Glennon Doyle Melton, Momastery
There are a lot of people who are confused about what it means to be Christian. It’s because there’s too many of us who go to the party and refuse to dance. (This is a five minute YouTube clip so please don’t subject it to a theological treatise. Just dance. It’s Sunday; Christians should dance.) (h/t)
Watch Stephanie Packer’s story. The principle for me and for her is the same: Life matters. It matters when we believe the quality is high, and it matters when we believe the quality is low. It matters when someone is suffering, yes. We aim to eradicate the suffering, not the person. Some people can’t see this, but stories like hers help.
As readers of this blog know, Kara Tippetts died a few months ago. Her husband, Jason, wrote a piece for the Washington Post explaining how his family was going to spend this first Mother’s Day without her. It’s a beautiful and poignant article.
This paragraph is with loaded with wisdom:
We will live in the reality of life instead of in our hidden expectations of how we want to be treated. I want my kids to enter into the celebration of this day, to remember the life their mom lived and the character traits she desired to foster in them: kindness, compassion and love. Our character develops when we are stretched, and this day will stretch us.
No one desires to experience hurt or face tragedy, but these experiences transform us. If we permit it, we can become better, stronger and more resilient as a result of them. We can become more compassionate and understanding. We may even experience joy, as Kara did, in the midst of heartbreak.
Get your Kleenex out. This is really a lovely testimony to life – and honestly, it’s not that hard, nor is it that expensive, and it will be the best thing that could ever happen to you.
[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p27Hi8QoHoo]
Parenting advice.
Moral inconsistencies are never better illustrated than in real life.
Check out these two stories, printed a day apart. In the one, we have Megan Huntsman charged with six counts of first degree murder and receiving a life sentence for each newborn child that she suffocated.
In the next story a day later, we have “Lisa” glibly discussing her four abortions thus;
With the first one, you don’t know what’s going to happen. You’re scared and anxious. But once you see all the other women there, it doesn’t make you feel that bad.
And it does get easier with the more you have. I know that sounds really bad, but that is just how it is.
Megan Huntsman killed her children because she had a drug addiction and didn’t want the responsibility of raising her children.
“Lisa” killed her children because each was fathered by a different man and she didn’t want the responsibility of raising her children.
One will go to jail and quite possibly never see the light of day again. Had she had her six children killed a few days earlier through an abortion procedure, FOR THE SAME REASONS we would never have known her name. Today she is a social pariah and a convicted felon.
Lisa on the other hand, will walk free. We will never know her real name because it has been protected, and she can carry on her life under the guise of anonymity, having more abortions if she so chooses.
The doctors who she had kill her four children will continue to dismember countless more and earn a great living doing so.
The only difference between these two mothers is that “Lisa” had the sense to have her children “terminated” through legal abortion. She played the game right.
There you have the great injustice and the horror of legal abortion, and the schizophrenia of a socially constructed “right” that is vehemently and aggressively defended, while violating everything that is decent about life.
Naomi Lakritz on egg freezing, so as to be able to have children later in life:
Save your money, ladies. …Not only is there never a moment when the stars are all perfectly aligned in anyone’s life, but you wouldn’t be able to recognize it, even if there were one. That’s because you have no power to see into the future, no ability to engage in hindsight ahead of time, to look back and assess the present moment while still living in it.
Naomi Lakritz
Quadruplets at age 65 sounds like a bit of a nightmare to me. Kids need parents, and if you are on the sunset side of life, it’s quite literally harder to be there for your family. But let me just say this, I don’t begrudge this woman her large family. Neither do I get particularly animated because she is a grandmother’s age. To me, the underlying problem is the ethos of “having children when we want them” through IVF. I understand that we mostly all have this idea that children are choices–and we get ’em when we want ’em, but the underlying principle of my worldview for absolutely everyone, 65, 35, gay or straight, etc. is that IVF is not the best option. I realize this is a painful thing to say for some. My reasons are as follows: There are risks associated with it; if the parts are not your own, it commercializes families and even when the parts are your own, there are still risks associated with it. I also confess I want to be consistent. If I’m not a fan of IVF for a 65 year old grandmother, what is the principle behind that if I’m OK with it for myself, or my friends? Who chooses the boundaries? Why this family and not that family? I prefer consistency, so I rule it out for everyone, including myself. The reality is that without IVF, this grandmother would not be having quadruplets. And then we wouldn’t need to worry about all the other associated risks.
Natural Family Planning, not the “rhythm method,” has devices and apps to track your fertility, which is part of your general health and wellness. (Things they don’t teach in school, not even necessarily med school, as I’m learning.) This article explains:
The company behind the Kindara app, which charts a woman’s fertility signs right on her phone and connects her with specialist support, has come out with an innovative thermometer.
Cheekily called Wink, the thermometer is linked wirelessly with the app in her cellphone and acts as an alarm clock – since taking basal temperature at the same time each morning is integral to most fertility-monitoring methods.
Temperature taking can be inaccurate, and there are effective methods without it, but in any case, it’s good to see any form of NFP providing this kind of convenience. Advocates for things like NFP, and I suppose I am one, need to remember that the charting thing can be a pain in the you-know-where for some people, so pretending it is always Fun! and Easy! (see stock photo) is unwise, to put it mildly.
What taking your temperature every morning looks like…never.
Time for some humour. As a “Lawyer Mom,” I loved this. And endorse it. It’s all true. Even the bit about laundry. I’m kidding. Sort of.
Exhibit D. We are trained interrogators. You may be able to trip up a 4-year-old claiming the cat used a Sharpie, but are you ready for teenagers with a coordinated cover story? Lawyer moms are. Have a seat in the dining room. Let me just adjust this dimmer switch — there, now I can see you. So, tell me again who was there? Nice. And Jordan drove? I love her Prius. What does it seat… five? Cool. Just one more thing: I think you said there were seven of you. KA-CHUNG. If there’s anything you want to tell me, I suggest you do it now while I can still convince Dad to go easy on you.
Yup. Watch out Jack. Mama’s got her eye on you. And daddy’s a lawyer too. So you might be out of luck…
(This is NOT a picture of my Jack. But a suitable picture nonetheless.)
I just got a call from a pro-life journalist to comment on yesterday’s Supreme Court of Canada decision.
I stumbled around looking for excuses as to why I haven’t even read the decision yet, and then finally blurted out that we recently moved, I’m still unpacking boxes, and my crawling baby is tearing my house apart.
The journo laughed, asked about Jack and wished me well.
It was a fun exchange. And I wasn’t left feeling like a slacker for probably being the only religious liberty lawyer in the country who hasn’t read the decision.
God bless friendly media people. Thank you for being kind to this swamped mama.
