Call of the wild

Husband talk

I find women differ much, both in the degree and manner in which their feelings will permit them to talk about their husbands. I have known women set a whole community against their husbands by the way in which they trumpeted their praises; and I have known one woman set everybody against herself by the way in which she published her husband's faults. I find it difficult to believe either sort. To praise one's husband is so like praising one's self, that to me it seems immodest, and subject to the same suspicion as self-laudation; while to blame one's husband, even justly and openly, seems to me to border upon treachery itself.

The Vicar's Daughter, George MacDonald

Expert opinion

Here you may read a graciously sympathetic post from the Anchoress, who kindly takes the time to consider what the life of a mother of many young children is really like, and a vision for a program of care to such mothers. Also included is this link to a writing from a Roman Catholic mother who is upfront about a hard fact of perpetual parturition: it places extreme demands on a marriage (NFP or not), even a strong marriage, even a strong marriage between two people equally convicted about the catholic teaching on marriage. The writer told her husband,

The worst part is, I blame the Church. I blame the ban on birth control, the fact that NFP doesn’t work for us, the reality that I will never, ever have a chance to get a handle on things because I’m constantly pregnant or nursing. I can’t crawl out from under the pregnancy-and-postpartum rock because the rock follows me everywhere, just waiting to smash me again. Intellectually, I believe the Church. I understand the arguments against birth control. I agree with them, even. I just no longer think I’m a good enough person to follow the rules.

There are many reasons people use contraception, and no one understands them better than people who don't. I have no use for the faux-debaters who will bellow forever about binding consciences, the first and last refuge of the lazy Lutheran. The loyal opposition I DO respect is comprised of those who are honest enough to say: "The church might really be right about that, but we just can't do it. It's too hard." They're right. It IS too hard. :P

The Anchoress' vision is unlikely to become a systemic reality anywhere. It may happen in individual Roman Catholic parishes where someone with a "heart for that ministry" undertakes it. Much less will it happen in our Synod where anybody with more than four kids is a caricatured joke, the lowest of the evangelists and the blandest of persons. The Republican Party at Prayer will never stop secretly wanting us all to be Michele Bachmann (physically attractive, kid count in the high-reasonables, bonus good-personism, successful career, and of course "conservative"). I can only be thankful for the dear people in my parish who are kind to me and help me as they are able simply because we are sisters in Christ, not because they share an interest in my personal pious cause. Developing a fantasy about some kind of formal support system serves merely to depress; my recommendation is don't bother.

BUT--I will remember what this is like. When these years end for me, I will try to be the loving presence; the listening, understanding, forgiving ear; the willing hands for any young mother who needs them so much, who is so disrespected and alone, beginning with the mothers of any grandchildren God should see fit to grant me.

Peter and Joan

They were the happiest couple in that country, because

they always understood each other, and that was because

they always meant the same thing, and that was because

they always loved what was fair and true and right better,

not than anything else,

but than everything else put together.



George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

Two to tango

This is one of those posts that will likely make no one happy, but I promised it to someone so here it is. Sorry, folks. Remember, I’m neither your doctor nor your mother; I’m just some blame fool on the Internet. 

Here’s a crazy notion: A Christian wife’s fertility is best managed by her Christian husband, because he is her loving lord and her appointed head. The approach any given husband takes in managing his wife’s fertility—which is a gift to him from his loving Lord and eternal head—is a matter of faith for that husband.* Additionally, the wife does well to recognize that her body and its life-giving capabilities are gifts, and to submit to her husband as to the Lord in childbearing.

Not all Christian husbands choose to manage their wives’ fertility like my husband chooses to manage mine. Each man has his reasons, his circumstances, and his conditions, and I don’t presume to know anything about his life or his crosses.

That said, there are women in our congregations who have encountered upsetting information about the Pill and its kin, and yet are still “on it” because it’s what their husbands insist that they do. There are women who trust that it is Christ who opens and closes the womb, and yet these women use prophylactics because their husbands do not desire more children, or because their husbands are not convinced that now is the right time for more children.

And sometimes a Christian sister, plagued by her conscience and/or the chaffing of disagreement with her husband, approaches a CSPP and asks something along the lines of, “What do you think I should do?” This is what the CSPP has to say to such a question: “God bless you, honey, you have to obey your husband. I’ll pray for you both.”

Because what else is there to say? When a woman is given in marriage, she promises to submit, to obey, to be a wife to her husband in sickness and in health. Physical sickness or spiritual sickness. The Christian husband who falls short on the matter of contraception is not equivalent to the abuser or the drunkard; he merely suffers the infection of the age. Sarah was not given to pack up and leave Abraham, who had his fair share of marital fumbles. Neither did harassing him do her much good. Sarah was given to wait and to pray. We are Sarah’s daughters. It is given to us also to wait and to pray, whatever our circumstances.

However, there is one caveat, and it’s Portia’s: while Shylock has a right to his pound of flesh, he may not shed a single drop of Christian blood in getting it. It is excusable and correct for a wife to refuse abortifacient forms of birth control, which is to say, pills, patches, rings, herbs, foams, jellies, injections, implants, and IUDs. When and where the universe has misinformed the Christian husband, the Christian wife is encouraged to help her husband become aware. I’ve no scruples about telling my Christian sister that she can pitch her pills. Just do it. OK?

But prophylactics and true contraceptives are a different deal. As these devices are not deadly to newly conceived children, and as they do no salient harm to women, their use in Christian marriages is difficult for contemporary Americans to condemn outright. Don’t misread me: the use of such things is problematic, but those problems are more difficult to discern in our day’s prevailing darkness. And while wives everywhere find such things humiliating and otherwise sad-making, well, what are we going to suggest these dear sisters do? Make a mess of their marriages? No and thousand times, no. Again, a husband’s stance on such things is a matter of faith for that husband.* Better for a wife to keep the peace and work gently and lovingly to change her husband’s heart. Such change takes time. And, like, dozens of pies.

So it goes for the modern woman. Turns out being a modern woman is pretty much exactly like being a woman at any other point in all of human history. We’ve come so far as not to have gone anywhere at all. But the news is still very good: We wives, whether suffering from inflicted barrenness or no, are given to lift up our heads and open our hearts, for Christ is coming (the signs abound!) and it is He who is the perfect Bridegroom, who makes us to be the perfect Bride, who gives to us the countenance and the fortitude to flourish within our marriages. To be married is gift in itself, for thereby is each woman given a companion to comfort her as best he can as she waits for Christ’s return. Take heart! The duty of the wife is to submit; in doing so her conscience is clear. Bide your time, sister. He works all things to the good of those who love Him.

*Yes, dear anonymous, you’re right; it’s not a matter of saving faith. A man need not ever conceive a single child to merit the righteousness that Christ freely imparts to His people through His cross. Nonetheless, “be fruitful and multiply,” a law spoken to all people by the one true and triune God, is accepted and enacted by people through faith in that God. You know: did He really mean it? But how much did He mean it? But does He still mean it? OK, but does He mean it for me? That sort of faith. Just so we’re clear. 

Having it all

There is a way to have it all, even for "you can't have it all"ers. That way is to marry late. I can name without much thought a number of smart girls who, not having been given a husband early, found ways to keep themselves busy and solvent and in the process made good names for themselves in their lines of work. Many of them are able to keep up that work after marriage since they established themselves in it beforehand. I wonder if they know how many of us are sitting in our houses feeling really jealous.

If they did, I think a lot of them would come and give us a hard kick.  Many of them sat in their houses at the end of countless workdays knowing every bit of that jealousy. Although I didn't have to live with it long, spouse anxiety is not a good feeling. Everybody wants that question answered. I'm not even going to talk about loneliness; the mention suffices. Though I may envy the lady who now has the husband and kids AND the name recognition and credentials and therefore public respect and earning potential I never will, I would not sacrifice one hour with the husband God gave me for any of that. It is better for me to tend his hearth than to be known and successful in the market. Our length of days together has also meant a family so big we can barely fit ourselves and our picnic into the car.

I like the idea of having it all. But I like my husband, like, so much more (and picnics too). So let's not be jealous, because they're really nice girls and they've earned what they have now. That's how their lives went and this is how my life went and haven't we all wasted enough of our lives wanting things that aren't ours? How much worse is it to mope about something we don't have that we know we don't really want?

". . . and last of all, behold! the mustard pot, which he had been sitting on without knowing it . . . ."

Above and beyond

I needed a baby so I could realize how much I needed a husband. A husband is not a BFF. A husband is the man who takes care of you when you can't take care of yourself.

I'm not saying a spouse isn't or can't be a friend, just that the "husband as BFF" motif so prevalent in contemporary conjugal piety (especially at weddings in which the couple writes the "vows") is really dumb. This has everything to do with a motif that's been dropped from contemporary conjugal piety: "husband as lord." This necessarily leads to people marrying their BFFs whether or not the BFF is of the other sex.

But anyway, although my husband is my friend, he is also more and less than that. He is my lord, and as such a great part of him is above me and therefore unknowable to me. And I will venture to assert that as his lady, I am and always will be a mystery to him. There is a great part of me that is beyond him and therefore unknowable to him. One of the greatest services husbands and wives do each other is NOT trying or pretending to share absolutely everything. Not every cross borne by a husband can be shared by a wife, as surely as a great multitude of a wife's burdens cannot be lightened by a husband. To act or expect otherwise is delusional and unfair.

Knowing this and valuing it frees us from needing to be jerks about it. I find that when I get to spend time with my female friends (which means one of us herding crawlers out of the kitchen while the other cooks), sharing with each other the burdens beyond our husbands, we end up thanking God together that he put us under the care of dudes so much better than we are.

Who shall stand?

I wonder how many of us are from the kind of families we imagine our children's future spouses must come from. Although I'm inclined to think I came from a pretty decent family, I'm sure some purists would consider it unacceptable. After all, anyone who grew up wrong regarding certain matters can't really be trusted, no matter what they say they think now. You can take the girl out of Sulva, but . . . ?

Furthermore, anyone who grew up right won't make Certain Mistakes, and Certain Mistakes are unforgiveable. Not for God of course (it's his job to forgive people), but for future parents of our grandchildren, who must be exactly as undamaged as we've imagined them.

It is an ever-fixed mark

My mind is a better place for having seen this painting. Thus, naturally, did I have to share it with you.

Wedded, by Lord Fredrick Leighton, c.1881

Happy Saturday.

Supper panic: Buy yourself a little time

Listen up, girls, because I’m going to tell you one of the great kitchen secrets that my mother shared with me shortly before my wedding.

Scene: For one reason or another (most likely one reason and another, and another…), supper plans have slipped your mind. It’s only when you remember that you’re supposed to be teaching a kid or two to tell time and you ask one of them to read the clock that you suddenly realize Dad will be home any minute…and you have no idea what’s for supper.

Now, you’ve got a few options. Here’s one that I’ve tried in several variations, but don’t necessarily recommend: As soon as your husband walks in the door, fresh from the bread-earning cares of the day, thrust the fretful baby at him, incoherently weeping and gnashing your teeth about how there’s no way you can possibly accomplish all the tasks in your day, and how he’d better peel all those brats off you RIGHT NOW OR ELSE, and anyone who wants supper can jolly well make himself a PBJ.

You might have better luck with this one: turn on the stove, and slice an onion into a pan with some butter. In a matter of seconds, the house will smell purposefully wonderful. Dad will walk in, sniff the air, and declare appreciatively: “Smells great!” That’s your cue to say, “Mmm-hmm. Now if you could just take the kids [outside, to the basement, wherever] after you’ve changed, I’ll be able to finish up in here.” Dad, feeling useful, and anticipating a good meal in reward for his labors, will cheerfully whisk the young’uns away to such activities as only fathers can pull off enthusiastically. The kids will be thrilled to have Dad to themselves. And you get a peacefully empty kitchen…and a few minutes to run to Allrecipes or CSPP cooks to figure out what on earth to do with those onions.

No, no, don't peek in the pot now. You just run along and have fun and I'll call you when it's ready.

This is how we treat our friends?

Nothing about the contemporary wedding has ever made sense or appealed to me. I find its demands shallow and inconsiderate, its conventions frivolous and absurd*, and its caricaturing of certain divine mysteries nauseating. But what really stands out to me from all the madness is the gross insensitivity of putting a group of random, normal women on display for 45 minutes of gawking, especially if they're all expected to wear the same dress.

(I realize this is silly of me and virtually no contemporary women consider themselves the least bit un-gawkworthy in any state of dress or undress.)

You stay classy, America.

*Symptomatic of my non-decorative inclination, probably. I'm sure everybody else's wedding was beautiful.

Thou shalt not, and why wouldst thou anyway?

A lady of my acquaintance once told me that any time she started thinking she'd be happier with someone else's husband, she just reminded herself that he (whoever the "he" may have been at her moment of temptation) left his dirty socks all over the place.

Gary Larson on the domestic condition

Talking to a 2-year-old

Disciplining a 3-year-old

Coexisting with a five-year-old

Assigning tasks to a six-year-old

Mom serves lunch

Ahem.

Dad helps Mom with her problems

Moral ambiguity

And that's how it is

Many nights ago, I had a trash bag full of trash. EVER so full of trash. Trash largely of a nature of which we have spoken here before; namely, the trash of others which they are unable to trash. We will call it "füdtrash," received as it was in such vast quantity as to prohibit its total consumption or quartering. Warm was this füdtrash, and squishy.

Excepting one year of our married life, my husband and I have not taken trash to the corner in a marital trash can like a proper man and wife but rather have shared a dumpster with other families and/or institutions. This night occurred not in that year of propriety. Excepting occasional exigent trips to dumpsters, my husband takes out the trash like a proper man, but again, we speak not of a night of propriety. There were reasons for this: a long day of physical labor on his part, an overstuffing of trash bags on my part for which I did not wish to be reprimanded again, the loathing of Wifekind to ask Mankind to take out the trash.

This reprimandible overstuffing found my feeble self dragging my füdtrash along the ground from dwelling to dumpster. It found me propping my warm, overstuffed füdtrash against the dumpster while I opened the lid. It found me swinging my squishy füdtrash back and forth, putting that momentum paragraph from ninth grade science and the more memorable thingy on my teacher's desk to good use. It found me mustering strength for a final heave. It found my füdtrash arcing promisingly, then embarrassingly evacuating itself out the bottom of the misused bag all over the ground.

Alas. Alas.

Shared dumpster. Traffic in vicinity of shared dumpster guaranteed in morning (barring certain eschatological events, which history now shows did not occur). Ground thickly covered in warm füdtrash and distinctive, incriminating personal items. Basic human decency. My path was clear.

Thus did I run back to my dwelling and return to the scene of my crime with a plethora of bags. Bags for my hands, bags for my füdtrash, bags for my bags. And in the dark night, I felt along the ground for my trash. I gathered my trash to me. I picked up the fluttering Tootsie Roll wrappers and the greasy junk mail, the overnight diaper and the pineapple top, the off-brand Kleenices stiff with their ministry and the off-brand Gladware that broke when it fell out of my overstuffed freezer. Most of all, I gathered up my warm füdtrash. Out of the grass did I rake up with baggéd fingers my reconstituted potato flakes, my quivering gravy. Under the quarter moon did I gather my trash even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings. I put my trash in new bags, and did toss these understuffed bags easily into the dumpster. Verily, they floated above me like jellyfish on the wing.

My amiable consort, missing me at last, called to me from our dwelling, but I assured him all was well. I found a hose, and hooked it up, and sprayed the lingering füdtrash into a more considerate arrangement for the morning's sure traffic. I closed the dumpster. I walked home.

And through it all my heart quickened not, neither did my nose burn; yea, my soul was at peace: for no child wept, and no child tugged at me, and no child whined, and no child bickered, and no child needed to be nursed, and no child bled, and no child painted another's sweater, and no child frolicked in the litter box, and no child profaned his trousers, and no child consumed an ink cartridge, for every child slept and no child knew. Wherefore I devoted myself wholeheartedly to the task and completed it well and satisfactorily, free of panic, wrath, or interruption; and I went to sleep at once and in good cheer.

The Masculine Mystique

I knew little of the lives of my younger brothers and sister in our teen years for reasons of mutual disinterest and, in my case, jerkiness. What tidings I heard of the brothers in particular were strange, mostly dealing with pyrotechnics and ballistics and complex vandalism involving defunct appliances and acquaintances' yards. I did not understand these things.

I married a man, and he became the friend and enemy of these brothers. They demanded time together for the purpose of ridiculing and injuring and defeating each other. They invented structures and folkways for the purpose of better accomplishing these goals. Where vandalism decreased, pyrotechnics and ballistics swelled and overflowed the balance.

None of these men looked particularly suspect. Lean, yes, but more quarterback than linebacker. Indeed not even quarterbacks, but tennis players and speechies, Coen aficionados and history buffs and Greek tutors. Why, then, the violence? Why the idiocy? Why the inflicting and inviting of utterly pointless pain? Why the games (games!) wherein loss threatened emasculation? Why the retrieval of submarine-sized logs from a frigid Gitche Gumee, equipped only with swim trunks and a moronic will?

Girls, I'll tell you. They are practicing. In this time and place they will probably not be called upon for the ultimate trial of manhood. But they might. And they would be ready. They would know fear. They would know courage. They would suffer pain. They would prevail. They would go first. They would leave last. For us.

And so he must appear to be an imbecile, because a world safe as ours gives him little authentic opportunity to put himself to the test. For both of these things we should be grateful. In time, he will teach his sons the same, and they will learn to fight and kill and suffer and yet come home to eat the cookies we baked in their absence.

Tell him he was real tough next time he comes in all sweaty.

Cecil's voice came: "My dear Freddy, I am no athlete. As you well

remarked this very morning, 'There are some chaps who are no good for

anything but books'; I plead guilty to being such a chap, and will not

inflict myself on you."

The scales fell from Lucy's eyes. How had she stood Cecil for a

moment? He was absolutely intolerable, and the same evening she broke

off her engagement.

Fa la la la la! La la la BLAT!

Another poem for the season:

A mighty creature is the germ,
Though smaller than the pachyderm.
His customary dwelling place
Is deep within the human race.
His childish pride he often pleases
By giving people strange diseases.
Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?
You probably contain a germ.

--Ogden Nash

I really hope you, dear reader, are having a far less messy week than I.

Matchmaking

I hear talk occasionally about matchmaking on behalf of one's children. While it's not a topic that particularly excites me in any direction, it does make me wonder what poor schlump I'd be married to now if my parents had been into it.

Hope you like spaetzle!

Selah

The lord of the manor recently looked at me askance and demanded to know why I'm not pregnant yet. I directed his attention to the likely explanation, which was rolling around corpulently at our feet, and asked what brought on such criticism. He said, "Things have been going way too smoothly around here."

Lamech, you're so lame.

Oh, those awful patriarchs and kings. How could they have been so wrong? And their wives, their FIRST wives, their REAL wives--how could they stand it? Why did they stand it?

"Lamech took to himself two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other, Zillah" (Gen 4:19). This is the first we hear of polygamy in the Bible. If one wife is good, two must be better; and Lamech's reasoning is found amenable for generations thereafter.

Interesting that God does not provide any editorial remark. Doesn't He think polygamy is bad? Well, yes. It's terrible. So terrible no one needs to say it's bad because every sane person knows. God also makes no comment on Lamech's bragging on his own malice and bloodlust a few verses down. We don't need to have it spelled out for us that Lamech's sins are sins.

But anyway, imagine Lamech's kids and neighbors. Meh, two wives. That's just how we do it in our tent, just how they do it next door. Not normal for everybody, but normal for Lamech. And what's normal for your dad or your neighbor, well, it's not that weird, right? Something you see every day isn't weird. Normal for Lamech and Adah and Zillah becomes normal for their sons, normal for their daughters, normal for their neighbors, just normal.

So Jacob: another week, another wife. David, a man after God's own heart, never gives us an indication that this polygamy business keeps him up at night for any good reason (neither does the practice solve his lust problem). Even tender Elkanah cannot imagine himself to be worth less to Hannah than ten sons, oblivious to having given her only half of himself. And if our main concern is that polygamy is bad for women, I wonder if 1000 lonely Ancient Near East guys might have some insights to offer wise Solomon.

What happens to polygamy? Exile, probably, and the poverty it brings. Roman occupation and law (thanks for that at least, nations). Once polygamy becomes abnormal again, its wrongness becomes self-evident to Christians. (Though our honored fathers can still trip us up.)

Polygamy: the sexual sin the people of God--good, pious, exemplary people of God--could not live without. Fornication, divorce and prostitution/pornography being roughly historically equal, can we possibly be so arrogant as to imagine that we have transcended this capacity for tremendous transgression, for unthinkable unchastity?

But don't worry, Protestants. As long as you're not a bishop (and what Protestant would be?) the Bible doesn't say you can't have two wives. As my favorite pastor told me, "At least polygamy is life-affirming."

Further reading.

The wife's part

Many's the time I've expended frank worry over the fact that I seem to have absolutely nothing to offer my earthly lord. Complicating this situation is the fact that he does everything, everything for me, and with a smile on his face. So this bit of old-timey Presbyterian wisdom from Home-Making by JR Miller caught my attention:

The true wife clings and leans, but she also helps and inspires. Her husband feels the mighty inspiration of her love in all his life. Toil is easier, burdens are lighter, and battles are less fierce, because of the face that waits in the quiet of the home, because of the heart that beats in loving sympathy whatever the experience, because of the voice that speaks its words of cheer and encouragement when the day’s work is done. No wife knows how much she can do to make her husband honored among men, and his life a power and success, by her loyal faithfulness, by the active inspiration of her own sweet life. Here are the true words from another pen:

“The woodman’s axe swings lighter, the heavy blows on the anvil have more music than fatigue in them, the farmer whistles cheerfully over his plough, the mechanic’s severest toil is lightened by a sweet refrain, when he knows that his fair young bride is in sympathy with him, and while watching his return is providing daintily for his pleasure and comfort, eager to give him loving welcome. To the artist at his easel come fairer visions to be transformed to the canvas because of the dear one presiding over his house. The author in his study finds the dullest subjects clothed in freshness and vigor because of the gentle critic to whom he can go for aid and encouragement. The lawyer prepares his case with better balanced energy, thinks more clearly, pleads his cause with more effective eloquence, inspired by the cheering words uttered as he goes to his labors by the young wife whose thoughts he is assured will follow his work with her judicious, tranquillizing sympathy. The physician in his daily rounds among the sick and suffering knows there is one, now all his own, praying for his success, and this knowledge so fills his being that his very presence by the sick bed has healing in it. The young pastor in his efforts to minister to the spiritual wants of his flock will speak peace to the troubled souls committed to his trust with far more zeal and tenderness for the love that will smile on him when he returns home.”

Is it true? I hope so. And I hope I will do a better job of it today and tomorrow and as long as we both shall live.