A Time to Laugh

Ebenezer Vista — The Big Outing

I’m calling this Ebenezer “Vista” because nothing quite worked out like I anticipated. And after it was over, it seemed like downgrading to an earlier version would be best.

I’ve got to admit. I’d just rather not talk about this. I kinda get ill just thinking about it all. For my friends, if I’ve told you any of this whole story, I haven’t told you about this. But it’s important part of the ominous sense of dread that built up over that final year.

The summer of 2006 I renamed the “Summer of Isaac and Gavin” because for the first time in my life I was a stay-at-home-mom. It was a new and happy thing for us. My sons and I did “Letter of the Week” that summer, and you can read about all our fun in my archives. I saw a different side of the infrastructure of our county (where are the sidewalks?) and a different side to the interior of my refrigerator (Pink and fuzzy guacamole? How long has this been in there? Ew!!).

It all started . . . with Sean Paddock’s death exactly two years and two day ago now. You probably don’t remember him. He died as the result of some very, very bad parenting. Lynn Paddock, his adoptive mom, suffocated the four-year-old by wrapping him too tightly in blankets to keep him in bed. If you keep up with the trends among Evangelical parenting authors, it should come as no surprise that she avidly followed the worst example available: Michael Pearl.

The Pearls capitalize on quaint Amish icons and natural family living ideals. They privilege an homesteading aura that is very appealing in our McWorld. I get that. I even admire it.

But . . . you don’t have to look very deep to find problems in his advice. In the end, it is heretical. Plain and simple, he denies Original Sin and asserts a sin-free perfectionism for those who are as accomplished as he. He believes that young children are so amoral and so ignorant that they are no different from animals, and the parent’s responsibility is no different than a farmer’s to his livestock. Where that leads him is clear in his explanation of Romans 1:21:

Obviously the 2 year old can’t glory, the 1 year old, the idiot and the retard can’t glory in anything. But those who have reached a place of intellectual maturity will glory and are expected to glory in God.

He’s neither saying that children are totally unable to save their full-of-sin selves nor is he saying that children are naturally good. In other words, he’s neither orthodox nor warm-and-fuzzy. And his bad theology pushes him to some really scary conclusions. He reasons that a parent can do whatever s/he needs to do to a child in order to “train” him — not discipline him since he’s not capable of receiving any sort of teaching. No, Pearl emphasizes training. He continually compares children to animals and overtly suggests that you train a child like you would a dog. For instance, what do you do when your dog has a housebreaking accident? You take him out and hose him down. You may respond to your 3-year-old’s potty accidents the same way, according to Michael Pearl. I kid you not. In his characteristic folksy style, he remembers advising a father to do just that in To Train Up a Child:

First, I pointed out that the boy’s mother, busy with the other children, would, several times a day, pick up this big kid, talk sweet to him, lay him on a bed, take off the dirty diaper, wipe him with a warm rag, rub a little lotion on the chaffed spots and then put a fresh, smooth diaper on him. Dumping in his pants was an opportunity to get his mother’s undivided attention. Now, we understand that there is no guilt or blame in this matter, especially on the child’s part, but there is something quite inconvenient–except for the kid who loved the experience and must have found it the highlight of his day.

So, my suggestion was that the father explain to the boy that, now that he was a man, he would no longer be washed in the house. He was too big and too stinky to be cleaned by the babywipes. From now on, he would be washed outside with a garden hose. The child was not to be blamed. This was to be understood as just a progressive change in methods. The next dump, the father took him out and merrily, and might I say, carelessly, washed him off. What with the autumn chill and the cold well water, I don’t remember if it took a second washing or not, but, a week later, the father told me his son was now taking himself to the pot. The child weighed the alternatives and opted to change his lifestyle. Since then, several others have been the recipients of my meddling, and it usually takes no more than three cheerful washings.

Doug Wilson sums it up:

The first part of the book [To Train Up a Child] reveals a sub-biblical theology on the nature of the child. The innate sinfulness of the child is denied, which leads the Pearls to sharply distinguish training from discipline. Training is what the innocent infants and toddlers get, and is identical to what puppies get when they don’t go on the newspapers. Discipline supposedly comes later when sin enters the picture. While this is not a book of theology, a Finney-like Pelagianism runs near the surface. And while there are some similarities between animal training and child-discipline, the distinctions between the two are not adequately maintained in this book. The result of this confusion is not only heretical, but also offensive to any parents who value the dignity of their children.

There’s more, but I’ll let you research that on your own, if you wish. It only gets more and more sad.

So . . . in the midst of a cyber-mourning for the Paddock family and the heresy that passes for biblical parenting advice, KatieKind stepped it up a notch with a challenge for all the Christian moms participating. She called us all to speak out when we heard Pearl being recommended in our little slices of Christendom.

Sigh. . . . I believe the Holy Spirit made me listen close to her urging. I knew that it was crystal-clear that Pearl was not biblical. I knew that people who supported him just didn’t know the whole story. I promised God that the next time I heard him supported I would say something. I’ve gotta admit — I didn’t think anything would come of it because the guy is a real nut!

Not too long later, I got the flu and was stuck on the couch comforting equally sick boys. So I read. A lot. You know how surfing materializes. That may even be how you settled here.

I landed in a big forum for fundamentalist Baptists. I’d read there a lot previously, but I had never joined. I could join — I could agree to the membership agreement and all — But I just hadn’t up to that point. Again I’m not telling you the name because I don’t want to start a war. I’ve seen that happen too often between blogs and large forums. If you’ve got a hunch, go find me in there. It’s not hard to search.

But, as you can guess from the way I’m telling this story, I landed on a glowing endorsement of Michael Pearl there. My stomach began to churn, and I remembered my promise. ::gulp::

Like a good fundamentalist, I kept my promise. I remembered all the sayings I had been reared on: “finish the job,” “the best ability is dependability,” “the test of your character is what it take to stop you.” I reminded myself that this Pearl stuff was wrong, and if anyone on the planet should be able to see that, I thought, it’s a fundamentalist, right? You with me on this?? Isn’t that what we do? Point out error? I thought that’s what I was taught while I read all those sayings above the chalkboards.

I took a deep breath and joined. The policy of that forum is to accept no anonymous members. You must use your real name and actual in-real-life facts about yourself (this policy might seem harmless enough, but in its working out, it’s not a good thing.). I poked around and found a lot of people I knew from junior high, high school, and undergrad. I found tons of my own students. These are my buddies, right? I should feel right at home. . . .

I pointed out the error in the Pearls as best as I could. It was met with a polite but inquiring surprise. They asked me to present my case, and I did. I joined the ladies’ forum and offered some prayer requests. It was a pleasant experience. I posted a few more opinions here and there. I’m pretty experienced with internet communication, so I know how to juggle some of the potential communication breakdowns.

Then it snowballed. Bad. The whole thing makes me too sick to go back there and review exactly when it all went south, but one poster seemed to be trying to “out” my position on punitive parenting. He asked me point-blank. I avoided an answer at first by joking it off. But he wouldn’t let go. And with Grant looking over my shoulder and cheering me on, I explained there publicly exactly what I told you a few posts back: “spanking is not biblically mandated.”

To keep things neat, I started a new thread with that in the title. It was a blood bath. I tried my best to keep things on task. I wouldn’t answer ad hominem attacks about how I was just a woman, illogical, uneducated, and inexperienced. I mean, I’m not perfect, so there’s always something to pick at (I’m happy to tell you those things, so you needn’t look too deep). I wondered where the forum moderators were! In my experience with internet forums, that kind of browbeating would not be tolerated. My blog statcounter jumped sky-high. I saw people googling me and sniffing me out. In the thread, I tried desperately to focus on the argument from Scripture since that was what I was trying to point out. I thought at the time that I did a pretty good job of that, but based on the outcome, I must have failed.

The thread quickly reached the forum’s 20-page limit and was closed. I have never posted again over there. I just can’t bring myself to.

But here’s the real kicker. A few weeks later I get an email from my then-employer that I was “blipping on the radar” because of those threads. His email was good-natured. I said that then and I’ll keep saying that. He did instruct me to never speak of my parenting views in the classroom (and I never did!). But overall he was friendly and fraternal.

Over time, however, the tone didn’t stay that way. Apparently, “several” letters were coming in to the administration about me and those posts. I don’t know if they were from members of the forum or not. I don’t know what was said. Months later I did find a poster bragging about disagreeing with a female faculty member, but I don’t know if he was speaking about me or not. In the end, I’ve never been afforded the opportunity to face those critics. It’s all been completely anonymous and very threatening.

I was told that those letter-writers wanted me fired.

So it seems, spanking is a fundamental.

Ebenezer 2006 — A Gavin is Born!

Hallelujah! Blessed man, blessed woman, who fear God,
Who cherish and relish his commandments,
Their children robust on the earth,
And the homes of the upright—how blessed!
Their houses brim with wealth
And a generosity that never runs dry.
Sunrise breaks through the darkness for good people—
God’s grace and mercy and justice!
The good person is generous and lends lavishly;
No shuffling or stumbling around for this one,
But a sterling and solid and lasting reputation.
Unfazed by rumor and gossip,
Heart ready, trusting in God,
Spirit firm, unperturbed,
Ever blessed, relaxed among enemies,
They lavish gifts on the poor—
A generosity that goes on, and on, and on.
An honored life! A beautiful life!
Someone wicked takes one look and rages,
Blusters away but ends up speechless.
There’s nothing to the dreams of the wicked. Nothing.

Psalm 112

Gavin, our little White Hawk, made his world debut in an entirely different way than his brother. Instead of inducing at 37 weeks, the docs thought we could wait until 39 weeks and 3 days. And while that was a little stressful for this mommy in those final weeks, all was well. I had quite a bit of “practice labor” — a totally new experience for me! You might have seen us marching around the park or Walmart that Spring trying to coax him out. But he wasn’t going to budge, that’s for sure.

You all who have more than one child know that the second (or third or nth) time you introduce a new family member, the process is familiar but much more complex. We read about being a brother with Isaac. We talked about how we’d have to take care of this new little life in the same way that Mommy and Daddy took care of him. Lots of cuddling and nursing. All of us needed the reminder that the ’sooner you help a crying baby, the sooner he stops crying.’

I reviewed the upcoming blessed event over and over with Isaac to the point that he’s still talking about it — even with strangers (a.k.a. mall Santas or any friendly person at the Playplace). He repeats: “This is my bruhver, baby Gavin. He was in my Mommy’s tummy. But then she went to the ‘hosapital’ and had a lot of contraptions. And he came out! And then he had papoo.”

The birth wasn’t quite as simple as Isaac says. Gavin was sunny side up. And he, like both his parents and his grand-dads, has a . . . uh, very large square head. You can see our OB explaining as much as he gloves up for the blessed (and forceped) event. 3 hours of hard pushing and a big pair of salad tongs and a nearly 4th-degree epi later, our Gavin was born. And that little trooper was holding his head up before we left the delivery room!

Our babymoon was also a new experience for me. He got to stay in the room with me. He nursed like a champ right away. He slept in my arms. And we all went home as soon as they’d allow (which, I’m convinced, is only after you’ve signed every paper they can dream up).

As my brother has commented before, God used Gavin to heal us even further. I could relax. He was okay. I was okay. I made slings galore! Who cares what people think, right? And that easy-going joy oozes out of every pore. He dances. He sings. He runs. He jumps. He prays!! He devours vegetables. He really lives like the Psalm that Pastor used in his dedication: heart ready, trusting in God, spirit firm, unperturbed. I needed that reminder of child-like confidence in Christ for the year to come.

So there in our arms was this beautiful, snuggly monument to robust, unfazed, happy confidence in God.

Ebenezer — A Second Chance

You can go see it for yourself, you know. My blog post on May 15, 2005. Marty Medhurst — that believing gentleman and very well-published scholar — had posted a call for manuscripts on CRTNET for Baylor University’s Rhetoric and Religion series. And I responded with my dissertation. He said, to my shock, that he was hoping I’d see that and respond. Wow! Me? Color me thrilled!

All went well. After editing and submitting the whole document, he said mine was the only manuscript in the series that had unanimous approval. WOW.

I told one “rising” colleague, a friend. He responded very kindly and fraternally and happily. He, too, is a gentleman. I told a few other close friends too. I think, three or four.

And just for the record, it was in the Fall of 2005 that I double-checked the Faculty Handbook about faculty publishing. Most of the focus had to do with music publishing and recording. The rule for writing was that if you were publishing “outside of your area of expertise” you had to get dean-approval from the dean who oversaw that area of expertise. Well, when you get a Ph.D., your dissertation is the very definition of your area of expertise. And I had mentioned it to those directly above me. So I put that out of my mind. I’m sure the rule has changed by now.

Medhurst and I talked some more. And I admitted to him that because it was over five years since I defended my dissertation, it badly needed an updating. I mean, look at all that had happened in the United States political sphere since. The War in Iraq, Bush’s entire presidency. And how had fundamentalism changed? I no longer heard the moniker “fundamentalist” anymore — not from local pulpits, not from chapel sermons, not from my own students’ descriptions of themselves. I set out to find out the best text to critique and to foreground this subtle shift.

By this time it was the Spring semester of 2006. I was carrying my much-prayed-for Gavin, due for induction in April. It was a little . . . disconcerting for me. I had poured my soul into that dissertation the first time while I was carrying Elise. Many of those pages have her “footprints” all over them — before and after her death. I sighed and cried a lot during that revision. It was healing too — like a second chance.

I read every Bush rhetorical critique I could find. “Meh” was about all I could say. I wondered if Bush’s “political fundamentalism,” as one author called it, played a part in fundamentalists’ disenchantment with the label. Most didn’t fit my boundaries for inclusion in my texts. But they were kind of interesting!

I took a step back. In the 2001 dissertation, I had focused on public, BJU-produced texts that were directed at secular outsiders. I knew things had changed in the discourse (I could feel the change in the pulse of the campus), but new texts were impossible to find. BJU actually kind of shut-up after Campaign 2000 (who wouldn’t?).

Except for one text. It was very small, but it was clearly public, BJU-produced, and written for the secular outsider. And it was a more evangelistic version of an exceptionally important text to student life.

Let me back up again. In the middle of Campaign 2000, I was so disgusted with the bad treatment of fundamentalists, specifically BJU fundamentalists (my homies!!) that I marched into my prof’s office and said, “That’s it! I’m doing BJU for my text for my dissertation.” He laughed and said, “Well. . . . that’s grabbing the tiger by the tail!! Are you sure they’ll let you do that?” When I asked the BJU administration a few months later, the response was, “Are you sure they’ll let you do that?” I still chuckle at those parallel responses.

But here I was in 2006 . . . reaching past the tiger’s tail and for his ruff. Was that little public text for outsiders what I should do? Like all these other Ebenezers, I begged God to push me away from it. To help me find something — ANYTHING — else. I hunted. I looked hard. Nothing else came to the surface. Nothing.

By now you’ve noticed that I haven’t actually told you the name of this book. Although I’m purposely trying to be vague, you might be able to guess. In all these posts, it’s not my purpose to hurt individuals. So I’ve used passive voice and have referred to generic “friends.” If I use an actual name, I’ve asked permission first.

It’s not my intention to offend anyone. I’m blogging. So I’m trying to remember my feelings, my perceptions, my realizations — all how God changed me and mine. I don’t know for how long I’m going to be able to maintain that standard. Although I do know that God wanted me to write that additional chapter, He apparently has other plans for it than to be published in this first book.

But that’s another Ebenezer for a later post.

Another Ebenezer — Reading is Fundamental

Fundamentalists often hear and repeat, “My Bible is all I need.” And while I understand and affirm the sentiment that God’s Word is well. . . . GOD’s WORD, the expression is full of hubris. It’s not that God’s Word is incomplete or inaccurate or insufficient. We are. It’s the old four blind men and the elephant problem. If that Eastern example doesn’t do it for you, there’s always good ol’ Francis Bacon. In sum, idols distract us. We’re blinded by our infirmed humanity (idols of the tribe), our idiosyncratic personhood (idols of the cave), our reified culture (idols of the marketplace), and our inadequate education (idols of the theatre). One way of seeing around those idols that stand in our way of understanding God’s Wor(l)d is through a iron-sharpening looking outside of ourselves. Otherwise, we just see ourselves in Scripture instead of seeing God. That’s why God gave us the Church — to edify each other and point out our blindspots. We’re not islands unto ourselves. Or we shouldn’t be!

And that’s what these books did for me. Reading them is an Ebenezer — a monument to seeing my presumptions and my own microculture as badly flawed. All these books are, ironically enough, within the conservative Evangelical hermeneutic. I have some mainline liberal Protestant friends who read them and were left with only a “meh!” These don’t speak to them. But they do speak to us and are eye-opening, earth-shaking, Church-building, and Christ-centered.

I got into trouble for reading and for talking about these books. So if you want to upset the Powers that Be, read them. If you’re content with things as they are, avoid them like the plague. Trust me.

Heartfelt Discipline by Clay Clarkson. Clarkson set out to prove that the usual punitive advice that circulates in conservative Evangelical circles is from Scripture. He found out otherwise. That negative testimony is pretty persuasive. His basic argument is that if you take the rod verses totally literally (and I’m not saying that Proverbs are intended to be absolutely literal. I mean, does a stitch in time literally save nine?), then you would beat with a rod on the back (not with a hand on the bottom) of a na’ar — 5-20 (some say 15-20) year old boy (and not on an eight-month old baby!!!).

Grace-Based Parenting by Tim Kimmel. Kimmel is a great alternative to the punitive monopoly in Evangelical parenting advice books. He’s experienced, logical, and biblical. He asserts that all children need a secure love, a significant purpose, and a strong hope. They need the freedom to be different, vulnerable, candid, and to make mistakes. All that’s only possible with Grace as a guide. I can’t say enough good about this book. I found myself seeing God and my responsibilities to my sons in a whole new way.

Why Christian Kids Rebel by Tim Kimmel. Here Kimmel scared me. I saw so many of my students in his words. It changed the way I talked and interacted with them. He describes Compulsory Christianity (where the religious practices become a hobby for the family. Like that pirate family on Wife Swap.), Cliché Christianity (the kind of life foregrounded in Christian education, according to Kimmel. “The problem lay in the fact that everything about the school was designed to prop up your ability to appear spiritual. With very little effort, you could act and talk ‘Christian.’”), Comfortable Christianity (an easy Prayer-of-Jabez kind of focus on material acquisition and loss), Cocoon Christianity (a.k.a. The Village. Shyamalan showed us how well that worked.), and Compromised Christianity (A parent living under the veneer of a top-notch Christian but who abuses his family and drives them away from the faith. Notice that the compromise is not in whether or not the family watches movies or plays video games, but in whether the mom and dad see themselves as needing a daily dose of the Gospel as much as their kids.).

What will always ring in my memory is his chapter on the Prodigal Son. I had never heard the story explained in that way. God, as the perfect Parent in the story, acts differently than the Clueless parent, EMT parent, or the Special Forces parent. It really hits “home” when Kimmel points out that in contrast to God’s way of parenting us and welcoming us back after our sin, “some [prodigal] kids never go home because they can’t recall their parents dealing with them in understanding, patience, and grace” (66).

And I saw so much of a very familiar discipline system in his critique of “Special Forces Parenting”:

Families don’t live in war zones. If there were any kind of zone a family should be living in, it would be a grace zone. Unfortunately, if Special Forces-type parents aren’t careful, they can create a war zone in their child’s heart.

There was a time when this autocratic style of parenting actually worked. The gears of industry and the wheels of commerce turned under the inertia of an autocratic system. . . .

Special Forces parenting makes a lot of noise, offers up a lot of threats, and tries to rule by intimidation. When it’s time to deal with a problem in a child’s life, these SF parents love to pull out the heavy artillery and often turn to some form of punishment. Unfortunately, that tends to miscarry with overuse. That’s because punishment is one of the least effective forms of correction. Why? Lots of reasons.

Punishment is more about getting even or balancing the score than it is about correction. It’s also about communicating who is boss. But it is ineffective because it’s not the way our world deals with short-comings. . . .

As we’ll see in the story of the prodigal son, the most effective form of correction is consequences. And the more natural the consequences, the better. That’s the way the real world operates, that’s the way God operates, and that’s the method most helpful to rebellious kids in figuring out why what they are doing is unacceptable.

Another reason why the autocratic control of a Special Forces parent doesn’t work well over time is because it conditions children to respond to outside voices and forces in their lives. They get a little bigger and a little older and it’s easy for them to start submitting to the barking orders of overbearing boyfriends or girlfriends or the outspoken voice of the crowd. I guess you kind of figured out that Special Forces parents make it easy for their kids to find their way into rebellious lifestyles. (56-58)

Families Where Grace is in Place by Jeff VanVonderen. This book jarred us both from the unbiblical errors and extra-biblical extremes that run rampant in our previous life. Most startling is VanVonderen’s rather matter-of-fact correction that the Bible doesn’t say that I’m supposed to make my husband love me, nor is he supposed to make me submit. I have my responsibility to submit, and he has his responsibility to love. That’s our division of labor, so to speak.

The same goes with parents and children. My responsibility to not provoke my sons to wrath is actually greater than their responsibility to obey/honor me. I can’t make them honor me, but I need to act honorably. VanVonderen was the first for me that made that very simple, mind-blowing point.

Tired of Trying to Measure Up by Jeff VanVonderen. In talking about this book, I might even say “it all started with reading VanVonderen.” It still makes me giggle that whenever I mention this title to anyone inside fundamentalism (even those at the very “top”), the reaction to the title is always the same — a jaw-dropping, eye-rolling, sighing, empathetic, but sardonic laugh that says “Ha! Somebody gets it!”

This book got me into some deep trouble. It so poignantly speaks to the problems in our former life that I bought a dozen copies and had them stacked on my desk, ready to give away to the next frustrated student or colleague that unloaded on me (and yes, I gave them all away quite quickly). Once this got up the food chain, the Powers that Be weren’t pleased. The Gospel is usually unsettling.

On October 16, 2006, I was told to stop recommending this book. I agreed. I said, “I figured you would ask me that, and I’m okay with that. I’ll just point people to Romans and Galatians instead.” Tee-hee. My little joke got lost, I think. Later I was told that VanVonderen had “very dangerous theology.” In response to that declaration, I smiled and said, “We’ll have to agree to disagree on that point.”

Go see and read for yourself why it would be unsettling or dangerous. Fact is, it’s pretty standard stuff for the rest of Christendom. It’s fundamentalism that’s out-of-sync with the Bible. That fact alone might make you stop reading me. I understand. I remember that feeling too.

Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse by Jeff VanVonderen and David Johnson. I’ve heard from other believers around the world that many autocratic Christian leaders despise this book. Of course they do! I read it the first time in a rather cursory fashion. I’ll admit it, I first came to the book trying to deconstruct the definition of “spiritual abuse.” Some descriptions just sound like bad management — something that could happen at Disney or Microsoft. But I found in VanVonderen and Johnson, who coined the term, a very substantial case. I was still in denial though. Not here, right? No, no. . . . not here. Please, please not here.

On the second reading though, I wept.

Soul Survivor by Phil Yancey. Yancey is hands-down an excellent writer. He’s just a joy to read. And this is the first book of his I read in the Fall, 2006, thanks to my old buddy’s recommendation. While he introduced me to Chesterton and Dostoevsky, I couldn’t shake his rebuke of Southern conservative Evangelical organizations for never repenting of their racist sins of the past. Sigh. . . .

What’s so Amazing About Grace? by Phil Yancey. Yancey at his finest. Babette’s Feast is now one of my favorite films after Yancey explained its mirroring of Christ’s gracious love feast within a harsh, cold, unhappily pious world. In the middle of all our abuse in that last year, I couldn’t forget Babette’s culinary demonstration of grace. If you can only read one chapter, though, read the “The New Math of Grace.” God’s calculator defies any one that we create. Ironically enough, Yancey says he got in trouble for the chapter/article as well. We Christians are so protective of the status quo.

With these books, I found a story of redemption in Scripture that I had never heard before. And I realized that the Church had been proclaiming this Good News for millennia, independent of my sliver of Christendom. I discovered the Gospel anew.

And that led to another book. . . . But we’ll talk about that in a future post.

Technorati Tags: Phil Yancey, Jeff VanVonderen, Tim Kimmel, Clay Clarkson, David Johnson, Francis Bacon

Ebenezer 2004 — Our First Outing

The Ebenezers I’ve described up to now are familiar enough and have been repeated enough that I’m comfortable in describing them. The stories to come, however, are all new. And I don’t know how to say it all yet. I’m hoping that this exercise of re-telling those events helps me in seeing God at work. As much as God had discipled us between July 2001 and May 2004, there was so much ahead. Everything, it seemed, would change.

So God brought us to a place in our parenting that we never imagined, a place that we didn’t even know existed. I can call it different things: “grace-based parenting,” “positive discipline,” “mothering by grace.” But what it means on a practical level is that Grant and I chose to remove spanking from our parenting toolbox. We still discipline, of course, but in the older sense of the term (rather than the contemporary American usage) — we teach. And what does that mean on a theological and philosophical and cosmological level? That we’re still digesting. Living out the Gospel changes every relationship, every interaction, every decision . . . It’s really a move from the tragedy that we humans are mired in to the comedy in Christ we can all enjoy. It is radical.

I had fully intended to never breathe a word about this until my oldest was 18 or so. Or maybe 15. I could see that. But I was going to shut up and parent in secret. Parenting choices are all your own to make, right? And it was our decision, right? No one needs to know.

And then, of course, God changed all those plans. ::more ominous music::

The first public announcement of our being counter-cultural parents was an impetuous decision made on a rainy South Carolina morning. It was pouring. And I was to meet Grant at the BJU Dining Common with Isaac for lunch. I had to carry an umbrella and other things. It was wet and very cold. A stroller, quite honestly, made no sense. But this was tough. There in Ezzoland, did I dare to walk in to the most public and social place slinging my son? Everyone would see and everyone would talk about my radical “marsupial” status. The tongues were still wagging about my silly hairdo from several months prior.

Practicality got the best of me. It was wet and my son needed to stay warm. Forget the gossip, I’m slinging him. And there he went in that little $0.56 ring sling. Snug and warm. Next to me and under the umbrella. I sang quietly in his ear “Raindrops, raindrops, tiny little raindrops . . . in each drop is God’s great love!” as we walked. It was the best walk in the rain evah.

And we did turn more than a few heads that day and in the coming months. Mind you — the grandmotherly sorts didn’t care because they were too busy cooing at and talking with Isaac. The early childhood educators didn’t mind because they were citing positive research on baby wearing. And the college kids didn’t flinch because they were just talking about the engineering of such a contraption or curious at how human their professors seemed. It was my contemporaries that were raising eyebrows very quietly because they knew on which side of the parenting “wars” I was siding.

I got more and more bold, and the slinging was so practical. He just plopped right in there and smiled at all the friendly students eye-to-eye. I made tons of slings and bought a few. No wonder so many moms over the history of the world have carried their wee ones. It just makes sense!

We really didn’t say much more. I’m sure people knew we were . . . “off.” What with the extended and tandem nursing and all that slinging. And the only reason I’m describing this very small event is that this tiny little “outing” is a sort of foreshadowing of the events to come.

God was gently pushing us outside of our comfort zones. And the coming months? . . . . They brought a whole new sort of Ebenezers. Monuments that I’m erecting right here as I write.

While Samuel was offering the sacrifice, the Philistines came within range to fight Israel. Just then God thundered, a huge thunderclap exploding among the Philistines. They panicked—mass confusion!—and ran helter-skelter from Israel. Israel poured out of Mizpah and gave chase, killing Philistines right and left, to a point just beyond Beth Car. Samuel took a single rock and set it upright between Mizpah and Shen. He named it “Ebenezer” (Rock of Help), saying, “This marks the place where God helped us.”

I Samuel 7:10-12

Technorati Tags: Baby wearing, slinging, Ebenezers, Gary Ezzo, Attachment parenting, Mothering by Grace

Ebenezer — A Threepeat

So there I was. A mom of five with only one I had ever seen smile. That youngest one was just a few months old. And God had already taught me through him that He answers prayer, that He loves me a lot, that He parents me in that deep, attached love, and that my loyalty to evangelical ideologies can unfortunately skew my judgment.

But God wasn’t done. ::cue ominous music::

I would often sit and read while nursing that lil’ bundle, and my curiosity got the best of me one day. I thought, “Okay. An Ezzo mom I am not. Why not venture over to the critics of Ezzo and see what they are up to?” These were the people I had consciously avoided in 1999 for my research. A few weeks earlier in Isaac’s life when Ezzo’s prescribed “routine” was failing us, I had tried to find an Ezzo support group, but there were none online. None!

Wow. What I found among the Ezzo critics were not rabid, ugly-spirited, vitriolic bullies. I found godly ladies – kind but firm, gentle and persuasive, logical and fair. I actually, in all my years of studying argumentation, had never seen such skill. These women were gooood. I am blessed to still call these Christian sisters among my closest friends. They are gems.

As I was reading their documentation of the whole controversy, I was shocked. There . . . there in their timeline was one of my interviewees from 1999: Laurie Moody.

Let me brag on Laurie for a second. I met her only because of my project for Orsi’s class, but I did know some of her extended family (everybody knows SOMEbody you’re related to in the BJU “family”). And I was really impressed. I thought, “Wow — I hope I can be a mom like Laurie some day.” She was a fellow alum from my alma mater, she was loving and fair with her kids, smart and well-spoken. When I talked to her in 1999, she was studying to be a lactation consultant for Growing Families International, Ezzo’s parenting business, so she knew her stuff!!

When everything Ezzo was failing me and my son, I thought briefly about Laurie. It worked for her, I told myself, but it wasn’t working for me at all. ::shrug::

But there was her name on the Ezzo timeline as having left GFI. Hmm. Must have been quite an exodus for her. So now she and I both were ex-Ezzoites. Hmmm. . . . interesting.

I sought her out online. And once again, God had gone ahead of me. Laurie’s friendship, her exodus, and her careful exegesis of Scripture — God would use all of that to push us down a road I could have never imagined.

I found her website. On there she had her study of the “rod verses” — those (in)famous Proverbs we conservative Evangelicals use to justify our parenting traditions.

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I printed it out and carried it around in my purse for weeks.

When we realized that our Isaac was going to be a keeper (just after we had discovered that he was an “Isaac” at 20 weeks in my tummy), I prayed for guidance about how to raise him. The BJU Inservice that semester focused on family issues, and I submitted a few questions to the “gurus” about how to raise this blessing. I got a book recommendation and some generalized responses. But I still wasn’t satisfied. My parents were terrific, but we had chosen a different sort of ministry for our family. How did God want our parenting to look?

I had finally found the answer from my old friend, Laurie. It sounds like a small step now, but it was a huge pivot for us. Through Laurie’s study, the Holy Spirit proved to me that — contrary to every sermon I’d heard and book I’d read on parenting — the Bible never commands parents to spank their children.

Read that carefully. I’m not saying that the Bible forbids spanking. I’m not saying that those who choose differently from me are disobeying Scripture. I’m not saying anything more than the very small statement: spanking is not biblically mandated.

That was a hard pill to swallow. It was so . . . radical. I begged God to move me away from that conclusion. He pushed me further toward it. I read Clay Clarkson’s Heartfelt Discipline (who, in his conservative hermeneutic, also set out to prove that the typical evangelical parenting advice was biblical but was then persuaded from Scripture that the exact opposite is true) and was finally convinced — this was my answer to prayer that I’d prayed when Isaac was still in my tummy. This is how God wanted me to mother this precious bundle.

I don’t expect you who are reading to agree with me. I’m okay with that. I’m actually pretty used to it. I think the best response we ever got to our family’s prayerful and counter-cultural decision was from a dear friend who, although he strongly disagreed with us, very kindly said, “We haven’t found that to be true for our family.” And for that gracious response, he will always have my respect and admiration.

So our children have never been spanked or hit or even, to be honest, punished. The oldest is only four, I understand. We have only two, I admit. And of course, they are far from perfect. But they, like their parents, get forgiveness for sin not from a purgative pain, but through the same Person and His gracious sacrifice. We are, in God’s grace, trying to parent these charges just like God parents us — loving and teaching and correcting and always pointing to Christ.

Not the labor of my hands
Can fulfill Thy law’s demands;
Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow,
All for sin could not atone;
Thou must save, and Thou alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to the cross I cling;
Naked, come to Thee for dress;
Helpless look to Thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me, Savior, or I die.

Technorati Tags: Gary Ezzo, Grace-Based Parenting, Laurie Moody, William Sears, Positive Discipline

The Ezz and I (Ebenezer 2.1)

This is a very hard blog post to write. But in order for the next post to make sense, I think I need to face the music.

In the Spring semester of 1999 at Indiana University, I took Children and Religion with Robert Orsi. The best thing I learned from Professor Orsi was how to conduct a class discussion; he was a whiz — a natural. And the texts he assigned still ring out in my memory. All in all, a very successful class.

But my project, now, is an embarrassment. I think admitting that might be good for other grad students, good for scholarship in general, good for understanding where I stand now, and good for imagining where I might stand in the future. It’s all very humbling.

Nine years ago, all the rage in conservative Evangelicalism was a little-known man named Gary Ezzo who claimed that his child rearing expertise was “God’s Way.” What had started as a “parenting class” at John MacArthur’s church became nothing short of an empire.

All my contemporaries were having babies (while I was “nursing” textbooks and endnotes), and they were all talking about Gary Ezzo and his approach to “Growing Kids God’s Way.” I decided to pick this trend for my project for Orsi’s class. Seemed obvious enough.

I will reluctantly show you the paper. Go ahead — you can read it. But before you do . . . let me just say — I was wrong. As a mom who now calls herself an Attachment Parent — Ezzo’s ridiculous, muddled-headed foil to his seemingly commonsensical, Godly parent — I know I was wrong. My denotative descriptions of Attachment Parenting are pretty fair, I would say now, but the moral conclusions I make are just incorrect. Sure — there may be parents who would fit that negative description, but that would be like judging all Americans on the antics of Paris Hilton.

I won’t torture you or me by going line by line over all my errors. Instead I’ll just back up a tad and identify the reasons for the problems:

• My method was so totally new, and I was completely unprepared. I was attempting to do an ethnography — what seemed to me to be a rhetorical analysis of regular conversations. I didn’t know how to collect those conversations, and I was running into many brick walls. I didn’t know my way around or over them.
• Because I was having trouble finding people who were willing to talk to me, more than a few of my subjects were close friends. I wanted to tell their story as best I could. I wanted to be more than fair, I think, and I wanted them to think I was being fair.
• There was so much criticism of the medical problems in Ezzo that I really couldn’t parse it all. There I was — a Ph.D. student in rhetoric and religion and an Associate Instructor. I was just plain overwhelmed, and I had to draw the line somewhere. I wasn’t trained to judge medical info, and so I just cast that aside for this project. I said to myself, “I’m not a doctor. I can’t interpret all that. I can only talk about their words.”
• And quite honestly, I wasn’t a parent. What did I know about any of this stuff?
• I could only get the secular, watered-down version of Ezzo’s plan from Babywise. I couldn’t really get the comprehensive Ezzo text — Growing Kids God’s Way — because they wouldn’t let it out of “trained hands.” I’d have to take a big series of classes in order to get at it, and that’s something a busy grad student can’t do. Sure — alarm bells went off at that point, but I was desperate to think the best about this organization.
• I have to repeat and unpack that last sentence: I was desperate to think the best about this organization. Every good fundy knows that we have to field more than a normal share of criticism. It doesn’t take long in your adult life to realize that the media can really be pretty sloppy in dealing with the facts. As you grow up in the subculture, you catch the idea that the real problem is that people inside the group just don’t have the words to express themselves or the arguments to defend themselves. They need an apologist, right? A loyal, er . . . rather an empathetic, skilled apologist. That idea of loyalty pushes any criticism out of bounds as simply unreasonable griping and immoral living. I was still learning that at this point in my study. At IU, I researched many, many approaches to social change, and it seemed to me that those inside any culture were more effective at enacting social change than those outside (i.e. Martin Luther King does more than Malcolm X. Or so it could be argued.). And I was fully, loyally inside. I needed to prove to the Ezzo community that I was inside. And that meant to deliberately choose to think the best of the organization (and push all criticism outside the boundaries).
• I took Ezzo’s criticism of Attachment Parenting at face value. I shouldn’t have. He presents a very, very skewed view. His unflattering snapshot of attachment parents, I now know, more closely represents Alfie Kohn’s advice more than William Sears’.
• I didn’t know child-rearing literature enough to know that the things I was praising in his text were not at all new to him — baby signing, including children in the family, anticipating and scripting solutions, love languages, etc. That all exists elsewhere and in qualified sources.
• And . . . unfortunately, I let myself get bullied. Early in my research, a GFI employee called me and yelled — yes, yelled — at me for even thinking about doing this project. In escalated tones, he bellowed, “Why should we trust you? Why should we think you’re going to be fair?” And I shrugged and said, “You can’t. You just have my word is all. I’m a fellow Christian, and I want to do the right thing.” After hanging up, my mind was reeling. How can I communicate that I’m not out to get them? This is a test case for me. If I am going to write the dissertation that I want to write, I have to be empathetic (i.e. prove my loyalty) to my research subjects. . . . You can see why this was a tough crossroads.

So there you have it. For what it’s worth.

What’s amazing to me now is how God — in spite of my goofy, short-sighted conclusions — was already using my error to make something beautiful. I’m just amazed at that. But I’ll save it for the next post.

If I ever run into Prof. Orsi, I want to tell him all this. I don’t think he’d mind, but he’s a very busy and important man. I don’t know if he’d remember. I know he was a little befuddled by my conclusions. So am I now. And I’d like to tell him how God used him and that class and my errors for His best.

More to come. . . .

Technorati Tags: Children and Religion, Robert Orsi, Gary Ezzo, Babywise, Attachment Parenting, William Sears, Empathetic Rhetorical Criticism

Ebenezer 2.0

So Isaac was born just before Christmas in 2003. You can hear my laugh of joy on his birth video — A fitting tribute to our little Gift of Laughter.

But he was born just a tad too soon despite the tests that said his lungs were mature enough. He needed some breathing help, and he developed pneumonia. So he stayed in the NICU for 10 days. Ten very long days.

That was tough. Driving across town every morning to the hospital was the happiest time in our day. And driving back home as late as we possibly could was the most miserable. I felt like a mama dog whose puppies had been taken away too soon. I ached for him, but I knew first-hand that it could be much worse. We hardly slept, and we ate Christmas cookies and Hickory Farms gifts for breakfast and dinner, and lunch was instant soup from the March of Dimes.

We spent Christmas day at the hospital, teasingly insisting over and over that it wasn’t really Christmas that day. Christmas wouldn’t come until Isaac came home. We watched A Christmas Story next to his NICU bed, and I knitted a still-unfinished sweater.

After getting him born and keeping him healthy, we faced another (what seemed to be) insurmountable hurdle — latching him on. I had to breastfeed him. I had to. After Elise’s birth, I never felt more perfectly useless as my body was preparing to nurture a life who wasn’t there. I had re-read all the baby books, but it’s difficult with a NICU stay. He just wouldn’t latch on.

On one of those nights at home, I sobbed in prayer on the floor of our bathroom over Sheila Kitzinger’s book (her text seemed to be the only one to talk about hospital stays and nursing). I begged God to help us both figure it out. Sure — it’d be cheaper and healthier and all. But it was more. I needed to heal.

We never figured it out while we were in the hospital. We even stayed the last three nights in their live-in rooms, and I still had to resort to the bottle.

On New Year’s Day, we came home — all of us. It was our Christmas we had dreamed of for so long. And that night, Isaac and I finally got in our nursing groove. He latched on!! Amen!

But this little gift obviously hadn’t read the same books I had. According to the loudest and most recommended “expert” and even the NICU docs and nurses, he was supposed to eat every 3 hours for about 30 minutes. This lil’ guy was eating every 2 hours for an hour!!

And sleep? Are you kidding me? Nuthin’. Nada. I remember sleeping on the floor next to his crib. That barely worked. We tried the swing. We tried white noise. We tried pacifiers. The experts said that he should be sleeping a certain amount and eating on a certain “routine.” There was a little hope with Harvey Karp, but generally nothing was working like they said.

I discovered that that highly recommended expert was flat out wrong. Really wrong. I’ll say it more plainly — every single thing that I read in Babywise proved to be entirely false. None of it worked. The eat-play-sleep routine? Pshaw! Isaac was eat-play-eat-sleep-eat-eat-sleep-eat-eat-play-eat. He was hungry! And sleep? Only next to mama.

Somewhere in my desperation I found Kellymom. I read her site voraciously. While nothing Ezzo said worked (even though he claims his way is God’s way!), everything Kellymom recommended worked. Every single thing. Her complicated advice amounted to the brilliant “feed him when he’s hungry!” Doh!! Of course!! And the sooner you help a crying baby, the sooner he stops crying, just as Dr. Sears says!

When Isaac was 6 weeks old, Grant was leaving on an overnight school trip. I was scared to be alone with this little life. Someone had recommended I carry Isaac in a sling during the day to help him sleep better at night. A sling! Yikes!! No, no! I don’t want to be one of those dreaded “marsupial moms” that Ezzo derides. Not me! But again, I reminded myself that everything Ezzo said was a fool’s errand; and everything Kellymom had recommended worked. So for $0.56 I made a ring sling.

Magic! Holding that little person near me was bliss for him and for me. That was how he had spent the first nine months of his life. Why shouldn’t he want to be near his mama? He slept better. He was happier. He had everything he needed — me!

Before he left, Grant said with a smile, “Honey, you know what you are, don’t you? You’re an attachment mom!” Yes, I knew it. I had realized that I was the dreaded villain Ezzo warned me about. But my baby was growing and learning. It seemed pretty obvious.

Since I had so much down time holding and nursing and cuddling that wonderful blessing, I read a lot. And I decided to read all the Bible verses that mentioned nursing. Wow! What a vivid lesson. Like Isaiah 49:15:

Can a woman forget her nursing child,
that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.

I discovered that verse on Convocation morning — exactly a year after I had discovered that Isaac was in my tummy. That morning was the longest I had ever been away from him. I ached for him. I was actually physically uncomfortable. And look at that — God feels the same way about us! He says He remembers us just like a nursing mom remembers her child. There was no physical way for me to forget Isaac, and God cannot forget us either. Amazing!

It was that organic connection with Isaac that made me understand on a cellular level how much God loves me. How He holds me when I’m crying. He keeps me close in the dark. He nurtures me — not just every few hours or until I’m 8 weeks old. He doesn’t push me away until I live up to His standards (which I never could). He loves me first, and I then learn how to love.

When Dr. Teruel first mentioned breastfeeding to me when I was carrying Elise in 2001, he said, “Breastfeeding for the first year is the best start you can give your baby!” I giggled inside thinking, “A YEAR? Are you kidding me? Maybe 6 months.” And when Isaac and I had such a rocky start, I didn’t even know if I’d make it a week. Not only did God answer that little prayer of getting him latched on and helping me heal, in His gracious way, He taught me so much more. He taught me about Himself and His deep, organic, parental love for me.

He will tend his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms;
he will carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead those that are with young.

Isaiah 40:11

Technorati Tags: Gary Ezzo, Babywise, William Sears, Kellymom, Attachment Parenting, Breastfeeding

Here I raise my Ebenezer. #1

Here I raise mine Ebenezer; hither by thy help I’m come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger, interposed his precious blood.

I’ve heard myself say several times over the last few months, “I guess it all started when . . . ” There are so many ways I can finish that phrase.

In one sense, it all started when Elise was born. I could probably find things earlier too, but I don’t want to go too far back.

When you bury your child, you question everything. All the little clichés people say. God really protected us from a lot of the silly things people could have said, and I will scream from the mountain tops that we clearly felt God’s care wrapped around us from the very beginning.

Grant and I have four children in Heaven. After the last miscarriage, I was still just numb. To be a mom of four and never having met one of them was a lot to bear.

It was exactly five years ago this week when I probably reached my lowest point. Here’s how I described it way back when. I’ll just copy and paste it below:

While I endured the roller coaster of grief—from denial through guilt and self-pity and bargaining to sadness and finally acceptance—and learned from it that God was always lovingly in control, the second week of February 2003 was probably my lowest moment. I had had two additional miscarriages since Elise was born – that’s four pregnancy losses total. Satan attacked me with three horrible thoughts:

• I had overheard friends who had recently discovered they were pregnant express that they were scared to be pregnant “because of everything Camille had been through.” I was struck with the thought, “What am I now a discouragement to people? Great.” When you’ve had such horrible loss, you begin to think you’re a jinx and sometimes innocent comments like this only confirm those ugly thoughts.
• Then Grant and I went to Wal-mart for some essentials. Nothing extravagant—deodorant, light bulbs. It was $42 total. And we couldn’t buy it because our debit card didn’t go through. For a lousy couple of bags of nothing really, we had to walk away. We later discovered we only had $37 in our checking account. And that same day we got a bill for some recent medical procedures and tests for me—over $3000.
• I was smocking a dress to celebrate the adoption of a new family member. Scott and Chris Lining were adopting Janae after a long difficult illness for Chris and an arduous adoption journey. As I sat there poring over the patterns, relishing the planning of colors, thread, flowers, pearls, and fabric, Satan hit me right between the eyes with, “What kind of a fool do you think you are? Do you ever think you’re going to make one of these for your own child? Hmph. You’re a fool.”

This all happened on a Thursday. All these ugly thoughts and events coincided on that one day. By Friday night, when I was finally alone, I threw myself down in tears before the Lord, begging for Him to help. I finally prayed, “Okay, Lord. I am throwing this all in your lap. I need something. I don’t know what I need. But I need something. So I’m just going to assume that you are going to give it to me by Sunday night at church. . . . And btw, I promise that I won’t second guess it. I won’t question it. I’m just going to take your message at face value.”

There’s something about having all this education. You begin to question everything. You say to yourself, “That’s just what you want to hear, silly. That’s not what God’s saying.” So God was prompting me, I believe, to put aside my critiquing muscles and listen like a child.

I remember walking into choir practice that Sunday night. I prayed, “Lord, help Danny as he’s preparing. Remember, I’m listening. So give him what I need to hear.”

God had better plans. He didn’t wait until church. He started in choir. I sat away from my friends where I’d be tempted to giggle my way through. You know how chatty we sopranos can be. And He sat me right in the middle, right in front of Dr. Cook—who was in a bit of a chatty mood himself that night. We started with “None like you,” and I felt like God was softening me up for the next song: “And the Father will sing over you with joy.”

You all remember that song? It’s based on Zephaniah 3:14, 17. 

And the Father will sing over you in joy!
He will take delight in whom he loves.
Is that a choir I hear singing the praises of God?
No, the Lord God Himself is exulting o’er you in song!

Wow.

Warren amplified these words a little bit further. God rejoices over us? He SINGS over us? My word!! God is encouraged over me! What a cure to worrying about what others might fear from what God has carried you through. 

The song goes on.

My soul will make its boast in God,
For He has answered all my cries.
His faithfulness to me is as sure as the dawn of a new day.
Sing, O daughter of Zion, with all of your heart!
Cast away fear for you have been restored!
Put on a garment of praise as on a festival day.
Join with the Father in glorious, jubilant song.

The Holy Spirit struck me with the thought, “Honey, that dress that you’re making for Janae. That’s a garment of praise! You’re celebrating the fact that she’s home. See what I’m saying here—I’m telling you to get ready to put on your own happy garments. Get ready. The happy is coming. The festival day is coming. Just not yet.”

I wept through the entire choir practice. My poor sweet husband ran to my side afterward, but it was really all good. God was showing me His message. He was whispering to me His comfort while always underneath His care.

Whew! I was done, I thought. Okay. Wow. That was good. Okay. We can move on. The service began, and I realized Danny wasn’t preaching. It was Jerry Sivinsky. Hmmm. . . . okay.

He preached on prayer. Maybe you remember the sermon? He preached on praying specifically and confidently and with even a “deadline” of sorts. But get this—he had preached the exact same sermon at school in November. Huh. That’s certainly God trying to get my attention, so I knew I needed to listen.

But that was hard. You know, we pray so timidly. We ask as if to say “if that’s okay” and “don’t want to bother you.” Jerry was telling us something different. He was describing a boldness—like a child who marches up to her Father and asks, “Daddy, may I?” My critical muscles started to flex. “That’s not what God means.” But I told them to cut it out. I had to.

The next week, I sat down and wrote this prayer through tears and shaking hands. I was scared to even write it. I asked the Lord:

• To continue to carry us through these hardships so that we could feel His presence.
• To take care of our finances in a timely manner.
• To . . . . [and this is the one that made me so scared] give us a normal, healthy, screaming baby by the end of Christmas vacation. 

I knew He could do the first one. That’s a metaphysical request. No big whoop. The second? I’ve heard him do miraculous things with school bills and such. I knew He could do that. But that last one. . . . to be honest, I was thinking “Christmas” when I wrote “the end of Christmas vacation.” But I was giving God a few more weeks there—just in case He needed the later deadline. 

That scared me. In order for that to happen, there would be so much that would have happen “just so.”

• My surgery would have to go smoothly without incident. 
• My recovery would have to be easy.
• The doc would have to give me the go-ahead on my second cycle after the surgery.
• We’d have to conceive.
• That pregnancy would stick and be viable.
• I would carry that baby through to a live birth. 

That’s a lot. I remember sitting in that paper dress in my doctor’s office for my post-op follow-up. My incisions were fine and everything was healing well. I asked, “When can we go ahead and try to conceive?” He hesitated, “Well, you need to wait one more cycle. . . . Oh, here’s a phone call. I need to take it. Just a sec.” 

Sigh. . . . I laid there on the exam table and prayed, “Okay, Lord. You’ve got it worked out. I know that. I’m bummed about this, I just want you to know. But I know this is best.” 

The doctor came back in and said while thumbing through my massive chart, “You know, there’s really no need for you to wait. You can go ahead and start this next cycle.” 

YIPPEE!! And the next step was starting to take the baby aspirin and the folic acid and such which I started the Friday night of the Ladies Retreat two years ago. In the next few months, God reduced my medical bills to $320—we could manage that—and the next Fall, we FINALLY got a raise. And as you all know, three days before Christmas our precious little screamer, Isaac, was born. In fact, he screamed a little too early which is why he had to stay in the NICU for a few days. I’m still tickled that God heard my prayer for before Christmas even though I officially wrote down “the end of Christmas vacation.” 

I love this metaphor of “under his wings” because it’s a maternal metaphor. God is quite flexible in how He describes Himself, and He isn’t worried about narrow roles. And it says that He’s protecting us instinctively. He’s holding us very, very, very close to Him when danger is near. So close that He knows the intimate and even unspoken and unwritten desires of our hearts. He wants to give them to us. He’s not maniacal—dangling a carrot at the end of a string in order to watch us dance at His command. He’s not locking us up in our rooms when we have strong and difficult feelings. God doesn’t do time-outs; He does time-ins. He draws us close, rocks us to sleep, carries us all the day long. 

Answering my prayer and giving me this little life to enjoy is proof to me of how much God loves me and how closely He listens. But loving this little life has also taught me what that love is like. When I comfort him through teething, clean yet another explosion in his pants, giggle at his imitating Daddy brushing his teeth, and instinctively protect him under my wings, I think I get a better glimpse at how lovingly, persistently, and generously God loves us. 

He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust.

Technorati Tags: Pregnancy Loss, Stillbirth, Grief

Show my People?

Isn’t that Dr. Gingery conducting? Recognize the Costume Room’s uniform but Crayola-box sense of style? Those chandeliers look familiar too. How about the hair off the face and shoulders? And “rolled”? And I’m sure they are all using the same tube of lipstick. Can you see the outline of the pit pads?

Ah. . . the memories. Or close to it.