Roger, roger! Baby birds to nest: we have flown!

*sigh*

My fifth and last child started kindergarten this morning.  Millions of mothers have been through this before me, and millions will come after me.  I am a little different in that I never went through this with my first child.  I homeschooled her through 2nd grade, so when she left me, she was 7 years old and very self-possessed.  We were also both very ready for that change for several reasons.

With my three other children, of course I felt tugs on my heartstrings as each of them entered school, and each first day of kindergarten was an event both celebrated and mourned, at least by me.  But it all felt like natural progression, and each of them was so excited and so ready that I had no real concerns about letting them go.  And all four of my older children have proven out my confidence by becoming outstanding students and good citizens of their school communities.

So now we come to the youngest.  She was equally excited and ready, even though she is still only four years old.  She passed the school district's assessment for admission to kindergarten before the birthday cutoff (which is in September, while her birthday is in October) with flying colors.  I have just as much confidence in her as I did in the others.  I watched her this morning, walking across the playground and uncertain where to go, approach a teacher and ask for help, with no fear or hesitation.  Clearly she can navigate this new environment and will be fine.

I'm sure I am not the first mother to be more deeply affected by her youngest child starting school than by some of the others, and to wonder if that makes me a less-than-stellar mother to my other children.  Of course I really do know that is not true, that each child is different, and that my relationship with each is different.  But feelings don't really respond to logic.

However, there is a certain element of my relationship with my last baby that is unique.  Not many people can say that God basically commanded them to have a specific child....but I can.  Every child is a gift from God and His creature, but let's face it, usually we decide when and if to have a child or not.  From our perspective, even if God works in the background, our decisions are the only ones we see leading directly to the creation of our children.  For me, with this particular child, that is not true.  It is impossible to express the sense of obligation and responsibility I feel about my baby girl, because her existence is attributable only to direct, and extremely obvious, intervention by God in my life and consciousness.

I know, I know.  Some of you reading this are rolling your eyes and thinking, "Oh great, another Jerry Falwell claiming direct messages from God."  I assure you, that is not it at all.  No one needs to send me money to prevent my being struck dead.  If anyone feels compelled to make sure, however, I am happy to provide a mailing address.  ;-)

I don't think I have ever shared this story with anyone besides my husband before, but I feel like I want to today, on this momentous day in the existence of the child God pretty much forcibly placed into my life.

I have never been a perfect Catholic, and have always struggled with the Church's teaching on birth control.  (In fact, earlier this year, I chronicled my ultimate failure to obey it.)  In late 2006, when my fourth, and what I thought would be last, child was a little over a year old, I had enrolled in a clinical trial for a new method of sterilization.  It seemed like the perfect solution.  No surgery, no artificial hormones (which can be abortifacient and so are a humungous NO NO, but which also made me feel horrible the short time I did take them), and no cost because I would be assisting in the testing of this new method before it was approved and marketed.  Basically it was to be a small spring-type device inserted into each Fallopian tube, which would cause scar tissue to grow and block the tube.  I was uncertain, but I figured all women go through some doubt before doing something as radical as ending their fertility, so I tried to dismiss it.  I also was fully aware that I was acting directly against my Church and its legitimate authority, and that was tearing me up.  I am not one of those that could claim ignorance... I had read and studied and struggled for years, so I knew exactly what I was doing.  Contemplating mortal sin and its consequences isn't peaceful and obviously shouldn't be!  But I was trying to ignore all that too.

We happened to be running a yard sale at our house a week or two before I was supposed to go in for the procedure.  So my husband took the kids to Mass with him early in the morning while I attended to our sale, and then I went to the noon Mass by myself.  During Mass there was a baptism, and I saw the sweetest little rosebud of a baby girl, all frilly and frothy in white, carried against the shoulder of her father.  The sight struck me to the bone, and I realized I would never see my husband that way again.  While my feelings were in turmoil, the ground under my feet rocked.  And I don't mean like the little 3.0 earthquakes I felt growing up, I mean the earth turned about 45 degrees under my feet, I lost my balance, and was forced to sit down on the pew before I fell.  Everyone else in the church acted normally, so I know I am the only one who saw or felt it.  (Literally, the altar was diagonal in my sight!)  I have since heard the quote from Blessed Theresa of Calcutta that goes something like, "I know God will never give me more than I can handle, I just wish he didn't trust me so much."  Boy can I relate to that quote.  Suffice to say that once my physical environment righted itself a second later, I was trembling and having a serious "holy shit" moment.

When I got home, I told my husband what had happened, and told him I could not possibly proceed with my plans.  He had never been really thrilled with the idea, so he didn't take much convincing.  Then I told him I thought we were being called to have another child.  That gave him a lot more pause.  We have struggled financially for much of our marriage, and adding a fifth child seemed irresponsible from that that standpoint.  There were also times we felt overwhelmed trying to be effective parents to the four we had, and so adding another child to the mix would mean taking the risk of parenting all of them at a lesser level than what they deserved.  But the biggest complication was that we had suffered two miscarriages in the few months leading up to this, and the desire to end our ability to have children was in part motivated by wanting to avoid ever facing that pain again.

Let me take this aside to say that our culture has absolutely no understanding or respect for the pain of fathers in that situation.  I was utterly shocked and stunned by how the loss of his baby destroyed my husband.  I can count maybe two or three times that I have held that strong, brave man while he cries..... and that was by far the worst one.  Even in my own pain, I saw that his was raw, deep, and primal.  It frightened me.

So asking him to be open to having another child was asking almost too much of him.  We had learned the hard way that there were no guarantees, that even if we conceived, we might never have another baby, but only have to mourn another death.  There is a saying that still waters run deep, and that perfectly describes my husband.  He is a man of deep faith, and he recognized God's intervention when I described it.  He put his fear aside, trusted God, and came along on the journey with me.

When the little plus sign showed up on the pregnancy test, we told no one.  After having had to tell our children that the baby in Mommy's tummy had died, we decided no one would know I was pregnant until after the first trimester, if I made it that far.  We never wanted to see that look in our kids' eyes again.  I think my husband probably didn't want to face a repeat, either, of his mother's comment when he informed her of the first miscarriage.  I really don't understand how when your son calls you to inform you of the tragedy of the death of his child, the first thing that comes to your tongue is, "Well, you really didn't need another one anyway!"  But that is what happened, and I still don't think he has forgiven her for it.  (I certainly haven't.)  So for many reasons, we waited.

That twelfth week blessedly came and passed, and we both breathed.  Maybe we would hold this baby after all.  We finally started telling people, and allowing ourselves to plan.  We took our kids to the ultrasound appointment at 16 weeks, and they all cheered to learn there was a sister in there.  They started calling her by her chosen name, Victoria.  They delighted when it seemed she could hear them and would kick their hands on my tummy.  My husband played his favorite pregnancy game again each night, pushing back wherever that telltale little lump appeared, and being rewarded by her thumping his hand again and again.  All of us still had a little fear, the kids would occasionally express concern that this baby would die too, but as I got bigger and bigger, the worry faded and some of our pain healed.  We looked toward birth and joyously waited for her to tell us she was ready.

As if we hadn't had enough indication that this child was special, her birth turned out to be unique as well.  I had had a planned home birth with my third child, after two cesareans that I am convinced were medically unnecessary.  When the doctor supervising my care in that small Montana city told me my only option was to lay down on that table and be cut open again, because that was how SHE felt comfortable, I rebelled and called a midwife, with support and encouragement from my husband.  I had to pay out of pocket but it was worth every penny to prove those impatient, meddling "professionals" wrong.  My body can birth the babies I grow!  When we moved to Arizona, differences in the laws governing midwives meant I had to give birth in a hospital, but we found one that allowed VBACs (and the fact that we had to search for that is disgusting), and had a wonderful and peaceful birth there.  We had planned to return to that hospital, which is about a 30 mile drive away in the middle of Phoenix, but Victoria had other ideas.  She was in an awful hurry to be born, and so she was, in my bathroom, while I stood holding onto the sink and the towel bar, and my awesome husband knelt underneath me to catch her.  All 10 lbs. 5oz. of her!  I found out later that even though my husband had kicked them all out of the master suite, my other kids sneaked in again and watched their sister being born into their father's hands.  I cannot describe my feelings when I think about that moment.  Few families can say they share anything like it.

After she was born, we settled into nursing whenever she fussed, sleeping fused together most of the time, and learning to incorporate her into the rhythm of a family with some kids in school and several activities going on.  She was amazingly calm and easygoing, and never lacked for arms to hold her, voices to sing to her, or faces to entertain her.  Such are the dividends of being a fifth child, born three years after the last one!  As she has grown she has never lost her serenity, except when mightily provoked by a sibling.  I don't want anyone getting the idea she is some perfect angel.  She is a normal kid, and she has been frustrated, thrown tantrums, and lied to get out of chores.  But her baseline personality is so calm....it seems weird to a high-strung person like me.

I have no idea what God's plan is for this little girl.  But I have no doubt He has one.  And to a far higher degree than with my other kids, I feel an obligation to stay out of its way and not interfere.  I am here to guard and guide more than direct.  Today is the beginning of a new phase in her journey to discover it.  She is going out into the world to achieve things that are completely hers, separate from me.

Today also represents a personal milestone for me and the fulfillment of a parenting goal I set before I even had children.  I have been able to care for my own children during their pre-school formative years.  I have been able to fulfill the commitment I made to them that their own parents would be the ones to care for them, and not any paid institution or outsider.  At times the sacrifices required to keep that promise I made to them have been painful, bordering on impossible.  But I did it.  We did it, my husband and I together, and it's an accomplishment of which I feel proud.  No one loves or values them like we do, no one is as invested in their futures as we are, and we thought they deserved to have that level of investment every day, all the time.  I am grateful we were able to provide it.

Even though there is a little sadness in my heart as my last baby bird starts her test flights out of the nest, today is overwhelmingly a day for joy and celebration.  It is truly the day the Lord has made! 

My failure invalidates precisely nothing

OK time to go all religious on you, folks.  Honestly, President Obama and Kathleen Sebelius didn't give me much choice.

I am a Catholic.  I will fight the encroachment of the Federal government upon the rights of my Church.  If you are not Catholic, I am fighting the encroachment of the Federal government upon the rights of your church too!  Your church allows contraception and sterilization, you say?  The particulars of the belief in question don't matter.  What matters is that, in direct violation of the First Amendment, the Federal government has informed our Church that we are not allowed to hold and practice this belief without penalty from them.  If we drop health coverage for employees to avoid the requirement to fund contraceptives and sterilization, then the Federal government will fine us.  And the fines are not small.  If we continue to write policies, the law requires we write them to violate our beliefs.  This time, it may be a belief or teaching you don't care about.  But what happens when the Feds again decide the Catholic Church, or any other church, teaches something they don't think it should?  And this time it's one you care about?  If you sat back and allowed them to destroy our First Amendment rights this time, how can you hold the line the next time?

Some people would call me a hypocrite.  Many people in my life don't know what I am about to admit, and I'll be honest, I am afraid their opinion of me will change.  But one cannot operate on fear.

I had a tubal ligation in December 2007, a couple months after my fifth child was born.

Yep, I disobeyed the Church.  I committed a mortal sin.  I thought all my reasons were good at the time, and that the Church was just being unreasonable, so therefore it was fine for me to disobey.  All the normal rationalizations that one tells themselves when they set out to purposely disobey God.

And you know what?  That means precisely.... NOTHING.  My failure to live up the the laws of the Catholic Church in no way invalidates those laws.  If surveys are to be believed, at least 90% of Catholics fail in obeying this particular teaching.  Even failing on that massive scale does not affect the validity of the Church's teaching.  All it means is that the human sin of pride is alive and well.  If the sins of its members invalidated the laws of the Catholic Church, then the Church wouldn't have survived one century, never mind twenty.  And if only the pure can defend the Church, then there is no one to defend Her.  As Jesus said about throwing stones....

I have nothing but the deepest respect for people who are able to live up to the Church's requirement of the use of only natural methods for regulating births.  They are stronger than me and I know it.  But they have their sins too, they are just different ones from mine.

I did go through a period of rebelliousness when I called myself a "birth control dissenter."  What we like to call "common sense" told me that it was impossible for people to actually live that way.  Those ideas were just outdated and the hangover from Medieval attempts to control the laity in every respect.  Basically, I bought into secular reasoning on this topic, which is hard not to do.  I must say, too, though, that some supporters of NFP methods do the Church no favors, in that their lack of charity can be breathtaking.  But in the end, after some growth and soul searching, and further reading of works that both supported and attacked the Church's position, I came to realize that there really isn't anything special about my position or my choice at all.  I am merely a sinner, who needs the hospital of the Church for her soul.  The fact that my sin has to do with a controversial topic, and would be regarded by most as no sin at all, again means nothing.

I submitted myself to the legitimate authority of the Church and made my Confession.  I expressed remorse and received absolution, so I know in my head that God has forgiven me my sin.  Sometimes my heart is another matter, though.  Even expiated sin leaves lingering temporal effects, which is why Purgatory exists.  (That is a whole other post and I am not getting into it here!)  Some days I am pretty sure that we do part of our time in Purgatory here on Earth.  Just before the doctor put me under for the surgery, I almost told him to stop, don't do it!  But I hesitated and the moment was lost.  I live with consequences from the choice I made often.  I wonder who the next baby would have been.  I wonder if God would have blessed us with a third son.  And I feel the absence in my life.  Victoria being four, by now I would have had another baby if our previous pattern and fertility continued.  Of course our lives would be different, and some sacrifices would have been necessary, had we chosen to have more children.  But different is not always bad.  In fact it's not even usually bad.  Whenever I have these feelings, though, my mind reminds me of the financial struggle, physical consequences, and unkind social pressure that led to the decision in the first place.  It reminds me of my two lost babies, the ones I loved but never got to hold, and how Craig and I were so afraid to face that again that we almost didn't have Victoria.  Sometimes I feel momentarily guilty about making love to my husband, even though my priest assured me that I should not.  I also feel guilty about depriving him of the opportunity to love more little people that look like him, because no matter how hard things got, he would always have been happy to greet another child into the world.  His well of love is deep and always ready to grow.  There are reasons he could not bring himself to do what I did, and I am sure I don't know the half of them.  In short, I live with spiritual warfare inside myself, as the price of my disobedience.

The worst temporal effect, by far, though, is that I have to explain this to my children as they grow up and I teach them about marriage and the Church.  Talk about Purgatory on Earth.  All I can do is emphasize that we are all sinners, and this is one of my more obvious sins.  I don't pretend that these issues are easy to decide for anyone, nor that they will likely cause my children and their spouses struggle and sleepless nights as they did me.  I suppose I will be in a unique position to understand and offer charity and sympathy.  You will never see me on a blog or message board screaming that contraceptors should be thrown out of the Church.  Yes, there are people who actually do say that.  I always ask them, for what other sins do we summarily throw people out of the Church?  There are sins bad enough that they incur automatic excommunication and can ordinarily only be absolved by the Bishop, but they are extremely few.  But, we don't throw people out of the Church for committing murder, rape, or abusing children.  We don't throw out people who cohabit in a sexual relationship without being married, straight or gay.  They may be in a state of mortal sin, but they can always come back and confess those sins and restore their communion with the Body of Christ.  Their membership in the Church is unaffected.  Yet some people think those who practice contraception should be just thrown out?  Reminds me of a dialogue about eyes, specks, and beams....

And so, this is how a woman with her tubes tied ends up defending the Catholic Church and its teaching on contraception.  I challenge anyone to read the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae by Paul VI, the one that confirmed the teaching of the Church against artficial birth control in 1968, and tell me that all of his predictions for society did not come to pass.

As I said in the beginning, though, the particular moral teaching that the Federal government's action impacts upon really, truly, is not the issue.  This is about the First Amendment, and the absolute prohibition on the government interfering in churches, and its utter disregard by this Administration.  Non-Catholics and Catholic birth control dissenters... join us in the fight.  Because if we lose and they win, the Constitution is dead and churches will be subject to government control or suppression, like they are in China and Pakistan now and in the Soviet Union in the last century.

I will end as I began.  I am a Catholic.  I am loyal to my Church and try my best to accept and obey all Her teachings, even when I don't fully understand them.  I recognize Her authority as legitimate and coming directly from Jesus Christ.  When She is under attack, I will do my best to defend Her.  But I am also an American, and I regard the Constitution as precious and one of the pinnacles of human achievement.  By standing up against the onerous intrusion of the Obama Administration upon the Church's rights, I am defending both my Church and my country.  And your church and your country, too.