Mourning with Those Who Mourn on Mother’s Day (reblogged)

Mother’s Day is loaded with issues for me. My bio-mom hates me and hasn’t spoken to me in years. I am also estranged from the rest of my family because of the incest issues and general family dysfunction. Plus,  I always thought that my genes were better left out of the gene pool because of my struggles with Bipolar Disorder. And then the hysterectomy of 2010 pretty much took motherhood off the table for me. Yes, God has given me wonderful women who have acted as mothers to me… but today they are with their own real families. Somebody mentioned adopting to me… but after the life I’ve lived WHY would I want to do that to some kid?? Seeing all the posts of my friends’ facebook updates about how great their moms are is hard. I do rejoice that they have had wonderful experiences with their moms but is a giant slap in the face to me because of the mom I lost and the kids I’m never going to have. I feel like a grinch, but Mother’s Day is painful for me.

 I boycotted church this morning. They’re having a Mother’s Day Brunch. Church stresses me out on regular days. Subjecting myself to that today would be just plain stupid.  I don’t know what led me to this Christianity Today blog since I’ve never read it before, but when I found it and read it, I felt a little less alone in the universe. I’d like to share it in its entirety followed by a link to the actual post:

Her.meneutics: Mourning with Those Who Mourn on Mother’s Day

Like a lot of doting children, I loved Mother’s Day growing up. The holiday usually involved eating out at a fancy restaurant (not the norm for our family), where we gave my mom carefully composed cards and handpicked gifts. Even into adulthood, Mother’s Day never caused problems for me.

 

 

And then I miscarried. Last Mother’s Day was the first one where I felt deep down that I was supposed to be celebrating that day, yet my arms were empty. I should have had a one month old, not a spare bedroom filled with books and supplies we never used. Like many women, I dreaded the day, wishing I could sleep through it and wake up on Monday. And here I am, one year later, arms still empty due to infertility, still trying to make sense of this holiday. As Wendy Horger Alsup so helpfully said at Her.meneutics last year, Mother’s Day can be a painful holiday for many women.

Maybe you are facing the first Mother’s Day without your own mom. Maybe you are longing for a child, but financially cannot afford an extra mouth to feed right now. Maybe you have a wayward child, and all you want is for him to call you this Mother’s Day and say “Mom, I’m saved.” Or maybe you are like me, and are facing another Mother’s Day plagued by infertility. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the commercials for cards and flowers and myriad of morning-show segments all dedicated to the one thing you want most. And then you throw in the Sunday morning church service, with its peppy messages to “all the moms out there,” and you are now one conversation away from a meltdown.

It’s interesting that even some outside of the Christian community want to combat the endless commercialization of the day by highlighting other important aspects of motherhood, like the fact that many women in underdeveloped countries die in childbirth. Others, like writer Anne Lamott, refuse to even celebrate the day because of what it can do to all the non-mothers out there. What is the Christian’s response to all of this? Surely the answer cannot be to completely throw the proverbial Mother’s Day baby out with the muddy, consumer-driven bathwater. Instead, Paul’s simple exhortation to the Romans is a helpful framework for thinking through our response.

“Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15).

How do you obey the biblical command to “rejoice with those who rejoice,” when rejoicing feels like a knife stabbing you in the heart?

The truth is sometimes it is just plain hard. Good news does not always come at convenient times. In fact, sometimes the news of a friend’s pregnancy comes right after you have spent the morning weeping over your own inability to conceive. Sometimes the mother/daughter tea at church comes right after a low day of missing your own mom. This life is messy and sorrowful, something Paul understood when he wrote these words. Sometimes rejoicing with someone else means expressing genuine joy over their good blessing, while you wait bereaved and barren. This never negates the reality of our suffering, but it does help us to give honor where honor is due, especially on a day like Mother’s Day. Motherhood is a high and glorious calling. In a culture where motherhood is increasingly under attack, we should be the first to embrace and honor the gift of motherhood, even if it is a gift we have yet to receive.

 

But as Christians, we must remember that there is a second part to that command. As hard as it is to rejoice with someone who has something you don’t, it is equally if not more difficult to weep with those who weep, especially when their tragedy seems foreign to you. How do you weep alongside the weeping woman while you have a happy, healthy baby bouncing on your hip? The reality is that if your life is fairly blessed and carefree on Mother’s Day, it is a lot easier to obey the first part of Romans 12:15. Yet we should be the first to enter into the pain that this day so often brings to so many women. From sharing a Scripture with a grieving friend to giving a card to a woman who is struggling with infertility, simply acknowledging the ache that many face is obeying the command to “weep with those who weep.”

Motherhood is a great gift and calling, but it also bears the stamp of this fallen world. With the name “mother of all living” came the curse that the very thing we were created for would now be marred by death, pain, and loss. The answer is not to call for a moratorium on all celebrations. But nor is the answer to pretend like nothing is wrong.

Regardless of your situation this Mother’s Day, Romans 12:15 is true for you. It does not take away the pain you might feel. Nor does it diminish the joy you might feel. And if we were truly honest with ourselves, we would say that obeying this command in the thick of your pain or joy is virtually impossible. We need Christ’s help to enable us to serve one another well in every season of life. Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for everything, and Mother’s Day is no exception. May our churches be a place where the glory of motherhood is upheld and honored, but the pain and sorrow of those who long for what they do not have is honored as well.

 

 

Her.meneutics: Mourning with Those Who Mourn on Mother’s Day.

Family Isn’t What You Make It…

I dreamed about my family last night. One of my older sisters and my brother were in the dream. It was a weird dream. We talked about gardening. Some mention was made of our broken relationships, but then like most of my dreams… it morphed into another dream (even weirder) about biker grannies with tattoos on a rampage. Must have been the turkey taco sandwich I ate last night. My take away from this dream? Families are weird and unpredictable. I’m also glad that dreams are not real. My siblings aren’t likely to call me today and praise God, I do not actually have a biker granny with tattoos.

I used to think that “family” is what you make it. Over the years I’ve had friends that have been better to me than my birth family. Friends who have been there to bail me out of all kinds of jams. Friends who have given me money when they knew that I had no way of paying them back. Friends who loved me and clothed me and fed me. I am thankful for those friends and I consider them family. In fact, I started saying that “Family is what you make it,” as if I had something to do with it.

My revelation du jour is that I didn’t do it. God did. With few exceptions, most of those friends are Christians. When I became a believer God gave me a new family. Those have been the folks who did all that bailing and feeding and clothing. And it’s easy to love people when they are helping you so much. But I read something interesting in one of my devotional books the other morning (9/3) that continues to give me pause. I’d like to share it now:

The moment you acknowledge God as your heavenly Father, you become part of His family. He has lots of kids. And you may not like all of them. But… a parent hates when his children fight. And when sibling relationships are broken, it grieves a parent’s heart. God feels the same way. ~Stormie Omartin

It was like God, himself, was responding to my “Grr. Argh” post. I can’t ignore or avoid people in the family of God who push my buttons. I can’t keep isolating myself because I never learned how to play well with others growing up. Now none of the relationships in my bible study are broken. It’s my way of relating to people that has cracks. I have some choices to make: I could leave because I don’t know how to relate to people whose personalities challenge me. And if I did, then I would be the one guilty of breaking the relationship. I would be the one grieving God. I could hang around and keep allowing my buttons to be pushed until I got so angry I imploded. That wouldn’t be good either. When people are really worked up they rarely say anything beneficial. Or I could speak the truth in love and then trust God with the outcome. That is the choice that I’ve made. I don’t yet know the outcome, but I’m hoping for the best.

I share this because I KNOW that I’m not the only Christian who has felt this way about some other Christian in their church or small group or in their place of employment. Like all families we are going to have our issues. Some of those issues will be real and others (like in my case) will be in our heads. Nobody has done anything or even said anything to me. People are just being who they are. I’m the one sitting back in judgment. I cannot expect them to change. The change must first start with me. It dawned on me the other day that people from my church actually read this blog. My first panicked thought was “Should I edit or remove the posts?” But putting on the mask is what keeps problems and issues flourishing. God never said fake like everything is ok. He said, “Speak the truth in love.” Nothing is ever going to change if nothing changes. If folks from my church read this… moreover, if folks from my small group read this — please accept my apology for being so hypersensitive and judgmental.

If family were what we make it… my family would be made up of a bunch of people just like me. There wouldn’t be any variety or differing ways of doing things. There’d be no different personality types. In short, I wouldn’t have a family. I’d have an army of clones that did and said what I wanted them to do and say. And when you put it that way, I see that it’s not a family at all. God’s given me family. They are different from me in every way, but we share one common passion, one common belief. We share a common game book. Sure, the different personalities and ways of relating to people might cause tensions, but it’s necessary. If we were all the same there’d be no growth. I’m looking at this as a growth experience. Talking with my small study leaders today promises to be interesting. Meeting with my Father’s kids in my Father’s house. Family is what He makes it and He makes it with growth in mind.

We Are Family…

The irony is not lost on me.

Two posts back I was going on and on about the body of Christ being all warm and fuzzied filled to the brim with unity. If I’d typed a verse from Kumbaya, I don’t think anybody would have been surprised. I was so caught up in the moment of belonging when I wrote it, that I didn’t think about what might be coming next. So why is it that not five days later I’m writing another post about how people in the body of Christ are pushing my buttons??? I didn’t even make it through a full week before I started singing a different, off key tune. What happened?

A realist might say, “Life.” Life happened. The minute you think everything is going all strawberries and whipped cream, life has a way of  intruding like a strawberry seed stuck between your teeth. It doesn’t even have to be some major crisis. People just have to act like people.

When I was born on August 20th back in 1968, I was born into a family. I have seven sisters and two brothers and assorted foster and step-siblings. At the time I only had six sisters, but even that didn’t register on me because in true infant form, all I cared about was me and my needs. Sadly, that hasn’t changed much 42 years later, but my awareness of my family changed over the years. My little sister was born two years later. I started to grow up. I fell into my spot as the low man on the totem pole. Now, 42 years later, not one of my sisters speaks to me. My brothers don’t speak to me either. And I only mention the steps and fosters when I want to shock people by saying I have 15 siblings. Yet for all of that, I get silence.  Ok, one sister occasionally facebooks me, but shouldn’t family be more than an occasional message through a social network?? My family is not family. Conflicts arose and we didn’t have the tools to repair the damage. Personality conflicts abounded in my family. Tempers flared. One sister would hate the other. Now it’s just silent. And to be honest, I like it that way. I only miss having a family at holidays.

I’d be lying if I said that I enjoyed walking on my tiptoes around their tempers like a refugee inching across a minefield. I don’t miss all the drama. If we could be in relationship without all the drama?? I’d be there in a Maui minute. But I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen. I can’t fix what went wrong because it’s bigger than me and we’re not all on the same page. We are all playing by different rules. For all intents and purposes, I’m a 42 year old orphan. Might as well go buy myself a red dress, a fright wig, and a dog.

On January 1, 1994 I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I was born into the family of God and at the time I had no awareness of what that actually meant either. I had no idea that people who I didn’t even know and would never even meet would have the right to call me “sister.” Terms like father, mother, sister, and brother have always been loaded terms with me that could push my buttons in an instant, so it shouldn’t have surprised me that my new “siblings” in the family of God would have the power to push said buttons. Some of the worse emotional damage done to me over the past decade has been committed by other Christians. But since I don’t hang out with a lot of non-believers, that’s to be expected. The pain was real though and it confused me. For years it used to give me a lot of grief. “We’re supposed to be on the same team,” I’d wail to anyone who’d listen. I couldn’t understand why God didn’t teach his kids how to behave. I chose to isolate myself from other Christians rather than risk the hurt.  If God wasn’t going to control his kids, I’d just avoid them.

Far be it for me to try to tell God how to raise his children. People are people after all. And Christians are people. We are prone to all the same character quirks and flaws as non-believers. The only thing that is different in the way we operate, or should be different, is that we share a common truth: the Bible and should refer to it when we have conflicts with other believers. When some of our siblings in God’s family are chapping us the wrong way, we have guidelines for how to respond to fix things rather than make the fracture worse. THAT’S how I can write one post one day going on and on about how blessed I am to be part of God’s family only to be followed a few days later by another post detailing how my Christian family is pushing my buttons. Admitting issues and dealing with them are healthy.

Besides, whose to say that I didn’t push a few buttons the other night? I can be rather abrasive without even trying sometimes. If I offended anybody, I won’t have any way of knowing unless somebody bothers to tell me. And to be honest, if I did bug somebody… I hope they tell me. I’m convinced that nothing changes if nothing changes. The family of God has a really bad rap with non-believers partially because of the sex scandals that always seem to be popping up and partially because we fail to do one thing that God specifically told us to do:

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34

If I spent more time trying to love other Christians rather than focus on how they are working my nerves, the corner of the world that I inhabit might just become a kinder and gentler place. I can’t keep pointing the finger outward. It starts with me. My attitude has to change. Sure, I wrote that last post, but I didn’t leave it at that. I took more counsel from the Bible:

“Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body.” ^{Ephesians 4:25}

I grew up learning to hold in my anger, to not let my siblings know when they were hurting my feelings or making me mad. Years of being the brunt of their jokes made leaving them easy. There is nothing to miss. I could slap on a mask and not deal with  my current feelings and just wait until my feelings reach a boiling point. Or I could change my MO. No more waiting to implode. Last night before going to bed, I emailed the leaders of my study. I haven’t touched base with them to hear their response, but I believe I did the right and best thing. They are part of this family that I find myself in. They’ve also been Christians a lot longer than I have. They know the game book better than I do. I am trusting that they will be able to help me navigate my issues with my Christian siblings so that this family album has a happier ending.

In regards to Christianity, I used to say that I wasn’t in it for Christians. I was in it for Christ. That was rather shallow and ridiculous now that I think about it. I was a self-serving maverick who thought I didn’t need anybody. Now I know differently and for whatever reason, God has placed me where I am. Rather than cutting bait because my buttons got pushed I need to plant my heels and commit to the long haul. I am never going to grow if I keep clinging to old and unhealthy behaviors. I am blessed to belong to a church that accepts me for who I am, warts and all. The mental illness, the sexual addiction, the quirky idiosyncratic behaviors. They accept all of it and all of me…. the least that I can do is return the favor and stop being so petty and small minded. They are, after all, family.

We Are a Family

I make such a big deal about my “church family” because they are awesome and they rock. I have never been this close to any of the other people at any of the other churches I’ve attended over the years… but a lot of that comes, not from their ignorance over mental health issues… but because I just wasn’t at a place where I was mentally or emotionally ready to engage in a family-like relationship with them. In my earlier blogs I touched on how my bio family relationship was not a good one. And I tend to leave it at that. I see no point in family bashing especially since my family is not peopled with monsters. Had I gone through a monsterous childhood with hideous levels of abuse… maybe that would be a story that needed to be told. My family, however, was just dysfunctional and tearing them down serves no purpose at all. The hurt that they caused me, while intentional much of the time, fell into the category of “Forgive the Father for they know not what they do.” They had no idea what the consequences of their words and actions would have on my life. It took me years of therapy and prayer to get to the point where I could forgive them and not see them are evil people… but now I see them for what they are: human.

Of the lot of them (I have seven sisters and two brothers), there was one, an older sister who made my childhood bearable. She loved me as if I were her own child, which I could have been since her own kid was only two years younger than I. She was the mother to me that I wish my bio mom had been and we enjoyed a close relationship until a few years ago when I told her about my book and told her that I wanted to tell my brother and stepfather that they’d been mentioned in relationship to my incest issues and porn addiction. To say that she didn’t think I should bring it up to them was an understatement. My request for her help in contacting them blew the underpinnings of our relationship away like that flying cow in the movie, “Twister.” At the time, it seemed like I could only look on helplessly as the poor old cow flew away. Upon reflection… sounds like I’m calling my sister a cow. She’s not. It’s just before 3am in the morning. I like the visual of that analogy and I’m not going to change it. Maybe I will at 9am, but at 3am it’s sounding kinda cool.

So this morning I find myself awake taking pain meds and going to the bathroom. Now that my uber-uterus is no longer smashing my bladder I don’t have to pee every hour… but it’s still pretty painful to have to get up and go. My incision hurts when my bladder is full and getting up without hurting myself is a challenge… so going back to sleep is not always easy. I started reading a book about strengthening your faith and though the author was talking about a long dead biblical figure, he could have been talking about my sister. And as I read what he wrote, I found myself crying. I stopped praying for my family a long time ago. Some of them object to me being a Christian. Some of them were just plain mean and I had to set a boundary. Others think I’m a liar and my book is just a bunch of lies (they’ve never read it… but they are certain it’s full of lies). Then there are some who just don’t care about me and never have. But that’s no excuse not to pray for them and their eternal destiny. When I was in the hospital that tech who was able to get the IV started in my hand after praying for me looked me in the eyes and told me not to give up praying for my family. It was freaky but I know a message from God when I hear one.

I’ve been praying kind of haphazardly for them but this morning I prayed in earnest. And after I finished praying, I emailed Older Sister #2 and told her how much I’d missed her. I pointed out that it would have been stupid to have someone notify her in the event that there were complications during surgery because what good would it be to know (past tense) that I loved her if I were dead. Love not expressed in deeds is not love. So I emailed her and then came here to post. Yes, I make much over how great my church family is. I’m always going to rejoice over the fact that Jesus was true to his word. He said that if we left home, family, and field to pursue him and his kingdom he’d give us many more homes, families, and fields. Right now I can’t believe how many sisters and brothers in the Lord have come up to love, help, pray for, and encourage me. But I have a chance to reconcile with one of my bio sisters. And my prayers changed today about the rest of my siblings. Instead of a hard-hearted, self-righteous prayer, this book brought me to tears for them.

I do not know what God is going to do with my prayer, but after all that I’ve been through I don’t want to limit him. He is a huge God and he’s able to repair the damage done in my family.