Locusts and honey

This is not a post about breast-feeding, in spite of the recent fuss and muss prompted by Barbara Walter's recent over-reaction to a breastfeeding mother and baby sitting on the plane next to her. It's about why people sometimes react the way they do. I used to be on a breastfeeding forum ( promise I'm only going to say the 'b' word maybe one more time), and I was surprised at how often we would get 'hit and run' posters who would pop in to a discussion labeled 'breastfeeding' and say that we should all quit talking about its benefits because it made some mothers (like them) feel guilty.

We all make choices. We live with our choices and nobody else is responsible for them, however much we might wish we could lay the blame for them at somebody else's door.

I know two sisters, one who married young, had children, and a career, and the other married much later in life, had her children later, and meanwhile, traveled the globe. Both sisters learned, much later, that each of them had often envied the other her lifestyle, and each of the regretted sometimes the choices they'd made and wished they'd made others. They spent years looking longingly over the fence into the choices the other had made, regretting their own. Yes, the choices of the married sister closed the door to some choices, but opened it to other possiblities, just as lovely, but different. The choices of the unmarried sister closed the door to some possiblities, but opend the door to others, just as exciting and interesting. Only different. Having made our choices, we need to make the most of them, without comparing ourselves (favorably or unfavorably) to those who have made others.

We all make choices. We make a lot of them in parenting, choices about parenting, choices that will have long term effects in our children's lives. It's a scary thing. And we love these people so much that we want to always make the perfect choices. But we are not perfect people (and neither are our children) and we are not living in a perfect world, so sometimes, we'll make decisions we really regret later. We feel guilty about those choices (Equuschick, I'm still very, very sorry I sent you to preschool for three months. Please forgive me.).

We can make choices about that guilt, too. We can hate feeling guilty so much that we want to blame other people for reminding us of the choices we wish we hadn't made, so we tell them not to make us feel guilty. Or we can be grown ups and own the choices we made and their consequences, and go beyond the guilt and regrets. We can make sure other parents have the information we lacked or did not seek out. We can use it to remind ourselves of our past mistakes to help us make better decisions in the future.

IT's not somebody else's fault if we feel guilty. We all own our guilt. We can take
responsibility for it, deal with it, get rid of it, or accept it. What we can't do is blame other people for it.

Here's one of my big regrets: Between our fifth child and our sixth is a six year gap that was not our choice. We just didn't conceive, except to miscarry at 16 weeks. I cannot tell how burdened I was with grief. My heart was bowed down with sorrow. I regret that I did not make better use of the four years between my miscarriage and our next child. I spent too much time feeling sorry for myself and wishing for what I did not, and seemingly could not, have.

I tried not to let my own sadness at our secondary infertility affect my children. I did my crying in private. In many ways I was so wrapped up in my own pain though, that I didn't realize all the ways that I _did_ let it affect my parenting, because this grief nearly consumed my life. I probably should have sought counseling, but it wasn't until I got better that I realized how badly off-kilter I'd been. When I did realize it, I was ashamed, sorry, reptentant, and grieved all over again. I could have let guilt over my attitude and consequent inattention to some things that needed attention consume me further. I could have wasted lots more time on fruitless regrets.

I refer to those years of infertility as the locust years. There's a passage in one of my favorite books that talks about the joy of abundance after a locust plague,
and one part says "He restoreth the years that the locust have eaten."

Locusts ate away at those years, but they were my locusts, locusts of grief, discontent, misery and just deep unhappiness. I couldn't control my fertility, but I could have controlled my attitude about it. When I look back on those four years everything seems to exist through a dark filter- even my memories, my mind pictures, are gray. It's hard to explain what I mean- but if you took a photograph and put a very transluscent piece of black plastic over it, that's pretty much what all my memories of that period look like. Certainly I should have sought help, but again, I didn't even realize what was happening until I started seeing our lives in color again.

The birth of our sixth child restored those locust eaten years in a multitude
of ways, but I like to think I was coming out of it anyway. Before I conceived her, I made a serious attempt to lay my burdens down and not pick them up again this time. I gave myself a major mental shake and determined that I would be content as things were and enjoy the blessings I had without grieving because they were not greater. I quit wallowing in self-pity. I determined that God knew what was best, and I would praise him for the children I had and for the lives we were living as they were, not as I wished they were. Things got better-I got better- and then I conceived our six child. But that's a different story.

This story is about allowing the locusts of grief or guilt to eat away all the color out of your life. There is a better way. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Bring Christ your broken life. He will restore. Take responsibility for whatever you feel guilty about, acknowledge it, give it up and put it behind you. Press on to what lies ahead. If you can do this (and with God's help, you can), the years of plenty, the milk and honey, will follow the season of locusts.