Somehow, what I considered inconceivable has happened:
I'm a working mom.
I never wanted to be a working mom. I've always been certain that when I had babies, I'd stay at home with them. It's what I grew up with, and what my husband grew up with - and that's what we both feel comfortable with. It was my dream, honestly.
Yet this is the second time I've been asked to serve as youth director, but this time I've been asked to stay on permanently. I said yes because I have a deep concern about the program and how its instability is affecting our youth. I found, accidentally, that I have a deep love and passion for teaching our faith to just about anyone - teenagers, adults, young children.
But where does this leave my family? I am strongly believe in the need for a mother in the home. I do think it makes a difference when a family doesn't have someone in charge of their full-time management. This has less to do with some sort of Victorian angel-in-the-home concept, and more to do with practical realities: most women want to stay home once they have children, they want to work on their terms (not the male dominated paradigm of 9-5), and a home functions better when there is someone in charge of it. No one walks into a grand hotel and thinks it looks good and runs efficiently on its own - we know that there is competent management in charge. Yet our homes are so much more than hotels, and spiritually, they are more than a place to put our stuff: they are a place where we need to be able to invest our hearts in our family members.
I believe in the Home. But I also believe in my work. How do I balance these two competing spheres, both of which would take all of my time and energy if I let them?
I'm still fighting with these two parts of my life. On one hand, I hate even the word feminism. I hate what it implies: that equality is only achieved by number parity, that to be as good as men we have to renounce what makes us women, that staying at home is somehow degrading, that our bodies hold us back and should be suppressed. On the other hand, I have personally experienced sexism more frequently than I ever could have imagined - in high school, at all three of my institutes of higher learning, and even in my parish. There is clearly a problem in our society that cannot be completely rectified by trying to force society back into mindsets from past years - because these problems existed then as much as now. And I do think part of the solution is women who are called to work to embrace their work: to bring their feminine charisms to the workplace, and refuse to be objectified or suppressed. (this is much of the message of John Paul the Great's letter to women, Mulieris Dignitatum)
As Catholics, the last thing we should be afraid of is a strong woman with a call to work. Mary, our Mother, is the Queen of the Saints and Angels - Queen of Heaven. The person to achieve the greatest heights of holiness, who wasn't God, is a woman. I am trying to keep that in my mind as I pray my way through this, but honestly, it's sometimes a challenge. I love Mama Mary, but I can't imagine her answering emails, rushing to yoga, negotiating hours. I sometimes struggle imagining her doing anything but happily sacrificing every waking hour to do housework.
Maybe what I'm doing is the most trail blazing thing I could do: refusing to let existing norms dictate what God is calling me to do. There wasn't anyone like St. Catherine of Siena before she existed so...guess I'm out to create another way to be a saint.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Thursday, March 13, 2014
{P - H - F - R}
Easing back into the blogging game here with a little link-up action!
Zuzu has been enjoying our temperate early Spring by sporting some truly awesome headgear and playing outside with chalk and the hose nearly every day. Our next door neighbor, Macie, who is 8, comes over to play most days after school and really makes Zuzu's day! I believe it is for this reason that Zuzu says, every day when she wakes up from her afternoon nap, "Mimi?"(her name for Macie - and both of Macie's sisters, Marren and Mia).
Things are growing in my garden! My orchid is blooming (thanks Mom - the gift that keeps on giving!), and my mint in the little pot is coming up too. Unfortunately, the last picture above shows you Zuzu picking off one of the more promising stalks.
I put a potty seat out on the porch and have started talking to Zuzu about it, just because I need something else to do in parenting. At this point, she thinks it's a really fun chair for her to sit on and sometimes, pee next to.
Cracks me up.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real}
Trying my hand at linking up again with my favorite AUTHORS over at Like Mother, Like Daughter!
(Have you preordered their book for me yet, darling husband? Will you please?) - see aren't blogs such useful communication tools!
{Pretty}
We had to get my phone repaired again the other week (ahem, Zuzu) and whilst stuck downtown waiting for it to be repaired, we realized we had walked into a MLK parade and festival! How fun! We had a great time walking around Cambier Park, and Zuzu is shown here, paying her respects at the Veteran's Memorial and Fountain.
{Happy}
Do you ever look through your pictures and realize…no one would know you exist judging by them??
We have a million pictures from Zuzu's first year, but so few of them are of the two of us! Usually I am capturing she and Daddy, or just the cuteness herself. I was very proud that Tom nabbed the camera the other day while we were eating out to celebrate Zuzu's baptism day. Proof that I exist!
{Funny}
Friday is our playdate day. There's a standing one with the Catholic Mom's Group, but I also sometimes just hang out with one of my good friends and her little one, Stella. The other week I went to the Mom's Group meeting - lots of kids, big playground, gorgeous day and what does my child do…
Beg to run away into the woods.
I hope she hasn't inherited my antisocial tendencies. I was really thinking she'd inherit her father's lovely sanguine ways.
{Real}
Getting back from vacation is always daunting because I have to dive right back into work and yet there are no groceries, piles of laundry, and the like. It always makes me grumpy for a good several days because I feel overwhelmed and behind!
When will I learn from my younger self? We built an extra two days on the backend of our honeymoon, so we wouldn't come back and jump right back into work. Why don't I do that for vacation?? Oh…because I don't HAVE those extra days anymore!
I have about seventy five thousand blog posts in the hopper.
Maybe one of them will see the light of day before Monday.
Monday, February 3, 2014
Am I Heartless if I Don't Adopt?
To everything there is a season; to every argument a counterargument; in every life, a balance to be struck. But a huge question that keeps haunting me is: is there really a balance to be struck with adoption discernment? Or is it simply, if I don't adopt, I'm heartless?
My husband and I had a great, honest conversation the other night. We had received some detailed information about a child in another country, and we were able to look through it and really see what it would mean to adopt that child from that country. We looked at each factor in turn, giving our opinions honestly as we could.
We had to face the costs - probably about $25,000. Despite thinking about fundraising and the tremendous support of the Reece's Rainbow community, that number is so daunting.
We had to face our fertility - and the fact that we do want to have more children biologically. Abstaining is unnatural; it is natural that a husband and wife come together to have children. And we just don't feel comfortable bringing home a special needs child and a newborn - either at the same time, or within a very short window. We're not sure that would be fair to either child, and we're not exactly pros at balancing multiple children yet!
We had to face our fears - both of ours, honestly. My greatest fear is that I will ruin everything (I do have a flair for the dramatic). That we will adopt and it will really hurt our family - that it will hurt my marriage, hurt Zuzu, hurt our family. The fact is that right now, we live a rather idyllic existence. We have a great rhythm as a family, my marriage is happy and healthy, our baby bright and well-adjusted. We have a good community and good jobs. We are beyond blessed.
I am frightened to introduce strife. I am frightened that we will adopt a child and the child will bring with them so much hurt, so much pain, so much - that it will sink us. We will be ill-equipped and we will fall apart under the strain of it all. Would it be that child's fault? God no. But I am even more frightened that in our weakened state, we would blame that child - we would blame that child for the wreck of our idyllic life.
It all feels like too much right now. I wonder if, after we have another child, it will seem easier - maybe our life will be more chaotic, our first child will already have shown her less-than-angelic side, we'll be less afraid of getting some mud on the tires of our life, as it were.
But that makes me feel so heartless. Especially when I read things like this. That…that was really, really hard.
I want love to be enough. I want to be able to make it work in my family, right now, no matter what. I feel like I can't breathe when I think about what some of these children are enduring, when I realize the stark contrast between their childhoods and my only baby's charmed life. I want to mother the world - I always have. Not unlike my own mother, who would take in my stray friends and treat them like one of us, I just don't see many distinctions. I am a mother, and they are children, so why shouldn't they belong to me, if a place to belong is what they need?
But I have to balance this heart with the realities of my life, and that fact that I have a little person I am already responsible for, and a man to whom I have pledged my life who gets a rather big say too. That is hard - I hate being restricted by anything, I hate having to realize that life isn't a movie, that no one comes in to make it all better at the eleventh hour. Sometimes you have to say "not now" to a desire - even good, holy desires.
Right now, our adoption plans are...on hold. I don't know for how long - maybe it just means we've stalled out on international adoption. Maybe domestic is still in the works. It doesn't mean there aren't other things I can do to help, and it doesn't mean we'll never adopt. I'm probably still going to blog about it - because it is on my heart a lot these days. Adoption has forced me to look at so many aspects of myself, has made us dig deeper as a couple, and as Christians. We have to see where this takes us, but it doesn't seem like it's international adoption right now - unless or until God shows a way, softens hearts, opens doors, reveals a path. If I'm open enough, I know it'll happen - in His time.
My husband and I had a great, honest conversation the other night. We had received some detailed information about a child in another country, and we were able to look through it and really see what it would mean to adopt that child from that country. We looked at each factor in turn, giving our opinions honestly as we could.
We had to face the costs - probably about $25,000. Despite thinking about fundraising and the tremendous support of the Reece's Rainbow community, that number is so daunting.
We had to face our fertility - and the fact that we do want to have more children biologically. Abstaining is unnatural; it is natural that a husband and wife come together to have children. And we just don't feel comfortable bringing home a special needs child and a newborn - either at the same time, or within a very short window. We're not sure that would be fair to either child, and we're not exactly pros at balancing multiple children yet!
We had to face our fears - both of ours, honestly. My greatest fear is that I will ruin everything (I do have a flair for the dramatic). That we will adopt and it will really hurt our family - that it will hurt my marriage, hurt Zuzu, hurt our family. The fact is that right now, we live a rather idyllic existence. We have a great rhythm as a family, my marriage is happy and healthy, our baby bright and well-adjusted. We have a good community and good jobs. We are beyond blessed.
I am frightened to introduce strife. I am frightened that we will adopt a child and the child will bring with them so much hurt, so much pain, so much - that it will sink us. We will be ill-equipped and we will fall apart under the strain of it all. Would it be that child's fault? God no. But I am even more frightened that in our weakened state, we would blame that child - we would blame that child for the wreck of our idyllic life.
It all feels like too much right now. I wonder if, after we have another child, it will seem easier - maybe our life will be more chaotic, our first child will already have shown her less-than-angelic side, we'll be less afraid of getting some mud on the tires of our life, as it were.
But that makes me feel so heartless. Especially when I read things like this. That…that was really, really hard.
I want love to be enough. I want to be able to make it work in my family, right now, no matter what. I feel like I can't breathe when I think about what some of these children are enduring, when I realize the stark contrast between their childhoods and my only baby's charmed life. I want to mother the world - I always have. Not unlike my own mother, who would take in my stray friends and treat them like one of us, I just don't see many distinctions. I am a mother, and they are children, so why shouldn't they belong to me, if a place to belong is what they need?
But I have to balance this heart with the realities of my life, and that fact that I have a little person I am already responsible for, and a man to whom I have pledged my life who gets a rather big say too. That is hard - I hate being restricted by anything, I hate having to realize that life isn't a movie, that no one comes in to make it all better at the eleventh hour. Sometimes you have to say "not now" to a desire - even good, holy desires.
Right now, our adoption plans are...on hold. I don't know for how long - maybe it just means we've stalled out on international adoption. Maybe domestic is still in the works. It doesn't mean there aren't other things I can do to help, and it doesn't mean we'll never adopt. I'm probably still going to blog about it - because it is on my heart a lot these days. Adoption has forced me to look at so many aspects of myself, has made us dig deeper as a couple, and as Christians. We have to see where this takes us, but it doesn't seem like it's international adoption right now - unless or until God shows a way, softens hearts, opens doors, reveals a path. If I'm open enough, I know it'll happen - in His time.
Monday, January 27, 2014
Is Adoption a Good Thing?
I have been delving more and more into the world of adoption blogs. I found Rage Against the Minivan and then I was off...discovering more and more, especially about transracial adoption.
When I first dipped my toe into the waters of adoption, I was mostly exposed by looking at Reece's Rainbow. It's a great site and a needed one - it specializes in highlighting special needs orphans from around the world who need homes, and allowing others to contribute to adoption costs. What a great idea! But I quickly realized that the language used to describe adoption in some of these circles bothered me. "Orphans no more" is one of their taglines. They talk about "children at home with their families." But, after reading several sites from adoptive children, I wondered if they would appreciate this - being told they weren't an orphan anymore when their birth parents are still not in their lives, that they are at 'home' when removed from their home countries. Adoption can be a wonderful thing, a redemptive thing - but I found that the more I was asking question in certain circles, the more people kept claiming adoption was all rainbows and happiness - 'hard but worth it.'*
I'm not sure I agree with that at this point. I think the way we talk about adoption should be more nuanced, more respectful of the very huge life-altering decision that it is for everyone involved. Some things I have come to recognize about adoption include:
1) Adoption always comes from loss. Adoption is never the ideal, and that should be obvious! The ideal would a husband and wife have a child biologically. Statistically, is the best situation for a child. If a child is being placed for adoption, then something went very very wrong. There was death, drug addiction, abuse, neglect. Something broke down and that child's biological parents could not parent that child. That is a tragedy. We are not downplaying the 'realness' or importance of adoptive families by acknowledging that adoption always beings with loss.
2) We must resist the desire to see adopters as 'saviors.' I think my biggest issue with the language used in RR communities is that there is a push for someone to "go and save" the children. Save them from an institution, from an orphanage, from their politically unstable home country. I get that - no one wants these kids to be in a bad situation, and many of them are. But adoption also takes a child from what they know - even if it's not safe - and closes the door on ever reuniting with their biological parents. That is still sad. The fact is, only Jesus Christ saves us and what he saves us from is ourselves. We should seek to be conduits of God's grace, but in no way does that mean white-washing the pain of separation from a home culture or over-inflating our role as parents into saviors.
3) Adoptive children might see everything very differently. As adoptive children grow up, many of them see their experience differently than the wider world. They may be angry that they were separated from their culture or their identity; they may long to find their birth parents or extended family; they may still feel apart from their adoptive family, despite years of love and care. The fact is, most of the adoption narrative that we read are from one perspective - the parents - and neglect to acknowledge that the adoptees experience may be very different.
4) There is an innate desire to know where we come from. I think a lot of people approach the concept of family by saying "love makes a family." They want to call the adoptive parents the 'real' parents and say that DNA does not equal parenthood. I think that comes from a good place; a place of wanting to make what we choose rather than what we're dealt our reality. But children want to know where they come from - they love to know that they were made in love, that they have Daddy's eyes or Mommy's hair, that they look like Grandma, etc. It gives a person context for their life. We can't minimize that, no matter how much we try or how much it seems politically incorrect.
5) Adoption is a paradox. I think the last point brings us to the paradox of adoption - we want these children to grow up in a family, not an institution, with people who permanently belong to them - and yet, even the process of adopting someone can still cause pain and loss. Adoption, from my point of view as a Catholic Christian, is our attempt at healing our brother and sister's pain - at being a father to the fatherless. But just as we are adopted children of God, and still long for our Heavenly home, so too being adopted children will not solve all the pain of initial abandonment.
These are aspects of adoption I don't think I had ever considered until I really began to pray and consider adoption from a very personal standpoint. As I begin to think of adoption not as a monolithic experience, but what it would be for us - for our family, made up of people who are sinners and have unearthed prejudices and selfishness - and for the children we are matched with, children whose stories are as different as they are similar, who present unique challenges, who have bottomless needs just as we all do - I realize it's not so simple. Adoption is as simple as wanting to love more, and yet so much more complex that statement looks insulting. It's not just, I want a child, my biology isn't cooperating, and look, here's one of the type we want. It's not as simple as, there are children who need homes and I can open mine.
I will figure out why God has placed this desire on my heart, but I'm grateful I'm not jumping in blind. I'm grateful that I have doubts, concerns, a need to push more and ask the hard questions. Because as much as I don't want to do anything bad, I want to do more - I want to do good. And I'm still asking, for our family and a given child, is adoption a good thing?
*I am grateful to the Reece's Rainbow community for all the work they do on behalf of children who are not with their birth families and are often neglected in bad conditions. They are a grant foundation that supports adoptive parents; they are not an orphanage or an adoption agency. They have answered so many questions that I have, and have been nothing but wonderful. In writing this, I only question the line that adoption is always a good thing - because I am concerned that this neglects issues like focusing efforts on family reunification, poverty being a reason to abandon children, etc. I know that these issues are beyond the scope of RR - I'm just opening up a wider conversation on adoption as I consider it for our family.
When I first dipped my toe into the waters of adoption, I was mostly exposed by looking at Reece's Rainbow. It's a great site and a needed one - it specializes in highlighting special needs orphans from around the world who need homes, and allowing others to contribute to adoption costs. What a great idea! But I quickly realized that the language used to describe adoption in some of these circles bothered me. "Orphans no more" is one of their taglines. They talk about "children at home with their families." But, after reading several sites from adoptive children, I wondered if they would appreciate this - being told they weren't an orphan anymore when their birth parents are still not in their lives, that they are at 'home' when removed from their home countries. Adoption can be a wonderful thing, a redemptive thing - but I found that the more I was asking question in certain circles, the more people kept claiming adoption was all rainbows and happiness - 'hard but worth it.'*
I'm not sure I agree with that at this point. I think the way we talk about adoption should be more nuanced, more respectful of the very huge life-altering decision that it is for everyone involved. Some things I have come to recognize about adoption include:
1) Adoption always comes from loss. Adoption is never the ideal, and that should be obvious! The ideal would a husband and wife have a child biologically. Statistically, is the best situation for a child. If a child is being placed for adoption, then something went very very wrong. There was death, drug addiction, abuse, neglect. Something broke down and that child's biological parents could not parent that child. That is a tragedy. We are not downplaying the 'realness' or importance of adoptive families by acknowledging that adoption always beings with loss.
2) We must resist the desire to see adopters as 'saviors.' I think my biggest issue with the language used in RR communities is that there is a push for someone to "go and save" the children. Save them from an institution, from an orphanage, from their politically unstable home country. I get that - no one wants these kids to be in a bad situation, and many of them are. But adoption also takes a child from what they know - even if it's not safe - and closes the door on ever reuniting with their biological parents. That is still sad. The fact is, only Jesus Christ saves us and what he saves us from is ourselves. We should seek to be conduits of God's grace, but in no way does that mean white-washing the pain of separation from a home culture or over-inflating our role as parents into saviors.
3) Adoptive children might see everything very differently. As adoptive children grow up, many of them see their experience differently than the wider world. They may be angry that they were separated from their culture or their identity; they may long to find their birth parents or extended family; they may still feel apart from their adoptive family, despite years of love and care. The fact is, most of the adoption narrative that we read are from one perspective - the parents - and neglect to acknowledge that the adoptees experience may be very different.
4) There is an innate desire to know where we come from. I think a lot of people approach the concept of family by saying "love makes a family." They want to call the adoptive parents the 'real' parents and say that DNA does not equal parenthood. I think that comes from a good place; a place of wanting to make what we choose rather than what we're dealt our reality. But children want to know where they come from - they love to know that they were made in love, that they have Daddy's eyes or Mommy's hair, that they look like Grandma, etc. It gives a person context for their life. We can't minimize that, no matter how much we try or how much it seems politically incorrect.
5) Adoption is a paradox. I think the last point brings us to the paradox of adoption - we want these children to grow up in a family, not an institution, with people who permanently belong to them - and yet, even the process of adopting someone can still cause pain and loss. Adoption, from my point of view as a Catholic Christian, is our attempt at healing our brother and sister's pain - at being a father to the fatherless. But just as we are adopted children of God, and still long for our Heavenly home, so too being adopted children will not solve all the pain of initial abandonment.
These are aspects of adoption I don't think I had ever considered until I really began to pray and consider adoption from a very personal standpoint. As I begin to think of adoption not as a monolithic experience, but what it would be for us - for our family, made up of people who are sinners and have unearthed prejudices and selfishness - and for the children we are matched with, children whose stories are as different as they are similar, who present unique challenges, who have bottomless needs just as we all do - I realize it's not so simple. Adoption is as simple as wanting to love more, and yet so much more complex that statement looks insulting. It's not just, I want a child, my biology isn't cooperating, and look, here's one of the type we want. It's not as simple as, there are children who need homes and I can open mine.
I will figure out why God has placed this desire on my heart, but I'm grateful I'm not jumping in blind. I'm grateful that I have doubts, concerns, a need to push more and ask the hard questions. Because as much as I don't want to do anything bad, I want to do more - I want to do good. And I'm still asking, for our family and a given child, is adoption a good thing?
*I am grateful to the Reece's Rainbow community for all the work they do on behalf of children who are not with their birth families and are often neglected in bad conditions. They are a grant foundation that supports adoptive parents; they are not an orphanage or an adoption agency. They have answered so many questions that I have, and have been nothing but wonderful. In writing this, I only question the line that adoption is always a good thing - because I am concerned that this neglects issues like focusing efforts on family reunification, poverty being a reason to abandon children, etc. I know that these issues are beyond the scope of RR - I'm just opening up a wider conversation on adoption as I consider it for our family.
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