Our baby already has a name

Naming things has always been a duty of utmost gravity to me. I named my flip phone in high school (Santiago), each of my cars (Sunny, Sirius, Cherry, Han, Blackavar), my stuffed animals (too many to list, sorry). I nicknamed almost all my friends through middle school and high school (fewer than the stuffed animals but still, I won't bore you). The first time I remember naming something is when we got our first poodle. Her name was Chloe, the name was my suggestion, everyone agreed it fit, and I have been wearing that knowledge like a medal of self-affirmation ever since. 

More recently husband and I have agonized over which name would best fit each of our cats (Pippin, the late Bombadil, Zuko, Princess Peach). Their names are fun and fitting, often literary. But naming a baby is a very different task. Almost a prophetic one.

I don't believe in mantras or manifestation, but I do believe there is something profound about a name. God certainly does. All throughout the Bible He was naming people, re-naming people, calling and commanding and setting apart. It's part of Him knowing us, better than we even know ourselves. That's why naming a child feels different, like it's almost too big a task for my human brain. A person's name is the first thing they claim as a part of their identity; what their name means can inspire and encourage them as they grow up. I learned in elementary school that the name Samantha, translated from the Aramaic, means listener. After that it always seemed to me like a title worth living up to (and here's how we know God has a sense of humor, because it is often a great challenge for me to listen well). 

For the one who does the naming, it creates a sense of connection, of responsibility and pride, that for some reason isn't there until a name is spoken. That's why Zac and I named each of our children while they were still in the womb--to confirm their humanity, their value, their set-apart-ness. That's why we've prayed over each of our children's names, and why we wouldn't just change one on a whim. That's the human explanation for why our second son is named Abraham. 

Abrahamic covenant

The ultrasound didn’t show me

the color of your eyes, the pattern of your hair.

It wouldn’t show those things,

the ones that come with time.

Whether you will like Brussels sprouts 

or playing in the snow.

There is no prenatal personality test,

no questionnaire or list of preferences.

Your existence, enabled in part by my own

flesh and blood,

depends on something else entirely.

Would I take that job if I could?

Pencil in your features like some dystopian geneticist,

gray-green eyes and your dad’s hair.

I’d never have to tell you

not to hit your sister.

You’d never cry over out-of-reach candy.

And I think

you’d end up really boring.

We named you Abraham before we saw you,

a name emanating legacy,

a dream of faith-fed greatness. Abraham.

Presidential, near-prehistoric. Possibility

and promise.

No, I wouldn’t write your story.

The part of me that wants to 

has all the fear, none of the reckless courage

such a name requires.

But God knew you before I did,

he saw your footprints and where they led,

and promised to lead you.

You may not turn out to be

the father of a nation 

but you will be the father of something.

Your life brings forth some newness

some first-print exclusive

never-would-have-thought backstory

written by the only original in the universe.

We chose your name

but I have a feeling

God did that too.

Pregnant again

Yes, we are having another baby! Our new baby boy is 17 weeks old and growing! 

And yes, this is a good, good thing. 

My husband and I are blessed with three children now, two who have been born, and we couldn't be more grateful for the love and support we have found over the last couple years in starting our family. 

After the first baby, a lot of things are different, and one thing that's stuck out to me in this most recent pregnancy is the change in tone when people find out. 

I just want to say this isn't a complaint. I'm very excited to have another new baby join the club, and I don't need others to validate me because I know all new life is a gift from God. But it's weird how the negativity seeps in further with each new addition. People will be happy for you, but there's a wariness to them. A fear that maybe this time the new baby won't be a blessing but a burden.  

I'm past the point of wanting people to say different things. Everyone's going to say something, and I shouldn't expect them to shape their though process to what fits my worldview best. There's been plenty said to me by the few people I told about this pregnancy early, and all of it varied widely--even though everyone in my life we shared our news with is supportive and wonderful.

I said before I don't want to expect people to change their words to suit me, and that's true. But I do think the way we talk about things matters. It matters because our words shape our perceptions more than we'd like to admit, and the words we hear from others operate in the same way. In our society we're accustomed to labeling children as a burden. When we Christians, who should know better than anyone what a blessing a baby is, who follow a God who has never said anything but positive things about children, start to absorb this worldview, it comes out even when we are happy about a pregnancy.

That's how you end up congratulating someone on a new baby and in the same breath saying,

"Children are expensive." 

"Pregnancy is traumatic."

"When are you going to be done?" 

"They'll be so close in age, you'll be exhausted!"

"Bet your husband is planning his vasectomy already!"

"I'm just glad it's you and not me."

These are all things I've heard people say to expecting moms (most of them to me) upon their pregnancy announcement. As if they feel compelled to temper their joy with a dose of reality. And I've been guilty of the same thing myself. Why do we feel we have to do this? 

I think life so often disappoints us that we feel the need to buffer our happiness with a layer of doubt. We stop ourselves from diving in to the joy of life because we don't want to be taken by surprise when things are hard. We project our own fears or struggles onto other people because we don't want them to suffer. We fear that if we experience joy too fully, it might seem to others that we don't see their hardships. 

This kind of thing is not only unhelpful, it's dumb. I say that from experience. It's dumb not to allow yourself to appreciate blessings, for any reason. It's dumb to let your anxiety taint the joy of others. It's dumb to look at a good thing and, because it isn't easy or because we live in a world full of bruises, to say that it might actually be bad. Good things are good, and they can be good even here.

Our mindsets need to change on this. Yes, having children isn't all rainbows all the time. Nothing is. That doesn't mean every child isn't a masterpiece handcrafted by God. 

If motherhood has taught me one thing it's that I can't control everything. I actually pretty much control nothing. And any time I start feeling it's my responsibility to ensure that everything is the way it should be for my babies, God sees fit to remind me that ultimately it is He who takes care of all of us.

He's taken care of me my whole life, and He takes care of my children. 

He takes care of the children whose mothers don't. Who've been abandoned by their fathers or shunted into the system. He watches over every soul on this earth, the forgotten, the lonely, the impoverished, the enslaved. He knows their circumstances better than even their parents could. And He loves them better than anyone. Children are precious to the Lord, their Creator. So how can I see them as anything but precious, a thing to be cherished, a gift to be in awe of every day?  

Not every mother can see this, or has ever even heard this truth about her children. But we followers of Jesus are ambassadors of His truth, His light. We should take this responsibility seriously, not using our words to discourage, but to uplift. 

You're worried a mama you know is going to have a hard time--so what? It's the perfect opportunity to ask her if she needs anything. To come alongside her and let her know you love her and her baby and want the best for both of them. To not discourage her by saying something negative. 

Next time you speak to a mama, encourage her. Affirm that her baby (or babies) are loved and created for a purpose. Rejoice with her! Let God open your heart to her. If she has needs you can meet, give generously to her family. We don't have to let joy blind us to need--we should joyfully participate in the will of God to meet those needs. That way, we don't keep our joy hoarded away, not to be shown. Instead we get to share it with others, and point to the One who makes our joy complete. 

God does answer prayers

June 24th is the new favorite holiday of all pro-life people. A poem for the occasion:

Finally, an Answer

Is this the first one:
It feels like the first real victory,
the first time we rallied
and overcame the enemy.
It feels like the first day in decades
we've breathed clean air

But is it, really,
when for the light to get here
it had to travel quite the distance,
one point in history to the next,
too far away to see at first,
now blindingly here,
leaving behind
a trail of undaunted footsteps.

Every domino set, a victory.
Every step forward, a battle won.

No,
when God was silent
He was not absent--
He was there, baton raised
breath poised,
kinetically focused,
never hasty.
Our lens is a pinpoint;
our frame too small
to realize how short our time is,
how infinitesimal the gap
between silence and sound,
between earth and sun.

So in the darkness, still I will thank Him
for the speed of light. 

Babies are My Favorite People

Babies really are just the best. 

Pre-motherhood me did not understand how some people seemed to be enamored of every baby they met. Don't get me wrong, I'd known some cool babies before having my own, but I was never very impressed by babies in general until becoming a mother. Now I know the truth: that babies embody many of the good things we adults strive for, or feel we've lost. And they are the purest of us all. 

Our culture is way behind on this. Women nowadays fear fertility. Young people find babies gross, needy, demanding, and inconvenient. Which they are. 

But as adults, it's so easy to forget we were all babies at one point. Our society is full of evil Headmistress Trunchbulls, expounding on the toxicity of the festering pustules that are children while denying they were once, not really so long ago, a little pustule of screams, snot and tears. And in reality, we should all be grateful that someone chose to put up with us in the pustule stage, because for parents it ain't always easy.

Parents have to put up with their children. Parents have to allow their children safe harbor in their home, make food for children to throw on the floor, and find their list of favorite hobbies reduced to a single word: silence. 

Why? you may ask. Why should a fully developed, functioning adult be reduced to a servitor of someone else's needs--particularly a someone who will probably never thank them, even once they learn how to say phrases with more than one syllable?

There are a few good reasons, but all of them pretty much boil down to this: babies are innocent.

Babies have never done anything wrong. On their own, they have no concept of evil. They haven't reached the point where malice becomes interesting to them. No baby will ever want to hurt you.

They're also incredibly self-assured. My toddler waddles around like a tiny drunk, convinced that the entire world loves him. And why shouldn't they? He's a baby, not a pimply teenager or a cynical coworker. 

A baby is the least cynical of all people. They live life ready to be pleased with everything, and when something bad happens to them it's an incredible surprise. We find it odd when a baby cries inconsolably over a tiny scrape on their knee or a dropped sippy cup--but imagine if you had lived the entirety of your life without a single thing going wrong (that you were aware of), and then one day you arrived in a place where things go wrong at least once a day, maybe more. That's quite the adjustment for a little pustule brain.

And that's the other really cool thing about babies. They are dang smart.

Oh, I know, they can't pronounce the letter Q and they think lint rollers are hairbrushes. But they are absolute shamwows when it comes to learning new information. They observe and pick up on everything, then next thing you know they're showing you where they hid their shoe when you've been driving yourself crazy for half an hour looking for it. Who's smarter than who now? 

Not to mention, teaching babies stuff makes you feel smarter. My toddler can't quite get the last of the yogurt off a spoon, but I can do that without even batting an eye. Take that, babies. 

I mean it, babies are awesome. Most of us are just in denial.

Maybe one reason why we tend to be annoyed by children is because a small part of us resents them for their lack of encumbrances. A baby has no problem crying in a public space. You, on the other hand, can't even let yourself have a good cry in the mirror when you're all alone in your apartment--let alone allow another human being to witness your splotchy-faced, tearstained glory. Maybe we all wish someone would just hold us close and feed us, be responsible for our well-being so we wouldn't have to, let us sleep on them and smile at us even when we accidentally yank the hair out of their skull.

We're jealous of babies because we ourselves have lost our baby-ness as we age, and we've become aware of how messed up the world is. In adulthood we stay just as self-centered and entitled as babies, but without the impeccable purity that allows for such indulgences. When I pull your hair now, it's because I wanted to regardless of how it made you feel. When I make unreasonable demands of the cashier at a McDonald's now, it's because I don't care enough to moderate my frustration. The main difference between me and a baby is that I choose to do bad things; a baby may do bad things without knowing what he's choosing. 

In that way, the openness and dependency of babies is humanity in its ideal form. And I think the reason we become worse over time is because, for whatever reasons, our sense of security gets stolen as we age. People disappoint us and hurt us. Life makes us uncomfortable, unfulfilled. The world loses its sheen of newness and becomes bland like a plain pita chip. 

But what if we could rediscover that sense of security? Then maybe our innocence would find its way back to us. We wouldn't unlearn our knowledge of the world's brokenness, but it would be neutralized by our trust in the One taking care of us, who loves and holds us through all our human nonsense. That's why Jesus told us to become like children. 

To overcome ourselves, we have to realize that not only are we dependent on God, but we can depend on Him. And with that confidence we can begin to throw off the burdens of adulthood and become the grown-up babies we were always meant to be. 

  

Abortion isn't Healthcare. It's a Holocaust.

I can't stop thinking about those babies. 

More than likely you already know what I'm talking about, but if you don't: last week, the bodies of five babies were recovered by Washington D.C. police in the home of a well-known pro-life advocate. For days the pro-life community has been calling out for an investigation into their deaths, which appear not only brutal in nature (as all abortion is), but potentially illegal as well. There has been nothing but radio silence from the D.C. government in response. 

This is our holocaust. 

I do not use that word lightly. Some may think I use it inappropriately, but I don't care. The time for sparing feelings has long since passed, and abortion is a holocaust on a grander scale than any Nazi ever could have dreamed. And yet, so many of us are silent. So many are content to stand by and do nothing. So many are content to keep the truth buried inside.

And what's our excuse? Social ostracization. Unpleasant conversations. Imperfect solutions. The Germans in 1940 had better excuses than we do. 

After a week like this, it can be hard to remember that evil is destined to lose. But I still believe in the God who defeated death. 

Lament for the Five

Five.

Five children dead.

Five sons and daughters mangled, abandoned

to blood and fear, cold and betrayal. 

Five dead faces speak for millions,

and the wicked heart calls this barbarism 

beauty.

These words, these thoughts are poison,

bitter herbs and stinging bites.

But how can I write anything else

when my mind is full of them?

Words of sorrow and rage,

hateful condemnations,

silent screams. 

I am anger,

I am a blunt weapon.

I am fatigue, I am nausea.

I am everything unrighteous. My heart

turns against me.

I hate death and desire destruction.

I desire the destruction of the wicked

yet my own maladies would condemn me.

Pain and death surround me.

The pain of the innocent encroaches on my safety.

With every breath

fear and hopelessness snatch at my joy.

The dead lurk behind my eyelids.

I cry rivers of blood,

never enough to satisfy a cruel world.

But the Holy One of Israel will not be thwarted.

His hands heal their misery,

for them now just a memory, 

while left behind,

we live still, in the echoes.

Come quickly to save me,

Man of Sorrows and Prince of Peace.

Wipe the tears from my eyes.

Let me write of beauty and love.

Let me sing songs of hope,

courageous ballads.

Let me dance and be joyful.

No more songs of lament

will flow from my lips,

no tears then

Except tears of laughter when I see You.

You, always before me,

just in your anger. Eager in mercy.

Perfect in goodness and

inescapable.

Let me rejoice and find in You my salvation.

find out more about how you can fight the evil of abortion at liveaction.org

A Long-Awaited Treasure

Not so long ago, I was just sitting down to write my son Salem's birth story. Now he's almost 15 months old and here I am again, writing his little sister's. (The scene is very similar, actually, except for a few significant details: there are two cribs in the nursery now instead of one, and while one tiny baby sleeps on my chest, my firstborn is now too much his own man to ever do more than sit next to me on the couch for a few minutes. I'm using my phone, not my laptop, to draft this post, because toddlers have devious little fingers that can't be trusted with laptop keyboards.)

Lydia Zahava was born on February 28th, 2022, one day after her due date. 

She had spent the entire month previous playing practical jokes on me. Night after night I went to bed with mild contractions, thinking it couldn't possibly be that much longer until she finally decided to come out--and every morning I woke up, still pregnant and incredibly tired of it. By the middle of February my body felt so cumbersome that my husband started helping me into and out of bed without me needing to ask. I started avoiding the stairs in my house at any cost. I grew increasingly touchy about acquaintances' well-meaning inquiries of "how much longer?" and "no baby yet?"

I expected the end of my second pregnancy to involve less anxiety than the first, but in reality it was more excruciating--probably because of my expectations. I felt I should be more prepared, should be able to easily distinguish between real labor and a Braxton Hicks contraction. I thought my labor was sure to start suddenly, since my body had already been through the process before--and this is what I wanted, for things to simply happen. But these expectations kept getting disproven left and right. I told people sardonically that the feeling was like knowing you were going on a road trip soon, but not when you were leaving or where you were going--only that you had to be ready to leave at a moment's notice. 

One night as I treated Zac to my millionth rant on the subject, he stopped me and said, "Have you been praying about this? I haven't heard you mention God a single time in this whole conversation." To which I replied, "Get out of my face with that convicting nonsense."

Not really. But that is kind of how it felt. To be honest, I didn't want to talk to God about it because I thought I could predict what He'd say: that I should be patient and trust his timing and let go of my expectations. As much as I wished I could be patient, I was also tired of being placated and admonished. But I will begrudgingly admit that Zac was right to point this out to me. 

So I decided that I would just start complaining to God. Every morning I nagged Him with the same request, to finally meet this baby, knowing that one of these days that prayer would be answered with a yes. I stopped ending my prayers before they began. I told God how I was feeling. And He did not give me what I wanted--but He did also show me how okay it actually was for me to not get my way. Every notion I had about the perfect timing got chucked out the window one by one. We made a plan to induce on the 28th, a Monday. It was an unsavory choice for me, the last resort I hadn't wanted to worry about. But every day I got a little more comfortable with being proven wrong. 

Not that I gave up very easily. I still paced my living room like a caged tiger and danced around my kitchen and recklessly drank chamomile tea in the hopes that the little lady might catch my hints. 

She did not. Or if she did, she decided unequivocally to ignore them. By the 27th, Lydia's due date, she was no closer to moving herself out and I had been sufficiently humbled to no longer feel like inducing was somehow beneath me, like it meant I was giving up or admitting to my desperation. In other words, I got over myself a little bit. 

The day itself was a beautiful day. The night before, my parents came by our house to pick up Salem for his very first sleepover, and I didn't even cry after they left (I got that over with before they arrived). On Monday Zac and I got up at 5:45. I had predicted only restless, anxious sleep for myself--if any--but far from being anxious, I was relieved. That morning did indeed feel like getting ready for a road trip--a road trip that promised the best souvenir ever. Nothing was rushed. The car seat buckled in, the go bags stuffed in the trunk, the tiny polka dot dress for Lydia all ready for her to come home in style. The week's forecast was practically summery, so much so that I boldly left the winter weather car seat cover at home. 

To most people, when you say the words "in labor," the images that come to mind are hardly placid ones. Most people would not envision a pleasant day spent playing made-up word games with one's spouse, watching Marvel movies on TV, and cracking jokes with two nurses as they bustle around checking monitors and hooking up bags of fluid. But that was how we spent Lydia's birthday. The only low points in the day were getting a disgusting IV placed in my right forearm, and trying not to picture the epidural needle going into my back as I squeezed the life out of Zac's hands. 

I will never be ashamed of getting pain medication during labor. With Lydia, and Salem as well, once I had the epidural I was able to rest and really enjoy the time spent anticipating the birth. I can remember both days as peaceful, even restful, preparation for an exciting change. 

In total, I was in labor for about 9 hours. At 5:15 pm, my doctor arrived to interrupt our scheduled programming of Avengers: Endgame, and it was time to push (we did finish the movie afterward, ha). I was so grateful that this moment came before the nurse shift changed, so that the two nurses who had helped make my day so peaceful were the ones there with me when Lydia made her appearance. 

She was born at 5:41, weighing 7lb 15oz, measuring 20 inches long and looking, somehow, just like her dad. In the end she couldn't have made it easier on me. 

We named her Lydia Zahava. Lydia was Zac's choice: in his words, the prettiest name for a girl he could think of (and fitting, because it actually means "beauty"). Zahava is a name of Hebrew origin, from the word zahav, meaning "gold." Lydia Zahava, because of what a treasured gift she is to us, and because our prayer for her is that she will learn to find her worth in the beautiful identity that God bestowed upon her when He created her. 

I spent the next day in the hospital with her, just the two of us, since Zac, husband and dad extraordinaire, had to be at work. My mom brought Salem to see us during the day, and I loved watching his sweet, clumsy fascination with his new little sister. We brought both our babies home on the evening of March 1st. 

This time around, the wait was certainly the hardest labor, but our precious Lydia is well worth it. She's truly adorable, a little angel who looks just like her brother when she's sleeping and makes the tiniest squeaking noises whenever she stretches out her limbs. She's had no trouble at all stealing the hearts of everyone she meets--except maybe the cats. 

Welcome to the world, sweet girl. 

He will be the sure foundation for your times,
    a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge;
    the fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure.

Isaiah 33:6

Let's talk about IVF

Is in vitro fertilization a moral or ethical practice, and should I, as a pro-life Christian, support it? Perhaps you've never asked, or been asked, this question before, but it's important for us, as principled individuals, to have a clear and well-defined philosophy on any Life issue. 

For the purposes of this post, IVF is defined as the process by which a mother and father's egg and sperm are combined to create a new life outside the womb, and then that new life is either implanted in the womb or frozen in a kind of stasis until the parents decide what should be done with it.

This practice is wrong. It is not ethically consistent with either a pro-life or a Christian Life ethic, and we need to start thinking about it more critically.

Before going further, I want to fully acknowledge that this is a sensitive and painful topic. I've heard many families' heartbreaking stories about infertility, and I know that the decision to attempt IVF is not made lightly by anyone. Feel free to disagree with me on this, but regardless of the difficulty, I think my claim is valid. Here's why:  

On a basic level, IVF is both selfish and wasteful. Selfish because it creates tiny humans who are then subject to the will of others, the question of whether they will have a chance to grow answered not by natural means, but by the parents' choice. Wasteful because even in the most hopeful of circumstances, it is generally accepted and even expected that not all babies created through IVF will survive to be born, or even be implanted in their mother's womb. This has created a consumerist attitude toward IVF babies, where their futures are determined either by convenience or desperation. 

A mother who experiences one successful pregnancy may decide she doesn't desire to repeat the process with her leftover embryos. She may die, or develop health problems that make it unwise for her to become pregnant, before having the chance to bear all her children. On the other hand, a mother may choose to implant the last of her IVF children only because the process hasn't been successful yet. The result is either that the remaining babies are never prioritized for a chance at life, or the one successful pregnancy leaves behind it a trail of miscarried siblings. 

Those miscarried babies are precious lives lost, every one a tragedy. And those extra embryos, the ones never implanted, are often left behind in "storage," never to be implanted unless a new family comes to adopt them from their biological parents. 

Creating a human and then essentially putting them into cryo-sleep until it suits you to give them a chance at growing (possibly never) is unethical, no matter one's reasoning. IVF treats human lives as products. There is no dignity in it for the person created in the process. 

And the industry itself displays an ironic callousness toward unborn lives, regardless of how the parents feel about their embryos. Use of IVF is always accompanied by the basic assumption that not all embryos created this way will survive--and if those children do miraculously beat the odds, it actually complicates the situation further. Parents are warned against implanting too many of their children at a time, lest those babies actually grow and the pregnancy become threatening to the mother's health. 

In this case, many OBGYNs will advise their IVF patients that "selective reduction"--ending the life of one or more of the growing embryos--is a desirable way to prevent too many of them from surviving until a dangerous point. So not only are babies selectively chosen for life during the implantation process, they are also often selectively marked for destruction if the process is too successful. 

Even if we leave all these extenuating circumstances behind, even if you acknowledge the humanity of your artificially created children, and desire them all to survive and be born, does that justify the selfish act of suspending them in limbo? Does it justify creating a buffer of multiple babies out of the statistically-supported fear that less than half of them actually will survive? 

There is, perhaps, somewhat of a gray area here in which one might make a moral case for creating and implanting only one embryo at a time, simulating the circumstances of most natural pregnancies. But even then the question becomes: where does it end? A single embryo created through IVF has only a 47% chance of surviving a pregnancy. That's about twice the usual risk to the embryo as in a natural pregnancy, which is why so many parents choose--and many doctors advise-- to create and implant multiple babies at a time. 

Every child, from zygote to newborn and beyond, is a unique and beautiful creation. IVF cheapens that creation by causing society to value them less, and view them as products rather than people. Children created through IVF are of the same worth as every other child created in the image of God. They are not potential children, they are children. Children created to become essentially the unwitting subjects of a lab experiment. The question posed by this experiment: will this baby live or die?

Human lives are not ours to control and manipulate. The humanity of IVF babies demands dignity. A pro-life person knows this. A Christian knows this. 

So we cannot be casual about IVF anymore. We can't be casual about the commodification of life. We should be champions of selflessness and patient endurance of trials, even the heartbreaking trial of infertility. We should be champions of adoption--including the adoption of the children who have spent their entire lives frozen in test tubes, waiting for the chance to be born. 

If you are struggling with infertility, my heart hurts for you in your struggle. God's heart hurts with you. But suffering has never justified injustice. Together we should fight to create a world in which the value of every human life is fully acknowledged.