Better than a Hallelujah

 Recently I was reminded again of the song Better than a Hallelujah, which Amy Grant recorded in 2010. From the first that I heard it, it's been a tear-jerker for me, but now it strikes me on even a deeper level than before. 

When I first latched on to the song, I was drew encouragement and consolation from it, because I was in a time of pouring out my miseries. I needed to hear that my mess was indeed beautiful, and that pouring it out to God really was better than a choir singing out... The hallelujah, well, that spoke to me of trying really hard to have faith and to stand firm, when all I felt capable of was crumbling. 

We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a hallelujah

Now it's some ten-odd years later. Now I'm in a formation program to become a spiritual director. Now this makes me weep for the sheer beautiful truth of it. 

God just hears a melody

It's in fact the Song of the Resurrection, which He has written and He pours into us even as we are pouring out our miseries to God. "Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be poured into your lap" (Luke 6:38). It is precisely in those moments where we feel the most pitiful, when we cry out, that God is instantly reciprocating and pouring Himself out in return. It might take years to consciously receive, but "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" (Rom. 10:13). 

I think if there is one task of the contemplative spiritual companion, it is to bear witness to God's presence, who He is and what He does. In a way, it is what Amy Grant did for me (or rather Sarah Hart and Chapin Hartford, songwriters, did). The song affirmed to me, yes, it really is better to pour out your misery than it is to carry out mere religious action, even if that action is objectively good (and especially if it is just conformity for the sake of saving face or pleasing someone else). There is a messy point in life where honesty, for a moment, flies in the face of what is right, decent, and true. But the truth is, God hears through it. Hearing another human being affirm that pouring out one's heart to God is beautiful is enough to support faith until it becomes one's own interior knowledge.

Heaven knows there's no shortage of provocation to our cries of misery. It's a grace, actually. The misery itself? No. But the act of faith that knows there is God to whom I can turn meaningfully with it, that's such a tremendous gift. 

In reality, most of the time these exchanges happen in excruciatingly slow motion. I don't just feel miserable for an hour, cry out to God, and then skip along merrily through my life, blessed beyond measure. These things require patience, stamina, and determination. I think it is like planting a fruit tree, and it is why it is ten years later than I can look back and hold the fruit in my hand that grew from a dead pit. This is the spiritual life. There is no quick fix, but there is real transformation. It's true!

As a bonus, here's the official video, telling its own story: 

The Anawim of Advent: Infertility

I remembered it this morning during Mass.

"If you struggle with infertility and are already depressed, it's not a good idea to go to daily Mass the week before Christmas."

We discussed it in my infertility support group back in the day. Because, for several days, the Scriptures tell several stories of women who were infertile, and then got pregnant and had babies who grew up to be someone significant in salvation history.

And no one who is infertile and depressed about it so close to Christmas wants to hear yet another story about a baby.

My days of anguish are years behind me, ever since the positive pregnancy test I had in 2004. My daughter will be 12 next year. She was born the day after we finalized our son's adoption (when he was 3 1/2).

And I hear all those stories differently now, too. The problem is, we all need to learn to feel the anguish in them. What flies by in a few moments' reading needs to be something that hits us all in the gut.

An angel of the LORD appeared to the woman and said to her,

“Though you are barren and have had no children,yet you will conceive and bear a son. The woman went and told her husband,“A man of God came to me;he had the appearance of an angel of God, terrible indeed. I did not ask him where he came from, nor did he tell me his name. But he said to me,‘You will be with child and will bear a son.  (Judges 13)

Both were righteous in the eyes of God,observing all the commandmentsand ordinances of the Lord blamelessly. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barrenand both were advanced in years. 
 “Do not be afraid, Zechariah,because your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son,and you shall name him John. And you will have joy and gladness,and many will rejoice at his birth,for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. 
“How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.” And the angel said to him in reply,“I am Gabriel, who stand before God.I was sent to speak to you and to announce to you this good news. But now you will be speechless and unable to talkuntil the day these things take place,because you did not believe my words,which will be fulfilled at their proper time.”

After this time his wife Elizabeth conceived,
and she went into seclusion for five months, saying,
“So has the Lord done for me at a time when he has seen fit
to take away my disgrace before others.” (Luke 1)

There is an awe, a fear, that descends upon the wife of Manoah, whose name we are not told. Zechariah, on the other hand, has grown old with the pain of barrenness, and the pain has gotten so crusty that he no longer has power to believe. His long pain needed a long rehabilitation -- even longer than Elizabeth's confinement. During that time, his fear of hoping is replaced by joyful faith, magnified in silence.

Longing for a child that cannot be conceived is the strange ache, not of a loss, but of something that has never been. It is a form of anguish, a sense of impotence, of deep inability, of powerlessness. In biblical times, if not now, it was the worst of social shames. One does not belong; one has no people, no future. The fact that God is "the Lord and giver of life" is of deep, distressing consternation. It seems one also has no standing with God.

And yet from the outside, no one can see this anguish. One carries on through a private, intimate humiliation, disappointment, and grief.

Spiritually, this is a place of incredible value, and it is the path along which God brought Israel, making it the anawim, "the poor who depend on the Lord for deliverance."

It is very difficult, especially for powerful, modern Americans, to be in the position of the anawim. It is painful. And like it did to Zechariah, the pain can make one crusty and quick to doubt.

To be brought to this place, and to cry out for strength and to cling in trust to God who is Good, is a priceless gift. We need to help others who are in this situation to persevere in hope and faith, not for the deliverance of their choice, but for their choice of Deliverer.

The message of Advent is: Our God will come and will not delay. He is the Deliverer.

Lord, grant us the grace to open our hearts and to receive You as You are.

Realizing What I Forgot

Today I had one of those moments that I might have thought was never, ever going to happen to me. I realized that I had forgotten all about a pain that had once been so deep as to control my emotional life, namely, infertility.

I was talking with a woman I had just met, and as we were getting acquainted and she was telling me about her large family, she asked me how many children I have.

I told her, I have two. Not only did I not explain, defend, or mourn over the fact to her, I didn't even really think about doing it. It was only her expression that stirred me to remember I once would have done that.

Living among faithful Catholics can be difficult for women whose family size seems inadequately generous. Yes, people make either judgments or assumptions. Because there is nothing that is considered everyone's business as much as the intimate details of other women's reproduction. The sense of a required story to stay in other's good graces can be overwhelming. I've heard it so many times both from women who struggle with low fertility, or even just women who for other reasons have "small" families. And how many times oy vey! have I heard from some people that every last evil in the world is caused by all those selfish women who would rather live in their nice houses and go on trips rather than have children. Because we all know that women with few or no children choose that.

It can be a cesspool of judgment and rash talk.

But you know what, I know my own story. I am personally very happy to share my story. But I don't feel compelled to defend myself with my story. And my story is by no means dominated by grief and mourning. Becoming a parent has been a wonderful gift from God, just as He fills my life with so many gifts. My life isn't like anyone else's that I know, at least not in detail. I can also respect that others have a story, gifts and a call. And today I realize there is great peace in not only being myself, but in allowing myself freedom from all the thoughts or potential thoughts from others that could reach me. In the right context, to be able to say, "you know what, I don't care" is extremely healthy.

Do Pregnancy Complaints Rip Your Heart Out?

I have written at length in the past about the unspoken pain many women carry due to infertility. I lived there for five years. Women who are in the grips of such pain rarely speak out about it, except perhaps to others they know who have experienced the same pain and therefore can understand. It can be an all-consuming pain, and all-consuming pains are very difficult to speak about at all, let alone objectively, to try to explain it to someone to whom it is foreign.

But the other day I startled myself a little by finding myself in a 180° situation while being party to a conversation about a certain pregnancy. In that moment I pictured right where I had been, in the Children's department of the library, with my toddler foster son. It was some "bring your kids to play and learn" gathering, and it was the two of us with two other women and their children. One of the women was pregnant. And she was complaining.

At the time I had never experienced pregnancy, and I wanted to with all my heart. Anyone who complained about giving life was branded in my book as an ungrateful, selfish lout.

So a decade later, seeing the scene in my mind, I was startled to realize I've learned a few things since then. I thought I should write a blog post to the misery-gripped infertile woman I was back then. And, to anyone else it might help.

You hear her say: "I've already gained so much weight."
What it hurts her too much to say: I've always felt so ugly. God, I hate myself.

You hear her say: "I'm gonna make my husband pay for doing this to me!"
What it hurts her too much to say: The last time I was pregnant he started going to a prostitute. He doesn't know I know, and I'm too devastated to bring it up.

You hear her say: "What am I gonna do with another baby?"
What it hurts her too much to say: Why should a horrible woman like me, that no one could really love, bring an innocent child into this world? I'll miss her up too badly.

You hear her say: "Ugh! All those doctor appointments."
What it hurts her too much to say: My last child miscarried/was stillborn/had a serious birth defect/was sick and I'm terrified it will happen again.

You hear her say: "I can't stand feeling sick!"
What it hurts her too much to say: I'm getting pressure to abort this baby, too.

My dear infertile sister, the next time you cringe or rage at the complaints of a woman about her pregnancy, consider that she, too, might just know pain that is too profound for her to face and to put into honest words. Yes, her words hurt and wound you. Just remember the maxim that hurting people hurt people. When you hear it, open your heart, even silently, and offer her your love. Ask God to offer His love to her through you. And guess what? When you do that, you do the maternal thing.

You exercise spiritual maternity.

Surprised by Hope

This morning, our deacon preached on how today's readings bespeak hope. He talked about how we all have dead places in us, like Abraham and Sarah who were too old to have children, like the leper who was not only terminally ill but cut off from the community. These "point of no return" places leave us with no hope for change. The only exception is if there is divine intervention.

Divine intervention is all over Scripture.

And it isn't about people magically getting their wishes, or attitude adjustment that merely sees good in a bad situation.

Divine intervention is about making the impossible possible. Christianity is divine intervention in the human race, making it possible for all of us broken, sinful, self-absorbed human beings to come into union with the creative, holy, self-donating Love that is God -- and to live there, as apprentices, and eventually as masters. All by His gift, offered by Him and awaiting our response.

That mention of the hopeless case of Abraham and Sarah's infertility struck home. Deacon Steve referred to how hopelessness sometimes has to reach utter despair and desperation before it flings itself out with a request like the one made to Jesus today, "Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean." It is the acknowledgment of our own utter powerlessness to change ourselves. I want to be clean, but I have no power to make it happen.

With my own flesh and blood I've written my own story of fading hope and utter despair when it comes to infertility. There's a struggle with one's very purpose, one's sense of worthiness of blessing, of fulfillment. Sometimes there is much grinding that occurs before even being blessed with a sense of climax of reaching desperation, if you know what I mean. I've experienced this in other aspects of life as well. It really is a blessing to reach a breaking point, even though it doesn't feel like it at the time. It's like the blessed release of death. On the other side there is acceptance, learning, and a new kind of life-giving potential. But none of that is evident for some time, only pain.

(I don't wonder that folks sometimes want that breaking point so badly that they make our daily sagging hope worse than it might otherwise be. Like Redd Foxx on Sanford and Son, they are constantly proclaiming, "This is the big one!" A breaking point is a gift of grace, not something we can conjure for ourselves. We need to be patient with the suffering of each day, in all its painful hum drum, hard work, lack of glory.)

I realized today that one result in having written these stories of despair in my own life is that hope strikes me as a demand of reality. My daughter is a concrete person whom I can touch. I am bound, obligated, by my experience of God to hope in the face of these other situations where I have experienced hopelessness. Life is not random. God speaks through everything I experience, and He is not haphazard in His lessons. He is not teaching me to rely on some magical power by which I satiate my passing pleasures. He is teaching me to live in union with Him, which is ultimate, cosmic happiness. That entails laying aside the penultimate for the ultimate, and of course learning to discern between the two in the nitty gritty of daily life.

I discovered hope, in its deep green vigor, like a surprise in my life. Just as the plants in my garden are practically doubling in size over the course of a few days, all of a sudden I realize how powerfully hope has gripped my life.

That really is quite marvelous.

Jealousy and the Zero-Sum Game

Some years ago, a woman on an infertility forum I was in made a very profound point that makes more sense to me as time passes. You see, this was a group of faithful Catholic women who were both struggling with the desire to have children and struggling against the notion, broadcast so loudly in both the medical community and the infertility culture at large, that children are a commodity to be demanded and produced at will. This is an incredibly painful rock and hard place to be between. To truly entrust oneself to God and seek to do all that is humanly possible to open oneself to the most optimal health.... and to try to maintain this within a loving and patient relationship with one's spouse, all while yearning for children -- this is a very heavy cross.

And in that support group context, it would occasionally happen that a woman would get pregnant and stay pregnant. And that gave all of the rest of us the occasion to decide how we would react.

Some women were gracious and excited for one so blessed. Oh, we were all excited, but some had an easier time expressing it. Some, myself included, had a harder time with this. After reading through fifty emails of congratulations, and a few rounds of the amazed new mother responding how she is so grateful and thrilled at God's blessing, there would often be at least one honest soul who confessed to having a very hard time at watching someone else be blessed. I imagine there were others who simply quietly slunk off and had a good cry.

It's not that anyone would wish ill on someone who had struggled, but it was just so dang painful, and rejoicing with those who rejoice never seemed harder.

This whole scenario would replay itself every so often, and one of these times was the prompt for the insight that has stuck with me:  God's blessings are not a zero-sum game.

Meaning, of course, that just because God had blessed x person, nothing had been taken away from y person. Your blessing does not diminish me. My blessing does not threaten you.

And that is so, so hard to take in when you are in pain and are already feeling threatened by everything.

I think part of the way we get in pain in the first place is by getting stuck defining goodness in our own self-centered terms. We know we are limited. We know that if we, say, give our time to sewing wonderful outfits, we won't have time for cooking wonderful meals -- or at least not that same time. If we worship a god that we have created in our own image, we think of this god as being as limited as ourselves, probably without being aware of how silly such a god would be. If god has blessed you, that must mean there is less for me. If you didn't exist, I might be the one being blessed. This is why jealousy leads to hatred.

To truly rejoice with the one who rejoices, we need to grasp that the one who bestows blessings is infinite. God is good. It is His nature. He is not some idol like ourselves of our own making.

But again, trusting that God is good when one is in pain is difficult. There were plenty of times when I yelled at God, cried at God, got disgusted at God, and turned away from God in self-pity because of pain. It's that last one that is really the goal of the enemy of our souls. If the devil can get a soul to just poke a toe into the miry tar of self-pity, he will have little more work to do. By just rumpling around the slightest bit in self-pity, that soul will lose sight of God's goodness, love and mercy, and lose sight of its own identity as a child of God who is loved and as a creature of God who, by mere fact of one's existence, owes the Lord reverence and worship in justice.

So much is corrected by praying "Lord, You are God; I am not."

The answer to pain, jealousy, and every other sin and negative thing we experience is to bring them to God for a good long show-and-tell. Just make sure you are talking to the real God, and not navel gazing, or you are really just back in the trap of self-pity.

It is hard. But when you bring pain to God, He responds. He acts, He answers, He involves Himself. He is Almighty. He is not a gumball dispenser, though, so along with your pain, bring respect, honor and surrender.

Because you want out. You want the blessing this time.

Instead of cursing the candle which has shown you God's blessing is possible, extend your wick in faith and trust, and receive the light of Christ.

The Hard Ways and the Love of God

This morning I've been thinking about some of the hard ways in which God has led me.

It is, indeed, of ultimate importance that we come to understand that God never has any thought toward us other than total and complete love. But I guess that means that we also come to disassociate our ideas and our experiences of love from our desires for indulgence. Indulgence means that right now, today, I have an idea of something that I believe will satisfy me, and I want tons of that and I want to wallow in it, even disappear into it. That's pretty much a definition of disordered love, is it not. First, we know by experience that what we think will make us happy today doesn't always make us happy tomorrow. We also know that just because a little of something gives pleasure does not mean that a lot of that same something gives a lot of pleasure. Sometimes a lot of something just makes us sick, or at least sick of that thing. And disappearing into something? People disappear into prison cells.

Disordered love is about willing bondage.

What about real love, then?

Yes, there is such a thing. Even people who "believe in God" sometimes doubt, based on their experiences, whether real love exists, or at least if it will ever show up in their lives. If God loved me, then I wouldn't have xyz going on in my life, children wouldn't suffer and everyone would be good to each other. It's not a far leap to chuck the idea of a personal God entirely, except perhaps as a cultural icon, an idea, after one questions God's love in this way.

Moderns like their theism to be self-styled, and this kind of junk betrays that one has remade God in one's own image. I think what one is really saying is If I were God, I would get rid of xyz in my life, and I'd make everyone happy. I'd be a great sugar daddy!

Reminds me of listening to a bunch of kids (or maybe candidates!) making plans for the country after one of them becomes President. Everything is free and everyone has all the money in the world.

Back to the top. I've been thinking about some of the hard ways in which God has led me.

God's love, the real stuff, has as an effect our freedom. When we really let God do His thing with us, it will (get ready, you can take it) hurt, but only to the extent that what binds our lives up gets broken away and what imprisons us gets destroyed. We simply have to want real love more than we want the bondage we create.

So, I was thinking of all those jobs where I had to make and answer hundreds and thousands of phone calls. Me, the phone-phobic woman. Some of those I answered were extremely intense when I worked for the Right to Life office and got grieving or angry or sometimes just downright evil people on the other end. And I thought of the time I spent in Japan. At a time when I struggled to speak even to friends in English, I plopped myself into a foreign country by myself where I could not communicate with anyone beyond the level of a toddler. For 30 months my soul scraped the dregs of isolation and loneliness. And then there was the whole infertility thing, when I felt that God Himself was thwarting my deep desire to become a mother. That pain was only second to the pain and mental torment I'd endured wondering if I would ever have a husband in the first place.

Often during these years I'd say to the Lord through my tears, "I don't see your love in this."

God's every thought toward us is love. His every movement toward us is love. His every desire toward us is love. Love entails the giving of oneself. But for God to give Himself to us in a way that we can receive, we need to have space, openness to Him. All of these painful things were really like sunlight shining on me, melting my frozen, fist-like heart that would not open to receive anything from God because of fear and shame and all that bad stuff. If ice could think, it might think sunlight is an enemy bent on its destruction. It might not realize that there is an entirely different state in which it can exist -- that of life-giving and refreshing water. It might not realize that it is meant to be part of a cycle of movement and change and that if it gives itself even to the hottest sun, it won't be annihilated.

Sometimes the things that cause us the most pain are the deepest evidence of God's loving presence in our lives. He is coming to liberate us. It is who He is and what He does. He is our freedom. We can trust Him.

Bucket List

A few days ago I got the most recent copy of the propaganda magazine my undergraduate college sends out. (I always read it with raised eyebrows when I was a student -- how did our humdrum student life get to sound so incredibly amazing when packaged for donors?! Incredible?!) Amongst the comments I noted that apparently it is the thing these days for students to be encouraged to make a "bucket list" and then plan to accomplish these things.

Now, I'm with it enough to understand this is based on a movie I've never seen and means that you are supposed to list all the things you'd like to accomplish before you die.

So I thought about that.

I'm really not the sort of person to think dreamily about things I'd like to do. There have been a few times in my life when a desire welled up in me to do something. One such time occurred when I read The Way of the Pilgrim in the early 90s, which is an account of the spiritual journey of an anonymous Russian Orthodox man. In it, he expressed a desire to go to Mount Carmel in Israel. I was completely taken with the same desire by the time I finished the book, and I told the Lord that if He opened the way for me, I would take it and go. It was several days, maybe a couple weeks later, that I was at a John Michael Talbot concert and he spoke of an upcoming pilgrimage he was making to the Holy Land, and mentioned they would go to Mount Carmel. There was my chance! It worked, and I went. It ended up being my Catholic honeymoon as I went just two weeks after coming into the Church.

Then there was my desire to go to Japan, which was birthed in a much less sublime or even logical way. As a kid I wanted to be a missionary; my best friend was a Japanese-American, and this made me believe going to Japan would be easy. When an already difficult relationship completely broke apart and I had no idea what to do with my life, I looked up opportunities to teach in Japan, and I moved there. It was the worst decision I ever made, at least in terms of discerning what I could handle. But I thought it was what I wanted, and I did it.

The only other thing I wanted deeply was to get married, which I eventually did. And of course then I did also deeply want to have kids, which I also did. Maybe it was these experiences that taught me something about this whole concept of "wanting something and going for it."

There's such an illusion of control buried in that. Sure, we are free to make choices. It's great to be able to follow through on the desires of one's heart, when it's a choice to buy a certain t-shirt or learn to speak Danish. But, when the desires hit the core of who we are, something changes. I wanted to get married for such a long time before I did. All I can say is I thank the Lord that I didn't marry in my 20s. I shudder to think what my life would be like if I had. We wanted to have children right away, and lots of them. That didn't happen. We can want things, but we don't enjoy this illusory control that gives us what we want with a simple decision. At least, that's not the way my life has worked.

I spent a lot of time moaning and crying and griping and complaining to God about both my marriage prospects and my desire for children. Really, the infertility thing broke me, deeply. If children were this wonderful gift from God I could not understand why we were so out of His favor to struggle so. But I think what the Lord wanted of me was that He would become my "Bucket" so to speak. In the midst of caring for a foster son whose adoption was pending and pending and pending, making it so that we could not pursue another adoption while, for a time, living with the possibility of losing him, and at the same time finding it impossible to become pregnant, I finally came to the point of switching my prayer from, "Lord, please do this for us!" to "Lord, here is my life. Do with it whatever You want." Instead of having my bucket full of my desires that I set out to get fulfilled, I reluctantly gave the whole thing to Him. After such a wrestling match it felt more like defeat than surrender.

And yet, God is always to be trusted. We did have a daughter, and we finalized our son's adoption. More importantly, these things were part of God's plan leading me closer to Him and healing my soul. That's what's in God's bucket for me. I know now that His plans always turn out better than mine, even though His can hurt an awful lot (especially when I resist) and frequently leave me confused for a time. But never, ever has God proven unfaithful to me. He always works everything to my good and helps me bear my own mistakes.

So the only thing I want on my bucket list these days is to wake up every day that I get, offer the day to God to be His, come what may, and to have the love and grace in my life to follow as closely as I possibly can the directives He presents.

He gives me so much more, besides.

Love, joy, suffering, miscarriage

I am struggling. Embedded deep within me, it seems I have a calendar which does not allow me to forget that during this week three years ago we learned I was pregnant, and then learned I had lost the baby before I had even gotten used to the idea of being pregnant.

Today had the same Mass reading that hit me so hard last year when I wrote about this anniversary. That was striking.

Raise a glad cry, you barren one who did not bear, break forth in jubilant song, you who were not in labor, For more numerous are the children of the deserted wife than the children of her who has a husband, says the LORD. Enlarge the space for your tent, spread out your tent cloths unsparingly; lengthen your ropes and make firm your stakes. For you shall spread abroad to the right and to the left; Your descendants shall dispossess the nations and shall people the desolate cities. Fear not, you shall not be put to shame; you need not blush, for you shall not be disgraced. The shame of your youth you shall forget, the reproach of your widowhood no longer remember. For he who has become your husband is your Maker; his name is the LORD of hosts; Your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, called God of all the earth. The LORD calls you back, like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, A wife married in youth and then cast off, says your God. For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great tenderness I will take you back. In an outburst of wrath, for a moment I hid my face from you; But with enduring love I take pity on you, says the LORD, your redeemer. This is for me like the days of Noah, when I swore that the waters of Noah should never again deluge the earth; So I have sworn not to be angry with you, or to rebuke you. Though the mountains leave their place and the hills be shaken, My love shall never leave you nor my covenant of peace be shaken, says the LORD, who has mercy on you.

How it hits me this year is that during this season of Advent that always stirs me so deeply with hope and then Christmas which has been an annual reminder to me of the flood, the torrent of love God has for me that has totally reshaped my life... during this powerful time, I have a poignant reminder that I cannot fulfill my own desires for myself. Infertility and the loss of two pregnancies has taught me that. I can't give myself God's gifts. Every good thing that comes to me comes from the hand of God, and what He doesn't drop right into my soul He gives directly into the hands of other people, with the directive to be faithful to Him, thereby giving to me what I so desperately need. In the same way, He puts into my heart and hands things that belong to others, with the same charge to live faithfully to Him, thereby spreading His gifts adequately. We all fail each other. But God is so generous; He doesn't seem to mind working with our failures and still accomplishing His will. In the midst of all the beauty with which God floods me, I have also this reminder: I am not the Author of this. Neither great joy nor suffering are evidence of some kind of merit on my part, some kind of trick that I've performed to win God's favor. Rather, His love IS. That's the fact. I am a creature. That is also the fact. A creature drawn to union with the Creator will experience both joy and suffering, but neither joy nor suffering amount to anything apart from that union. I can try and struggle to get myself happy, but it is futile unless what I seek is whatever union with God in Christ calls for.

"To reach satisfaction in all, desire satisfaction in nothing." -- St. John of the Cross.

Motherhood is a Calling (But What About Those Who Don't Get the Call?)

It's early in the morning, I woke even earlier, and I feel like shooting from the hip.

I just read this very good, very true article which has been floating around among several of my Facebook friends. Read it here so you know what I'm talking about: Motherhood is a Calling (And Where Your Children Rank)

Every time I read something that starts into the refrain of derisive comments heard by mothers of many (that means more than three) I can't help but think about the other women -- the ones who long to have children but struggle, either because they are single against their choice or because they have low or impaired fertility in their marriage. I've felt both pains, but it is especially the second that always rises in my heart when I read about the crosses of motherhood.

Maybe what got to me was this line from the article: Do we believe that we want children because there is some biological urge, or the phantom “baby itch”? "Itch" is too casual a term, but those who have never agonized for years with the unfulfilled desire for children may not be able to understand the painful yearning in the soul of a married Christian woman who knows her union is to mirror that of Christ and the Church -- it is meant to bear fruit and to give life. Rarely does such a woman need a theology lecture to realize this. It is written in her nature, and that of her husband.

The article goes on to say "Motherhood is... what God gave you time for." Well, ok. The article is being addressed to mothers, and so, yeah, for those women, it is what God called them to. But the truer part comes later in the article, where the author talks about death and resurrection: the paschal mystery. THAT is what God gave us time for. Many married women are called to motherhood, even to be mothers of many. But let's look at another cross some women bear.

See that couple who come to church Sunday after Sunday, and you with your busy family aren't even sure if they are married or engaged or just dating? Or cohabiting? They have no kids, so you have no common ground to actually talk with them. They look like they have some money. They both work. Hmm... I suppose they're just one of those couples who think they need to travel and own a house and three cars before they have a family. I wonder if she knows how bad contraception is for her body. I guess I'll just pray for them that they can get over their selfishness and that God will turn their hearts...

Isolation. Judgment. Friendlessness. Misunderstanding. Misdirected "jealousy" by those who truly aren't open to life. These are real crosses, too, but many women have no words to express them without opening up the privacy of their hearts and then sounding like whiners. They might not get comments in the grocery store, but might it be even more painful to be stopped on the church steps and be given a lecture about why for the good of their souls they need to be open to life? Or "Relax. It will happen in time." (Yes, the infertile also have their list of painfully annoying comments far too oft repeated.) Instead of relaxing, they spend their time doing medical research, traipsing from visit to disappointing doctor visit, usually being ridiculed by doctors for not "being serious" and trying artificial reproductive technologies and being offered little other hope or understanding for what is impairing their fertility.

This paragraph is striking:

But a Christian should have a different paradigm. We should run to to the cross. To death. So lay down your hopes. Lay down your future. Lay down your petty annoyances. Lay down your desire to be recognized. Lay down your fussiness at your children. Lay down your perfectly clean house. Lay down your grievances about the life you are living. Lay down the imaginary life you could have had by yourself. Let it go.

Now, I know from experience how painful this can be when the "hope" you are laying down grinds down to the very core of your meaning as a woman. Oh, I wanted so badly at one point to be recognized as a "real Catholic woman" because I had six or more kids in tow. But, that was an imaginary life. I couldn't for the life of me understand why God wasn't giving it to me, and I yelled and screamed at Him to let Him know it, too.

There ain't nothing we can hide behind in this Christian journey. What St. Paul said is true, women are saved through childbearing (1 Tim. 2:15). That's like saying women are saved while being women. A woman is saved by being who she is designed to be. But let's not wrench that out of the context of all else we know to be true in Christ. We are saved by the cross of Christ, by His death and resurrection, by being incorporated into Him in His death and raised to life in the Trinity, a communion of persons. For some women, united with the will of God for their lives, this experience of childbearing is very fruitful, and this then is how they meet the cross. For other women, also united with the will of God for their lives, the experience of childbearing is not fruitful, or takes on forms that are not physical. This is how they meet the cross. Pumping out a half dozen babies does not per se produce sanctity. We can't hide behind our many children or our sorrows and griefs at why we have none (or few), propping these up and trying to get these to be our union with Christ. No, nothing can replace my heart following Christ, not even my own (martyr-complex?) notion of my vocation.

There is joy to find, and it is in Christ. He is available to each and every person, regardless of the circumstances of your life.

"I love you Steve," turns into "You failed me, Steve"

I seem to be on a kick lately of watching movies about mentally ill musicians. I just finished watching the movie The Soloist. The plot involves a newspaper reporter, Steve Lopez, who tells the story of a homeless man, Nathaniel Ayers, who had once attended Julliard School of Music and who was a gifted cellist. It was interesting, but not what I would call profoundly moving, with the exception of one scene. Nathaniel had just told Steve that he loved him, and Steve was feeling the pressure of being the only positive human contact Nathaniel knew. Steve tells another character, "I don't want him to love me. 'I love you Steve,' turns into 'You failed me, Steve.'" And this potential of failing in yet another relationship (as we get hints of the failed relationship with his ex-wife and son) is more than Steve can bear.

That admission struck me like a ton of bricks. It was at once so obvious that he might feel that way (I immediately understood his emotional logic) and yet it was such a completely foreign idea to me (I don't believe it has ever occurred to me that anyone would think that way).

I had many thoughts at once upon processing this bit of dialogue. I thought of how I would consider anyone I love as a reflection of God, of human love as a taste of the transcendent, and therefore demanding or expecting something from another limited human being that I would expect to satisfy me fully doesn't seem logically consistent in the least. Holding out a worry as this character does seems to indicate the pride of feeling he really was all that was operative in the good that was happening. He was no instrument, in his own mind. I can understand that this is a terrifying feeling. There is only peace in knowing there is One who is greater who fills and animates us, who is closer than our own breath and is the Meaning of everything. Otherwise, my goodness, the pressure on anyone's back to be the All for another! Yikes!

But then I also thought of how my own love for God went through a phase where this exact sort of thing was involved: "God I love you" did become "God, you failed me." For example, when I was in the throes of dealing with my infertility, I did get very angry at God and didn't understand where His love was in all of the pain. I remember going to confession and identifying with the older son of the prodigal parable. Here I am, doing everything right, and you don't even give me a goat to celebrate with my friends!! But at that point I wasn't really relating to God at all; I was sorting out my own heart to be able to relate to Him again not as an idea, but as a Person. A personal God with a desire for a personal journey with me. With a will of His own, with things of His own to share with me. I was missing out on that completely and just fishing for things I wanted. God's goods; His products, things He could do for me. But not God Himself. Same is true with people. If I'm just fishing for what I want in a relationship with another person, I'm going to be missing that person completely.

In the movie, we do see that Steve was sorting out his own heart to be able to relate to Nathaniel as a person instead of a story or a project or an annoyance. I guess there is quite a journey we need to make sometimes, just to be able to meet another person as a person, rather than as a tool, a toy, or an obstacle. Without an admission, an acknowledgment, an awareness, an experience of Transcendence, what is the hope for any sort of personal relationship at all?

Laetare Sunday

Today is Laetare Sunday, or the fourth Sunday of Lent. Catholic parishes might use modest flowers today, and a bit more music to note this festive turn in Lent.

It seems that most reflections I've heard about this Sunday lean towards saying "Aren't you glad Lent is half over with? Soon you can get back to all those things you gave up!" But to me, this is missing the beauty and the point of Lent that the Church intends to give us.

I think of an experience I had several years ago as a member of the on-line Catholic infertility support group I belong to. Someone suggested that all who wished should join together in praying a 54-day rosary novena. (This was the first of many novenas the group prayed.) The idea was that for the first half we would be praying for each other for the healing we all desired, and for the gift of children. Then in the second half we would pray in thanksgiving for the graces God had given and would give.

This was the first time I ever participated in something like this, and praying the rosary every day for 54 days was a major undertaking for me. I was in a very painful stage of our infertility journey; the ache in my heart for a baby was intense and unrelenting. I did all right with the first half of the novena, pouring out my pain on my own behalf as well as for my on-line friends. But when it came time to shift to thanksgiving... ooh, that was hard. I didn't feel like I'd gotten all the pain emptied out. I didn't suddenly feel more hopeful. But the directive was to start praying in thanksgiving and gratitude for what God had given and what He would do. The directive was to make an act of faith and hope. I felt more like staying attached to the pain.

But I did it.

I didn't miraculously become pregnant during those 54 days, but some women did. And one woman who had long since given up hope of ever being able to conceive discovered at a medical exam that she was actually five months pregnant! We were all deeply encouraged at the power of praying for each other.

And I learned something about Lent.

If we live this season honestly and openly, I believe, we encounter again our intense desire for the glory of God to be revealed in us, through us, and in our world, and the utter impossibility that our own power should accomplish this. We are simple vessels. The power is the Lord's. It is His power, His initiative, and our need, our ache. Our emptiness for Him to fill. We are invited again to look at our lives, make emptiness where perhaps we have cluttered ourselves, open up the space to invite Him in.

And then, we are invited to rejoice. Not because soon we can clutter our lives again, but because in this wonderful dance, in this wonderful harmonization with the Lord, we know He will not fail to do His part! We may well fail, and we do! But He will not. We rejoice because He is coming in power. He is coming to break the bonds of death. He is coming to bring new life that we cannot now even imagine. He is coming to breathe on us, filling us with His Spirit, recreating us -- and the whole world! We are filled with anticipation and hope, not because of anything we can do to bring on the power, but because He is the one who fills the hungry with good things and raises up the lowly from the dust.

So with great joy, let's allow ourselves to experience our hunger, our lowliness, our poverty, the beauty of Nothingness. Jesus overflowingly fulfills all of our expectations, usually in ways we least expect. Let us walk on towards Jerusalem now, with the loving and longing eye of Our Lord ever on us.

A Different Gift

Tonight I had a most unusual experience. We were at an event at our parish, and afterwards a friend who is pregnant and I got chatting. She reviewed for me the history of her ebb and flow of fertility; times when she conceived easily, times when she couldn't conceive at all, when she miscarried, when she never expected to become pregnant again. It was the whole nine yards of conversation. I could almost hear the unspoken thoughts coming through: "So, you never know, Marie, despite the number of years -- the same thing might happen to you!"

I could very easily imagine a day when my heart would have started beating fast and I would have broken out into a sweat. Or worse, broken down into tears, these words pummeling at me like bricks falling on my already bruised and aching body.

But tonight, it was just a chat about her experience, and appreciating that she was exuberant about an unexpected turn in her life.

And I know I've had an unexpected turn in my life, too.

It was just over a year ago the last time I found it necessary to run out the back door at a baby shower. Too much baby talk, too many pregnant women, too much pain in my heart. A complete inability to face it.

One of the transformations that has happened for me this year has been peace about our family size. I don't know why it should be, but it is true: infertility just doesn't weigh on me anymore. I realized this somewhere in the late Spring. Today sure confirmed it.

Infertility is a strange kind of mourning because it is mourning the absence of something, like the loss of something that never was there. So it is hard to articulate being free of an absence. I guess it is just called contentment. It, too is a gift of God, just like the yearning is. It's just... different.

Lent's Way of Reaching Me

Some people give up blogging or computer-related activities in general for Lent. I had considered writing a blog post about how, since blogging tends to be such a wonderful spiritual process for me that I would be making a concerted effort to "blog for Jesus" this Lent, you know, being mindful and more diligent to really explore the things that make His presence clearer in my life, blah blah blah.

I never did get around to writing that post, but the thought of it sure came to bite me in the conscience today. It's funny how God knows all and knows me and has this way of keeping me honest, despite my best protestations.

Funny.

The other day my husband asked me what has been bothering me of late. Bothering me? Me? Whatever could he mean? After responding (by email of course; we don't have the luxury of uninterrupted conversation that often) that it wasn't much, maybe just a little tired, oh and maybe it has something to do with the new supplements I'm taking... I thought about it some more. Only, it wasn't really like a mental process whereby I came to a realization. It was much more an emotional process whereby I allowed something to emerge. I blurted it out, but assured him that I didn't even want to think about it let alone talk about it, for reasons that I know are obvious to him. It is sweet to have a spouse who understands.

In School of Community we read a section of the book on Hope about how life is a trial. This is the nature of life; it is a test. Hope is sure when and because the Great Presence in our lives is sure right now: Christ is with us, so we know Christ will remain with us, come what may. But the "come what may" is the nature of a trial. We don't know what will come, we can only know with Whom we will be, and the nature of that Whom. God is good, life has purpose, pain has purpose. But life is a trial.

I have a trial in my life and it is called infertility. It is difficult to describe the exact nature of this trial, because even for me it changes from season to season in my life. There was a time when my life was consumed by the desire to conceive a child, and this desire served me well and shaped my life, though not without long stretches of misstep and anguish. I have at times found myself completely unable to be in a room with pregnant women or small babies. And I have at times been very much at peace with it all, just sort of patiently bearing with the "maybe" and figuring in a few years (I'm 41) I can start giving away all of our baby accouterments.

Currently the hardest thing for me to face is what those trying to conceive call the "two week wait" when there is something unusual going on.

Welcome to my first week of Lent.

Last week I visited with my Naturopath and started on a new supplement, a chasteberry compound, and rededicated myself to faithfulness with the supplements I had been taking more and more haphazardly. The good news is I can feel a difference. When you deal with hormonal imbalances as long as I have you can feel the presence of progesterone in your body. The difficult thing, which I will explain for those who either aren't familiar or don't spend your life obsessing over these things, is that a rise in progesterone and concomitant feelings also happen when one has conceived. In general, I need progesterone supplementation both to conceive and to be healthy. I used to take HcG injections which essentially mimic the action of pregnancy in the body. Because of all this, I really can no longer trust my senses about things like "feeling pregnant." I can feel a hormonal shift, but I can't say what causes it. I used to say this with anguish; now I just say it as a fact. The last time I started brand new supplements with my ND I had wild and crazy pregnancy symptoms, but they were the estrogen-dominant type.

Let's add in to the mix that the last two positive pregnancy tests I had ended in miscarriage almost sooner than I could turn around.

I am helped by staying with the Great Presence right now, and His assurance that He holds life and death, my life and death, in His hand, despite seismic uncertainty. And I can't quite talk myself out of this being a seismic issue, as much as I'd like to put it more in the category of whether I make or miss the sale on asparagus. What comes tomorrow -- any energy I invest in imagination is really just energy I'd rather spend in what is right now.

But this is a trial. It is THE category of life that most draws me to cling to the cross. At Mass today I reflected on how Jesus handed over His body, placed the control over His sacred body, into the hands of sinners and was violently tortured. Like King David I can only say how much better to fall into the hands of God than the hands of violent men (2 Sam 24:14-15)! I entrust my body, which is given to me by God in the first place, to the One who sustains everything.

You Are Three

Tonight, my daughter had some trouble getting to sleep. Well, no, she went to sleep just fine, only she couldn't stay asleep. Seems pinworms or something of the sort were causing her great grief and aggravating every other possible minor discomfort into something that demanded attention and wakefulness. I gave her the appropriate medicine, and as we waited for it to take effect, she said she wanted to go downstairs with me.

So, we sat on the couch, and I tried to encourage her to lay down and try to sleep. She flopped herself into my arms.

Watching her drift off to sleep, I couldn't help but be overcome. Still the same face that greeted me moments after birth with eyes wide with exploration. Only so much bigger. I wept with sheer gratitude for her existence. I thought how so soon she would resist my kisses, as her big brother already does and has for at least a year. I thought how soon she would be far too big for me to hold like this and to carry down the stairs.

But for now, I thought, you are only three, and here you are cuddled up in my arms!

I carried her, now sound asleep, back up to her bed -- all 38 pounds of her. She stirred a bit and remembered she had had reason to be uncomfortable earlier, but then dropped back into sleep.

I just want to hold this moment, this day, like the treasure it is. Not because I don't believe tomorrow will be an equal treasure, but because as long as I can marvel in today, tomorrow takes care of itself.

What Can You Call a Post Like This...

A lot has happened since my last post.

Wednesday morning I figured I'd gulp deep and dip into my dwindling store of pregnancy tests I bought off ebay. Two lines! That means positive. Part of me, the intellectual, fact-based part, was not completely surprised. But the part that responds spontaneously to joyful news was completely shocked and unable to respond. I think my last go-around with two lines on a test had something to do with that. That and all the rest of my history of struggling with infertility.

By Wednesday afternoon I was starting to accept this reality, starting to really warm up to thinking about the personhood of this new life.

And then late in the afternoon I started bleeding. Just a bit.

So, blah blah blah, all that stuff about bleeding being common, no cause for alarm at least half the time, yada yada, all that again.

I woke up at 4:30 this morning, which gave me plenty of time to coordinate myself to get to my OB's for a blood draw. Of course, I don't get results until tomorrow, and they don't mean anything until I can compare them with another blood draw Saturday.

My children went to visit friends, and another friend arranged to bring dinner by. I napped. I woke up to cramping and a bit heavier bleeding.

An hour or so later, I finally started to believe that the test Wednesday morning had really been positive, and that I had been only lightly bleeding before that. I'm not sure what I believe now. Actually, to be honest of course I do. I believe that this baby too has died or will shortly.

At one point this afternoon, I asked Mary Olivia (baby previously lost) to pray for us. All at once I felt great peace, and I remembered: even though I had chosen the name Olivia after a relative who had recently died, I was later struck by its meaning -- peace. The olive branch of peace. And peace is what came into my life after the incredibly short sojourn of Mary Olivia. I had been very anxious to conceive again before that, but afterwards I began to know peace about it.

I told this baby about all the people longing to see her face, but that surely Mary Olivia would be willing to wait awhile to meet her.

But what can I do. I can state my desire, I can pray, but I can't know. Soon enough I will, and whether we keep the gift of sorrow or the gift of life, there's something there with great meaning, for what life is without it?

Just please pray for us so that for my children's sake we can celebrate the Nativity without me, or despite me being a hormonal mess.

Baby Factory Open for Business

This development is astonishing. The people of Poland stand in need of our prayers.

30 years of IVF

I missed this news story; it actually was July 24. It was Louise Brown's 30th birthday. Oh, now I don't begrudge the woman her birthday or call it a tragedy, but do you remember her? She was the world's first IVF baby.

I came across an article from five years ago stating that as of that date, nearly 1,000,000 babies have followed her path. Do you realize that that means for all of those live births, there have been many, many more millions of babies who have died, either because of a failed transplant, of being allowed to thaw, or because of purposeful "selection reduction" (i.e. murder) after transplant? There are also innumerable embryos who live, suspended in time in a frozen state.

As an aside, did you know it is becoming commonplace for OBs to declare a pregnancy only when implantation has occurred, and not conception? Scientific hogwash. But do you see what a conscience salve that redefinition becomes? It is almost as if IVF is becoming the paradigm rather than natural conception.

This is a procedure which is widely socially acceptable, even by many who consider themselves pro-life. When is the last time you've seen protests outside a fertility clinic? Even apart from the destruction of embryos which usually, though not always, accompanies IVF, there are numerous problematic aspects to its use, in terms of moral acceptability, the health of the mother and child, the money-making involved for the technology's providers, and last, but not least, the utter neglect of the actual health needs of women and men with fertility challenges. Go to your nearest "fertility specialist" or Reproductive Endocrinologist, and you are likely to be pushed toward IVF without any real work towards getting to the root causes for the lack of conception or of carrying a child to term. The fault cannot all be laid at the feet of the medical folks; of course there are stories of women who simply wish to get pregnant "now" and resort to IVF when they have no particular fertility challenges.

Did you know that embryos have all naturally occurring water extracted from them and are injected with anti-freeze? Read all about the process here.

Surprised by Wisdom

This morning I was feeling a touch more than I typically do the pain of having low fertility. I turned to the Lord with a kind of heavy sigh in my heart, and flipped open my Bible.

Now, as a Protestant I got pretty good at never being surprised at anything I found in Scripture, because I spent a lot of time reading (or hearing taught) even the obscure bits. But those good old deuterocanonicals can still catch me off guard. (I recall being among a group of joking fellow converts, speaking of how our Scripture reading habits had gotten "washed away with Baptism" ... ok, work with me on the joke a bit -- "worn off with fading chrism" just doesn't work as well.)

So today I was surprised to read Wisdom 1:16-5:23.*

Check out these verses:

Yes, blessed is she, who, childless and undefiled, knew not transgression of the marriage bed; she shall bear fruit at the visitation of souls ...

For the fruit of noble struggles is a glorious one; and unfailing is the root of understanding.

Better is childlessness with virtue; for immortal is its memory: because both by God is it acknowledged, and by men.

(And if you think those who struggle to conceive are not tempted to the transgression of the marriage bed, think again about what IVF actually is....)

I understood that God's word calls me to have the perspective of eternity on my pains, both momentary and deep. The meaning of our lives goes beyond what we see in this moment. Thank you, Lord.

*By the way, I find it irksome that I cannot find a source from which I can quote this entire text in the NAB. So, I use a Protestant source which has kindly included the Douay-Rheims version.

The Good that I Would, I Do Not

I have a struggle. It is an irrational struggle. It is irrational because after years of searching, searching that came at the price of my will being moved (with difficulty) out of a stupor to even begin searching, I have answers; but I find it such a challenge to use the answers I have been given. I am forever in this state of denial of my actual need.

Here's the deal. A variety of things conspire together in my body to give me two interrelated problems: hormonal imbalances and low-grade depression. I'm not sure exactly how long this has been my biochemical reality, but it has been a long time, like since childhood. Both are very subtle problems, and they leave one feeling like one should be able to "snap out of it" by choice. Moreover I grew up around other depressed people, so until I was nearly 30 I never really questioned whether it were possible for me to live a different way.

After I returned Stateside from Japan, I stayed for a short time with friends, Leo and Mina, in Milwaukee. They are warm-hearted, sociable Filipinos, and Mina is a pediatrician. So when I sat in my room all day curled up in a blanket and slept until noon, they did not consider this normal. Mina gave me a B-complex vitamin one day, and the next morning I woke at 8 with actual energy. It was amazing. Over the next months I began, with great difficulty, to have the will to figure out what my body needed. Because depression saps desire to act for one's own good, it can be a very sticky wicket from which to emerge.

Two years later, I got married, and shortly it became clear that we weren't having success achieving pregnancy. By then I saw patterns in when depression would grab me and the difference between my depressed state and my normal state. With great trepidation and courage, I made a medical appointment to start pursuing what was going on with my body. After I explained to the doctor that I believed I had hormonal imbalances and I was struggling with depression, he patted me on the knee and said "oh, don't be sad." I don't react quickly in the moment, but out of that completely inappropriate comment grew my belief that I need to be responsible for my own health (which definitely was not my paradigm at that time!)

So, fast forward this story a bit. I finally found someone who believed in full hormonal testing, confirmed my problem, took medication, supplements, changed my diet and my entire approach to health. Depression became very rare in my life. My daughter was born.

Since that time I have been working with a Naturopathic physician. Testing with him also has shown hormonal imbalance, and I've undertaken a program of supplementation and diet that has proven very effective for keeping depression at bay, at least when I use it. And here comes the irrational part.

In days gone by, I took my pills and shots religiously. At one point I took a dozen pills on a set daily schedule, along with temperatures and pulses four times daily. The prescriptions I refilled looked very formal and serious (and were dreadfully expensive). At the end of each cycle I called the nurses at Pope Paul VI for a "cycle review". I was like a student fulfilling the most strenuous expectations of my teachers for over two years. Dr. Hilgers even complimented me on my diligence when I saw him for my third surgery for endometriosis. All this time I didn't even stop to question why I was still not achieving pregnancy despite monthly blood draws which usually showed decent hormone levels. And so it was completely devastating that my third surgery showed that my condition was worse than before the first two surgeries -- something I am told has only happened with five other of his patients (out of how many thousand?).

After that devastation I shifted responsibility for my own health care into high gear and discovered what chiropractic, Traditional Chinese medicine, and diet could do for my health. (If you want to debate whether there is any validity to these, please take it up with my daughter.) So. My paradigm now is that I have no one whom I perceive to stand over me and grade how well I care for myself. I know that if I take the nutraceuticals my Naturopath recommends, I'll be ok. I know that I need to avoid certain foods like wheat that trigger depression, I'll be ok. I have tested these things over and over again, and I know what the consistent results are. That, my friend, is another way to say that is I've figured -- several times -- I could give up the regimen and be ok, and I'm just not. (You can consult with my whole family on this one.)

So, why is it so hard for me to do it? Why is it so hard to honor what I know I need? Why, when it is all just my responsibility (there are no prescriptions to refill), do I doubt that my need is real? Have I been so brainwashed into thinking that someone else has to control my health care that I struggle with taking self-control seriously?

Writing this is my act of accountability. If I publicly state I know what I need to do, I am more likely to stick with it. This, too, I have discovered .

Perhaps while I'm at it should also state that I need to drink more water and keep exercising!