(With apologies to Gauntlets)

The Unborn
by Sharon Olds

Sometimes I can almost see, around our heads,
Like gnats around a streetlight in summer,
The children we could have,
The glimmer of them.

Sometimes I feel them waiting, dozing
In some antechamber - servants, half-
Listening for the bell

Sometimes I see them lying like love letters
In the Dead Letter Office

And sometimes, like tonight, by some black
Second sight I can feel just one of them
Standing on the edge of a cliff by the sea
In the dark, stretching its arms out
Desperately to me.

That awkward phase

Not adolescence. The-baby-is-three-months-and-nothing-fits. And-maybe-I-won't-lose-it-all-this-time-anyway. That phase.

I'm not the only one who's struggling. Recently my husband and I had to attend an event and I did that thing where I stood in the closet trying on everything and determining that it all looked awful, spiralling into ever-darkening panic and gloom as the time for our departure approached. Dad really hates it when I do this. In what he claims was an attempt to be encouraging, he sized up one ensemble and, clerically clad, asked, "Are we going as a pair of cat burglars?"

Fast forward a week. I come into a dress from a kind soul. I am afraid to try it on, not sure if this kind soul has accounted for the fact that it takes me longer than three months to return to my standard dimensions. But she has and it fits. I present myself to Dad. Quoth he, "You look like a vampire."

Friends, what am I to make of this? I try to look decent though the cards are stacked against me. My husband, the only person whose judgment of my appearance matters to me for reasons beyond vanity, the person whose words have the power either to pulverize or illuminate my heart, and I may also add a perceptive and gifted communicator with the ability to choose apt words, when in my hour of deepish need is looked to for aid, characterizes me twice as a criminal.

Distinctive and interesting criminals, yes.

But???

NOW how do I look?

Because we can't ever really be prepared for this sort of thing

I’ve been sorting through and tossing lots of stuff lately. Nesting, you ask? Well, I suppose I will start nesting in earnest over the next couple days, when we arrive at our new church and new home. At 35.5 weeks’ gestation (but who's counting). All part of the CSPP adventure, no? Hey, I’m looking forward to actually meeting the doctor who will deliver this baby next month. But more on that later. Probably much, much later.

In all this purging, in some long-forgotten archives, I came across the handbook from the “Prepared Childbirth” class we took some 6 years ago, whilst pregnant with our first. Of course, the irony of the class’s title is obvious to anyone who has actually given birth—but oh! We were all such earnest students! Carrying our pillows to each session, learning the proper massage and vocalization techniques, sticking our hands in icewater to simulate the pain of giving birth (?!?)…

Allowing my swollen self a break from the boxes, I thought it might be fun to at least flip through the thing before I pitched it, especially as another Blessed Event looms large on my personal horizon (ahem). So I kindly entertained my hardworking husband by reading him choice tidbits, such as “Forty-One Ways a Labor Partner Can Help,” from those terrifyingly giddy long-ago days.

I flipped to THE TAKE CHARGE ROUTINE (“Save this routine for any time during labor when the mother: hits an emotional low; is in despair, weeps, cries out; wants to give up or feels she can’t go on; is very tense and cannot relax”). This includes the admonishment: “DON’T GIVE UP ON HER – it is a difficult time for her, it won’t help if you decide she cannot handle it. Acknowledge that it is difficult but not impossible” At which point the ever-supportive father of my children oh-so-innocently inquired whether I was still talking about his role during labor or just during life in general.

Well, he has a point. In fact, for some time now I’ve had a half-baked post half-drafted on Hard vs. Hopeless (unrelated to L&D but with obvious parallels). And half-drafted it shall remain until later. Much, much later.

In the meantime, “ENCOURAGE HER WITH EVERY BREATH…YOU CAN TRULY EASE HER BURDEN BY HELPING HER WITH EVERY BREATH” isn’t such bad daily advice, after all—for CSPP husbands and Sisters alike, in the L&D room and out. Biblical, even.

Quasimodo geniti

Here's something I wish someone had told me before my first baby was born: you can't nurse a newborn under a blanket. Depending on the skill level of the newborn, you may not be able to nurse a newborn wearing much at all. Even the ones who know what they're doing don't know that well. They have to be helped and watched. You'll have to add your neck and back and arms to your Sore list (even though I suppose you "shouldn't"). There's no holding a book in the other hand or carrying on a conversation for at least the first week or two, and not much for the first month. Those visions of picnics at the park or hanging out with everyone who comes to meet the new baby while Baby happily nurses away under the culturally mandatory blanket will happen, but not at first.

This is one way the postpartum experience is completely different for nursing moms than for formula moms, and probably a big reason many people give up. It is so lonely. And it's the hardest for first time moms, who are having to learn their end of it in addition to teaching the baby, and likely to be at home alone all day.

BUT--absolutely worth gutting it out.

Spiritual mothers

All the seven of us were recently honored to be invited to dinner with the family of a couple from our church celebrating their SEVENTIETH [70th] wedding anniversary. And when I say "family," I mean this couple's nine children and the two additional generations they, um, generated.

The exalted mother of this family is always very kind to me, and has a worry I recognize behind her eyes when she asks me, "How are you doing?" She knows.

At this celebration, she sought me out (!) to thank us for coming and we stood there, two shy girls, not knowing what to say to each other despite our mutual affinity. But after we got through the requisite pleasantries of the day, she said to me, "I'm so happy now. But then, I just thought, 'Why, God?'"

"Why, God?" indeed. Why me when so many others are better suited, better hearted; and why can the weight of a blessing be so heavy in this broken world? Could it be that this gracious, humble, gentle, and longsuffering sister felt this way too? Strange words in which to find encouragement, but I did. No temptation has seized us except what is common to man, or even woman.

Shyness notwithstanding, the one thing this lady and say to each other whenever we cross paths is, "I think of you all the time." I know why I think of her: she is virtually the only real-life neighbor I have who can serve as a role model for my specific situation. I can watch her lean, pew by pew, up to our Lord's altar, and marvel at what this now bent and fragile person has borne. And although I do not think myself worthy of her thoughts, I think I know why she thinks of me anyway: the same reason I think of those at the very beginning of this road, of my own daughters, of all my younger sisters in this struggle. Their trials are precious to me.

At her party, she said another thing to me: "My cup runneth over." May the Lord deal with all of us so favorably.

CSPP: What is it we think we’re doing?

If this shadow you offends, please forgive its rougher ends. I'm really just a stupid dame, and all this post is mostly lame. Gentles, do not reprehend. If you pardon, we will mend ...

When I first jumped the Mainstream Mule for the CSPP Nag, I did so with full awareness that I would end up with a larger-than-average family. Captain Obvious on patrol, here, folks. Just passing through.

What I didn’t realize is how easy it is to fall off the other side of the CSPP Nag: QUIVERFILLING. We’ve gone to some lengths on this blog to dissociate ourselves from our Baptist doppelgangers and their slightly alternate take of Genesis 1:28. However, on less than rare occasions, I find myself gasping for air under my very own self-made Quiverfilling assumptions. You know: I MUST HAVE HUNDREDS OF BABIES OR I CAN’T BE CALLED A CHRISTIAN!

I’m sorry, friends. I don’t mean to be this way.

My children are my darlings. They are beautiful, living proof that my husband loves me and that I’m not yet dead. They fill my life with star light and laughter. On my best days, I do not regret that my body has been ruined or that my mind is mostly empty space. On the contrary, I cannot begin to imagine myself doing anything else. I mean, I’m just really good at stretching snot encrusted sweatshirts over an implausibly swollen belly, so ...

But, I’m also really good at turning the good gift of marriage and children into something grotesque.

My inner serpent hisses, like this: Fill your quiver and you’ll fill the church; the church needs you. Fill your quiver and you’ll change the political spectrum; your country needs you. Fill your quiver, and you’ll fight back against the explosion of heretics, pagans, and infidels; your world needs you. Fill your quiver, and God might just love you, you unlovable slug; you might just prove useful for once in your miserable life.

Dear self, please stop ruining everything. Do you not know that God is able from these stones to raise up children for Himself? He does it all the time. He doesn’t need you or your womb to build His church or bring his Kingdom. Get thee behind me, crazed lunatic Dispensationalist self! How did you sneak in here, anyway?

I have a suspicion that when Christ returns we’re all going to be really, really surprised to find out we’ve been doing everything all wrong, in spite of our good intentions.* Good news, everyone: We don’t really have to have hundreds of babies. We don’t really HAVE to have any babies at all. Really. I’m serious. God doesn’t need us to fill up His church. America doesn’t need us to sway the vote. Iraq is Iraq's problem. Lord have mercy on us all.

However, when God famously said, “Fill the earth and subdue it,” He was endowing Man with an irrevocable authority and He was giving Man a gift. Fill the earth with more of yourself, Man, because the earth is good and I want you to have it. Enjoy your marriage, because marriage is good. Enjoy your children, because children are good. All of this good I give to you, Man, because I love you, and because you are good.

Then when all hell broke loose, God graciously corralled the procreative authority of Man rather than simply allowing Man to destroy himself and die out. Girls, given the depth and breadth of sin, it’s a miracle that any of us are able to bear children at all. Every baby conceived is a present, pure and simple. Furthermore, every moment our sin-strained, dying brains somehow manage to perceive our children as presents is yet another present.

Joy in its many manifestations is always, always a gift. Joy is God's will for His children, and it is always proof that God loves us and that we are not yet dead. Why do we have all these babies? Because we’re extraordinarily blessed. They really, truly are a heritage from the Lord. He loves you, He wants you to have them, and He works all things for the good of those who love Him. Be fruitful and multiply, not because you have to, but because, incredibly, you can—and because God’s rainbow still shows up after a storm, and because the Church still has Baptism, and because Christ is coming back to reveal His kingdom once and for all with all authority in heaven and earth in His hands.

You won’t always be made of mud and decay, precious daughter of God, and you won’t always resist the good God causes to flow in, with, and under you every second of every day. Eyes to the skies and hands to the nursery, for Christ is risen and Joy is already at the door.

*Doing everything wrong short of hearing the Word and receiving the Sacrament. But I assumed you would assume that. :)

Hats

The Easter hats of Trinity Lutheran, Worden IL:

Here are some more from Ewe. Any others?

UPDATE: some particularly lovely ladies, with thanks to Father Ben Ball.

Two ways

There are two ways of doing it.

One is to think, upon considering a task pending or accomplished, "I wish someone did this for me."

The other is to think, "I'm glad I can do this for someone I love."

Most of us want to be nice people and do nice things and be thought well of. The easy route to this is by doing nice things for people we don't really know for the purpose of being kind, yes, but also to gain their esteem. Random acts of kindness directed toward strangers are personally superficial, because they cost us very little.

Our boring work offers us daily the opportunity to show kindness to others, and not just any others, but the people we love most. What a loss to reap from it a harvest of resentment rather than satisfaction.

The joy of the dative, people. Not "I'm doing this," but "I'm doing this for them."

Reprint

An article I wrote for the Jan/Feb issue of Touchstone has been reprinted at Generation Cedar.

In these rhetorically destitute latter days, it seems prudent to state upfront that the points presented are in no way a slam dunk regarding contraception. They are merely observations of how the Christian ethical milieu in relation to chastity and marriage has changed since procreatively inhibitive intimacy became the norm among practicing Christians.

I am indebted to my reverend father for much of my thought on this matter, whose emphasis in confirmation class on the necessarily public nature of marriage really stuck with at least one sixth grader.

A wordle for the short on time:

Who will roll away the stone for us?

Our parish follows the custom of veiling images of our Lord on Judica. I hate it like I hate everything that's good for me. In years past we have done this at home too; covering the crucifixes in every room. This year I didn't do it, because I hate it. And even in years when we have done it, I have never veiled the icons and crucifix opposite my nursing chair in the baby's room. I can live, albeit gloomily, with the crucifixes veiled, but I cannot sit alone* in that chair in the dark night without my little group of icons above the changing table and the crucifix over the door.

On Judica, a huge black shade is drawn over the Christ Blessing image on our church's reredos. It's really not my favorite image. But that huge black shade at the front of church where Jesus should be hangs heavily on the soul.

At the Easter Vigil, during the Litany, the lights come up, the candles are lit, the vestments change from violet to white, and the awful shade is lowered by a server, a servant of the Most High. At the end of the Litany, the pastor turns around and declares, "Alleluia! Christ is risen!" It is the most preposterous moment of the Church's year. "He is risen indeed! Alleluia!" we answer, preposterously. And it is over. The Passion is past. It is the day of Resurrection. We keep the Vigil, we watch for our Lord to pass over from death to life, but in the end it is still a mystery.

To just come to church on Easter morning, Jesus is back as if by magic. The shade was there on Friday, and now it's gone, and there are flowers and white paraments and Alleluias. But there was a moment when the shade was rising, when its string slid through someone's careful fingers and allowed it to fall inch by inch, when Jesus' hair appeared and then his face and then his hands and then his feet. There was also a moment of something like fiat--"Alleluia! Christ is risen!"--because even as we watched, we missed it.

And there was a moment when a servant of the Most High rolled away that stone, for it was very large, so that people too weak to roll it away themselves could see where Jesus, who didn't need the stone rolled away to leave, was not. And there was a moment when Jesus began to be not just impossibly alive as at the unfathomable moment of his Incarnation, but impossibly alive again.

*not really alone, of course. If I were alone I wouldn't be sitting there. But although very sweet, an 80% asleep nursing baby is insufficient comfort for me.