My children ask me things that I used to have answers to. “Where is [deceased person] now?” “Were Adam and Eve real?” “Why did Jesus ‘have’ to die?” “Who is God’s mom?” “Did God really kill all the firstborn sons in Egypt?” (thanks, Prince of Egypt, for that one… oops) But the questions didn’t come to me then, when I would have turned toward countless Christian-parent resources and colored pictures of Noah’s Ark and talked about how God is just and hates sin, but loves us. The questions come now when I have run almost entirely out of printable answers on which we can color inside bold black lines. I…
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Mush Mom
I guess I thought I was better than this. I thought that at some point some magical switch would flick on – maybe sometime in the pregnancy? Or during labor? I thought at some point there’d be a click (maybe even audible) and I would be Mom. I would unleash the patience and empathy and wisdom and creativity locked somewhere deep inside me just waiting for that magic thing to happen. I remember my first baby growing, feeling her kicks, dreaming of her before I even knew her gender. I remember *feeling* the magic. I read books and decorated her nursery and told her all about the world she would…
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There was a school shooting…
There was a school shooting near my home today. Not many details have been released, but there was a school shooting near my home today. Parents – friends – received automated voice messages from the school district informing them that their children were on lockdown. News footage covered the school like it’s covered so many – too many – before. There are cliches around this now; how did that happen? A friend of mine texted me a link to a news article while I was plunked down at the YMCA getting some work done, my babies safely playing mere feet away from me in the child watch, oblivious to the absolute…
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Highest Hope
I gave birth to her on the floor of the Birth Center – right outside the tub where I thought I might die, where I hated her from a reserve of fury I didn’t know existed, where I’d cursed the moment of conception which had brought me to this agony. She came quickly. Her eyes were steely blue, her lips resembled a rosebud, her chubby olive cheeks were too kissable to resist, and she smelled like Heaven. I am convinced. If there is a Heaven and if it has a smell it is that one. The midwife handed her to me and I don’t think she even reached my chest before…
