My darling

Dear Baby,

I just wanted to take a second to say hello. Hello! You are right now kicking the dickens out of me. You are unbelievably strong. I can't get over how strong you are. When I put a little pressure on my belly to counteract your intense kicks, you provide counterpressure. Very, very strong counterpressure. How can you already be so strong?!

I'm sitting with you here at work. (Only six more weeks, give or take, that you will be able to come to work with me. It will be a sad day when I have to leave you behind!) I am listening to really, really boring people drone on and on about the "value" of things. Things they want to buy and sell and trade. Things like stock in companies, or pieces of the debt those companies hold, or insurance. Sometimes they talk about the "value" of houses they want to "trade". Or wine. Not for the business, mind you, but for themselves to live in and drink. And I really wonder if they know what value really means. Do they taste the wine when they drink it? Or do they only muse on its selling price and congratulate themselves for getting it on the cheap? Do they imagine the history of a home and its former inhabitants, imagine themselves and their families growing up in its rooms, listen to the walls and the wind in the backyard, notice the neighbors and the flower beds smiling at them? Or do they just calculate its monetary appreciation over the next five years?

And my spirit recoils from them. These are the people who cannot hear music, who cannot open their souls to pray, who cannot bare their hearts to others. There is too much calculation. Do they weep, I wonder? Do they truly love? Can they worship? Can they forbear?

My darling son, my innocent son who has not yet contemplated his vocation, I want you to know that Mommy and Daddy support any good endeavor you wish to pursue. If you choose business, you have our blessing. We know that the world needs business people and that it is as much a holy calling as any other. But if you choose this particular pursuit, please do not forget that you have still been called to create. Create work for others, create a product, create a business. Make something, quite literally, of your life that will be an offering both to God and to men. And do not forget what true praise is - the recognition on a visceral and soul-level of a thing's intrinsic worth, quite apart from it's monetary worth, that you share with others.

Despite what our money-mad society would have you believe, there is more to this gift of life than buying and selling. So much more. And it is wondrously beautiful.

Love,

Mom

God is good. Then why?

I have been struggling with my faith since we lost Rebecca. Actually, I don't think that last statement accurately captures what exactly the struggle is. I do not doubt God's existence. I do not doubt Christ's life and sacrifice. I do not doubt my salvation. I do not doubt God's goodness - at least, not in my mind. My heart is another matter. Because of the disconnect between my reason and the pain I feel, I cannot pray. And I am frustrated and angry at all of the platitudes, well-meaning though they may be, by the faithful. They offer no clarity, no electrifying of my faith. They make things more gray, more muddy, more confusing, more sad. They make God seem less God. Less good.


The pain is so deep that it shoots through every cell of my body and every synapse of my brain and every sacred corner of my soul. When someone tells me, "It was God's will," I want to scream. How could it be God's will that my little girl was torn from my body while I lie there in physical agony? I'm sorry, but that is a wholly inadequate explanation. I have heard things like, "Perhaps you have some unconfessed sin," and (this was to another woman suffering the same thing) "God told me to tell you that you need to forgive someone in your life before you will carry to term." WHAT??!! Or, "God spared you from having to raise a deformed child." How is it sparing to save me from what I would have gladly done and in place give me the worst nightmare I could imagine? Or, said by other people whose scares turn out to be just scares, "God was watching over us." Meaning, God was not watching over me and my husband and our child. Or, "It's all part of God's plan." Well, from my perspective, it's a pretty shitty plan.

My mind insists that God is good, merciful and just. What happened to me and my husband doesn't make sense to me, doesn't square with my sense of goodness, mercy and justice. Not when we see women on the subway punching and slapping their children, showering four letter words down on their innocent and trusting ears. Not when young girls sleep around, get knocked up and kill their children through abortion. Not when prostitutes with AIDS or crack addictions give birth to children who, if they are lucky enough to survive their diseases, will be whelmed in destitution for life. Are we such bad parents that we don't deserve a chance, that Rebecca didn't deserve a chance?

Why, why, why, why, why?


Why, when most couples I talk to get pregnant shortly after a miscarriage, are we still sitting here weeping with empty arms? Why, when I saved myself for marriage, am I subjected to tests for sexually tramsitted diseases that I could never have? Why must I give up either the privacy of my marriage bed or all thought of bearing my husband's child?


I will not accept any of the answers I have heard so far. They smack to me too much of pharisaism. I cannot reconcile a God of justice, mercy and goodness with these answers. And the only prayer I can pray until I receive an answer that makes sense to me is, "Why?"


God is good, I know, or all of existence is senseless Hell. God is my Father because I have asked him to be. I strive to be a good child. If He then refused me and refused help to me, He would not be good. So I will sit and await an answer from my Father.