Delighting in motherhood

I distinctly remember being asked, sometime when E was almost five months old, "Don't you just love being a mom?" My eyes welled up involuntarily. I paused to compose myself, then forced a smile and said, "I love her." And then I quickly changed the subject. At the time, and for much of the last year, no, no I haven't loved being a mom. My thoughts were largely occupied with how hard it was to learn so many new things, be good at none of them, have everything change constantly, lose all sense of my identity, and feel guilty for all of it.

But this past week I realized that something had changed. More importantly, I had changed. I still am learning all sorts of new things, still am not very good at most of them, everything is still changing, and my identity is still in flux. But now I am loving it.

God has given me the great grace to enjoy motherhood. I look at my baby girl, at her adorable toothy grin and crazy reddish hair, and I delight in being her mom. She charms everyone we meet, which is terrifying for an introvert like myself, because I suddenly find myself having conversations with everyone. No longer can I skate through life under the radar, avoiding human contact--she smiles all the time and draws every passerby into her little sphere of cuteness (today at the DMV, we had the whole bench laughing at her). At the same time, I love showing her off. I am so proud of her friendliness, curiosity, and expressiveness. I love watching her try new foods, discover new toys, meet new milestones. I love holding her tight and having her pat my arm and snuggle into my shoulder.

I know there will be many other times throughout her life when being a mom does not feel like one of life's greatest blessings. But today it does. And I know that it is a gift from God. And I am so grateful.

What we believe

I saw a post on facebook recently that got me quite riled up (I know, shocking).

I guess it seemed like a good idea to whoever put it together. Unite all the hot causes under one umbrella feel-good mantra. Plus, anyone who disagrees with any of those statements is clearly an unsympathetic bigot (who wants to deny any of that?). But here's the thing: I don't believe you. I don't think you really believe those things. I think you believe the very surface level of what each of these catch phrases was trying to capture, but you don't really believe this at all.

Black Lives Matter

Obviously these are buzz words meant to conjure images of cops shooting unarmed teens, and therefore blatant racism. Who doesn't want to eradicate racism? Ignoring how wild that leap is, let’s just take the words at face value. Black lives matter. I assume that means we want blacks to be able to live, and likely to have a certain quality of life. So, what are the real threats to that? The number one killer of blacks, by far, is abortion. According to the CDC’s latest data, there are just over 300,000 black deaths a year. There are over 250,000 reported abortions performed on black women a year (likely total numbers are at least 30-50% higher). If black lives really matter, let’s protect the most vulnerable. But I don’t see that argument going over well, because "it's not a human until it's born". So let’s set aside the abortions and go back to the 300,000 deaths of already-born blacks. The number one and two causes of death are heart disease and cancer, accounting for 45% of black mortality. Homicide? Number 8. If you really care about black lives, let’s focus on heart health, cancer screening, and access to quality health care. And possibly educating black men and women about their sexuality, the meaning of the family, and available options if they do get pregnant. By the way, abortion, heart disease, and cancer are the leading killers of all races.

Women’s Rights are Human Rights

This one drives me crazy. It reduces all of my rights to the “right” to abortion on demand and free contraception. Because those are my “rights” as a woman? What about the right to worship, to work, to become a mother, to serve, to be safe and free? The UN Declaration of Human Rights (granted, it was written a long time ago, but it seems pretty comprehensive and relevant--if not downright liberal--to me) says we are entitled to life, liberty, security of person, freedom from slavery and torture, recognition as a person before the law and equal protection under the law, a fair trial, the presumption of innocence, privacy, travel, nationality, the protection of marriage and family, property, religion, assembly, work, rest and leisure, motherhood, and education. Do some of those surprise you? Do you think some of those are possibly more important than access to free birth control? Do you think if we eliminated these rights, that access to “reproductive choices” would even matter much? By the way, those were nowhere on the list. The document also says that these rights are subject to limitations “for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order, and the general welfare”. Food for thought.  

No Human Is Illegal

This one is just false. There are laws that exist in order to protect the rights listed above, and if you break those laws, you are, by definition, acting illegally. It’s really a nice sentiment that is meant to equate dignity with legality, but let’s be clear. No human should be denied their basic rights, but if they are jeopardizing public order and the general welfare, and have broken the law, there need to be consequences. What this is really saying is rules don’t matter because we should all just get along. Good luck with that.

Science is Real

Okay, I think you probably believe this one. I have no idea who disagrees with this. Science is just making a hypothesis, testing it, and drawing a conclusion. Don’t leverage science to try to prove the rest of your inane generalities true.

Love is Love

Again, this is a nice platitude that no one would want to disagree with. What else, after all, would love be if not love? But what this statement is really after, and where it falls grossly short, is assuming that all “loves” are the same. I love pizza. I love Colorado. I love sleeping in. I love my husband. What about when my husband needs me to get up early? Then I choose him over sleeping in. Usually. The point is: real love is a choice. It’s a gift of oneself, a choice for the good of the other person. And for that, you have to know what the good is. Which requires what John Paul II called “an adequate anthropology”. For nearly all of human history, “good” was virtue, not comfort. That’s changed now in many ways, but that doesn’t make it right. If you want to be correct rather than cliché, love is virtue. Still interested?

Kindness is Everything

Is it? What about Truth? Justice? Beauty? Goodness? Holiness? Courage? What about something bigger than even the created world? It’s called God. That’s everything. When you hyperbolize like that so that the reader will agree with you, you’ve just lost all credibility.

So here’s what we believe in this house, and I bet is actually pretty close to what you believe as well:

All lives matter.

Human rights are endowed to everyone.

Rules exist for a reason.

Science is real.

Love is a virtue, and it's hard.

God is everything.

Marriage "prep"

For the last several months, my fiance and I have been working our way through Gary Chapman's book "Things I Wish I'd Known Before We Got Married". Based on what he's seen in decades of premarital and marital counseling, Chapman has created a list of a dozen topics for couples to discuss on their journey towards marriage. Many of the concepts seem intuitive, if not downright basic. For example, "That toilets are not self-cleaning" and "That I was marrying into a family". Well, duh. It's not that we didn't already know these things, but it was incredibly beneficial to actually discuss them and what they meant for our relationship.

As we worked our way through the book, we found that we had already touched on many of the topics, but it was nice to have a nonthreatening springboard into them that wasn't triggered by an argument. The book covered areas like money, in-laws, roles in marriage, sex, disagreements, personality, etc. More importantly, it made those subjects concrete, asking us to discuss specifics like how much we will tithe, who will do laundry, and what constitutes a meaningful apology. It wasn't always easy to be honest in our discussions, but again, it wasn't like we were waiting until an argument arose before bringing it up, when things would have been far more emotionally charged.

I would highly, highly recommend this or a similar book to help break down the barriers to discussing these important topics. Again, it gives you a platform to start talking without having to wait for him to leave the toilet seat up or her to make some extravagant purchase. I don't even think it matters if you're already married, or not sure you're going to get married. Any couple can benefit from having these discussions on neutral ground. Get a book and start plugging away.

Love wins

I’ve been torn on what to say, if anything, in relation to yesterday’s Supreme Court decision. I am not surprised by it, but I am saddened by it. However, I find myself having a much stronger reaction to the social media response to it, and here’s why.

I lament that the left-leaning secular crowds have claimed “Love wins” as their mantra. It sounds so intuitive and so, well, loving, that anyone who disagrees with anything they say is labeled a hater and a bigot. Who doesn’t want love to win? But here’s the truth. Love isn’t 5 appointed judges making some arbitrary decision. Love isn’t being able to be with whomever you wish, for however long you wish, for whatever reason you wish. Love is a man who hung on a cross for three hours after enduring abandonment, mocking, torture, and crucifixion, who then conquered death and rose again. Love is a God who holds us in existence, whose love is so concrete and dynamic that it creates. Love is wanting the good of the other person for his or her own sake (and we could have a whole different discussion about defining “the good”, but suffice it to say it’s not comfort). So, yes, love wins. Love always wins. But I’m reclaiming that phrase for Love Himself, who wants better for us. Who wants us to walk the straight and narrow, which is difficult to be sure, but leads to life to the full.

Furthermore, I’m upset by the subtle, unrecognized discrimination of the so-called “tolerant”. All those people posting rainbows in solidarity with the “persecuted” would never post a cross to support the Christians around the world who are being put to death for their beliefs. They would never post a picture of a church if one were forced out of its tax-exempt status because it held to its beliefs in not holding same-sex union ceremonies. Those posting rainbows are only in solidarity with those who hold their same beliefs, namely that people should be able to do what they want, but only if those people are not Christians who are convinced that God’s law still trumps the law of the land. 

Finally, I’m disturbed by the short-sighted nature of those who are celebrating this decision as a victory. To say that marriage can be defined based on the whims of culture is to lead us farther down a slippery slope from which our society may never recover. This has nothing to do with the “rights” of homosexuals, to things like healthcare benefits, tax status, etc. To redefine marriage is to undermine the foundation of our culture, which is the nuclear family. What is to now stop someone from “marrying” their father, or brother, or dog, because who are you to tell someone who to love? When our children grow up seeing that “marriage” is merely a construct of convenience and enjoyment rather than commitment and covenant, they will extrapolate those values to everything else. I really don’t think it’s alarmist to go down this path. I think it’s ignorant and naïve not to.

So yes, it’s easy to post “Love wins” without thinking about what you are really saying, and it’s easy to say that anyone who disagrees with you is a bigot, but Love has always won and will always win, and Love looks a lot more like this: