Bittersweet Feast

Today is the prelude of joy for the universe!
Let us anticipate the feast and celebrate with 
exultation:
Gabriel is on his way to announce the glad 
tidings 
to the Virgin;
He is ready to cry out in fear and wonder:
Rejoice, O Full of Grace, the Lord is with You!


I have to say that The Feast of the Annunciation is a little bittersweet for me. I love the miracle of human reproduction. It is fascinating and awe-inspiring. What makes it even more so is this very feast. God The Word chose this process to redeem his race of Image Bearers. Whenever a woman has a child she is taking part in that same process. So I find myself so excited to celebrate this feast for the very first time tonight. There is the sweet.
As I meditate on The Theotokos carrying not only Life but the Light of Light, True God of True God, the One who was in the beginning, I can't help but wonder what it was like. Women who have carried children past the first few days or weeks must have a taste of her wonder. And a very literal  bitterness enters here. I am jealous. I want to understand the Incarnation and the Theotokos in the way that any woman who has given birth can. What makes it all the more painful is that many women, especially my Protestant dear ones, don't care. Today is just Friday. They have the opportunity to stand in front of Christ and His Mother and have just a glimpse of one of the most important moments in human history, and it is just Friday.
It is a similar feeling to when I read Facebook statuses about how exhausting children are and how parents wish that kids would just nap, or that they could go out on a date without having to find a babysitter. Now I don't think these aren't real frustrations and legitimate emotions. I don't think that these friends don't love their children with all their hearts. I don't even think they should keep their frustrations to themselves. But, it stings a little. I want to respond "I would give my life and everything I have for a sleepless night with a colicky infant rather than with my own depression."
So as people's Facebook statuses start to pop up with everyones Friday night plans, and laments of lost pre-baby weekends I'm going to be a little bitter. Because not only don't I have the baby, but tonight I will go to church for the feast and not have the experience of knowing that feeling of life inside of me to deepen my worship.
I think as long as I suffer from infertility this will be the hardest day of the Church Year for me.

Housekeeping

I think one of the jobs of a wife and a mother is to build and maintain a sanctuary for the ones she loves. Your home should be a place where your husband comes home at the end of a long day and feels at rest.

Well I suck at it. I get my house together and I have these great intentions. I don't know what happens after that. Its like entropy is stronger than I am. Then things get so bad that its overwhelming and I know it would take a whole day to get everything together, so I wait for a free day. Well by the time that day rolls around it gets so that it would take me a whole weekend. So I wait for a free weekend (which we never have). By the time a free weekend rolls around it is so bad that I would need a few days. See a pattern?

Brian and I are going to attack everything during the next couple of weeks... again. I have gotten my other stuff in order. I'm eating right. I'm exercising 6 days a week. I am in a time of change, I am forming new habits. I want to do whatever I have to do for home to be a haven for Brian when he comes home. I want a home that I would be proud to bring children into.

It is my job. I need to, in the terminology of the Roman church, build a domestic church. I need to ask myself, when I look at my home, how would I respond if I walked into a church and the sanctuary looked like my house looks. In this home I am the minister. It is through my work that my husband and future children are reminded of God's grace. I should maintain an environment that reminds them of God's provision in providing us a home. I should prepare meals that feed their bodies, but also makes them thankful for God's provision in feeding their bellies with something they enjoy.

When I was a kid we would go gem mining. I have sapphires and amethysts that I found in the dirt and they look like rocks. They have value because of what they are, but it is hard to appreciate them in that state. God's gifts are a lot like that. God provides a roof over our heads, but if its falling apart then it feels like a burden on us instead of a blessing. Food is always a blessing, but if it tastes bland or like chemicals then we are tempted to ask why we can't have good food. If I've done my job right then God's gifts to us should be more apparent then they were before.

"Marriage is more than human. It is a 'microbasileia,' a miniature kingdom which is the little house of the Lord." - St. Clement of Alexandria

New Words For Old Thoughts

I said something on Sunday I had never said before. It just popped out of my mouth and it was so true but I hadn't thought it through and I hadn't planned to say it. I imagine it is what happens when fictional people fall in love without knowing it and those 3 little words just fly out.

"If my children ever came home and said 'I asked Jesus into my heart today' I think I will cry," and no I didn't mean tears if joy. It sounds weird or, if you happen to be an Evangelical, disturbing. But hear me out.

I don't remember not believing in God. I don't remember not believing in Jesus. But I do remember being told I had to have a conversion. So at five I said a prayer and it was supposed to change something, which it didn't. I still wasn't really a part of the church because I wasn't allowed either sacrament at 5. So why was it necessary? I didn't believe anything the next minute I didn't believe the minute before, or even the year before. It didn't give me access to my church. I was still an outsider looking up and in.

No one would ever have a baby, give them to an orphanage and say, "When this baby decides they want to join our family we will welcome them with open arms." So why would we exclude our children from the church until they can chose it? Why leave them spiritual orphans until they can verbalize something in the language of adults? Is it because we only understand salvation in a personal context? Is it because we've lead ourselves and our children to believe that there is salvation outside of the church? Do we believe that we each need to make our own path to God? Do we leave our infants to find their own way to food? Why leave them to find their own way to God?

I want the opposite experience for my children. I want to give them to the Lord as soon as possible. I want to tell them from that day forward that I loved them enough to give me away. Like Hannah, I prayed to have them, I cherished them, and so I gave the most precious thing I had to the Lord. This is not a hypothetical dedication. This is not a promise. I want to allow them to be grafted into the Body of Christ. I want to grasp all of those promises for them. 

They will be part of the church from the beginning. They will know that those promises are for them. They will know that by no merit or action of theirs they are the next generation of the covenant. One day the time will come for them to receive the Body and Blood of Christ and they will have been in our arms at the rail every week. They will have known, from before they can remember, what it is and why we do it. Then when it is their turn they will take all of those promises onto and into themselves. 

Finally, when they are old enough to verbalize all of these things they will stand in front of the bishop and he will ask them if they believe. They will confirm and be confirmed and they will stand on their own in the Lord, independent from me and from their father. The Lord will be the same yesterday, today and tomorrow for them. Nothing will change, if we've taught them and guided them well.

No one, if I have anything to say about it, will ask them for their testimony. There will be no pressure to tell a story of a fall from grace and a rescuing hand. They will, if my prayers are answered, be one of the 99 sheep who remained safe in the pen warm from the night and protected from the wolves by their family and the faithful shepherds serving their master. And if they ever feel the need to "pray the sinner's prayer" then I will cry because I failed them as their mother and I have failed the Lord as a shepherd.