Advent realization

Part of the reason that video in the last post resonated so deeply for me is that I spent a good part of last week worrying that I was pregnant with what would be our seventh child. I woke up one morning with a sinking feeling that you are not supposed to have when you are married. And for the next couple of days, I fretted over how to fit another car seat into the car, how to respond to all the negative comments we were sure to receive, how to give up my increased liberty of movement and time, all very self-conscious and selfish fears.

But what I was really worried about was how I could parent another child when the ones I have seem so desperate for attention that I seem unable to satisfy. My 3, 5 and 7 yr olds fight over who gets to sit next to me at meals. After school my other kids are constantly yelling over each other to tell me things or reaching out to me for hugs, while instead I give them stiff little pats. I am not the affectionate type and feel like all elbows and bones when people try to hug me. While I have no trouble loving and holding little babies, I have a harder time responding to the demands of the bigger children they grow up to be.


Maybe I’m overanalyzing their needs. I didn’t read the Time magazine article about “overparenting,” only reviews of it, partly because I’m afraid I might recognize some of myself in it. Perhaps I try to make up for what I lack in affectionate behavior by over-managing homework and play time.

Anyway, my anxiety ridden response to a possible pregnancy surprised even me. I’ve been sort of expecting that we would have another child – a surprise baby in our last years of fertility. I haven’t given away all the baby clothes, and I’ve been listening sympathetically to a couple of older friends, both of whom have 5 or 6 kids, talk about how they’d like to have another. For a while I liked to say we “practiced” NFP and weren’t very good at it, but 3 years after our last, maybe I was starting to get a little overconfident. And a little too comfortable in the status quo.

In my frustration at making a “mistake,” I moaned and berated myself, grousing and griping and being very unpleasant to be around. Sorry, family. And here it is Advent, when we’re supposed to be eagerly anticipating a Baby, the gift of Life.

Then one afternoon while driving home from school, I started thinking of names that we haven’t used yet. And by giving this potential thing a name, I finally began to think of it as a baby, as a person, as someone new to love.
Snuck into Confession before going to a Christmas party, and finished the weekend without so many worries, only regret that I’d been such a bear to everyone, especially so unnecessarily, as no telltale signs of pregnancy have showed up. And now maybe I am a little sorry not to add a little more drama to life.
Perhaps a benefit of this little episode is that it has heightened my commitment to an Advent resolution of putting aside fear about the future. So in that vein here are a couple good quotes from Watch for the Light:

This from Fr. Alfred Delp who died in a Nazi prison:

There is perhaps nothing we modern people need more than to be genuinely shaken up. Where life is firm we need to sense its firmnees; and where it is unstable and uncertain and has no basis, no foundation, we need to know this too and endure it. … And now God strikes the earth till it resounds, now he shakes and shatters; not to pound us with fear, but to teach us one thing – the spirit’s innermost moving and being moved.

And this from Johann Christoph Arnold:

Love is a tangible reality. Sometimes it demands hard work and sacrifice . . . As my great-aunt Else laying dying of tuberculosis, a friend asked her if she had one last wish. She replied, “Only to love more.” If we live our lives in love, we will know peace now, and at the hour of death. And we will not be afraid.