| May 11, 2003 Mother's Day | Julie Lutz | |
| Motherhood and Faith |
I have often listened to the wonderful lay preachers at church and wondered to myself, "What could I possibly say up here that would have any meaning to anyone sitting out there?" Then the day of the Women's Faith Lift I was inspired by a session that Marian Vibert did. To the best of my memory it was entitled something along the lines of "Christianity 101". I wasn't sure what to expect, but what those of us who were lucky enough to be present heard was a delightful, inspirational story of a women's life as a Christian. It was several weeks later that I began to formulate ideas for a lay sermon. I decided that what I could share that might be meaningful to someone was what it is like to be a mother struggling to raise children in a Christian church and how my faith has helped me. I also need to say that since Peter first encouraged me to do a sermon I have questioned many times whether or not my message is meaningful.
I have to admit that I don't think of myself first as a mother. In fact if people asked me what I am, my response is generally that I am a psychologist. Of course that typically gets all sorts of reactions, most of them not all that pleasant. It can be particularly embarrassing if I am somewhere where one of my three children are not behaving as well as they can. I like to consider myself living proof that knowing how to do something the right way does not guarantee that it gets done that way.
But first, in order to help you to better understand me, I would like to share some of my history with you. I was brought up in a household that was heavily involved in church. I was baptized in a Dutch Reformed church and confirmed in a Presbyterian church. My father taught Sunday school and ran the Jr. High youth group before my siblings and I were even old enough to be involved. He was also church treasurer, a Deacon and an Elder. My father loved Billy Graham. We watched his crusades on television as a family many times. Once we even went to New York City to see him in person. I was much too young to understand what walking up front and accepting Jesus as my Savior meant, but I went anyway. I still love the song that they played while people were walking, the one we sang earlier this morning "Just as I Am".
When we were a bit older we changed churches. My mother became church secretary at the Presbyterian Church, ran the summer youth program, was President of the local and regional United Presbyterian Women groups and was very involved in several of the church "circles". My siblings and I went to Sunday school and church service weekly, were involved in years of youth groups, sang in the youth choir and played in the handbell choir. Church was what the family did every Sunday. For me church was family and church was friends. It was a major part of my life.
I was married in a Presbyterian Church to Marcel who was raised Catholic. Although that was a problem for my father five years earlier when my sister had done it, he was beyond some of those prejudices when I did it. Following our marriage my church attendance all but stopped. Marcel and I have talked about that. His memories of church are far different than mine. Although Marcel's parents were devout in their faith and attended church regularly, they didn't go as a family. His mother attended the Roman Catholic church and his father a Dutch Reformed church. Church was an obligation for Marcel and one that he admits to avoiding whenever he could sneak away on his way to service.
A short while after Marcel and I were married, we relocated to Long Island because of a job opportunity that Marcel had. For the first 12 years after we moved to Long Island I looked half heartedly for a church to join. I sporadically attended five or six different churches on the North Shore between Port Jefferson and Calverton. Church visits generally coincided with visits from my parents who were always hopeful that we would find a church home. The first impression that you get from a church is an interesting one. Some we attended more than once, for some just once was enough to know that is wasn't home for me. But we were also very involved in our careers. Giving up the one morning a week that was left over for sleeping in or doing chores around the house was not something that either one of us were enthusiastic about.
In 1995 we had our first child. Actually we first struggled to have a child. In line with my obsessive compulsive nature I had my life all planned out for me. I wanted a career, and a house, I wanted to finish my education and I had to have everything perfect before we started a family. Then, as luck, or God, would have it we couldn't conceive. For anyone who has been through any type of fertility treatment you are well aware of what kind of emotionally and physically stressful experience it can be. I will spare you the medical details but share with you the lasting effects of the process.
We lost several pregnancies along the way. Each of these a small success followed by tremendous feelings of failure and discouragement. But, we were among the lucky few who were able to conceive after only about nine months of trying. When we were finally successful I had a negative reaction to the hormones that were used and spent a week or so in the hospital followed by 6 weeks at home on bed rest. The pregnancy was what they term a multiple one. They were not sure if there were 3 or 4 embryos. We rejoiced with the entire office staff over the success of the procedure in spite of my severe medical reaction. There were lots of jokes about needing to buy a mini-van and pats on the backs between the medical providers.
But about 11 weeks into the pregnancy one of many sonograms into the process revealed that there was only one embryo left. The day I was told that was one of the low points in my adult life. There was a piece of me that was angry and a part of me that felt very lonely. Marcel didn't seem to understand the depths of my sadness. There was also a big part of me that was undergoing the typical emotional roller coaster that is part of the first trimester of any pregnancy, probably somewhat enhanced by the fertility hormones used. I now know that what I needed to do was grieve for the loss, but I was getting a very strong message from the medical community that I should be thankful that I had one healthy embryo left.
For me the short term effect of those accumulated losses and disappointments was that I mentally prepared myself for the worse. Although I didn't talk about it much, (that being both my nature and my nurture) it took me until the day Emily was born to allow myself to mentally settle on a name for her. She was well into her second year of life before I allowed myself to imagine what she would look like at 16. It wasn't until we had a second child that the feeling that something else would go wrong in her development finally subsided for me.
One of the gifts that I now realize that God gives women is the inability to truly appreciate motherhood until you are a mother. A good friend of mine once said to me long before my child rearing days "You can't possibly imagine how a little human being can tug on your heartstrings so". I now know that only a parent can truly understand what that means. I often wonder if I had had the support of a church at that difficult time in my life if I would have handled things differently. But I didn't.
Pregnancy and birth amazed me. The incredible miracle of the inter-mingling of a mother's body and a baby's body both before and after birth is awe inspiring. I wouldn't say that my bonding with Emily was immediate. Like most newborns she slept days and was awake at night. My mother who is a natural with babies stayed for the first three weeks and on more than one occasion would send me back to bed in the middle of the night while she rocked a crying baby to sleep. But slowly the natural mother-child bonding took place. Nine months after I had Emily my body started functioning normally again, something it hadn't done in many years. And after a natural conception, almost two years to the day after we had Emily we brought our second daughter into the world and a little over two years later out third. Throughout all of this time we continued to be a "non-church" family.
One hot summer Saturday night at my parents church in Syracuse we finally had Emily baptized. Having her baptized was something I did more to please my father than because it was meaningful to me. Not that he ever asked me to...but he didn't need to. I waited quite a while before I did even that. It was shortly after I realized that I was pregnant for our second child that all of a sudden I felt pressured for time. As it was, Emily was old enough to walk over to the baptismal font and dip her fingers in. I insisted that the baptism occur at a time other than during a church service because I felt I was being hypocritical to ask a congregation that I only see on holidays and vacations to assist me to raise my child in the church.
The minister of that church was wonderful. He had a way of accepting my churchlessness, without need for explanation. He was very non-judgmental in his approach to the whole thing. I now know that it was my guilt that I was dealing with. This was probably one of the first steps towards renewing my faith. It was several years after Emily's baptism that we had Molly as a two year old and Abigail as a newborn baptized in the same church. This time we did it during a summer church service. It was a major step for me to stand up and ask for the support of the congregation to raise my children, but doing this was healing for me as well.
We still hadn't found a church family during all of those years. Every Christian holiday I found that I experienced a sense of loneliness which I didn't really understand until now. Church for me had always held many positive memories of important events in my childhood. It was especially at holiday times that I felt a combination of guilt and regret that my girls weren't experiencing those wonderful things.
The Easter following the baptism of the younger two, we dressed the girls up and decided to attend Easter service at WRCC. It was one of the first Easter's since our move to Long Island that we were not in Syracuse and we chose to attend church even without the guilt inspired by my parents when they were here to visit. We chose WRCC because it was close and it was similar in doctrine to what I was used to. I would like to say that the Easter message was so awe-inspiring that I just had to come back. But in reality what caught my attention was the fact that all three girls went into the nursery and watched a video about Easter. In the meantime I had an hour or so of peace and quiet to listen and worship. Following church the two older girls chatted excitedly about the Easter video that they had seen to the amusement of Marcel and I. They were quite taken aback by the thought of a man on a cross and asked many questions. But overall they had enjoyed church and were quite comfortable leaving us to go to Sunday school that day.
I have to say from that point on I was hooked. An hour of free child care each week, an opportunity to reconnect with a church family and less guilt regarding my neglect of their Christian upbringing was more than enough for me. We have attended church here regularly ever since. This church has become the extended family that I remember as a child. My children enjoy the time that we spend here on Sunday and for other events. I love seeing them feel comfortable here and hearing them talk about what they learn in Sunday school. But most importantly to me is the renewal of faith that I have had and the effect that that has had on me as a person and in particular on my role as a mother.
I will admit that I am relatively new to this parenting thing. I have only been at it for a little over eight years. There are many of you who have much more experience at it than I do. I have heard from friends with older children that as the children get bigger the problems also get bigger. I worry about having three adolescents in the same house at the same time. And for those of us with younger children who think that parenting stops at 18 or 21 I realized again this morning that that is not the case as my mother called this 42 year old daughter to wish her good luck with her sermon.
What I find so intriguing is that in my professional life I rarely question what I do or what decisions I make. However, I seem to always be second guessing myself or questioning my abilities as a parent. There are days when I am tired or when they are cranky when things come out of my mouth that I regret the moment they are said. I then regret them again when I hear them come out of the mouth of one of the kids. I struggle with how to keep them safe from harm and how to allow them enough freedom to learn from their mistakes. I struggle with how to balance my time with them, my other numerous obligations and my time with Marcel, not to mention time for myself. There are days that I just feel like crying from feelings of failure and some days that I do. I find myself frequently reciting the "Serenity Prayer," sometimes more than once - you know, the one that asks God for serenity, courage and wisdom all in one breath. Many times I would like to add strength to that list of wishes. But there is not a day that goes by that I don't thank God for my family. I am learning to look to God to have the answers for things that I can't begin to understand and for things that don't go the way I plan. Faith for me is trusting that God's will will be done and that my job is to assist him.
As a mother and a Christian I have to admit that I sometimes struggle to understand tragedies that occur in the world, particularly when they involve children. My faith has helped me to understand that all of life's events, even the most painful ones are small stitches in God's bigger tapestry and that although the finished product is usually well beyond my ability to understand, every stitch has a purpose. Sometimes the hardest lesson is figuring out what that purpose is.
Motherhood for me has provided both the most joyful and most heart wrenching experiences. Having faith that God is helping me to raise my children every step of the way and is helping me to be the best mother I am capable of being is an amazing comfort for me.
Let us pray,
God grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change,
the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the
difference. Amen