I don't care

Here I am writing a blog post reflecting on a previous blog post. Sigh. What kind of a navel gazer does this make me?

The post I am referring to is here (Why I am a Complementarian...), in which I tell of an oath I took before God, and how I broke it. As soon as I published that post I almost chickened out and took it down. Now people know I’m a horrible person. They must think I’m not fit to be a mother.

Or they’ll say I’m being too hard on myself, and ridiculous: chill out girl! It was a different country, a different situation from the one you grew up in. You did what other expats said you should do. Sentiments which I know are mercy and kindness and sweet intentions, but have no power to expunge the guilt I have felt, and only invalidate the experience.

I have to confess, I procrastinated on that post for as long as I possibly could. I kept trying to write other posts, and kept finding that I couldn’t until I’d written That One. And That One was just too scary to write. So I ignored the nagging feeling that essential things were being left unsaid, until there really was nothing more I could say without saying That.

You see, the story I told about a simple orange juice stand and a solemn vow involved the confession of the very darkest point in my memory. Nothing else has the power to fill me with more shame. I drank that roadside orange juice despite my better judgment. I should have known better. I did know better. I had lived in Africa all my childhood; I remember my parents teaching us to refuse any un-bottled drinks whenever we went visiting in the village, or even to a restaurant. I recall a time they wouldn’t let us buy sealed freezies on the road because they might have been made with questionable water in a questionable facility. But hard on the heels of the thought, “That might be unsanitary,” came the thoughts, “It’s probably fine since all the other westerners here talk about having it,” “I am SO thirsty, I NEED that o.j.!” and “The poor roadside-orange-juice-boy will be offended if I back out now.”

So I drank it. And what do you know, 48 hours later I’m sweating and shivering and crying because I could have killed my baby with one drink of that delicious orange juice.

I don’t write this to defend myself to you. To tell the truth, I don’t care what anyone thinks anymore. Don’t get me wrong dear reader, I do care what you think--and that’s the reason I write. But at another level, actually I don’t.

I know the One who knows me best, and He has told me it’s all okay. God is gracious. He gave me my lily-girl, whole and perfect, a grace-gift and every day a reminder of how He sees me. And you need to know that no matter what you’ve done or how much shame or guilt you feel, He can see you the same way. He can, and He will.

So despite my fear, I published the story, both because I love you, dear reader, and because I don’t care what you think.

Beauty Is.

When Nae was 3 days old, I had an epiphanous moment. She had woken early in the morning for a feeding, it seemed silly to go back to sleep after I fed her, and she was ready to start her day. The house was quiet, A. and Grandma were still sleeping down the hall. I laid out a blanket on the floor, placed Nae  on the soft pink fabric and lowered my aching body next to her. And then we just stared at each other in one of those moments seemingly frozen in time. I was overcome by her perfection. It brought to my mind all of those feelings I'd had about myself growing up. I thought about how my perfect, beautiful daughter would feel about herself as she grew up. I realized, in that still and quiet moment, that there wasn't anything that would change how completely beautiful she was. And in that moment a bit of healing took place for me: beauty was no longer a Hollywood-fixed image in my mind, but a fact. My daughter is beautiful. I am beautiful. People are beautiful.

Now I'm sure by this point at least half of you are thinking that I'm putting too much emphasis on beauty, particularly because I'm raising a girl, and shouldn't I be placing more emphasis on other qualities; her intelligence, her spunk, her strength? Well, sure, all of those things are very important, and of course I don't want my daughters growing up believing that beauty is all-important. That being said, it's going to come up because it's saturated our entire society, it grips us, dazzles us, and misleads us. I've seen it happen, and it's happened to me. J has shared briefly her battle with anorexia and I have had my own struggles with disordered eating. It is everywhere. So as parents, and especially as mothers of daughters, we need a plan to confront society's misinterpretation of beauty and bring truth into our daughters' lives.

My plan mostly centers around things I try to always do, or rather, never do. I never talk about how I feel about my own body. I try not to talk about food as being "good" or "bad" and I try never to chastise her for her food preferences or choices. I never talk about anyone else's body, either--or at least I try really hard not to: "Oh, isn't she gorgeous/ugly" is never a phrase that exits my mouth. The rest of this post might seem to contradict that last statement, but what I said I said only because I had a very controlled environment and a willing participant.

Yesterday morning Nae, still in her pyjamas, her hair uncombed and teeth unbrushed, came up to me all gussied-up: bracelets to her elbows, lip gloss carefully painted over her mouth, wearing my highest heels, and asked me, "Mommy, am I beeeeautiful?"

Honestly, it was a sucker-punch to the stomach. It always is... every time she comes up to me, dressed to the nines, with such a simple, innocent question. Normally, I say something like "Of course you are, Sweetie!" But this time, I picked her up and told her:

"You are always beautiful. You are beautiful when you first wake up, and you are beautiful when you're fast asleep in bed. You are beautiful when you are happy and you are beautiful when you are sad. Your clothes don't make you beautiful. Clothes aren't beautiful. Clothes are plain or comfortable or fancy or fun. Clothes aren't beautiful. You are beautiful. You are beautiful just because God made you, and He made you just right."

Then we talked about all the people in her life, "Is Emma beautiful?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied.

"How about Grandma? Is Grandma beautiful?"

"Yes!" She said.

We went on like this for awhile. I tried to include people she knows of every skin tone, body shape, age, hair color, makeup and style preference that I could.  There was no doubt in her mind that all of these people were truly beautiful, so I'm not sure she understood the point of the exercise, which is perfect, because that was the very point.

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day, and I have just one thing to say:

Your life is beautiful. It's an on-purpose work of art. And it is not finished yet.

And please please please, let's talk. Let's all talk. Let's talk about mental illness until there is no more stigma. Let's talk about our struggles until no one thinks they are alone anymore. Let's talk about our darkness and let some air and light in! Let's talk about grace until the sound of it drowns out the voices that tell so many that their life is not worth living.

OK, so that was sort of more than just one thing.

I feel I can do no better on this Suicide Prevention Day than to link to a couple of posts by others. The first is the recent story of a new mom who lost her life to postpartum depression. Let's stop devaluing and ignoring the pain of so many precious mothers by calling it "the baby blues." This needs serious attention, serious thought, and tremendous effort to prevent more tragic deaths.

The second is a phenomenal poster I saw on Facebook a while ago that apparently hangs in a therapist's office. It should be posted everywhere. Please, anyone who has though.t about ending their own life, you are NO coward. Your thoughts are far from selfish. You are anything but weak. Go and ask for that stick.

With all of my heart,
J