It didn’t take long in my experience as a mother – maybe a couple dozen hours – to face the unfortunate reality that motherhood comes with a lioness’ share of pain.
What I didn’t quite anticipate before crossing this threshold is how I was expected and encouraged to respond to the pain.
It began with nursing. While pregnant I had every plan to breastfeed. In our expectant couples class, my husband and I were taught about nursing in the “feeding” module. No more than five minutes were devoted to formula-feeding.
Well, nursing went peachy on days one and two.
Something went a bit “tit’s up” as the English say (and quite literally) on day three.
Maybe it was the crowded recovery ward. Maybe it was Clementine’s jaundice. Maybe it was the sound of the hideous beige curtain at the foot of my hospital bed flapping in the night (I say night, but really, at that point I had lost all sense of time).
Clemmie woke hungry. When she tried to feed it hurt like nothing I’d ever experienced. For a second I thought maybe I was having another contraction, a sort of labor after-shock, but in my breast. Clemmie’s wailing grew louder and longer as I shifted her body into various positions that might alleviate the agony. Nothing worked.
The midwives were hopeless. One handed me a laminated diagram of breastfeeding postures. It was four in the morning and I was crying too hard to see it. The other did a sort of pretzel-knot-headlock-move with Clementine that startled her into opening her mouth a different way, sure, but also made her scream in like a possessed feral cat at being handled like a football.
My doula’s solution? A clear plastic device that, once placed on the affected area, caused my pain to increase by a factor of ten billion, give or take a billion.
“It’s hard, breastfeeding,” she said as I writhed.
She said it all matter of fact, the way one might point out the hours when the gift shop is open.
Perhaps more than the pain, I was shocked by her cavalier attitude.
I wasn’t into the idea of ignoring my body. Or treating my evolving pain threshold like a badge of honor.
I stayed up in the hospital the entire night researching breastfeeding benefits only to discover that many are dubious or wildly exaggerated. It turns out the most proven benefit is actually for the mother: a reduced breast cancer risk.
We started formula feeding the following day and never looked back.
This nursing incident was my introduction to the disturbing but widely accepted lie that when something is difficult and painful, it must therefore be more virtuous and right for a mother, and she should simply press on.
In the following weeks I wondered if this attitude toward mothers was largely imagined by me in my labor-recovery state of delirium. Or if it was a cultural reality.
By then my husband and I were deep in the throes of sleep deprivation. One morning I posted on social media about our experience.
A friend sent a well-meaning reply.
“You’re just in the period of ‘dying to self’,” she said.
I read her message with Clementine asleep in my arms and I winced. It was like a needle on a record screeching to a sickening halt.
I was bleeding, un-showered, and my baby repeatedly pressed her body onto my tender scar.
No, this wasn’t dying to self.
Dying to self as Jesus describes it isn’t dying to basic elements of personhood, like being able to sleep or having a conversation with your spouse or doing a crossword for pleasure on a Sunday afternoon.
Dying to self as Jesus describes it is dying to sinful patterns in your heart. Selfishness, greed, you know the list.
It’s not putting aside what constitutes your humanity.
That is called pain, or violation, or misery, or whatever word you prefer. There isn’t any inherent value in it. Not even for moms! Can you believe it?
Sure, pain is something God can use and redeem creatively. But it certainly shouldn’t be valorized or celebrated.
More recently I encountered a different twist on the same principle. I’d been reading a book on being a stay-at-home-mom because I feel a bit alien in it, even after two years, and I don’t really have many stay-at-home-mom friends.
The author describes her feelings of resentment as she cleans up mac and cheese from the kitchen tile. As she is on her knees, she hears God tell her that she is not alone and that God is in her serving. That’s where moms can find God: in doing thankless tasks.
I closed my eyes after I read this passage. Here’s what I saw:
Jesus swilling a glass of red at a wedding. Still buzzing, He stumbles upon a garden way past midnight and gazes at a scattering of stars. Jesus talking shop at a crowded dinner party. Debating theology at the temple before lunch. Jesus off fishing for the afternoon, a satchel of bread and olives and cheese in tow.
Jesus serves. But not all the time. Not the way moms are encouraged to do.
In fact He has something to say about this. If you know the story of Mary and Martha, you know Martha’s out back in the kitchen, scrubbing the pots and pans and cooking and doing the stuff moms do (I don’t actually know if Martha is a mom, but you get the idea). Meanwhile Mary is in the living room, sipping hot coffee, chatting away with Jesus.
According to the gospel account, it is Mary that chooses the better way.
I don’t think Jesus suggests there is no value in scrubbing pots and preparing meals. Of course there is. There is spiritual value in these things, even.
What I think Jesus is suggesting – if you’ll permit me to even wonder aloud – I think when Jesus chastises Martha, he is hinting at a deep, lasting Jewish idea that mercy is greater than sacrifice (Hosea 6:6).
This mercy can take many forms, including mercy toward yourself.
As in, sometimes it’s better to order take-out to not miss a second of valuable conversation with an old, dear friend. Sometimes it’s better to not clean the house and to put on the television. Sometimes it’s better to skip church and sleep, let your body feel the kindness of rest, of solitude, of comfort.
Yet somehow mothers are taught to believe the complete reverse. We are even told that this is the spiritual path of motherhood: to sacrifice, period, that’s that.
And there’s no way around it. Motherhood involves tremendous sacrifice. I won’t say otherwise.
Since becoming a mother I have had to let go (temporarily, I hope) of many things: running by myself for exercise, going on regular dates with my husband, showering by myself, pursuing the goal of a narrative non-fiction manuscript, travel, and the benefits of dual-income lifestyle, just to name a scant few.
Two years in and I’ve come to believe that because there is so much sacrifice, there is so much more room for mercy.
I’m not talking about self-care by way of bath bombs and manicures. Though if those are your thing, by all means go for it.
I’m talking about a spiritual practice that is in many respects the most liberating thing I have experimented with as a mother, my own little mercy bubble bath.
Detachment. Specifically, detachment in love.
To detach in love means you let go of other people’s behaviors and feelings that you cannot control anyway. You take care of yourself, take responsibility for yourself, and your baby’s general well being, and let God sort out the rest.
Kid melting down for some irrational reason at the park? Nothing you can do but let go and ride it out. Mother at the nursery giving you the stink eye for formula feeding? Let her judge you and think about what you’ll make for dinner instead.
What’s spiritual about detaching in love? What does detachment have to do with mercy?
Every time we detach we remember that other people – even our own kid – isn’t a reflection on us, on our success, our worth, and our competence.
We remember this world is full of endless freedoms, including the freedom for people to disapprove of us, to not like us, and to act all crazy and throw rocks by the swings.
What’s more is that we don’t need them to be happy and responsive and sane all the time.
Shit, we don’t even need to be happy and responsive and sane all the time.
As moms we don’t need to enjoy suffering either. Or try to force some meaning on it when meaning isn’t there.
When we detach in love from what we cannot control we trust that our identity is based on something other than the whims and caprice of the people we hold dear.
There is a mercy in letting go of those unsteady things in your life from which you habitually derive a sense of sufficiency.
There is a mercy in honesty, in not pretending, in not putting on a proud, stoic face.
There is a mercy that is so much greater than the sacrifices we think we should make on the altar of motherhood, a mercy that says it’s ok to dislike being really lonely and exhausted.
It’s like what I always say to Clementine: “of course you do. Of course you feel scared. Of course you are crying; you suddenly slapped your head on the wooden floor. Of course. It makes sense. And that’s ok.”
The same is true for me. Mercy instead of sacrifice as a mother means I try not to see myself as a martyr enlisted to degrade myself for the sake of humanity, but instead as a human with needs like everyone else, just taking on a hefty load for a season.
Of course I hate shit storms, sleep deprivation, and toddler food-throwing.
And I know that’s ok because being made in God’s image means there’s a wide range in that image. God is not just found in serving. He is at weddings and wine bars and in gardens and out to sea. Sometimes he’s probably drunk. He cries and he laughs. He’s not keen on the main elements of his job title. Sometimes he’d like someone else to do it, frankly.
And as a mother, so do I.