I’ve got a good case of them, and that’s probably why I haven’t spent a lot of time blogging.
I went for my final checkup yesterday with the surgeon who delivered my baby. It was my “good bye, good luck” visit. My incision is healed, my uterus has shrunk back down, so medically, I’m fine. Good to go!
Emotionally I’m a wreck. I cry at Hallmark commercials and greeting cards. A week or so ago I tried to convince Bill Luse not to close down his blog, and in his sweet reply back he called me, “sweetheart.” Such terms of endearment at this point in my life just kill me. I cried like a baby over that.
Then over on John’s blog, we were having the ever popular contraception/natural family planning/ I’m my own magesterium debate,when a very pro-artificial birth control commenter made a comment that just floored me. We were discussing the “crosses” of marriage as in Jesus’ command to pick up the cross. Now I always took that to mean the crosses (big and small) of life and admittedly some crosses are very small, others are huge. The baby crying in the middle of the night is a small cross for example. Regardless of what our life is, we all have crosses. If you’re human and susceptible to illness, disease, anger and annoyance – those are crosses. In married life those crosses can be as small as having to brush the whiskers off of the sink after your husband trims his beard, or finding a nasty stain on a nice shirt that the kids hid behind the hamper. A head cold is a small cross.
But this lady didn’t see it that way and when I pressed her on it she said,” I don’t see married love as a cross.”
I replied, “Well congratulations! You must be the only married couple in history without bills, illness, and laundry! or you love bills illness and laundry? Either way good for you!! Most people find those sorts of things the little crosses of life.”
and then the part that stunned me
“But, yes, I have been very blessed indeed. Bills and laundry are not an issue. My husband does very well and we have a girl come in to clean and do laundry. Love and money – go me!”
I’ve got tons of bills and laundry. The only one cleaning up this mess most of the time is me and Pete, and the boys with some persuasion. We have lots of love and almost no money. Her remark made the cross on my back just about bend me into the ground. I lost my enthusiam for the debate soon after.
So I hold my little Rosie. Gosh she’s gorgeous. She’s starting to smile now and she nurses great! She doesn’t know that mommy and daddy are technically poor, or that she probably is going to have to do a lot of her own struggling and sacrifice in this life. Does that mean it would have been better to not be born at all? I can’t and don’t believe that in my heart.
Then I hear women say things like this and I just marvel at how easy it is for some women to close the door on their childbearing years. I’m at the end of mine and I begrudgingly accept what must eventually be, but I cannot imagine voluntarily slamming and locking that door on purpose and when I think about that, as I shower this post-partum body of mine, or hold my little precious baby girl, or any of my kids, I cry. They are tears of grief over the loss of a time of my life that I have thorougly and completely enjoyed regardless of the hardships, and I thank God for them.
Ugh… I’m a lactating, postpartum and perimenopausal woman…probably best not to mess with me just now… sniff!
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