At Home, Arlington, Massachusetts
I think pregnancy is going to be horrible for me. Or at least, technically, I think that the postpartum period is going to be hell. I pretty much expect that I will deal with postpartum depression. This is my very unscientific evaluation, but being on the pill was great for me. It regulated my moods and everything seemed to just balance out. The ups and downs of my emotional life were significantly less exaggerated. Now that I'm coming off the pill, everything is hitting me again full force. It's like I had forgotten just how unruly my emotional life was and know I'm meeting a familiar face once again. It makes me think that pregnancy itself will be pretty great - I'll be on a high. But if the loss of hormones I'm going through now is any foretaste of the loss of hormones I'll go through then, well then look out world. Hannah's life is going to SUCK.
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At Home, Arlington, Massachusetts
Fallen human nature is a beast. We know how to take all good things and turn them into twisted, horrible echoes of their former selves. My friend just had her baby and despite every inch of excitement and joy that I felt, I managed somehow to find a way to wallow in self-pity. Self-pity when there is new life and new joy in the world! I can come up with any number of excuses and explanation. It's not like I have a great track record with mothers, or really women on their own paths to motherhood. I’ve had friends who suddenly never talked with me about anything other than their babies. Other friends have decided that because they are pregnant or mothers they have the right to judge and pressure me unless I also followed their life plans. And once I was embraced in the bear hug greeting of a woman while she yelled across the room, "Now, there's the person I really want to see!" to a visibly pregnant acquaintance. If there ever was a symbol of the world and church's preference for the pregnant, that was it. A clear, visible reminder that among women, what counts is having a baby. Nothing more, nothing less. From my perspective, becoming a mother is the point at which all women's gazes turn inward. Damn the rest of the world. The ranks are drawn together, the lines drawn, and the people they all really want to see are those that are just like them. Insular, they now are supercharged to command the stage, and to let every other woman know that they are waiting, and expecting, their quick assimilation into the line. But no matter how much of this is true, none of it, absolutely nothing from my experience, justifies my own turning of my gaze inward during the arrival of new life. If anything, it should draw my gaze upward, and outward, resting upon the face of the Father. He has given this life, he has seen it to fruition, and I give him praise. I woke up on Tuesday morning and for some reason, I believed I was pregnant. My period hadn't yet started and for some reason it felt like it just wasn't going to happen, like my body was telling me it was producing life. Later that day the cramps kicked in and the illusion popped, but for a few hours, I felt so happy. The timing wouldn't be great, but I didn't care. It just would have been happy. I have a hard time with mommies. But I'm starting to remember how much I like babies. Of all the pictures of this new baby that we've been sent, my favorite is the one where she is trying to open her eyes. She's squashed and bleary-eyed, and a little grouchy looking – and I love her. Her face in this picture is exactly how I feel every day of my life. Like if I could only get my eyes open enough, there might be some real things to see. But it's hard and painful and my eyes just can't get used to the bright light. They aren't used to working yet. One day they will be fully adjusted and reality will enter my perception and mind and self, but for now keeping them closed is the best way to cope. Jesus, you are the light of the world. You have given my heart new eyes, but I can't keep them open. It's too bright. Please, please help me. At Home, Arlington, Massachusetts
Today is a big day for Nation family reproductive history. This is my first day off of the pill. I've been trying to write about the end of using the pill for a few days now, but I just haven't been able to do so until now. It honestly just didn't really register until last night when I went to set my alarm for this morning. I didn't set my 9:00am alarm for the pill and though I haven't set it for a week every month for the last four years, this was what caused the reality to really hit home. I don't intend to really ever set that alarm again. An era of my reproductive life has concluded. Birth control is a funny thing and I've been thinking about it a lot recently. I am deeply thankful for its invention and thankful that I live in a time and age in which I have the option of easily separating sex from procreation for a time. Granted, it does mean that I have been constantly tempted to view those things as fundamentally separated and fundamentally in my control, but I also have had the opportunity to learn the lesson of surrendering my will to God. I get to choose to step into a new role, following the Lord as I do so. This thing – motherhood – is not my own story. I belong to the bigger story of Eve – the story which involves helping and suffering, adoption and heirs, waiting and promises, the Bride and childbirth. I don't get to choose whether I face a reckoning with this story. I live in a time and place in which the world is constantly trying to trick me into thinking that I can escape this story if I want to, that I can wrest this story into being my own, and mine alone. But all women everywhere will stand face to face with their potential, abandoned, lost, or gained motherhood at some point and decide how to engage this story that has always been bigger than our small individual selves. Lord, I am small and I am usually pretty afraid of this story that you have spun into motion. And most days I think that by expelling a baby from my womb, I will inevitably expel my brains along with it. But I am trying, really trying to believe that the story you created is not a harmful story for my person. That you did not make me second rate. That by being a mother, I will not be losing everything you have created me to be. That you have created me to be a self and a mother, and that I do not need to be a mother to be a self. And ultimately, that motherhood was not intended to be a destructive force that shuts down a woman's gifts, talents, and strengths, but rather something that can be wondrous. (Image by Erik Cleves Kristensen, "Mother painting.") Athenaeum, Boston, Massachusetts
I love the Athenaeum. I love spending days here, lost in the silence and the coating of whispered sounds that tingles my skin and soothes my mind. I love losing myself in the world of my thesis, fellowshipping with my sad, beautiful sisters across the centuries who desired usefulness for their Creator and gave themselves up for it. They feel like my friends, their voices so clear and challenging. They were platinum – priceless and hard. I love being able to pick books off the endless shelves and find delight in them. Tonight I picked up a book of five hundred self-portraits and I could look at it all evening long. I love being able to walk out the door to grab lunch or dinner, and a coffee. I love the rain against the huge windows and I love the lights on Park Street. I love the romance of this place. As I sit here enjoying my little pool of warm lamplight spreading across my wooden table, I sorrow over the reality that once I start having children, all of this will go away. The silence, the mental space, the communion with women across the centuries, the freedom, the romance. I no longer struggle to want to have those children that will take all of this away from me, but I still find myself mourning the inevitable. Will I keep my mind? Will this world of thought that I have been building and growing dissipate like the morning dew? It feels too tenuous to remain – like it will disperse in an instant. Right now all of my thoughts, all of my ideas float with me throughout the day. But it seems hardly likely that they will be able to collect around me when there are other people connected to my being, my reality. The mists of thought will vanish, and in the light I'll look down to find a pack of little faces clinging to me for life, requiring me to die so that they can live. They will be my parasites and I will love them. Lord Jesus, please help me to love them. Please enable me to delight in them, to find sublime joy in what will be required of me to give up for their sake. But please, Lord, please also don’t let all of this go away. Please, let me keep some small corner of mist. Let me retreat there every so often. Please don't take my mind away. At Home, Arlington, Massachusetts
I've been feeling incredibly stressed about my thesis - I just don't even know if it makes sense anymore. And I'm only two weeks into reading primary sources. I made the horrible mistake of starting research on PhD programs in the UK in the middle of my most stressed out part of the day and all of the sudden all of my academic self-doubt and fears about putting a pause on everything to try to start a family came rushing back in. Tonight, though, I was thankfully reminded of how much I need to let go – by Anne of Avonlea of all things. I know it is incredibly silly and probably very superficial, but I need Anne in my life. Trey and I decided to spend the evening listening to an audio book and sew and do a puzzle respectively instead of gooning out to TV all night. Anne is just so optimistic and it challenges my pessimism to the core. She is willing to be content and wait for things to come when it's the right time, and though she is just a child's fictional character, I need what she represents. What I have now is so rich and so good. What it looks like I'll probably have for the next six years is also phenomenally good. God has blessed me abundantly after waiting for this time to come, why do I doubt him in the next stage of waiting? There is joy to be found in doing my current work well – I’ve waited years to be able to do so, so I might as well have fun! It may take years before the next stage in my academic career, but really good things will come in between. I don't need to stress. Maybe I just need to start planning a trip back to PEI for this summer. At Home, Arlington, Massachusetts
Would you rather... Have children who rebelled, made life a hardship, and you never really knew either way if they loved the Lord, or never have children but live out your life in meaningful ways and joyfully with your spouse? This was the question I asked the car for “peel the onion” on the drive back to Boston from Thanksgiving. Everyone else in the car (R., J., and Trey) chose the second option. I chose the first. And though I couldn't say I would definitely be committed to the choice, I think that choosing it demonstrates growth in my life. I don't think either answer is ultimately right or wrong, but I'm glad that I felt compelled enough by the first answer to go with it in a silly game. Perhaps even if one could never really know about the eternal state of your children, producing life is good in and of itself. At Home, Arlington, Massachusetts
“The opposite of the ‘One Child Policy’ is not the ‘Two Child Policy,’ but ‘Free to Birth.’ When I think about it more deeply, we are no more better than our parents when celebrating the replacement of the ‘one child policy’ with the ‘Two Child Policy.’ We may not be affected by the national policy, we may have more choice to deal with it (many of our friends went abroad to bear their second child), but we are deeply affected by the values of the world — parenthood should not degrade my living standards, my financial standards, or my standards of freedom — because we are still afraid of losing comfort, pleasure, or something that gives us identity. We are still making the choice in the fear.” I'm editing J.’s blog post for the CP on China's switch to the two-child policy and am incredibly convicted. He basically just tells stories from life about the policy, but he ends by discussing the way Chinese don't care about it anymore because no one wants to have kids anyways. His words above are as equally applicable to me in the West as they are to the Chinese. Lord, forgive me. I am making my decisions out of fear. I am no better. I am afraid of giving up my comfort, my financial security, my time, my independence. But parenthood isn't a degradation of these things and we shouldn't see it that way. I shouldn't see it that way. Please God, forgive me, and change my heart. Help me to see the beauty there is in your world, in the way you made me, in parenthood. Please help me to be more compelled by your design and your definitions of beauty than those which the world tells me are beautiful. Amen. Airport, Atlanta, Georgia
I can just feel this pressure welling up inside of me. Why am I not pregnant? Does everyone judge me? My brain and heart are really twisted. Approval has ALWAYS been my biggest idol. One small moment during this weekend has been a surprise blessing, though. An older friend mentioned to me in passing that she was 33 when she had first child and 38 when she had her last. I don't really know this woman well, and I don't know what the circumstances were, but those words were a sweet balm to my soul when I heard them. Gordon-Conwell, South Hamilton, Massachusetts
I really believe that God is going to give me hardship when it comes to having children. I don't know why. I don't know for what purpose. But I feel it. At Home, East Arlington, Massachusetts
Last week, my mom came to visit. Mothers are such complicated things. I don't think my relationship with my mother is any more complicated than anyone else's, but sometimes, in my most disoriented moments, it certainly feels that way. My mom and I are very very different people. She is all practicality. She is rooted in life in a way that I've never been able to share. Her mind is all lines and sense where mine is chaos and flicker. People are central to her world. Ideas are central to mine. She listens to people's hearts. I imagine what their hearts could be. Recently, I've started to realize that as much as she struggles to understand me, I struggle to understand her. For a long time, I thought that I was a lot like my mother. And we are. We both care about people a great deal, and I thought that her gifts and talents were mine. The thing about this is that of course most children inherit some of their parents' abilities. I got just enough of my mother's straightness, just enough of her “peopleness,” just enough of her empathy to think that I could go through life doing much of what she did. As with most children, I tried to pattern myself off of her frame. But I can never be everything that my mother is because I can't understand her frame. And this is currently one of the biggest struggles in my life. Within me, there is a tug to be rooted in reality and people the way she is, but I can't do it. The times I've tried have overwhelmed me. But without following in my mother's footsteps, in whose footsteps do I follow? My own are a scary and lonely place. I can't be my mother. And she doesn't want me to be her. She made it very clear when she was visiting that I have to be my own person. I have not been made to replicate her. But this is frightening. It is being cut loose into a world of decision. It is having to think. It is having to examine. It is having to trust. There is so much within me that comes from my mother. Though we do not think alike, we certainly feel alike. And that strongly. And maybe that is why it is sometimes difficult to relate. Our minds and attitudes are miles apart, but our hearts beat the same emotion. We struggle to comprehend what the other is thinking, or why she is thinking such things, but we feel the same way – strongly and sensitively. Both deep love and great hurt are often produced by this reality. My mother is a great woman. Perhaps the greatest I know. And in the end, this is the most profound reason why it hurts at times not to be just like her. I have risen and called her blessed, and I fear that unless my life looks exactly like hers, my children will not be able to do the same for me. What does it mean to honor your father and mother? Surely it does not mean becoming exactly them. And yet they have shaped me and molded me in indefinable ways. I am grateful to know they love me and are proud of me, despite all of the internal crises I put myself through. |
About the ProjectThis is a very personal project. It tracks my growth and development as I journeyed toward motherhood over the recent years. It doesn't document every experience I had, and probably neglects my more joyful and peaceful moments in the frenzy of trying to communicate my fears, anxieties, and doubts. If you are a friend or loved one, please do not let anything you read here overshadow what you know of me personally. If you are a stranger, please remember that a living and flawed person stands behind these words. To all my guests here, please understand these are not political statements and try to extend me grace, even as I share my failures and foibles - I have repented of much of what I share. I don't share this journal as an exemplar, but rather out of the desire to share my hope that entrance to motherhood does not need to be a fearful thing - despite the very real fears I have fought against. Motherhood is simply a part of life and one through which I am discovering more of myself and my God. Archives
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