Mary and Elizabeth

I am amazed by the crazy experience pregnancy must be for a woman.  Watching my wife go through it, it totally makes sense the immediate connection and solidarity that she has with other currently pregnant women. However, when I see this, I immediately try to categorize one woman as "Mary" and one as "Elizabeth" and either want the "Elizabeth" to be a mentor figure to us or my wife to be the mentor figure to the "Mary". Being the J that I am, I get especially gleeful if one woman is almost exactly 6 months ahead of the other. I'm a weirdo.

Would I really be pro-life if...

A relative of mine recently got married and found out they were pregnant. As a couple, they are not very well-off financially or in a place the secular culture might deem as being "ready" to start a family.  Not being particularly religious, they were receiving pressure to abort the pregnancy and were seriously considering it as an option.

When I heard about the situation, it hit rather close to home.  It made me realize that in my social circle, there isn't a lot of practical room for a situation like aborting an "unplanned pregnancy" to play out or at least where the couple would share about it as if it were a completely normal and valid option.

All of the catechesis that I've received or that I've taught or that my fellow young adult volunteers at my church teach is mostly theoretical.  We are quite well-versed in the rhetoric, but through this situation, I've realized that very few of us have a deeply personal connection or at the very least, share openly about a deeply personal connection to these life issues in our lives (ABC's tend not to be very vulnerable, but that's a different post entirely).

Being in the middle of our own pregnancy, I've had to face these issues more than I've ever had in the past on a personal level.  It has been a great experience being a part of the West Coast Walk For Life and also praying outside of an abortion clinic, but when our doctor is telling my wife and I about the need for genetic testing so in the case of catastrophic genetic deformity, we would be able to consider our "options," it hits me in a much deeper way.

Thankfully, my conscience has been well-formed enough so that we will receive whoever God gives us, no matter what.  But it was an interesting thought experiment for me to think about what it might feel like to consider abortion in the event of a major disability. 

I found that my immediate, albeit hypothetical, reaction was that all of the dreams of having a normal child, like running around in a lush field of green grass, having rowdy family dinners, cheering at their sporting events, etc., were the first thing to be offended and since that's what I really wanted - those experiences - the child, not being able to provide that, so I would think, didn't fit. 

The second reaction was thinking about all of the work and sacrifice that I hadn't signed up for.  There were expectations of a normal first few years of sleepless nights and diaper changes, but eventually the child would gain more and more independence and ultimately, we would have an empty-nest.  I didn't sign up to have to care for this child the rest of my life, never regaining the independence that I was supposing to only be temporarily giving up (see #2).

I found both reactions to be selfish.

On the flip side of the earlier situation, I lay awake that night asking myself, "If [the couple] were going to go through with the abortion, do I value life so much that I would volunteer to adopt their child?  I mean, I talk the pro-life talk, but do I believe it so much that I would sacrifice my life in this way so that a priceless life that I always teach/preach about would be saved?  Of course I would have to talk it over with [my wife]...I wonder what she would think.  It would be almost like having twins.  That would be CRRRAZY.  Jon and Kate Plus Eight here we come?  And it's interesting that the only way I'm having this conversation with myself (Thought Inception!) is because I'm married.  This definitely wouldn't work if I was still single.  Funny how marriage changes things..."  I think I fell asleep after that.

Thankfully, the couple has decided to keep their child!  That has now led me down the line of thinking how we can help support them and future play dates.

Pregnancy Envy as a Guy

It's really weird as a guy to know what pregnancy envy feels like. Prior to wanting to start a family or even being married, I knew this was an experience for people who desired to have a child, but were having trouble conceiving. Growing up, I knew of certain couples in the church who wanted children, but couldn't and even now, I'm friends with couples experiencing this. It seems pretty obvious that it must be very difficult when people around them are getting pregnant and especially when their good friends who try for the first time and boom, they're pregant. It's also probably very spiritually stretching if you're in a good a place and spiritually dark if you're not.

However, my personal empathy to this experience prior to us wanting to start a family was that I was only affected when talking to these couples directly, hearing them share about their struggles or trying to be sensitive about dropping any mutual friends' baby news.  I didn't really think about it otherwise.  Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.

My wife and I have always been very excited to start a family and both desire a large family. But now that we're actually starting to try, the whole shift in mindset has been quite staggering. There are lots of weird little things that I start to notice or think about. Among them:

• It's quite liberating to go from avoiding green and white baby stickers (Creighton Model) to just enjoying each other.  It's funny because in our first few months of marriage, almost every month, there was a day we "shouldn't have used" which caused us to look forward to the next period in anxiety wondering if we got pregnant.  I remember thinking that if we had gotten pregnant, I would've been a bit distraught.
• The whole process has really brought out what my wife and I individually believe about God's goodness to us.  We can tend to struggle with feeling like God asks us to sacrifice things for Him more often than not so we've found ourselves wondering if we'll end up being one of the couples who can't conceive or if we may be parents to a special-needs child or something else.  This has really brought to light the concept of barrenness in the Bible and how it's an age old problem. 
• On that note, the whole process just seems way slower than I expected.  Each month you try during the fertile time and then you just ........... wait.  There's nothing else you can really do to make things happen faster or ensure a positive result.  You just wait and see if the period comes.  It was a bit surprising, but very interesting to see that in conjuction with the common societal value of needing to be in control.  We have only been trying a few months and so far, it's felt like forever.  I know there are tons of couples who are rolling their eyes right now.
• And as you're waiting, I've noticed that my wife struggles with how much to look into every single sign.  I'm starting to cramp --> my period must be coming --> I'm not pregnant =(.  I'm feeling a bit nauseous --> I've had a cold for a while --> or I might be pregnant.  For the woman who is desiring to become pregnant, it feels like such a roller coaster ride.
• On my side, it feels like EVERYONE is pregnant around me.  All of a sudden, I have baby bump radar (or bump-dar).  There are seriously at least six women at work who are pregnant and three guys just announced that their wives are pregnant.  In the same meeting.  It's like it's so easy for other people.  And then that gets me thinking about all of the teen pregancies out there shaking my head in disbelief at how that works out.  Either they are having TONS of sex or they are super fertile. 

Well anyways, forgive my political incorrectness.  This is a new experience.