On foolish obedience

and living by convictions

Welcome to my new readers! Thank you for joining me here. Today’s post does contain a lot of talk about pregnancy and birth. I know these are tender topics, so if you need to skip today’s letter I hope you’ll take good care of yourself.

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Living life according to your convictions is a funny thing. 

In my experience, it means feeling foolish quite often. 

There have been many times in my life where my feelings and my convictions were at an impasse. Feelings are a little like small children - they need and deserve attention, but it’s dangerous to let their whims dictate your every action. Often they tell us things we would not know otherwise, but this doesn't mean they run the show. So we must have something else to guide us - the word of God, what we know to be true, the wisdom of those who have lived faithful lives - and these are the things we call our convictions. 

I have never regretted acting according to my convictions, but I have often felt more uncomfortable and ridiculous in the short term because of them. At times I have been furious because the unyielding nature of them has made me chafe, pitting what I want against what I believe is right. 

A little over a year ago, my husband and I both separately arrived at the conclusion that there was not a good enough reason to prevent another child if God chose to give us one. 

Then I had a personal crisis for about three months while I wrestled with God about all the reasons I should be allowed to escape this conviction. The reasons were many, and they would have made sense to other people; I would have been given understanding and empathy. The problem was that I knew at a core level that all these reasons were me trying to find a way around obedience. Still, it didn’t make sense to me. It felt like being asked to put down all my dreams, all the ways I wanted to prove I could be productive and all my plans. It felt like being ruthlessly pruned.

Surrender to another change, just when things felt stable.

Surrender my body to more years of being tied to someone else’s.

Surrender the small freedoms I had gained. 

Surrender writing before I even got started.

Surrender my plans for a perfect summer as a fun mom.

The internal battle raged with moments of crystal clarity obscured by my very human doubts.

Then we said yes anyway and I found myself staring at two pink lines, calculating a due date.

For the next few months I struggled with some of the most pervasive guilt and shame I have ever felt. I chose this, so how could I be so upset about it? It wasn’t the sort of thing I could easily talk about. Perhaps I sometimes expressed ambivalence and people assumed, as they are wont to do, that it must be a surprise pregnancy. I didn’t correct them - their assumption seemed more sensible than the truth. I only shared with my husband, a few trusted friends and my counselor how wretched I felt. The guilt intensified into a fear that I would miscarry and it would be my fault for not wanting the baby enough. I dutifully ate protein, got my bloodwork done and found prenatal care. I comforted myself knowing that I could care for this baby without feeling attached, but I prayed that my fears wouldn’t affect the tiny baby growing. “It’s me, not you” I would whisper, hoping the message would travel. 

And so it continued the entire pregnancy. Was I depressed? In retrospect I’d say yes, but it’s so hard to know these things while you’re in them. I prayed a feeble, “I believe, help my unbelief” over and over. I wrestled with God, telling him, “if you asked me to do this I am going to trust you will meet me, but it’s going to take a miracle.”

I could not muster the “right” feelings to save my life. They just wouldn’t come. Even as the baby started kicking and growing I struggled to feel attached. I decided I would show up every day and take the best care of myself and my baby that I could, and if that was all I could do, it would be enough. I remembered a Sally Clarkson podcast in which she talked about how it was not necessary to *feel* loving towards our children to act in a loving way - that in fact it was possible to be very frustrated and still go through the motions of treating them lovingly. I clung to that idea and was grateful for the acknowledgement of the complexity of parenting.

It’s easy to forget the trauma of a prior birth or recovery until you’re facing down a dwindling number of days before you must, without exception, have a baby exit your body in some form and then feed them in some fashion. There’s many ways for this to happen, but at the same time, there’s the inescapable reality that it does have to happen, and at a rather specific time. There are many sources of trauma that you might heal from and never have to return to the “scene of the crime”. But birth is not one of them. It is intimate and vulnerable and invasive all at once. 

After I became pregnant I had to grapple with the fact that the birth of my previous child, now close to a year and a half old, was more stressful than I’d admitted to myself. I got pregnant in 2020, we were living in rural Wyoming, 55 miles from the nearest hospital. He was due in February and the road we lived on didn’t get plowed at night and required us to drive up and down over 1,000 feet of elevation in order to get to town. If something went terribly wrong we would need to get on a helicopter. My jaw ached for the month before delivery, clenched in anticipation of all the things that could go wrong. He was born in a pocket of nice weather between a week of -20 temperatures and 80 mph winds. Shortly after labor began, the midwives arrived at our home (after an 2 hour drive on an ice slick) only for labor to start and stop for a full 24 hours while we coerced my body into cooperating. I have vivid memories of walking up and down a hill in our driveway in frigid weather and growling like one of the grizzlies whose footprints we sometimes saw. When the baby finally arrived all was well, until the nursing problems began, resulting in weeks of pain, an ER trip for mastitis and then packing up our house and moving home when I was six weeks postpartum. It was also the spring of 2021, so not exactly the most normal time to be doing anything. We moved in with my husband’s family, then faced down the prospect of trying to evict renters that refused to pay and trashed our house, figuring out how to make a living, finding alternate housing as prices skyrocketed, and finally deciding to take the plunge and start our own business. It was an exhausting string of events, and we were tired. 

When the next spring rolled around and things had settled a bit, my response to these convictions that wouldn’t go away was anger.

“How dare you ask me to do one more hard thing, God? Haven’t I done enough to make you happy yet? Haven’t I suffered enough? Don’t you remember all the things that happened before we even moved to Wyoming? Don’t I deserve a break? Why are you teasing me with the things I want and then taking them away?”

It wasn’t fair. I needed a break. Didn’t God agree with me? Couldn’t he see my point?

I took a month off Instagram in August after spending the summer being morning sick and sick-sick while my husband worked 70 hour weeks. I was grumpy and frustrated and honestly felt a little sorry for myself, especially when I compared my summer to everyone else’s. It was a perpetual season of penance - trying to keep a good attitude but then descending back into petulant whining to God, scrawled in a journal. 

I struggled to know what to write as all my words and ideas felt dry. I was stretched thin and exhausted, feeling like a failure more often than not.

The year continued, one foot in front of the other. It wasn’t bad, but I still struggled to wrap my head around the concept of another child. I was holding everything at arms length.

Then there were the two weeks before she was born. Two whole weeks of start and stop labor, with contractions sometimes being three minutes apart for a whole day. Add in the pre-labor death cold and I was about to go insane, but even with all of that I was holding things back. Every time I felt contractions pick up, the only thing I could think was, “I am too tired to do this right now”. 

I tried to tell myself this was illogical and unhelpful because the baby simply had to come out. There was no other option. But to no avail. My six year old cried each morning when he glimpsed my belly, the waiting for this event more than he could bear. I was a constant source of disappointment everywhere I went. My husband gently suggested that the baby might not come until I decided to let it. I balked, but knew he was probably right. I baked, and baked (literally and figuratively) and went to Costco, I tried Walcher and Spinning Babies and taught my co-op class again, because what else do you do? 

Even 10 days overdue I still wasn’t ready to have this baby. I was scared of the nursing struggles, scared of all the things I knew would be hard, scared of unequivocally entering a reality that I had never felt ready for but agreed to all the same. If I wasn’t ready then, would I ever be ready?

At 41 weeks and 4 days, my midwife ordered a biophysical profile and suggested I try the “midwife's brew”. I finally acquiesced to the reality that I could consent to labor or consent to a hospital induction, and by the grace of God something shifted. I took a nap, woke up at 4 pm, sucked down a mason jar of  the nastiest concoction I’ve ever had and went on a date with my husband to the local brewery. Nothing like a 12 days overdue pregnant woman at a brewery, huh? Our babysitter left at 10:30 PM, my contractions were 2 minutes apart at 10:45 PM and I was holding a baby in my arms at 12:49 AM. 

It was such a redemptive birth. After two weeks of doubting my body, the pain was welcomed, productive and empowering. I caught my baby myself, and brought her pink and squalling to my chest. Then we exclaimed in disbelief and joy at the fact that she was, indeed, a SHE.

We named her Abigail - “cause of joy”- the only girl name we’ve ever agreed upon. 

The joy she has brought us in the last 3.5 months is overwhelming, and it is pure grace. I know without a doubt that my delight in this gift is not my own doing. 

A little joy-bug!

A few days ago I read Psalm 127 again, I think I’ve always seen the two parts of this psalm as separate before.

Unless the Lord builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the watchman stays awake in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early,
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to this beloved sleep. (Ps. 127:1-2)

At first glance this seems to be an entirely different topic from:

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one's youth.
Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. (Ps. 127:3-5)

But what if our anxious toil and our willingness to welcome children are intricately connected? What if our acceptance of the gifts God has for us - both children and rest - is so often precluded by our own striving? I’m not saying we must have as many children as possible, but our attitude towards these things matters. Do we believe God when he says that children are a reward? Do we believe him when he says that he “gives his beloved sleep”? Or do we try to micromanage? This particular psalm doesn’t speak to wisdom, prudence, discernment, hard work… but there are many other places in the Bible that do, so of course we don’t throw these out the window. But if we are honest, how many of us have discarded the fundamental truth that God is the giver and source of every good gift, and we are not in control? Medical advances give us the illusion of control - but are you in control while you’re asleep? And can you create life within your womb? Or can you merely receive these gifts?

I’m still in awe of this baby we’ve been given. In reflecting upon God’s faithfulness throughout this story, I am strengthened to continue to live by convictions, as foolish as they seem. I can rejoice with David, knowing that God has pulled me up out of the pit, and say, “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” (Psalm 118:23)