Get you a pastor

OK, here's something I'm going to get full-on preachy about. Every human needs a pastor. Theology professors need pastors. Sextons need pastors. Pastors' kids need pastors. Pastors' in-laws need pastors. Pastors' widowed mothers need pastors. Pastors' maiden uncles need pastors. Pastors need pastors. Popes--they who believe, teach, and confess themselves to be the Vicars of Christ on earth by divine right!--need and have pastors. See where I'm going with this?

That's right, the pastor's wife needs a pastor. For all the boo-hooing spent on this pseudo-conundrum, I am mystified that the totally obvious provision our Lord normingly and our Confessions normedly make for it is endlessly overlooked. Which is to say, "And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." What? No special asterisk here for that extra-special person, the pastor's wife? As usual, Bob Dylan said it best: "Everybody must get loosed*" (*or bound).

I have not set out to say here that the pastor's wife's husband cannot be her pastor. Most of the time it is he who brings her God's Word of Law and Gospel, baptizes her children, and feeds her from our Lord's Altar. That's fairly straightforward most of the time. The place the pastor/husband thing is most likely to get tricky is the confessional. After all, against whom does the pastor's wife sin most? Whose sins are the second closest to the pastor, and therefore the second easiest and hardest for the pastor to judge?

Even yet I will not say that her husband cannot be her Father Confessor, for the complications I have cited are merely practical. He can be. Sometimes he should be or has to be. Sometimes she asks him to be. But often, he doesn't have to be, and often, this benefits both man and wife. Furthermore, the pastor needs a pastor, and here's where things really start coming together: the pastor and his wife and their kids can have the same pastor. They can go to confession as a family. Although it is still private, it is a pilgrimage of discipline they can make together, a blessed humility they can share, a divine comfort in which they can be united. And when the pastor's family needs someone to meet them at the hospital, to pray for them in their distress, they know whom to call: their dear pastor. Not just the guy at the next closest church or Dad's buddy or the circuit counselor no one else in the family knows. They can call a man who is Father to all of them.

If this doesn't sound right; if a Father Confessor isn't what the pastor's wife is looking for, then she's not looking for a pastor. She's looking for a therapist or a friend or a cheerleader. Any of those may be something she needs, and she would do well to secure them. But she definitely needs an ear to swallow her sins up in death and a voice to breath forgiveness and life into her, whether or not she feels she needs it or is comfortable with it. She definitely needs to make confession and hear her sins absolved, whether or not she perceives that confession will help her with her perceived problems. For her true problem is always sin, and the true cure is always Holy Absolution.

So, pastors' wives, get a pastor. Make sure your kids have a pastor. Your husband also needs a pastor.

The droid I'm looking for

This week's snap post has already expired in terms of superlative usefulness.

My heart exults in the Lord

God has seen fit to give us a son, born Monday, February 21, 10:17 p.m. He weighed 8 lbs. 5 oz and was just over 19 inches long. He was baptized into the Name of God yesterday.

Among other favorable traits, he is smart about nursing. Though he is still rather impatient. Which is why I've got to be going.

Thanks terribly for all the prayers.

Why you didn't see us on Good Morning America

Oh look, a baby born in a hospital elevator. Not exactly ideal, but then again, the same thing happened to my husband's cousin. I worked with an ex-cop who had delivered two babies in his squad car. The week after our baby was born in the car, a relative of a family at our school caught her own baby while her husband called 911. Et cet.

People here wanted to know why we didn't get famous, especially when another couple with a carbaby showed up on one of the morning "news" shows shortly after our event. Locals were particularly disgusted since a bystander delivered that baby "and Pastor did it himself!" No doubt; what was that slacker dad doing? :D

Anyway, here's how it works: the ambulance shows up and takes you to the hospital, and the EMTs have no idea what to do with a just-delivered mom and baby, and the ER has no idea what to do with a just-delivered mom and baby, and you finally get to Maternity and everybody gets inspected and mopped up and reassembled and you wonder when the heck somebody is going to bring you a cheeseburger and then the head of OB comes in and says, "Wow, what a morning! Great job, Dad! Would you like us to call the paper?" And you say, "Um . . . no thanks." And your zany tale doesn't go out on the wire but remains a community and familial legend, and you go on with your life and don't have to worry about getting skinny in time for your big TV appearance.

However, you do worry about where the next baby, if there is one, is going to be born. :P

How to fix a snap

This might be the most useful thing I've ever posted (and/or the only useful thing I've ever posted).

I hate it when the leg snaps on baby clothes won't stay snapped. It ruins a piece of clothing which is otherwise totally fine. I keep all these ruined pieces of clothing around so I can stay mad longer.

The other day I was trying my hand at installing snaps on a sewing project and demolishing many snaps in the process. One of the ways I demolished snaps was by hammering them so hard the stud got flattened or off-centered and wouldn't fit into the socket. At first I hammered too hard out of inexperience and excessive zeal, then I moved on to wrath, and finally I settled into overhammering for the gratifying feeling of the power to destroy.

In the process, I realized that although the flattened studs were totally messing up my sewing project, they were exactly what my pile of maddeningly useless baby clothes needed! So I found that pile and hammered each stud, like so:

It took about five or six well-centered mid-impact whacks per stud. Naturally I overdid it a few times, what with the zeal and the wrath and the joy of destruction. I was able to fix one case of overdoneness by squeezing it back into shape with pliers, like so:

But a couple of them got hammered and pliered so many times they're just done for. Fortunately they were both on one romper that I already couldn't use, so I think I'll find it in my heart to forgive myself. Baby Dude has worn each of the restored items for a full day with no unsnapping. There you go, earthlings.

Martha, Martha

I hesitate to claim some camaraderie with Martha, because I've got a healthy propensity toward squandering my time. "Perfectionism" and "working too hard," those most virtuous of vices, are not among mine (and let me tell you, being the only woman in America who is flat out lazy and does a semi-moked job of pretty much everything is powerful lonely).

But I spend more and more of my kitcheny hours really feeling for the poor girl. I wouldn't have wanted to sit in the man-talk room while the day strode on toward suppertime, knowing what everyone in there expected of me (not quite everyone, turns out, but who saw that coming?). Sheesh, is there anything worse than being the tagalong female all the men wish would get lost? What would have happened at 6 if Martha had gotten it right? Was this a scenario that expired with the Ascension?

Then again, I have a Martha-ish tendency to get really mad about being the only person attending to tasks I have deemed immediately necessary, so maybe that's what this is about. Either way I'm wrong, of that I am certain.

And all this dissonance without any kids in the story! What if?!

CSPP offers online School for Writers and Speakers

My Women over at WLI are excited for another academic year to begin in their acclaimed Schools for Speakers and Writers. Unfortunately, women who happen to be raising children pretty much won't be able to go. But we're so talented! It would be bad stewardship for our skills not to get more skilly! So in the spirit of stewardship, CSPP is offering the following free online course for Writers and Speakers:

1. Know the right person who knows the right people to get you a writing or speaking gig.

2. And we're done!

(Bonus hint: meet the Right People at the WLI Schools for Speakers and Writers.)

And thank you, person who keeps me up with WLI so I don't have to keep myself up.

Birth pains

One of those long, thick, repetitive things I post selfishly for my own self. Do with it what you will.

I am due to have a baby in but a matter of days, but I've forgotten everything I ever once thought I knew about having babies. The fire of my previous births has washed from my feeble brain all political detritus, all desire for preparatory dialogue with my care providers, all vehemence for my supposed rights to birth Romantically. I have only one opinion about giving birth left to me: please, God, don't let either of us die.

One would think that the more one does something, the more confident about doing that something one would become. But, no, not here. The more I birth, the more I am rendered inert, bewildered, afraid. The pain, the blood, the crushing helplessness poured liberally out of me, upon me, over and over and over again, teach all too well that in birth I am no goddess. Rather, I am caught and shaken like meat in ravenous jaws. There can be no escape. There can be no exertion or insistence or distinction of self, for I am but the matter upon which Birth enacts its form. In short, I am a woman, and accursed. All the baths, balls, and balms in the world detract nothing from the shame of my flesh, which cannot—not even when hoisted on rhetorical crutches—do well that which it was most especially designed to do: carry a child into the world.

If even the most blessed Virgin cried out in the agony of birth, how can I expect anything but agony? If even our most holy Lord was born under perilous circumstances, yea, even under the cross of death, why would peril be missing from the births of my children? Kyrie eleison.

And yet, even so, why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my countenance and my God.*

The curse of Eve—which enshrouds even the easiest of births, which renders every birth perplexing if not mangling—this curse justly pronounced from the mouth of God yet works good for those who love Him. Women of Christ, the hour of our affliction is even the hour of our salvation. Be still, and know that He is God. He who will be exalted among the nations will triumph especially over the earth of your flesh. It is He who brought you forth from your mothers’ wombs, and it is He and He alone who will deliver you and your children in the coming tribulation. Christ knows our suffering; He has provided for our release: with every celebration of the Eucharist, Christ Himself enters into the tombs of our mouths, descends into the hell of our flesh and there declares victory over every particulate of our beings. To our Lord are we bound, His most holy, eternal, living body and blood graciously and incredibly given to mix with the humble flesh of His people. He has died Once, and will not die again. Thereby are we, people of His flesh, holy, eternal, living. Death shall have no dominion, no, not even in birth.

And what is more, the dragon that perched presumptuously at the Virgin’s blessed feet, ready to strike and kill the fruit of her womb, has been chained and cast aside. Come what may, our Lord has prepared something far better for our sons and daughters than what He allowed for Himself. The waters of Baptism lie just beyond the doors of the womb, and in those waters are to be found the blessed birth that washes our darlings free of the sin that we, their finite mothers, so helplessly and insidiously confer. It is a painless, bloodless, sweet regeneration that imparts all the promises of eternal life

God knows what must be done to save me, His love for me will never cease, for He upon His palms did grave me with purest gold of loving grace. My God desires the soul’s salvation, Me also He desires to save; Therefore, with Christian resignation all earthly troubles I will brave.*

Bring on the baby.


*Verbatim from Stark's Motherhood Prayers. If you haven't gotten your copy yet, well, why not?

Before there were internets

Perspiration broke out on Hubert's mother's forehead and she began to feel faint so she closed the door and slowly went downstairs.

She took two aspirin tablets and then telephoned her friend, Mrs. Bags. She said, "Hello, Mrs. Bags, this is Hubert's mother and I am so disappointed in Hubert. He has such lovely toys--his grandfather sends them to him every Christmas, you know--but he does not take care of them at all. He just leaves them all over his room for me to pick up every morning."

Mrs. Bags said, "Well, I'm sorry, Mrs. Prentiss, but I can't help you because you see, I think it is too late."

"Why, it's only nine-thirty," said Hubert's mother.

"Oh, I mean late in life," said Mrs. Bags. "You see, we started Ermintrude picking up her toys when she was six months old. 'A place for everything and everything in its place,' we have always told Ermintrude. Now, she is so neat that she becomes hysterical if she sees a crumb on the floor."

"Well, I certainly hope she never sees Hubert's room," said Mrs. Prentiss dryly. "She'd probably have a fit." And she hung up the phone.

Then she called Mrs. Moohead. "Good morning, Mrs. Moohead," she said. "Does Gregory pick up his toys?"

"Well, no, he doesn't," said Mrs. Moohead. "But you know Gregory is rather delicate and I feel that just playing with his toys tires him so much that I personally see that all of his little friends put the toys away before they go home."

"That is a splendid idea," said Hubert's mother, "but I am trying to train Hubert, not his playmates."

"Well, of course Hubert is very strong and healthy, but Gregory is intelligent,"said Mrs. Moohead.

"Is he?" said Mrs. Prentiss crossly, because she resented this inference that her son was all brawn and no brain.

"Oh, dear," squealed Mrs. Moohead, "I think Gregory is running a temperature. I must go to him." She hung up the phone.

Mrs. Prentiss then called Mrs. Grapple. "Hello, Marge," she said. "How's Susan?"

Mrs. Grapple said, "I've spanked her seven times since breakfast and I just heard a crash so she is probably getting ready for another. How's Hubert?"

"That's what I called about," said Mrs. Prentiss. "Can you suggest a way to make Hubert want to pick up his toys? His room looks like a toy store after an earthquake."

"Why don't you call this Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle? I have heard she is perfectly wonderful. All the children in town adore her and she has a cure for everything. As soon as I spank Susan, I'm going to call her."

Betty MacDonald, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle

Please start a blog. Save us from each other.

Starck's Motherhood Prayers available from Emmanuel Press

At long last, girls: Starck's Motherhood Prayers for all Occasions are now available in a freestanding volume, $10 from Emmanuel Press. 76 little pages for you to hold in one hand so you can pray for your new baby while you sit up in the night with the old one. :) This is an essential for the pregnant lady personal library and a perfect addition to the next baby shower gift bag you assemble. It also deserves a place on your pastor's shelf and in your church library, and would be a really lovely gift for churches to offer expectant mothers. I reviewed the Motherhood Prayers a while ago . . . um . . . here.

It was my honor to write the Introduction for this new reprint, but thanks are primarily owed to Chaplain Michael Frese and his wife Janet for the work that went into its publication. THANKS!