Fear and Theology

Although I no longer suffer from intrusive thoughts, I still suffer from one of the after-effects...fear.  The intrusive thoughts awakened in me a fear of the pain and evils in this world that I didn't know before.  I continue to struggle with trusting God with my family and having peace.  This has been a time in my life where I've learned the importance of clinging to what I know to be true, rather than what I feel.  I choose to believe that God is good, even though I still feel fear in my heart, and sometimes that is the best I can do.

Image: Louisa Stokes

 I recently came across a blog where a man powerfully describes his choice to believe in God's goodness in the midst of a terrible circumstance.  He talks about the importance of good theology when dealing with difficult circumstances ("Theology is not for the intellectuals, those in the ministry, and those with too much time on their hands. Theology is for those with guns to their heads.")  He talks about the heartbreaking decision to "disown his children" during this trial (they are God's, not his) and that in disowning his children and all he held dear, he was able to be "invincible."

If I were ever in a situation where I had to make the same decision, I'm afraid my heart would break open and never be fixed.  Actually, I'm sure I don't have the courage to make such a decision now, but I believe God will give me the courage if and when the time comes.  If you are in the same situation where you are confronting fear in your life, I hope this man's courage will also give you courage to keep trusting God.

Read about what happened here (don't worry, no one was physically harmed).
Read about his powerful response here.

And please pray for the Sturms!

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Visions for the new year

When I was in college, I attended a talk where the speaker was casting a vision for the new year.  I don't remember the speaker or the vision, but I remember how he defined vision:

the intoxicating dream that hurls you into pursuit of that reality

I think this wins the prize for packing the most number of loaded words into one definition.  Intoxicating.  Dream.  Hurls.  Pursuit.  Reality.

Image: Salvatore Vuono

I'm extremely grateful for the ways I was challenged in college to pursue a radical lifestyle and for books like Crazy Love and Don't Waste Your Life.  However, sometimes I feel that I have only been equipped to live a life full of adventure, travel, physical hardship for the sake of God's glory, and if I am honest with myself, personal glory.  But I have been ill-equipped to live a quiet life with little to no personal glory or adventure.  Lately, I am in need of inspiration more along the lines of:

• Contentment with leading a quiet life
• Joy in the midst of boredom
• The work of Christ in domestic matters (if there is such a thing)
• Laying down your life for your husband and children
• Toddler evangelism

These are my "visions" for how I will eventually grow as a wife and mother.  More sobering than intoxicating.  And moving at a reluctant snail's pace rather than hurled into pursuit.

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Single women, mothers, and the nuclear family

I recently read an interesting Atlantic article on the current singleness epidemic among women, and while the topic was singleness, the article also made some broader statements about how women participate in society.  One idea in particular struck me:

“We are not designed, as a species, to raise children in nuclear families,” Christopher Ryan, one of the Sex at Dawn co-authors, told me over the telephone late last summer. Women who try to be “supermoms,” whether single or married, holding down a career and running a household simultaneously, are “swimming upstream.” Could we have a modernization of the Mosuo, Ryan mused, with several women and their children living together—perhaps in one of the nation’s many foreclosed and abandoned McMansions—bonding, sharing expenses, having a higher quality of life? “In every society where women have power—whether humans or primates—the key is female bonding,” he added.

Image: graur codrin

My mom lived with us the first month after I gave birth, and I still went into my room to cry without her knowledge almost every night, so having other people around won't prevent PPD.  But my mom's presence did help with a lot of new-mom anxieties.  She didn't know how to use the new, high-tech diapers we have these days (she used cloth back in the day), but she reassured me of some obvious truths:  newborns can't be controlled by a schedule, kids are resilient and won't be easily messed up, and most importantly, it will get better.  Not to mention her cooking and what a relief it was for me to have someone else do baby-rocking duty when I couldn't stand it any longer.   I believe in the traditional, nuclear family, but it's quite possible that the way our nuclear families are organized (each one separated by walls, fences, and a lot of space) may not be the way God intended. 

I don't see our society ever moving back toward communal living, but the concept goes a long way in perhaps explaining why motherhood is so hard for so many of us.  Stay-at-home-moms have a martyr complex about their brains turning to mush for the sake of the kids, and working moms have a constant guilt complex about not being home with the kids.  Maybe if we lived more communally, SAHMs would have more of the community and intellectual stimulation they seek and working moms would have a greater ability to work from home to be around their kids more.

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