tell our families and close friends. Everyone is thrilled. Most of them are aware of how long we’ve been waiting for this, how much heartache the wait has caused us. It is a blessing to behold their happiness on our behalf.

Of course there is no perfect fulfillment this side of the grave (I often suspect I will not fully learn that until I am on the other side of it) and I quickly learn that I had not been prepared for how scared I would be. I feel like I am wrestling with demons (and do not rule out the possibility that I am). At one moment, convinced that I am miscarrying, I am actually a tiny bit relieved, because now I won’t have to fear it any more. I write this post.

But slowly I face my fears, slowly because there is no other way, because there is no quick fix for things like this. I pray, hard, the same words over and over. Sunday morning during the offertory I mentally place everything I have, everything to which I am holding tightly, on the altar. Lord, no matter what happens, I trust you. I do it because I know it is right, I do it because I desperately want to be released from my fear, and I do it because experience has taught me that all solutions but surrender are merely illusions. It helps. It begins the process.

That evening as we’re driving home Bryan and I talk about the wonder of the new life that I am carrying. We pray hard that we will have the chance to meet and raise this little one, but whether we get that chance or not, everything is different now. He exists. In future years our children may come to us in many different ways, but this is how the first has come and so these days are the birthplace of our family.

It’s slowly sinking in. I’m still scared, but as my father writes to me so wisely, “Now is the time when hope is most important.” I’ve learned over the past years how to deal with the hard, barren side of hope, and so this rich, fertile side is a bit bewildering. But it is wonderful, and the One who got me through those years has certainly not abandoned me now. Absolutely not.  I am, as much as ever, in the palm of His hand.

Please, of course, pray for the safety and well-being of the tiny new member of our family.

And REJOICE with me! The time for rejoicing has come.

In the face of fear

When I was a child I had an irrational and very strong fear of wolves.  Often, after my parents had put us to bed, I would creep to the top of stairway and call down to them, and they would comfort me.  After a while it developed into a routine, and they taught me a prayer to say when I was afraid: “Things I'm scared of, go away, in Jesus' name, Amen.”  Simple but comforting, and whenever I was afraid I would call to my parents, who would coach me through the prayer.

It may seem strange that my parents had me pray for the wolves to go away; since they knew that the danger of wolves attacking our home was virtually zero, it seems they might have comforted me with that.  In fact, I vaguely remember them telling me that wolves could not possibly come, but it did not help.  The prayer, which I imagined obtained the happy result of Jesus keeping us safe from the wolves, did, so I prayed it, night after night, with one or the other of my parents coaching me along. I imagined that God was protecting because I asked him too.  And what I never realized, not then and not for many years afterward, was that while I prayed for “things I'm scared of” to go away, I was really praying for protection from the fear itself.  How wise my parents were to help me do that.

Almost two decades later, the things I am afraid of are much larger and more real than the wolves.  Much more worthy of fear, I delude myself into thinking But in moments of clarity, in moments of truth which closes its ears to the cries of our worry-happy culture, I know that the delusion is just that.  In the light of the one whose angelic messengers always say “Be not afraid,” I know that the fears I have now are just as ridiculous as the fear of wolves which haunted me all those years ago.

Fear, as a fleeting emotion, is perfectly natural.  Life is precarious, and there are moments in which it is absolutely necessary to cry, as Jesus did in the garden after the Last Supper, “Father, I'm scared.”  For me, the problems come not when I give that cry, but when I forget to give it, when I turn in upon myself and let my fear simmer.  It is then that fear becomes a habit.

And while fear as an emotion is natural, fear as a habit is cancerous.  If I let it, it quite literally eats away at my soul.  Which is, of course, how the Breeder of Fear likes it.  The Prince of Light, the only true conquerer of that Breeder, is standing by to fly to my assistance, but if I do not ask him he will not come; that is the burden he has put on himself.

Months ago my sister and I had a conversation during which we reached an insight that keeps pushing itself back into my mind.  (When this happens it is almost always a sign that the thought is far more important than I imagine.)  The insight was a simple one: that, despite our fearing many things in the past and present, God has always provided for us. Our fears have sometimes come true (for example, Bryan and I have been forced to wait for our children, as I feared would happen) but through it God has continued to provide everything we needed.  Which means that I do not fear that God has not or is not providing, merely that he will not continue to do so.  Based on his past record this is clearly ridiculous.

I am learning, with many missteps and much stumbling, that the only real response to fear is that which our Savior gave in the garden: “Father, help!” There are not many options here, there is only one: I turn to God, or I am doomed.  For me, in this time and all future ones, it is as simple as that. 

And if sometimes I am praying for the annihilation of the things I fear, and sometimes I am praying for the annihilation of fear itself, I don't think it makes a difference.  It is only the praying that matters.

Sweet and swift

I record so many of my salt-encrusted moments here that I often forget how important it is to record the sweet ones as well. But this morning I had a sweet moment that was rich enough to stay with me all day, rich enough to still be with me now and to inspire me to write about it.

I don’t think it’s an accident that the sweetest of my moments often occur during worship. This post has some lovely thoughts on worship, and one in particular which I have thought about often since I read it, the importance of speaking true words. This sentence captures the heart of the thought: “Not only is there a shortage of truth in the world, so that every addition of truth is precious, but we men so often speak untruth that it is worthwhile for us to speak clear and certain truth from time to time just to train our tongues to it.”

This morning the entrance hymn was “Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven.” I have always loved it, and this morning I loved it even more because of this line: “Praise him still the same as ever, slow to chide, and swift to bless.”

Speaking true words, indeed.

As I have been waiting and hoping for these past two-and-a-half years, I haven’t exactly felt that my blessings were coming swiftly. Quite the opposite, in fact. And many times I’m sure I would have cringed at the line above. But this morning, this morning! as those words left my lips I could taste the sweet truth in them. 

Because the truth, of course, is that every blessing that comes to us comes more swiftly than we deserve it. Even if I never have children in this lifetime, I can still have the chance to receive in eternity that fulfillment which is what I am really seeking, and that is a blessing I could never deserve on my own, not in a thousand lifetimes.

Meanwhile, the past years have felt long in the living, but as I stand here now they feel short, swift, quick. The growing I have done in them seems more than enough atonement for the pain they have brought. Just now, in this sweet moment, I know that blessings do come swiftly, that yokes are easy, that burdens are light.

Does that mean I think it’s wrong to ever feel otherwise? Of course not. “Blessed are those who mourn,” after all. I believe with all of my heart that these trials are meant to hurt me, must hurt me, or else they have served no purpose.

But at the same time, I truly believe there is a bigger, richer truth than we can possibly imagine, a truth in which I will see that my trials have really been blessings, a truth in which I shall mourn nothing. That truth is not here now, but in life’s sweet moments I get a glimpse of it, and it is staggering.

Slow to chide and swift to bless He is, after all.