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

Why I am a Complementarian (And Other Thinly Veiled Attempts to Start Fights in the Comments Section)

Photo credit Stacy Brumley

(I do hope you read that tongue in my cheek).

Deep into the Woods

This post should be at least two different posts, and most of it is really a rabbit trail, but for some reason I cannot pull it apart in my mind. Maybe because my brain is like spaghetti (I’ve actually never read this book, but it looks kind of connected, and do I ever relate to the title!) This post started its life in my head as a tribute to my husband and the way he pulled me through the worst of my illness. Then I realized I’d have to explain my beliefs in more depth, and then, with a pang, that I had not yet been specific about those beliefs. What a sad omission. I intend to remedy that now: to explain my faith and a bit about how it has been vital to my recovery. I hope to do it in a way that leaves you in no doubt whatever that no matter your beliefs, I sincerely welcome and desire your readership, your input and your discussion.

I am a Christian--a Christ-follower, Jesus-lover, baptized believer. Christie and I grew up with parents in full-time Christian ministry. We both chose early, and re-committed later more fully, to follow Jesus. I’m sure I can say for both of us that we could not have recovered without integrating our faith into the process. Because my faith in God is such an essential part of who I am and how I make sense of my illness and recovery, it will feature often in this blog. For me, wellness and faith had to coalesce, but not in the same way some of my Christian friends insisted they should.

I do plan to explicitly address some blog posts to the Christian community because I believe that we are lagging sadly behind the secular western world in understanding mental health. As I see it, the Church has had uniquely terrible responses to mental illness. While secular society is working hard to conquer the stigma surrounding mental illness, correcting popular vocabulary that mocks the mentally ill, and beginning to accept that mental illness is in most respects no different from physical illness, the Church is still condemning the mentally ill. Still telling people with depression to “buck up and rejoice in the Lord.” Still demanding that they repent of their worry and fear. Still frightening young girls struggling from eating disorders with talk of demon oppression, and in general over-spiritualizing mental illness. I’m dismayed to admit that the church is decades behind the rest of society in terms of accepting and reaching out to the mentally ill.

I’ve been hurt by the Church, but I still love it. I love it because my Savior loves it, and sees so much potential in it, as He sees potential in me (now there’s the real difficulty!). Mental illness is not a sin. I do not believe anxiety is necessarily a sin, nor is depression. Many disagree with me, and so throughout my writing on this blog I will attempt to explain my position and convince my Christian brothers and sisters. My hope is that some will reconsider their views on mental illness and the way they talk to their fellow Christians who struggle (or may be struggling--you never know!) with mental illness. For many of us, our healing needs to come within the Church. God wants to be our source of healing, but if His character and message are misrepresented or undermined by the Church, an individual’s faith can actually become a barrier to healing.

With that basic explanation of where I am coming from, let me now explain the complementarian bit, and why I am not actually trying to start a fight with this post.

Back onto the Bunny Trail...

There is a lot of discussion in the Christian community over the roles of women in the church. Traditionally, women have accepted a deferential role of service and giving, while men took on the leadership roles. This practical interpretation comes from an understanding of the Bible which states that since woman was created after man, woman is subservient to man.

Modern feminism has of course called into question this interpretation of Scripture, leading to much heated debate over which roles women can hold in church and family life.

Egalitarianism counters the traditional understanding by pointing out passages which show that there is no favoritism in God’s view of men and women--the best example being Galatians 3:28 which says: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28; compare also Romans 3:22 and 1 Cor 12:13)--and that Christ’s own attitude towards women was revolutionary in the extreme patriarchal culture of his time. Egalitarians insist that women should have all the same privileges and responsibilities as men. Both men and women should be preachers and teachers, and in the marital relationship both must submit to each other and lead their family together.

Complementarians by contrast, insist on the clarity of verses of Scripture which state that man is the head over woman (1 Cor 11:3), and that men are therefore to take the leadership roles. It is not that women are of lesser importance or position than men, complementarians argue, but that they are different and therefore necessarily fill different roles. Men and women have complementary roles to play in both church and family: men as leaders, women as helpers.

Most of you will see this as a rather extreme oversimplification of the situation, but that is as far as I am able or willing to go in this blog post.

To be honest, I do not consider the role of women to be a central issue of dogma. I don’t think God cares all that much which side we land on in the debate--He cares much more that we recognize Him as the ultimate Head, and that we all equally submit to Him.

In this blog post, I present the weakest argument I know to support my complementarian stance, because I consider a weak argument sufficient.

So with that caveat, I will now present my argument. It is, as I said, one of the weakest forms of argument according to philosophy--an argument from personal experience. As such, it need not sway your thinking much. The experience was nonetheless significant to my healing.

Once Upon a Time

It began with an oath I took before God. I had just been scratched by a strange cat in Africa. I knew nothing about the cat, and next to nothing about diseases from cats that might be harmful in pregnancy, but I had heard of such a disease, and I was terrified. I believed I could have prevented the scratch, so I made a promise to God to be more vigilant about protecting my unborn child.

I later received a comforting email from my midwife assuring me that I could not get the dreaded illness from a cat scratch. However, the promise I had made still stood. A few days later, when I was offered a drink of the famed roadside-stand-fresh-pressed orange juice of the area, I took it even though I was unsure how sanitary the stand could be. Later I lay in a fevered fit, full of guilt and shame for having taken that drink. My still-fresh oath compounded my shame. I vowed then that I would never again do anything if I was uncertain it would be good for my child.

This oath hung like a giant’s gavel over my head. In the following weeks, I discovered I was unsure about most things. On second thought, I was unsure about everything. How could I be sure that the water the airplane stewardesses handed out was clean? How could I know I had not brought back a deadly germ in my suitcase? That I would not pass a harmful toxin to my unborn child if I used that shampoo, touched that doorknob, ate at that restaurant, got out of bed in the morning?

In response to a question from my mom one day, I told her and Jem about the vow I’d taken. Jem’s immediate response was, “That was a really stupid vow to make.”

My mom kindly tried to temper his remark. No, it wasn’t stupid. No Judy you aren’t stupid. But in spite of an initial sting, his gruff words were actually what I needed to hear. There was an ancient solidity, an authority, about his response.

I don’t remember if it occurred to me right away or if it took a few days, but I recalled an obscure passage in Numbers chapter 30:

If a woman vows a vow to the Lord and binds herself by a pledge, and her husband hears of it and says nothing to her on the day that he hears, then her vows shall stand, and her pledges by which she has bound herself shall stand. 8 But if, on the day that her husband comes to hear of it, he opposes her, then he makes void her vow that was on her, and the thoughtless utterance of her lips by which she bound herself. And the Lord will forgive her.

I needed my husband to repudiate the oath from the beginning. I leaned into his authority. I asked him later if he had been thinking of that passage. No, he said, his reaction had been entirely out of his gut. I knew then that I’d been set free.

I didn’t live free right away. The fears had already carved deep striations through my brain that would take many months and much practice to heal. But there was never again a question in my mind that my vow held no power over me.

There were other similar moments throughout those months, when Jem stepped up in a rather knightly way to slay my dragons. One day he told me that God never expected mothers to protect--that was a father’s job. He declared himself responsible for my health. On another occasion, he came home early from work to carry me bodily into bed when I could do nothing but stand shaking and crying. His presence and wisdom through that dark time is unparalleled in any of the fairy tales. It wasn’t exciting or beautiful or romantic in the fairy tale sense, but it was a real-life, albeit earthy, rather dreary, fairy tale.

Worry Olympics

You’ve probably heard that the water the athletes in Rio will be rowing and swimming in is pretty gross. I have a morbid curiosity about such things, so I went looking online for more information. (Typically online research is a really bad idea for someone with OCD. I’m not supposed to be Googling health risks, and I don’t recommend you do either. In this case, it worked out in my favor, but...). Luckily, I came across this article.

The article states that people who ingest 3 teaspoons of the water at Rio’s Olympic venues could get violently ill. The title includes the word “just” (just 3 teaspoons), but it might as well read “as much as” for the effect it has on me. 3 teaspoons sounds like a ton! Granted, it may not be much when you consider how much water a swimmer is likely to ingest. But it is about ten thousand times more than the amounts I worry about, and in much less extreme situations--situations like water splashing out of my sink while I’m doing dishes, or my girl throwing stones in our city’s beautiful river. The article goes on to say that even though it would take 3 teaspoons to make illness a high probability, “whether they actually fall ill depends on a series of factors including the strength of the individual’s immune system.” My mind is blown. A whole three teaspoons and they might not even get sick?

Don’t get me wrong. I feel tremendous concern for the Rio athletes. But I don’t think I’ll worry about my girl splashing river water anymore. In fact, I just took her to throw stones in the river. Check out the size of the one she threw in. You can bet she made a splash.

"Aha!"

"Should I? Or not?"

Mud puddles are also a perennial favorite

TTC (Curious?)

Figgered you might be, whether you know what the abbreviation means or not. At least I was. Out of curiosity recently, I clicked on a “TTC Vlog” that came up in my YouTube feed. I soon learned, as some of you are about to learn (unless I was the last ignorant one), that “TTC” stands for “Trying to Conceive.”

Anyone out there feel a bit surprised? embarrased? uncomfortable about the notion of the TTC vlog? I did. My initial thought was: wow people, we are dying for community! Why else would anyone be willing to put out there for the entire world to see, analyze, maybe even laugh about, every detail of their personal uncertain attempt at conception?

Aside from my embarrassed surprise, this is a subject that brings up a heavy load of emotions. So I decided, perhaps against general caution, to address the topic on this blog.

No, this is not my TTC blog. I’m not telling, one way or another, so don’t get any ideas or start any speculative rumors! But I know that for many who are trying, TTC can be a source of almost unbearable heartache--because I’ve experienced it.

I must qualify that we did not try very long for lily-girl. I know many have tried much longer without the blessing we received, comparatively quickly. For those of you who cry out for a child that never comes, for those who have experienced a miscarriage, maybe multiple miscarriages, I cannot hope to say anything here that will ease your burden. But I believe the very least I can do is acknowledge it. Detailing my experience, brief and easy as it was compared to yours, may shed some light on the depth of your pain.

My story involves less waiting and less grief than many, but waiting and grief nonetheless. It involves a suspected--never confirmed--miscarriage, and years of mourning before the comfort of a pregnancy. Once we decided to try for a pregnancy, I cannot describe my waiting each month as impatient; it was rather more like desperate. Several months in a row I experienced pregnancy symptoms like breast tenderness, fatigue and nausea, and missing my normally clockwork period by a week and a half or more. Once when my period started nearly two weeks late, I was so convinced that I was pregnant that I went to the emergency room thinking I was having a miscarriage. I was beyond embarrassed when the doctor walked in and said, “So, you aren’t actually pregnant…”. I later learned these could have been symptoms of phantom pregnancy, or pseudocyesis. Yup, it’s a thing. Sometimes it lasts a few weeks. Rarely, the symptoms of pregnancy continue and progress a full 9 months, occasionally years, without a baby being present. Christie knew a woman who grew a belly, went into labor, and came back from the hospital without a baby, because there never had been one.

I felt like my body had turned traitor. It was teasing me, raising my hopes to dash them the harder. I felt like I went through the wringer every month. I felt like I grieved the loss of a baby every month.

Some of you may think my reaction melodramatic. I rather agree! I felt humiliated that I was so naive as to let my own body keep fooling me, embarrassed by my sheer desperation to have a child. But no matter how much I tried to teach my heart to feel differently, it remained unteachable, at least for the time. And all of the ache and desperation I’ve just described explains a lot about how I later experienced pregnancy, how on edge I was, how febrile, how anxious to get it just right.

I think we need to recognize that pregnancy and childbearing are fraught with emotion from before the very beginning. Waiting, more waiting, expectation, disappointment. Hoping and trying not to hope. It’s no wonder perinatal mental illnesses are so common. We’re raw and tender from the wringer.

When I was a teenager and young adult, my mom used to tell me, “Your reactions are valid. Your feelings are just as right as anyone else’s”. I never believed her. Generally, my own gut reflexes caused me either embarrassment or anger. Here was more evidence of my reflex-incompetence: this preposterous desperation and grief over trying to conceive. There was no good reason to feel so miserable, just as there was no reason for my body to feel and act pregnant.

When I later discovered that someone had given the experience a name (pseudocyesis/ phantom pregnancy), that someone else’s brain and body had joined forces to humiliate her, the realization that I was not alone loosened the grip at my gut.

The mental illnesses common in pregnancy range beyond postpartum depression, but we don’t hear about them. For example, you may be surprised to hear that anxiety disorders are actually more common than depression in the perinatal period, and mood disorders of all kinds are about as common during pregnancy as during the postpartum period. In particular, PTSD affects about 3 percent of pregnant women, and about 20 percent of women with OCD say their symptoms began in pregnancy (I got these stats from a wonderful resource called The Pregnancy and Postpartum Anxiety Workbook, by Wiegartz and Gyoerkoe, pp. 114 and 150). Because no one talks about them, pseudocyesis, OCD, PTSD and panic disorders ambush us, and at a time in our lives when we are most vulnerable. This is one of the main reasons for this blog. If we start talking more about perinatal mood disorders, if mental illness in general is no longer shrouded in secrecy and confusion, then we can hope to take out some of the shock and sting of shame. More women will have the courage to seek treatment. Fewer will believe they are alone. Above all dear readers, I want you to know that should you find your gut going through a wringer-washer of pain and guilt and shame, YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

Understanding my vulnerability helped disprove my original mortified assumption that no other brain had ever reacted as melodramatically as mine.  And then at least I was fighting a better-known giant. At least I knew the giant had been fought and beaten before. And now hopefully, so do you.

the new sock game

Well, I am back to writing after a long hiatus. This has been a terrible spring for illness! Our family has had a continuous string of colds and flus for the past couple of months. Taking care of a sick toddler and husband, and feeling under the weather myself has left me little time or energy to write. So that’s my excuse. I’m back now, and really hoping you’ll stick with me!

A ton of ideas for this blog have come up for me, so I’m not sure where to start. I’ve decided to start small and tell you about one of the tougher struggles I had recently. I’ve been doing well for the most part, but there are still plenty of battles in my brain. OK to be completely honest, even at this stage of recovery some days are just a matter of getting through a moment at a time, weathering a storm of worries that hurl themselves at my consciousness from various sides. It isn’t possible to explain to someone who has not dealt with OCD what it is like to live with an obsessive-compulsive brain--even a recovering one. It’s a lot of work. What looks to others like the simplest decision could be a major conundrum, an agonizing wrestling match in the brain of someone suffering from OCD. So, in an attempt to help you see through the eyes of another….

Lily-girl and I--as a team (haha)--started a new job recently. A friend of mine went back to work after her second maternity leave, and needed someone flexible to babysit on a casual schedule. So, a few times a month I take my "co-worker" over to their place, and get to watch three babies instead of one. I love it! My friends’ kids are perfect little angels (pretty well), and so full of zest for life. They are great companions for my lonely only, and the extra cash doesn’t hurt. Still, it is my first job post-partum and post-OCD-recovery, and I am encountering some unique challenges. Like when someone else’s child sticks her hand in my mouth. Or when navigating someone else’s kitchen, I think I’m reaching for a jar of peanut butter for a quick snack and find it is full of vegetable peelings for the compost (Aaargh! One of my absolute worst fears, by the way).

The particular day I am remembering was the warmest day of the spring thus far, so the babies played outside for most of the morning and got filthy in the sandbox. I didn’t think it would bother me so much, but it did. Don’t ask me why: I’m trying not to get into details in case someone with OCD reads this blog! Suffice it to say that I was experiencing unreasonably high levels of anxiety for the rest of the day. I was particularly worried about lily-girl’s sandy socks, which I intended to change when we got home, but forgot. She and her Daddy decided this was the day to invent a new game with those socks, and they were playing it on our unmade bed, right on the surfaces I would later lay my face on. Of course I wanted to change the sheets, and wondered if that would really be unreasonable. But I didn’t have time for such a major endeavor (our only other set of sheets is rather too small for our bed) and besides, I knew Jem would be annoyed and say that I was giving in to the OCD. I decided instead to flip the pillow over and sleep between the top sheet and blanket.

Some of you may think this story is funny. Some may recognize the pain of the dilemma. Some may have no idea what I am talking about! Whatever your reaction, I just hope you recognize that it is hard. I can't know if I made the “right” decision--should I have pushed myself more to face the fear? Or was I actually too nonchalant about a real danger? There is so much self-doubt involved in navigating life with OCD.

But you know what I am discovering? There is grace. There is grace when I make mistakes (whether real or imagined)--like forgetting to change my daughter’s socks, or not washing my hands “perfectly” every time. And there is grace for where I am in dealing with OCD. There is grace for not making the “right” decision all of the time. There is grace for not being completely "recovered" (whatever that would mean!) There is enough grace, even for me.