Category: Uncategorized

The Grace of Seasons

God does nothing by mistake. It’s never easy to admit that in the trenches of loss, but it’s unchangeable and true: God is always in control, and he is the only author who never makes mistakes.  I, for one, have asked him to change my story and wondered (sometimes in the most obnoxious, whiny version of myself) why he has written some of the chapters I have been given.  Surely a heroine deserves to get what she wants more often than not.  (If you are an “NCIS” fan, insert a Gibbs slap to the back of my head here.)

The truth is I have far more often gotten what I wanted and not what I deserved, and I have always gotten what I needed. I have simply focused on what I didn’t get that I wanted instead of what I desperately needed: the grace of Jesus.  God teaches us in each season of life to trust him, to rely on the truth that his grace really is sufficient for each moment.  Every hard or impossible or glorious moment, he’s showing you himself.  Are you looking for him?  Do you see him waiting for you there?  I don’t always look, and sometimes I look but don’t see what I think I should see.  Not every moment of searching for God has been a glorious appearing.  Sometimes it is slogging through the day and trying to remember that God exists.  And sometimes it is a soul lifting time of illumination and vision and energy.

We have seasons through the year in nature (unless you live in Alabama…), seasons of life as we age, seasons in our emotions and spiritual lives. I love that God gives us seasons – cycles even.  Every year, the earth will rotate around the sun, and every year we will have spring, summer, fall, winter.  There is comfort in the pattern, and we know that one season will not last forever.  Each season has a purpose, too; without winter dormancy, many plants will not produce fruit; without summer and fall harvests, we would starve through the winter.  Each cycle depends on the stage before it.

It’s simple to see how stages of life build on each other as we grow older – “You are what you eat,” “We are what we repeatedly do…” Every choice has a consequence that will pay off somewhere in the future.  But it’s less simple to appreciate season cycles in life.  Emotional winter too often feels like failure, and we fear anything that isn’t eternal renewal or happiness in our lives.  We fight to escape anything heavy or painful because that really cannot be what Jesus meant when he promised abundant life and joy.  But we need every season in the cycle.  We learn to walk through pain and still find the joy of grace, and we laugh and dance through the joy of happiness and renewed faith.  We can work and be productive in the steady times, and each cycle should build on what went before and lay a stronger foundation for what comes next.

Grief can feel like a time-loop. As time passes, you feel you’ve moved on, until one day you’re neck-deep in pain again.  But with each loop through the cycle, I have learned the patterns, which gives me the comfort of knowing that no part of the cycle lasts forever.  I am still learning how to walk through each part of the cycle pattern without trying to avoid the pain – at least not all of it.  I am an expert at avoidance.  I can eat, shop, read, or otherwise distract myself, but I am short-tempered, angry, and pretending not be wounded.  Feeling the pain and acknowledging it so you can keep walking through it isn’t the same thing as living in it, wallowing, and stagnating.  Depression is a serious de-motivator, but you can’t really live there.  You have to keep moving through the day, moving forward in your life… just moving.  Get up, get dressed, and get out there and do something.  I have to tell myself this every time the depression creeps back in.  It would be simple to sit on my couch – easy to just stop until I hurt a little less.  The problem with that approach is that my inaction doesn’t make the pain go away; the loss is always with me.

But each cycle gets better. I am able to move more quickly past the deep hurt and into shallower waters where it is sunnier and easier to breathe.  As I am able to examine and acknowledge my grief, it becomes a little lighter each time through the deep end and less of it follows me into the next season.  Spring and summer are more beautiful having lived through the winter.

The Miracle-Gift-Angel Baby

Not long after Engelberta was born, I realized that I had a sore spot slightly larger than Texas.  I couldn’t stand for anyone to call her an angel.  At that point, I had nine angels, and she wasn’t one of them (now I have ten, and she still isn’t one of them).  My angels are the babies who didn’t get to breathe on earth; Engelberta is a living, breathing baby that I can hold, not an ephemeral memory.  I know that all sleeping babies look like angels, but smell the southward end of a northern facing “angel.”  There are no smells like that in heaven because God promises that in heaven there will be no more suffering.

Which brings me to the other reason I obstinately refuse to call my child or anyone else’s an angel in anything other than sarcastic/ironic context: kids are kids.  They are not perfect, nor are they currently heavenly beings.  They may occasionally look cherubic; they may act in an angelic manner once in a while; we may call them angels, but they will never be angels.  In fact, biblically speaking, none of us will ever be angels, which means that the tiny souls that I lost before they could be born are also not, in fact, angels – I just don’t know what else to call them without being obnoxious.  I feel like calling children angels and princesses on a regular basis is a way of putting them on a pedestal or allowing them to stay in a world that revolves around them.  Of course the world revolves around toddlers, but they don’t get to stay there.  We need to be teaching our kids to look outside themselves – to empathize, to see the bigger picture, to serve.  Engelberta was not created to be an angel, and she did not win the genetic lottery to be a princess (she’ll just have to marry a prince…).

The other sore spot I seem to have is hearing her called a miracle.  Of course she is a miracle!  But so is EVERY child born on this planet!  Life is a miracle, and there are no gradations in the miracle of life.  I believe that there are miracles that happen all the time.  There are amazing things that are just too big for us to imagine – perfect timing saves someone from certain death in an accident; a passing stranger happens to be a doctor who performs a life-saving procedure on a kid who otherwise would have died waiting for an ambulance – huge things that only God can pull off are all around us.  There were none of those extraordinary measures involved in Engelberta’s birth – just the ordinary miracle of a new baby being born.  If you are a parent, I’m guessing that you view your child as a miracle, and you should.  You probably don’t think that my child is a greater miracle than yours, and you shouldn’t.  Mostly, I want to avoid constantly telling Engelberta that she is a miracle so there will be no pressure to live up to some crazy standard just because we had a terrible time getting her here.

So, if Engelberta is neither an angel nor a “special” miracle, how do I see her?  She is a tremendous gift.  All children are gifts, but sometimes, in some circumstances, there are parents who will always appreciate that gift just a little bit more.  I don’t know a single parent who doesn’t appreciate the gift that they were given in becoming a parent; I do know a few parents who realize just how precious and unimaginable that gift is because it can be impossible to come by.  We are the people who relish every stinking diaper and every sleepless night merely because they exist.  This doesn’t mean that I am living in a constant glow of blissful motherhood – no one glows on less than two hours of sleep – it means that even in the midst of that awful night I am thanking God that I have a reason to drink a gallon of coffee the next morning.

God had already given me the perfect gift of knowing that I could have peace and joy with him even if we never had a child.  Engelberta was a gift I didn’t see coming, like the biggest surprise party you can imagine or the best Christmas present you ever got because it was just so much more than you expected.  And she is a gift I sometimes feel guilty about because not everyone gets such a gift.  I know how much it hurts to see the family life that you’d always assumed would be yours pass you by, and I wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone.  I hope that you, my friend who is struggling through this season, know that you are not alone and that you are deeply loved – by me, and by a God who will hold you up and will one day take all of your hurt away.

On a Dime

I find myself unable to dwell in other people’s misery, even if it’s just a sad movie. Maybe I have had too much misery of my own, and now I am doing my best just to keep up with daily life. I find that I avoid any sad story that doesn’t directly touch my life. Friends are a different story; I celebrate and mourn and empathize with them. But I cannot make myself follow any of the sad/tragic FB pages, even if I am terribly interested in the outcome. I desperately want each and every one of those stories to have a happy ending, but I can’t invest any of my heart in them. I will pray over the situation when I see an update in a friend’s feed, but they haunt me if I linger too long.

A friend of ours lost a baby early in her pregnancy several months ago, and I cried for her like I cried for me. She was in the all too familiar position of having to rescind such good news and replace it with devastation. On a dime. Overnight. That’s how instantly her life changed, as did mine the second we heard the first bad news being delivered. At some point in our loss history, I think the bad news ceased to be life changing in the drastic, on a dime, kind of way. Loss became our story – just part of the landscape.

Now that Engelberta is here, the landscape has changed, though the possibility of a new and even more devastating type of loss hides around every corner, every “Pray for (Insert Name Here)” FB page. I’m sure every parent panics a little bit when they hear of a tragedy striking another child because it just might happen to them, too. I’m sure they respond in the usual “hug your kids a little tighter” manner and move on. I force myself to move on. I have to fight too many demons to invest serious thought or prayer in anyone I don’t know. Maybe this makes me a bad person for deliberately ignoring a need for prayer. But I just can’t handle the thought that my life could again turn on a dime.

There are stories all around me of babies who need organ transplants, babies who will die of terrible diseases, children who have been severely injured and face years of rehab. I know that these stories are statistically unlikely to happen to most children, including my own, but we’ve been statistically challenged up to this point. One story particularly haunts me. Not long ago, a little girl in our town died of heat stroke after being forgotten in the car. Her mother forgot to drop her off at daycare, and the little girl was sound asleep in her car seat when mom arrived at work. Everything about this story was familiar to me: the couple struggled through years of infertility before they finally had a beautiful baby girl. They had a family-owned business with all of the extra work and crazy hours that go with that responsibility, and one day the mom was particularly overloaded and skipped a single step in her routine.

Oh, God, how this story breaks my heart. I am this mom; I survive a lot of days on ritual autopilot, so a single skipped step will end in some sort of disaster later in the day. Fortunately, my skipped steps usually involve some sort of coffee brewing calamity or lack of deodorant or a cell phone launching from the hood of the car. But this family’s tragedy feels too close, too familiar, for me to let go. I can’t imagine how this mother feels. I can’t imagine the guilt and shame and horror she must combat every moment. Merely imagining her pain swallows me up, and I am consumed with thoughts of “What if this happened to me?” What if Engelberta died? Could I ever recover from that after everything else we’ve been through?

I know we’d survive somewhat intact, but that would be a labor of grace and faith. I keep telling God that there’s no way I could live with a hole that big in my heart. I keep turning a blind eye to the losses I don’t know personally, and I keep praying that my life is through turning on dimes for at least a little while. It hurts enough to know that someone I love is experiencing that kind of pain. That said, if you read this and need to talk, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or to anyone else who will listen and love you. Never, ever feel that just because someone has dealt with a lot that they shouldn’t be burdened with your problems. Most of the time someone who has been to hell and back is more than willing to help someone else through. For me, most days, the only thing that keeps me from breaking down is knowing that sharing my story has helped others in some small way. It’s the only thing that gives reason to the otherwise incomprehensible mess of the last several years.

Image Is Everything

I am not, nor will I ever be, a size 2. I would like to be a size 10; I have three sizes to go. I am overweight and out of shape, but I’m working on it. As an emotional eater and very busy person, that’s not an easy task. As a new mom facing down celebrity mom weight loss photos, it’s down right daunting. I know I’m never going to look like a magazine cover, but, sheesh, why can’t I melt away pounds like one? The one I really hate right now is a before and after picture floating around Facebook that shows Jessica Simpson at her heaviest (which was PREGNANT) and then slimmed down, with the tagline, “I lost 25 pounds in 5 weeks.”

This is TOTALLY unrealistic for anyone who doesn’t have a personal chef, personal trainer, personal assistant, and nothing better to do than exercise for hours and hours a day. Realistically, I can eat well and commit about 30 minutes per day to working out – if everything goes perfectly with my routine, which it never does. So, realistically, I can shape up, and I might eventually reach size 10 nirvana, but the bottom line is that my bottom line isn’t going to perk up instantly. I’m trying to make peace with that.

I am not giving myself a free pass for the bad behavior that landed me in overweight/out-of-shape territory. I am, however, looking for ways to remind myself that I am healthy and that my body is amazing just the way it is. With this body, I have completed a half-marathon, a sprint distance triathlon, and delivered a baby. That’s a pretty great list. It would be easy to beat my own drum every day because of my little list, but then I’m not likely to do the work I need to do to get back in shape. On the flip side, I’ve realized that when I’m critical of my own body, I’m usually judging everyone else’s, too.

My new experiment is to find something beautiful in each lady who crosses my path, especially when I find myself thinking something negative. I tend to be less judgmental of guys, so I largely exempt them from my thought experiment. So, when I see someone who doesn’t meet my ideal in some way, I pause to find something to appreciate. It’s also cheating to let myself off by thinking, “She has a great personality.” I find something physically attractive, no matter how small it may seem. If I happen to be in conversation with the person, like a cashier, then I try to compliment them while we’re talking (unless it’s weird, like “You have nice eyebrows” – then it’s just creepy).

I have never seen an ugly smile when offered sincerely. I have seen people more beautiful than have ever graced the covers of fashion magazines. And I have found that this thinking spreads to other areas of my life. It’s no secret that I struggle occasional with mostly mild bouts of depression. I know I’m having a rough time when I realize I am short fused and cursing like a sailor when I talk to myself. Those are also the days that I come as close as I get to road rage; it’s still really road annoyance rather than rage.

This afternoon, I was cut off in traffic twice by the same vehicle, which I found terribly obnoxious. When the other vehicle finally swerved to another lane to exit the interstate I expressed my relief as a quick, “Thank goodness!” But as I passed the car, I happened to glance at the driver, who was an older middle-aged woman who looked completely frazzled. My road annoyance disappeared, and then I felt a little guilty. This poor woman was probably following directions in an unfamiliar part of town, and the exit ramps were a little tricky. Instead of telling myself how badly this woman drove, I prayed for her to find her destination easily and to feel more calm about driving in strange territory. And then I hoped that someone would extend me the same grace next time I’m acting like an idiot. Maybe they’ll think I have nice eyebrows, too.

On the Subject of Altars

“Build for me an altar made of earth, and offer your sacrifices to me—your burnt offerings and peace offerings, your sheep and goats, and your cattle. Build my altar wherever I cause my name to be remembered, and I will come to you and bless you. If you use stones to build my altar, use only natural, uncut stones. Do not shape the stones with a tool, for that would make the altar unfit for holy use.” (Exodus 20:24, 25 NLT)

One of the things I love about the Old Testament is that it is all very existential, very present and earthy. It might be easy to get bogged down in the “begats” and the seemingly inane and endless levitical laws, but don’t get lost in the details because the big picture is beautiful. Sacrifices and altars might be part of the regulations that we want to skip because it doesn’t seem relevant to modern life. But we’d be wrong to miss something so essential.

God required the Israelites to present perfect sacrifices – unblemished lambs, the first crops harvested – not to punish them or to make their lives more difficult, but to acknowledge that God is holy and perfect and righteous. The sacrifices cover the fact that we are not holy or perfect or righteous without grace. It stands to reason that since God requires perfect sacrifices that he might want the altar they are offered on to be perfect, too. But we’d be wrong to miss something so essential.

These verses from Exodus have been a balm to my ailing self image of late. The post-partum body is a hilarious and embarrassing collection of weakened muscle, body fat, leaking parts, and shedding hair. It’s easy to stare at the topographical map of stretch marks in the mirror and wonder if the sagging belly will ever stop jiggling. Even more than body image, though, I have always wrestled with my to-do lists, thinking I will never be even half of the Proverbs 31 ideal. Most days “bringing her food from afar” means pick up instead of delivery, and “providing for her household” means nobody died that day. I am a broken altar.

Read these verses again, and read closely for any mention of perfection. You didn’t see it either, did you? The only requirements are build where I tell you, and use natural, uncut stones; in fact, shaping the stones with a tool would “make the altar unfit for holy use.” I see a lot of things that make me very happy to put away my tools. First, God provided good raw material. He has given us everything we need to build the perfect altar (ourselves) for his use; it’s all there, but it must be assembled according to his instructions (that’s the tough part). Second, my tools are wholly inadequate to improve on God’s craftsmanship. Any shaping or cutting must be an act of God, not man. Third, the altar was made of earth; it needed to be raw and natural because it merely acted as a table for the sacrifices.

As a very raw altar stone, I can stop trying to chisel away what I see as blemishes and rest in the grace that I am as God made me. This does NOT mean that I stop growing or trying to be better or exercising. It means that I can focus on building where God tells me to build and building what he tells me to build. For instance, I will never look like Heidi Klum; I will only ever look like me. Accepting that I will not grow another four inches and lose half my body weight frees me to be the healthiest I can be. That may include losing weight but will never require looking like a German underwear model. Another example: I will never be Martha Stewart or Rachel Ray or any other semi-put-together homemaker. Accepting that I will never be able to keep my house immaculately clean and/or cook dinner every night while also working full time, raising a child, and volunteering frees me to realize that there are a lot of ways to be a good wife without a spotless house. My poor husband has resigned himself to sharing his living quarters with the occasional (or semi-permanent) dust bunny and a wife who will never be a German underwear model. He seems to have made his peace with that.

What matters most is that I am following God as closely as I can and that my family reflects that faith and love. It matters that this earthy altar gets used to glorify God more than it matters that each stone block was perfectly cubed before it got used. It matters that the altar is raw material, malleable and natural without the facades we humans use to hide our inglorious imperfections. That kind of altar is ready to offer up holy sacrifices of service and worship – ready to accept that Jesus made one perfect sacrifice for all humanity and my sacrifices are merely offerings of thanksgiving for what has been done already. It matters that I am fit for holy use just the way I am, regardless of what I see as my blemishes. Those extra pounds, my mound of stretch marks, my total lack of discipline in the presence of chocolate, my impatience, my humanity – those are God’s raw materials to shape as he sees fit. And underneath the imperfections that always catch my attention are some pretty neat building stones: creativity, humor and empathy to name a few. While it may be obvious to me how God is using those good things, it is less apparent to me that he is also using my broken bits, often in bigger ways than what I see as my strengths.

So, build where God tells you to build. Build according to his instructions, and remember that your raw materials are both worthy and holy if you allow God to shape them. Allow your altar to be used just as it is.

“Run Away Home”

Go. Go be With Jesus,
Go and dance with your man,
Go and play with my babies.
We can handle the rest.

Run. Run away home,
Run and never grow weary,
Run and finish your race.
We can handle the rest.

Fly. Soar up to heaven,
Fly and leave all the pain,
Fly and live forever.
We can handle the rest.

Dance. Dance on two legs,
Dance and sing your praise,
Dance and bask in the glory.
We can handle the rest.

Know. Know that you are loved,
Know that you are missed,
Know as you are known.
We know you have earned your rest.

A few weeks ago, my husband’s grandmother died after a long fight to recover from a car accident. This poem was my way to say goodbye and process the loss of a beautiful, humble, godly woman who adopted me as if I had always been her granddaughter.

For Mother’s Day

“Sing, O childless woman, you who have never given birth! Break into loud and joyful song, O Jerusalem, you who have never been in labor. For the desolate woman now has more children than the woman who lives with her husband,” says the Lord. “Enlarge your house; build an addition. Spread out your home, and spare no expense! For you will soon be bursting at the seams. Your descendants will occupy other nations and resettle the ruined cities. “Fear not; you will no longer live in shame. Don’t be afraid; there is no more disgrace for you. You will no longer remember the shame of your youth and the sorrows of widowhood. For your Creator will be your husband; the Lord of Heaven’s Armies is his name! He is your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, the God of all the earth. For the Lord has called you back from your grief— as though you were a young wife abandoned by her husband,” says your God. “For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great compassion I will take you back. In a burst of anger I turned my face away for a little while. But with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,” says the Lord, your Redeemer. (Isaiah 54:1-8 NLT)

This may seem an odd introduction for a Mother’s Day post, but I wanted those words in your head first. I have held on to this Bible passage for at least fifteen years now. It struck me in college as I was working with youth and kids that even though I didn’t have children (nor did I want them in that stage of life), each life I touched was enlarging my house. One translation says move your tent pegs out, which is such a lovely way to think of adding to your family. Create a little more space; add a little water to the soup pot; be ready to nourish anyone who comes your way.

In broad strokes, this passage, like most of the Old Testament is God wooing his errant Israel back into the fold, back to his tent, back to life and love. Here, God is promising Israel that he will have compassion on their captivity and return them to the land he promised them, like a husband tenderly making up with his wife. This marriage imagery runs throughout the Bible, and as a woman and a wife, I can instantly identify with the roles of God and his people – Christ and his church. There are so, so many layers to this passage, but I only want to point you to one.

Mother’s Day is a bitter pill for me, and this year is a grab bag of emotions. It will be a tough day for so many of my friends who are struggling to become pregnant, who have lost pregnancies, and who long for children someday but realize that someday is dangerously close to passing them by. If you’re in any of those situations, may this offer you the same consolation I’ve gleaned from these verses. Israel is a childless widow, meaning she has no possible way to have children. Without promising her that she would ever give birth to any children, God still promises to act as Israel’s husband – her provider – and to give her more children than even the married woman has.

God tells Israel to enlarge her house – move her tent pegs – for the descendants that will soon be “bursting at the seams.” She’ll forget all about the “disgrace” and “shame” of her current situation. I put those two words in quotations because I know that you feel shame and disgrace if you are a woman longing for a child. You feel as if you’re out of sync with nature and maybe even God, but there is no reason for your guilt. A beautiful thing about women is that we are built to nourish other people. It’s biological as well as emotional and spiritual, and most of us nurture others everyday without even thinking.

So this Mother’s Day, look around you and consider how many lives yours enriches. Do you work with children? Do you volunteer to help others? How many people have you supported through tough times or adopted as extended family? Celebrate those things today, because you, my friend, are a mother whether you have given birth or not. Expand your tent pegs to make room for all of your children, because once you look past the physical aspect of childbirth, you’ve actually given birth to a huge family. If you have nurtured another being, nourished another soul, you are a mother, and worthy of being celebrated.

And Now Your Life Begins…

When you have a new baby, you will hear more than once, “And NOW your life REALLY begins.” This is one of the most ridiculous new baby sayings of all time. What was I doing before my daughter was born? What if I’d never had a baby? What about the rest of my life that isn’t all about the baby? Does nothing I’ve done or continue to do count unless it’s about the baby? This one is a close second: “Don’t you feel fulfilled now that you’re a mother?” Yes and no. You really don’t want me to answer that question honestly if you were the one who asked that in conversation because my answer will not be the simple “Oh, yes!” you were looking for.

My life is just continuing, and now I have an added responsibility and joy. I have a dream that was fulfilled, and it is everything I imagined it to be so far. I am not any more fulfilled as a person and follower of Christ than I was before. You may not believe me, but if you are struggling through infertility or miscarriage and think that your life will drastically improve and you will feel whole if you only had a child, it won’t and you won’t. If you haven’t dealt with all of the pain and loss you’ve been handed, it will not magically disappear when your child comes home. You will only add more work to your emotional to-do list, and you’ll probably feel guilty for still experiencing grief in spite of your bundle of joy – especially when it won’t stop crying for no apparent reason. Then you’ll feel like a bad mom on top of everything else, and the one thing that was supposed to fulfill you is creating more pain.

I’ve said more than once that I think the replacement baby mentality is a really bad idea, and I’m even more sure now that our baby is here. I look at her and love every curve of her face and every expression she makes, and I wonder at the same time what each of my angel babies look like. Each milestone she passes reminds me of what I missed every time we miscarried, and the grief is staggering if I peek over the abyss too long. Our daughter is a gift; her presence is a gift that has soothed the ache of longing to be a parent. She hasn’t erased anything that happened before her arrival, nor should we expect her to lest we force the weight of our losses onto her tiny shoulders. She is our miracle, but I already wonder how to explain that to her when she is old enough to understand without pressuring her to make up for nine angel babies.

I’ve done the work to be a whole person again, and in spite of that, the last month has been hard. Our first baby should have been five on April 1. The first few years, that day was really tough to handle. Each successive year was easier, and the distance of time allowed the open wound to scab over, to heal a bit more and sting a little less – until this year. Having our baby in my arms didn’t soften the blow; I think it may have made it more difficult. This year was incredibly painful, maybe because I’ve experienced a tiny bit of what we missed the last five years. Maybe more than anything else, the April Fool’s Day kick in the pants reminded me that my life is very definitely not just beginning, but my daughter’s is. She is brand new and baggage free, and it is my job to use my experience to teach her how to handle everything that life will throw at her, good and bad. So, my life will continue, her life has just begun, and I pray that we will both be fulfilled by being who God created us to be.

The Even Keel

In case you noticed the giant lapse in blog entries and wondered why, we had our little girl at the end of January. I actually went into labor on her due date, and our little Engelberta was born the next day. Also, in case you wondered, I am not going to use Engelberta’s real name here. If we are friends, then you have likely already seen her name and pictures on FB a few times. If you are Joe Public reading my blog, I hope you’ll understand that I’d like to give Engelberta some privacy since this isn’t her blog.
If you know me or my husband well, then you know that neither of us are overly excitable people; you know the type – they scream loudly on roller coasters, they squeal with delight upon seeing old friends, and they may actually jump up and down with glee. We, on the other hand, are not quite as demonstrative even though we may feel the same depth of emotion. I am the person who smiles (silently) on a roller coaster and who screams (on the inside) without making more than a little “ha!” noise. Through our whole pregnancy, people constantly asked us if we were excited, and most of them were squealing and/or jumping while asking the question. We always replied calmly that of course we were excited, while the interrogator looked dubiously at our lack of exuberance. I often felt like maybe I SHOULD be physically jumping for joy even though I was jumping, silently, on the inside. Our labor and delivery nurses kept remarking at how calm both of us were through delivery, but we kept laughing and saying, “You don’t go through everything we’ve been through and then freak out over delivering a baby.” You don’t freak out over much at all, actually.
I have realized that one gift the last five years’ events have given me is an extraordinarily even keel. Our circumstances can be all over the map, but my emotions don’t have to live on the peaks or in the valleys. Of course I feel the highs and lows, but my heart is anchored in the hope of Christ, and that gives me a solid place to stand no matter what life throws my direction. God gave us the lows of each miscarriage and the high of this successful pregnancy. The constant in every circumstance is that God gives us himself, and we have found our joy in his presence and not in our circumstances. That is freedom. That is certain knowledge that whatever happens, it is what it is, and it doesn’t define me; God does and what I do in the moment does.

A Rare Political Moment

I am surrounded by people with very strong political beliefs, as are most people in the United States. I have friends with widely varying viewpoints, and I tend to hold my opinions close to the vest with all but my closest friends. There are family members I won’t discuss politics with, either because I might truly offend them or there’s just no point in any of us wasting our breath. I would guess that almost everyone who expresses their strongly held opinion to me thinks that I mostly agree with them.

Here’s the thing: I probably don’t. I am much more centrist and libertarian than most of the people I am around, meaning I didn’t think it was the end of the world when either W or Obama got elected, and I don’t believe either of them to be the second coming of Christ. I find that most political debates focus too narrowly along party lines, as does every important national discussion. There was a recent Huffington Post op-ed that described the role that faith plays in both major parties and how that same faith puts them at polar opposites. I can’t remember the author or the title now, but the gist of the piece was that Republicans get hung up on moral programs like the pro-life agenda while Democrats get hung up on social programs like healthcare or welfare. Both are acting on an extremely narrowly interpreted faith with no room for compromise.

In the last few weeks, the national conversation has focused on gun control. I think we’re having the wrong conversation. Guns, like money, have no moral value; they are neither good nor bad, and their influence is entirely based on the person holding them. Someone who is willing to shoot and kill another person will not be stopped by more gun control laws. If legislating morality were all it would take to make mankind better, we wouldn’t need police forces, and there wouldn’t be mass shootings. Here’s how the current conversation will go: “liberals” will argue that enough is enough, and we must ban guns altogether or restrict their sales and usage to such a degree that the average law-abiding citizen will never own a gun; “conservatives” will argue that guns don’t kill people, people kill people, and mass shootings wouldn’t occur if more average law-abiding citizens were armed. No guns versus more guns. Which side is right? Neither one – they are both knee-jerk reactions to a horrible tragedy. Both sides will argue, fight dirty, and blame the other side. One side may even “win” by passing a new restrictive law or repealing an old restrictive law. The media will rehash every detail released and determine that mental illness is to blame, and dozens of people along the way missed vital clues that could have prevented the tragedy. Most of the mainstream media seems to have already decided that tighter gun laws would have prevented the Newtown tragedy.

All of the focus on gun control and mental illness are smoke and mirrors hiding the real and ugly problem our culture faces: we do not value life. We do not value individuals as unique creations of God, and until we do, no law in the world will stop another tragedy from happening. There is another op-ed that I read and greatly admired. If you haven’t seen the “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother” piece, Google it. The author is a mother of a teenage son who has an undetermined mental illness, and he has had violent outbursts that are increasingly harder to control. She has been seeking help, but the best suggestion given her by professional social workers and healthcare providers is to have her teenage son arrested so that he could be “in the system” and locked up or committed more easily. More horrifying than the professional suggestions to have the kid locked away were the comments from readers that her son SHOULD be locked away either in jail or a mental institution for life or medicated into oblivion. Most of the comments were rude beyond imagination. This woman was brave enough to share her story and to ask for help, for viable ways to treat her still developing teenage son either by correctly diagnosing and treating the problem or by assisting when he acts out. The public at large condemned her for advocating for her son and is willing to throw away a life that can be saved.

This is how we treat people asking for help, and then we blame the parents and anyone else in contact with a “problem child” when the child does something truly horrific. Why didn’t the parents see the signs? How could all of their teachers have missed the problem? We can’t have it both ways. Either we value each life and support those in need, or we deal with tragedy after tragedy. Either every life is valuable or none are.

The current political climate isn’t just a reflection of polar extremes in philosophies or theology – the hatred and vitriol apparent in virtually every debate demonstrates a fundamental lack of respect. There are at least three topics I avoid discussing with almost everyone because I can’t stand to hear either extreme side of the argument and because I know my opinions will not make anyone happy: healthcare, abortion, and gay marriage. As Christians, we are charged with loving one another and caring for the needs around us – to borrow from my pastor, we should be Jesus until he comes back. None of the extremes in any of these topics reflect the love of Christ.

How can anyone who thinks that the church’s job is to take care of those in need be violently opposed to a program to provide healthcare? From the other side of the argument, how can anyone who wants to accomplish such a noble task be so irresponsible that they would establish a program without reforming the system that is so bloated and corrupted that it caused most of the problem of unaffordable healthcare?

How can anyone who cares so much about being pro-life turn a blind eye to everything involved in a woman’s decision to have an abortion? Are you willing to provide childcare and post-natal support for as long as it takes for mother and child to live healthy lives? Are you willing to provide family counseling for families that are unwilling to allow adoption of the unplanned child and/or are unwilling to provide a loving and stable home situation for mother and baby? Are you willing to love the mother even if she chooses abortion? And if you have no qualms about abortion for any reason, how can you find such a waste of life acceptable in any but the most extreme situations? How does the use of abortion as a late form of birth control demonstrate anything except extreme disregard for human life and a fundamental lack of respect?

How can any Christian look me in the eye and say with a straight face that gay marriage will destroy the sanctity of marriage? I think the divorce rate among churched straight couples makes that a moot point. This argument garners about as much sympathy from me as the “Keep Christ in Christmas” hullabaloo. No law or government on earth can remove Christ from Christmas if you believe in Jesus as the savior, just as no law or government on earth can destroy the sanctity of a marriage commitment made before God.

What do we gain by constantly shouting out the extremes? I can tell you what we lose. We lose relationship, dialogue, and respect for one another. What do we lose by actually listening to one another without trying change the other party? What do we lose by occasionally compromising with the other side (a la healthcare) or by admitting we don’t really have all the answers?

If you are a careful reader, you’ll realize that I still haven’t really shared my personal view of any of the topics I presented as problematic; you may even think I’m dodging, and I guess I am to some extent. I’ll happily discuss anything I believe with anyone who is open to honest and respectful conversation. I freely admit that I have no simple answers to any of the national debates, but most of the simple answers involve the same hateful and uncompromising sound bytes that form both major party platforms. At some point, we have to learn to respect each other – to respect and love each individual life for what it is – or we will face more national tragedies, more unresolvable fiscal cliffs, and even more polarization. If you tend towards either extreme conservatism or extreme liberalism, take a long and hard look at how you react to the other side – if it’s automatic outrage or condemnation based on faith, consider that the other side feels the same way about you, and you both believe you’re doing what Jesus would do. It’s possible both sides are wrong and neither side truly represents what Jesus would do.