The game of global domination

No matter what one is doing in life, there are people who know what one ought to be doing instead. Once people give up on talking you out of having so many kids, they will change tactics and try to talk you out of having kids when you're old (unless, of course, you have no kids and are old; then it is still OK for you to have a kid and actually not really OK for you not to). 

Since we are very knowledgeable nowadays, the reason old people with kids should not have kids is that it's dangerous for old people to have kids. All your kid making components are rotting (and so are his, even), so you're going to have rotten kids, and having a rotten kid would be really bad and actually even selfish and pretty much almost immoral.

This is basic eugenics, and we are all naturally eugenicists in our own ways. It's just one of those things we have to recognize and learn our way out of. Here are the basic lessons for dealing with this particular line of eugenic thought:

--God puts an end date on each woman's fertility. When she's too old to have kids, she can't. If she can still have kids, she's not too old. (I mention this just to help us keep from mixing biology with ethics or morality.)

--Every human life is worth living, no matter how miserable it looks to the strong, the healthy, the gifted, the intelligent, the rich. To consider another life and say that it is not worth its own cost is nothing but prideful condescension. This judgment does not happen in a vacuum. To say, "You shouldn't risk having a Down's baby" is to look at a living person with Down's and say, "There should not be another person like you." There is only one person of whom God ever said, "It had been good for that man if he had not been born," and it wasn't because that man had a genetic defect.

--There is no person so un-rightly made that he does not show forth the image of God. There is no human so poorly endowed that she cannot receive the gift of forgiveness and salvation. There is no one so ugly, so weak, so sick, or so empty that he is beyond our risen Lord's power to make all things new.

--You don't know what baby you're going to have until you have it.

To avoid the increased risk of genetic problems or whatever other harms to which the children of older parents are more subject is to take the wrong gamble. So here is the general answer I have on hand for the caring people who want to make sure I know there's a bigger chance now that a baby I have could have something wrong with it:

"Thank you for telling me about that risk. I read an article about it too. If our Lord sees fit to give old people like us another baby, the greatest likelihood is that that baby will be healthy and well."

Practice it in your head so you can say it instead of what you're really thinking.

Call of the wild

Where's the baby?

Some months back we ran into someone we hadn't seen in a while. He asked, "Where's the baby?" "There," I said, pointing to the one-year-old running around. And then, "I guess she's not much of a baby any more."

Even less on this day, when she is exactly as old as our firstborn was the day our secondborn was, um, born. To our knowledge, there is no one else on the way.

So much for this. There's not much to say about it and even less to do about it.

Ad menopausum

Katie is incorrect in referring to me as wise; it is precisely that lack of wisdom that keeps me talking. :P

It is an honor to have been offered a soapbox at He Remembers the Barren today. (You've bought this, right? And this?)

Trumpet needed

A friend was telling me about the disapproving glances she gets from certain older women at her church whenever her kids get a bit rambunctious in the pew. She exclaimed, I don’t want to be one of those old ladies—the fussy frowny type! I want to be the wise kind, the kind that just rolls with everything, the kind that has deep joy. She paused, and then she added, But I’m afraid—do I really want to go through what it takes to get there?

                                            

That, in my humble opinion, is an entirely reasonable fear.

Once upon a time, I thought (or perhaps merely hoped) that simply having a statistically above-average number of children would be a sort of automatic piety-booster for me, a jump-start to personal sanctification. I mean, how could I spend most of my waking (and some of my would-be-sleeping) hours tending to the pressing needs of others, and not end up less selfish for it? Well…quite easily, actually. Rebekah touched on the topic in this ye olde (but goode) poste.

The terrible truth that I understand more fully than I care to admit is that I can all too easily feel this crowd of children pushing me, not toward a more pious dependence on the giver and sustainer of life, not toward a life of selfless good deeds, but toward the Other Edge instead.

I should have known better, even all those years ago. Doing what has to be done, simply because it has to be done, is not a magic formula for personal piety. If I’m not careful, in fact, the hodgepodge of daily duties combined with periodic crises (of childrearing and of life in general) becomes the perfect recipe for resentment and even despair. And too often, I’m not careful.  

Yet I’m afraid—do I really want to go through what it takes to get there? goes even deeper than  the constant war that must be waged against crankiness. It goes down deep, to the basement closet of a mother-heart—the door that we daily hurry past, shuddering, never opening because we’re ashamed of the horrid things that lurk there. I’m afraid—what would happen to our family if we got another kid like the complicated one (to say nothing of the potential for more complicated complications)? I’m afraid—because after a miscarriage, there’s no such thing, ever again, as a blithely-contemplated possibility of pregnancy. I’m afraid—because as my children grow, I realize anew just how little control I have over Outcomes. I’m afraid—because I go through long dark stretches where it seems like every day, my head sinks just a bit lower under the waves, and how many times can I reasonably expect to add more ballast and go under and yet come up again? 

I’m afraid—because I forget that what it takes to get there is, after all, never anything more or less than the cross. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. Perfected for all time—safe in the Shepherd’s hand; while yet being sanctified—treading this via dolorosa. To wish for an easier way is only human; even our Lord himself did mention it wistfully once.The answer, however, remains the same.

What it takes to get there may prove to be every miserable thing in that basement closet of mine. And more. But through it all, I will yet remember to sing, even shout, that greatest of triumphant rallying cries: Killed all the day long--More than conquerors!

Find me a trumpet, someone; I’m going to learn to blast out that anthem til the quivering closet slitheries cower and realize the pitiful limits of their wretched reach.

Book, recommended (particularly for those of us who are currently in a season of “little years” that may leave us short on sleep, reading time, coherent thoughts, temper…)

A dear person gave me this deceptively little book, and I am so glad that she did. Though some of its self-contained chapters don’t quite reach two pages, each one has exponential potential for unpacking through prayer, self-examination, and action (at least for those of us who are in need of a perspective check, which describes me approximately every other minute or so).

I skimmed it once, quickly, and it’s still all whooshing around in the churn. I plan to read it again, slowly now, to work at getting some of the cream to come together, solidify.

I needed to read a book about the “little years” again. I know that I’m still a total amateur in this parenting thing; I don’t even have a kid in the double digits yet. But after having been at it for such a seemingly long time (B.C. is but a lazy, hazy memory), a creeping frustration was beginning to darken my days—the feeling that I should surely have somehow moved beyond the “little years” by now, or at least should have become more breezily adept at coping with the daily fatigues of the preschool-toddler-infant set. I’ve got bigger fish in need of frying now; why am I still wiping bottoms and teaching people the alphabet and pretending to be patient while a two-year-old works to put on her own shoes? True: I don’t feel the weight of every decision anywhere near as heavily as I did when I had only two littles. But neither do I feel like an old pro at things like potty training and toddler discipline and babies who cry in the middle of the night. I just feel...old, and tired, and frankly sometimes just tired of it all. In short, I needed a good kick in the pants, which this book cheerfully provided. Thank you, Rachel Jankovic!

Perhaps I’ll have more to say about the book as I reread, but for the moment, I’ll leave you with an image that instantly and helpfully crystallized some of my recent musings. Jankovic uses it to describe what she calls “growth spurts” (those times when you feel like you’ve just gotten a handle on things, and then, seemingly overnight, the kids all show up with entirely new variations on crazy). The image is also quite apt for household adjustment whenever a new baby arrives:

“You know those pain scales at the hospital, where they rate your pain from one to ten? Well, pretend that you are screaming, “Thirteen, thirteen! Fifteen!” What that should tell you is that it is time to restart the whole thing, stop screaming, and just accept that this is now the new ‘one.’ Start over, and accept the new ‘normal.’ I promise that this little mental change will actually change how you feel, and by extension how your children feel. Growing is, after all, what God wants them [and us!] to do.”

So if you’re screaming “fifteen!”, or tired, or overwhelmed (Jankovic offers a helpfully convicting perspective on the “o-word” too), you just might want to spend a few minutes a day with this book, which helpfully smacked me back toward the Book whose perspective should frame my every moment.

You might be CSPP if

two kids get a stomach bug and you feel like you won the lottery:
Only two!

Shut those selfish jerks down.

Step 1: Read

All families with fewer than three children should be combined such that all the children be placed under the care of one set of parents. The other set of parents will be released from parental obligation.

Larger families are able to use resources more efficiently via economies of scale. Children in large families naturally learn better to share, to be patient and delay gratification, and to make good use of their time and resources. They are more independent and better problem solvers and initiative-takers. They develop stronger internal motivation and work ethics. They are less spoiled and indulged. In large families, the children's individual skills are cultivated, valued, and called upon for authentic tasks; they are true assets to the family and derive from this a sense of organic responsibility. Large families are more diverse and the children benefit from contact with siblings who have different gifts and interests. Children of large families also have more opportunities to acquire sensitivity to and serve the wide variety of needs to which they are exposed.

The parents who are not given the care of the children will be better able to serve society since their interests will not be divided. They may wish to devote themselves entirely to their previous extra-familial duties, which will enable them to contribute more to society since their assets will not go toward an inefficient model of family maintenance. Alternatively, they could provide foster care to or adopt groups of three or more children. Perhaps, drawing on their (albeit inadequate) parental experience, they could also seek part-time employment in an auxiliary capacity or volunteer for a [proper] family.

Some families are simply too small to benefit society. It is selfish of both parents and children of such families to insist upon existing autonomously. This insistence is stubborn, greedy, unneighborly, and sentimental. Any families with fewer than three children who do not want to be restructured should have more children.


Step 2: Multiply all numbers by 10. Replace family with congregation, children with parishioners, parents with pastors, and society with Our Beloved Synod.

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.

Poured from a steady hand

The other day, I sat and rocked my baby for an entire hour. My fifthborn—can you imagine? I just sat, and rocked him.

The big boys were happily occupied at school a few blocks away. The preschooler was pleased to have the play-doh all to himself. The toddler was taking a much-needed nap. And the overtired baby just couldn’t get to sleep.

The appliances were doing my work for me: clothes swished in the washer; potato soup bubbled in one crockpot while yogurt did its magical thing in the other; an oatmeal loaf was rising in the machine.

So I snuggled my nursling under a fleece blanket, and he settled, and sighed, and periodically shuddered in utter contentment. The autumn rain spattered on the panes, and the leaves swirled wetly down in clumps.

I was fighting one of those two-day headaches, which precluded reading, so I listened to the rain, I watched the leaves, I breathed the soft-sweetness of the warm weight in my arms.

And I thought,

My life is impossibly rich.

In that day, in that week, that hour was the eye of a hurricane: a temporary calm bracketed by swirling, buffeting activity that seemed certain to inundate me.

How soon I forget: the raging waters that threaten to overwhelm me spill from my overflowing cup. Sometimes, it feels as though the ludicrous Generosity that poured these blessings upon me was so rashly lavish that the sloshing will never subside. But our Lord is no careless server; His hand is steady. Once, and only once, was the water poured abundantly enough to drown me—so that forever after the waves may hold for me no ultimate fear.

Temporarily overwhelmed by the waves? Often, to be sure. But also—pure grace-gift in odd and unplanned moments—
unexpectedly and heart-swellingly overwhelmed by the impossible richness of this crazy, crazy life.

When we seek relief

Of all the freedoms the mother of very young children surrenders, perhaps the most emptying is the freedom to grieve. A baby's smile must be returned. A toddler's manic, violent adoration must be reciprocated. They cannot understand another's sadness. A mother cannot close her door and bawl out her sorrow, scream at it or sleep it away. Is mourning selfish? Is even this another avarice of which she must be purged? Grief denied; who could imagine such a thing?

My cloudy crystal ball

(Nothing profound. Just pep-talking myself a bit.)

I know that if it is granted unto me to live into my seventh decade of life, I will look back on these days, and I will think that every messy and exhausting and overwhelming moment was Totally Worth It. There will even be some things about these days that I will miss (a nostalgia that will, God willing, be more than adequately sated by means of the time I spend helping out with my grandchildren). I know this, because all the septuagenarians I’ve ever met can’t be wrong.

 (The tricky part, of course, is that I can’t see quite how I’m going to get from here to there…)

Also, if I make it to 70, I will in all likelihood smile with nostalgic empathy at the moms wrestling their toddlers in the pew, and I will talk crazy-talk to young mothers; i.e., “Enjoy them while you can! They don’t stay little long! It really does go fast!” I know that I will say these things, because all the septuagenarians I’ve met, even the most sensible ones, talk like that.

I just pray that I will be granted the grace to become my favorite kind of septuagenarian: the kind whose nostalgia is realistic enough to recall, even amid fond reminiscing, “I was just so tired all the time;” and “It was hard and I sometimes wondered how I’d make it through.” The kind who inquires with true empathy about Baby’s sleeping habits, who volunteers to be a warm body between the more volatile elements in your pew, who drops off chicken soup when everybody’s dragging around with a cold. What a precious, precious resource: a woman who has been there and done that, who has not forgotten that the investment required to make eternal treasures is heavy, and who is willing to continue investing herself after her intial tour of duty is done.  

(And I still totally respect the octogenarian who once told me, “I wouldn’t trade those years for a million dollars. And I wouldn’t give a dime to go back.”)

Indelible character

After a acquiring a some comparatively high number of kids, one becomes a character. I consider this a benefit. It saves the public from my personality and makes socializing easy. All I have to do is be Mrs. Sowerby, Mrs. Quiverful, Mrs. Pike, Mrs. Weasley, Mrs. McBroom, Mrs. Gilbreth, etc. I don't have to have any other interests or features. The plot lines and conversations are all about the number of children I have and what my life must be like in that context. Straightforward, if occasionally a little embarrassing when one of those jokey characters shows up. Also mostly true.

Parish-famous

Little has made me feel more at home in this place we've landed than having crazy rumors about me get back to me. The first major one I remember was soon after the birth of Baby 5. Scouts were sent to discover if I was, in fact, pregnant again already. No, I explained calmly, I am merely fat. I just had a baby.

Later, word came in from the street that I was going to be making all the pies for our church's sausage supper. The sausage supper feeds over 1000 people and requires approximately 80 grillion pies. I was pleased that someone imagined I would be capable of this.

A few months ago I learned of a belief that the lady who sits with me in church was going to quit her job and become my full-time nanny. It's a great idea.

Last week I received congratulations from someone who had heard I was expecting again. I congratulated her on receiving the news before I did. She was apologetic. I assured her it was a mistake anyone could make.

I have also heard various reports as to the number of children my husband and I are purportedly aiming to have. Some say seven, some say eight. I think I have even heard ten floated. Imagine my surprise when this very evening someone disputed a number projected by a third party on the grounds that fruitfulness was the relevant non-numeric. Imagine also the color of my face while this discussion took place around me.

I am not kidding at all when I say I am, overall, deeply honored to have become part of the local rumor mill. I find it hilarious and flattering to be a Person of Interest. It makes me feel like I really belong here. I can't wait to hear what I'm up to next.

Another miraculous crisis

[Ramblings of a recently postpartum mind trying to make sense of the experience. Skip unless you’re into L&D details.]

Typing up my latest birth story, I noticed something really odd: if read by an objective third party, it might not sound like such a bad deal. I mean, from an outsider’s view, the main post-water-breaking action could be boiled down to three ginormous contractions that made me wish desperately for instant death (but that were spaced far enough for me to fall asleep (!) in between), fifteen or twenty more minutes of unrelenting, excruciating back pain, 2.5 pushes, and---Baby!

Wow, what a lot of women wouldn’t give for that, huh? Although the doctor, in a post-action review, described this L&D as somewhat “surreal” even from her end of the proceedings, she still seemed inclined to classify it as not such a bad deal, considering. In my mind, however, this L&D looms large and terrifying. Go through that again, ever? I can’t even begin to mentally broach the edges of that thought without reaching for a paper bag to breathe into.

In fact, I think I was more nervous heading into this L&D than any of the preceding ones (possibly excepting the first). What gives? Am I the only one who’s actually losing confidence as she goes along? Shouldn’t the fact that babies and I have come out all right on the other side five times now make me ever more assured?

The pain is not fun. I dread the pain, but I can deal with pain, especially pain that I know is finite and productive. And there are drugs to deal with the pain (though unfortunately it seems I’m becoming less and less likely a candidate for such interventions, should I be inclined to request them).    

The uncertainty is unsettling, to say the least. Does anyone really have “textbook” labors, going to the hospital when regular contractions are 5 minutes apart, proceeding smoothly through transition, etc.? I kind of doubt it, but I’d settle for my own stories resembling each other, at least. Deliveries #2 and #3 were somewhat semblant, but that’s about it. Well, at least I can count on the fact that the doctor will have to break my water every time, either as an overdue induction, or to get things progressing in a labor that’s already underway. Oh, except for the time that my water spontaneously broke first, and then nothing else happened until they started the pit drip. Oh yeah, and the time that it actually broke on its own mid-labor.

Well, at least I know that my babies are always late, or else reasonably close to due date. Oh, except for the one that was two weeks early.

Well, at least I know that my babies come pretty fast once it’s pushing time. Oh, except for the time I spent 45 (drug-free) excruciating minutes pushing to turn a large-headed misrotated baby.

Well, at least I’ll always know for sure when it’s time to head to the hospital. Oh, except for the time I showed up for a scheduled checkup kind of thinking things were getting going, and amused and alarmed the doctor by being at 8 cm already.

See what I mean? There’s just not even a hint of a pattern to go by here.

Well, at least I know that the babies always come out OK, with no hint of delivery-related complications. Oh, except for the time a baby swallowed a bunch of amniotic fluid that I think he’s still working out years later ;P. Oh yeah, and that time a few weeks ago when I delivered a purple baby with an almost-triple nuchal cord.

And there, I think, is where the real terror comes in. Those babies were safely delivered. And statistically speaking, and as my own personal statistics have borne out, I am much more likely to lose a baby in the first trimester than in the delivery room. But—what if there hadn’t been enough slack in the cord? What if his head had still been rotated the wrong way like it was when then doctor first checked? What if I had run out of strength to push him out fast enough so that the little bit of “fetal distress” became an unbearable amount of distress? (The fastest our little hospital can pull off an emergency C-section is probably an hour.) What if? What if?  

My delivery room stories have all had happy endings. But I know that not every story does, and I ache for those who have endured a harsher turn of plot. In the delivery room, as a mother pants and struggles through what should be the most natural and fulfilling of roles for her, the bearing of new life, the words of the curse echo loud.

In the delivery room, these present sufferings, this eager longing, bear down sharply. The cursed crisis of the delivery room under which we groan is at once both intensely personal and weighted with the collective universal pain of our foremothers, indeed of all creation.We labor under the weight of the weary world: small wonder that we should groan!

In the delivery room, as the world condenses to another miraculous crisis, Eden is mere memory too distant to be anything but mockery, and the New Earth gleams just beyond the far horizon, promised rather than perceived. Between paradises, we labor by faith and not by sight. We must fight back the vivid uncertainty of What Ifs with the unseen but Realer than real, sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.

The curse is visible. The pain is tangible. The What Ifs, not just of pregnancy and delivery, but of the entirety of the child’s future life, are overwhelming. But hope that is seen is not hope. And lest we forget, Eve was called, in sure and certain hope, mother of all the living--after the Fall.

The What Ifs can be terrifying—but they cannot have the last word. As my overanxious brain would do well to remember, the last word has already been spoken. The plot of every life is watered by tears—for some a trickle; others a torrent. But take heart, o my timid soul: the Ending is happy beyond measure, its luster all the more brilliant for the gloss of each precious tear shed.     

Weirdos

So if someone says to me, "You have SIX kids?" is it somehow not OK for me to respond by saying, "You got your ENTIRE leg tatted?"

More mysteries

Why is it that appearing in public with five children while pregnant is so much more embarrassing than appearing in public with six children while not pregnant?

Harder in easier ways

I have moved from the "You've got your hands full!" years to the "I don't know how you do it" years. Weird since I still have my hands full, but whatever. The point is that the chatty public indicates to me a general impression that my life is impossibly hard. It is not. I just have a lot of things to do. In many ways, it is easier than the years when all I had to do was wait for something bad to almost happen and maybe try to get something made for supper while I waited (lesson learned: as soon as you start trying to get something made for supper, something bad will happen).

I often say that it gets easier, but that is shorthand. It is more accurate to say that it gets harder, but in easier ways. For me, there has been nothing harder than a first baby. The hardness has become broader but shallower as babies are added. I have never been more desperately exhausted, more horrified and hobbled by physical pain, more lonely and close to despair than I was that first time around. The new and growing demands are more quantitative than qualitative. Although packing for a trip or bagging the groceries or just getting everybody through breakfast is far more time-consuming and personally taxing than it used to be, I would take those jobs any day over a trip back to the Baby 1 era. (Yes, I find bagging groceries for eight people personally taxing. I am a wimp.)

Maybe this is just me and my androidish inclination to tasks over people. I love the people, but they wear me out terribly and I am relieved that there is now an "each other" for them to have rather than only a me. The tunnel years of running a little-kid-only house are real, although no one in a two-kid society is able to recognize them as such. It is hard work of getting to the big family stage, and although it doesn't strictly get easier, it does change, and that helps.

(Un)Common Sense

I grew up placing a high premium on common sense, even if I wasn’t always sure what it was. I remember overhearing my mother and grandmother, both admirably commonsensical people, shake their heads regretfully and say of someone or other, “That poor girl just doesn’t have any common sense.” It seemed clear that someone without common sense was crippled, doomed to eke out an inferior existence as best she could. Whatever common sense was, I hoped that I’d been granted a measure of it, or that at the least I could somehow grow into it, or beg, borrow, or buy some. I certainly never wanted to be on the receiving end of that pitying headshake.

One of the hardest things about the CSPP life in our culture today, even (alas!) in our church culture, is that it looks like a self-imposed martyrdom. It just seems so…un-commonsensical. Can’t quite see how you’ll afford music lessons and education (to say nothing of diapers and nutrition) for all those kids? Want to make a reasonable budget that includes getting back to work once the kids are all in school? Going crazy with all those kids in the house? Get sick (physically/emotionally) every time you’re pregnant or postpartum? Well, show a little common sense already! Choose a reasonable quitting point and be Done having babies! [Cue pitying headshakes of rational, commonsensical people…]

Even worse: so insidious and pervasive is the choice-mindset, that CSPP sometimes feels like a self-imposed martyrdom, even to those of us who ought to know better. Tell me again, why am I having all these kids?! Why are we choosing to make ourselves crazy like this, and what right have I even to groan under the cross of my vocation, when I could stop the seeming madness by any one of the various methods so glibly recommended by nearly everyone of my acquaintance?

                                                                                                     

Thankfully, the common sense that my familial matriarchs endeavored to pass along to me is extra-ordinary. Having a devout, commonsensical mother and grandmother helped me to see beyond what seems normal and obvious: sometimes, for those of us who are trying (fumbling along as we may be) to walk by faith and not by sight, common sense is anything but common. Being CSPP doesn’t make financial sense. It doesn’t make physical or emotional sense. To most people (including me in the darker moments), it makes no sense whatsoever. But! Submitting to God’s plan for marriage and children does make eternal sense, and in the End, the foolishness to the eyes of the world will be revealed as the most marvelously, magically rational sense that it actually, already is.

Ten years

One of the hardest Sulvanisms for me to shake was the idea of spacing. It did not occur to me that I would be lighting each new pregnancy off the smolderings of the last. I was looking forward to the breaks that only seemed reasonable and necessary; I, like everyone else, had always lived break to break. Some months of not serving as host for another human life would keep me going. No weird clothes. No icky and embarrassing demands on my body for a while. Time for the baby to get bigger so it wouldn't be so rough adding another.

It didn't work out that way. Sometime in the last few days I lived the unknowable moment past which I have been pregnant, nursing, or both for ten years with no breaks in service. The part of me that finds this shocking has gotten smaller over those years, but she's still in here somewhere. While the lot of normally functioning woman is no longer unthinkable to me, it remains incredible and menacing and gargantuan. It is a tidal wave and I am a bicycle on the beach. To think of it makes me want to fall down on the floor and just lie there.

I'm good at faking my way through local life like a normal person; to do otherwise would make everyone miserable. But I always secretly feel like an alien around women with kids the age of my older kids, because I do not know any who are living the lot of normally functioning women like I am. They have moved on to basketball practice and bike rides. There are no maternity clothes boxed up in their closets, there is no nursing paraphernalia in their top drawers. Precedent indicates that the baby and preschool moms, my closer allies for now, will soon leave me to join the basketballers and bikers. But I'll probably still be here; pregnant, nursing, both.

I didn't get the memo. I'm the supermom nobody wants to be.