A Life Examined

     Imagine a crazed man with a gun encounters you in your home one evening as you and your sibling are chatting over hot cocoa.  Imagine he makes all sorts of threats and, in a frenzy, grabs your sibling and puts one arm around their neck and pushes the other one, gun in hand, into the side of your siblings' head.  Unable to meet his demands, he threatens to kill your sibling before your very eyes.  You shake.  Your sibling is crying.  You feel powerless as you try to reason with him.  You begin the plea for their life.

   
     That's literally what I feel every single time I read something about prenatal testing for Down's Syndrome.  Just today, out came an article about how expectant parents are going to be able to take a blood test at a mere nine weeks gestation to determine whether the child the mother is carrying has Down's Syndrome.  Most seem to cheer the news as a way in which the termination of those pregnancies will be able to happen at an earlier gestational age.  Some put the estimate at a staggering 90% of those who choose to terminate upon finding out their child has it.  I shudder.

    So how do I make the case, even if no one is listening, that my sister is worthy of life? That people just like her are invaluable insomuch as any of us are.  How do you communicate with the blind what it's like to see?  How do you put measure upon a person's mere existence?  Seriously, how would you defend any of your siblings' lives?  "Oh, you can't kill my brother! He's a good person."
    Emily Grace Meredith is the definition of good.   This is the girl who, upon hearing my other sister was having trouble paying her bills, collected hundreds of dollars worth of change over the course of several months.  She presented the money to her and merely stated, "I heard you needed some money."  One of my early memories is getting upset over something and I started to cry.  I ran to my room and shut myself in the closet.  Emily followed not too long after, only being a little toddler herself, and hugged me, sitting with me until I stopped crying.  Loving me, as always, just by being there.  Just her presence was, and is, gift enough.  I could easily make the case that Emily is a good person, much easier than I could make the case for myself.

    Or maybe you would say something more like, "Please, spare him! He has a family."  Translation: he is loved and needed.  Emily will probably never get married and have kids.  But she has us.  She is incredibly loved and, more than she knows, is incredibly needed.  Everyone has a soft spot for Em.  She is not hard to love.  She is hilarious, innocent, honest, and pure.  A glimpse of her mind is a vision of the untouched.  The wholesome.  I'll never forget when she first got on Facebook.  She is an avid LSU Tiger football fame and eagerly searched for Les Miles' profile page.  Of course, like all of us know, there are numerous Facebook pages that say they are Les Miles and have his picture as their profile pic.  Well, to Em, that's him.  So she goes to "friend request" one of the fakes and I say, "No, Em, that's not really him."  To which she replied, "Molly, I know what Les Miles looks like and that is definitely him."  Of course I started this lengthy diatribe about how people can call themselves Les Miles and put his picture up to trick people but it's not really him.  Well, she wouldn't have it.  To her, that kind of deception was incomprehensible.  Who would do such a thing?  Exactly.  And, typically, she friend requested the fake.  To see the world through those blue eyes.  To find other people's mockery and deception unfathomable.  To not be able to believe the bad because it's so far away from your own heart.  That is Emily.

     You could probably come up with a million reasons why your sibling should be spared and I could match you reason for reason.  A life is a life.  A sister is a sister.  She, along with my other sister, was maid of honor in my wedding.  She prays for me every night.  She is godmother to my brother's youngest.  She is an artist.  She loves movies.  She rides horses and hikes mountains.  She swims like a fish and laughs with abandon.  She keeps me in line and holds my children.  She is a part of my heart that stirs the deepest thoughts.  I contemplate her existence in the same vein I contemplate the very existence of God.  I love her with every fiber of my being.  I get annoyed with her like every sister should.  I challenge her, she challenges me.  I tell her she needs to exercise and she tells me I shouldn't drink beer.

     Many argue that everyone should have the right to choose whether or not they think they could handle having a special needs child.  And many understand the couple who chooses to terminate the growing life within.  I understand.  But I will never agree.  I honestly ache for the parents who could choose that.  I ache for their lack of understanding the gift they hold.  If they could only peer down the road, see past the horizon of today's sunset.  If they could name the child and feel their hug.  If they could only grasp what a life is, however broken in the eyes of a very broken world.  I ache for the siblings who will be robbed a brother or a sister and may never even know.   The difference that different life could have made.  
     It's my mother's birthday today.  60 years.  She'd probably die if she knew I told everyone that.  That's alright.  I was going to write about her but it's probably right that I write about her baby.  Her youngest.  The girl who literally changed everything for her.  For the better.  The one who gave us sight.  The one who, in her beautifully broken way, continues to lead us.  I know my sister is going to heaven.  And I know, that if I am ever so unbelievably lucky to find myself there too one day, I will enter in holding her hand.

Confessions of a Modern Eve

I don't drive a Prius.  I shop at Wal-Mart AND Target.  Often.  My 3-yr. old daughter has owned at least five Disney princess dresses and I've fawned over each one, playing the part of the Queen Fairy Godmother like the best of them.  I eat hormone-laden chicken and don't put the carcass in a compost when I'm done feasting.  The soles of my shoes are not made from recycled car tires and I take long, hot showers.  I'm more of a cheerio than I am granola.  Thus concludes the beginning of my confession.  Lest you think I work really hard to save the planet while my long skirt and long hair sways to the beat of a funky drum, I must prove you wrong.  Not for your sake, but for mine.
     Lets start at the beginning of my intent to try and reduce my rather large, rather imposing carbon footprint.  When I took the kids to Zuka Baby to buy the cloth diapers, I felt a little out of place.  And yes, I was tempted to dive on the McDonald's Happy Meal that stumbled out of the car when I opened Katherine's door.  Evil processed food.  And yes, I somewhat envied the cool calmness that radiated from the no-makeup, baby attached via a perfectly-wrapped-sling ladies that shopped amongst me.  Maybe its a lack of knowing who I really want to be, or maybe its a beautiful fluidity that keeps my personality evolving to prevent staleness.  I don't know.  But there are beliefs within me that pull to the natural, habits within me that pull to the familiar and sometimes artificial.
     Convictions are tricky.  You follow one and the temptation is to get lost in them all.  I am joyful with my cloth diapers.  Really I am, or I wouldn't have switched. The only hard part about the switch was knowing where to stop.  The wisdom of knowing that its okay to make small changes, and that if other parts of my life don't match my child's eco-friendly behind at least both sides of his back cheeks do.

     I am familiar with the thought process of feeling like there's always something more you could be doing.  But I also know that when I overwhelm myself with the "I should"'s, I lose the joy of the "I want"s.  I really want to cloth diaper.  I really do NOT want to drive two kids around in a Prius.  If we are so glum as to only point out things we should be doing or other people should be doing, we begin to follow the external laws of the un-convicted heart.  We lose the joys.  We engulf ourselves in feeling overwhelmed rather than empowered.  We descend the long staircase into the safe but smothering world of being trapped.  Safe from having to choose, but smothering from that same lack of choice.

 

 But therein lies the difficult part, being patient with the part of ourselves that haven't been redeemed.  The part of ourselves that are still very much attracted to that which is not the best.  The reckoning that you would have chosen, just like Eve, the damn apple that you KNEW would make your teeth ache for all of eternity, but you chose it anyway.  Because you were lazy, because you were hot and it looked nice and cool, because red is your favorite color, because Adam told you too, because for-crying-out-loud you were just having a bad day.  As I get older, I think less about how stupid Eve was and how I'd really like to read her the riot act one day.  I think more about how I'm really glad it wasn't me because I probably would have picked a whole bushel of apples and argued with God that if He hadn't created the apple in the first place, I would have kept my hands in my figgy pockets.  Because I know myself a little bit better now, or so I'd like to think.  Now when I read Genesis, I'm not surprised or even miffed at the sin.  Rather, I'm drawn to the mercy of God.  God didn't strike her down or even demean her ("You idiot!!" or "Really, Eve? Smooth move").  He gave her another chance.  I'd like to think she's in heaven.  That she didn't bemoan the fact that she brought down the equivalent of a rock-star curse upon all of humanity.  That she hoped, through her great fault God would bring great good.
     Even when we complain a thousand times or drive through McDonald's three times in one day (btw, haven't done this yet, but I know I'm not totally safe from doing it), we can still believe that God isn't done with us yet.  We can still believe that WE aren't done with us yet.  I can't save the planet.  I can't save my soul.  But I can make a tiny difference.  A sweet, tiny difference.

Road Rage and Other Virtues I Possess

So, I'm hoping there is some unspoken statute of limitations in marriage whereby you can blog about an event that took place without appropriate retribution or haggling from your spouse.  With this hope, I proceed.

So I ran down a guy not too long ago in his big ole' Escalade or some flashy rig like such.  I was in my mini-van, perhaps a little sleep deprived, on the way to somewhere when we encountered each other at a four-way stop.  Lovely man didn't stop and smiled as he passed us without even mouthing "I'm sorry" as he broke the law and triggered the citizen cop deep within me.  So what does the incredibly virtuous, mother of two in tow do?  Follow him, of course.  I so wanted to have one those magnetic, strobe-like cop lights to whip out of my diaper bag and throw on the roof as I totally surprise this cat with my part-time job.  I could totally visualize me pulling him over, kids wailing and I don my cop hat as I knock on his window and casually ask, "Didn't see that there stop sign, now did we?" as I smile and write a million-dollar ticket.

Actually, what happened was I did catch up with him and I didn't know what to do with him once I caught him.  He looked over, no doubt surprised at the horsepower under my hood.  I thought about trying to rev my engine but thought it would look totally lame if I accidentally hit the car in front of me.  So instead, I just gave him The Face.  Oh, my kids know The Face and I'm sure my message was loud and clear to this petty criminal.  It was a "don't mess with me, I'm having a bad day and you don't want to know what could happen" face.  The light turned green and we went our separate ways.  I'll probably never know the lasting impact I made on that man ;)

Point being, I never used to have road rage.  In fact, I was appalled at stories I read about this unfamiliar emotion.  But, what happens when you move to the city, have two kids, never get enough sleep, and encounter a cocky, never-learned-to-take-your-turn driver?  Apparently, in my case, road rage happens.  I have thought about this incident several times since it happened, most often asking myself: "How did I get like this?" But that's just it.  How did I get like this?  I became challenged in a different way than I've ever been challenged before.  Sure, it's easy not getting road rage when you're never put in a situation that requires enormous patience behind the wheel.  It's easy to be patient when you don't have kids asking you to do something for them for the five hundredth time today.  It's easy to give money in the collection on Sunday when you have plenty to share.   It's easy to be chaste when you don't have a date!  You get my drift?  The more we interact in the world, the more chances there are to be virtuous but the more chances there are to totally screw things up.  Before we revel in our virtues, it might serve us well to ask if we've ever been really challenged in that area.  I know I thought I lived a simple life, then I lived amongst the really poor in Honduras and realized I had just never been really challenged in my life in that way.  Washing my clothes on a rock?  Now that's simple.  It's also terribly difficult if you want to know the truth.  But I've done it.
Honestly, thinking about this so much can make you really depressed, like "Oh my goodness, if I sit here long enough and really think about it, I'll come to the conclusion that deep inside I'm probably a very broken person.  That, if I'm pushed hard enough, I'll break, too."  But, alas, therein lies the point.  The words of one of my favorite Scripture passages comes seeping back into my heart.  Mark 2:17 when Jesus says "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come for the righteous, but for sinners."  Ahhhh.......the beautiful sigh of relief.  So that's why He came.  For people who are so screwed up and who know it.  For the road-ragers.  For me.

Diaper Dilemmas

I know.  How exciting for my very first blog post: diapers.  People will no doubt be flocking to read this from all corners of the earth.  Can't help it- they're on my mind.  Plus, I think it very appropriate to blog about diapers considering the name of this blog is Poop and Poodles.  It's even more appropriate, or inappropriate, when I tell you Boo Boo (our issue-ridden part-poodle dog) ate a dirty diaper yesterday.  Ugh.

   Boo Boo, the poo poo eating "Prince"

Anyways, so I see this blog as a way to empty out the random thoughts in my head lest they exit via a weird dream during the night when I really need some good sleep.  So, rather than dream tonight that a cloth diaper and a disposable diaper are having a debate and I'm the emcee, I'll blog about it.

That's right, I said cloth diaper.  Two words I never thought I'd actually say if it wasn't preceded by "Who uses a.....?"  Yet, here we are, day #3 of decorating James' behind with some disposables and some adorable little BumGenius cloth diapers.  How did I get to this point?  I don't actually know.  I know I've read about them before, seen blog posts about them, considered them for half a second when someone mentioned that disposables are a main contributing source to landfill waste.  But I always went back to my trusty Target-brand disposables.  Then, I read this book that has gotten me thinking about a LOT of things.  I read Affluenza rather quickly, enamored with the points they were making about the tendencies of our consumer/materialistic culture and ways we can fight back against the trends of our day.  It brought me back many times to my time in Guatemala and Honduras and the struggles and the beauty of that experience.  They made a lot of good points about a lot of different subjects.  The boredom of American kids while being surrounded by an ungodly amount of toys, the obesity of our young and old while being surrounded by ungodly amounts of food, and the sheer amount of trash we unload into landfills while we consume more and more "stuff."  Ugh.

So, cloth diapering came into my mind and stayed a bit longer.  I decided I would buy three and see how it went.  Can you believe it? It has been so great!  Just goes to show how we can be so afraid of change sometimes, only to discover, when we just TRY to change for the better, sometimes its not so bad.  

                                           James modeling the latest in cloth diapers
So there.  That's the latest lesson I've learned in this motherhood adventure.  Oftentimes, change is far worse in our imagination than in our reality.  What a relief :)